October 29, 2019 – The “coup” against Trump is formalized…a resistance member shows up to testify at Trump’ impeachment inquiry, wearing a military uniform

“The word “coup” shifted to a new level of formalized meaning last week when members of the political resistance showed up to remove President Trump wearing military uniforms.

Not only did U.S. military leadership remain silent to the optics and purpose, but in the testimony of Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman he admits to giving instructions to ignore the instructions from a sitting United States President.

In the absence of push-back from the Joint Chiefs, from this moment forth, the impression is tacit U.S. military support for the Vindman objective.

Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, a National Security Council official, testified before congressional committees conducting an impeachment inquiry on October 29, wearing a full military uniform.

To date, there has been no visible comment from U.S. military sanctioning Lt. Col. Vindman for his decision; or correcting the impression represented by Vindman’s military appearance.  The willful blindness is concerning, but it gets much worse.

Beyond the debate about the optics of the “coup“, within the testimony of Lt. Col Vindman, the witness readily admits to understanding the officially established policy of the President of The United States (an agreement between President Trump and President Zelenskyy), and stunningly admits that two weeks later he was giving countermanding instructions to his Ukrainian counterpart to ignore President Trump’s policies.

The coup against President Donald Trump went from soft, to hard.  Consider…

The testimony from Lt. Col. Vindman is available here.

Borrowing from Roscoe B Davis, here are some highlights:

Representative John Ratcliffe begins deconstructing Lt. Col Vindman, while his arrogant attorneys begin trying to interfere with the questioning.

(Vindman’s testimony with Congressman Ratcliffe continues on Conservative Treehouse linked here:)

This next section is very interesting and very important.

Congressman John Ratcliffe begins questioning Vindman from the perspective of an Article 92 violation, coupled with an Article 88 violation.  President Trump is Lt. Col Vindman’s superior.  President Trump sets foreign policy. 

Two weeks after President Trump has established an agreement with Ukraine President Zelenskyy, and established the policy direction therein, Lt. Col. Vindman is now giving contrary instructions to the Ukranian government.  Vindman’s lawyer recognizes where the questioning is going and goes absolutely bananas:

(Read more: Conservative Treehouse, 11/09/2019)

December 19, 2015 – November 8, 2016: An Alexandra Chalupa timeline

In late 2015, as the Trump campaign started to become more popular, Alexandra changed gears and focused more on her research, which included an expanse into Trump’s alleged connections with Russia.

On December 19, 2015, Alexandra represented the Ethnic Dems as she hosted a speech in Manchester, NH.

In January 2016, Alexandra informed a senior official at the Democratic National Committee about the potential connections between Trump and Russia, and warned that Paul Manafort may entangle himself in the 2016 election soon as a result. Simultaneously, Alexandra was also warning members of the Ukrainian-American community about Manafort.

On February 27, 2016, Alexandra hosted a discussion about the Ethnic Democrats for the Afric Vision Network.

On March 24, 2016, Alexandra discussed Manafort and his ties with Russian interests during a meeting at the Ukrainian Embassy with Ambassador Valeriy Chaly and his aide, Oksana Shulyar. Ambassador Chaly dismissed the discussion as he expected Trump to lose the nomination. The meeting also discussed a reception in June 2016 at an event featuring Hanna Hopko and Melanne Verveer.

Andrii Telizhenko was then ordered by Shulyar to assist Alexandra in her research of Manafort, Trump and Russia, as the Ukrainian Embassy was coordinating an investigation with the Clinton campaign. Alexandra, at the time, prepared opposition research files on Manafort.

Four days later, on March 29, 2016, the day after the announcement that Trump had hired Manafort to corral the delegates, Alexandra then briefed the communications staff of the Democratic National Committee about Manafort, Trump and Russia.

After this, Alexandra pushed for the Ukrainian Embassy staff — with encouragement from the Democratic National Committee — to arrange an interview with President Poroshenko to discuss Manafort’s ties to Yanukovych, although the Ukrainian Embassy declined the request.

