Section: TPM (USA)
Vermont’s GOP Governor Says He Supports Trump Impeachment Inquiry
For the first time, a Republican leader has expressed support for the House’s impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump. Vermont Gov. Phil Scott (R), seated in one of the bluest states in the country, said in an emailed statement to TPM on Thursday that the investigation was “appropriate” in light of a whistleblower’s...
Former DNI Clapper Impressed By Quality Of Whistleblower Complaint
Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said Thursday that the whistleblower’s complaint that prompted the House of Representatives to launch an impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump’s actions was the best documented he had ever seen. “I’ve seen a lot of whistleblower complaints during the time I was...
Giuliani Claims He Kept Texts From State Dept. To ‘Protect’ Himself
Rudy Giuliani, President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, claims he has a safeguard in case the Trump administration throws him under a Ukrainian-sized bus. During an interview on Thursday with CNN, Giuliani denied a whistleblower’s allegations that he had played a major role in Trump’s pressure campaign to convince Ukraine to...
NYT: Whistleblower Is CIA Officer Who Was Detailed To White House
The individual who filed a whistleblower complaint with the intelligence community’s inspector general last month is a CIA officer who was at one point detailed to the White House, The New York Times reported Thursday citing three unnamed people familiar with his identity. The whistleblower has since returned to the CIA, the paper reported....
Trump Calls Whistleblower Source A ‘Spy,’ Implies Execution
In a closed-to-press event in New York on Thursday morning, President Trump had harsh words for the person who gave the intelligence community whistleblower information about Trump’s July call with the Ukrainian president and the Trump implied that he wanted to punish that person. According to a New York Times report, Trump said the person...
Top Takeaways From The Trump-Ukraine Whistleblower Complaint
As acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire testifies about his handling of the whistleblower complaint, we’ve had time to go through and pick apart the complaint itself. While it deals in part with the now-infamous July 25 phone call between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, it offers a wealth of...
Schiff: Intel IG Is Completely Stymied By OLC Opinion Protecting Trump
Thanks to a Justice Department opinion, the intelligence community’s inspector general does not believe he has jurisdiction over the whistleblower’s complaint that’s thrown the House into an impeachment investigation, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA) said Thursday. Rather, because the DOJ’s Office...
Pelosi Responds To Whistleblower’s Complaint: ‘This Is A Cover-Up’
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) slammed President Donald Trump and the White House’s actions detailed in a whistleblower complaint as “a cover-up” on Thursday. During a press conference, Pelosi read aloud the section of the complaint that described how top White House officials attempted to “lock down” records of Trump’s call with...
Acting DNI Didn’t Think Whistle Blower Complaint Was Election Security Issue
The acting director of national intelligence didn’t consider the whistleblower’s complaint that’s led to an impeachment inquiry to be an election security matter — but rather one concerning “a conversation by the President with another foreign leader.” The complaint largely focuses on events surrounding a July 25 call in which...
Manafort Is the Key
I’ve been waiting for this to come up. According to Murray Waas writing in the New York Review of Books, Rudy’s excellent Ukraine adventure began not as an effort to damage Joe Biden but to discredit the case against Paul Manafort and lay the groundwork for a pardon. It will take a while to suss out the precise order of events and...
