Intel Community Secretly Gutted Requirement Of First-Hand Whistleblower Knowledge

[The_Waco_Kid]

Oh My! looks like someone changed the law illegally!


Intel Community Secretly Gutted Requirement Of First-Hand Whistleblower Knowledge


https://thefederalist.com/2019/09/27...wer-knowledge/


Federal records show that the intelligence community secretly revised the formal whistleblower complaint form in August 2019 to eliminate the requirement of direct, first-hand knowledge of wrongdoing.

Between May 2018 and August 2019, the intelligence community secretly eliminated a requirement that whistleblowers provide direct, first-hand knowledge of alleged wrongdoings. This raises questions about the intelligence community’s behavior regarding the August submission of a whistleblower complaint against President Donald Trump. The new complaint document no longer requires potential whistleblowers who wish to have their concerns expedited to Congress to have direct, first-hand knowledge of the alleged wrongdoing that they are reporting.

The brand new version of the whistleblower complaint form, which was not made public until after the transcript of Trump’s July 25 phone call with the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky and the complaint addressed to Congress were made public, eliminates the first-hand knowledge requirement and allows employees to file whistleblower complaints even if they have zero direct knowledge of underlying evidence and only “heard about [wrongdoing] from others.”

The internal properties of the newly revised “Disclosure of Urgent Concern” form, which the intelligence community inspector general (ICIG) requires to be submitted under the Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act (ICWPA), show that the document was uploaded on September 24, 2019, at 4:25 p.m., just days before the anti-Trump complaint was declassified and released to the public. The markings on the document state that it was revised in August 2019, but no specific date of revision is disclosed.

The complaint alleges that President Donald Trump broke the law during a phone call with the Ukrainian president. In his complaint, which was dated August 12, 2019, the complainant acknowledged he was “not a direct witness” to the wrongdoing he claims Trump committed.

A previous version of the whistleblower complaint document, which the ICIG and DNI until recently provided to potential whistleblowers, declared that any complaint must contain only first-hand knowledge of alleged wrongdoing and that complaints that provide only hearsay, rumor, or gossip would be rejected.

“The [Intelligence Community Inspector General] cannot transmit information via the ICPWA based on an employee’s second-hand knowledge of wrongdoing,” the previous form stated under the bolded heading “FIRST-HAND INFORMATION REQUIRED.” “This includes information received from another person, such as when an employee informs you that he/she witnessed some type of wrongdoing.”

“If you think that wrongdoing took place, but can provide nothing more than second-hand or unsubstantiated assertions, [the Intelligence Community Inspector General] will not be able to process the complaint or information for submission as an ICWPA,” the form concluded.

Markings on the previous version of the Disclosure of Urgent Concern form show that it was formally approved on May 24, 2018. Here is that original Disclosure of Urgent Concern form prior to the August 2019 revision:





Here is the revised Disclosure of Urgent Concern form following the August 2019 revision:





The Ukraine call complaint against Trump is riddled not with evidence directly witnessed by the complainant, but with repeated references to what anonymous officials allegedly told the complainant: “I have received information from multiple U.S. Government officials,” “officials have informed me,” “officials with direct knowledge of the call informed me,” “the White House officials who told me this information,” “I was told by White House officials,” “the officials I spoke with,” “I was told that a State Department official,” “I learned from multiple U.S. officials,” “One White House official described this act,” “Based on multiple readouts of these meetings recounted to me,” “I also learned from multiple U.S. officials,” “The U.S. officials characterized this meeting,” “multiple U.S. officials told me,” “I learned from U.S. officials,” “I also learned from a U.S. official,” “several U.S. officials told me,” “I heard from multiple U.S. officials,” and “multiple U.S. officials told me.”

The repeated references to information the so-called whistleblower never witnessed clearly run afoul of the original ICIG requirements for “urgent concern” submissions. The change to the “urgent concern” submission form was first highlighted on Twitter by researcher Stephen McIntyre.

The complainant also cites publicly available news articles as proof of many of the allegations.

“I was not a direct witness to most of the events” characterized in the document, the complainant confessed on the first page of his August 12 letter, which was addressed to Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), the respective chairmen of the House and Senate intelligence committees. Hearsay is generally inadmissible as evidence in U.S. federal and state courts since it violates the constitutional requirement that the accused be given the opportunity to question his accusers.

The anti-Trump complaint also made several false claims that have been directly refuted and debunked. While the complaint alleged that Trump demanded that Ukraine physically return multiple servers potentially related to ongoing investigations of foreign interference in the 2016 elections, the transcript of the call between Trump and Zelensky shows that such a request was never made.

The complainant also falsely alleged that Trump told Zelensky that he should keep the current prosecutor general at the time, Yuriy Lutsenko, in his current position in the country. The transcript showed that exchange also did not happen.

Additionally, the complaint falsely alleged that T. Ulrich Brechbuhl, a U.S. State Department official, was a party to the phone call between Trump and Zelensky.

“I was told that a State Department official, Mr. T. Ulrich Brechbuhl, also listened in on the call,” the complaint alleged. Shortly after the complaint was released, CBS News reported that Brechbuhl was not on the phone call.

