To: Winfastorlose who wrote (1170117 ) 10/10/2019 10:30:51 PM From: pocotrader 1 RecommendationRecommended By rdkflorida2
Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 1573415 National Security At least four national security officials raised alarms about Ukraine policy before and after Trump call with Ukrainian president President Trump speaks to members of the media on the White House lawn Thursday before boarding Marine One for a short trip to Andrews Air Force Base, Md., and then on to Minneapolis, for a campaign rally. (Patrick Semansky/AP) By Greg Miller and Greg Jaffe Oct. 10, 2019 at 3:46 p.m. PDT At least four national security officials were so alarmed by the Trump administration’s attempts to pressure Ukraine for political purposes that they raised concerns with a White House lawyer both before and immediately after President Trump’s July 25 call with that country’s president, according to U.S. officials and other people familiar with the matter. The nature and timing of the previously undisclosed discussions with National Security Council legal adviser John Eisenberg indicate that officials were delivering warnings through official White House channels earlier than previously understood — including before the call that precipitated a whistleblower complaint and the impeachment inquiry of the president. At the time, the officials were unnerved by the removal in May of the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, by subsequent efforts by Trump’s lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani to promote Ukraine-related conspiracies , as well as by signals in meetings at the White House that Trump wanted the new government in Kiev to deliver material that might be politically damaging to Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden. Those concerns soared in the call’s aftermath, officials said. Within minutes, senior officials including national security adviser John Bolton were being pinged by subordinates about problems with what the president had said to his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky. Bolton and others scrambled to obtain a rough transcript that was already being “locked down” on a highly classified computer network.