Re: Politics
Posted: Mon Mar 25, 2019 7:29 pm
by joez
Thanks for the critique
I get the drift
There's a lot of news out there that effects our daily lives. Some of it good, some of it not so good. Some of it out of the main stream news cycle. Some of the news you might not read in your local newspapers nor see on your local television networks or even your normal, everyday internet browsing.
I was just trying to keep the information highway open to whoever was interested
I guess the ratings didn't meet up to my expectations
Keep your eyes and ears glued to the news everyone. The future is in our hands
Re: Politics
Posted: Mon May 06, 2019 12:44 pm
by Hillbilly
I saw that no sooner than Joe Biden hit the campaign trail he continued the lies being told by the other democrats running for prez about the Tax Cuts that are currently booming our economy and job market. About time some republicans start fighting back against the lies that democrats and their propaganda arm, the liberal news media, keeps pushing.
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Democrats are dishonest on taxes, trying to distract from economy on the move
Chuck Grassley, Opinion contributor Published 9:05 a.m. ET May 6, 2019
Many Democrats continue to pull the wool over Americans’ eyes about all the ways the GOP Tax Cuts and Jobs Act is improving our lives and our nation.
Partisan politics too often distorts a healthy debate and misrepresents good policy. Case in point — the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.
For the past two years, congressional Democrats have led a campaign of misinformation about tax reform. They’ve misled the American people and promoted a narrative full of distortions, misrepresentations and even flat-out lies about what the law does and doesn’t do. What’s worse, many in the media have served as their megaphone, providing a platform to deceive American taxpayers without commensurate fact-checking or context. A recognition of a few basic facts about tax reform is long overdue.
One of the most-covered falsehoods being spread about tax reform is that it’s a middle-class tax hike. It’s even become a favorite among 2020 presidential candidates. According to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, every income group in every state is paying less on average in 2019 because of tax reform. The liberal Tax Policy Center reports that, when looking at the individual income reforms only, nearly 70% of Americans earning between $30,000 and $50,000, and more than 80 % of Americans earning between $50,000 and $75,000 received a tax cut. Further, the average middle-income household paid approximately $800 less than they would have without the enactment of tax reform. If you include all major reform provisions, 80% of all taxpayers received a cut and around 90% of middle-income households received a tax cut averaging roughly $900.
Another deception being advanced by many Washington Democrats is that Americans are seeing smaller tax refunds and that equates to a tax hike. In both the House and Senate, they’ve used their platforms to mislead the American people. The fact is that returns are historically in line with past years. The new tax law adjusted withholding amounts, which means that most Americans paid less in taxes on their monthly paychecks. Opponents of tax reform initially pushed this falsehood based on very limited data points, but now that tax season has ended, a fuller picture shows this argument was nothing more than another dishonest talking point. In fact, according to the most recent IRS data, the total number of returns receiving refunds was up over last year, and the average refund amount differed by only $55.
Everyone benefitted from Tax reforms
In interviews, during political rallies and on social media, Democrats enthusiastically say that tax reform has only benefited corporations and the wealthiest Americans. They refuse to acknowledge that it has actually made the tax code more progressive and that nearly everyone is benefiting from tax reform. Why? Because the facts don’t fit their party’s political agenda. However, evidence of tax reform’s benefits for American workers is overwhelming.
Every income bracket received a tax cut, and as a percentage of tax revenue paid to the IRS, the wealthiest Americans are actually paying more than before tax reform. According to the Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Committee on Taxation, three out of every four dollars in tax cuts went directly to individuals and small businesses. What’s more, it doesn’t take a tax expert to see income, wages, jobs and unemployment numbers have all improved since the enactment of tax reform, reflecting significant benefits for American workers.
Annualized growth in real after-tax personal income averaged 3.2% during the Trump administration before tax reform; it has averaged 3.5% following tax reform. Annualized growth in real average hourly earnings averaged 1.2% under Trump before tax reform and increased to 1.7% following tax reform. Monthly job gains have averaged 199,000 under President Trump before tax reform and 215,000 after tax reform. Nearly 5.4 million jobs have been created since January 2017, with more than half of that job creation having occurred since the enactment of tax reform. Prior to tax reform, the unemployment rate under President Trump averaged 4.1%; the average decreased to 3.9% after tax reform.
