Whistleblower Complaint and the U.S. Constitution;
Life on an Offshore Energy Rig
CARL AZUZ, CNN 10 ANCHOR: On the last day of the work week there`s a saying we have and it goes a little something like Fridays are awesome. I didn`t happen to mention that last week but you reminded me. I`m Carl Azuz, welcome to CNN 10. Our coverage on this last Friday of September starts with a whistleblower or at least a report from one. We don`t know the identity of the whistleblower, the person who made the complaint about recent events concerning U.S. President Donald Trump. We know the controversy started with a phone call between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and we featured a detailed explanation on that in yesterday`s show. You can find it at CNN10.com.
The complaint was declassified Thursday morning which allowed the public to see it and in it the whistleblower accuses President Trump of abusing his power by pressuring a foreign country to investigate former U.S. Vice- President Joe Biden, who`s one of President Trump`s main political rivals for next years election. The whistleblower, the person who made the complaint to U.S. intelligence officials, says he or she was not a direct witness to most of the events in the complaint but that it was put together from information that came from more than six other U.S. officials. The whistleblower also says that in the days after the phone call, the White House tried to lock down to keep secret all records of it though earlier this week it released a summary of the call.
Yesterday, the acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph McGuire appeared in a public hearing with the House Intelligence Committee. He said everything from the complaint itself to the way it was handled by U.S. government officials was done legally. The White House called the complaint a quote "collection of third hand accounts of events and cobbled together press clippings all of which shows nothing improper". But Democrats called it a roadmap to their investigation into whether President Trump committed a crime, he could be removed from office for, that`s a big question in all of this. What is the U.S. Constitution say?
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What is presidential impeachment? Impeachment is a trial without a judge or jury or prosecutor but instead politicians accuse, prosecute and stand in judgment of another politician. In impeachment proceedings, the House of Representatives is the investigator and prosecutor. The Senate is the judge and the jury. It takes 67 votes to convict and only 34 to acquit. So we`ve had exactly two impeachments both of which resulted in acquittals. Andrew Johnson was impeached for actions that were really more political at the time than criminal. Then of course, President Clinton was the last president impeached. He was charged with perjury and obstruction.
When the Senate impeaches and removes a judge, they`re just removing one person`s appointed official. When the Senate impeaches and removes a president, they`re undoing the votes of millions. There`s a lot of debate about what is an impeachable offense. The Constitution says treason, bribery, and high crimes and misdemeanors. In other parts of the Constitution, like the arrest clause, the framers list treason, felony, or breech of the peace. The framers knew what kind of language they were using. If they intended for the president to be removed for any crime at all, they would have put that in the text.
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AZUZ: 10 Second Trivia. The first known windmills were utilized in what country? Persia, Egypt, India or China. As long ago as 500 A.D., Persians used windmills for grinding grain and pumping water.
Today wind power is one of the fastest growing sources of energy on the planet. It`s renewable as long as the sun keeps a shining and the wind keeps blowing. It`s generally affordable for consumers after it`s set up and it doesn`t pollute the air, but it has its downsides. It takes a lot of money up front to pay for a wind farm. The best wind sites are often far away from the homes and businesses that need the energy and wind turbines can kill birds and other wildlife. They can also be noisy and unattractive to look at unless of course they`re built far out at sea.
That costs substantially more than building them on land and it gives workers the opportunity to live a very unique if remote lifestyle.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If you look at the surface area that this wind farm covers, it`s 40 by 15 kilometers. Each turbine is about 100 meters tall and the blades are 75 meters each so the total area that the blades cover is bigger than a millennium wheel. One rotation of this turbine can power an average home for about one day. Because we are so far off shore for this project, we figured that it would be best to have the whole crew working here, living together on one platform. So the site management, normally based onshore is actually based offshore at the moment. That is around, on average, 100 plus people on this offshore hotel. That`s what it is.
The GMS (ph) endeavor that`s accommodation check up and that`s the vessel with legs so it can actually jack itself out of the water. It lowers it`s legs onto the sea bed and pushes further and then the vessel comes out of the water. Then there is a stable platform. I mean look around you? This is our - - this is our open office, right? Open office 2.0. That`s - - that`s where we are now for the people who work and live and sleep here, they are all on a two week on, two week off rotation. There is a cinema, there`s high-speed internet. There is a gym. There is a great kitchen.
There`s a lounge room, a (inaudible) office. For some people, I think it`s better than being at home. A lot of them stay on board of this vessel to
do the planning for the day and the other guys they sail out. They`ll go to various locations.
Homesey (ph) One is the biggest offshore wind farm that anyone has ever built. What we`re actually building is 174 enormous turbines. We`re spacing them out over 400 square kilometers of sea bed and between each turbine and the next turbine there is a cable all buried into the seabed and all these cables from all these turbines. They all go into each substation from where the electricity then goes into the national grids and from there it goes into people`s homes. On the drawback of having turbines offshore is you need to get there and when there`s a lot of winds that`s why we built them here. There`s a lot of waves and when there`s a lot of waves you can`t get with a vessel to a turbine.
For any helicopter flights that you undertake over land can basically just step in but when you fly (inaudible) or offshore you need to do a circle.
You would set the helicopter on the water escape training where you train what to do when a helicopter lands in water and maybe rotates you. It`s about a weeks training that you need to go through to be fully certified to work here. Flying out from shore to on the - - it`s a gift every time.
It`s a present going to work.
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AZUZ: Summer may have officially ended on Monday but in many parts of the world, it`s still warm enough to do this. And in Malaysia, it`s always warm enough to take a ride on the world`s longest inner tube water slide. It just received the Guinness World Record. It`s more than 3,600 feet long which is approaching three quarters of a mile. You take a cable car chair lift to get to the top and it takes four minutes to get from start to finish.
You can watch part of a movie in that amount of time. Consider "Sliderman", "Slidizen Kane", "Islide Out", "Slideways", "The Slider House Rules", "Slide and Prejudice", "The Slide of the Yankees", "Seven Slides for Seven Brothers", "West Slide Story", "His Girl Sliday", "Bonnie and Slide" and of course there`s also the "Shape of Water", "Water Birds", "Gravity" and "Jaws" which would make one "exsliding" trip. I`m Carl Azuz.
Have a great weekend from all of us here at CNN.
