Lindsey Graham Wants To Call Whistleblower After Trial To Ask 'How All This Crap Started'
Category: News & Politics
Via: tessylo • 4 years ago • 106 commentsBy: Mary Papenfuss, HuffPost
Politics
Lindsey Graham Wants To Call Whistleblower After Trial To Ask 'How All This Crap Started'
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told Fox News on Sunday that the Ukraine whistleblower will be called before the Senate Intelligence Committee after the impeachment trial because “I want to find out how all this crap started.”
Graham is also threatening to go after former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter when the trial is over, even though Donald Trump ’s impeachment defense team failed to demonstrate a single ethics violation or crime by either man.
As for the whistleblower, whose identity is protected by federal law, Graham told Fox host Maria Bartiromo : “The Senate Intel Committee under [Sen.] Richard Burr (R-N.C.) has told us that we will call the whistleblower. Why is it important? I want to find out how all this crap started.”
Graham, a vociferous apologist for Trump, added: “The day of reckoning is coming.”
Graham said he wants to know “if the whistleblower is a former employee [or] associate of Joe Biden,” or “was working with people” on Rep. Adam Schiff’s (D-Calif.) staff. Republicans have presented no information that either case is true.
“We’re going to get to the bottom of all of this to make sure this never happens again,” Graham said.
The whistleblower did not testify at the House impeachment hearing (the Senate called no witnesses) because information the whistleblower provided was confirmed by other documents or witnesses under oath.
Corroboration included Trump’s own rough transcript of his phone call last year with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky in which he pressured Zelensky to launch an investigation into unfounded accusations against Joe Biden — while Trump was withholding military aid from the nation.
Federal law protecting a whistleblower’s identity is designed to encourage government employees with information of wrongdoing to come forward. Some Republicans and Trump supporters have revealed the identity of someone they claim is the whistleblower, which the whistleblower’s attorney has argued puts his client’s life at risk.
At the Senate impeachment trial last week, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) submitted a question to Chief Justice John Roberts reportedly naming the whistleblower in order to deliberately expose the person’s identity. Roberts refused to read Paul’s question.
Republicans claim that Biden, who was pressuring Ukraine to crack down on corruption in the nation while he was vice president, was attempting to block investigations into Ukraine energy company Burisma while his son was on the company board. But the vice president was pushing Ukraine to oust a prosecutor widely viewed by U.S. and European allies as corrupt. A Ukrainian investigation into Burisma was closed before Biden came on the scene , according to reports.
Graham said he wants to know “if the whistleblower is a former employee [or] associate of Joe Biden,” or “was working with people” on Rep. Adam Schiff’s (D-Calif.) staff. Republicans have presented no information that either case is true.
A fair question which goes to the matter of whether leftover partisan Obama officials conspired with House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff] in order to devise an impeachment scheme prior to the beginning of the proceedings.
And your proof of this is....
No, it's not a fair question.
The impeachment is not a 'scheme'.
No one conspired with Schiff.
What a load of nonsense.
It is a question not an answer. So, Senators can't question certain people? Why?
There is reason for questions:
" Rep. Adam Schiff, chair of the House intelligence committee, wrongly implied that his committee had no contact with the whistleblower before receiving the complaint. Schiff claimed, “We have not spoken directly with the whistleblower,” when the whistleblower had in fact reached out to a committee aide before filing a complaint.
A Democratic committee official told us Schiff “could have been more clear” but was “referring to the Committee officially interviewing the whistleblower, and himself personally.” It was clearly known, however, that the committee hadn’t officially interviewed the whistleblower at that time."
Why not?
So during the 'impeachment', senators can't question certain people? Why?
So did the house.
You mean in the Senate trial? I don't know if the Senate intends to look into the false statements Schiff gave on the WB, but the Senate does have the power to look into lots of things.
In far right propagandists upside down bizarro world , the motives of the whistleblower are a hundred times more important than the actions of the president.
It's an odd , pathetic, viewpoint.