In a legal opinion that was released to the public along with the phone call transcript, the Department of Justice (DOJ) Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) determined that the complainant’s submission was statutorily deficient and therefore was not required to be submitted to Congress. The White House nonetheless declassified and released the document to Congress late Wednesday evening.

“The complaint does not arise in connection with the operation of any U.S. government intelligence activity, and the alleged misconduct does not involve any member of the intelligence community,” the September 3 OLC opinion noted. “Rather, the complaint arises out of a confidential diplomatic communication between the President and a foreign leader that the intelligence-community complainant received secondhand.”

“The question is whether such a complaint falls within the statutory definition of “urgent concern” that the law requires the DNI to forward to the intelligence committees,” the OLC opinion continued. “We conclude that it does not.”

It is not known precisely when the August 2019 revision to the whistleblower complaint form was approved, nor is it known which, if any, version of the Disclosure of Urgent Concern form the complainant completed prior to addressing his complaint to Congress.

Reached by phone on Friday afternoon, a Director of National Intelligence official refused to comment on any questions about the secret revision to the whistleblower form, including when it was revised to eliminate the requirement of first-hand knowledge and for what reason.

Sean Davis is the co-founder of The Federalist.

[The_Waco_Kid]

paging the Scaredy Cats ... your impeachment is imploding!!


Oh, So That’s Why The Trump-Ukraine Whistleblower Complaint Is Loaded With Errors

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattve...rrors-n2553847


Matt Vespa
|
@mvespa1
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Posted: Sep 27, 2019 5:35 PM


I know we’ve repeated this line, but let’s recap again. House Democrats decided to get the impeachment circus going based on an anonymous whistleblower complaint that alleged President Trump shook down the Ukrainian political leadership by withholding military aid unless they opened a corruption probe into Hunter Biden, son of former Vice President Joe Biden. The quid pro quo allegations spread like Ebola and the Democrats are now moving forward with their three-year-long project: impeaching President Trump for…winning the 2016 election. Did the person, who is reportedly a CIA agent, listen in on the July call where this mob-like shakedown occurred? No. He heard it from second and third-hand sources, hence why it’s loaded with errors. The media reporting drummed it up as Watergate 5.0. It was another nothing burger. There was no quid pro quo. There was nothing illegal.



Well, you’d think that actual witnesses to activities that deem unethical would be the benchmark for reports like this, especially ones that will be used to impeach a president, right? A first-hand account is one thing, but this complaint is certainly not that. And it seems like the intelligence community secretly removed the direct, first-hand knowledge of wrongdoing requirement. Sean Davis of The Federalist has more:

At a minimum, the complaint contains numerous factual errors, which is unsurprising since it was not first-hand information. https://t.co/FZ4zPMF2bU
— Brit Hume (@brithume) September 26, 2019

Between May 2018 and August 2019, the intelligence community secretly eliminated a requirement that whistleblowers provide direct, first-hand knowledge of alleged wrongdoings. This raises questions about the intelligence community’s behavior regarding the August submission of a whistleblower complaint against President Donald Trump. The new complaint document no longer requires potential whistleblowers who wish to have their concerns expedited to Congress to have direct, first-hand knowledge of the alleged wrongdoing that they are reporting.
The brand new version of the whistleblower complaint form, which was not made public until after the transcript of Trump’s July 25 phone call with the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky and the complaint addressed to Congress were made public, eliminates the first-hand knowledge requirement and allows employees to file whistleblower complaints even if they have zero direct knowledge of underlying evidence and only “heard about [wrongdoing] from others.”


The internal properties of the newly revised “Disclosure of Urgent Concern” form, which the intelligence community inspector general (ICIG) requires to be submitted under the Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act (ICWPA), show that the document was uploaded on September 24, 2019, at 4:25 p.m., just days before the anti-Trump complaint was declassified and released to the public. The markings on the document state that it was revised in August 2019, but no specific date of revision is disclosed.


The complaint alleges that President Donald Trump broke the law during a phone call with the Ukrainian president. In his complaint, which was dated August 12, 2019, the complainant acknowledged he was “not a direct witness” to the wrongdoing he claims Trump committed.
A previous version of the whistleblower complaint document, which the ICIG and DNI until recently provided to potential whistleblowers, declared that any complaint must contain only first-hand knowledge of alleged wrongdoing and that complaints that provide only hearsay, rumor, or gossip would be rejected.

