Trump is Terrified that WH Counsel Cipollone Will Tell the Truth to the January 6th Committee

Donald Trump is a severely disturbed individual in desperate need of intense psychotherapy. But being too debilitated by his malignant narcissism to seek the help he so obviously needs, he has been using his failing social media website, TRUTH Social, as his personal, online, cathartic release valve. He employs it almost exclusively to vent about whatever happens to be outraging, depressing, or frightening him at the moment.

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Donald Trump Sweating

In a recent post, Trump ranted incoherently about the wholly imaginary fears that are consuming his warped state of mind. The triggering event this time is the pending testimony of Pat Cipollone, his former White House counsel, before the House Select Committee investigating the January 6th insurrection that Trump incited.

Previous testimony by Cassidy Hutchinson, the former aide to Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, revealed that Cipollone warned Trump that his participation in plots to overturn the election, including his encouragement of the insurrection, were unlawful. “Please make sure we don’t go up to the Capitol, Cassidy,” Cipollone implored Hutchinson. “We’re going to get charged every crime imaginable if we make that movement happen.”

Seeking additional details about Trump’s activities during, and leading up to, the Capitol riots, the Committee has recalled Cipollone. And that has elicited the following furor by the former reality TV game show host…

“Why would a future President of the United States want to have candid and important conversations with his White House Counsel if he thought there was even a small chance that this person, essentially acting as a ‘lawyer’ for the Country, may some day be brought before a partisan and openly hostile Committee in Congress, or even a fair and reasonable Committee, to reveal the inner secrets of foreign policy or other important matters. So bad for the USA!”

This tirade is another demonstration of how ignorant Trump is of governmental processes and law. He thinks that every conversation with the White House counsel is privileged. That’s false. Conversations that do not involve the official duties of the president are not shielded by either executive or attorney/client privilege. More to the point in this case, is that conversations that involve the commission of a crime are likewise not protected.

RELATED: Trump is Freaking Out that the January 6th Hearings are So Effectively Illuminating His Crimes

What Trump is really asking is “Why would a future President of the United States want to” discuss with his White House counsel his seditious plot to undermine democracy and overthrow the government? Which is actually an excellent question. Too bad for Trump that he didn’t think of it before incriminating himself.

Furthermore, there is nothing in the conversations that the Committee is seeking testimony for that involve “inner secrets of foreign policy or other important [official] matters.” That’s a red herring that Trump threw into the stew to make his cult disciples believe that he has a rational argument. He doesn’t.

Trump is also showing that he is ignorant of recent history. His hysterical reaction to the testimony of his White House counsel suggests that he thinks it is an unprecedented affair. However, anyone with a bit of institutional memory knows that Richard Nixon’s counsel, John Dean, testified before Congress, and was instrumental in Nixon’s downfall. Or perhaps someone did inform Trump of this fact, and that’s what he’s afraid of.

In any case, Trump’s fear is well founded. With the accumulating evidence of criminal behavior on his part, and that of his associates, he must know that there will likely be legal consequences to follow. So he’s lashing out with these pitifully ignorant outbursts in the safety of his own social media website. He obviously isn’t trying to convince the public at large that he’s an innocent victim of “deep state” persecutors.

related: The Crimes Trump Can (Should) Be Indicted For Now, According to Watergate Prosecutor and Others

In fact, Trump is just adding to his legal peril by unleashing more incendiary comments that have the potential to incite more violence. And the members of the House Committee, as well as prosecutors in the Justice Department and state offices, are surely paying attention.

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SURPRISE! Trump’s Impeachment Defense Begins with 6 ‘Facts’ that Are All Lies

The day that Donald Trump has been waiting for (and whining about) has finally come. It’s the day that marks the commencement of his Fox News Legal Team’s presentation of his case against removing him from office now that he has been irrevocably impeached for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.

Donald Trump, Impeach

Of course, everyone has already heard the case that Trump’s lawyers will be making. They have been making that case relentlessly on Fox News for weeks. The case that Fox viewers haven’t heard is the one by Democrats. That’s because Fox News chose to shield their snowflake viewers from any exposure to reality. Instead, they aired their own regularly scheduled, Trump-fluffing programs during prime time rather than the Senate hearings. They even admonished their viewers not to watch the hearings at all because Fox’s shills would watch for them.

