Prelude: The 19th century Progressives bequeathed to us a many tentacled Leviathan. The monster grew out of the progressives’ fundamental premise that life is too complicated to be left to individuals. We need, they asserted, “experts” to guide and assist us in achieving our highest potential. They did not see the monster developing a mind of its own with distinct interests from those it was intended to serve. You might say, a culture evolved from its peculiar ecosystem. Out of this unique culture arose a predilection for certain views, born of its circumstances and concomitant norms and expectations. The 2016 election threw back the rug and exposed the thing for what it really is. It is a living and breathing thing no longer moored to its original raison d’être. Its purpose for existence is itself, not the country and the country’s citizens.
*******
At times Tucker Carlson drives me nuts. One of his favorite bogeymen is “neocons”, which occasionally crowds out his infatuation with UFO’s. To him, free markets are “just a tool”. He completely misses the point that they are what happens when the state leaves people alone. Free markets blossom when a state is created to protect our natural rights, not the creator of them. But I have to admit that he is onto something in most things Trump. The latest Trump furor erupted over a whistleblower complaint about his phone call (later referred to simply as “the Call”) to Ukrainian President Zelensky. A CIA veteran appeared on his show to present his view of the whistleblower’s complaint. His observations should raise at least a few eye brows. Watch.
The complaint (read here) according to former CIA officer John Kiriakou reads too polished and legally suave to be a product of a single person. In his view, the complaint by the time it got to Congress had passed through multiple hands. Maybe this is normal, but today’s political environment isn’t normal. Multiple hands might mean a coordinated effort. There are concerns that the administrative state is a hyper-partisan outfit, particularly in its DC stomping grounds. Is it possible that our bureaucracies in DC are a well-oiled special interest group with a clear ideological cast? Is the “whistleblower” a pseudonym for a cabal of apparatchiks intent on removing Trump?
Details about the complaint and the complainant are only now beginning to emerge. The existence of an accusation was known to Adam Schiff (D, Ca.), chairman of the House Intel Committee, as it was gestating in the intel bureaucracy (read about it here). According to the latest information, the accuser interacted with a Schiff aide and was referred to a lawyer. Who’s the lawyer? It’s none other than one of the many revolving-door Democrat apparatchiks who populate the environs of the DC Mall, Andrew Bakaj with Mark Zaid as co-counsel.
Previously, Bakaj has been at the center of insider politics to frustrate Trump appointees. In 2018, he went after Christopher Sharpley, Trump’s nominee for CIA Inspector General, ironically a holdover from Obama’s tenure where he served as deputy IG of the CIA, and functioned as acting IG under Trump. Out of the woodwork arose a cadre of former apparatchiks to blast Sharpley for allegedly punishing “whistleblowers”. At the tip of the spear was Bakaj. They successfully torpedoed Sharpley’s nomination when he withdrew his name rather than face the Dem gauntlet. And who was retained as Bakaj’s legal counsel in this earlier jig? It was Zaid. You can read about the episode here.
It’s time to clear up this business about “whistleblowers” before we go any further. “Whistleblowing” can be more than just a sincere exposure of those of public trust who cook the books. It also lends itself to partisan political crusades. Whistleblowing at this level looks a lot like leaking. Whistleblowing has the potential to be legal cover for leaking.
The motivations of the complaining actor (or actress) can be of a partisan nature. Speaking of partisan, look at Bakaj’s political background. The guy is fully marinated in Democratic Party politics. He interned for Sens. Chuck Schumer and Hillary Clinton in the Spring and Fall of 2001 according to his Linkedin page. He was employed at the CIA’s IG office during the Obama years. That’s where he ran afoul of Sharpley, the CIA’s Deputy IG, at a time when Obama was petrified over leaks. Even Democrats at that time were aware of the blurred line between “whistleblowing” and “leaking”.
Bakaj is now part of the web of professional handlers who are on speed dial with Democrat officeholders with a political ax to grind. So the Call’s digestive tract might look like this: leaker > Schiff aide > Schiff? > Bakaj > Zaid. As more information comes to light, we may have to add more entrails to the guts of the beast.
The Call’s coming to light is starting to eerily resemble the sliming of Kavanaugh. At the root of that campaign was Debra Katz, the DC lawyer who represented Christine Blasey-Ford and her completely unsubstantiated allegations. Is her’s (Katz) a fully objective legal mind? Are you kidding? She once crowed not long after Trump’s inauguration, “This administration’s explicit agenda is to wage an assault on our most basic rights — from reproductive rights to our rights to fair pay . . . We are determined to resist — fiercely and strategically.” She’s a charter member of the Resistance.
Into this boiling stew is thrown the Call. Cutting through the bombast, we find the complaint adds nothing, other than what appears to be Democrat boilerplate. Trump trumped them by releasing the transcript of the Call. The very thing that was to be the accelerant for a full blown uproar was now equally in the possession of any congregation of people at a barber shop or supermarket. The mom with a basket full of groceries knows just as much as the “whistleblower”. With the transcript, we get to compare the whistleblower’s account of what was said with … what was actually said.