However, at some point, Telizhenko was brought into a meeting with Alexandra by Shulyar as an American media organisation was conducting their own investigation into Manafort, while Alexandra wanted to push for a Congressional hearing on either Manafort or Trump for September 2016.

On March 30, 2016, Ukraine In Washington was hosted at Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, which was attended by Ambassador Chaly and David Kramer.

In the first week of April 2016, Alexandra discussed with a foreign policy legislative assistant who worked in the Office of Representative Marcy Kaptur about the potential of a Congressional investigation into Manafort.

Alexandra also began working with Yahoo! News journalist Michael Isikoff, who had a prior relationship with Glenn Simpson as they considered writing a book together titled “All the President’s Women” in 1997. Alexandra also reached out to her connections in both Washington and Kiev, and circulated memos and e-mails about Manafort across the Democratic National Committee.

On April 20, 2016, Alexandra received messages from the administrators of her Yahoo! e-mail account, which warned that state sponsored actors were attempting to gain access to her account.

Three days later, on April 23, 2016, Alexandra, Nancy DiNardo and Amy Dacey addressed a gathering at the Belvedere Restaurant in New Britain, CT, where she rallied Ukrainian-Americans against Manafort. The same day, EuroMaidan Art & Graphics declared Manafort as “Putin’s Trojan Horse” and called for his dismissal, and arranged a protest of Manafort as New Britain, CT was his hometown for the same day.

On April 25, 2016, Isikoff published the article “Trump’s campaign chief is questioned about ties to Russian billionaire” in Yahoo! News.

On April 27, 2016, Alexandra held a panel at the Library of Congress, where she met with a delegation of 68 Ukrainian investigative journalists in a program sponsored by the Open World Leadership Center. During this time, she discussed her research on Manafort. After the panel, Isikoff then escorted Alexandra to a reception hosted at the Ukrainian Embassy.

Other attendees to the event at the Library of Congress included executive director John O’Keefe, Oksana Syroid, Bohdan Futey, Richard Bennett, Myroslava Gongadze and Ambassador Chaly. The events are commonly connected to the U.S.-Ukraine Foundation.

“In his address to the guests of the Embassy Ambassador of Ukraine to the US Valeriy Chaly noted that the meeting was very symbolic when all brunches of power gathered under one roof and felt united by the common goal. He urged Ukrainian delegations to take advantage of their visit to the US and disseminate the information about the situation in Ukraine in the context of counteracting Russian aggression, explore opportunities for the launch of new Ukraine-US projects as well as apply new experience and knowledge in Ukraine, in particular in the areas of reforming the justice sector, fighting corruption and ensuring transparency.” — Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine

On May 3, 2016, Alexandra sent an e-mail to Luis Miranda at the Democratic National Committee, where she discussed her panel at the Library of Congress. This was in response to an e-mail from Luis, which featured a link from Politifact: “Paul Manafort, Donald Trump’s top adviser, and his ties to pro-Russian politicians in Ukraine” by Aleksandra Kharchenko.

A lot more coming down the pipe. I spoke to a delegation of 68 investigative journalists from Ukraine last Wednesday at the Library of Congress — the Open World Society’s forum — they put me on the program to speak specifically about Paul Manafort and I invited Michael Isikoff whom I’ve been working with for the past few weeks and connected him to the Ukrainians. More offline tomorrow since there is a big Trump component you and Lauren need to be aware of that will hit in the next few weeks and something I’m working on you should be aware of.” — Alexandra Chalupa to Luis Miranda

Alexandra also provided a screenshot of the error to Luis.

The screenshot features two tabs — one of which is “Paul Manafort isn’t a GO…”

This is an article written by Franklin Foer of Slate, which was originally titled “Paul Manafort isn’t a GOP retread. He’s made a career of reinventing tyrants.” The article was published on April 28, 2016, the day after Alexandra’s Library of Congress visit, and its current title is “The Quiet American”.

Shortly after the e-mail was sent, a number of executives at the Democratic National Committee became concerned and concluded that the Russians were the state sponsored actors behind the recent phishing attempts. The executives then ordered for Alexandra to cease her research efforts.

