The Latest on the Impeachment of President Donald Trump: It Looks Bad for Trump. Real Bad

September 26, 2019

9:32: Trump is taking all of this very calmly.

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The whistleblower complaint has been released. I'm still gathering my thoughts on it and trying to summarize it effectively, but basically, the whistleblower complaint details Giuliani's efforts both before and after the election of Zelensky to lobby the government there to investigate Biden. After the election, Trump made it known that he would not communicate with Zelensky unless he agreed to "play ball." In fact, he instructed Mike Pence not to attend the inauguration of Zelensky until he knew whether Zelensky would cooperate with efforts to smear Biden.

Meanwhile, after the phone call with Zelensky, White House lawyers made efforts to cover up and hide the transcript because they knew how bad it was.

The whistleblower complaint catalogs information received from half a dozen intelligence officials over four months, and implicates Trump, Giuliani, and William Barr in an effort to compel a foreign country (Ukraine) to interfere in our election by smearing Donald Trump's political opponent, Joe Biden, and the White House's efforts to cover it up.

Here are a few choice paragraphs from the complaint:

-- "The President instructed Vice President Pence to cancel his planned travel to Ukraine to attend President Zelensky's inauguration.....it was 'made clear' to them that the President did not want to meet with Mr. Zelensky until he saw how Zelensky 'chose to act' in office."

-- "Multiple U.S. officials told me that the Ukrainian leadership was led to believe that a meeting or phone call between the President and President Zelenskyy would depend on whether Zelenskyy showed a willingness to 'play ball' on the issues that had been publicly aired."

-- White House officials told me that they were 'directed' by White House lawyers to remove the electronic transcript from the computer system in which such transcripts are typically stored. One White House official described this act as an abuse of this electronic system because the call did not contain anything remotely sensitive from a national security perspective."

Here's how the Times characterized the complaint:

Attorney General William P. Barr and the president's personal attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani were central to the effort to get Ukraine to interfere in the 2020 election, the complaint said.

In addition, the whistle-blower, an unidentified intelligence officer, learned from multiple American 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," the complaint said. "This set of actions underscored to me that White House officials understood the gravity of what had transpired in the call."

Obviously, this is all developing. Joseph Maguire, the acting DNI, will testify in front of Congress today. We'll have much, much more throughout the day, including reactions from Congress. This post will be updated throughout the day.

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