WTF Just Happened Today

Wednesday, September 25, 2019

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1/ Trump urged President Volodymyr Zelensky to "do us a favor" and "look into" potential corruption by Joe Biden's son, according to the White House readout of the July 25th call. Trump told Zelensky he'd have Attorney General William Barr and Rudy Guiliani contact him and help Ukraine "figure it out" and "get to the bottom of it." Trump, before asking Ukraine to investigate Biden's son, reminded Zelensky that the U.S. sends security aid to Ukraine. Trump also asked Zelensky to investigate Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election as it related to Ukraine, as well as to investigate whether he could locate a hacked Democratic National Committee computer server that contained some of Hillary Clinton's emails. (New York Times / Washington Post / Wall Street Journal / Bloomberg / NBC News / Politico / NPR / CNN / ABC News / CNBC / HuffPost)

1. The director of national intelligence and the inspector general for the intelligence community each referred the complaint for a possible criminal investigation into Trump's actions after the whistleblower complaint raising concerns about Trump's call with Zelensky.

2. The intelligence community's inspector general told the Director of National Intelligence that Trump's comments could be viewed as soliciting a foreign campaign contribution in violation of federal campaign finance laws despite there being no explicit reference to the $391 million in foreign aid that Trump directed Mick Mulvaney to block days before the call took place.

3. The Justice Department, however, concluded that it "could not make out a criminal campaign finance violation" based on the summary of the call. Officials, however, didn't take into consideration that Trump was withholding aid to Ukraine at the time.

4. The document, which the White House and Trump refer to as a transcript, isn't verbatim – it's a "memorandum of telephone conversation" based off the "notes and recollections" of Situation Room and National Security Council officials.

5. Trump, meanwhile, accused Democrats and reporters of pursuing a "hoax" against him. Trump insisted that "we want transparency" while calling the impeachment inquiry "a joke." (New York Times)

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