Trump White House ID's REAL Ukraine Treason-Crimer And It Is ... Let's Say That Guy!
Scapegoat found.
Blessed damnation, the White House is looking for a scapegoat to distract us all from the verified science fact that Donald Trump (and Rudy Giuliani!) improperly and illegally led a campaign to extort the president of Ukraine into investigating his political rivals and thereby assist Trump's 2020 re-elect, in exchange for a White House visit and military aid Ukraine desperately needs to protect itself from Russia, and which had already been appropriated by Congress. We say this is a verified science fact because we have the partial transcript of the call as released by the White House, which corroborates the whistleblower complaint, which corroborates State Department text messagesfrom two of the "Three Amigos" deputized to do Ukraine crimes after the Trump administration pushed the real professionals out, which corroborate the testimony of literally everyone who's sat down with Congress in the past two weeks.
THAT is what Donald Trump is being impeached for.
But in the whistleblower complaint, we learned a new bit of alarming information that was tangential to the central issue, but important and fucked up nonetheless: that the Trump White House has been taking Trump's embarrassing and crime-y and maybe treason-y unclassified phone calls with foreign leaders and hiding them on a secret NSC server intended only for the most closely guarded secrets, like details of the bin Laden raid. (That's why we nicknamed it the "Bin Laden Server.")
But never fear, everyone! The White House is investigating the White House for improper activities at the White House involving the secret White House server! We are sure they'll find the ONE PERSON responsible for all of this, whose name is definitely not Donald Trump! It is John Eisenberg! John Eisenberg is the bad man! LOCK HIM UP! LOCK HIM UP! LOCK HIM UP!
Maggie Haberman 'n' pals report:
President Trump has for weeks sought to unmask the whistle-blower who shed light on his Ukraine dealings. But instead aides have fixated on one another: Advisers began a fact-finding review that some fear is a hunt for a scapegoat, according to White House aides and other people familiar with it.
Even as the impeachment inquiry intensifies in Congress, White House lawyers are leading their own review, the people said. They are seeking to understand White House officials' actions around Mr. Trump's July 25 call with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, which is central to the whistle-blower's allegation that Mr. Trump abused his power.
The lawyers' inquiry centers on why one of their colleagues, the deputy White House counsel John A. Eisenberg, placed a rough transcript of the call in a computer system typically reserved for the country's most closely guarded secrets.
Yes, why did JOHN EISENBERG do the bad thing? Everybody let's point at John Eisenberg like handmaids sitting in a circle during Testimony Time and shout "Sinner! Sinner! Sinner! Sinner! Sinner!"
Handmaid's Tale Season 3 Episode 8 Unfit Ofmatthew Testifies www.youtube.com
To be clear, we are pretty sure John Eisenberg, a White House counsel for the NSC, did some bad shit. When the whistleblower first came forward to CIA General Counsel Courtney Simmons Elwood, she went both to the Justice Department -- the leader of which, Bill Barr, is implicated in the complaint -- and to John Eisenberg at the White House. Eisenberg already had at that point been hearing rumblings around the water cooler about the bad call, perhaps because people had been raising alarms about it pretty much since Trump hung up the phone with Volodymyr Zelenskiy, and also he was the one who put the records of Trump's "perfect" shakedown call with the president of Ukraine on the Bin Laden Server . (It bears repeating that this has been done, we now know, with Trump's calls with literally every other dictator in the world Trump is currently in love with, including the Saudis and Putin. That's a huge problem.)
As our Liz has pointed out, Eisenberg was also the lawyer then-White House Russia adviser Fiona Hill went to, on orders from John Bolton, with her worries that Rudy Giuliani was doing "shadow foreign policy" with Ukraine.
So yes, he's neck deep in this particular river of shit. But we are also pretty sure John Eisenberg did not come up with all of this on his own.
But whatever, SCAPEGOAT!
Some officials have expressed fears that the review is intended to assign blame and highlight decisions that helped fuel the impeachment inquiry, the people said. Mr. Eisenberg reacted angrily to suggestions that he is under scrutiny, according to two people told of his response.
Well yeah, we'd be pissed too! But this is the Trump White House, where if you haven't been thrown under the bus to protect Trump yet, your tire tracks are coming.
The Times says it's not clear who ordered this trumped up investigation, but that (acting) Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney has "encouraged it," and the people in his office are helping White House Counsel Pat Cipollone. Clearly this is part of why it's been reported recently that Mulvaney and Cipollone have been hating each other's asses ever since Trump released his own treason confession transcript, which AGAIN, is why he's being impeached.
All the rest of this is gravy. Crime gravy. Grievous-threat-to-national-security gravy. JOHN EISENBERG gravy.
But gravy, just the same.
Wonkette looks forward to Eisenberg's upcoming resignation and tell-all testimony before Adam Schiff's boys and girls. Wheeeeeeee!
[ New York Times ]
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There is literally no bottom.
Dammit.
It does seem that way, but I refuse to accept that it's true. There is still more than a little bit of fight left within me.