To say it simply, tax reform is working for Americans of every walk of life. For Democrats to suggest otherwise is to disregard the data that shows its positive impact for taxpayers, businesses and the overall economy.
Don't believe Democrats' lies
Republicans passed tax reform to invest in American workers and American business competitiveness. Before that, President Obama presided over the highest corporate tax rate in the industrialized world. That forced American businesses to go overseas and take their jobs with them. Now, tax reform lowered the corporate rate and is bringing business back to the United States. This is spurring economic growth and boosting job creation within our borders instead of in other countries. This reform was never about helping corporations, but about helping workers whose jobs were being shipped overseas and small businesses that couldn’t compete with the unfair advantage foreign countries created. The nonpartisan, independent Congressional Budget Office reported that “by lowering the corporate income tax rate,” tax reform “gives businesses incentives to increase investment.” It also projected that “heightened economic activity,” since tax reform “reduces incentives for corporations to shift profits outside the United States…” and increases U.S. and foreign investors’ incentives to invest and locate activities in the United States rather than abroad.
Despite the evidence that tax reform is working, many Democrats continue to pull the wool over Americans’ eyes about all the ways it’s improving our lives and our nation. Unfortunately, their deception is working. A recent Gallup survey revealed that 43% of Americans were unsure whether tax reform affected their federal tax bill, even though a majority of those Americans had their taxes lowered. Worse, 21% believe that their taxes increased, even though fewer than 6% were projected by the non-partisan Joint Committee on Taxation to have a tax increase. According to an NBC News/ Wall Street Journal poll, only 17% of Americans believe their taxes decreased under tax reform, even though every analysis of the bill demonstrates that the vast majority saw a tax cut. That represents a real failure on the part of the news media to correct the record and inform the public about the very basics of major legislation.
The consistent drumbeat of negative, misleading and outright false information being spread by Democrats and many in the media about tax reform is damaging to the nation. The precedent it sets will further corrode the trust Americans put in their elected leaders. It’s time to stop playing political games and give citizens what they deserve — just the facts without the partisan spin.
Sen. Chuck Grassley is the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. Follow him on Twitter: @ChuckGrassley
Re: Politics
Posted: Mon May 06, 2019 12:53 pm
by Hillbilly
Another big lie lately by Corey Booker and some dems is to credit the booming jobs market and economy on Obama policies.
Obama, the same guy who literally said those manufacturing jobs aren’t coming back, unless Trump has a magic wand. Obama, who had no clue.
Well abracadabra bitch. Over 500,000 manufacturing jobs added, and manufacturing is up 714% under Trump.
What a crock. These politicians and their mouthpieces on MSNBC and CNN take the American people for fools.
Re: Politics
Posted: Fri Sep 27, 2019 10:11 am
by joez
Just say'n I visited Glacier National Park in 1978. Revisited 2015. Not the same.
If the global climate change trends continue, researchers predict that Glacier National Park will no longer have glaciers by 2030. Many of the remaining active (over 25 acres) glaciers will be gone before that date.
Sobering thought.
I also visited Yellowstone in 1986, a couple of years before the fire. Visited again a couple of years after the fire. Not the same.
At least Yellowstone has a chance of replenishing itself. Not so sure the same can be said of glaciers worldwide.
It's a global affair.
Greenland glaciers are being destroyed. Alaskan glaciers are melting 100 times faster than previously predicted. Melting glaciers are a disaster for China and South Asia. The list goes on.
But, hey, Global warning is a deep state conspiracy theory, right!
Re: Politics
Posted: Fri Sep 27, 2019 2:33 pm
by Hillbilly
Joe, you are spreading outdated wrong information.
First of all, the article you posted was from two years ago. The National Park service has now removed the signage saying the glaciers are melting. We have had brutal winters here last couple years and the low temperatures and heavy snowfall have actually led to a reversal.
Also the NPS article you posted contain pictures supposedly showing an ever shrinking glacier. But what they don’t tell you is the pictures were taken at different times of the year. Those same pictures were posted at Many Glacier hotel here and caused a stink. Proven to be misleading.
A group from a University have been visiting that Glacier, Grinnel, for last couple years and have been finding totally different results than NPS used to try to feed ipeople like you previously.