To no one’s surprise, Trump’s defense was littered with familiar lies. His White House counsel, Pat Cipollone, led off by falsely characterizing the House impeachment hearings, saying that Democrats “lock[ed] everybody out of it from the President’s side.” In fact, Democrats invited the White House to participate, but the invitation was rejected in a letter from Cipollone himself. And all Republican members of the three committees holding hearings — Intelligence, Foreign Affairs and Oversight — participated and were given equal time.

Following Cipollone’s flagrant fictionalization of events, his deputy, Mike Purpura took center stage with what he said were the “six key facts that have not, and will not, change.” (video below) Let’s take a look, shall we?

FIRST: “The transcript shows that the President did not condition either security assistance or a meeting on anything.”
Actually, there has been no transcript released, only a memo purporting to summarize the phone call between Trump and Zelensky. And in that memo Trump is plainly seen to condition aid with a demand that Zelensky “do us a favor, though.” Trump then stated his interest in a conspiracy theory about a a Democratic computer server, and the Biden family. There was no discussion of corruption whatsoever.

SECOND: “President Zelensky and other Ukrainian officials have repeatedly said that there was no quid pro quo and no pressure on them to review anything.”
In fact, Zelensky had to be careful not to upset Trump at the risk of losing the aid. You can’t ask a hostage if he’s under pressure and expect a candid answer. Zelensky told an interviewer that he didn’t “want us to look like beggars.” Then went on to say that “If you’re our strategic partner, then you can’t go blocking anything for us. I think that’s just about fairness. It’s not about a quid pro quo. It just goes without saying.” What’s more, Trump himself confessed on national television that he did condition aid on a demand that Zelensky help him smear Joe Biden. When asked directly what he hoped to get from Zelensky, Trump said “I would think that if they’re honest about it they’d start a major investigation into the Bidens. It’s a very simple answer. They should investigate the Bidens.”

Third: “President Zelensky and other high ranking Ukrainian officials did not even know the security assistance was paused until the end of August, over a month after the July 25 call.”
Not according to the Ukrainian Deputy Foreign Minister who said that Ukraine was aware of a U.S. freeze in military aid as early as July.

Fourth: “Not a single witness testified that the President himself said that there was any connection between any investigation and security assistance, a presidential meeting, or anything else.”
Not true. Several witnesses (i.e. Gordon Sondland, Alexander Vindman) said that Trump had made a such a connection. But if Trump’s attorneys are concerned that there wasn’t sufficient testimony from first-hand witnesses, then why is Trump prohibiting staffers like Mick Mulvaney, John Bolton, Mike Pompeo, etc., from testifying? Why would he block testimony from those he says would exonerate him?

Fifth: “The security assistance flowed on September 11, and a presidential meeting took place on September 25, without the Ukrainian government announcing any investigations.”
What Trump’s team isn’t saying is that those things occurred only after he got caught. They were an attempt to paper over his criminal behavior after the fact.

Finally: “The Democrats blind drive to impeach the President does not, and cannot, change the fact, as attested to by the Democrats’ own witnesses, that President Trump has been a better friend and stronger support of Ukraine than his predecessor [President Obama].”
You can hardly call threatening a country with the loss of critical military aid during a war as “friendly.” And even if there were cursory signs of friendship, that doesn’t excuse Trump’s unlawful behavior. Furthermore, Trump has been a far better friend to Vladimir Putin and Russia, the country that is invading and annexing parts of Ukraine.

If this is any indication of how the Trump defense is going to go as it proceeds through next week, we are in for some hefty heapings of falsehoods and misdirection. They haven’t even even gotten to the Bidens yet, as Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow promised to do. But rest assured, that will come. And the whole of the Trump defense will be built on distortion and deception. But that’s only because they can’t defend Trump on the facts.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

White House Counsel Regurgitates Trump’s Most Flagrant Lie at Impeachment Hearing

After three years of relentless lying, it’s clear to most Americans the Donald Trump is incapable of telling the truth, particularly about himself. He is the most prolific liar ever recorded, having already racked up more than 16,000 documented falsehoods. Trump has made it plain that he will lie about anything – great or small.

