House Impeachment Inquiry

[Stacyhs]

This is the way it was perceived at the time, apparently:

Quote:
The prospect of Mr Trump, who has praised Ukraine’s arch-enemy Vladimir Putin, becoming leader of the country’s biggest ally has spurred not just Mr Leshchenko but Kiev’s wider political leadership to do something they would never have attempted before: intervene, however indirectly, in a US election

.

Quote:
“Ukraine’s anti-corruption activists have probably saved the Western world,” Anton Shekhovtsov, a western-based academic specialising in Russia and Ukraine, tweeted after Mr Manafort resigned

https://www.ft.com/content/c98078d0-6ae7-11e6-a0b1-d87a9fea034f


They used the word "intervene" instead of "interfere", but come on.

If that's the sort of semantic trick that makes Kent "not lying", he's lying.

What I have no idea about is WHY he's lying.

More of the article quoted here: http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=12891834&postcount=1727

I think you're conflating interfering in the election with investigating Paul Manaforte's criminal behavior. That Manaforte was Trump's campaign manager at the time had a lot to do with the timing of the investigation, I'm sure, but that still does not mean Ukraine interferred in the same way or near the extent that Russia did: there were no bots, no misinformation being spread through fake websites and accounts, etc.

Kent isn't lying as he sees Ukraine investigating corruption not 'interfering in the election'.

 

[Stacyhs]

A budget office official will be testifying about the money withheld from Ukraine.

Mark Sandy, a White House official working in the Office of Management and Budget, will testify in the impeachment inquiry if served with a subpoena by House investigators, his lawyer Barbara Van Gelder told the Washington Post Thursday.

Why it matters: Sandy would be the first OMB employee to break the White House's blanket non-cooperation policy and could shed light on the motivation behind the Trump administration's decision to freeze nearly $400 million in military aid to Ukraine.


•Unlike OMB acting director Russell Vought and other political appointees in the White House, several of whom have defied congressional subpoenas, Sandy is a career official.
•The Post reports that he was one of the White House staffers who raised questions about the aid freeze and that he was at one point responsible for signing documents that prevented the funds from going to Ukraine.

https://www.axios.com/white-house-b...iry-79606799-5e37-4470-9daf-a347e56c0124.html

This should be interesting!

 

[kellyb]

Absolutely 100%. Kent is not lying at all with his answer....

Goldman: And to your knowledge, is there any factual basis to support the allegation that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election?

Kent: To my knowledge, there is no factual basis. No.​

He is absolutely telling the truth here. There IS no known factual basis of any kind that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election. The whole idea that they did was made up from whole cloth by Konstantin Kilimnik (Russian/Ukrainian political consultant with ties to Russian intelligence) and Paul Manafort (tax-dodging criminal and general, all around scumbag) both of whom wanted to draw attention away from the Russian interference and what they were up to.

FACT: The Russian Government hacked the DNC server and passed the information they stole to Wikileaks.

FACT: The Russian Government interfered in the 2016 US election in support of Donald Trump.

FACT: This was all confirmed by the Special Counsel, who indicted 13 Russians (including Kilimnik) for various offences including conspiracy to obstruct justice, aggravated identity theft and money laundering.

FACT: This was also confirmed by the bipartisan, Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee.

FACT: The Ukrainian government had nothing whatsoever to do with the hacking of the DNC server, nor did they interfere in the 2016 US election at all.

There's some disconnect here between your mind and mine. I'm not really sure what the deal is, but let me ask you this:

Do you think this sentence is accurate?


"The prospect of Mr Trump, who has praised Ukraine’s arch-enemy Vladimir Putin, becoming leader of the country’s biggest ally has spurred not just Mr Leshchenko but Kiev’s wider political leadership to do something they would never have attempted before: intervene, however indirectly, in a US election."

If you believe that's accurate, do you think that "intervening" and "influencing" and "interfering" are very different things, or whatever?

