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Hey Legal Eagles, it's time
to think like a lawyer.
Because the President
could use some good advice,
unlike the bad legal advice
he seems to be getting at the moment.
Today we're going to discuss
one of the newest scandals
to rock the White House,
the allegations of bribery
and potential abuse of power
by President Trump in
exchange for getting dirt
on presidential candidate, Joe Biden.
All hell seems to be breaking
loose here in Washington.
And although you could probably
say that on any given day,
this time it seems to
be a little different,
because of one thing.
House Democrats have announced
that they are formally
opening an inquiry into the impeachment
of the President of the United States.
This doesn't happen every day.
To understand how we got here,
you need to know the
facts about Donald Trump's
conversation with the
President of Ukraine,
a mysterious high level whistleblower,
the many faces of Rudy Giuliani,
and what all of that has
to do with Joe Biden's son.
So to take a step back,
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe
that was formerly a part
of the Soviet Union.
The country currently has a
rocky relationship with Russia
because Russian troops have invaded
part of Ukraine's territory,
the Crimea, back in 2014.
Ukrainian citizens protested
Russian involvement in their government,
ousting President Viktor Yanukovych,
for conspiring with Russia.
Now the United States
and most of the world
condemned Russia and warned it against
further interference in
Ukrainian sovereignty.
Later that same year
then Vice President Biden
went to Ukraine to deliver US aid.
Now fast forward a few years,
in July of 2019,
the Washington Post reported that
a high ranking intelligence official
had filed a whistleblower complaint
about promises that
President Trump had made
during communication and
interaction with a foreign leader.
Several news organizations reported
that this whistleblower complaint
involved President Trump
promising aid to Ukraine
if they dug up some dirt on
Hunter Biden, Joe Biden's son.
Trump himself confirmed part of the story.
Hunter Biden was a member of the board
of a company called Burisma Holdings,
the largest gas company in Ukraine.
That company was known
for having some ties
to former President of the
Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych.
Hunter Biden remained a board
member of Burisma until 2019.
So what is the deal with this
Intelligence Community whistleblower?
Well I probably don't need to tell you
that it is incredibly unusual
for a member of the
Intelligence Community to
number one, file a
whistleblower complaint.
There are strict guidelines
that one must follow
in order to blow the whistle
on the Intelligence Community.
And it is almost unheard of
that a whistleblower
would blow the whistle
on the President of the United States.
It just, has never happened before.
And on September 9th,
Intelligence Community
General Inspector, or the
ICIG, Michael Atkinson,
informed representatives,
Adam Schiff and Devin Nunes,
who were on the House
Intelligence Committee,
that he'd forwarded a whistleblower report
to Acting Director of National
Intelligence, Joseph Maguire.
A whistleblower is a "person
who exposes information
"that he or she believes
is illegal or unethical."
Governmental whistleblowers
are not unusual.
But a whistleblower at this
level of the government
in the Intelligence Community,
making an allegation of the President,
absolutely is incredibly unusual.
Inspector Atkinson determined
that the report was,
quote, "an urgent concern", end quote,
and, quote, "credible".
Urgent and credible are
two statutory requirements
that require the ICIG
to forward the complaint to Congress.
Atkinson's ruling immediately made this
a very serious allegation that
Congress wanted to review.
However, Acting Director
of National Intelligence,
Maguire, stepped in to
claim that the complaint
was not required to be
released to Congress.
Now remember this fact
about Acting DNI Maguire,
as we'll come back to it later.
This fact could be the first indication
of a cover-up by the White House
and the Department of Justice.
At the time of the this video,
we don't have all of the facts,
we don't have the entire ICIG complaint,
but news reports are
indicating that President Trump
may have threatened to withhold
$400 million in military aid to Ukraine
if it did not investigate Hunter
Biden, among other things.
The Trump Administration had criticized
the Obama Administration for not providing
lethal foreign aid to Ukraine
in its fight against Russia.
So earlier this year,
Congress appropriated
almost $400 million in military aid.
$250 million in explicit military aid,
and $150 million going
through the State Department
that can be used for lethal
force by the Ukrainians
to buy military goods from the Americans.
The argument, of course,
being that Ukraine
needs that military aid to help it
fight against Russia in Crimea,
and was approved by the
Pentagon and Congress.
However, for months,
President Trump froze that military aid.
