Thursday 7 November 2019

Jared Kushner blamed for events with Khashoggi




Reports Blame Kushner for 

Events with Khashoggi

Is it really true that Kushner was indirectly involved in Khashoggi events that lead to his death?




WHITE HOUSE CALLS 

REPORT OF KUSHNER 

GREEN-LIGHTING 

KHASHOGGI ARREST 

‘FALSE NONSENSE’

Meanwhile, House Democrats Release The First Two Transcripts Of Impeachment Inquiry Testimony.


5 November, 2019

The White House is shooting down a British conservative news magazine’s gossip report that Jared Kushner green-lighted Saudi dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s arrest.

The Cockburn gossip column in the U.S. edition of the British conservative news magazine The Spectator wrote that House Democrats trying to impeach President Donald Trump have seven intelligence whistleblowers. Those whistleblowers, according to the column, have already given evidence about the president’s dealings with foreign governments—far beyond the so-called “Ukraine call.”

The author of the column further reported that “at least one” of the whistleblowers reported a call between the president and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. According to the report, the subject was the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser and his friendship with the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia.

This is a potentially troubling relationship TruNews has reported on previously. But the Cockburn author reports, in part:

Unfortunately, it’s claimed that what he was sharing was American secrets: information Kushner had requested from the CIA would (allegedly) be echoed back in US intercepts of calls between members of the Saudi royal family. One source said this was why Kushner lost his intelligence clearances for a while.

According to Cockburn’s source about the seven whistleblowers, there’s more. It is that Kushner (allegedly) gave the green light to MBS to arrest the dissident journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, who was later murdered and dismembered in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. A second source tells Cockburn that this is true and adds a crucial twist to the story. This source claims that Turkish intelligence obtained an intercept of the call between Kushner and MBS. And President Erdogan used it to get Trump to roll over and pull American troops out of northern Syria before the Turks invaded.”

The Daily Mail now reports that a source at the White House has described the Cockburn report as “false nonsense.” However, the gossip columnist now reports that the House Intelligence Committee is now looking into the allegation.

In the meantime, House Democrats have released transcripts of the testimony of former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch and former senior adviser to Secretary of State Michael McKinley. In a statement from Chairman Adam Schiff, the Democrats reminded the public that transcripts only have to be released at his discretion as part of the impeachment inquiry resolution adopted last week—largely along party lines.

In addition to releasing the transcripts—and “key excerpts” selected by House Democrat staffers—Schiff and the chairs of the Foreign Affairs and Oversight committees released the following statement:

As we move towards this new public phase of the impeachment inquiry, the American public will begin to see for themselves the evidence that the committees have collected. With each new interview, we learn more about the President’s attempt to manipulate the levers of power to his personal political benefit.

The transcripts of interviews with Ambassadors Yovanovitch and McKinley demonstrate clearly how President Trump approved the removal of a highly respected and effective diplomat based on public falsehoods and smears against Ambassador Yovanovitch’s character and her work in support of long-held U.S. foreign policy anticorruption goals.

Ambassadors Yovanovitch and McKinley’s testimony also demonstrates the contamination of U.S. foreign policy by an irregular back channel that sought to advance the President’s personal and political interests, and the serious concerns that this activity elicited across our government.

Unfortunately, despite those concerns, the transcripts also show clearly that efforts to secure public support for Ambassador Yovanovitch from the senior-most levels of the State Department were never realized, thanks to worry among those leaders that such support would be directly undermined by presidential attacks.”

Schiff’s statement said individual transcripts will be released on a rolling basis as the remainder of the inquiry is completed. It said the testimony of ambassadors Kurt Volker and Gordon Sondland will be provided next—if their attorneys allow the releases “in a timely manner.”

It was not made clear when, or even if, the remaining transcripts of testimony will be released for other members of Congress and the public to review. House Republicans have been demanding their release for several weeks.


https://spectator.us/seven-whistleblowers-jared-kushner-bin-salman/


Cockburn has updated this story to take in ongoing developments…

Seven Brides for Seven BrothersThe Magnificent SevenSeven SamuraiThe Seven Year ItchSnow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Hollywood loves stories and film titles with seven in them. So how about Seven Whistleblowers? It has a nice ring to it. Because a source tells Cockburn that House Democrats trying to impeach Donald Trump have no less than seven intelligence whistleblowers willing to give evidence, or who have already given evidence, about President Trump’s dealings with foreign governments.

Some we know about already. There’s the original whistleblower, the CIA officer at the White House who first reported Trump’s call to the Ukrainian president. Republicans are now pushing to ‘unmask’ him, though his name is already all over the internet. He is, supposedly, a 33-year-old graduate of Yale, a registered Democrat who had worked for both Joe Biden and John Brennan. These facts, so helpful to the White House, are in a ‘dossier’ circulated on Capitol Hill by the president’s allies. A second Ukraine whistleblower has come forward. We know this because the lawyer for the first whistleblower, Mark Zaid, told ABC News that he was representing a second. In fact, Zaid’s co-counsel said that they were representing ‘multiple’ whistleblowers. Two? More than two? Seven?

Cockburn wondered if one of the whistleblowers could possibly be Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, the senior Ukraine expert on the National Security Council, who came to the US from Ukraine — to Little Odessa in Brooklyn — as a child aged three. He arrived to give evidence to the House Intelligence Committee wearing his dark blue Army dress uniform and military ribbons. He said that the White House transcript of the call between Trump and Ukraine’s president had important gaps — and that his attempts to include ‘crucial words and phrases’ had been rebuffed. ‘I am a patriot and it is my sacred duty and honor to advance and defend our country irrespective of party or politics.’


Or perhaps Tim Morrison, the NSC’s director for European and Russian Affairs, who was one of the small group to have listened to the call. He told the committee that Trump’s ambassador to the EU, Gordon Sondland, had said Ukraine wouldn’t get US arms unless it investigated Biden. But the British Daily Mail has pointed out that both officials testified under subpoena and so — Lord Rothermere’s organ states, correctly — neither is legally a whistleblower.


However many Ukraine whistleblowers there may or may not be, Cockburn’s source says that at least one of the (purported) seven has nothing to do with Ukraine at all. Instead, it’s claimed that this whistleblower reported a call between Trump and the Saudi ruler, Mohammed bin Salman. He or she is said to have had ‘concerns’ about what was said on the call about the president’s son-in-law and adviser, Jared Kushner. Kushner himself is known to have a very close relationship with MBS. Cockburn has previously written that Kushner may have been what 
Cosmo would call an ‘oversharer’ when it came to MBS. Unfortunately, it’s claimed that what he was sharing was American secrets: information Kushner had requested from the CIA would (allegedly) be echoed back in US intercepts of calls between members of the Saudi royal family. One source said this was why Kushner lost his intelligence clearances for a while.

According to Cockburn’s source about the seven whistleblowers, there’s more. It is that Kushner (allegedly) gave the green light to MBS to arrest the dissident journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, who was later murdered and dismembered in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. A second source tells Cockburn that this is true and adds a crucial twist to the story. This source claims that Turkish intelligence obtained an intercept of the call between Kushner and MBS. And President Erdogan used it to get Trump to roll over and pull American troops out of northern Syria before the Turks invaded. A White House official has told the Daily Mail that this story is ‘false nonsense’. However, Cockburn hears that investigators for the House Intelligence Committee are looking into it. Who knows whether any of this is true…but Adam Schiff certainly seems to be smiling a lot these days.


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