If this isn't a giveaway about the operation that was being run, I don't know what is. https://t.co/cRTaMEwr5h
— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) September 27, 2019

Alas, this doesn’t matter. House Democrats retook the House due to their promise to stop Trump, and yes—impeachment was their ultimate goal. There is a deep state, folks; it is not tin foil hat fodder anymore. We have two instances where our intelligence community is seen trying to boot an elected president. The FBI cited the Steele Dossier, compiled by ex-MI6 spook Christopher Steele and funded by the Democrats, to find dirt on Trump, used it as credible evidence to secure a FISA spy warrant on Carter Page, Trump’s former foreign policy adviser for his campaign, and it was the focal point for the FBI’s counterintelligence probe into Russian collusion which became the special counsel probe. Oh, and the document wasn’t verified. Now, we have another shoddy whistleblower complaint from someone reportedly working at The Company that’s being weaponized into the impeachment ICBM to take out this White House. It’s not the job of the IC to snitch to Congress what the president says to foreign leaders. It’s not, even CNN contributor Phil Mudd, a former CIA and FBI official, made that point, saying he was about to blow a gasket over this story. It’s an overreach. Period. But now the Democrats have chosen a path. It will fail because the Republican Senate will never convict and it looks like it could morph into one of the biggest in-kind contribution Democrats and their media allies have made to the Trump re-election campaign so far this year. I would say ‘ever,’ but we all know they’re going to screw up again.




BAHHAHHAHHHAAAAAAAAA

[The_Waco_Kid]

[Trey]

What a waste of space. You expect people to read everything you copy and paste. And then your blowhard dribble follow up.

[The_Waco_Kid]

Originally Posted by Trey

What a waste of space. You expect people to read everything you copy and paste. And then your blowhard dribble follow up.

thank you valued poster!

[Austin Ellen]

-

[WTF]

Originally Posted by Austin Ellen

-

And you remember Trumps....

[I B Hankering]

Originally Posted by WTF

And you remember Trumps....

An intelligent person would remember that Slick Willie made sure the American taxpayers footed the bill for his trysts, while Trump paid for his out of his own pocket.

[matchingmole]

Originally Posted by I B Hankering

An intelligent person would remember that Slick Willie made sure the American taxpayers footed the bill for his trysts, while Trump paid for his out of his own pocket.

Or the pockets of the contractors that he stiffed.

[WTF]

Originally Posted by I B Hankering

An intelligent person would remember that Slick Willie made sure the American taxpayers footed the bill for his trysts, while Trump paid for his out of his own pocket.

Tricky Trump is being paid back in billions by the American taxpayers footing his bills!

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/31/b...ity-zones.html

It allows investors to defer for up to seven years any capital gains taxes on the money they invest in opportunity zones. (That deferral is valuable because it allows people to invest a larger sum upfront, potentially generating more profits over time.) After 10 years, the investor can cash out — by selling the opportunity-zone real estate, for example — and not owe any taxes on the profits.
Over a decade, those dual incentives could increase an investor’s returns by 70 percent, according to an analysis by Novogradac, an accounting firm.
“We are very, very excited about the potential,” the president’s daughter Ivanka Trump said last yearat an event celebrating Mr. Parker’s role in creating opportunity zones. “The whole White House obviously is behind the effort. The whole administration.”

[I B Hankering]

Originally Posted by matchingmole

Or the pockets of the contractors that he stiffed.

But then you'd be a blind soul with your head in the dirt.

Originally Posted by WTF

Tricky Trump is being paid back in billions by the American taxpayers footing his bills!

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/31/b...ity-zones.html

It allows investors to defer for up to seven years any capital gains taxes on the money they invest in opportunity zones. (That deferral is valuable because it allows people to invest a larger sum upfront, potentially generating more profits over time.) After 10 years, the investor can cash out — by selling the opportunity-zone real estate, for example — and not owe any taxes on the profits.
Over a decade, those dual incentives could increase an investor’s returns by 70 percent, according to an analysis by Novogradac, an accounting firm.
“We are very, very excited about the potential,” the president’s daughter Ivanka Trump said last yearat an event celebrating Mr. Parker’s role in creating opportunity zones. “The whole White House obviously is behind the effort. The whole administration.”

To date, none of Trump's kids have been business associates of Chinese spies stealing nuclear secrets from the U.S. as was the case with Hunter Biden. And Trump's aunt and uncle are NOT in this country ILLEGALLY collecting U.S. taxpayer subsidized welfare.

[matchingmole]

[dilbert firestorm]

I think MM is YR!

[eccieuser9500]

Originally Posted by I B Hankering

An intelligent person would remember that Slick Willie made sure the American taxpayers footed the bill for his trysts, while Trump paid for his out of his own pocket.

Keep lying to yourself "intelligent" person. His foundation paid for it. He used the foundation to pay for innumerable self-serving activities.

How Trump may have used his charitable foundation for personal and political gain


https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/ho...political-gain

David Fahrenthold:

Three things, basically.

First, Trump used the foundation as kind of a checkbook for himself. Nominally, this money was in an independent charity. It had its own charitable aims. It was supposed to spend money for charity. He used the money to settle business disputes, to settle legal disputes involving his for-profit businesses.

I keep counting the ways.

Despicable piece of shit he is.

[I B Hankering]

Originally Posted by eccieuser9500

Keep lying to yourself "intelligent" person. His foundation paid for it. He used the foundation to pay for innumerable self-serving activities.

[CENTER]How Trump may have used his charitable foundation for personal and political gain


https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/ho...political-gain


I keep counting the ways.

Despicable piece of shit he is.

An intelligent person would recognize biased speculation from a lib-retard media outlet.

You keep counting until you master the number of lint balls you pull out of your navel.