by Charlie Martin, PJ Media:

I’ve grown increasingly curious — hell, let’s say suspicious — about the most recent incarnation of the three-year effort to find a case for impeaching Trump. This is, of course, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) and the Democrat members’ “impeachment investigation.”

Take it as read that we now know the Ukrainian investigation of Burisma — the Ukrainian gas company for which Biden apparently interceded while in office, and where Hunter Biden had a very well paid sinecure — started long before Trump’s controversial call; that the President of Ukraine has said on the record he didn’t feel he was pressured at all by Trump’s call; and that Biden admitted on video using aid to Ukraine to pressure the then-government to fire the prosecutor that was investigating the company.

Neither Trump’s call nor Biden’s on-video bragging about having the power to cancel aid seems to be in question. We have a video, and we have the transcript of the call.

(Just to forestall some of the rent-a-commenters, I’m going to call it a transcript. Yes, it’s not word for word, but multiple people have testified that it’s as good as, because it’s the collation of notes taken by a number of members of the IC. As such, it has multiple vettings, including — not coincidentally — the IC members who served as sources for the original whistleblower. Anyone who has listened to Trump talk knows that he can be maddeningly repetitive, which the note-takers wouldn’t include, but would indicate with ellipses. And seriously, how big a fool do you have to be to believe that the transcript would have some kind of incriminating information elided and the elisions then indicated with ellipses?)

Here’s what we know about the whistleblowing:

• The first whistleblower (WB1) had an issue with what s/he heard about (not heard directly) the Trump phone call to the president of Ukraine and felt Trump was out of bounds for asking Ukraine to investigate Crowdstrike and apparent Biden-family graft.


• WB1 then notified Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee of his unease. House members, including both Adam Schiff and Nancy Pelosi, started revealing parts of WB1’s complaint before it had been filed with the Intelligence Community Inspector General (ICIG).


• Contrary to House rules, the Democrats on the committee did not share the information with the Republicans on the committee.


• When WB1’s complaint was actually filed, it was a well-written legal brief that, oddly, turned out to have no part that was first-hand knowledge, and even more oddly referenced a lot of public press coverage.


• In an odd turn, the direction given by the ICIG’s office, that whistleblower complaints must be based on first-hand information, was rescinded enabling the second-hand WB1 complaint to be considered. This rescission apparently happened in September but was backdated to August.


• WB1’s complaint also turned out to have a number of factual errors.


• After the Democrats demanded the release of the transcript, Trump declassified the transcript, upon which the demands were changed to releasing WB1’s complaint. Which Trump then did.


• The House Democrats refuse to make public WB1’s name, but the ICIG testified that the complaint was questionable because WB1 was not just a registered Democrat but was professionally associated with a current Democrat’s 2020 campaign.

This already adds up to a suspicious sum: second-hand information, factual errors, backdated changes in guidance, questionable sourcing, and a suspiciously back-door — and potentially illegal — contact with the HSPCI majority before the complaint was filed, violating House rules.

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