The motives are important. If he was conspiring to bring down a president, he is not a whistleblower.
It might give him a chance to clear his name:
According to a March 2019 article in Politico:
Did you read what that says? It does not say that Schiff talked to the WB beforehand.
What graham is doing is going after process, which seems to be the fallback republican position.
No actual defence of donald just attack the process.
Um-hum
What graham is doing is going after process
No, I don't believe he is. I think what he is going after is the past actions of Eric Ciaramella.
'In far right propagandists upside down bizarro world , the motives of the whistleblower are a hundred times more important than the actions of the president.
It's an odd , pathetic, viewpoint.'
It's quite deplorable as are all things republicon/gop.
So calling out corruption when someone hears/sees it - is an attempt to take down the 'president'?
Nonsense.
Leaking would be. Has Ciaremella been leaking in the past? Don't know? Maybe we should have a look see...
Ah yes...retribution....
So you would be OK if someone spread false rumors about you that could jeopardize you well being, and when it is proven those rumors are untrue, you would not want to find out why those rumors started, who started them or what the reason why the rumors were started?
I bet you would want to know all that and maybe even more.
That's precisely what Trump is trying to do with the Bidens.
We now know they are NOT rumors. Most of the Senate is on record saying Trump has done what was reported. They just don't care. The only reason to call the "whistle-blower" now is to score cheap political points with the Republican base during an election year to distract from the multiple still ongoing House (and NY) investigations of Trump wrongdoings. Trump better hope he does get re-elected or he'll be in jail as co-conspirator #2 next to his ex lawyer.
Of course, let's call witnesses and declassify the documents Trump is hiding!
We can let the Senate do that after the impeachment sham is over.
No one that the democrats called to testify said that Trump did what they are claiming he did. Quite the contrary, they said the opposite. As far as the leaker, er, "whistleblower, most Americans want to find out why he did what he did, who he is affiliated with and who coordinated to do what he did with them. My guess is the name "Schiff" will come up often if the guy is forced to testify to the Senate.
BTW, the "I don't care" attitude came up with democrats during the house investigation. All they wanted to do was impeach, many of them openly stating that since before they or he was inaugurated or sworn in. There is much video of such claims.
Witnesses and documents collected was the job of the House. They failed.
Game over.
Let me ask you this question....Over and over and over and over..for days and months, we heard Schiff and company say that the "evidence" against Trump was overwhelming and indisputable. So, if the evidence was so overwhelming of guilt, why would they want to get more witnesses? It should be a slam dunk and Schiff and company would not have needed 24 MORE hours over 3 DAYS to claim Trump guilty? Also, to beg for another week to get witnesses.
Schiff and company overstepped and they lost because of it.
So you now want the senate to being an investigative body after they spent the last several weeks saying they would not be an investigative body...
No one said he did? Hell Mulvaney said in a press conference he did and that it didn't matter.
Besides, now all they have to do is refuse to testify. Everyone else can do it why not others.
then according to current liberal logic,
they will/must rush to the stand to defend themselves.
Jeopardize his well being? Haha Where do you all come up with this.
No matter how many times you say it, it is more than rumor.
According to conservative logic, they can ignore subpoenas and refuse to testify at all.
those are the old rules.... this is a brave new world created by dems
one reaps what they have sown
enjoy
And what part would this play in Lindsay's witch hunt?
Whistleblower Protection Act of 1989, 5 U.S.C. 2302(b)(8)-(9), Pub.L. 101-12
Please DO tell me how they got Trump to make the 'perfect' phone call Vic? Oh and how did they get Trump to order the OMB to hold the aid to Ukraine?
I mean, these guys must be sending cyber rays into the WH from a super secret bunker as we speak right? /s
"whistleblowers" do not get to remain anonymous. and yes they can be questioned. this one surely will be.
No federal law exists that entitles whistleblowers the statutory right to remain anonymous—no matter what their government position, location of employment or the nature of the alleged improper incident.
schiffs anonymous whistleblower had better have their shit together as they will not be anonymous for long.
hint: questioning a whistleblower is not retaliation.
