From a May 2017posting.
The question is why has Mike Pence been seemingly out of the White House loop on the Russian connection controversies? Perhaps it goes back to the 2016 campaign when Pence parted ways with Trump on Russian policy. Going back to two prior postings on this blog, this has a history, including the Mike Flynn/Pence flap re: Pence saying Flynn lied to him. In these blogs are also references to the Russian connections in the 2016 campaign and possible financial entanglements with Russia in the Trump administration. Whether Pence took himself out of being involved in the Russian connection issue or if Trump did, is unknown. However, it may be Pence himself removing himself and the matter flared up when he accused Flynn of lying about the nature of his conversations with the Russian ambassador, that forced Trump to fire Flynn.
Pence also departed from Trump on Russia in his first trip abroad with a hard line approach: : http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/18/politics/pence-munich-russia-foreign-policy/,
Pence also departed from Trump on Russia in his first trip abroad with a hard line approach: : http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/18/politics/pence-munich-russia-foreign-policy/,
Blog Posting Oct. 5 2016
"One event in the Vice Presidential debate, October 4, was the position of GOP candidate Mike Pence regarding Russia. The comments on Russia got lost in Pence's absolute denial that Donal Trump ever said Russian President Vladimir Putin was a better leader than Pres. Obama. The quibble could be whether the correct term was "stronger". In any case, there is plenty of video available on Trump's comments which makes Pence look like a liar, albeit a smooth one delivered with conviction.
What should also be the story is that Pence took a hard line on Russia saying we should stand up to them.. This deserves some closer scrutiny and looks like there is a division on foreign policy between the two running mates. Take a look at the debate as can be accessed via You Tube regarding Pence's views of Russia incursions into the Crimea, Ukraine and Georgia...a great contrast from Trump's prior statements.
What does count in 2016 ,however, is Trump's position, though Pence might use his own quotes in his own future campaigns.
It stands in sharp contrast with the GOP presidential candidate himself, Donald Trump, who has been advocating a foreign policy that strangely runs parallel to the same as Russia's, from declaring NATO obsolete, not objecting to the Russian threats and incursions into Eastern Ukraine, and recognizing Russia's grab of the Crimea. In fact, the mutual comments between Trump and Putin have been so complimentary that it has been timed a "bromance" of mutual admiration.
Not only is this a major issue in foreign policy, but in calls into question whether Trump can even negotiate with Putin in America's and our alliies' security interests without giving away the store to Russia. Negotiation means give and take and the question remains what Trump would give away to make a deal.
http://mufticforumblog.blogspot.com/2016/09/trumps-foreign-policy-make-russia-great.html
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/10/vice-presidential-debate-putin-mike-pence-donald-trump-229147
http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/28/politics/donald-trump-vladimir-putin-quotes/ "
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Blog posting Feb, 14, 2017
"General Michael Flynn's departure from the White House may have much deeper roots than just his lie to both Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence about conversations with the Russian ambassador. The conflict between the two goes back to the days of the campaign post-GOP conventions. I noted that in a column at that time. In the Vice Presidential debate, Pence parted ways on Russia from candidate Donald Trump's line.
From my blog posting 10/5/16: (repeated above)
and continues:
"Some background:
For some time, the question has been why has Donald Trump been so cozy with Russia? There has been a great deal of speculation ranging from Trump's debts to Russia oligarchs to blackmail, the connection with the Russian Alfa Bank, with embarrassing pictures (a victim of a honey trap). Fingers have been pointed to influencing Trump's views of Russia was his campaign manager, who departed the campaign mid-year, Paul Manafort, who was an advisor to the ousted president of the Ukraine who sought refuge in Moscow after a coup. Congressional investigations into Russian influence and hacking in the US elections are just getting underway. Ukraine is involved. The Russians have conducted a stealth takeover of the eastern parts of that country and the West punished Russia with economic sanctions. The Flynn issue involves lies about his pre- January conversations with the Russian ambassador over lifting those sanctions. The question arises was this a thank you for the role Russia played in helping Trump win by planting false news stories and by hacking and revealing damaging information regarding Hillary Clinton.