“But Chalupa’s message, which had not been previously reported, stands out: It is the first indication that the reach of the hackers who penetrated the DNC has extended beyond the official accounts of committee officials to include their private email and potentially the content on their smartphones. After Chalupa sent the email to Miranda (which mentions that she had invited this reporter to a meeting with Ukrainian journalists in Washington), it triggered high-level concerns within the DNC, given the sensitive nature of her work. ‘That’s when we knew it was the Russians,’ said a Democratic Party source who has knowledge of an internal probe into the hacked emails. In order to stem the damage, the source said, ‘we told her to stop her research.’” — Michael Isikoff

Three days later, on May 6, 2016, John McCarthy sent an e-mail to Alexandra from his personal gmail account to arrange for religious leaders to stage a protest at the Republican National Convention.

On June 20, 2016, Alexandra received her final pay cheque for $25,000.00 from the Democratic National Committee. Coincidentally, this was the same day as the authorship of the first Steele memo.

On July 1, 2016, Rokas Beresniovas tweeted: “Thank you @TheDemocrats @NickSeminerio @AlexandraChalup It was a great event with @Simas44 of the WhiteHouse”.

On July 25, 2016, Isikoff published the article “Exclusive: Suspected Russian hack of DNC widens — includes personal email of staffer researching Manafort” in Yahoo! News, which featured information about Alexandra’s e-mails. The same day, Alexandra was in Philadelphia, where she introduced Senator Amy Klobuchar to the crowd.

In late July 2016, Alexandra left the Democratic National Committee in order to commit full-time to her investigations of Manafort, Trump and Russia, where she became an unofficial source for a number of journalists investigating the three.

On July 31, 2016, Andrea was interviewed by Hromadske’s Nataliya Gumenyuk about Alexandra’s e-mails being hacked.

ANDREA CHALUPA: “Yeah, well, you know, as- as- as, Nataliya, I have friends who are journalists who asked to speak with my sister, and I just keep saying ‘no’ because right now it’s just not a good time for her. Um, she is, you know, working for the DNC right now, and she has a lot on her plate with this election. It’s- it’s- it’s very much an all-hands-on-deck election, things are extremely serious. Things are very, very scary here. Um, so, but what I will say — what I’m allowed to say — because, you know, I can’t speak for my sister, um, she will speak when the time comes, um, but what I can say is that… you know… watching her work tirelessly, tirelessly, from the very beginning, many, many months ago to say: ‘Paul Manafort has just been brought in to run Donald Trump’s campaign. This is a huge deal. This is a very, very, very, very, very serious… warning bell going off, because this is who Paul Manafort is.’ He is a- a- a puppet master of some of the most vile dictators around the world, and of course, we who have focused on Ukraine know the name Paul Manafort increasibly well.”

“So my sister was- was- an instrumental voice inside the Democratic Party as has been reported to say, you know, this is someone we need to research. And she was leading that research. And… here in the U.S., you know, we have a lot of our own issues that we’re focusing on, so foreign affairs is something that is still abstract to many Americans, so doesn’t get prioritised, um, in elections as it should. But I- I just wanted to finish that point by saying it’s hilarious to me — and it’s hilarious to anyone that’s been following the situation that my sister finally got her message out there to the world in a major way thanks to the Russians. Thanks to the Russians hacking the DNC. Now everybody knows just how dangerous Paul Manafort is.”

In August 2016, Chalupa was contacted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, where they imaged both her laptop and her smartphone as part of an investigation into the Russian cyber-attacks.

On August 4, 2016, Ambassador Chaly published the opinion piece “Ukraine’s ambassador: Trump’s comments send wrong message to world” in The Hill.

On August 19, 2016, Andrea Chalupa sent out an e-mail, where she celebrated the dismissal of Paul Manafort from the Trump campaign and the potential investigation into him for FARA violations.

On August 22, 2016, Sheryl Gay Stolberg published the article “Ukrainian-Americans, Long Fond of the G.O.P., Greet Donald Trump With Despair” in The New York Times, which featured some time dedicated to Alexandra.