Some reports indicated
that government employees
were instructed to
obfuscate or lie to Congress
about the reason for why
that money was frozen.
It's not necessarily unusual to freeze
this kind of military aid,
but under the circumstances,
it appears to be highly unusual
and we'll get to why in just a moment.
Although there is much speculation
over the contents of the
whistleblower report,
President Trump and his
personal lawyer and advisor,
Rudy Giuliani, started confirming
aspects of this particular story
just days after it was broken.
President Trump spoke with
new Ukrainian President,
Volodymyr Zelensky, by
telephone on July 25th,
just days after Robert Mueller
had testified in Congress,
when President Trump allegedly mentioned
his desire to have Biden
investigated, up to eight times.
According to Trump, he
summarized his phone call saying,
- We had a great conversation.
The conversation I had was
largely congratulatory,
was largely corruption,
all of the corruption taking place,
was largely the fact that
we don't want our people
like Vice President Biden and his son
creating to the corruption
already in the Ukraine.
And Ukraine's got a lot of problems.
- President Trump described
the phone call as,
quote, "perfect".
- It's very important to
talk about corruption.
If you don't talk about corruption,
why would you give money
to a country that you think is corrupt?
So it's very important that, on occasion,
you speak to somebody about corruption.
- So President Trump agrees that he spoke
about alleged corruption by the Bidens,
and that he also was reluctant
to give money to Ukraine,
because, he says, the country is corrupt.
A potential flaw with
this argument is that
the United States gives military aid
to many different countries,
not the least of which, is Saudi Arabia.
But the President does not
seem to be doing any kind of
corruption analysis with respect
to those other countries.
This may be specifically
geared towards Ukraine,
and these unusual circumstances.
But President Trump wasn't done yet.
Speaking a few days later
at the United Nations,
President Trump said:
- Joe Biden and his son
are corrupt, all right?
But the fake news doesn't wanna report it,
because they're Democrats.
If that ever happened,
if a Republican ever
did what Joe Biden did,
if a Republican ever
said what Joe Biden said,
they'd be getting the electric
chair about right now.
- So what is it that President Trump
alleges the Bidens did?
President Trump alleges that Joe Biden
used American financial aid
to pressure the Ukrainian government
to fire its top prosecutor in 2016.
The theory is that the prosecutor,
Viktor Shokin, was investigating
the Ukraine's largest
gas company, Burisma.
Although President Trump has been vague
about what the Bidens did that deserved
this so-called electric chair,
the corruption allegations have been
investigated and dismissed.
Shokin was accused of
being soft on corruption.
United States was not alone
in calling for his ouster.
Other western nations in
the entire European Union,
also called on Ukraine to remove him.
And the Ukrainian Parliament
eventually voted to remove Shokin.
According to Bloomberg News,
which did an extensive
report on the matter in 2019,
the Burisma investigation
had already been dead
for about a year by the time
that Vice President Biden
called for Shokin to be sacked.
And there is no indication
that Hunter Biden personally
was being investigated for corruption.
The former Ukrainian Prosecutor
General told Bloomberg
that he found no evidence of
wrongdoing by either Biden.
But President Trump would not
let that debunked story die,
stating Biden, quote, "said,
'I'm not going to give
"'billions of dollars to Ukraine
"'unless they remove this prosecutor.'
"And they removed the prosecutor
supposedly in one hour.
"And the prosecutor was prosecuting
"the company of the son and the son.
"He just shouldn't have said that.
"Now as far as my
conversation, it was perfect.
"It was a perfect conversation."
As you may be aware, Joe
Biden has consistently been
the Democratic front runner
against President Trump
in the 2020 presidential election,
and has consistently led Donald Trump
in head-to-head poles.
President Trump and Rudy Giuliani
have already confirmed many aspects,
although not all of the aspects
of this particular story.
So what's going up with
Rudy Giuliani, you may ask?
Well Rudy Giuliani is one
of the President's personal lawyers.
He has no formal job
with the US government,
but allegedly has been
acting as a messenger
for President Trump with Ukraine.
In another one of of Mr Giuliani's
legendary TV appearances,
Giuliani has admitted that
he spent several months
pressuring Ukraine for dirt on the Bidens.
Appearing on Chris Cuomo's
CNN program, Giuliani said:
- The only thing I
asked about Joe Biden is
to get to the bottom of
how it was that Lutsenko,
who was appointed, dismissed
the case against AntAC.
