Category: Knowledge and News

Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it. You’ll have to because it will follow you for your entire life. Because you did lie. You deliberately stated a falsehood, and you did so maliciously, for the purpose of hurting an individual. People will forgive white lies, pretty lies and fish stories, but they are not likely to forget or forgive a false statement deliberately intended to ruin a man’s reputation.

On May 10, 2017, Sanders told reporters that “countless” FBI agents had told the White House that they had lost confidence in James Comey, who had been fired as FBI director the day before by President Donald Trump. She later had to admit under oath that her assertion had no basis of any kind and was a total fabrication.

(A lie.)

She chose to characterize it as a “slip of the tongue,” a statement which, ironically enough, was actually …

(another lie!)

A slip of the tongue is something that you say by accident when you intended to say something else. Obviously, she had said exactly what she intended to.

All he had to say was “no,” and explain where he and his lackeys actually were on that European trip. That would be the end of the discussion. Instead, he just babbled on, and the questioner dropped the thread.

So … nothing suspicious about that!

BARTIROMO: Were you in Vienna w/Shokin?

NUNES: Because there is criminal activity here, I'm not going to sit here & try to compete against the media

B: To be clear, you're telling me CNN committed criminal activity?

N: It's very likely, or they're an accessory to it, right? pic.twitter.com/epHJN0V7gK

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) November 24, 2019

As I noted the other day, he’s already misplayed his hand if he really wants to sue. A defamation lawsuit would require him to show that the news outlets acted with malice and a reckless disregard for the truth. If he asked them politely to retract the story, or clarify it, based on factual evidence showing he could not have met with Shokin as alleged, and if they then refused to print a retraction or clarification, he would then have a case to establish malice and disregard of the truth. By failing to follow that path, he has already blown his suit. This suggests that he can’t actually dispute the claim.

Another aspect of the case is that CNN and The Daily Beast did not claim that Nunes was there in Vienna. They simply reported what Lev Parnas said through his lawyer. So even if Nunes never met with Shokin in Vienna, he probably has no valid libel case against outlets accurately reporting a newsworthy claim by an important principal in the Ukrainian scandal.

“If true, the allegation would mean that Nunes — the chief defender of Trump as ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, which has been holding impeachment hearings for several weeks — was himself involved in the very plot the committee is investigating.”

The lawyer for Lev Parnas, the Giuliani associate who was arrested at the airport, said “I can confirm that Victor Shokin told Lev Parnas that he had met with Nunes in Vienna in late 2018, and that Derek Harvey informed that they were investigating the activities of Joe and Hunter Biden related to Burisma.” (Derek Harvey is Nunes’ investigator.)

Nunes says the story is false and has threatened to sue those who published it.

The story does match up with the chronology of known Nunes activities. Congressional travel records show that Nunes and three aides, including Harvey, took a trip to Europe from Nov 30 to December 3 of last year.

My experience is that anyone who immediately threatens to sue is guilty of what he or she is accused of, and is trying to bully the accuser or to fight the case in the court of public opinion. Innocent people contact the sources with clear evidence that the story is incorrect, then ask for a public retraction and apology, preferably on the front page. If no satisfaction is forthcoming, then they file a lawsuit. (Without saying publicly “I’m going to do it.” The time for crowing is AFTER the verdict.) The fact that they have presented the evidence, asked for the retraction, and failed to get it, can multiply the settlement significantly, since such a sequence could be an indication of malicious intent. In fact, following that process is probably the surest way to establish malice. On the other hand, shouting “I’m going to sue” is not only useless in the legal process, but it is actually against the interest of the (allegedly) offended party, since doing so wastes a great chance to establish intent.

Weasels are like poor poker players – they aren’t aware of the “tells.” “I’m going to sue” is a tell. Think about people who say “I won’t dignify that with an answer.” They never seem to realize that that means “yes, I did it,” since if the answer were “no,” they would simply say “no”!

‘A Warning’: 10 Takeaways From Anonymous Senior Trump Official’s Book

“I’ve only won two cases in the courts as president. And you know what one of them was? A case against a stripper. Can we just get rid of the judges? Let’s get rid of the fucking judges.”

“I don’t care. I believe Putin.”

Although Holmes was called to the stand to testify about a conversation he heard between Sondland and Donald Trump, and Sondland’s subsequent comments on that conversation, the most shocking part of his statement was about another incident:

“Ambassador Sondland told Mr. Yermak that the security assistance freeze would not be lifted until President Zelenskyy committed to the Burisma/Biden investigation.”

Holmes did not have first-hand knowledge of this conversation, so the value of his claim can’t be evaluated until Sondland testifies.

As for the specific conversation Holmes was involved in, his statement went like this:

“I then heard President Trump ask, ‘So, he’s gonna do the investigation?’ Ambassador Sondland replied that ‘he’s gonna do it,’ adding that President Zelenskyy will do ‘anything you ask him to.’

I asked Ambassador Sondland if it was true that the President did not ‘give a shit about Ukraine.’ Ambassador Sondland agreed that the President did not ‘give a shit about Ukraine.’ I asked why not, and Ambassador Sondland stated that the President only cares about ‘big stuff.’ I noted that there was ‘big stuff’ going on in Ukraine, like a war with Russia, and Ambassador Sondland replied that he meant ‘big stuff’ that benefits the President, like the ‘Biden investigation.'”

Those allies responded, “And you are …?”

“Former Obama White House staffer R. David Edelman woke up Thursday to a bizarre new reality: Many people on the pro-Trump internet were convinced that he was the anonymous whistleblower at the heart of the impeachment proceedings.

And then the death threats started.”

It would have been bad enough if he had been the real whistleblower, but he isn’t, and could not have been. Nothing in his history matches with the description or situation of the whistleblower. The nutcases who tried to out him are as stupid as they are dangerous.

If you really care, you can probably determine the identity of the real whistleblower with a quick Google search. I don’t know why anyone would care, since (1) it was the ICIG (Michael Atkinson) who determined that the claim was credible and pushed the case forward, (2) the whistleblower has nothing further to offer, and (3) everything he claimed has already been investigated.

Even if the whistleblower was Joe Biden himself, the question of bias is now completely irrelevant, since everything in his complaint is being subjected to scrutiny. But while the identity is not important to the facts of the case, it is important to Trump.  If the facts stand alone, unattached to a name, Trump can’t muster any defense because he is completely guilty as charged. His only recourse is to attach the facts to a name, so he can malign and slander the person. From his point of view, that is the smart play. Hell, it’s the only play!