Trump Muddies Impeachment Timeline
President Donald Trump continues to muddle the timeline of events to falsely suggest that the White House release of a memo summarizing his July phone call with the president of Ukraine silenced whistleblowers and contradicted Democratic leaders.
Contrary to Trump’s claims:
- The whistleblower did not “disappear” after or because Trump released the memo. The whistleblower has chosen not to reveal his identity, but through his attorney, he has offered to provide written responses to lawmakers’ questions.
- The second whistleblower did not “disappear” after release of the memo, either. The second whistleblower did not step forward until after the memo was released.
- There’s no evidence House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was “angry as hell” that the memo did not match the whistleblower’s account. In fact, the memo corroborates the main points of the complaint. After the memo’s release, Pelosi said it “confirms that the President engaged in behavior that undermines the integrity of our elections.”
- Rep. Adam Schiff’s dramatic, and embellished, reading of the July 25 conversation was not exposed by the release of the memo. Although Trump claimed he “caught” a “very embarrassed” Schiff in a lie when the White House “released the transcript,” the memo was actually made public a day before Schiff’s recounting of it.
The was filed on Aug. 12. However, the first rough outlines of the complaint only began to trickle out publicly in mid-September, beginning with an anonymously sourced in the on Sept. 18. Several days later, t
