Schiff says whistleblower testimony is 'redundant and unnecessary'

[Cordelier]

One disagreement with your comment: "this whole thing with Biden and Crowdstrike and Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election is a story the President made up".

I don't think the president has the intellect to make up a story as complex as the Biden/Burisma thing. Seems to me the story came from some shady characters in Ukraine, with interests linked to Russia and personal bank accounts. Shokin and Lutsenko were both fired from their failure to prosecute oligarchs ripping off the Ukrainian people. Then there are Lev and Igor and their relations with Trump and Giuliani

Oh, I don't deny that there are very probably some shady doings going on.... and I imagine there's a pretty straight line back to Paul Manafort's work for Yanukovich. I just didn't want to muddy the waters with facts not in evidence yet.

 

[MTAtech]

All I can say is -- if you are "not overly concerned about Trump", you are either not paying attention to what he has done or you just don't give a flying ****. That concerns me, that so many Americans seem to have the same attitude about the man's actions.

It's not just Trump but his enablers in the House and Senate. If Obama had done anything like this, he would already have been impeached (and Dems would have voted for it) and they'd probably have hung him on the WH lawn.

As Maureen Dowd wrote, "Republican members of the Intelligence Committee risibly struggle to back up Trump on his demented conspiracy theory — belied by the consensus of the entire U.S. intelligence community — that it was Ukraine that meddled in the 2016 election to help Hillary, rather than Putin who meddled to help Trump."

We read the same storyline parroted on this forum by Trump cult members that believes everything he says without any evaluation. We understand why GOP politicians do it, "...they are recreants, slavishly trying to hold onto voters who are more intensely aligned with Trump than old-style Republicans." But why do others buy into what is nothing more than pure BS?

 

[Somerville]

Two week old news, news that I had not read at anyplace else but it popped up while doing some googling for work. Perhaps it's that "Exclusive" bit which has kept it off mainstream media sites.

Exclusive: Overhaul of Ukraine prosecution agency buries Manafort inquiries - investigators

KIEV (Reuters) - Sweeping changes to Ukraine’s top law enforcement agency ordered by President Volodymyr Zelenskiy are set to derail a series of long-running criminal investigations, including two related to U.S. President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, three current and former Ukrainian prosecutors told Reuters.

One might think that Zelenskiy IS doing the quid pro quo thingie for Mr Trump.

The reorganization, which includes fresh leadership for the agency and mandatory skills testing for prosecutors, represents an upheaval of Ukraine’s General Prosecutor’s Office (GPO), one of the most powerful bodies in the country, and one that has long been the target of criticism.
(. . .)
Plans to shake up the GPO played a role in a July 25 phone call between Zelenskiy and Trump that is now at the heart of the impeachment inquiry into the U.S. president. On that call, Zelenskiy told Trump he was installing a new head at the agency who would be “100% my person, my candidate” and who “will look into the situation” regarding the Bidens.

There are parts of this plan that do make sense but there are parts which definitely provide some shade for both presidents.

New Prosecutor General Ruslan . . . Ryaboshapka, who previously headed an anti-corruption agency and briefly served as Zelenskiy’s deputy chief of staff, also has imposed a written legal exam for all the GPO’s prosecutors, a move many of those staffers view as insulting and an unfair test of their skills and experience. More than 200 have already been fired for refusing to take the exam, according to the prosecutor’s office.

and here's the 'good' part

Among those who have been fired are 13 prosecutors from the Special Investigations Unit, which was overseeing corruption cases from the period of former President Viktor Yanukovich. Manafort, who worked as a political consultant in Ukraine for years, was implicated in two of those probes, one linked to a dossier of off-the-books payments made by a Ukrainian political party, and another looking at the alleged illicit use of state funds by Yanukovich’s government.
(. . .)
Three members of the Special Investigations Unit told Reuters the loss of key personnel and reshuffling of responsibilities would effectively sabotage five years’ worth of investigations into alleged corruption during the pro-Kremlin presidency of Yanukovich, who was in office from 2010 until he was driven from power in a popular revolt in 2014. Manafort worked as a consultant for Yanukovich’s political party for over a decade.