Everyone knows that words, written or spoken, can have tremendous power. But when they are written or spoken extremely well — clearly, forcefully, straightforwardly — their impact is particularly magnified.
That’s what we witnessed today with release of the whistle-blower’s complaint.
When I turned on the TV this morning, the first thing I saw was Joseph Maguire, the acting director of national intelligence, being quizzed by members of U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff’s House Intelligence Committee.
It was all political noise, with the Democrats trying to get him to say one thing and the Republicans trying to get him to say another.
…For me, it was time to go straight to the document, which I did.
And it is amazing.
Whoever the whistle-blower is, he or she (for the sake of simplicity, I’m going to use “he” from here on out) is 1) a veteran in the intelligence realm; 2) steeped in knowledge of intelligence agency rules and procedures; 3) very courageous; 4) a hell of a writer.
It’s no wonder that, as The New York Times reported earlier today, part of the Republican strategy will be to focus on the reconstructed transcript of the Donald Trump-Volodymyr Zelensky phone call, not on the whistle-blower’s account.
If enough people read and absorb the whistle-blower’s complaint, it could easily end up turning enough voters against Trump to cost him re-election. (If impeached by the House of Representatives, it appears he would not be “convicted” by two-thirds of U.S. senators.)
The letter — addressed to Schiff and U.S. Senator Richard Burr, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, consists of seven crystal-clear pages, with a dozen detailed and helpful footnotes.
(Very craftily, in one footnote, the writer preemptively moves to deter his supervisors from categorizing his complaint as “classified,” which would make it more difficult to get it into the public realm. The complaint should be “unclassified,” he says, because, “There is ample open-source information about the efforts I describe below.”)
If you’re a student of the King’s English or just enjoy persuasive writing, this letter is worth taking a closer look at…Come along, if you will.
…As far as I can tell, the letter does not have one grammatical error. It is cohesive and extraordinarily well organized. Every word, whether part of the text or the footnotes, helps advance the writer’s devastating charge, set forth in these words in Paragraph Two:
“In the course of my official duties, I have received information from multiple U.S. Government officials that the President of the United States is using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election.”
That sentence rivets the reader’s focus. The word “official” lets you know this is someone who knows what he (or she) is talking about. That the information comes from “multiple…officials” lends credence to its factuality.
And then the cudgel: “The President…is using the power of his office to solicit interference…”
** But the writer realizes he has to make the case for his credibility. So he says…
“Over the past four months, more than half a dozen U.S. officials have informed me of various facts related to this effort. The information provided herein was relayed to me in the course of official interagency business. It is routine for U.S. officials with responsibility for a particular regional or functional portfolio to share such information with one another in order to inform policymaking and analysis.”
(Apparently, about a dozen people were listening in on the conversation at one place or another, amplifying Trump’s lunacy and audacity.)
** Having stated his charge at the outset, the whistle-blower tells his readers why they should care…
“I am…concerned that these actions pose risks to U.S. national security and undermine the U.S. Government’s efforts to deter and counter foreign interference in U.S. elections.”
** Then, like a salesman unlatching his briefcase to display his products, the writer launches into a four-point examination of what has come to his attention.
Point 1: The July 25 call between Trump and Zelensky
Point 2: “Efforts to restrict access to records related to the call”
Point 3: “Ongoing concerns”
Point 4: Circumstances leading up to the call
In persuasive writing and reporting, you always want to give as much detail as possible. The whistle-blower does that very effectively when addressing the efforts that were made to shield records related to the call.
He says…
“White House officials told me that they were ‘directed’ by White House lawyers to remove the electronic transcript from the computer system in which such transcripts are typically stored for coordination, finalization, and distribution to Cabinet-level officials.
“Instead, the transcript was loaded into a separate electronic system that is otherwise used to store and handle classified information of an especially sensitive nature. One White House official described this act as an abuse of this electronic system because the call did not contain anything remotely sensitive from a national security perspective.”
All that is very damning and goes directly to an overarching point the writer made earlier: “This set of actions underscored to me that White House officials understood the gravity of what had transpired in the call.”
Toward the end of the letter, the whistle-blower reveals that not only did Trump try to shake down Zelensky in the phone call but that, earlier, Ukrainian leaders had been told a phone call between Trump and Zelensky depended on whether Zelensky showed willingness to “play ball” regarding the effort led by Trump to uncover dirt on Joe Biden.
…It’s a very nasty and “deeply disturbing” (to cop a term many Democrats are using) business. But the whistle-blower lays it out in a spectacularly beautiful body of words.
JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC 
Full disclosure: Hell will freeze over before I even consider voting for Trump, much less do so. It was a disaster when he was elected.
That said, I just read the whistleblower’s letter. My main reaction after reading it once is this: If I really want to understand it, I need to (and will) read it again, and possibly a third time. There are way too many individuals and situations mentioned to easily absorb after one reading.
Also, your followers might want to read this column (link below) as they ponder the latest mess Trump has created. There are implications here for both Democrats and Republicans.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/09/24/democrats-investigation-might-do-more-hurt-biden-than-trump/
It does take several readings to get the full impact and to appreciate its detail and cohesiveness. Great reading…
The New York Times is reporting tonight that the whistle-blower is a male C.I.A. officer who at one point was detailed to the White House. Among other things, the story says…
“His complaint suggested he was an analyst by training and made clear he was steeped in details of American foreign policy toward Europe, demonstrating a sophisticated understanding of Ukrainian politics and at least some knowledge of the law.”
