The Right Side of the News

Hi Dr. Can you quote me pages and paragraphs if Trump repeatedly asked the Ukrainian government to investigate Joe Biden and his son?I will see if I can help you a little bit. The following is quoted directly from the original transcript. I added the underline to draw attention to certain portions.

quote:

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President Zelenskyy: Yes you are absolutely right. Not only 100%, but actually 100% and I can tell you the following; I did talk to Angela Merkel and I did meet with her. I also met and talked with Macron and I told them that they are not doing quite as much as they need to be doing on the issues with the sanctions. They are not enforcing the sanctions. They are not working as much as they should work for Ukraine. It turns out that even though logically, the European Union should be our biggest partner but technically the United States is a much bigger partner than the European Union and I'm very grateful to you for that because the United States is doing quite a lot for Ukraine. Much more than the European Union, especially when we are talking about sanctions against the Russian Federation. I would also like to thank you for your great support in the area of defense. We are ready to continue to cooperate for the next steps specifically we are almost ready to buy more Javelins from the United States for defense purposes.

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The President: I would like you to do us a favor though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it. I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say Crowdstrike... I guess you have one of your wealthy people... The server, they say Ukraine has it. There are a lot of things that went on, the whole situation. I think you're surrounding yourself with some of the same people. I would like to have the Attorney General call you or your people and I would like you to get to the bottom of it. As you saw yesterday, that whole nonsense ended with a very poor performance by a man named Robert Mueller, an incompetent performance, but they say a lot of it started with Ukraine. Whatever you can do, it's very important that you do it, if that's possible.

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President Zelenskyy: Yes it is very important for me and everything that you just mentioned earlier. For me as a President, is very important and we are open for any future cooperation. We are ready to open a new page on cooperation in relations between the United States and Ukraine. For that purpose, I just recalled our ambassador from United States and he will be replaced by a very competent and very experienced ambassador who will work hard on making sure that our two nations are getting closer. I would also like and hope to see him having your trust and your confidence and have personal relations with you so we can cooperate even more. I will personally tell you that one of my assistants spoke with Mr. Giuliani just recently and we are hoping very much that Mr. Giuliani will be able to travel to Ukraine and we will meet once he comes to Ukraine. I just wanted to assure you once again that you have nobody but friends around us. I will make sure that I surround myself with the best and most experienced people. I also wanted to tell you that we are friends. We are great friends and you Mr. President have friends in our country so we can continue our strategic partnership. I also plan to surround myself with great people and in addition to that investigation, I guarantee as the President of Ukraine that all the investigations will be done openly and candidly. That I can assure you.

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The President: Good because I heard you had a prosecutor who was very good and he was shut down and that's really unfair. A lot of people are talking about that, the way they shut your very good prosecutor down and you had some very bad people involved. Mr. Giuliani is a highly respected man. He was the mayor of New York City, a great mayor, and I would like him to call you. I will ask him to call you along with the Attorney General. Rudy very much knows what's happening and he is a very capable guy. If you could speak to him that would be great. The former ambassador from the United States, the woman, was bad news and the people she was dealing with in the Ukraine were bad news so I just want to let you know that. The other thing, there's a lot of talk about Biden's son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it... It sounds horrible to me.The first section I underlined is where President Zelenskyy is stating he is thankful for the US help with the Russian sanctions.The second is where President Trump mentions Biden's son.The third is where President Trump mentiones Biden going around bragging about he stopped the prosecutor as he was fired.If I remember correctly Biden gave the Ukraine government until his flight left to fire the prosecutor or they would not get the billion+
dollars.In the entire transcript I can not find any other mention of Hunter Biden or Joe Biden.Maybe my eyesight is getting bad and I missed where President Trump asked President Zelenskyy to dig up dirt on anyone multiple times.God Bless

Today's Washington Examiner reports that Senate report criticizes Obama FBI response to Russian interference on Twitter and Facebook. That's a long stretch no matter how you look at it. The article begins:

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A new report from the Senate Intelligence Committee highlighted the Obama administration's failure to properly warn and work with Twitter and Facebook to battle Kremlin-backed trolls interfering in the 2016 election.

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Incredibly, the Examiner article leads with information from page 73 (out of 85 total pages) of the Senate report (Report of the Select Committee on Intelligence, United States Senate, on Russian Active Measures Campaigns and Interference in the 2016 U.S. Election, Volume 2: Russia's Use of Social Media With Additional Views), where the report faults the FBI for using contractors and for not being more proactive in working with Facebook and Twitter. Here's what the report actually had to say. Every paragraph seems to begin with a parenthesized bold "U" - very weird, but I included it:

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    (U) This progress notwithstanding, it is important to memorialize the state of information sharing between law enforcement and the social media companies in fall 2016. The FBI was examining social media content for its potential as a means of effectuating foreign influence operations in 2016, but mostly through contractors:

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(U) In October 2016, the Counterintelligence Division tasked a contractor to
identifY Russian influence activity on Twitter. The FBI contractor collected and
analyzed a sample of Twitter activity conducted by an overtly pro-Russian
network of 13 Twitter accounts and their followers, including automated
accounts, which promoted US election-related news and leaked Democratic party
emails published by WikiLeaks.