When I get time I will look their blogs up and post a link if you are at all interested in the truth. Somehow I doubt it. I post an article saying the NPS has removed those signs, then two posts later you post a 2 year old article with info that was just debunked.i mean seriously, if you are going to enter a conversation then get your act together.
I am currently sitting in the Boat Club Bar at the Lodge on Whitefish Lake. Literally a stones throw from Glacier National Park. My wife and I have to cut our weekend getaway short because there is a blizzard moving in.
That’s right, a blizzard. In September. 1 to 3 feet depending on where you are here. So don’t expect Grinnel Glacier to go shrinking this year either...
And everyone please remember the former NASA scientist I quoted here quite a while back.He says the sun runs in cycles. And due to lack of sun surface activity and sun spots he predicted we were going to be entering into a cooling off spell. Some really bad winters.
Judging from last winter and the start of this one I’d say his real science was on to something.
Re: Politics
Posted: Sat Oct 05, 2019 2:50 pm
by Peter C
Holding Ukraine hostage: How the president and his allies, chasing 2020 ammunition, fanned a political storm
By Greg Miller , Paul Sonne , Greg Jaffe and Michael Birnbaum
October 4 at 10:14 PM
By mid-May, the U.S. relationship with Ukraine was unraveling: The U.S. ambassador had been recalled home for no apparent reason, the country’s new president was anxious about U.S. support, and President Trump’s personal lawyer was hawking Kiev conspiracy theories.
Amid this turbulence, an unexpected figure stepped forward to assert that he was now in charge of the U.S.-Ukraine relationship. Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, had no apparent standing to seize this critical portfolio, nor any apparent qualifications as a diplomat beyond the $1 million he’d given to Trump’s inauguration.
But when some in the White House and State Department sought to block his power grab, current and former U.S. officials said, he rebuffed their demands to know who had granted him such authority with two words:
“The president.”
Over the next four months, Sondland worked closely with Kurt Volker, the U.S. special representative for Ukraine, to reorient America’s relationship with Kiev around the president’s political interests.
Newly released texts exchanged by Sondland, Volker and other U.S. officials during this period read like a government-sanctioned shakedown. Again and again, they make clear that Ukraine’s new president, Volodymyr Zelensky, would not get military aid or the Oval Office invitation he coveted until he committed to investigations that Trump hoped would deliver damaging information on former vice president Joe Biden and undermine the origins of the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Rather than official State Department email, the text exchanges between the diplomats took place over WhatsApp, a U.S. official said.
Only if Zelensky can convince Trump that he will “ ‘get to the bottom of what happened’ in 2016” will he be granted a meeting with the president, Volker tells one of Zelensky’s top advisers in late July in a text that alludes to Trump’s belief that Ukraine sought to sabotage him in the presidential election. In a separate message weeks later, Sondland emphasizes that the president “really wants the deliverable.”
The exchanges reveal the direct participation of State Department officials sworn to serve the country in events that increasingly bear the markings of a multipronged political conspiracy.
At the same time Sondland and Volker were using diplomatic channels to press Trump’s demands, the president and his personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, were using other channels to deliver the same message. At the center of the scandal is a July 25 phone call between Trump and Zelensky that was exposed by a government whistleblower and triggered an impeachment inquiry.
On the receiving end of these demands was a country turning to the United States for help with legitimate desperation. Over the past five years, Ukraine has endured incursions by Russian paramilitary forces, the loss of the Crimean Peninsula after its seizure by Moscow, and a deadly and ongoing conflict with Russian-backed separatists — not to mention its own internal political and economic problems, and corruption.
Against this backdrop, Ukrainian officials cited in the texts released by House committees late Thursday come across as feeling abused by their American counterparts. Zelensky “is sensitive about Ukraine being taken seriously, not merely as an instrument in Washington domestic, reelection politics,” a U.S. official, dispatched to Kiev after former ambassador Marie Yovanovitch was removed on May 7, said in a text.
Sondland brushed aside his counterpart’s apprehension. “We need to get the conversation started and the relationship built,” he wrote back, “irrespective of the pretext.”
