Page 29 - Central Question News Today

Two articles, but its quite different than the trial i sat through. >> very interesting to hear you lay that out and also your very well-informed thoughts about what the articles could be. as a prosecutor, all the people the house has been gathering. congress schiff saying and well put this up here, you have the whistleblowers. you have the ambassador of ukraine, bill taylor, you have fiona hill, george kent, john bolton who has been quoted for his rhetoric and criticism and the people who have ...

Reason because theres all sorts of things that are horrible and abuses of trust but arent criminal. this one actually happens to be criminal. it is a thing of value, i think, for reasons you were talking about, but i think that doesnt matter for the impeachment debate at all. the central question, ari, that our founders thought about when they thought about impeachment is this, has the president abused the public trust, has he broken his fiduciary responsibility to the american people, and this ...

Emerging, what is the issue? they are saying democrats are doing anything to bring down this presidency and we have other issues that seem to be more important. >> and im with you, frankly all of these issues are important. around doing the state departments bidding or the presidents bidding or maybe both and maybe that is sort of improper venture. it including tpompeo and others. but you asked the central question, what is most important? really what is most important is a president that figura...

>> its important to understand how this typically works. its typically the case that when the president has a phone call with a foreign leader, that the transcript of that phone call is packaged up and sent out to other cabinet officials who may have an interest in that discussion. when i was at odni, it was regularly the case the director at the time, dni jim clapper, would get transcripts of those phone calls. what were being told in this case is there are phone calls that are happening, and n...

Campaign, dont you think that should be investigated? >> i have no reason to believe -- i do not understand. i have no situation awareness if that was withheld or why it was withheld, mr. chairman. >> well, i can tell you we are going to find out. director, i want to thank you for your attendance today. i want to thank you again for your service. as my colleague underscored, mr. welch, and i fully agree with his sentiment. no one has any question about your devotion to the country. no one has an...

It was a remarkable hearing today, but the whistleblower complaint, if youre at home, suspend your politics and read it, not only did the president seek foreign dirt in the 2020 election and used essentially extortion against the ukranian government. but in some ways, more dangerously, it suggests that people in the white house created a second computer system because they understood how outrageous this was and they were hiding this, covering it up, burying it. the question is, does washington h...

Said anything. mcconnell is a big supporter of the president, i believe, reluctantly so, so lets see what mitch mcconnell does in the senate, if anything. i dont expect any kind of groundswell from republicans, do you? >> no, and if you look at the raw numbers in the house, the democrats dont need it. at this point it looks like they have enough votes, obviously the inquiry hasnt happened, to go forward. it would be beneficial to the country if it would be bipartisan. the question is if it would...

President has already taken extraordinary steps to hide the content of his conversations, youll recall, the confiscated notes in july of 2017. that to me was a signal that what this whistleblower revealed goes beyond what we even learned. >> lets be clear, this is an allegation. it is a wow. if true, it takes down the president for improper behavior and by authority who would hide things and cover it up. the question is can washington have a process you trust to go through it and air it out? tha...

Issues, and theyre moving that information from a system that archives transcripts of these calls, and theyre putting it in a compartmented, highly classified, sensitive system thats only used for dealing with information that are of a particularly sensitive nature. that system is being misused by those officials. and what the dni has to understand is that because its an intelligence community classified system, it falls under his purview, and what he should have did when he saw this is he shoul...

Subtext here is that people knew that that was bad, therefore, they were putting phone calls in to people like the whistleblower saying, what is going on? it was a 911 phone call from inside the white house saying, whoa. >> they were enabling. >> and this is why i think the committee was so focused on procedure today. yes, we have this complaint. but the sheer scope of the number of people that are involved, and who knows whats happening with other conversations, records or notes or other contex...