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    (U) The apparently outsourced nature of this work is troubling: it suggests FBI either lacked resources or viewed work in this vein as not warranting more institutionalized
consideration. None of the resulting analysis or even notice of the underlying activity appears to
have been communicated to the social media company in question prior to the election. I
Twitter's General Counsel told the Committee in January 2019: "To the best of our knowledge,
Twitter received no information from the U.S. government in advance of the 2016 election about
state sponsored information operations."

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    (U) Facebook, however, had more robust information exchange with law enforcement in
2016: "In several instances before the 2016 U.S. election, our threat intelligence team detected
and mitigated threats from actors with ties to Russia and reported them to US law enforcement
officials, and they subsequently shared useful feedback with us." Still, it was incumbent on
Facebook to initiate the dialogue with law enforcement, and the exchange of information was
predicated on Facebook bringing foreign influence activity directed at Americans to the attention
of the FBI.

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The Examiner evidently read the report from back to front because not until the end of their article do they summarize the report's findings, which began on page 4. There were some redactions, but here are the report's important points:

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• (U The Committee found, that the IRA [Russia's Internet Research Agency] sought to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election by harming Hillary Clinton's chances of success and supporting Donald Trump at the direction of the Kremlin.
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  (U) The Committee found that the IRA' s information warfare campaign was broad in scope and entailed objectives beyond the result of the 2016 presidential election. Further, the Committee's analysis of the IRA's activities on social media supports the key judgments of the January 6, 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment, "Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections," that "Russia's, goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency."5 However, where the Intelligence Community assessed that the Russian government "aspired to help President-elect Trump's election chances when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton and publicly contrasting her unfavorably to him," the Committee found that IRA social media activity was overtly and almost invariably supportive of then-candidate Trump, and to the detriment .of Secretary Clinton's campaign.
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  (U) The Committee found that the Russian government tasked and supported the IRA' s interference in the 2016 U.S. election. This finding is consistent with the Committee's understanding of the relationship between IRA ownerYevgeniy Prigozhin and the Kremlin, the aim and scope of the interference by the IRA, and the correlation between the IRA's actions and electoral interference by the Russian government in other contexts and by other means.7 Despite Moscow's denials, the direction and financial involvement of Russian oligarch Yevgeniy Prigozhin, as well as his close ties to high-level Russian government officials including President Vladimir Putin, point to significant Kremlin support, authorization, and direction of the IRA' s operations and goals.
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  [4 redacted lines]
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• (U) The Committee found that Russia's targeting of the 2016 U.S. presidential election was part of a broader, sophisticated, and ongoing information warfare campaign designed to sow discord in American politics and society. Moreover, the IRA conducted a vastly more complex and strategic assault on the United States than was initially understood. The IR.A's actions in 2016 represent only the latest installment in an increasingly brazen interference by the Kremlin on the citizens and democratic institutions of the United States.
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  [a few redacted words] Russia's history of using social media as a lever for online influence operations predates the 2016 U.S. presidential election and involves more than the IRA. The IR.A's operational planning for the 2016 election goes back at least to 2014, when two IRA operatives were sent to the United States to gather intelligence in furtherance of the IR.A's objectives. [about 10 redacted lines]
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  (U) Analysis of the behavior of the IRA-associated social media accounts makes clear that while the Russian information warfare campaign exploited the context of the election and election-related issues in 2016, the preponderance of the operational focus, as reflected repeatedly in content, account names, and audiences targeted, was on socially divisive issues-such as race, immigration, and Second Amendment rights-in an attempt to pit Americans against one another and against their government. The Committee found that IRA influence operatives consistently used hot-button, societal divisions in the United States as fodder for the content they published through social media in order to stoke anger, provoke outrage and protest, push Americans further away from one another, and foment distrust in government institutions. The divisive 2016 U.S. presidential election was just an additional feature of a much more expansive,, target-rich landscape of potential ideological and societal sensitivities.
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• (U) The Committee found that the IRA targeted not only Hillary Clinton, but also Republican candidates during the presidential primaries. For example, Senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio were targeted and denigrated, as was Jeb Bush. 14 As Clint Watts, a former FBI Agent and expert in social media weaponization, testified to the Committee, "Russia's overt media outlets and covert trolls sought to sideline opponents on both sides of the political spectrum with adversarial views towards the Kremlin." IRA operators sought"to impact primaries for both major parties and "may have helped sink the hopes of candidates more hostile to Russian interests long before the field narrowed."
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• ....