 

[kellyb]

I think you're conflating interfering in the election with investigating Paul Manaforte's criminal behavior. That Manaforte was Trump's campaign manager at the time had a lot to do with the timing of the investigation, I'm sure, but that still does not mean Ukraine interferred in the same way or near the extent that Russia did: there were no bots, no misinformation being spread through fake websites and accounts, etc.

Kent isn't lying as he sees Ukraine investigating corruption not 'interfering in the election'.

It was Foreign Policy magazine that called it "intervening in a US election".

I agree that Ukraine's actions were completely understandable, though, if that's your point. What Ukraine did is not any more controversial or alarming now than when it was reported at the time. I'm sure the Republicans want it to be, but it's not. Not unless someone has bad motives, or is operating from a wildly inaccurate fact base, or is just thinking irrationally for some reason.

I'm not understanding why we need to drag "Russiagate" back into any of this at all.

I think the historical record on Ukraine can be discussed completely spin-free on it's own without it accidentally appearing to discredit the FBI and the foreign policy establishment.

 

[kellyb]

Thank you for clarifying.

George Kent is aware of those facts but does not subscribe to the spin you describe.

What are you calling "spin"?

 

[W.D.Clinger]

I think the historical record on Ukraine can be discussed completely spin-free on it's own without it accidentally appearing to discredit the FBI and the foreign policy establishment.

A demonstration of that possibility would be welcome.

Thank you for clarifying.

George Kent is aware of those facts but does not subscribe to the spin you describe.

What are you calling "spin"?

Please see my response above.

 

[smartcooky]

There's some disconnect here between your mind and mine. I'm not really sure what the deal is, but let me ask you this:

Do you think this sentence is accurate?


"The prospect of Mr Trump, who has praised Ukraine’s arch-enemy Vladimir Putin, becoming leader of the country’s biggest ally has spurred not just Mr Leshchenko but Kiev’s wider political leadership to do something they would never have attempted before: intervene, however indirectly, in a US election."
If you believe that's accurate...

You're going to quote Pravda as some kind of truth... and you expect me to take you seriously?

 

[Trebuchet]

No pravda in Pravda!

 

[kellyb]

You're going to quote Pravda as some kind of truth... and you expect me to take you seriously?

That's the quote from Financial Times magazine, directly, verbatim. (I was mistaken upthread and called it Foreign Policy magazine, but it's Financial Times magazine, FT, not Foreign Policy magazine, FP.)

Here's the link: https://www.ft.com/content/c98078d0-6ae7-11e6-a0b1-d87a9fea034f

Where are you getting Pravda from? Did Pravada borrow the quote from Financial Times somewhere?

 

[smartcooky]

do you think that "intervening" and "influencing" and "interfering" are very different things, or whatever?

"Interfering" and "intervening" in elections mean very similar things, and they are both illegal.

However, "influencing" means something different. Elections are influenced all the time, legally, by things such as campaign rallies and political advertisements etc.

That's the quote from Financial Times magazine, directly, verbatim. (I was mistaken upthread and called it Foreign Policy magazine, but it's Financial Times magazine, FT, not Foreign Policy magazine, FP.)

Here's the link: https://www.ft.com/content/c98078d0-6ae7-11e6-a0b1-d87a9fea034f

Where are you getting Pravda from? Did Pravada borrow the quote from Financial Times somewhere?

https://forum.pravda.com.ua/index.php?topic=943819.35;wap2

I can't access the FT article (subscription only/paywall), but I struggle to believe that a British conservative newspaper would have anything valid to contribute on the subject of US-Ukraine-Russia relations.

The facts are that it was Russia, and Russia alone that interfered directly and illegally in the 2016 US elections by hacking into the DNC server, and by passing stolen information to Wikileaks, and by unleashing thousands of social media bots masquerading as Americans, to try to sow division and racism and to suck gullible idiots on Twitter and Facebook into believing a raft of BS propaganda about Clinton, while singing the praises of Trump.