Hint: You don't have a clue.
That's just WHACK!
Cheers
[Deleted]
[cheers ]
If the whistleblower had made the shit up one could see why you might be upset with the whistleblower. But he didnt make up anything against Trump, he revealed Trump's wrongdoing.
No one has a reason to be against the whistleblower, unless they want Trump to be protected against the public's justified reaction to his wrongdoing.
I'm sure after you reflect on this you will agree.
not a chance.
the whistleblower had better have his shit together - we will know his name and he will be questioned about any contact with schiff and/or his minions prior to making the complaint
you don't have to agree here... just sit back and watch.
Sit back and watch what?
You realize that your link states that the IG MUST keep the identity of the whistleblower confidential right?
So if the IG can't out the whistleblower, HOW does anyone else find out who they are?
Oh and here is another tidbit from your link:
False. The House NEVER voted against calling witnesses.
Why 8? The whistleblower complaint stands on it's own. It's been corroborated. WTF does his name matter except for Trump's cultist taking revenge?
You and your fellow travelers don't seem to care that the whistleblower was OBLIGATED by regulations and oath to report wrongdoing or crimes up the chain of command, who in this case is the ICIG.
Then comes Biden ?
no, it does not. but you can think otherwise...
here is what will happen.
we will know his name and he will be questioned about any contact with schiff and/or his minions prior to making the complaint
Could it be construed that the committees questioning is retaliation, especially in light of Graham's words?
Hint: I suggest you bone up on your legal research.
So tell me what was false in the whistleblower complaint 8.
And then what?
And then what?
BTFW, are you pissed that the whistleblower honored his oath?
personally, id rather you remain clueless.
just sit back and watch the show.
the next episode is awesome
Did your magic 8 ball tell you that?
LOL
Why?
Like all of your prophecies, that have never come true, neither will this.
That's just WHACK, like usual.
Cheers
You're the one with no clue 8 ball.
WHACK!
Cheers!
That magic 8 ball is cracked and WHACKED.
Graham and the Trump cult could have subpoenaed the whistleblower anytime they wanted to, including during the trial. WTF has Graham et al been waiting for?
BTFW, Barr could have had the FBI interview the whistleblower before the complaint was made public. Barr chose to try to cover up the complaint instead.
Lastly, the question you have is the Intel Committee's to answer, NOT the whistleblower.
Clear his name of WHAT?
I find it ironic that you quoted the article yet utterly ignored the FIRST sentence.
Yet THEIR names haven't been thrown out as fodder. Why not? Let's talk to them too. Let's have the FBI interview the lot of them.
BTFW, it's obvious that someone in Trump's NSC leaked content of the Bolton transcript, where is the investigation for that leaker, who obviously continues contact with the media to trickle out more information?
That’s what we need to find out. It’s time to investigate Biden and. Schiff now.
Says the one that believes donald tells the truth.
they will.
Why didn't they subpoena them during the trial Xx? In fact, why hasn't Graham subpoenaed them in all of this time? Hell this all started way back in May. WTF has Graham been doing other than playing golf with Trump?
they have plenty of time for that. no rush.
Then why have they been demanding that the Democrats do it for them for months?
no one has been demanding they do anything... LOL
they could have done it in the house but chose not to expecting the senate to do their job for them
epic failure by the resistance.
Oh come on 8, the Trump cult has been whining about needing to out the whistleblower since day one. The GOP Congressmen tried to question witnesses about who the whistleblower was. Hell I read that Rand Paul announced the name of the suspected whistleblower on the Senate floor today.
Are you under some delusion that the whistleblower would honor a House subpoena? Why would he?
Oh and BTFW, IF the whistleblower HAD testified, you'd just bitch about it being hearsay.
and we will know his name. count on it.
And THEN what 8? What is the goal of that disclosure? Please tell me that you have a goal other than revenge against a citizen that FOLLOWED THE LAW.
