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The Trump Presidency: Part 17

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phiwum

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phiwum
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bruto said:
The only link I see on that page leads to the memo, and the notation that the memo is not the transcript.
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There is no transcript for such phone calls because they are not recorded. This has been policy since 1974. (I've read a lot of articles recently and can't point immediately to my source on this, but I believe it was a Post article I read this morning.)

This memo, presuming it has not been edited and that the ellipses aren't hiding anything important, is as good as there is.

This is a continuation from Part 16, which has been closed for length. Posts from previous parts may be freely quoted here.
Posted By: KMortis
 
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The Great Zaganza said:
there is no real transcript.

there is a memo of people present's recall of the conversation from notes they made. There is no way to know how accurate it is and how many gaps there are.


This alone probably violates Record Keeping obligations.
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If so, every president since 1974 is in similar violation (at least those who served under the current record keeping obligations).

Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nati...nearly-verbatim-not-exact-heres-how-it-works/ (This article says mid-1970s, not 1974 exactly. It's not the article I previously read, but I couldn't find that one.)
 
It was discussed in the previous thread why Trump chose to release the complaint.

Let's not forget that it was never legally up to Trump whether or not to release it. Trump and his cronies broke the law by witholding it.
 
phiwum said:
If so, every president since 1974 is in similar violation (at least those who served under the current record keeping obligations).

Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nati...nearly-verbatim-not-exact-heres-how-it-works/ (This article says mid-1970s, not 1974 exactly. It's not the article I previously read, but I couldn't find that one.)
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I believe the president should have executive privilege to have private conversations, but of course that's just one of the reasons why the office requires someone of the highest integrity. Trump only released the transcript because he knew that it was much less damaging than the whistleblower complaint, which Congress had every legal right to receive. Trying to make the best of a bad situation, Trump and his bootlickers will try to make that one call, in isolation, the issue and keep insisting that since Trump didn't explicitly say he would release the aid money if Zelensky started the investigations, then he's in the clear.

You don't have to be stupid to be a trumper, but it helps.
 
If the released transcript isn't the one stored by the White House, it means that it is the one leaked to the Whistle blower.
 
uke2se said:
It was discussed in the previous thread why Trump chose to release the complaint.

Let's not forget that it was never legally up to Trump whether or not to release it. Trump and his cronies broke the law by witholding it.
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I don't believe that is all that clear.

The Justice Department has wide latitude to interpret the requirements of such laws and told the DNI that the whistleblower law didn't apply here. The DNI is bound to follow their advice.

Whether Justice came to the right conclusion may be debatable, but there's an argument that the whistleblower law was for finding issues in the intelligence community and the president isn't part of that community. There's an argument to be had there.
 
phiwum said:
I don't believe that is all that clear.

The Justice Department has wide latitude to interpret the requirements of such laws and told the DNI that the whistleblower law didn't apply here. The DNI is bound to follow their advice.

Whether Justice came to the right conclusion may be debatable, but there's an argument that the whistleblower law was for finding issues in the intelligence community and the president isn't part of that community. There's an argument to be had there.
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No there is not argument to be had. That the person having the whistle blown on them isn't the one who gets to decide if the whistle blowing is valid or not isn't some minor, debatable side detail. It's the point.

Whistle Blower complaints against the DNI have to go to Congress isn't a suggestion or a best practice or unspoken Gentleman's agreement.
 
phiwum said:
Is that tweet what you meant to cite? It doesn't say that there was a transcript aside from the "rough transcript" we've received.
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The whistle blower 9 page memo says there is a word for word transcript which has been put onto a database for code word level documents. Further, that there are other such transcripts of other problematic calls not related to Ukraine.
 
“Congress, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 transcripts that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by the voters.”
 
phiwum said:
I don't believe that is all that clear.

The Justice Department has wide latitude to interpret the requirements of such laws and told the DNI that the whistleblower law didn't apply here. The DNI is bound to follow their advice.

Whether Justice came to the right conclusion may be debatable, but there's an argument that the whistleblower law was for finding issues in the intelligence community and the president isn't part of that community. There's an argument to be had there.
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The complaint alleges that the POSOTUS abused power by using Intelligence Department servers to hide politically messy information.
That is not only criminal, but outright despotic.
 
Overshadowed by all the Ukraine/Biden stuff, there have been a few other things happening.

The U.S. almost had a HUGE meltdown with its postal system:

From: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/sep/25/un-universal-postal-union-mail-deal-trump
The UN agency linking postal systems worldwide has agreed to reform its fee structure under a proposal by the United States that averted the Trump administration’s threat to leave the global network but may mean many consumers pay more.

The agency basically coordinates mail between countries, so that if you mail something from one country to another, the postage is accepted and the package is moved around. The problem is that the fees for shipping stuff were based on the economic situation from decades ago (when China was much less successful.) Thus, there were accusations that the U.S. was "subsidizing" stuff mailed from china.

The problem is, the Trump administration was engaging in some dangerous brinkmanship... pullout out of the organization would mean the U.S. was largely isolated... mail in or out of the country might not be accepted (unless the U.S. arranged bilateral deals with each country it wanted to exchange mail with.)
 
Another Trump scandal that might have been mentioned already but has gotten waaaaaay too little coverage:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...airo-sulzberger-walsh-fake-news-a9117721.html

Egypt wanted to arrest a NYT journalist. The NYT asked the State Department to intervene, but Trump made sure that the US would not help the journalist against the Egyptian police state.
In the end, it took the efforts of Ireland to extract the Journalist.

Trump was probably thrilled to see a reporter from the NYT thrown in jail.
 
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