That there are many concerned about why Donald Trump only ever has kind words for Russia and their president Vladimir Putin while being critical of even our closest allies and even calling NATO, our mutual defense treaty with Europe, obsolete. It has set our Eastern Europe members of NATO on edge and one of President Obama's departing actions was to announce the placement of US troops in Poland as a signal to Russia not to mess with our Baltic members. Trump and others, including libertarians, had already expressed concern about going to war to support the small trio of Baltic nations in spite of their NATO membership. Russians have always seen the Baltics, with their ports to the sea, as part of theirs since there is a large number of Russians living in those areas left over from the old Soviet military occupation days when the Baltics were their satellites. Russia has a modus operandi of using "saving discrimination against Russian minorities" as an excuse to grab territory and the Baltics are ripe targets. Their membership in NATO has made Russia think twice. Ukraine, Crimea, and Georgia, recent targets of Russian grabs, are not part of NATO and are not under NATO's protection. Flynn was Donald Trump's closest campaign advisor on foreign affairs throughout the campaign."
- Taylor was also worried that Trump might be willing to trade away Ukraine's interests as part of a grand bargain with Russia, Volker told lawmakers.
- Taylor is expected to appear before members of Congress next week.
Details: Volker told members of the House Intelligence, Foreign Affairs, and Oversight committees earlier this month that he recommended Taylor for the job after the former ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, was removed from her position.
- Volker said Taylor was initially “reluctant” to accept the role because “he was not sure if we would maintain as robust a support for Ukraine as we had had for the past 2 years."
- Taylor also told Volker that he was worried about Giuliani's efforts to investigate the Bidens. "He was just worried [Ukraine] was going to get undermined at some point,” Volker added.
- “Hanging over everyone’s head in the expert community is, is there some grand bargain with Russia where we throw Ukraine under the bus?”
- Volker said he tried to assure Taylor that the U.S. actually has strengthened its support for Ukraine by increasing sanctions and lifting arms embargo.
- Volker told Taylor, "Look Giuliani does not represent the U.S. government. Don’t worry about that."
- Taylor decided to take the job but only after speaking with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for reassurance that Pompeo remained solidly in support of Ukraine.
Concerns about Giuliani's role in facilitating a relationship with the new Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky, started to raise alarms.
- Volker told committee members that he, Taylor, and acting assistant secretary of state Phil Reeker discussed their concerns about Giuliani, stating that they "were just very uncomfortable with him being active.”
- They thought Rudy was creating “a problem,” and the problem “was that he was amplifying a negative narrative about Ukraine that was impeding our ability to advance the bilateral relationship the way we wanted.”
- Volker said he relayed these concerns to Pompeo, and told him he was trying to "correct that impression" the president had. Pompeo said, "I'm glad you're doing it."
- Volker said Burisma was known for years to be a corrupt company, but that didn't transfer to the Bidens. “Saying investigating Vice President Biden or his son, that is not fine. And that was never part of the conversation.”
- Taylor specifically warned the Ukrainians not to do anything that would be seen as interfering in U.S. elections.
Volker, Taylor and the committees did not respond to a request for comment.
The Democrat's case for impeachment in simple terms: The case for impeachment in simple terms: Pres. Trump tried to shake down the Ukranian president to force him to find dirt on Hunter Biden and Joe Biden , his perceived political rival in 2020, by withholding military aid authorized by bipartisan Congress to prevent further Russian military incursion into Ukraine...and then hid the text in a separate server reserved for very secret classified code word national security matters, not for political matters to protect the president. .
Some background: The military aid to Ukraine was supported by both Congressional Democrats and Republicans as a way to prohibit further Russian expansion into former USSR satellites..both those under mutual NATO defense and not under a mutual defense treaty like Ukraine. There is an active war in Easter Ukraine with Russia's annexation of Crimea and the Donbas region.within the national boundaries of Ukraine, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Donbass There is a de facto annexation by Russia and the area is occupied, Russian stealth troops. The Western world including the US had reacted with imposing economic sanctions against Putin's best friends and Russia...which became the subject described in the Mueller report. The appropriation legislation was a bipartisan agreement that it was in the US's national security interest to counter Russian threats to take control of the rest of Ukraine. It was this allocation that Donald Trump halted in spite of the legislation that allocated the aid, then asked "a favor" of the new Ukraine president to look into the business dealings of Hunter Trump as a way to hurt the strongest rival to his re-election, Joe Biden. It was not until the whistleblower's allegations surfaced that the Trump administration released the military aid. The military aid was both physical support of the western leaning Ukrainian government as well as verifying Trump's "tough" stand against Putin which was in contrast to Trump's constant bootlicking of Putin. However, instead, Trump used this aid appropriated for the sake of US national security as a bargaining chip to get Ukraine to re-open the investigation into Hunter Biden instead of caring about the national security interests of the US. In the telephone conversation at question, the Ukraine president brought up the military aid for the Javelin anti-tank weaponry and then immediately Trump asked the Ukranian president "though" for a "favor", including re-opening the investigation into Hunter Biden. The "though" is a conditional indication."..will do a favor, though, ..here are my conditions" : The next question is if the White House released "text" of the conversation had been sanitized or hidden by Trump to bury the "bargain" as a quotable and directly obvious quid pro quo. The urgency is that the aid allocation to Ukraine was scheduled to expire Sept. 30.