I heard Rand announced on the Senate floor after Roberts blocked him twice at the 'impeachment hearings'
What a scumbag.
I think it's time to investigate Ms. Lindsey.
Heaven Forbid corruption is called out when it is seen Ms. Lindsey.
It seems to be the republican way now. Attack and go after everyone. Now a certain republican senator has said that if Biden would somehow win the presidency, they would immediately start to impeach him.
Bunch of sick bastards.
How dare we say the emperor has no clothes.
So they'll continue to do nothing, the gop, like since tRump has been 'president' and when Obama was President. Just continue to obstruct and draw a salary and get nothing done.
Well to be fair they have gotten a bunch of people that were rated as not qualified on judicial benches.
republicans, determined to ruin the country.
They certainly do love incompetence and they hate our country.
What, you don't like impeachment based off of feelings, innuendo, and second and third hand reports?
That is the can of worms the Democrats opened up. Get on their asses for lowering the bar for impeachment.
Si in bizzarro world impeaching him in his third year is doing it from the start....
Maybe dempcrats are acting like the repubs and they don't like it thrown back on them. Hell they investigated Hillary for years on end costing millions of dollars.
Stop acting like they have their hands clean when we all know different.
What a steaming pile of shit. Nothing can compare to the criminality of tRump and his administration of gangsters, thugs, grifters and thieves
Lock up Hillary for what?
Do tell
Like who and what did they do, and who is in prison because of Trump?
Don't waste my time
that would be fun enough.
what's good for the goose is good for the gander.
Wow. That is some serious spin you are trying to put out there.
So it is spin to say the repubs have had investigations for years?
Sure....
That’s why Biden and Schiff need to be called out.
Why?
It's scary to think Adam Schiff had the power to prosecute people. How many innocent people did that liar send to jail?
'For various high crimes and misdemeanors like bribery, bearing false witness, abuse of power, etc.'
Sounds like you're describing the tRump administration of gangsters, crooks, mobsters, gangsters, grifters, thugs, and thieves.
The corrupt was voted out of the WH in 2016. And will more than likely be denied it again in 2020.
The corrupt was placed in the now White Trash House in 2016.
Maybe if you are blind to the obvious like the leftis.
Who are the leftis?
It is quite obvious this whole administration including Ms. Lindsey is complicit and corrupt.
And yet you offer not a single piece of evidence of being corrupt. But you go on with your inept self.
It's quite obvious to those who don't kiss tRump's big fat ass.
So, you dont have anything aside from a case of TDS. Although it's not that I expected anything more from you.
Who are you?
The Next Trump Crisis Is Already Here
Ukraine is by no means the only dirty secret being covered up.
David Frum
The Atlantic
7:00 AM ETActually, the first “next crisis” has already arrived. The New York Times reported Friday that, in his forthcoming book, former National Security Adviser John Bolton writes that Trump first tried to put the squeeze on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in early May 2019—and White House Counsel Pat Cipollone was a witness in the very room where the plot was hatched. Even as Cipollone argued on the president’s behalf that witnesses were unnecessary, he was plausibly alleged to be a crucial fact witness by another fact witness.
Even worse for Trump and the Republicans, Ukraine is by no means the only dirty secret being covered up. There are others, and perhaps even more damaging. Sometime before the end of June, the U.S. Supreme Court will rule in consolidated cases about whether Trump can continue to keep secret his tax returns and other business documents.
One case began with a New York State grand-jury subpoena of Trump business documents, to probe whether he broke laws when he allegedly paid hush money to two women during the 2016 campaign. The others involve subpoenas by House committees—Oversight, Financial Services, and Intelligence—of tax returns and banking records.
The multiple subpoenas raise different legal issues, especially because the Financial Services and Intelligence subpoenas were served not on Trump or his organization, but on his accounting firm and two of his banks.