- So you did ask Ukraine
to look into Joe Biden?
- Of course I did.
- So we already know that Giuliani met
with Ukrainian officials in
May and August of this year.
The August meeting was just a week after
President Trump froze
all of the military aid
that Congress and the Pentagon
had appropriated for Ukraine.
Giuliani said that during
the August meeting,
a Ukrainian official promised to,
quote, "get to the bottom", end quote,
of the Biden situation.
The Wall Street Journal reported that
this was part of an ongoing
effort by President Trump
to have the Ukrainians work with Giuliani
to find some dirt on the Bidens
in exchange for the promised aid.
Now on its face, there are major problems
with Giuliani's role in all of this.
Giuliani is not a member
of the US government
and should not be conducting
US foreign policy.
And if Giuliani is
conducting US foreign policy,
then attorney-client
privilege can't attach
to communications between the
President and his advisor.
Now there are, of course, maybe
executive privilege issues here
but it would be highly unusual
to have executive privilege
with your own personal lawyer.
Additionally, if the US government
needs foreign assistance
with an investigation,
there are proper channels to go through.
If there is a Mutual
Legal Assistance Treaty,
or MLAT, in place between countries,
then that's the proper outlet
for asking for a foreign country
to investigate particular crimes.
The US has an MLAT with Ukraine.
So the proper channels for this would be
for the DOJ to talk to
the State Department,
to talk to the Legal Attache
in the Ukrainian Embassy,
which would then liaise with
the law enforcement agencies in Ukraine.
Suffice it to say, the proper channel
is not your personal
lawyer, Rudy Giuliani.
And while I am loathe
to give any credibility
to the crazy things
that Rudy Giuliani says,
I think it is worth going into
what Rudy Giuliani claims
in this particular case.
So I know I've thrown
a ton of facts at you,
but here's a timeline of what
I think we know right now.
This is a fluid situation,
it's changing hour by hour.
Believe me, I have tried to
make this video for several days,
but the facts just keep changing.
But here's what I think we know right now.
On May 10th 2019, Rudy Giuliani
cancels a trip to Ukraine
just one day after saying
he would be, quote,
"meddling in an investigation
"and giving Ukraine's new government,"
quote, "reasons why they shouldn't stop it
"because that information will be
"very very helpful to
my client," end quote.
Shortly thereafter on July 25th,
President Trump talks with
new Ukrainian Prime Minister,
Zelensky, on the phone.
According to Ukraine's
readout of the call,
President Trump indicated
that Ukraine should,
quote, "complete investigation
corruption cases,
"which inhibited the interaction
"between Ukraine and the United States."
(phone pinging)
Oh, hold on.
This is breaking news.
And (beeping) my life,
the whole transcript has been released.
All right, we'll get to
that in just a second.
On August 28th, the Politico reported
that President Trump froze
100s of millions of dollars
in aid to Ukraine, and Congress
is in the dark about why.
On September 1st, Vice
President, Mike Pence,
meets with Zelensky in Poland.
On September 9th after learning
about the whistleblower complaint,
the House Foreign Affairs,
Intelligence and Oversight
Committees announced an investigation
into whether President
Trump and Giuliani have,
quote, "increased pressure
on the Ukrainian government
"and its justice system, in
service of President Trump's
"re-election campaign."
The next day on September 10th,
Intelligence Committee Chairman, Schiff,
begins corresponding
with Acting DNI, Maguire,
about the whistleblower complaint.
On September 11th, the
White House releases
the military aid to Ukraine.
On September 19th, when
reports emerged that Ukraine
may be the subject of the ICIG complaint,
Giuliani tells CNN that he told Ukraine
to investigate Biden.
This is confirmed on Twitter
where he says that the Bidens
quote, "built millions
of dollars from Ukraine,
"and billions from China."
After House Speaker,
Nancy Pelosi, announced
a formal impeachment
inquiry on Tuesday night,
President Trump decided to
release the full readout
of the call with Zelensky,
in full, unclassified.
So, if you'll give me one second.
Okay, so we're back.
I have the transcript.
Oh boy.
So, as President Trump indicated,
it does start off with a congratulation
of President Zelensky.
But things take a turn for the worse
as we go further down this transcript.