Was this a "shakedown" and "cover-up" as the House Intel committee chair Rep. Adam Schiff charges.? The actual recording of the conversation and the verbatim transcript has been "locked down" by the administration that has been moved per the Whistleblower complaint. However, what was "locked down" may not have anything to do with national security interests, but the political interests of the President, contrary to the usual use of that stand-alone system reserved for codeword intelligence.records. The outrage: The DNI referred the whistleblower complaint to the attorney general.Bill Barr.who was named as the president's envoy (as well as Guiliani) to follow up on president"s favor he asked: to rei-investigate the Hunter Biden and any connection with Joe Biden...as well as during that time the President had held military aid to Ukraine and joined the two issues in his telephone conversation. This was overt conflict of interest to ask Bill Barr for an opinion whether the Whistleblower complaint should be sent to Congress that includes him in the complaint. Of course, the Whistleblower complaint text eventually was sent on the day of the hearings on the Sept 26.
The Inspector-General interviewed witnesses that confirmed the Whistleblower complaint that there was a quid pro quo. We need to hear about what the IG found in his investigation that made the Whistleblower's allegations credible. What must also be done is to spring loose to the public the tape of the actual conversation that it was locked down after other eyes saw it. Some of those other eyes seem to have been interviewed by the IG to come to the conclusion that the Whistleblower's complaint was credible. Following up on the IG investigation becomes even more important as a way to justify the 'locked down" should be brought into the public domain. This a Nixon Tapes redux. Post-hearing, Schiff affirms plans to pursue this and to see if there are any other incidences like this.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/pentagon-officials-deemed-withholding-of-aid-to-ukraine-was-illegal-090046566.html https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-impeachment-inquiry/read-full-text-whistleblower-complaint-n1058971
Was this a "shakedown" and "cover-up" as the House Intel committee chair Rep. Adam Schiff charges.? The actual recording of the conversation and the verbatim transcript has been "locked down" by the administration that has been moved per the Whistleblower complaint. However, what was "locked down" may not have anything to do with national security interests, but the political interests of the President, contrary to the usual use of that stand-alone system reserved for codeword intelligence.records. The outrage: The DNI referred the whistleblower complaint to the attorney general.Bill Barr.who was named as the president's envoy (as well as Guiliani) to follow up on president"s favor he asked: to rei-investigate the Hunter Biden and any connection with Joe Biden...as well as during that time the President had held military aid to Ukraine and joined the two issues in his telephone conversation. This was overt conflict of interest to ask Bill Barr for an opinion whether the Whistleblower complaint should be sent to Congress that includes him in the complaint. Of course, the Whistleblower complaint text eventually was sent on the day of the hearings on the Sept 26.
The Inspector-General interviewed witnesses that confirmed the Whistleblower complaint that there was a quid pro quo. We need to hear about what the IG found in his investigation that made the Whistleblower's allegations credible. What must also be done is to spring loose to the public the tape of the actual conversation that it was locked down after other eyes saw it. Some of those other eyes seem to have been interviewed by the IG to come to the conclusion that the Whistleblower's complaint was credible. Following up on the IG investigation becomes even more important as a way to justify the 'locked down" should be brought into the public domain. This a Nixon Tapes redux. Post-hearing, Schiff affirms plans to pursue this and to see if there are any other incidences like this.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/pentagon-officials-deemed-withholding-of-aid-to-ukraine-was-illegal-090046566.html https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-impeachment-inquiry/read-full-text-whistleblower-complaint-n1058971
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