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There are more items, but I'll stop there. The important point is that the Washington Examiner played down these significant findings that were stated right at the top of the the report, that the Russians assisted Trump and hurt Clinton in the 2016 presidential election.It's ironic that Trump's obsession with proving that he won the 2016 election on his own merits and with no help from anyone is likely to get him impeached. This obsession is driving his efforts to force the Ukraine to dig up dirt supporting his conspiracy theory that it was actually the Ukraine that interfered in the 2016 election on the side of Hillary Clinton through the efforts of Joe Biden and his son Hunter working through Ukrainian gas company Burisma Holdings.--Percy

That "(U)" indicates the classification level of that paragraph. Classified documents are required to be marked with their classification level. That parts that are to be marked are:

• Each paragraph, such as you see. Also illustrations, tables, etc.
• Each page, which is classified at the highest classification level of its contents; ie, if all the paragraphs are unclassified, then the page is unclassified, but if even one paragraph is mark as secret, then the entire page is secret.
• The entire document, which is classified to the level of the most highly classified page.

The levels of classification are:

• (U) -- unclassified
• (C) -- confidential
• (S) -- secret
• (T) -- top secret

There are additional qualifiers (eg, NOFORN for "no foreign access") which further determine how that classified material must be handled.Don't forget to sign the muster sheet to show that you've received your annual security refresher training.  Sea story:
After I was discharged from the Air Force, I affiliated with the Navy Reserve. As an OSVET (other-service veteran), I was required to complete the rate training manual (RTM) correspondence courses. Mine (DS -- Data Systems Technician) came in two volumes: Vol 1 with 230 pages and Vol 2 with 87 pages. One of my ratings duties was to maintain the Naval Tactical Data System (NTDS), which was classified. There were about a dozen pages in Vol 1 that contained one to four paragraphs that were marked (C), so the entire page they were on was also marked (C). As a result, the entire RTM was classified confidential -- even though Murphy was an Air Force officer, his Murphy's Law is also applicable in the Navy, so of course it had to be the thick RTM that was classified. Because of the required handling, I was not allowed to take that RTM home to work on. Instead, I had to take a week of vacation from work just so that I could commute 30 miles to base and sit all day in PSD (Personnel Support Detachment, the controlling office for this classified) doing that course. Shortly after that I took the advancement exam based on that material and I made DS1 (E6) first time.

I used to work at the RCMP Training Academy and the RCMP used to handle counter-intelligence before the civilian agency CSIS was formed. Once I came across an envellope the had checkboxes for:

• Confidential
• Secret
• Top Secret
• Eyes Only

Why do you care that Biden withheld aid to Ukraine until they fired the prosecutor? Biden was standing by our allies when he did that. The entire G-7 and the International Monetary Fund was calling for his resignation because Shokin was absolutely corrupt and in Russia's pocket.

quote:

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This would all be a small footnote in history except that by 2016, officials throughout the Obama administration and in Western Europe had come to a consensus that Ukraine’s prosecutor general, Viktor Shokin, wasn’t doing enough to crack down on corruption. Biden, as he later colorfully recounted, delivered the message that the West wanted Shokin gone or else loan guarantees would be held up, and Shokin was, in turn, fired.

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There was nothing remotely controversial about this at the time. No congressional Republicans complained about it, and the European Union hailed the decision to fire Shokin. The reason there is video footage of Biden touting his personal role in this is it was considered a foreign policy triumph that Biden wanted to claim credit for, not anything sordid or embarrassing.

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But Shokin, of course, didn’t want to go down on the theory that he was corrupt or incompetent. So he started offering another theory: he was fired for going after Burisma by Joe Biden operating on behalf of Hunter Biden.

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The question of whether Shokin was actually investigating Burisma at all is a matter of dispute (the relevant Ukrainian players have told inconsistent stories), but this is clearly not the reason he was fired. The desire to push him out was fully bipartisan in the United States and reflected a consensus across European governments, not than anything idiosyncratic to Biden.
Hunter Biden, Burisma, Ukraine, and Joe Biden explained - Vox

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Biden was entirely in his right to brag about it because he scored a major victory for the US and our European allies when he got Shokin fired. Read my post above.