Ukraine had nothing whatever to do with any of this. The limit of their "influence" was to try to stop that lowlife scumbag Manafort by showing what he was up to.

 

[kellyb]

A demonstration of that possibility would be welcome.


Please see my response above.

Just give this a minute, and somebody will be willing to engage in spin-free back and forth exchange of facts and opinions.

Just hold tight. There just aren't enough people in here right now to demonstrate that the statement "the historical record on Ukraine can be discussed completely spin-free on it's own without it accidentally appearing to discredit the FBI and the foreign policy establishment" is not actually one of Sagan's Extraordinary Claims, like the claim that extraterrestrial aliens are really in control of the US government.

At least, I really hope so. I have been known to be wrong before.

 

[kellyb]

"Interfering" and "intervening" in elections mean very similar things, and they are both illegal.

Are you 100% sure "intervening" is illegal? Where is the lawbook on these terms? Is it an international legal language?

I've been under the impression that the laws governing such matters were still kind of vague and not as well-defined as what I'm hearing from you, but I'm willing and eager to learn something new here, if you can point me in the direction of the specific laws about "interfering" vs "intervening".

However, "influencing" means something different. Elections are influenced all the time, legally, by things such as campaign rallies and political advertisements etc.

If we're just talking about the way it seems those words should be used, I definitely agree. "Influencing" is a very broad category sort of word.

https://forum.pravda.com.ua/index.php?topic=943819.35;wap2

I can't access the FT article (subscription only/paywall), but I struggle to believe that a British conservative newspaper would have anything valid to contribute on the subject of US-Ukraine-Russia relations.

The link let me access it yesterday or the day before, when I grabbed the quotes, and then it locked me out, too. I originally stumbled across the link via Aaron Mate's twitter feed. Screenshots of the article he took, which you can scroll through, are here: https://twitter.com/aaronjmate/status/1194675914971463681/photo/1

FT isn't what I'd call a "conservative newspaper", personally. The publications collectively called "the financial press" are nothing like the Daily Fail. LOL Their bias is just in the direction of pro-Wall Street and London Stock Exchange, from what I can tell. FT endorsed both Obama and Clinton.

Literally everyone I know who's familiar with it considers FT a very legitimate source. That doesn't mean misinformation could never make it in, but I really don't sense that's what's going on with that article.

According to Aaron Mate's screen shots, the author of that article is someone I'm not familiar with named Roman Olearchyk. I can't access the articles, but I can read his headlines here. https://www.ft.com/stream/7b2da31d-9bac-3e56-8fc8-c71deb29949b He doesn't seem sketchy. The whole world is a weird place, and geopolitics is especially weird, tho. So, I dunno.

 

[kellyb]

For what it's worth, now that I've had a while to process things, I'm fairly certain what this (Kent's lie or apparent lie) is, is probably a phenomenon called "misleading towards the truth." It's something public figures of all sorts (public health officials, politicians, company CEOs and executives) are really tempted to do sometimes when they know they're overall the truth-teller in some conflict, but the truth-telling is just complicated.

This link I'm posting below is about the "misleading towards the truth" phenomenon as applied to public health officials, but it works the same for anyone who finds themselves dealing with inconvenient facts which they feel kinda need to be minimized for the greater good, so that people don't get the wrong impression as a result of nefarious actors out there who will use your words against you, and things like that. Accusing someone of "misleading towards the truth" in my mind is more of a "diagnosis" than an accusation in the traditional sense. It's about subconscious altruistic motives as well as consciously altruistic motives.
http://www.psandman.com/col/madcow.htm

Misleading toward the truth is exceedingly common. It is well-intentioned – or at least it is grounded in a normal mix of self-serving and altruistic intentions.

