News reports suggest that Donald Trump made a deal with the president of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskiy, that in exchange for his help in getting damaging information about Joe Biden and his son Hunter son who is doing business in that country, Trump would give something as yet unspecified in return.
This deal was sufficiently alarming to someone in the intelligence community who knew about this exchange that he alerted the inspector general who is required by law to report this to Congress. While Congress was informed that a complaint had been made, the Trump administration is stonewalling on its specifics.
The timeline is this: Atkinson, the inspector general, received the complaint Aug. 12, reviewed it and found it credible and urgent, and forwarded it two weeks later to Joseph Maguire, acting director of national intelligence. Maguire’s office decided the complaint was outside the agency’s jurisdiction and not urgent, and informed Congress Sept. 9 of the situation without showing it the complaint. Atkinson said that was a break from normal procedure, which is to disclose the contents to lawmakers.
Seth Meyers discusses what we know about it. His insinuation that the foreign leader that Donald Trump made a promise to is Vladimir Putin is contradicted by more recent reports that it was Zelenskiy.
The dems will do nothing. Pelosi won’t rock the boat if it risks her clinging to power.
(Emphasis mine.)
Eh? I not seen ANY report hair furor or his “lawyer”, Rudy Giuliani, made a deal — only that the current best guess is the whistleblower’s complaint is they(?) tried to make deal, and apparently used various threats of withholding various sorts of US assistance. For example, from Trump pressured Ukrainian president to investigate Biden’s son (Grauniad edits in {curly braces}):
None of this suggests the reports hair furor and Giuliani (at least) did threaten Ukraine and try to force them to “investigate” — read: invent — claims about the Bidens are false. As far as I am currently aware, those reports are informed and very plausible. However, at the moment, as far as I know, it seems Ukraine and its President did not accede to the demands and threats. (I have no idea if they hold hair furor and Giuliani to “feck off” or not.)