Hi Taq You been drinking too much of the cool aid.Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.Hunter Biden according to the New York Times was hired by Bursma in December 2015 which was just weeks after President Obama asked Joe Biden to oversee U.S., Ukraine relations.At the time Bursima was having problems with the law.On March 29, 2016 Shokin was fired at the demand of Joe Biden with the result of that firing not taking place meaning the Ukraine would not get 1+ billion dollars, in aid.John Buretta who had been hired to help Bursima with their legal problems tried to speak to Yuriy Sevruk who had been appointed temporary prosecutor general the same day Shokin was fired.He got that meeting on April 6, 2016 but Yuri Lutsenko was appointed prosecutor general. In January of 2017 the case Shokin was prosecuting was settled for a few million dollars in fines for alleged tax issues.Now I don't know anything about political business, but I do know a little about business.So if I had been in Burisma shoe's and under investigation I would have take out an insurance policy if one was available to me. It seems they had one available as President Obama appointed his vice president Joe Biden to be over the U.S., Ukranian relations. A few weeks later Hunter Biden was hired by Burisma.Later the prosecutor general was fired at the demand of Joe Biden with the result of a prosecutor who shortly thereafter settled the case out of court for a few million dollars.Sounds like a very good business investment to me with a great return on investment.But then what do I know?I just heard somewhere on this site that all you have to do is follow the evidence to reach the proper decision.God Bless

Whose idea was it to fire Shokin? Did it have support from Congress and our allies? Was their cause for Shokin to be removed?Do you really think that it was just Joe Biden calling for Shokin to be removed?Now, ask the same thing about Trump firing Comey. Who was Jim Comey investigating? His campaign, which includes some of his children. Who was the person who wanted Comey fired? Trump. Why did Trump say he fired Comey? Because of the investigation into his campaign, which includes his children.Whose the corrupt one?

Heard on the radio this morning -- that's all, just something I heard so don't demand evidence yet please -- that the prosecutor in the Ukraine has come out and said that it was Biden who got him fired and although he has been called corrupt that's a lie, he was investigating corruption.Oh, and the whole Mueller investigation was a hoax and Comey knew it, and it's probably going to come out eventually that he committed crimes himself in bringing it about.
.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Hi Taq I don't see where anyone gave them an ultimatum that they had 6 hours to fire the prosecutor or lose over a billion dollars in aid. If I remember correctly all the Dems were asking Trump to fire Comey as he was investigating Hillary Clinton.The investigation Comey was running was into the phony Russian Collusion against the Trump administration. We know now that firing was justified.On the other hand the firing of Shokin resulted in the prosecution Shokin was conducting being turned over to a prosecutor that settled the case for a so called tax liability and them being fined a few million dollars.That settlement and other things surrounding it has been under investigation for several months. Which was taking place before the conversation of which we have the transcript took place. You do know that Trump did not have to have any reason to fire Comey, don't you.Every person that is hired by the president or former president to work in his administration can be fired simply because the President got up on the wrong side of the bed or for no reason at all. Comey said he served at the pleasure of the President. At least he knew that much.God Bless

Re: Trump Bashing Thread, Message 3466That was obviously a Democrat plant, fake news, why do you all believe such nonsense?Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Why would you say that? Multiple people who were there confirmed the contents of the video. Organizers of the conference confirmed that the video was shown. The whitehouse has confirmed the contents of the video and Trump's spokesman has denounced the video. Nobody is saying the republican party put together the video, or that the Trump campaign put together the video or that Trump had anything to do with the video. But the truth is, that at a conference for Trump supporters, somebody thought it appropriate to show a video of Trump shooting up a church where the victims were prominent newspeople, democrats and other critics of the president.

You ducked the question.Do you really think that it was just Joe Biden calling for Shokin to be removed? So all Joe Biden has to do is say that any investigation into the company Hunter Biden was phony, and you you'll be ok with it? Trump stated in a TV inteview that he fired Comey because of the Russia investigation."On May 11 Trump told Lester Holt in an NBC News interview, "When I decided [to fire Comey], I said to myself, I said, 'You know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made up story",[13] while reiterating his belief that there was no proof Russia was behind any election interference.[65][66] "--President Trump
Dismissal of James Comey - WikipediaEdited by Admin, : Fix quote.

Shokin was fired because he refused to investigate corruption.

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But sources ranging from former Obama administration officials to an anti-corruption advocate in Ukraine say the official, Viktor Shokin, was ousted for the opposite reason Trump and his allies claim.

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It wasn't because Shokin was investigating a natural gas company tied to Biden's son; it was because Shokin wasn't pursuing corruption among the country's politicians, according to a Ukrainian official and four former American officials who specialized in Ukraine and Europe.
What really happened when Biden forced out Ukraine's top prosecutor

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Ask Paul Manafort if it's a hoax. People don't go to jail for hoaxes. Also, what about those 12 Russians who have been indicted for interfering in our elections? Just a hoax?

Choice between your sources and mine I go with mine.And the Mueller investigation found some stuff to prosecute totally unrelated to its reason for existing. The whole thing about finding something to pin on Trump, the whole thing about Russian collusion by Trump or his campaign team, was a big fat indefensible and probably illegal fishing expedition and there are people connected to it who should be prosecuted but in the Democrats' current condition of third world/Fascist-Communist type corruption probably won't be.