Early in the call, President
Trump starts talking
about the aid that the US
is supposed to offer to Ukraine, saying
"I will say that we do a lot for Ukraine.
"We spend a lot of
effort and a lot of time.
"Much more than European
countries are doing
"and they should be helping
you more than they are."
He goes on to say,
"the United States has been
very very good to Ukraine.
"I wouldn't say that it's
reciprocal necessarily
"because things are
happening that are not good
"but the United States has been
very very good to Ukraine."
At that point, President
Zelensky acknowledges the aid
the United States is
supposed to be providing,
and goes one step further.
He says, "I'm very
grateful to you for that
"because the United States is
doing quite a lot for Ukraine.
"We are ready to continue to
cooperate for the next steps
"specifically we are almost
ready to buy more Javelins",
which are missiles,
"from the United States
for defense purposes."
And as some background,
this is how military aid
from the United States works.
You provide a boatload of
money to a specific country
and they in turn give that right back
to the United States arms makers
who provide the arms
to the foreign country.
So in a way, it's almost a
subsidy for American arms makers
as much as it is foreign
aid to another country.
It's at that point that President Trump
asks President Zelensky for a favor.
He says, "I would like you
to do us a favor though
"because our country
has been through a lot
"and Ukraine knows a lot about it.
"I would like you to
find out what happened
"with this whole situation with Ukraine,
"they say Cloudstrike."
That appears to be a reference to
a QAnon level insane conspiracy theory
that the Ukrainians had
conducted the Russian hacking
that was against the
Democratic National Convention.
The DNC hired this company Cloudstrike,
and there is a crackpot theory
that the Ukrainians were involved somehow.
I refuse to go any further than that.
He continues, "I guess you have
one of your wealthy people",
there's an ellipsis,
there may be more there
that's not contained in this readout,
but we don't know why there
is an ellipsis at this point.
"The server, they say Ukraine has it.
"There are a lot of things that went on,
"the whole situation.
"I think you're surrounding yourself
"with some of the same people.
"I would like to have
the Attorney General",
that's Attorney General Barr,
"call you or your people
"and I would like you to
get to the bottom of it."
So there we have the first thing
that President Trump
wants from the Ukrainians.
Which is to investigate the Democrats.
The server, I think this is in
reference to Hilary's emails
and the Democratic National
Convention hacking.
At that point President Zelensky
goes on to say and respond,
"I would also like and hope
to see him having your trust",
that's the ambassador,
"and your confidence and
having personal relationships
"with you so we can
cooperate even more so.
"I will personally tell you
that one of my assistants
"spoke with Giuliani just recently."
So Zelensky has been
coordinating with Rudy Giuliani.
At that point, there is
a pivot to the Bidens.
President Trump says, "I
heard you had a prosecutor
"who was very good and he was shut down
"and that's really unfair.
"A lot of people are talking about that,
"the way they shut your
very good prosecutor down
"and you had some very
bad people involved.
"Mr Giuliani is a highly respected man.
"He was the mayor of New
York City, a great mayor,
"and I would like him to call you.
"I will ask him to call you
"along with the Attorney General",
again, that's Attorney General Barr,
"Rudy very much knows what's happening
"and he is a very capable guy.
"If you could speak to
him that would be great.
"The former ambassador from
the United States, the woman,
"was bad news and the people
she was dealing in the Ukraine
"were bad news so I just
want to let you know that.
"The other thing, there's a
lot of talk about Biden's son,
"that Biden stopped the prosecution
"and a lot of people want
to find out about that
"so whatever you can do with
"the Attorney General would be great.
"Biden went around bragging
that he stopped the prosecution
"so if you can look into it", ellipsis,
we don't know what else is there,
"It sounds horrible to me."
Zelensky responds and goes on to say,
"the next prosecutor general
will be 100% my person,
"my candidate, who will be
approved by the parliament
"and will start as a new
prosecutor in September.
"He or she will look into the situation,
"specifically to the company
"that you mentioned in this issue."
Which presumably is Burisma.
So there you have it.
This may not be an explicit quid pro quo
but this is about as close as you can get.
President Trump asks for an investigation
into the 2016 hacking and Cloudstrike.
And, the other thing that he asks for,
was an investigation into Joe
Biden and Joe Biden's son.
