Bill Taylor Archives - The Automatic Earth

Rembrandt van Rijn Jeremiah lamenting the destruction of Jerusalem 1630

Watching Day 1 yesterday of the impeachment inquiry that isn’t one, I was thinking about an old children’s game, which is just as useful for adults, in which, in a wide circle of persons, no. 1 tells no. 2 a story, no. 2 tells no. 3, and so forth. If the total numbers of persons in the circle is large enough, it’s certain that the story, if it has enough details, will have changed unrecognizably by, say, no. 20.

That little game is a nice illustration of why you’ve all heard the words “Hearsay, Your Honor” spoken by some lawyer or another in 1000+ movies and TV series. And hearsay was all there was yesterday from “witnesses” Bill Taylor and George Kent. They are both “witnesses” who didn’t witness anything related to the hearing in course and neither ever met or spoke to President Trump, but both claim to know exactly what he was thinking, why he did what he did, and said what he said, based on things they heard from third parties, quite a few of whom remain anonymous.

Little of what they said would therefore be ruled admissible in a court of law. But the House inquiry is not a court of law. It can probably best be compared to a grand jury, a very one-sided format designed to let a prosecutor find and present enough evidence to let a case go to court. If Taylor and Kent had been in a court room, you would have heard “Hearsay, Your Honor” about once in every ten seconds. That gets old fast.

So why do we have this circus going on when it is obvious that round 2 (or 3, if you think the basement hearings were round 1), the Senate trial which must follow if the Dems decide to impeach Trump, has to acquit him because the House based its entire case on hearsay? I don’t know, but perhaps we see some of it in Democrat Rep. Mike Quigley (IL)’s statement: “Hearsay can be much better evidence than direct … and it’s certainly valid in this instance”

Democrat Rep. Mike Quigley (IL) on evidence: “Hearsay can be much better evidence than direct … and it’s certainly valid in this instance” pic.twitter.com/JD0Ui6acxD

— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) November 13, 2019

Note that Quigley in that little video got shut down very rapidly in his enthusiasm for using hearsay by someone (I can’t see who) saying none of the exceptions he seemed to refer to applied to “this testimony”. And that’s the crux here: courts may have in the past, after much deliberation, allowed hearsay in specific cases, but Quigley tries to make it look as if that is now some general rule, and that is certainly not true.

Before I forget, something that struck me at the start yesterday was how both Adam Schiff and Bill Taylor in their openings emphasized their focus on Russia, while this case is not about that, but about Ukraine. And Russia Russia Russia has been shot down along with Robert Muller in his memorably awful “defense” of his failed report a few months ago.

Schiff’s opening words:

In 2014, Russia invaded a United States ally, Ukraine, to reverse that nation’s embrace of the West, and to fulfill Vladimir Putin’s desire to rebuild a Russian empire. In the following years, thirteen thousand Ukrainians died as they battled superior Russian forces.

There is so much wrong and debatable and leading and what not in just those few words, I don’t even know where to start. I guess perhaps I should be shouting out “Hearsay, Your Honor” at the top of my lungs. Then there’s Taylor:

After his opening statement, Taylor answers questions. He tells committee members: “If we withdraw or suspend or threaten to withdraw our security assistance” to Ukraine, it sends a “message to Ukrainians, but its just as important to the Russians who are looking for any sign of weakness”. “That affects us” he adds. It affects the world that we live in; that our children and grandchildren will grow up in,” he adds, appearing to become emotional. “Ukraine is on the front line of that conflict,” he concludes.

These statements are important because they tell us that Schiff and Taylor both see the world through the same glasses. The Russians are looking for signs of US weakness that they can use to advance their grand plan to (re) build a grand empire. That comes with the idea that the US didn’t cause the mayhem in Ukraine in 2014 with their coup, no, it was Russia which reacted so it wouldn’t lose its only warm water port.

Back to the hearing. Taylor said it was his “clear understanding” that President Trump withheld military aid to Ukraine until the Bidens and other matters were investigated. At the very least there is no proof of that. It’s much more likely from what we know today that Ukraine didn’t know Trump withheld the aid until after the July 25 phone call this whole thing rests on. It was suggested yesterday that they didn’t know until the end of August, but I’ve seen people claim that they knew a few weeks earlier. But Zelensky didn’t know on July 25, that we can agree on.