The New York Times’s report on the complaint refers to it as following the released transcript of the Call. Of course it does. Dah! But there’s much more to the complaint that sounds more like a legal brief than a singe person’s recollection. In-between references to the Call are interpretations and embellishments. These could have just as easily come out of the Resistance hothouse or Adam Schiff and the worst of the Democratic caucus. Examples are in order.
Example #1: Right at the start, in the introduction, the complaint rattles off a partisan indictment: “… the President of the United States is using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election. This interference includes, among other things, pressuring a foreign country to investigate one of the President’s main domestic political rivals.”
This is not in the transcript. It’s in the mind of the complainant, and whoever else helped him (or her) write it. As we know, Trump requested assistance from the Ukraine in our investigation of possible governmental misbehavior surrounding the 2016 election. We have treaties for this purpose, one with the Ukraine. Any reference to the Bidens is brief and offhanded, and fleetingly mentioned to make the point of possible corruption and other wrongdoing of recent vintage. As for a “quid pro quo”, to be blunt, there ain’t one. This is clear if you listen to a dramatic reading of the Call in natural conversational tones and rhythms (One was performed on the Hugh Hewitt Show, Hour 2, 10/2/2019).
Example #2: Here’s chilling reminder of the cabal within the unleashed Leviathan: “Over the past four months, more than half a dozen U.S. officials have informed me of various facts related to this effort.” Further, “It is routine for U.S. officials … to share such information with one another ….” Additonally and astoundingly, we have this admission: “I was not a direct witness to most of the events described. However, I found my colleagues’ accounts of these events to be credible because, in almost all cases, multiple officials recounted fact patterns that were consistent with one another.”
“Fact patterns”? “Multiple officials”? “Share such information”? What are “fact patterns”? They are opinions usually fueled by bias. In today’s climate, there’s no hotter bias than DC Trump-hatred. As for the “sharing” and “multiple officials”, that sounds to me like “intrigue”. I would like to remind the Dem caucus that interpretation equally applies to the complaint as it does to the Call.
Example #3: The frequent appearance of the word “pressure” to characterize Trump’s request for assistance from Zelensky, president of the Ukraine, underscores the partisan bombast. “Pressure” is a very loaded verb. Once again, a natural oral recreation of the conversation conveys no such “pressure”. It is a provocative verb enlisted for the sole purpose of advancing a political agenda. The complaint has the odor of DNC press releases.
Example #4: To further the charge of Trump “pressuring” Zelensky, a quid pro quo was stitched together by the author(s). First, they attempt to paint White House officials as “deeply disturbed” as they “witnessed the President abuse his office for personal gain”. The “abuse” relies on cobbling together a line from the Ukrainian president’s account of the talk on his website with the fleeting reference to the Bidens. Here’s the Ukraine line in the complaint:
“Donald Trump expressed his conviction that the new Ukrainian government will be able to quickly improve Ukraine’s image and complete the investigation of corruption cases that have held back cooperation between Ukraine and the United States.”
Attach the above with this:
“Aside from the above-mentioned ‘cases’ purportedly dealing with the Biden family and the 2016 U.S. election, I was told by White House officials that no other “cases” were discussed.”
And you have a “quid pro quo”. Really? Yeah, in the minds of those in the fever swamp. So, we are supposed to believe in the space of a limited conversation that the mere mention of the Bidens is ipso facto proof of “give me dirt on the Bidens or we’ll let you die on the vine”. The only way to get away with the accusation is to be unfamiliar with the Call. Now that we have it to read during our morning constitution, we know that the shenanigans of the intel community and the FBI in DC, along with Crowdstrike, were mentioned. “No other cases”? The Bidens were one of three, all brought up during the length of a short phone talk. The complaint’s author(s) are lying.
I could parse more of the thing by going beyond the first 3 pages of the 9 in the screed. The document is risible. It will become more of a farce as more comes to light, maybe more about the complainant. Some reports have revealed the author to be a registered Democrat. Something not unexpected given the natural affinity between the party of government (Democratic Party) and the employees of government.
Neighboring states around DC all of a sudden have a predilection for Democratic Party candidates. The federal government grows and Democrats flock to DC and its environs. Examine the map of Virginia from the 2016 election. Notice the northern state house districts on the south side of the Potomac, a few bridges away from DC?
Republicans venturing into DC are lambs stumbling into a den of wolves.
The tale of the Call is the story of the sunset of popular sovereignty. We must recognize that the government is so big that it cannot be controlled through elections. In fact, if elections go against the lunch room zeitgeist, the new officeholders will be undermined or removed from office. Welcome to modern impeachment in the age of the institutional radical left.
Stay tuned for more from the impeachment clown show.
RogerG