Now finally, I will
mentioned parenthetically,
that at the very end of this conversation,
the Ukrainian President makes it a point
to tell Donald Trump one thing.
And that is, he says,
"I would like to tell you
that I also have quite a few
"Ukrainian friends that
live in the United States.
"Actually last time I
traveled to the United States,
"I stayed in New York near Central Park
"and I stayed at Trump Tower."
So all of those people
who have been talking
about the emoluments
cases that are going on
in the 4th and 2nd Circuit,
just got a whole lot of information
that foreign officials like
to stay at Trump properties
for the purpose of influencing
the President, Donald Trump.
Now I wanna emphasize that this is not
a verbatim transcript
of the telephone call.
This is just a readout, it's a summary,
based on impressions and based on
audio recognition software.
So it doesn't convey everything
that went into this conversation.
And there may be more
nuance than it appears
just on the dry written page.
And additionally, there
may be additional context
that would help understand
this conversation itself.
(mobile pinging)
Uh okay, all right.
The ABC News is now
reporting that the Ukrainians
were briefed ahead of time,
by the Trump Administration,
telling them that this conversation
was going to discuss
the Biden allegations,
and it was basically going to be all about
what the Ukrainians could do
to churn out information about the Bidens.
So yeah, I guess in terms
of additional context,
it just makes it worse,
that the Ukrainians knew ahead of time
that this was gonna be about
the Biden conspiracy theory.
Now I also want to emphasize that
this readout of the July 25th call
is just one of the instances mentioned
apparently in the whistleblower complaint.
And that there could
be much more out there.
We don't know.
We'll need to see not only
the whistleblower complaint
but all the underlying evidence.
So that takes us to the
whistleblower complaint
and the whistleblower.
The Intelligence Community
Whistleblower Statute
is set up to provide a
pathway for individuals
to come forward with
allegations of urgent concern,
and in a way that does not
endanger classified information.
(mobile pinging)
Uh, wait, hold on a second.
Ah c'mon, all right,
apparently the whistleblower
complaint is out.
Give me one second, geez!
(gustily exhaling)
Okay, I now have the
whistleblower complaint,
in its unclassified form.
And things keep getting worse.
This is insane.
So let's just go over the new allegations
of the whistleblower complaint itself
and we can talk about the
repercussions thereof.
So it starts out as sort of summarizing
what we already knew from the transcript
of the phone call with Zelensky and Trump.
This whistleblower is concerned that
"the President was using
the power of his office
"to solicit interference
from a foreign country.
"The President's personal
lawyer, Rudolph Giuliani,
"is a central figure in this effort."
And "the Attorney General Barr
"appears to be involved as well."
The involvement of Barr
himself may require him
to be recused from further proceedings.
I guess we'll have to learn
more information about that.
But this whistleblower says
over half a dozen US officials
have informed him of the various
facts related to this case.
Now the whistleblower,
who's identity we still don't yet know,
is forthright and says that
they were not a direct witness
to some of the events
that they are describing,
and they're relying on the testimony
of somewhere between six
and over a dozen individuals
in the White House and the
Intelligence Community.
But that they are concerned that
the actions that they
have incredible reports of
pose risks to US national security
and undermine the US government efforts
to deter and counter foreign
interference in US elections.
This whistleblower then
goes on to talk about
the July 25th phone call that
we now have the readout of,
and sort of summarizes the
main events of that phone call.
It's interesting to note that
the readout that the
White House released first
before releasing the
whistleblower complaint
effectively corroborates exactly
what this person is summarizing here.
It's not clear if this whistleblower
was privy to that readout or not
but the information that this person had
apparently was spot on.
As we already knew from
the readout of the call,
Trump did indeed use the opportunity
to advance his personal interests
in the call with the
Ukrainian Prime Minister,
as the whistleblower talks about
pressuring the Ukrainian leader
to take steps to help the
President's 2020 election bid.
The information that is summarized
in this whistleblower complaint
appears to jive with the transcript itself
that talks about the President
trying to encourage an investigation
into Vice President Biden and his son,
asking the Ukrainians in help uncovering
that allegations of Russian interference
in the 2016 US presidential
election originated in Ukraine.
And there's a footnote to
this particular allegation
where the whistleblower
drops a footnote and says,
"I do not know why the
President associates
"these servers with Ukraine."