And anyway, this is merely Taylor’s opinion. Based on hearsay. Based on what some guy told him some other guy told him etc etc. And though Taylor never met Trump, the very idea of withholding aid to one of the most corrupt nations on the planet scares the heebees out of him because Russia Russia Russia.

Taylor is a career diplomat who has bought hook line and sinker into established US policy in the region, and who will defend it until his dying breath. And if that means going against the president of the country he allegedly serves, who has every right to rebalance that policy, Taylor will do it. That is what he was saying.

Taylor came close to matching Mueller’s uber-bumbling performance the other day, though he didn’t quite get there. Kent was not quite that bad, but he’s in the same camp, the same career field, and the same deep state, FBI-CIA controlled policy-making no matter who gets elected president. And looking at Bill Taylor, how can one not question the wisdom of people like him making decisions on matters such as that?

Republican counsel Steve Castor started off strong, at least from what I saw, but seemed to fizzle out a little because he became lost in his own one question every five seconds model. Perhaps it was the format, maximum time limits etc., which you don’t have in a courtroom. Jim Jordan did well, he just got named to the committee, but he could have been more effective as well. Still, this part was strong:

You didn’t listen in on President Trump & Zelensky’s call?

Taylor: I did not.

Jordan: You’ve never talked with Chief of Staff Mulvaney?

Taylor: I never did.

Jordan: You’ve never met the President?

Taylor: That’s correct.

Jordan: And you’re their star witness.

All in all, if you thought yesterday was a good day for the Democrats, for the inquiry, or for Adam Schiff, you really need to check a few fundamental issues. All Schiff managed to bring to the table was hearsay. And it’s only because of the grand jury-like format that he even gets to start day 2. No judge would have let him. But there is no judge, and there is no jury. There’s only an executioner.

PS I found this thing from the BBC intriguing and illustrative:

Bill Taylor, the acting US ambassador to Ukraine, said a member of his staff was told Mr Trump was preoccupied with pushing for a probe into Mr Biden. He was speaking at the first public hearings in the impeachment inquiry.

[..] During a detailed opening statement, Mr Taylor said a member of his staff had overheard a telephone call in which the president inquired about “the investigations” into Mr Biden. The call was with Gordon Sondland, the US ambassador to the European Union, who reportedly told the president over the phone from a restaurant in Kyiv that “the Ukrainians were ready to move forward”. After the call, the staff member “asked ambassador Sondland what President Trump thought about Ukraine”, Mr Taylor said. Mr Taylor said: “Ambassador Sondland responded that President Trump cares more about the investigations of Biden.”

First, it argues that a member of Taylor’s staff was told something by a third party, but later it changes to him/her hearing the president “live”. Albeit through an allegedly private phone call in which Trump may have sounded a bit loud. You want to impeach your president on the basis of a maybe overheard phone call that someone told you someone told someone else about?

By the way, that phone call allegedly was between Trump and Gordon Sondland, hotelier cum US ambassador to the EU, the same person who testified in the famous Schiff basement and whose laywer at some point contested Taylor’s statements about what Sondland told him, after which the latter went back to the basement to change his testimony. He said she said but then he said and then she said and so on.

What’s on the schedule for the circus today, is it the clowns or the elephants? I may take a day off. We have weeks more of this. And already I have no idea left of who told whom what.

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• The Impeachment Pantomime (Patrick Lawrence)

• The Real Ukraine Controversy: An Activist US Embassy (Solomon)

• Trump Impeachment Inquiry: New Claims Amid Public Hearing (BBC)

• Trickster Adam Schiff Conjuring ‘Guilt’ Out Of Thin Air (NYPost)

• Trump Impeachment Is Blueprint To Overthrow Government From Within (Rives)

• Here Are The Payments To Hunter Biden, Leaked From Ukraine (CDMedia)

• Lawmaker Posts Cryptic Jeffrey Epstein Message During Impeachment Hearing (G.)

• The Holy-Cow Moment for Subprime Auto Loans (WS)

• Le Mesurier Gets Cross (Craig Murray)

• Greek Refugee Camp For 640 People Is Found To Be Housing 3,745 (G.)

