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National Security Officials Knew Trump Was Going to Extort Ukraine President Before Call – and They Rang The Alarm

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The Washington Post has just reported that several national security officials were aware President Donald Trump – even before his infamous July 25 telephone call – would be trying to extort the president of Ukraine in a military funds for dirt scheme so egregious it has led directly to an impeachment inquiry.

“At least four national security officials were so alarmed by the Trump administration’s attempts to pressure Ukraine for political purposes that they raised concerns with a White House lawyer both before and immediately after President Trump’s July 25 call with that country’s president,” The Post reports.

“Within minutes,” of Trump’s disturbing attempts to pressure the Ukraine president, during which he asked for that now infamous “favor,” “senior officials including national security adviser John Bolton were being pinged by subordinates about problems with what the president had said.”

The reporting positions Bolton as not in on the call. Earlier reporting showed that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo sat in on the call, despite having pretended to be unfamiliar with the call’s details.

“Bolton and others scrambled to obtain a rough transcript that was already being ‘locked down’ on a highly classified computer network.”

The Post spoke with one person familiar with the events of that day.

“When people were listening to this in real time there were significant concerns about what was going on — alarm bells were kind of ringing,” said one person familiar with the sequence of events inside the White House, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter. “People were trying to figure out what to do, how to get a grasp on the situation.”

Ultimately, no one did, and the whistleblower’s complaint was filed, leading to the House’s impeachment inquiry.

Former National Security Council spokesperson and CIA veteran Ned Price weighed in via Twitter, noting “the July 25 call was months in the making, with the President and his allies pressuring Ukraine on several fronts.”

“This wasn’t a slip of the tongue with Zelensky. It was a concerted, coordinated campaign of betrayal,” Price observed.

 

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EXTORTION

‘I Only Did a Little Bit of Extortion’: Trump Mercilessly Mocked Over Desperate Tweets Arguing He’s Innocent

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5 years ago

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November 11, 2019

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‘STILL A CRIME, SPANKY’

President Donald Trump’s anxiety, as measured by number of tweets, seems to be approaching all-time highs. Monday, hours after giving a Veterans Day speech in his hometown of New York, surrounded by banners in windows and on buildings calling for his impeachment and removal, Trump took to Twitter and had yet another meltdown.

“In order to continue being the most Transparent President in history, I will be releasing sometime this week the Transcript of the first, and therefore most important, phone call I had with the President of Ukraine,” Trump tweeted Monday night. “I am sure you will find it tantalizing!”

Of course, that is the call nobody is talking about. The call that led to the impeachment inquiry is the infamous July 25 call, which Trump repeatedly has insisted everyone should “read the transcript” from, despite the fact he has never released the transcript.

Trump also posted several tweets purportedly quoting his fans at Fox News, including this one:

Then there was this false claim:

The mockery was immediate. Take a look:

 

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