If the Supreme Court rules in favor of some or all of the subpoenas, damaging financial information will tumble into the public domain right as the election season begins in earnest. Worse, the New York State case could conceivably lead to an indictment of Trump. The current practice is that a serving president cannot be prosecuted for a federal crime. What about a state crime? Vice President Aaron Burr was (unsuccessfully) prosecuted for the killing of Alexander Hamilton in 1804. Beyond that, there are not many relevant precedents. Whatever the ultimate constitutional answer to the question, it’s not a good look for a serving president to end a campaign arguing that he should be immune to state as well as federal criminal law. It raises questions like “Maybe we should have a president who has not committed so many crimes?”
Trump can of course hope that he wins on every point in the Supreme Court. Yet such a victory will not protect him unless it is overwhelming. If Trump wins 5–4, with the newest justice, Brett Kavanaugh, casting a vote for secrecy, this outcome will not command much legitimacy among Trump’s political opponents. Instead, they will charge that a justice whose guilty secret was protected by the president is now protecting the president’s own guilty secrets: yet another quid pro quo in an administration notorious for them.
Trump is driving a poorly packed egg cart over stony roads. He holds too many secrets, too ill-concealed, shared with too many people and companies with too little loyalty to him. Michael Cohen’s prison sentence stands as a reminder of the ultimate consequences of loyalty to Trump. Gordon Sondland jumped off before that point, and so, sooner or later, will Mulvaney. Everybody turns on Trump in the end, if only because they can no longer endure the abuse. His party in Congress follows him only so long as he looks like the path to success. If things begin to go south before Election Day, the defections will begin and then accelerate.
Yet the impeachment process has achieved something. It has removed deniability from the Republicans. They were enablers; now they are accomplices. They are all Carmela Soprano in the classic scene with the psychiatrist who speaks the truth about her criminal husband: “One thing you can never say: that you haven’t been told.” The Republican Party as an institution has utterly merged itself into the Trump cover-up machine, and there is no escape for any of them—not the concerned Susan Collins nor the troubled Marco Rubio nor the thoughtful Ben Sasse.
The story of the senatorial Republican Party since 2016 has been the story of people almost, kind of, any minute ready to step up and do the right thing—and then pitifully failing, one by pathetic one: Ted Cruz urging an anti-Trump vote at the Cleveland convention and then collapsing into abject support of the man who defamed him and his family; Foreign Relations Chair Bob Corker needling Trump on Twitter and then lapsing into frightened passivity; the China hawk Marco Rubio shrugging off Trump’s appeal to China for help against Joe Biden.
If the impeachment remedy has failed, the ballot remains, as corrupted as Trump is determined to make it. If Trump loses in 2020 and pulls the Republican Senate majority tumbling after him, then the rickety old constitutional system will be vindicated after all. Crime will not have paid off. But if he does win, this first Trump term will be only the choppy prelude to the storms to come after 2020.
The Downfall of the Republican Party
To see men and women who had a positive vision beaten down and broken by Trump is a poignant thing.
FEBRUARY 2, 2020On Friday, Republicans in the United States Senate—with the exception of Mitt Romney and Susan Collins—voted to prevent John Bolton, Donald Trump’s former national security adviser, from testifying in the impeachment trial of the president.
The reason they did so is undeniable: They did not want to hear from the most credible fact witness of all, one whose account would further implicate the president in his corrupt scheme—his “drug deal,” in Bolton’s words—to pressure the Ukrainian government to open an investigation to harm Trump’s main political opponent.
This is simply the latest act in an unfolding political drama, one in which the party of Lincoln and Reagan has now become, in every meaningful sense, the party of Trump.
I have written before about the massive moral and ethical defects of the president; there’s no need to rehearse them here. The point I want to make is a somewhat different one, which is that Trump’s takeover of the GOP has happened not because he is widely loved or admired by Republican lawmakers but because he is feared; not because most of the people in the Republican Senate Conference aspire to be like him, but because they are too timid to challenge him.
From a certain perspective, their timidity is understandable. They know that to publicly challenge Trump—to call out his ethical transgressions, cruelty, and indecency even as they support his policies—invites impassioned attacks from Trump supporters and, in some cases, a primary challenge. No one likes to be under attack, particularly by the base of one’s own party, and no one wants to lose a job.
