Evidence has emerged that shows President Donald Trump’s White House Counsel Pat Cipollone took action to keep Congress from investigating a whistleblowing report involving Ukraine’s president, The New Civil Rights Movement reports.
And, as The Washington Post reports, the whistleblower complaint is pretty “extraordinary.”
“The revelation that Trump pushed [President Volodymyr] Zelensky to pursue the Biden probe which was first reported by The Wall Street Journal, represents the most detailed account so far of the president’s conduct that prompted a U.S. intelligence official to file a whistleblower action against the president,” the Post reported Friday. “The disclosure comes amid new details about the White House’s role in preventing Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire from complying with Congressional demands for the material in the complaint.”
And the Post went a step further than that, providing new reporting that highlighted the role Trump administration officials played in the scandal. The information was provided by two people who spoke on condition of remaining anonymous because this is such a sensitive matter.
On July 25, in a conversation with Zelensky, Trump pressured the recently elected leader to pursue information that might bring up potentially damaging information on former Vice President Joe Biden. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
So once again Trump used his status to throw his weight around and pressure the leader of a country seeking financial and diplomatic support from the U.S. to provide political ammunition that could aid in his reelection. But rather than using Russia this time, he used its next-door neighbor, Ukraine.
And of course, he took time on Friday to deny this, and also refused to address whether he had hoped to use a now dormant investigation that involved Biden’s son, Hunter.
“It doesn’t matter what I discussed,” Trump said, using the occasion to lambaste journalists for covering the issue. “It’s another media disaster.”
But if it’s a “disaster” it’s one of his own creation. The intelligence community’s inspector general considers the whistleblower’s complaint to be credible and a matter of extreme urgency that should be disclosed to the relevant congressional committees.
According to other officials familiar with the substance of the complaint said it alleges Trump was pushing a quid pro quo agenda. The officials added whistleblower’s complaint described a “promise” Trump made or an offer that would benefit a world leader. And this comes right after new details were revealed about the Trump administration’s role in preventing acting director of national intelligence Joseph Maguire from complying with Congress’s demands for the material in the whistleblower’s complaint.
The Post notes:
“White House Counsel Pat Cipollone has been engaged in the matter since shortly after the whistleblower action surfaced, officials said, helping to identify legal obstacles to the sharing of information that could be politically damaging to Trump. Cipollone’s involvement reveals a more direct White House role in the dispute than has previously been reported.”
So Trump is merely using the same tactics he used in his attempts to derail Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign in 2016.
I guess that it’s really true; the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Featured image courtesy of the video above