“Democrats, seizing on a potential vulnerability for Mr. Trump, are increasing their own ethnic outreach this year, an effort that has been caught up in Russian political intrigue.

The personal emails of the woman running the outreach effort, Alexandra Chalupa, were among those hacked at the Democratic National Committee, a breach American intelligence officials attribute to Russian spies. Ms. Chalupa, who is of Ukrainian descent, had been researching Mr. Manafort while consulting for the committee when the hack occurred. She has been traveling the country, talking to Democrats about what she has found.

‘I’d talk about the Russia connection and what we were seeing,’ she said in an interview. ‘People were terrified.’” — The New York Times

Now take note of the various locations she was in, and the EuroMaidan protest that was arranged on the same day she was in town.

On September 9, 2016, Alexandra attended the premiere of the Hollywood film “Snowden”, which was also attended by Bill Binney, Oliver Stone, Michael Isikoff, Representative Alan Grayson and the wife of CNN’s Jake Tapper, Jennifer Tapper.

On October 24, 2016, Isikoff published the article “16 people who shaped the 2016 election”, which included Alexandra.

As Election Day drew nearer, Andrea tweeted: “‘The Kremlin also has both video and audio recordings of Trump in a kompromat file.’ #TrumpSexTape”, in which she quoted an article written by Newsweek’s Kurt Eichenwald, “Why Vladimir Putin’s Russia Is Backing Donald Trump”.

As noted by user /u/JohnWardCinematics on November 1, 2016 on Reddit’s The_Donald, #TrumpSexTape was trending and the originator was Andrea Chalupa. While he confused Andrea and Alexandra with each other in relation to the National Democratic Ethnic Coordinating Council, he noted the existence of Digital Maidan’s connection to two “Tweet Storms”, one of which related to #TreasonousTrump.

The website on Google which discussed the hashtag #TreasonousTrump followed the same method of social media integration used previously for Digital Maidan to transform anybody into a Maidan activist, instead this time turning anybody into a Trump resister through two planned Twitter Storms: October 20, 2016 and October 26, 2016.

This did not stop Donald Trump from becoming the next President of the United States.

On November 9, 2016, Alexandra posted a Facebook message in response to Hillary Clinton’s concession, where she discussed Russian interference initiating in May 2016, Russian hacking of election systems in over half the states of America, praise for Robby Mook, an apparent discussion between Trump and Manafort about a ‘rigged election’ talking point and Manafort’s federal investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

During this message, Alexandra also mentioned that an organisation known as “The Protectors” based in Washington, DC actively assisted both the Department of Homeland Security and the United States Department of Justice as they monitored activity on November 8, 2016.

“3) Homeland Security/DOJ teamed up with a group that is part of Anonymous based in Washington, D.C. called ‘The Protectors.’ This group saw a lot of activity during Election Day from the Russians and believe that the voting results projected don’t match the internal and public polls because the voting results were manufactured in favor of Trump in heavily Republican counties in key states, and voting results may have been decreased for Clinton in key Democratic counties via malware that was placed by the Russians when they hacked the election systems of more than half our states.” — Alexandra Chalupa

The day after, on November 10, 2016, Andrea tweeted two follow-ups in response to this:

• “My sister led Trump/Russia research at DNC. US hackers protecting voting systems believe Russia hacked vote tallies.”
• “All election day Anonymous hackers working w/DOJ updated my sister: they were at war w/RU hackers in our systems”.

As such, it can be concluded that “The Protectors” were in touch with Alexandra on November 8, 2016.

“Alexandra Chalupa, a former DNC consultant who during the campaign investigated links between Moscow and Trump’s then-campaign manager Paul Manafort, is also participating in the attempt to secure recounts or audits.