I have too much to say about the impeachment thing to do it here, I’ll do that separately later. Meanwhile, a few strong commentaries:

• The Impeachment Pantomime (Patrick Lawrence)

The impeachment probe starts to take on a certain reek. It starts to look as if contempt for Trump takes precedence over democratic process — a dangerous priority. Sperry quotes Fred Fleitz, a former National Security Council official, thus: “Everyone knows who he is. CNN knows. The Washington Post knows. The New York Times knows. Congress knows. The White House knows…. They’re hiding him because of his political bias.” Here we come to another question. If everyone knows the whistleblower’s identity, why have the corporate media declined to name him? There can be but one answer to this question: If Ciaramella’s identity were publicized and his professional record exposed, the Ukrainegate narrative would instantly collapse into a second-rate vaudeville act — farce by any other name, although “hoax” might do, even if Trump has made the term his own.

There is another half to this burlesque. While Schiff and his House colleagues chicken-scratch for something, anything that may justify a formal impeachment, a clear, documented record emerges of Joe Biden’s official interventions in Ukraine in behalf of Burisma Holdings, the gas company that named Hunter Biden to its board in March 2014 — a month, it is worth noting, after the U.S.–cultivated coup in Kiev. There is no thought of scrutinizing Biden’s activities by way of an official inquiry. In its way, this, too, reflects upon the pantomime of the impeachment probe. Are there sufficient grounds to open an investigation? Emphatically there are. Two reports published last week make this plain by any reasonable measure.

Nobody appears to know more about the Ukraine boondoggle than John Solomon. But the Hill seems to have dumped him. He publishes on his own site now.

• The Real Ukraine Controversy: An Activist US Embassy (Solomon)

The first time I ever heard the name of U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch was in early March of this year. It did not come from a Ukrainian or an ally of President Trump. It came from a career diplomat I was interviewing on background on a different story. The diplomat, as I recall, suggested that Yovanovitch had just caused a commotion in Ukraine a few weeks before that country’s presidential election by calling for the firing of one of the prosecutors aligned with the incumbent president. The diplomat related that a more senior State official, David Hale, was about to travel to Ukraine and was prepping to be confronted about Yovanovitch’s comments. I remember the diplomat joking something to the effect of, “we always say that the Geneva Convention is optional for our Kiev staff.”

The Geneva Convention is the UN-backed pact enacted during the Cold War that governs the conduct of foreign diplomats in host countries and protects them against retribution. But it strictly mandates that foreign diplomats “have a duty not to interfere in the internal affairs of that State” that hosts them. You can read the convention’s rules here. I dutifully checked out my source’s story. And sure as day, Yovanovitch did give a speech on March 5, 2019 calling for Ukraine’s special anticorruption prosecutor to be removed. You can read that here. And the Ukraine media was abuzz that she had done so. And yes, Under Secretary of State Hale, got peppered with questions upon arriving in Kiev, specifically about whether Yovanovitch’s comments violated the international rule that foreign diplomats avoid becoming involved in the internal affairs and elections of their host country.

Hale dutifully defended Yovanovitch with these careful words. “Well, Ambassador Yovanovitch represents the President of the United States here in Ukraine, and America stands behind her statements. And I don’t see any value in my own elaboration on what they may or may not have meant. They meant what she said.” You can read his comments here. Up to that point, I had focused months of reporting on Ukraine on the U.S. government’s relationship with a Ukraine nonprofit called the AntiCorruption Action Centre, which was jointly funded by liberal megadonor George Soros’ charity and the State Department. I even sent a list of questions to that nonprofit all the way back in October 2018. It never answered.

Given that Soros spent millions trying to elect Hillary Clinton and defeat Donald Trump in 2016, I thought it was a legitimate public policy question to ask whether a State Department that is supposed to be politically neutral should be in joint business with a partisan figure’s nonprofit entity.

The one thing that was new in yesterday’s circus was Bill Taylor claiming more third-hand stories.

• Trump Impeachment Inquiry: New Claims Amid Public Hearing (BBC)

A top US diplomat told impeachment hearings that President Trump directly asked about a Ukrainian investigation into his Democratic rival Joe Biden. In previously unheard testimony, Bill Taylor, the acting US ambassador to Ukraine, said a member of his staff was told Mr Trump was preoccupied with pushing for a probe into Mr Biden. He was speaking at the first public hearings in the impeachment inquiry. Mr Trump told reporters he did not recall making such comments. Mr Trump is accused of withholding US military aid to Ukraine in order to pressure the country’s new president to publicly announce a corruption inquiry into Mr Biden, among the favourites to take him on in the 2020 presidential race.