Which is just throwing shade
on the insane conspiracy theory
that relates to Crowdstrike, the DNC,
and the Russian hacking.
It appears to show that the
President still, in 2019,
believes the Russians were
not involved in the hacking
and that he believes this
crazy conspiracy theory.
So even the IC community
is not (chuckling)
is not buying the President's
conspiracy theory nonsense.
And then going further,
that the President asked
the President of the Ukraine
to talk to his personal envoys,
Mr Giuliani and Attorney General Barr,
to whom the President referred
to multiple times in tandem.
I mean this alone again
not only implicates Rudy
Giuliani in malfeasance,
but also Attorney General Barr.
Congress is going to have to follow up
and find out what Rudy
Giuliani said to whom and when,
as well as what Attorney General Barr's
involvement was as well.
And it may require Attorney General Barr
to recuse himself from everything
related to this scandal.
The complaint talks about
being deeply disturbed
and that many people,
in addition to the ones already discussed,
were concerned that they'd witnessed
the President abuse his
office for personal gain.
And the whistleblower talks about
how precautions had not been taken
in advance of the phone call
because everyone expected that
it would be a routine call
with a foreign leader.
So then we get to a
particularly concerning
portion of this complaint.
And these are new allegations
that were not revealed
as part of the transcript readout.
Which is that apparently
the White House has engaged
in efforts to restrict
access to the phone call,
because either President Trump
or those associated with President Trump
knew that the actions that had been taken
had crossed a line.
So this whistleblower alleges that,
"In the days following the phone call,
"I learned from multiple US officials
"that senior White House
officials had intervened
"to lock down all records
of the phone call,
"especially the official
word-for-word transcript
"of the call that was
produced, as is customary,
"by the White House Situation Room."
This whistleblower goes on to say that
the "White House officials told me
"that they were directed
by White House lawyers",
White House lawyers,
"to remove the electronic transcript
"from the computer system
in which such transcripts
"are typically stored for
coordination, finalization,
"and distribution to
Cabinet-level officials.
"Instead, the transcript was loaded
"into a separate electronic system
"that is otherwise used
to store and handle
"classified information of an
especially sensitive nature.
"One White House official
described this act
"as an abuse of the electronic system
"because the call did not contain anything
"remotely sensitive from a
national security perspective."
This has shades of the Nixon White House.
That often, it's the cover-up that's worse
than the initial crime itself.
But here, I mean both, are just bonkers
in terms of the abuse of power
and also the cover-up therein.
I mean, not only did President Trump
potentially engaged in an abuse of power,
potentially bribery,
potentially extortion,
but also those around him are taking steps
to cover up those efforts to
extort the Ukrainian President.
(loudly sighing)
This is bad.
I don't see an other side to this.
This is on par if not worse than
what was uncovered in the
1974 Watergate scandal.
I just, I don't see a second side to this.
And in fact the report
goes on to say that,
"During this same timeframe,
"multiple US officials told me
"that the Ukrainian leadership
"was led to believe that
a meeting or phone call
"between the President
and President Zelensky
"would depend on whether
Zelensky showed a willingness
"to play ball on the issues
that had been publicly aired
"by Mr Lutsenko and Mr Giuliani.
Mr Lutsenko is the prosecutor
who was fired for corruption.
And finally, the public
portion of this complaint
ends with, "In mid-July, I
learned of a sudden change
"of policy with respect to
US assistance for Ukraine."
That ends the unclassified portion
of the whistleblower complaint.
Which leads to a classified appendix
only parts of which have been revealed.
There are two things which
are really interesting
about this classified appendix.
The first is in the first subsection,
this whistleblower states that,
"According to White House
officials I spoke with,
"this was 'not the first time'
under this Administration
"that a Presidential transcript
"was placed into this
codeword-level system
"solely for the purpose of
protecting politically sensitive,
"rather than national security
sensitive, information."
That is an incredible bombshell,
that the White House is
covering up other information
that is politically
damaging to President Trump.
And squirreling it away in a system
that was designed for
national security information.
Obviously, Congress is
going to want to investigate
the other instances of abusing the system.
And, the Director of
National Intelligence,
this is exactly what they
should be looking into.
This kind of abuse of the
national security apparatus.
