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Trump throws Rick Perry under the bus, tries to blame him for making the Ukraine call

Trump throws Rick Perry under the bus, tries to blame him for making the Ukraine call

President Donald J. Trump just threw one of his cabinet secretaries right under the bus during a conference call with House Republicans, blaming his subordinate for helping set up the now-infamous July 25th phone call with the president of Ukraine which lies the heart of the ongoing impeachment inquiry.

Energy Secretary Rick Perry has kept a low profile after his first year in office, but President Trump’s new allegations against him appear to provide an explanation with an exclamation point as to why he suddenly leaked his impending resignation from office to the media only two days ago.

Secretary Perry becomes the latest high-ranking member of the Trump administration to be outed by the President as a potential co-conspirator in his plot to extort dirt from Ukraine to use against Joe Biden during the Democratic nomination process.

Add your name to tell Congress to investigate Pence for his role in Trump’s Ukraine corruption. The VP is complicit!

Axios reports:

Per the sources, Trump rattled off the same things he has been saying publicly — that his call with Zelensky was “perfect”and he did nothing wrong. But he then threw Perry into the mix and said something to the effect of: “Not a lot of people know this but, I didn’t even want to make the call. The only reason I made the call was because Rick asked me to. Something about an LNG [liquified natural gas] plant,” one source said, recalling the president’s comments. 2 other sources confirmed the first source’s recollection.

Trump made these comments during a conference call with House members on Friday, according to 3 sources on the call.

Interestingly, Rick Perry and his LNG initiative were not mentioned anywhere within the White House’s 5-page partial transcript of the call where President Trump asked for a “favor” from Ukraine’s President Zelensky.

Newly released text messages from State Department officials similarly omitted any mention of Perry, instead, they named the president’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani as the prime mover in arranging the presidential quid pro quo phone call.

Earlier this week, Senate Democrats sent a formal demand for information to Rick Perry about his visit to Ukraine in May for Zelensky’s inauguration, a trip that the top of the Trump Administration notably blew off, rather than making a show of support for our ally. Another Congressional subpoena to Giuliani is demanding his information about talks with Perry.

It’s an astounding turn of events for former Texas Governor who famously couldn’t remember the name of the Department of Energy in a 2012 presidential debate, ending his Oval Office ambitions.

While the former Dancing with the Stars contestant and ex-Texas governor Perry may not know much about energy science or nuclear physics, he did understand corruption.

Perry turned his position into that of a global lobbyist for American oil and “freedom gas” interests when he wasn’t busy hugging huge coal company owners and retaliating against whistleblowers who exposed his corrupt relations with industry. In a strange coincidence, the Ukraine whistleblower and the DOE whistleblower who exposed Perry’s wrongdoing both have the same attorney, Mark Zaid.

President Trump’s scheme to use American foreign aid dollars and our international relations to tip the 2020 election in his favor is rapidly imploding as the House investigates the alleged quid pro quo with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

If Donald Trump keeps burning his allies while the impeachment inquiry proceeds, it could ultimately lead to his downfall.

Original reporting by Alayna Treene and Jonathan Swan at Axios

Grant Stern
is the Executive Editor of Occupy Democrats and published author. His new Meet the Candidates 2020 book series is distributed by Simon and Schuster. He's also mortgage broker, community activist and radio personality in Miami, Florida., as well as the producer of the Dworkin Report podcast. Grant is also an occasional contributor to Raw Story, Alternet, and the DC Report, and an unpaid senior advisor to the Democratic Coalition and a Director of Sunshine Agenda Inc. a government transparency nonprofit organization. Get all of his stories sent directly to your inbox here:

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