[..] During a detailed opening statement, Mr Taylor said a member of his staff had overheard a telephone call in which the president inquired about “the investigations” into Mr Biden. The call was with Gordon Sondland, the US ambassador to the European Union, who reportedly told the president over the phone from a restaurant in Kyiv that “the Ukrainians were ready to move forward”. After the call, the staff member “asked ambassador Sondland what President Trump thought about Ukraine”, Mr Taylor said. Mr Taylor said: “Ambassador Sondland responded that President Trump cares more about the investigations of Biden.” Meanwhile observers and former officials have drawn attention to the security implications of making the call from a restaurant, potentially exposing the conversation to eavesdropping by Russian intelligence.

“Thanks to the false charges made by James Comey, John Brennan and others that Trump was a running dog for Vladimir Putin, uniforms and badges are no longer proof of rectitude. Count diminished public trust in those institutions as a lasting legacy of the Obama presidency.”

• Trickster Adam Schiff Conjuring ‘Guilt’ Out Of Thin Air (NYPost)

The conclusion has always come first — get Trump — then create a justification by weaving a few thin threads together into a noose. In both cases, the Dems have relied on members of the resistance embedded in the government to serve as the hanging party. Some wear military uniforms while others are in the CIA and FBI. Thanks to the false charges made by James Comey, John Brennan and others that Trump was a running dog for Vladimir Putin, uniforms and badges are no longer proof of rectitude. Count diminished public trust in those institutions as a lasting legacy of the Obama presidency. The main problem now is that, three years after Trump’s election, these constant hair-on-fire screams sound and feel like partisan politics pretending to be apolitical.

The smell of a continuing dirty trick is hard to ignore. Schiff, of course, comes by his current role honestly in the sense that he has been a chief proponent of anything and everything that might turn the public against the president. He insisted that Trump was guilty of collusion for two years before Mueller said otherwise and then continued to say it despite Mueller. But after the special counsel’s public testimony turned out to be the dud of all duds, Russia, Russia, Russia dropped off the earth and Schiff instantly proclaimed Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine the new crime of the century. In a rational world, where facts matter and credibility counts, Schiff would already be consigned to history’s dustbin alongside Sen. Joe McCarthy.

Like the infamous red baiter who saw a commie behind every desk, Schiff sees evidence of “high crimes and misdemeanors” every time the president opens his mouth. It’s been that way since before Trump was inaugurated. McCarthy was not burdened by decency, as Army lawyer Joseph Welch famously noted. Schiff is similarly unburdened and so he, too, willy-nilly ruins lives and trashes reputations without a sense of guilt. Speaker Nancy Pelosi is no less culpable. In the early months after she got the gavel, she skillfully pushed back against the tide of radicalism sweeping through her party. Repeatedly, she insisted that impeachment was extremely divisive, should only be a last resort and had to have bipartisan support.

Those were her red lines, and she violated all of them. Her resolution for a formal inquiry got zero GOP votes and the public support for removing Trump is essentially limited to her party’s voters. There is no national emergency that would justify such an extreme action, and yet she gave Schiff the green light.

Jenna Ellis Rives is a member of the Donald Trump 2020 advisory board. She is a constitutional law attorney.

• Trump Impeachment Is Blueprint To Overthrow Government From Within (Rives)

The House is ready to begin public hearings this week, furthering the partisan move by the Democrats to impeach President Trump in a blatant abuse of constitutional authority. Representative Adam Schiff said in a press conference, “These open hearings will be an opportunity for the American people to evaluate the witnesses for themselves and also to learn firsthand about the facts of the president’s misconduct.” There are several problems with this statement. First, Schiff is already characterizing the outcome of the investigation. As the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, he serves as a key arbiter of the inquiry under the resolution. As such, he is in a position that demands an unbiased irreproachable ethic in evaluating requests for subpoenas and testimony.

Any judge in a similar position would be required to recuse himself with even a hint of the pure bias Schiff has displayed, including coordination with the Ukraine whistleblower and other actions. The Democrats do not even pretend that their impeachment game is fair or actually about fact finding. This is simply about using a grant of power in the Constitution arbitrarily and politically, outside the bounds of due process and the purpose of that authority. Although the House does have the “sole power” of impeachment, that is a grant of jurisdiction, not a license to proceed on purely partisan motivation. Article One must work coordinately and not inconsistently with Article Two, which provides the legal basis upon which a sitting president may be impeached.

