The Memo Con:The White House yesterday turned over to Congress the whistleblower complaint filed by an intelligence official against President Trump regarding his telephone conversation with the president of Ukraine. It was delivered just hours after the White House released a memo giving an account of the July 25^thconversation.

  In a further development, the anonymous whistleblower is reported to have agreed to appear before Congress if he’s assured of the proper security. 

  And in yet another development, Attorney Gen. William Barr and the Justice Department quietly ruled in August that Trump’s evident bargaining for dirt on Biden was not a violation of campaign finance laws.

  What’s in the whistleblower complaint is not public, but in an abridged transcript of the July 25th telephone conversation released yesterday, President Trump asked the President of Ukraine to investigate Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter in relation to a previous investigation that was dropped. He described it as a “favor.”

  “There is a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution, and a lot of people want to find out about that,” Trump said to Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky, according to the document released by the White House. It’s what’s known as a “memocon” … not an exact transcript, but a memo about the conversation. If the version of the Trump/Zelesky conversation released by the White House was edited to make the President look good, the actual transcript must be really bad.

  Trump claims Biden convinced Ukraine to drop a corruption investigation of his son Hunter, who worked for a Ukrainian energy company. He has provided no evidence of this or that the younger Biden ever did anything wrong. Still, Trump tweeted yesterday “I fully support transparency on so-called whistleblower information but also insist on transparency from Joe Biden and his son Hunter, on the millions of dollars that have been quickly and easily taken out of Ukraine and China.” 

  Trump prefaced his request to Zelensky reminding him that “the United States has been very very good to Ukraine. I wouldn’t say that it’s reciprocal necessarily because things are happening that are not good but the United States has been very very good to Ukraine.”

  Trump brought up the conspiracy theory promoted by his lawyer, Rudolph Giuliani, that Ukraine had something to do with the 30,000 Hillary Clinton emails that went missing during the 2016 presidential campaign. “The server, they say Ukraine has it. There are a lot of things that went on, the whole situation,” Trump said. “I would like to have the Attorney General call you or your people and I would like you to get to the bottom of it.”

  Then he went on about the Biden matter. “The other thing,” he said, “There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it… It sounds horrible to me.” 

  There was never a moment in the released memo in which Trump said something on the order of “If you give me this, I’ll give you that.” But you can take the inference. Zelensky said, “I believe we can be very successful and cooperating on energy independence with United States. We are already working on cooperation. We are buying American oil but I am very hopeful for a future meeting. We will have more time and more opportunities to discuss these opportunities and get to know each other better. I would like to thank you very much for your support.”

  Trump signed off saying, “Good. Well, thank you very much and I appreciate that. I will tell Rudy and Attorney General Barr to call. Thank you.”

High Crimes and Misdemeanors:The delivery of the whistleblower complaint and the White House memo fed the Democrats’ impeachment furnace.  “The notes of the call reflect a conversation far more damning than I or many others had imagined,” California Rep. Adam Schiff told reporters. Schiff, who chairs the House intelligence committee, called the conversation a “classic, mafia-like shakedown of a foreign leader” that constituted “very powerful evidence of that kind of potential impeachable offense.” 

  The whistleblower complaint may be even more powerful. It is reported to contain more details of the President’s attempt to pressure the Ukraine president to investigate the Bidens.

  Democratic leaders are privately debating whether to focus impeachment on the Ukraine matter or to throw everything in the bucket, including the information about playing footsie with the Russians described in the Special Counsel report.

  Presenting a crack in the Republican wall, Utah Sen. Mitt Romney said he found the description of the Trump/Zelensky phone call “deeply troubling.”

  But, standing up for the President, and buying into the White House account, Louisiana Republican Rep. Steve Scalise said, “It’s now clear that Democrats launched a formal impeachment inquiry on the basis of rumors, rumors that turned out to be false.”

  The stories were not rumors, and they may be open to interpretation, but they were not false.

The Bulletin Board: Led by California, Maryland, and Massachusetts, state’s attorneys in 17 states have sued the Trump administration to block its weakening of environmental rules, claiming the changes were made without an environmental analysis of their impact, a violation of federal law.— Israeli President ReuvenRivlinhas asked prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to take another crack at forming a government after the general election ended in a virtual tie with his opponentBenny Gantz. Netanyahu has six weeks to put together a ruling coalition in Parliament. — Two more people have died of vaping-related illness, bringing the total to 11 across the country.

The Obit Page:Former French President Jacques Chirac, a strong proponent of European unity who was skillful dealing with the extremes of left and right wing politics in his country, has died at age 86.

  Chirac believed in a federalism of European states, a “Europe of United States.”

  He distinguished himself late in his career, and annoyed the United States, by standing against the War in Iraq.

Cold Pursuit:Gone are the days when police cars with huge engines were known as “pursuit” vehicles. An officer in Fremont, California the other day engaged in a chase driving his department’s only Tesla electric car.

  He radioed in, “I am down to six miles of battery on the Tesla so I may lose it here in a sec.” 

  The chase was dropped for safety reasons and the officer then called in, “I’ve got to try to find a charging station for the Tesla so I can make it back to the city.”

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