‘The person who received the most votes free from interference or tampering needs to be in the White House,’ said Chalupa. ‘It may well be Donald Trump, but further due diligence is required to ensure that American democracy is not threatened.’” — The Guardian

(Read more: The War Economy, 3/04/2019)

December 2015 – Hillary Clinton, the DNC, Alexandra Chalupa and the Ukrainian government try to sabotage Trump campaign

“The Ukrainian antipathy for Trump’s team — and alignment with Clinton’s — can be traced back to late 2013. That’s when the country’s president, Viktor Yanukovych, whom Manafort had been advising, abruptly backed out of a European Union pact linked to anti-corruption reforms. Instead, Yanukovych entered into a multibillion-dollar bailout agreement with Russia, sparking protests across Ukraine and prompting Yanukovych to flee the country to Russia under Putin’s protection.

In the ensuing crisis, Russian troops moved into the Ukrainian territory of Crimea, and Manafort dropped off the radar.

Manafort’s work for Yanukovych caught the attention of a veteran Democratic operative named Alexandra Chalupa, who had worked in the White House Office of Public Liaison during the Clinton administration. Chalupa went on to work as a staffer, then as a consultant, for Democratic National Committee. The DNC paid her $412,000 from 2004 to June 2016, according to Federal Election Commission records, though she also was paid by other clients during that time, including Democratic campaigns and the DNC’s arm for engaging expatriate Democrats around the world.

A daughter of Ukrainian immigrants who maintains strong ties to the Ukrainian-American diaspora and the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine, Chalupa, a lawyer by training, in 2014 was doing pro bono work for another client interested in the Ukrainian crisis and began researching Manafort’s role in Yanukovych’s rise, as well as his ties to the pro-Russian oligarchs who funded Yanukovych’s political party.

In an interview this month, Chalupa told Politico she had developed a network of sources in Kiev and Washington, including investigative journalists, government officials and private intelligence operatives. While her consulting work at the DNC this past election cycle centered on mobilizing ethnic communities — including Ukrainian-Americans — she said that, when Trump’s unlikely presidential campaign began surging in late 2015, she began focusing more on the research, and expanded it to include Trump’s ties to Russia, as well.

She occasionally shared her findings with officials from the DNC and Clinton’s campaign, Chalupa said. In January 2016 — months before Manafort had taken any role in Trump’s campaign — Chalupa told a senior DNC official that, when it came to Trump’s campaign, “I felt there was a Russia connection,” Chalupa recalled. “And that, if there was, that we can expect Paul Manafort to be involved in this election,” said Chalupa, who at the time also was warning leaders in the Ukrainian-American community that Manafort was “Putin’s political brain for manipulating U.S. foreign policy and elections.”

(…) Andrii Telizhenko, who worked as a political officer in the Ukrainian Embassy under Shulyar, said she instructed him to help Chalupa research connections between Trump, Manafort and Russia. “Oksana said that if I had any information, or knew other people who did, then I should contact Chalupa,” recalled Telizhenko, who is now a political consultant in Kiev. “They were coordinating an investigation with the Hillary team on Paul Manafort with Alexandra Chalupa,” he said, adding “Oksana was keeping it all quiet,” but “the embassy worked very closely with” Chalupa.

In fact, sources familiar with the effort say that Shulyar specifically called Telizhenko into a meeting with Chalupa to provide an update on an American media outlet’s ongoing investigation into Manafort.

Telizhenko recalled that Chalupa told him and Shulyar that, “If we can get enough information on Paul [Manafort] or Trump’s involvement with Russia, she can get a hearing in Congress by September.”

(…) And in an interview this week, Manafort, who re-emerged as an informal advisor to Trump after Election Day, suggested that the ledgers were inauthentic and called their publication “a politically motivated false attack on me. My role as a paid consultant was public. There was nothing off the books, but the way that this was presented tried to make it look shady.”

He added that he felt particularly wronged by efforts to cast his work in Ukraine as pro-Russian, arguing “all my efforts were focused on helping Ukraine move into Europe and the West.” He specifically cited his work on denuclearizing the country and on the European Union trade and political pact that Yanukovych spurned before fleeing to Russia. “In no case was I ever involved in anything that would be contrary to U.S. interests,” Manafort said.” (Read much more: Politico, 1/11/2017)