October 29, 2019

And Now . . . EllipsesGate

Back when President Trump released the “rough transcript” of his call with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, there were several spots where passages seemed to be omitted and replaced with ellipses. However, Trump insisted that the transcript was “word for word,” and folks with experience in this stuff explained that there was probably nothing to this. The ellipses just indicated pauses in the conversation.

Well, about that:

Lt. Col. Alexander S. Vindman, the top Ukraine expert on the National Security Council, told House impeachment investigators on Tuesday that the White House transcript of a July call between President Trump and Ukraine’s president omitted crucial words and phrases, and that his attempts to restore them failed, according to three people familiar with the testimony.

The omissions, Colonel Vindman said, included Mr. Trump’s assertion that there were recordings of former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. discussing Ukraine corruption, and an explicit mention by Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, of Burisma Holdings, the energy company whose board employed Mr. Biden’s son Hunter.

Those are pretty relevant omissions! Secret recordings of Joe Biden! An explicit mention of Burisma Holdings! I’ll bet that if we ever get to see a genuine word-for-word transcript with those passages restored, they would make the old quid-pro-quo a wee bit more obvious. After all, why redact them if they weren’t incriminating?

This whole thing just gets more Watergatish by the day.

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We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

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