Democratic strategist Tara Dowdell claimed on Sunday afternoon that despite President Donald Trump's assertion that the mainstream media and Democrats are attempting to smear him with allegations of corruption, all of the latest leaks have come from Trump officials.
The Trump administration has been accused of pressuring Ukrainian leaders to open an investigation into the business dealings of 2020 Democratic front-runner Vice President Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden. After the alleged efforts by Trump and his lawyer Rudy Giuliani, the Trump administration withheld $250 million in military aid. The funds were eventually released following bipartisan pressure from lawmakers in Congress. An unidentified whistleblower filed an official complaint about concerns regarding correspondence between Trump and Ukraine.
"You have a whistleblower," host Rev. Al Sharpton said during a Sunday MSNBC segment, "someone who had to be high up in intelligence to even be part to the call, saying that they were disturbed and then the inspector general says that this is a matter of urgency."
"The alarm bells went off from an intelligence officer, a senior intelligence officer," he added.
During a roughly five-hour-long closed-door briefing with House Intelligence Committee members on Thursday, Intelligence Inspector Michael Atkinson refused to allow lawmakers access to the contents of the complaint. In a letter to members of Congress on Sunday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi condemned the Trump administration for blocking lawmakers from receiving the information.
"All of the leaks, all of the information that we have currently about the corruption going on in the Trump Administration has come from Trump officials," Dowdell said. "They're the ones leaking this information. Democrats have been obstructed by the Trump administration from almost every request for documents. We saw how Corey Lewandowski behaved in that hearing. So, what makes this even more compelling is it's part of a pattern that people within Trump's own administration are the ones that are exposing him. So, there's nothing more compelling..."
Sharpton interrupted: "Including his inspector general!"
"Right, including his own inspector general," Dowdell continued. "There's nothing more compelling than that alone. Then we know that Trump has told 12,000 lies. That's as of August."
"This administration is engaging in what they have continued to engage in and what frankly they've gotten away with, which is deny, deflect, distract, attack," the Democratic strategist said. "That's the mode they're in. They're in the distract and attack portion of that mode right now. And one other thing I would add is the biggest report on this has come from The Wall Street Journal, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch, who is friends with Jared Kushner. He's actually mentored Jared Kushner in the news publishing business. And they broke Stormy Daniels and a series of these stories."
She added: "This is not a situation of smoke. This is a five-alarm blaze."
Trump defended himself from the allegations in a tweet this weekend, where he argued that the accusations, like others previously levied against him, were merely "Witch Hunt schemes" aimed at smearing him.
"Now that the Democrats and the Fake News Media have gone 'bust' on every other of their Witch Hunt schemes, they are trying to start one just as ridiculous as the others, call it the Ukraine Witch Hunt, while at the same time trying to protect Sleepy Joe Biden," the president tweeted on Saturday. "Will fail again!"
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