Finally, this whistleblower
complaint talks about
the games that were being played
with the $400 million
of foreign military aid
that was supposed to go
Ukraine, and states that,
"On 18 July, an Office of
Management and Budget,"
that's OMB, officially "informed
departments and agencies
"that the President 'earlier that month'
"had issued instructions to suspend
"all US security assistance to Ukraine."
That is the $400 million in aid.
"Neither OMB nor the NSC staff
"knew why this instruction
had been issued.
"During the interagency
meetings on 23 July and 26 July,
"OMB officials again stated explicitly
"that the instruction to
suspend this assistance
"had come directly from the President,
"but they were still unaware
of a policy rationale.
"As of early August, I
heard from US officials
"that some Ukrainian officials were aware
"that US aid might be in jeopardy,
"but I do not know how or
when they learned of it."
That is the pro to the quid.
And the quid pro quo
of this whole situation
is that there was a strange instruction,
relayed by Mick Mulvaney,
saying that the aid was not
supposed to be dispersed.
And that alone could be
a dereliction of duty
for the Executive Branch
not to enforce the laws of the country
which had been appropriated
by the Pentagon and Congress.
But that it was done in a timeframe
that makes it very much look like
it was done to make the Ukrainians,
quote, play ball, as
this complaint alleges.
This is incredibly damning
and very very worrisome.
I don't know that there's
two ways about it.
There may not be an explicit quid pro quo
in that the President literally says,
you must do this in order
to receive the foreign aid.
But all of the circumstances
make it seem like
that is exactly what was implied,
that the Ukrainians understood
the rules of the game
and that they wanted to play ball.
And the President may
have abused his power,
the power of the Office of the Presidency,
in order to get dirt on political rivals.
You might recall that the first
volume of the Mueller report
found that there was no
collusion, no conspiracy,
no criminal conspiracy with Russia,
because the Trump campaign
had not solicited the information.
Had they done so, it's
implicit in the Mueller report
that they would have been
guilty of a criminal conspiracy.
And it's almost as if they
took the Mueller report
as a roadmap to then say,
okay, well we'll then go
out and do it ourselves.
This is the kind of action,
the kind of proactive
seeking of information
that is what criminal
conspiracies are made of.
So with that, that takes
us to the actual process
of the whistleblower complaint.
When Atkinson described the process,
he said it was meant to
allow people who complained
to contact Congressional
Intelligence Committees directly.
The first step is to go to
the IG, the Inspector General.
The IG then has two weeks to conduct
a preliminary investigation into whether
the complaint is both credible
and of urgent concern.
An urgent concern is considered to be a,
quote, "serious or
flagrant problem, abuse,
"violation of the law of
Executive order or deficiency."
The IG is then supposed
to relay the complaint
up the chain of command and
share his preliminary findings
with the Director of National
Intelligence, the DNI.
The DNI is then charged
with giving that information
to Congressional Oversight Committees.
In this particular
case, this was not done.
On the contrary, Acting DNI, Maguire,
hired a lawyer to send a letter asserting,
I quote, "no statute requires
disclosure of the complaint
"to the Intelligence Committees,
"because 'the disclosure in this case
"'does not concern allegations of conduct
"'by a member of the
Intelligence Community,
"'or involved an intelligence activity
"'under the DNI supervision.'"
Essentially, Maguire is disagreeing
with his own Inspector
General discrimination,
that the information in the complaint
is credible and urgent.
But a close reading of 50 US C-3033
suggests that the DNI
may lack the authority
to overrule the IG on this determination.
The September 17th response
to Representative Schiff,
Maguire refused to release
the report to Congress,
citing three particular criteria.
One, the whistleblower
report does not meet
the definition of urgent concern.
Two, the complaint concerned someone
outside of the Intelligence Community,
presumably the President
of the United States.
And three, the report was unrelated
to intelligence activities.
It doesn't appear in the statute
that the DNI has the authority
to overrule the factual
findings of the ICIG,
in finding that the
whistleblower's complaint
was both credible and urgent.
But by the same token,
if the OLC or the Department of Justice
has issued an opinion that says that
they can't turn over that information,
then the ICIG's hands may be tied.
But by the same token,
that may itself constitute
an obstruction of justice.
So we'll see how this shakes out.
Because it doesn't seem
like this is going away
any time soon.
But I wanna emphasize again
that it would be very helpful
to hear from Acting DNI Maguire,
as to how all of these events went down.
(mobile pinging)
Oh c'mon!
