A new scandal has emerged in recent days with the revelation of a whistleblower complaint from inside the intelligence community that’s apparently about President Donald Trump’s behavior. According to reporting, it covers a “promise” he made on a call with Ukrainian leaders, and when asked about the story in the Oval Office this Friday, Trump freaked — which although in character in terms of the amount of times he’s freaked in the past, definitely suggests something is off. Just pair some of his most fervent public Twitter meltdowns with what’s been going on in the news at the same time.
This time, Trump pretty much explicitly insisted that there was nothing to see in the story of his interactions with Ukrainian leadership — which allegedly, at least according to putting together bits and pieces that have come out to far, involved a “promise” of military aid in exchange for dirt on former Vice President Joe Biden, who’s running as a leading candidate in the Democratic presidential primary.
CNN White House correspondent Jim Acosta shared on Twitter:
‘In Oval, Trump tells reporters when asked about Ukraine and whistleblower “it doesn’t matter what i discussed” and adds “someone ought to look into Joe Biden” (per WH pool).’
Actually, it does matter whether or not the president of the United States attempted to bribe the leadership of another country into producing help for his domestic re-election campaign. It’s as if the president is specifically and explicitly trying to get himself charged with conspiracy where the Russia investigation surrounding his and his team’s behavior ahead of 2016 came up short in having produced no charges against the president so far.
The information on Biden that Trump is after centers on allegations his team has hyped up that the former vice president acted inappropriately in pressuring Ukrainian authorities to fire a top prosecutor because that prosecutor had been handling a case looking into Biden’s son Hunter. The problem is — there’s no evidence Joe even knew of Hunter’s affiliation with the company, the push for the top prosecutor to go came from many sources besides just Joe, and according to some reporting, the case had already been shelved before the prosecutor even left.
Still, the Trump team is charging on. This week on CNN, although the conversation went round and round in a strange Trumpian maze, host Chris Cuomo got Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani to admit that he did ask Ukraine to look into the Bidens — an admission he made within minutes if not seconds of claiming the opposite, that he’d made no such call.
The Associated Press notes that the inspector general overseeing the intelligence community “appeared before the House intelligence committee behind closed doors Thursday but declined, under administration orders, to reveal to members the substance of the complaint.” Trump has insisted that the scandal over this complaint is just another product of the “fake news” conspiracy against him, but if there’s really nothing to it, then why is his team trying over and over again to block information from reaching Congress?
Featured Image via screenshot