Although brief and cryptic, that exchange captures a more pervasive divide within the Trump administration between career national security officials disturbed by what they perceived as a dangerous decoupling of U.S. foreign policy from core national interests, and political appointees who became complicit in the president’s use of American influence to advance his electoral interests.
This account is based on interviews with more than two dozen current and former U.S. officials, as well as documents released in recent days by congressional committees involved in the impeachment inquiry against the president. The officials interviewed spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing the sensitive nature of the subject as well as fear of retaliation. Sondland did not respond to requests for comments.
Re-litigating 2016
Trump’s preoccupation with Ukraine traces back to the 2016 U.S. presidential race, when a financial ledger surfaced in Kiev linking Trump’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, to millions of dollars in secret payments from a pro-Russian, Ukrainian political party he advised. The disclosures forced Manafort to resign his campaign position and fueled suspicions that Trump’s candidacy was being assisted by interference from Moscow.
Trump came to see the ensuing investigations of his campaign’s possible ties to Russia as part of an effort to delegitimize his presidency. In his July 25 call with Zelensky, Trump complained about the Russia probe and recycled discredited conspiracy theories, including that Russia had not really hacked the computers of the Democratic National Committee, and that the proof of that supposed hoax — the DNC hard drives — had been smuggled into Ukraine for hiding.
There is no evidence to substantiate any of these allegations.
[In call to Ukraine’s president, Trump revived a favorite conspiracy theory about the DNC hack]
“A lot of it started with Ukraine,” Trump said at a point in the conversation where he also alluded to aid and arms promised to Ukraine while telling Zelensky, “I would like you to do us a favor.” Among other things, Trump explicitly asked Zelensky to initiate an investigation of Biden and his son.
Giuliani, Trump’s lawyer, became similarly entangled in webs of unfounded accusations. By the time the Russia investigation concluded without uncovering clear evidence that Trump’s campaign had conspired with Moscow, Giuliani and Trump had both turned their attention to Ukraine as a potential ally that could both help validate their theories and provide ammunition against political adversaries.
To advance this shared agenda, Trump began exploiting the powers of the executive branch.
Trump enlisted Attorney General William P. Barr to launch investigations into the origins of the Russia probe, searching for proof that the work of the FBI and special counsel Robert S. Mueller III were politically tainted. As part of that effort, The Washington Post revealed this week, Barr traveled to Britain and Italy, hoping their security services could expose improprieties by American intelligence agencies.
Trump also began circumventing his own National Security Council at the White House and deploying trusted allies to pursue political dirt and re-litigate the history of the 2016 election. His target was a country that Manafort had long said was out to get Trump in 2016: Ukraine.
Sondland, 61, appears to have never held a position in government before being named U.S. ambassador to the European Union in June 2018. He amassed much of his wealth by acquiring and managing luxury hotels in cities including Seattle and Portland, Ore.
Sondland sought to distance himself from Trump in 2016, backing out of a Seattle fundraiser for the GOP candidate over what a company spokesman described as concerns with Trump’s “anti-immigrant” policies.
But Sondland didn’t stay away for long, later routing $1 million to the president-elect’s inaugural fund through a collection of shell companies that obscured his involvement.
In Brussels, Sondland garnered a reputation for his truculent manner and fondness for the trappings of privilege. He peppered closed-door negotiations with four-letter words. He carried a wireless buzzer into meetings at the U.S. Mission that enabled him to silently summon support staff to refill his teacup.
Sondland seemed to chafe at the constraints of his assignment. He traveled for meetings in Israel, Romania and other countries with little or no coordination with other officials. He acquired a reputation for being indiscreet, and was chastised for using his personal phone for state business, officials said.
Sondland also shuttled repeatedly back to Washington, often seeking face time with Trump. When he couldn’t gain entry to the Oval Office, officials said, he would meet instead with White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, preferring someone closer to Trump’s inner circle than national security officials responsible for Europe.
“He always seemed to be in D.C.,” a former White House official said. “People would say, ‘Does he spend any time in Brussels?’ ”
Trump's man
Sondland’s approach to the job was seen more as a source of irritation than trouble until May, when he moved to stake his claim to the U.S.-Ukraine relationship.
After Zelensky’s election, White House officials began making plans for who would take part in the U.S. delegation to attend Zelensky’s inauguration.