So what’s the problem? Misleading people, even toward the truth, is a very dangerous behavior. If and when people learn they have been misled, they have great trouble thereafter believing the truth they were misled toward. If and when they discover that the company or agency they have been listening to cannot be trusted, they jump to the conclusion that the facts it withheld or papered over must be damning. In our field, risk communication, this is predictable – as sound as Sound Science gets.

If you hide information from people because you are afraid they will misinterpret it, and then they find the information you hid, they are bound to leap to the very misinterpretations you feared. And so once you start to mislead people, even toward the truth, you are started down a path from which retreat is extremely difficult – a slippery slope more than a path. The “soft cover-up” of hyperbole and de-emphasis morphs into more aggressive strategies of distortion and deception, and not infrequently ends in outright lies. This isn’t a new or hotly debated insight: “Oh what a tangled web we weave….”

 

[smartcooky]

Let me put this in nice, simple terms

The evidence that Russia interfered in the 2016 US elections is stacked a mile high, it is overwhelming and utterly irrefutable.

The evidence that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 US elections could be engraved in six-foot high lettering, on an aspirin, with a prybar.

When George Kent said "To my knowledge, there is no factual basis (that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election), No" he was telling the truth.

 

[kellyb]

When George Kent said "To my knowledge, there is no factual basis (that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election), No" he was telling the truth.

Is this statement below true or false?

"The prospect of Mr Trump, who has praised Ukraine’s arch-enemy Vladimir Putin, becoming leader of the country’s biggest ally has spurred not just Mr Leshchenko but Kiev’s wider political leadership to do something they would never have attempted before: intervene, however indirectly, in a US election."

 

[Stacyhs]

What exactly do you think Ukraine did to 'interfere' in the 2016 election?

 

[McHrozni]

Is this statement below true or false?

"The prospect of Mr Trump, who has praised Ukraine’s arch-enemy Vladimir Putin, becoming leader of the country’s biggest ally has spurred not just Mr Leshchenko but Kiev’s wider political leadership to do something they would never have attempted before: intervene, however indirectly, in a US election."

It's false. Paul Manafort was channeling (presumably Russian) dirty money to Ukrainian neo-Nazis and Ukraine exposed that. How's that questionable? There is clear evidence Manafort was guilty, he's doing time already FFS. Yes, he was the campaign manager for Trump and yes that presumably affected the election, but none of that is the fault of Ukraine.

If that's intervening in the election than anything is intervening in election. Not opting to buy american APCs in an election year? Intervening in election to harm the incumbent. Opting to buy americans APCs in an election year? The same, but to harm the challenger.

Therefore if the statement is true it is also irrelevant. We can thus conclude the statement is false.

McHrozni

 

[smartcooky]

Is this statement below true or false?

"The prospect of Mr Trump, who has praised Ukraine’s arch-enemy Vladimir Putin, becoming leader of the country’s biggest ally has spurred not just Mr Leshchenko but Kiev’s wider political leadership to do something they would never have attempted before: intervene, however indirectly, in a US election."

Its neither. What it is, is totally irrelevant.

Your problem is that you are cherry-picking this one question, and its answer, and then trying to characterise it in such a way that you can shoe-horn it to fit your preferred narrative - to wit, a narrative in which Kent lied to Congress.

When you put this question where it belongs, in context with the previous questions and answers, then you come to understand that Kent's answer wasn't just not a lie, it was not even misleading.

GOLDMAN: Now, when he talks about this CrowdStrike and the server, what do you understand this to be a reference to?

KENT: To be honest, I had not heard of CrowdStrike until I read this transcript on September 25th.

GOLDMAN: Do you now understand what it relates to?

KENT: I understand it has to do with the story that there's a server with missing emails, I also understand that one of the owners of -- or -- of CrowdStrike is a Russian American. I am not aware of any Ukrainian connection to the company.

GOLDMAN: Now, are you aware that this is all part of a larger allegation that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election?

KENT: Yes, that is my understanding.

