InfoMullet: Prior to Whistle Blower CIA Registered Concerns over Ukraine
TLDRUpFront: New allegations, and evidence, of a high-level cover up that began in the White House prior to the WhistleBlower complaint being filed.
FullContext in the Back:
Unlike most scandals there hasn’t been much in terms of traditional cover-up allegations because this President, for better or worse, is pretty open about when he does something whether it’s scandalous or not. Releasing the transcript summary itself for example is about the least ‘cover-up’ thing one can do. . And although one can argue White House refusal to cooperate with impeachment hearings is obstruction, that’s different from an active cover-up.
Cue the drum roll.
As reported by NY Times, NBC, and now confirmed by LawFareBlog, it appears the CIA may have made a formal criminal referral to the Department of Justice prior to the whistleblower report even being filed on account of concerns over the Trump-Zelensky call of 25 JUL.
As LawFareBlog explains in some details there are clear laws and regulations promulgated within the CIA that require immediate referral of certain suspected criminal activity, including election interference from foreign governments, and the standard of evidence necessary to provoke such a legal requirement is low, simply a “reasonable basis” for concern.
What is alleged now is that the CIA may have made this criminal referral to the DOJ between the 25 JUL call and when the WH attorney moved the transcript summary to a much more secure server, a server that is normally reserved for only the most classified national security aspects of operational details, not normal Presidential conversations.
Although the timing may be coincidence, there are now two spots in the timeline now where a coverup allegation may be made, and I’m adding it as an active hypothesis to begin collecting confirming, confounding or refuting evidence.
The two spots are:
- When the CIA made a criminal referral on the Zelensky call subsequent to which the WH attorney then moved the transcript, inappropriately, to a more secure server.
- When the Attorney General referred the whistleblower complaint to the WH to see if they were going to exert executive privilege. That occurred in the same week that Congress launched a formal inquiry into whether Ukraine Aid had been withheld for any purpose related to Rudolph Giuliani’s political activities. The weekend subsequent to those events the military aid to Ukraine was released.
Now activities happening in sequence in a timeline do not mean they are necessarily causally related to each other. But it does raise the possibility of a potential high-level cover-up within the White House that adds a conspiracy element into what was already emerging of a picture of clearly recognized concerns that the Ukraine shadow policy run by Giuliani and Trump to solicit foreign support for investigations of domestic political opponents in exchange for national security policy favors was clearly inappropriate.
Sources:
For a super in-depth analysis of the laws and relevant policies surrounding CIA criminal referrals related to this allegation:
https://www.lawfareblog.com/cias-legal-obligation-report-ukraine-information-attorney-general
The NY Times report indicating the CIA whistleblower first made a referral to the agency’s top attorney…
www.nytimes.com/2019/09/26/us/politics/who-is-whistleblower.html
Which then prompted the CIA criminal referral to the DoJ. The DoJ did not open an investigation, and the whistleblower went to the Inspector General which we know so much about now to file a whistleblower report.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-impeachment-inquiry/cia-s-top-lawyer-made-criminal-referral-whistleblower-s-complaint-n1062481
Original Facebook Post: www.facebook.com/tim.clancy.313/posts/10211241443672482
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