National security adviser John Bolton removed Sondland’s name from the list, only to see it reinserted, a clear indication that Bolton had been overruled by the Oval Office.
Photos of the event show a beaming Sondland alongside Zelensky, as well as other U.S. officials including Volker and Energy Secretary Rick Perry.
In the ensuing months, Sondland maneuvered to cement a position of influence in the relationship between Trump and the new Ukrainian president. In early June, Sondland threw a lavish Independence Day reception — a month ahead of the U.S. holiday — at a cavernous antique car museum in central Brussels.
An enormous U.S. flag was projected onto a wall. Jay Leno — whom Sondland billed as a personal friend — delivered a standup routine whose U.S.-focused patter fell flat on the ears of European officials. At a private dinner afterward, Sondland hosted an eclectic mix of guests. Among those at the candlelit table were Zelensky, Leno and Trump’s son-in-law and adviser, Jared Kushner.
Within weeks, Sondland and Volker were deep into their efforts to consummate a secret political pact between Trump and Zelensky. Texts show the extent to which they explicitly pursued a transaction tying U.S. military aid and a future visit to the White House to a hard commitment from Ukraine to revive a corruption probe of a company, Burisma, that had employed Hunter Biden, the vice president’s son, as a board member making between $50,000 and $100,000 a month, according to people familiar with the matter.
A July 19 exchange between Sondland and Volker shows them discussing the status of their efforts to secure clear cooperation from Zelensky before the approaching Trump-Zelensky phone call.
Sondland said that he had spoken “directly to Zelensky and gave him a full briefing. He’s got it.” Volker replied that he had met over breakfast with Giuliani to apprise him of their progress, and the two later went on to discuss what Zelensky would need to do to secure the Oval Office meeting.
“Most impt is for Zelensky to say that he will help investigation — and address any specific personnel issues — if there are any,” Volker wrote.
Officials in Washington and Kiev were increasingly alarmed by developments that were out in the open, including the mysterious suspension of aid and Giuliani’s penchant for revealing his schemes in appearances on cable television.
Behind the scenes, other red flags surfaced. In a White House meeting in early July, Sondland surprised a room of U.S. officials and members of a small Ukrainian delegation when he diverged from U.S. talking points approved in advance by Bolton and others. As part of the conversation, U.S. officials recited their desire for Ukraine to continue seeking to rid its government and state-run companies of corruption.
But Sondland interjected that the United States also had other targets in mind for Kiev that went beyond its active, ongoing investigations. He didn’t cite Burisma or Biden by name, but the implication of his words struck others in the room as troubling and obvious, particularly given Giuliani’s public comments.
“What was shocking was that he said it in front of so many people,” said one official familiar with the meeting.
Such concerns in Washington were by then already tributaries in a stream of information flowing to a CIA employee who shared their dismay and would soon begin compiling an extraordinary whistleblower complaint to the intelligence community’s inspector general.
In Kiev, William B. “Bill” Taylor, who had served as U.S. ambassador to Ukraine from 2006 to 2009 under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, and had agreed to return on an emergency basis after Yovanovitch’s removal, was raising alarms.
Taylor, who was recruited by Volker, had been hesitant to even take the job.
“I’m still trying to navigate this new world,” Volker texted him this spring.
“I’m not sure that’s a world I want to set foot in,” Taylor replied.
On July 21, he voiced his concern about Ukraine being treated as a pawn in America’s “domestic, reelection politics,” only to have his concerns dismissed by Sondland, who suggested that Taylor was failing to recognize how bending to Trump’s demands was the only path to improving the countries’ fraught relationship.
The next day, one of Zelensky’s top advisers, Andrey Yermak, spoke by phone with Giuliani. Coached by the tandem of Sondland and Volker, Yermak appears to have given Giuliani the reassurances he needed to secure Zelensky’s phone call with Trump.
When that call happened three days later, some White House officials who had suspicions but were not read-in to the hidden agenda were so alarmed by Trump’s conduct, and the pressure he applied to Zelensky for a political “favor,” that they stuffed a transcript of the call onto a computer system reserved for some of the government’s most highly classified secrets.