Moreover, they will argue, they must defend the president in public so they can have influence in private. They have also convinced themselves that they are essential to the project of repairing the Republican Party post-Trump, and that this requires that they not be viewed as disloyal to Trump while he’s serving as president. “What good does it do to attack Trump?” they will ask. He won’t change his ways, and they will only weaken themselves in the process. (Many of them are happy to attack Trump in private conversations, citing, chapter and verse, things he has said or done that alarm them, showing that they both know better and are playing a cynical game.)
That, at least, is the story they tell themselves. Some of what they say is worth taking into account. But what they don’t tell themselves, probably because it would be too psychologically shattering, is that they have become fully complicit in a corrupt enterprise called the Trump presidency. (Romney is the rare exception.) They are defending actions they know are wrong and that, if they had been done by a Democratic president, they would be outraged by. More than that, they are validating Trump’s approach to politics—the hyper-aggression, the lawlessness, the mendacity, the shamelessness—and therefore guaranteeing imitators. It also happens that their influence on the president is far smaller than they tell themselves. They have made concession after concession after concession, justifying each one along the way. Then you look back at the road they’ve traveled, and it’s breathtaking. Donald Trump has changed them far more than they have changed Donald Trump.
In 1991, when Václav Havel received the Sonning Prize for contributions to European civilization, he spoke about those “who are starting to lose their battle with the temptations of power.” It is an insidious thing, Havel warned , to become captive to the perks of power. Politicians, he said, soon learn how easy it is to justify staying in power even as they give up bits of their soul in the process. It is easier than they think, he said, to get “morally tainted.”
“Politics is an area of human endeavor that places greater stress on moral sensitivity,” Havel concluded, “on the ability to reflect critically on oneself, on genuine responsibility, on taste and tact, on the capacity to empathize with others, on a sense of moderation, on humility. It is a job for modest people, for people who cannot be deceived.”
What Republicans who have rallied behind Trump don’t fully grasp yet is the toxic effect he’s had on the younger generation, and on college-educated, suburban, and nonwhite voters. (Trump is wildly popular among blue-collar and rural voters, who are shrinking as a percentage of the voting population.) The damage done by Trump won’t be limited in its reach. He has imperiled the future of the party he leads. And those who think the GOP will simply snap back to the best of what it was pre-Trump—who think the worst elements of Trumpism will vanish once he leaves the White House—are kidding themselves.
Those who fell in line behind Trump have empowered him (and his many acolytes and media propagandists) to redefine much of conservatism and the principles that once informed the Republican Party. I don’t think that is what they intended, but that is what they have helped achieve.
Few things in life are permanent, most of all in the realm of politics. The fight for the future of the Republican Party, post-Trump, will be an intense one. Those of us who are conservatives and those on the center-right who believe the soul of GOP is still worth fighting for will not go gently into the good night.
But for now, Donald Trump has an iron grip on the Republican Party—and Republican lawmakers who privately lament what he has done have publicly enabled what he has done. That is something that must haunt at least a few of them, at least in their private moments, when they lay aside their rationalizations for just a moment and reflect on the role they have played in this horror show.
Gee Lindsey, all of 'this crap started' when a candidate, a campaign and certain politicians had just to many and questionable connections to Russians and Russian Intelligence. You know, like Dana Rohrabacher and several others. Are you sure you really want to go there, Lindsey?
Ms. Lindsey is complicit and corrupt just like the rest of this administration.
He's been on his knees for tRump the whole time.
Cool? Then why, why, why did Republicans block every witness, every subpoena, and challenge every attempt to have witnesses that could shed light on the crime committed? The whistle blower just brought it to the attention of those who could prosecute or investigate. If there were witnesses that can prove the whistle blower lied then why doesn't ANY Republican including Trump allow witnesses to truly exonerate him come forward? Republicans don't do it because they won't like the truth or what comes out with actual witnesses and documentation.