Furious: Trump, Pompeo get serious about 'coup’

FPI / October 2, 2019

President Donald Trump said the Democrats’ and corporate media’s relentless assault on his presidency is a “coup” as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo pushed back against "intimidating communications."

Trump told reporters in the Oval Office today that because Rep. Adam Schiff read into the record and to millions of Americans watching a fictionalized version of the U.S. president's phone call with the Ukrainian president, he arguably committed a treasonous offense.

“He should resign from office in disgrace and, frankly, they should look at him for treason, because he is making up the words of the president of the United States. Not only the words but the meaning,” a furious Trump told reporters during a meeting with Finland’s President Sauli Niinistö. “It’s a disgrace.”

Trump tweeted on Oct. 1: “As I learn more and more each day, I am coming to the conclusion that what is taking place is not an impeachment, it is a COUP, intended to take away the Power of the People, their VOTE, their Freedoms, their Second Amendment, Religion, Military, Border Wall, and their God-given rights as a Citizen of The United States of America!”

As Democrats and the Democrat corporate media piled on, the Trump administration fought back.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo wrote in a letter to Democratic committee chairmen: “I have been made aware that committee staff has been sending intimidating communications to career department professionals. Let me be clear: I will not tolerate such tactics and I will use all means at my disposal to prevent and expose any attempts to intimidate the dedicated professionals whom I am proud to lead and serve alongside at the Department of State.”

Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff, chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence; Rep. Eliot L. Engel, New York Democrat and chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee; and Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, Maryland Democrat and chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, said Congress would “infer from this obstruction that any withheld documents and testimony would reveal information that corroborates the whistleblower complaint.”

Trump's comments from the Oval Office came after Schiff and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had warned the White House and Pompeo not to interfere with the impeachment inquiry.

"They just need to know that, even as they try to undermine our ability to find the facts around the president's effort to coerce a foreign leader to create dirt that he can use against a political opponent, that they will be strengthening the case on obstruction if they behave that way," Schiff said at a press conference with Pelosi on Capitol Hill.

Schiff, during a House Intelligence Committee hearing last week, had fabricated a version of the president’s phone conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to make it appear worse than it was.

“It bore NO relationship to what I said on the call,” Trump tweeted after the falsehood, which Schiff, after he was called out for it, claimed was "part in parody."

Trump added: “Arrest for Treason?”

Pelosi said on Oct. 2: "We have to be worthy of the Constitution. As we said before, we have to be fair to the president and that's why this is an investigative inquiry, not an outright impeachment. And we have to give the president his chance to exonerate himself, but he thinks what he did was 'perfect.' "

The committees subpoenaed four current State Department employees and one former diplomat.

Pompeo said the subpoenas, issued late on Sept. 28, left the department with no time to prepare. He did not say whether he would block the officials’ testimony.

Trump said he is entitled to confront the anonymous whistleblower and the person who gave the whistleblower what the president characterized as “false information.”

"This country has to find out who this person was, because that person's a spy, in my opinion," the president said, arguing that only "legitimate" whistleblowers should be entitled to protection from retaliation.

“This is simply about a phone conversation that could not have been nicer, warmer or better,” the president tweeted. “No pressure at all (as confirmed by Ukrainian Pres.). It is just another Democrat Hoax!”

Meanwhile, Rudy Giuliani, the president’s personal attorney, has hired former Watergate prosecutor Jon Sale to represent him in congressional matters, The Washington Times reported on Oct. 1.

House Democrats subpoenaed Giuliani on Sept. 30, asking for a trove of documents and communications related to his communications with individuals in Ukraine.

Sale was involved in the legal battle to obtain secret tapes from President Richard Nixon’s White House to determine whether officials engaged in criminal conduct, according to his biography on the website of his current law firm, Nelson Mullins. Based in Miami, Sale is co-chairman of the firm’s white-collar and government investigations practice group.

It is not immediately clear whether Giuliani will comply with the subpoena, which requires him to turn over the materials by Oct. 14. He said that the document request raises “significant issues concerning legitimacy.”

Trump had said during leaked private remarks during a closed-door reception with staff last week after the United Nations General Assembly: “We’re at war. These people are sick, they’re sick and nobody’s called it out like I do. I don’t understand, people are afraid to call it out, they are afraid to say that the press is crooked, we have a crooked press, we have a dishonest media.”

Free Press International