Second, Schiff demonstrates this is all about media play in the court of public opinion. Voters have no power or responsibility in an impeachment proceeding. The drafters of the Constitution intended the impeachment and removal process to be exercised only when there was sufficient evidence that the subject of the impeachment had committed a legally qualifying offense. This is not about whether impeachment is popular in the polls or whether a majority of Americans prefer it. Transparency in the context of this quasi judicial process is to provide fundamental fairness and due process for the president. Why are the Democrats so hellbent on blatantly refusing to allow Republican subpoenas and witnesses?

It is because it is a sham. Yet the Democrats are openly admitting that their goal is to try this in the media and attempt to dishonestly convince us that somehow we too should hate Donald Trump. They are hoping to convince us not to vote for him. That is not a legitimate or constitutional purpose of an impeachment. It is rather ironic that they claim his “crime” is an alleged quid pro quo to gain political advantage, while they are manipulating the power of impeachment for their political advantage. It is Schiff and other Democrats like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi who should be impeached. There is an actual constitutional basis for that.

And the series keeps going on.

• Here Are The Payments To Hunter Biden, Leaked From Ukraine (CDMedia)

The information below has been leaked from the Ukrainian General Prosecutor’s office and acquired from intelligence sources within Ukraine; it is part of investigative materials acquired during an investigation into Biden corruption. As CD Media has reported previously, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau Of Ukraine (NABU) has succeeded in shutting down all investigations into Hunter Biden, Joseph Biden, Burisma owner Mykola Zlochevskiy, former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, and former Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewskiy. NABU is controlled by Obama/Soros linked operatives and was created to coverup Democrat, Biden, Deep State, State Department corruption during the Obama Administration and the years after in which this cabal went after duly-elected President Trump.

Prosecutors who desire the information to get out in spite of the Deep State’s efforts to prevent such a release and prevent investigations to continue, have leaked to CD Media. The highlighted sections describe: According to the Department of Financial Monitoring (Counter-intelligence) of Latvia, the following sums of money were obtained from Busima Holding Limited (Cyprus) to the account of Burisma Holding Limited (Cyprus) which is open at AS PrivatBank in Latvia: money transfer of 14 655 982 US Dollars and 366 015 EUR from the company “Wirelogic Technology AS”, and 1 9 64 375 US dollars from “Digitex Organization LLP” based on the credit agreements. (Note: credit agreements here mean “intra-company” transactions to decrease the taxes to be paid or “credit agreement” also serve as means of hidden dividend payments).

Further, the part of the sums described above, the money was transferred to Alan Apter (302 885 EUR), Alexander Kwasniewski (1 150 000 EUR), Devon Archer and Hunter Biden. Additional information was leaked: BURISMA HOLDINGS LIMITED during a period from 18th November 2014 to 16th November 2015 transacted 45 money transfers through MORGAN STANLEY SMITH BARNEY LLC in the sum of 3.5 mln US Dollars. The recipient of the money transfer is the company Rosemont Seneca Bohai LLC (belongs to Devon Archer). Note: The company belongs to Devon Archer and Kerry Family including Kerry Senior, Kerry Junior, Heinz Jr and Hunter Biden. Devon Archer, Kerry Jr, Heinz Jr and Hunter Biden are listed as partners in Rosement Seneca Fund, Rosemont Seneca Partners and affiliated Rosemont Seneca other companies.

“EPSTEIN DIDN’T KILL HIMSELF”

• Lawmaker Posts Cryptic Jeffrey Epstein Message During Impeachment Hearing (G.)

Conspiracy theories have abounded ever since Jeffrey Epstein’s death in a New York jail was ruled a suicide, with figures on the right and left claiming he was murdered. On Wednesday, a US congressman weighed in with his own cryptic message. Republican Paul Gosar, a staunch conservative from Arizona, issued a series of 23 tweets over a roughly eight-hour period railing against the Democrats’ impeachment investigation of Donald Trump. Taken together, the first letter of each tweet spells: “EPSTEIN DIDN’T KILL HIMSELF”. As the first public impeachment hearing got under way, it was unclear what prompted the timing of Gosar’s message. Asked whether it was intentional, his communications director, Ben Goldey, replied with an equally cryptic comment:

All of the tweets pertained to testimony from today’s hearing.

Rest assured, they are substantive.

Every one of them.

All of them.

5 were brilliant.

1 was ok.

Zealous Twitter users picked up on the original message, which was easy to miss as it was couched in standard-issue rightwing complaints: “No quid pro quo”, “Democrats are desperate”, “Hillary Clinton and the DNC funded a foreign spy”. A few hours later, however, Gosar’s account posted Goldey’s comment with the first letter of each line bolded, making the message clear.