Donald Trump, Adam Schiff

Making matters worse is that Trump’s proclivity for prevarication is apparently contagious. He is a fabrication carrier who infects all those around him. And on the opening day of Trump’s impeachment hearing in the Senate, Trump’s disease of deceit was ravaging through the body of his White House counsel, Pat Cipollone. This is far more troubling than the fantastical fictions of Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, or his sycophantic mouthpieces in Congress or the wingnut press. Cipollone is employed by the American people to represent their interests and to protect and defend the Constitution. He is not Trump’s lawyer.

Unfortunately, that didn’t stop Cipollone from delivering a statement (video below) that was riddled with lies, beginning with his ludicrous assertion that “President Trump is a man of his word.” How anyone can say that with a straight face is inconceivable. Cipollone also claimed that House Intelligence Committee Chairman, Adam Schiff, prohibited Republicans from participating in the House hearings. But not only did they participate, they had equal time with the Democrats. This is so egregiously false that it can’t be merely a misstatement.

Yet even that was not the most profoundly dishonest comment by Cipollone. He went on describe a scenario that was such a jumble of inaccuracies and outright nonsense that it makes everything else he might say utterly unbelievable. He began…

“It’s very difficult to sit there and listen to Mr. Schiff tell the tale that he just told. Let’s remember how we all got here. They made false allegations about a telephone call. The president of the United States declassified that telephone call and released it to the public. How’s that for transparency?”

Right from the start Cipollone is getting everything wrong. It wasn’t Schiff who made the original (and verified truthful) allegations revealing Trump’s misconduct during the phone call with Ukrainian President Zelensky. It was the whistleblower, whose report was deemed credible by the intelligence community’s inspector general. Trump himself affirmed it on national TV. And Trump has still never released a transcript of the phone call, only a partial description in a memo. Now he says he has a tape recording. You’d think he would release that if it exonerated him. Cipollone continued…

“When Mr. Schiff found out that there was nothing to his allegations, he focused on the second telephone call. He and his colleagues made false allegations about that second telephone call that occurred before the one that he demanded. So the President of the United States declassified and released that telephone call. Still nothing.”

Cipollone is badly distorting the whole timeline. The only phone call that had any relevance to this inquiry was the second one that Trump keeps exhorting people to “Read the Transcript!” Indeed they should read it, because it clearly shows that Trump coerced Zelensky to help him smear Joe Biden. The first phone call was merely a congratulatory call after Zelensky won his election. Although Trump lied about that as well, claiming that they spoke about corruption. They didn’t. And Cipollone still wasn’t done lying…

“When Mr. Schiff saw that his allegations were false, and he knew it anyway, what did he do? He went to the House and he manufactured a fraudulent version of that phone call. He read it to the American people, and he didn’t tell them it was a complete fake.”

This is a flagrant, unadulterated, shameless, provable lie. And it’s a lie that Cipollone is parroting from one that Trump has been telling for months:

Let’s settle this once and for all. Trump’s obsession with Schiff stems from a brief portion of remarks made in a congressional hearing that Trump utterly failed to understand. Apparently Trump doesn’t grasp the concept of parody, or paraphrasing with emphasis, to make a point. That’s what Schiff was doing when Trump whined, falsely, that Schiff was quoting him verbatim.

Schiff actually prefaced his remarks by saying that Trump’s phone call with Zelensky “reads like a classic organized crime shakedown. Shorn of its rambling character, and in not so many words, this is the essence of what the President communicates.” So contrary to Trump’s brazen lie, Schiff was not “supposedly reading the exact transcribed version of the call.” He explicitly stated that he was not quoting Trump and he had no intention of misleading anyone. It’s all available for anyone to see and hear for themselves in the video.

The fact that Cipollone would repeat Trump’s nakedly dishonest account of Schiff’s remarks is proof that he is unfit to serve as a White House counsel. He knows that Trump was lying, and he knows that his repetition is also a lie. He is abusing his oath of office, his duty to the American people, and his loyalty to the nation. In a just administration he would be fired, disbarred, and prosecuted for perjury. But in Trump’s administration his disgraceful behavior will be heralded as heroic. Trump’s pseudo-patriotic cult followers are just too mesmerized to tell the difference between good and evil.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.