Among those engaged in the shadow diplomacy, however, the call was regarded as a breakthrough. Yermak told Volker that the “call went well,” and that Zelensky got his promised invitation to the White House, but no specific date. “Great,” Volker wrote back, noting that he would now set in motion a preliminary meeting in Madrid between Yermak and Giuliani.
Giuliani told Yermak that the Ukrainian president needed to make a public promise to pursue the corruption investigations, according to Volker’s testimony. Sondland and Volker set about revising the wording of a statement proposed by the Ukrainians that Zelensky could issue upon announcing his trip to Washington. When the two diplomats sent the statement to Giuliani, he was dismayed that it wasn’t more specific, and according to Volker, he demanded that the Ukrainians insert specific references to the 2016 election and Burisma, the gas company where Hunter Biden served on the board.
In an Aug. 10 text message, Volker tells Yermak that once the statement is ironed out, they can then “use that” to get the date for the meeting between Trump and Zelensky.
Yermak’s response makes the bargain clear. “Once we have a date, will call for a press briefing, announcing upcoming visit and outlining vision for the reboot of US-UKRAINE relationship, including among other things Burisma and election meddling in investigations,” he writes.
“Sounds great!” Volker replies.
Ultimately, Volker testified Thursday on Capitol Hill, the statement was shelved, because the Ukrainians didn’t feel comfortable making explicit reference to the Burisma and election interference investigations.
But by that point, Volker and Sondland were themselves unwitting to developments in Washington that would in time expose their months-long enterprise and trigger an impeachment inquiry against the president.
On Aug. 12 — the day before Volker and Sondland traded triumphant texts about the statement they wanted issued by Zelensky — the CIA whistleblower submitted his nine-page document to the inspector general of the intelligence community. Over the next several weeks, events proceeded along two separate tracks that finally converged this week in the secure hearing room of the House Intelligence Committee.
On Sept. 1, Taylor raised his concerns again. “Are we now saying that security assistance and WH meeting are conditioned on investigations?” That same day, at a meeting in Warsaw, the Ukrainians were hearing the same message from Vice President Pence when he told Zelensky that the United States was still concerned that Ukraine was not doing enough on corruption.
Sondland refused to engage Taylor on the matter by text, telling him to “Call me.”
A week later, on Sept. 8, Taylor issued a more forceful warning, saying that he would not be part of coercing a public pledge from Zelensky and withholding aid that Ukraine desperately needed. “The nightmare is they give the interview and don’t get the security assistance,” he said. If that were to unfold, he said, “The Russians love it. (And I quit.)”
One day later, on Sept. 9, Taylor confronted Sondland one last time by text, saying, “I think it’s crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign.”
Sondland, perhaps anticipating how this exchange would play out if it came into the possession of investigators or were released to the public, replied in an earnest tone: “Bill, I believe you are incorrect about President Trump’s intentions. The President has been crystal clear: no quid pro quo’s of any kind.”
Birnbaum reported from Brussels. Julie Tate and Michelle Ye Hee Lee in Washington contributed to this report.
Re: Politics
Posted: Sun Oct 06, 2019 10:30 am
by Hillbilly
Here we go again. Liberal media, the DNC propaganda arm, taking up the company line, even though it is BS. How long you guys going to continue to be lied to and still waste your time watching and reading this garbage? It says more about you than it does them.
These same people screamed Russia Russia Russia for two years. I am still waiting to see the evidence Adam Schiff, the biggest liar in Washington, claimed that he had proving that Trump colluded with Russia. He made that claim for 2 years to liberal media outlets, never once challenged, and not challenged now. Evidence that the Mueller team couldn't find. It is beyond belief he still holds his post, let alone allowed to be point man in this dog and pony show.
Here is why the above article from the Washington ComPost is garbage, just like the lies Schiff & Cummings and the rest keep telling.
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Prepared remarks by the first impeachment inquiry witness indicate House Democrat leaders cherry-picked and mis-characterized texts he provided during testimony Thursday to fuel their effort to remove President Donald Trump from office.
Former U.S. special envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker provided evidence in the form of texts to show he was not trying to push Ukraine into investigating former Vice President Joe Biden.
The texts cover conversations between Volker, U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland, top U.S. diplomat to Ukraine William Taylor, and Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s private lawyer.