Yeah, Jay Powell, very strong economy.

• The Holy-Cow Moment for Subprime Auto Loans (WS)

Serious auto-loan delinquencies – auto loans that are 90 days or more past due – in the third quarter of 2019, after an amazing trajectory, reached a historic high of $62 billion, according to data from the New York Fed today. This $62 billion of seriously delinquent loan balances are what auto lenders, particularly those that specialize in subprime auto loans, such as Santander Consumer USA, Credit Acceptance Corporation, and many smaller specialized lenders are now trying to deal with. If they cannot cure the delinquency, they’re hiring specialized companies that repossess the vehicles to be sold at auction. The difference between the loan balance and the proceeds from the auction, plus the costs involved, are what a lender loses on the deal.

The repo business, however, is booming. But delinquencies are a flow: As current delinquencies are hitting the lenders’ balance sheet and income statement, the flow continues and more loans are becoming delinquent. And lenders are still making new loans to risky customers and a portion of those loans will become delinquent too. And now the flow of delinquent loans is increasing – and this isn’t going to stop anytime soon: These loans are out there and new one are being added to them, and a portion of them will be defaulting. Total outstanding balances of auto loans and leases in Q3, according to the New York Fed’s measure (higher and more inclusive than the Federal Reserve Board of Governors’ consumer credit data) rose to $1.32 trillion:

Upon the death of White Helmets co-founder James Le Mesurier, Murray lists some 20 UK journalists who all follow the Twitter account of “Philip Cross”, which has only ever retweeted things without posting one original tweet. “Philip Cross”, though, has changed Wikipedia pages for 2,987 consecutive days, and made dozenns of changes to Le Mesurier’s page in the 24 hours after his death.

• Le Mesurier Gets Cross (Craig Murray)

This week, on the day of Le Mesurier’s death, “Philip Cross” made 48 edits to Le Mesurier’s Wikipedia page, each one designed to expunge any criticism of the role of the White Helmets in Syria or reference to their close relationship with the jihadists. “Philip Cross” has been an operation on a massive scale to alter the balance of Wikipedia by hundreds of thousands of edits to the entries, primarily of politically engaged figures, always to the detriment of anti-war figures and to the credit of neo-con figures. An otherwise entirely obscure but real individual named Philip Cross has been identified who fronts the operation, and reputedly suffers from Aspergers. I however do not believe that any individual can truly have edited Wikpedia articles from a right wing perspective, full time every single day for five years without one day off, not even a Christmas, for 2,987 consecutive days.

I should declare here the personal interest that “Philip Cross” has made over 120 edits to my own Wikipedia entry, including among other things calling my wife a stripper, and deleting the facts that I turned down three honours from the Crown and was eventually cleared on all disciplinary charges by the FCO. I hazard the guess that at least several of the above journalists follow “Philip Cross” on twitter because they are a part of the massive Wikipedia skewing operation operating behind the name of “Philip Cross”. If anybody has any better explanation of why they all follow “Philip Cross” on twitter I am more than willing to hear it.

“Nine unaccompanied girls were sleeping on the floor in a 10 metre sq container next to the police office, with no bathroom or shower.”

• Greek Refugee Camp For 640 People Is Found To Be Housing 3,745 (G.)

An EU-funded refugee camp on the Greek island of Samos built to house 640 people is home to 3,745, with unaccompanied children forced to sleep on the floor of windowless and overcrowded containers, an official audit has revealed. Other children were found to be living in makeshift tents or in derelict buildings on the outskirts of the camp in what the special report from the European court of auditors described as “dire conditions”. “Seventy-eight unaccompanied minors were in tents or abandoned derelict houses outside the hot spot, in unofficial extensions to the facility,” the auditors said. “Nine unaccompanied girls were sleeping on the floor in a 10 metre sq container next to the police office, with no bathroom or shower.”

The situation at Greek facilities on Samos and at the island of Lesbos are described as “highly critical in terms of capacity and the situation of unaccompanied minors”, due to a failure of the bloc’s relocation and return scheme for migrants coming to Europe from countries such as Syria. The auditors’ findings were echoed on Wednesday in appeals made by the mayor of Samos, Georgios Stantzos, who warned of riots due to the “primitive” conditions. Last month, a fire broke out in the camp after a brawl in town between rival groups of Syrians and Afghans.