GOLDMAN: And to your knowledge, is there any factual basis to support the allegation that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election?

KENT: To my knowledge, there is no factual basis, no.​

By isolating Kent's answer in the way you have, you are implying that his answer refers to ANY possible or potential Ukrainian influence on the election, when the question was really about the bat-**** crazy "CrowdStrike framed the Russians" conspiracy theory they were talking about in the previous questions and answers.

What you have shown here is how dangerous it is to cherry pick your preferred soundbites.

 

[kellyb]

When George Kent said "To my knowledge, there is no factual basis (that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election), No" he was telling the truth.

Is this statement below true or false?

"The prospect of Mr Trump, who has praised Ukraine’s arch-enemy Vladimir Putin, becoming leader of the country’s biggest ally has spurred not just Mr Leshchenko but Kiev’s wider political leadership to do something they would never have attempted before: intervene, however indirectly, in a US election."

Its neither. What it is, is totally irrelevant.

You're essentially "pleading the 5th" on my question?

This is a really simple question. I'm asking if ONE sentence is true or false.

It's not a trick question, either. Why won't you just answer it? It's coming across kinda weird.

 

[kellyb]

What exactly do you think Ukraine did to 'interfere' in the 2016 election?

Well, the word "intervene" was the one used to describe it in the Financial Times. Here's them on the subject, and I'll let it speak for itself. It looks like they just snitched on Manafort, to try to give the election to Hillary, and their motives really were pure, understandable, and nothing about it was "shady" or illegal according to any law I'm aware of.

No matter how I slice this, they were motivated to influence/intervene (or whatever word you choose) in the US election, and snitching on (or "exposing", or however you'd like to phrase it) Manafort was the mechanism they were able to find to try to keep Trump from being elected.

If you disagree, I'm all ears.

This isn't a big deal, which is why I'm weirded out by people trying to deny it happened. The only thing I can think of is that maybe it's a big deal because we put sanctions on Russia for the troll armies but not Ukraine for this? Is that at the heart of everyone's discomfort and why Kent lied about it?
ETA: if my speculation is accurate, I don't see why they don't just point out that Trump doing things like openly calling for Russia to go after a server made it extra worthy of sanctions, the FBI probe, etc...

The prospect of Mr Trump, who has praised Ukraine’s arch-enemy Vladimir Putin, becoming leader of the country’s biggest ally has spurred not just Mr Leshchenko but Kiev’s wider political leadership to do something they would never have attempted before: intervene, however indirectly, in a US election.

Mr Leshchenko and Ukraine’s anti-corruption bureau published a secret ledger this month that authorities claim show millions of dollars of off-the-book cash payments to Paul Manafort, Mr Trump’s campaign director, while he was advising Mr Yanukovich’s Regions party from 2005.

Mr Manafort, who vigorously denies wrongdoing, subsequently resigned from his campaign role. But Mr Leshchenko and other political actors in Kiev say they will continue their efforts to prevent a candidate — who recently suggested Russia might keep Crimea, which it annexed two years ago — from reaching the summit of American political power.

“A Trump presidency would change the pro-Ukrainian agenda in American foreign policy,” Mr Leshchenko, an investigative journalist turned MP, told the Financial Times. “For me it was important to show not only the corruption aspect, but that he is [a] pro-Russian candidate who can break the geopolitical balance in the world.”

Mr Trump’s rise has led to a new cleavage in Ukraine’s political establishment. Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee, is backed by the pro-western government that took power after Mr Yanukovich was ousted by street protests in 2014. The former Yanukovich camp, its public support sharply diminished, leans towards Mr Trump.

If the Republican candidate loses in November, some observers suggest Kiev’s actions may have played at least a small role.

“Ukraine’s anti-corruption activists have probably saved the Western world,” Anton Shekhovtsov, a western-based academic specialising in Russia and Ukraine, tweeted after Mr Manafort resigned.