All right, Maguire has just testified.
Apparently, so Director Maguire says that
when he received the urgent
and credible complaint
from the whistleblower and the ICIG,
he then took it up the chain
of command to get an opinion
from the Office of Legal
Counsel and the DOJ,
and also to get counsel
from the White House
about whether executive privilege applies.
The problem with that, and
in normal circumstances
that's probably the right thing to do,
but the problem here is that
it's the White House and
the Attorney General,
who is the head of the
Department of Justice,
who are implicated in this
whistleblower complaint.
I don't know that Maguire was
wrong to get their opinions
but man it looks bad when
the person or persons
who are accused of a crime
and an abuse of power
are the ones that you're asking
if you can release the
whistleblower complaint.
But for now at least we
have the readout/transcript.
We have the complaint
from the whistleblower.
I'm sure in the coming weeks and months,
we will hear from the
whistleblower themselves.
We will hear from potentially
the White House officials
and members of the Intelligence Community
who are mentioned in this
whistleblower complaint.
We will hear from the Inspector General
of the Intelligence Community.
We'll probably get more information
but it's hard to imagine
what could possibly be worse
than what we already know
now what's on the record.
But one thing is for certain,
this is not going to go away.
This has already implicated
dozens of officials in the White House.
The story is only going
to get bigger over time.
This is not going to go away.
This is not a small thing.
This is not the news clamping
on to some small nitpick.
This appears to be on
par, if not far exceeding
what happened with Watergate.
And things are going to get
bigger before they get smaller.
And that brings us to impeachment.
If these allegations are true,
can the President be impeached?
You'll be able to find
the detailed breakdown
of what constitutes an impeachable offense
in a video that I'm working on
and I'll release in a couple of days.
But experts have already
started to weigh in
on whether repeatedly
asking a foreign country
to investigate a political
opponent is impeachable.
Whether there is an express
quid pro quo or not.
If the President asked
the President of Ukraine
to investigate the Bidens in exchange
for already promised aid,
then Trump has leveraged
a foreign government
into helping him to defeat
a political opponent.
This would be a gross abuse
of the Presidential power.
And most people point to the
triggering of impeachment
being high crimes and misdemeanors.
But people forget that
impeachment is triggered
not only by high crimes and misdemeanors
but also treason and bribery.
And the I think bribery is
the operative word there.
The US Code 18 C-201,
deals with the bribery
of public officials and witnesses.
Scholars disagree on whether
that particular statute
applies to the President.
But clearly that statute would be subsumed
into the general statement
that bribery is enough
to trigger impeachment
of the President of the United States.
And the facts as we know them,
could lend themselves to a conclusion
that the President solicited
bribery from a foreign official
in the form of political
dirt on a political rival,
in exchange for releasing
foreign aid to the Ukraine.
And as former Federal Prosecutor
Renato Mariotti points out,
whether this actually fits into
the specific bribery statute
or Federal Elections
statutes, misses the point.
This is more than just
a garden variety crime.
It's worse, as he points out.
Mere bribery probably understates
the magnitude of the malfeasance here.
What is alleged is a
jaw-dropping abuse of power.
The criminal process isn't
equipped to deal with this.
And even if it were,
it's possible the DOJ can't
indict a sitting President.
And let's say it doesn't meet
the technical definition of bribery
because the statute doesn't apply
to the President as the head of state,
or sovereign immunity applies,
critics will then say
everything is all good
because it's not bribery itself.
Whether these actions meet the
strict definition of bribery,
we know now that the President
has used the power of his office
to dig up dirt from foreign officials.
The transcript confirms it,
if not an explicit quid pro quo,
at the very least, a very
strong implied quid pro quo.
This could be solicitation of a bribe
but it's definitely an abuse
of power, pure and simple.
(loudly exhaling)
Okay, I thought I was done.
I thought today would be a
good day to get a hair cut.
But no, apparently, I need to somehow
link the scandal to Skillshare,
which is one of my favorite sponsors,
but, you know, still, ugh.
You know, I guess
getting smaller countries
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And if you need to pressure foreign powers
into investigating political rivals,
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And with Skillshare's
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Oh it's fun to joke when
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Do you agree with my grade?
Are you as worried about
the Republic as I am?
Leave your objections in comments,
and check out my other
real law reviews over here,
where I will see you in court, I guess.
