I'm shocked, but apparently the reason why the Trump regime allowed Acting DNI Joseph Maguire to testify to Congress this week is because he threatened to resign if they stopped him.
The acting Director of National Intelligence threatened to resign over concerns that the White House might attempt to force him to stonewall Congress when he testifies Thursday about an explosive whistleblower complaint about the president, according to current and former U.S. officials familiar with the matter.
The revelation reflects the extraordinary tensions between the White House and the nation’s highest-ranking intelligence official over a matter that has triggered impeachment proceedings against President Trump.
The officials said Joseph Maguire, who was thrust into the top intelligence post last month, warned the White House that he was not willing to withhold information from Congress, where he is scheduled to testify in open and closed hearings on Thursday.
Maguire denied that he had done so. In a statement, he said that “at no time have I considered resigning my position since assuming this role on Aug. 16, 2019. I have never quit anything in my life, and I am not going to start now. I am committed to leading the Intelligence Community to address the diverse and complex threats facing our nation.”
The White House also disputed the account. “This is actually not true,” White House spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham said in a tweet.
After these statements were issued, Washington Post Executive Editor Martin Baron said, “We stand by the story.”
Somebody, maybe Maguire himself, wanted to make him look more sympathetic and honorable. We've had our fill of Trump regime employees who walked away from their train wrecks and refused to say anything about how Trump was hurting the country, previous DNI Dan Coats and previous Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis among them.
Meanwhile, Trump's new Ukrainian friends aren't exactly in a good place, and they can smell what's coming down the pike.
When Ukrainians voted to elect comedian Volodymyr Zelenskiy as their next president in the spring of 2019, the fledgling administration was eager to coordinate a phone call with Kyiv’s most important benefactor -- the United States, according to an adviser to Zelenskiy.
But after weeks of discussions with American officials, Ukrainian officials came to recognize a precondition to any executive correspondence, the adviser said.
"It was clear that [President Donald] Trump will only have communications if they will discuss the Biden case," said Serhiy Leshchenko, an anti-corruption advocate and former member of Ukraine's Parliament, who now acts as an adviser to Zelenskiy. "This issue was raised many times. I know that Ukrainian officials understood."
The Trump administration’s alleged insistence that the two leaders discuss a prospective investigation into Biden, one of the president’s political opponents, casts his July 25 conversation with Zelenskiy in a new light.
During the call, a rough summary of which was released by the White House Wednesday, Trump repeatedly encouraged Zelenskiy to work with Attorney General William Barr and his personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, to probe Biden’s role in the dismissal of the country’s prosecutor general, Viktor Shokin, in 2016.
Why yes, the Ukrainians knew full goddamn well that before Trump would even talk to Zelensky that they had to agree to come up with something on Joe Biden's son.
That's it, guys. That's the crime.
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