Democrats and the liberal mainstream media suggested the texts amounted to evidence that Volker helped Trump’s attempt to push Ukraine into probing into Biden.
That would mean Volker, a Trump appointee, provided self-incriminating evidence to House Democrat lawmakers pursuing the impeachment inquiry that would harm himself and others at the center of the investigation.
In the written testimony, obtained by BuzzFeed News, Volker declared:
At no time was I aware of or took part in an effort to urge Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Biden. As you will see from the extensive text messages I am providing, which convey a sense of real-time dialogue with several different actors, Vice President Biden was never a topic of discussion.
The Democrat leaders seeking Trump’s impeachment, however, released some of the texts to support their claim that Volker helped Trump coerce Ukraine into investigating Biden.
Reps. Elijah Cummings (D-MD), Adam Schiff (D-CA), and Eliot Engel (D-NY)
conceded that the texts were “only a subset of the full body of materials” they received from Volker.
House Democrats refuse to release the full transcripts of the more than eight hours of testimony provided by Volker on Thursday.
Volker’s prepared remarks suggest the Democrats mischaracterized the texts.In particular, a text about a statement Volker and Sondland were helping Ukraine draft.
Volker said Andrey Yermak requested assistance in penning a statement to express Ukraine’s commitments to combating corruption.
Yermak is a close aide to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who was expected to issue the statement.
The ultimate aim of the statement was to convince Trump to meet with Zelensky, but the Urkainian president never delivered it.
The Democrat leaders cited a July 19 text from Volker to make it seem as if the former envoy was briefing the Ukrainian president on what to tell president Trump during the July 25 call that triggered the impeachment inquiry.
In his prepared remarks, Volker indicated that the July 19 text was about the statement they were helping Ukraine draft, not about the call.
Volker explicitly says that as of July 24, “I still did not know whether or when such a call [between Trump and Zelensky] was to be scheduled …”
The Democrats introduced the text saying, “On July 19, 2019, Ambassador Volker, Ambassador Sondland, and Mr. Taylor had the following exchange about the specific goal for the upcoming telephone call between President Trump and the Ukrainian president.”
Volker said in the text:
Good. Had breakfast with Rudy this morning — teeing up call w Yermak Monday. Must have helped. Most [important] is for Zelensky to say that he will help investigation — and address any specific personal issues — if any.
Again, Volker said he was referring to a statement Zelensky was expected to issue, but never did.
The former envoy stressed in his written testimony that the statement was never intended to mention former VP Biden.
Instead, it was expected to focus on an investigation into 2016 U.S. election meddling by local Ukrainians and the domestic energy company Burisma Holdings.
Volker emphasized that the statement was ultimately “shelved” because he wanted “Ukraine [to] do nothing that could be seen as interfering in the 2020 elections.”
Republicans have accused their rivals of cherry-picking the texts they chose to release.
This unilateral and cherry-picked release by the Democrats is a desperate attempt to further their failing impeachment narrative and skew the story. This information cannot possibly be understood without Volker’s explanations from today’s testimony.
— Oversight Committee Republicans (@GOPoversight)
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I would recommend if you see a pile of soft black stuff, and it smells like crap, that you assume it is crap and not chocolate soft serve.
For instance, a couple years ago democrats would have you believe that Trump colluded with Russia to win the 2016 election, an election Russia wanted him to win. And how did Russia help their candidate win? By releasing pictures of him getting pee'd on by Russian prostitutes!
With friends like that who needs democrats??
Just how ridiculous is that? Any reasonable minded person would have known that was a farce from the get go. Unlike some of you, I didn't waste 1 minute of my life believing that nonsense.
Now, democrats would have you believe that Kurt Volker came in and voluntarily turned over a slew of texts that would incriminate himself and others.
Yeah, that sounds right.
Don't eat that chocolate pudding either...
Now here on the other hand is a corrupt politician, giving details in his own words...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXA--dj2-CY
The president has every right to have his legal team to look into how the ridiculous investigation into his campaign got started. He wants to make sure it never happens to any other candidate again. And the president has a duty, a duty, not a right, a duty, to look into any corruption by high ranking DC politicians.
The swamp will fight back, and that's what they are doing now. But in the end I sincerely hope Barr and Durham get to the bottom of all this crooked mess.