I expect he would make a hell of a witness…
Also, The Washington Post has a story that says…
“The whistle-blower has by some measures managed to exceed what former special counsel Robert S. Mueller III accomplished in two years of investigating Trump: producing a file so concerning and factually sound that it has almost single-handedly set in motion the gears of impeachment.”
Couple of points. Wehn the Star was busy trampling on some little precinct committeeman for being too uppity with one of their star (pun intended) candidates, they referred to him as an “official” to make him sound more important than he was and make then sound less like the assholes they were.
Second, everything he writes about is hearsay.
Third, trump released an unredacted transcript of the conversation.
Four, before this is over the bigger problem may be for Uncle Joe and his sleazy fruit of the loin son..
Fifth, as usual, my stuff is grammatically horrible.
I can understand why you’d not capitalize the president’s name: He gets smaller in stature every day.
I did it just for you (along with all of the other errors). This brings back such fond memories of reading every week about how Clinton would be gone by the next week. really, every damn week for 8 years. And then Obama. Lord love a duck. Surely that traitorous bastard would be gone as soon as someone found his Kenyan birth certificate or something. Again, 8 years and neither of those weasels had the good graces to leave office early and we even impeached Clinton. And so I commiserate with you as you experience the 8 years of the trump (just for you) presidency.
As has been pointed out by some observers repeatedly, this is not a transcript. It is a memo. The two are different. A transcript is an exact word for word recording of what was said. A memo is a general summary of what was said. It is not clear that there is an exact transcript, but if there is one, it is locked away in on that super secure server they are now talking about that is not supposed to be used to log politically driven calls.
Steven Dennis who writes about the Senate said yesterday he had one prominent Republican tell him if the Senate could vote by secret ballot to impeach Trump today, that 30 of the Senate Republicans would vote to impeach. That is more than enough to remove Trump. Jarrod Kushner did not just surprise show up at Mitch McConnell’s office yesterday for “How’s it going chat?”.
As the public learns more about this, public opinion is rapidly changing to that the House should proceed with impeachment. I expect within the next 2 weeks it will go to 60+% support.
Vanity Fair is reporting that Fox News is in turmoil about this. Paul Ryan is now on the Fox board and he advising they dump supporting Trump and concentrate on focusing getting their viewers to move on to the next Republican leader. The article said the new head of Fox News, Rupert’s son Lachlan, is also saying they need to prepare for life after Trump. If Trump loses Fox News, it will be all over for him very quickly. He would probably resign (like Nixon) to avoid being convicted at an impeachment.
There were 0 members of Obama’s campaign and administration that are in jail. Trump has not even been in 3 years yet and 10 are convicted with another 80 facing charges. I expect before this is all over, Rudy, Bill Barr, and several others will be added to the list.
You aren’t alone in recognizing great writing. You nailed it immediately.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-whisleblowers-complaint-should-be-taught-far-and-wide_n_5d8d02e8e4b0019647a556ca
Too many people were listening to the conversation between Trump and the Ukrainian president, and they will gladly testify. Someday, eventually, the recording of their conversation will be public. Those riding the Trump train to the end of the line will be carried over the cliff.
Thanks, Steve.
Fitz, yes the whistle blower presented his case very well. And I want to see Trump impeached and hauled away to prison for the rest of his miserable life. But within hours of Nancy Pelosi announcing the impeachment inquiry, that bastard raised $13 million for his re-election campaign. That’s a shitload of money that Trump will use to smear anyone who has the courage to challenge him. It worked with Hillary Clinton and it will work again in 2020. Half the nation believes that facts are fiction. They vote with their pocketbooks and their prejudices. And as long as Donald Trump talks about building a wall and lowering taxes, he can kill a family’s cocker spaniel in all 50 states, have sex with its carcasses and still get elected. Combine that with all the voter suppression laws that are being passed by state legislatures and we can stick a fork in this 243-year-old experiment called Democracy.
Now there’s some colorful writing…A playwright unloads.
“(s)he can kill a family’s cocker spaniel in all 50 states, have sex with its carcasses and still get elected.”
Bingo, Mike. Districts where the candidate with the best ideas and the greatest integrity wins are fewer and fewer. The battles are over the primaries and those go to the candidate at the farthest extreme.
I watch this and think of Berlin in the 30’s. And if you think your candidates are any better you’re wrong.
These are the days where Trump has set the bar so low, he goes subterranean. His argument: Those damned spaniels were asking for it.
Excellent writing in the actual report.
To Mike’s point, so what if the orange-hued shtgibbon raises millions? So what if he smears people like he did Hillary? That doesn’t truly matter; e.g. the 2016 popular vote.
What matters is…
a.) getting out the vote
b.) making sure the votes are tabulated, and correctly to boot.
To that end it’s waaaaaaaaaaaaay past time that the U.S. beefed up the number of outside LTOs.
Want to help? Make sure you assist in getting people registered and then to the polls next November. Volunteer to work the polls yourself.
You can also contact the GOs and request they send many, many more LTOs to the US for the 2020 elections: OAS and OSCE. Both groups monitored the 2016 elections, but we need them in at least quadruple the number of people they sent in 2016.
Because that’s the only way Trump wins, by stealing the vote (again.)