‘Bet On The Wrong Horse’ — Fiona Hill Admits Ukraine Was Currying Favor With Hillary Clinton In 2016
Dr. Fiona Hill testified Thursday that members of the Ukrainian government were attempting to curry favor with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2016 with the assumption that she was going to win the presidential election.
Hill made the admission while discussing a 2017 Politico article by reporter Ken Vogel that alleged Ukrainian officials attempted to sabotage President Donald Trump’s candidacy. The article has been used to prove that Ukraine, in addition to Russia, had some role in interfering with the US election.
Vogel reported, “Ukrainian government officials tried to help Hillary Clinton and undermine Trump by publicly questioning his fitness for office. They also disseminated documents implicating a top Trump aide in corruption and suggested they were investigating the matter, only to back away after the election. And they helped Clinton’s allies research damaging information on Trump and his advisers, a Politico investigation found.”
Hill seemed to acknowledge that Vogel’s reporting was accurate, but indicated that actions taken by “individuals” against the Trump campaign could not be compared to the vast Russian effort to damage Clinton. The testimony seemed to partially contradict her opening statement, during which she accused Republicans of creating a “fictional narrative” by suggesting Ukraine had meddled in the election. (RELATED: Fiona Hill Says Longtime Clinton Crony Showed Her Steele Dossier Before It Was Published)
“I do want to point out that the crux of the article here by Mr. Vogel is he said there was little evidence of a top-down effort by U.K. He makes the distinction between the Russian effort that was directed by Russian president Putin and involved the country’s military and foreign intelligence services. Now, I don’t think that those two things are exactly the same,” Hill testified.
WATCH:
She also, however, indicated that Ukrainian officials “bet on the wrong horse” in 2016 and said inappropriate and disrespectful things about President Donald Trump.
“They bet on the wrong horse. They bet on Hillary Clinton winning the election. And so, you know, they were trying to curry favor with the Clinton campaign. It’s quite evident here,” Hill said, adding that Trump never let Ukraine’s behavior affect his attitude toward the country.
“I could list a whole host of ambassadors from allied countries who tweeted out, who had public comments about the president as well. And it did not affect security assistance, having meetings with them. If it would, there would have been a lot of people he wouldn’t have met with,” she explained.
Post by soonernvolved on Nov 21, 2019 15:22:14 GMT -6
4:12 P.M. — Schiff attempts to argue that it’s “absurd” for Republicans to point out that witnesses’ testimonies are based on “hearsay.”
4:09 P.M. — Biggs once against fact-checks Schiff in real-time after the California Democrat falsely claims that Republicans dispute Russian interference in the 2016 election:
Adam Schiff can't help but to mislead Americans yet again in his closing statement for today's impeachment hearing.
Republicans DO NOT believe that Russia did not interfere with the 2016 election.
We DO believe that @realdonaldtrump did not collude w/ Russian interference. pic.twitter.com/SoP6JGlycu
— Rep Andy Biggs (@repandybiggsaz) November 21, 2019
4:05 P.M. — Schiff: “The Three Amigos, two of whom never made the connection between Burisma and Biden, it took Tim Morrison ten seconds on Google to figure that out.”
4:02 P.M. — Schiff: “My [Republican] colleagues sought to use you to besmirch the reputation of Lt. Col. Vindman. He heard the same quid pro quo you did. So why are they smearing him? They don’t question the facts. It’s just gratuitous.”
4:01 P.M. — Schiff begins his closing statement: “Dr. Hill, you were criticized several times by my colleagues for your opening statement. I’m glad you didn’t back down from it. You’re much more diplomatic than I am Anyone watching these proceedings would have the same impression that you evidently had.”
4:00 P.M. —
The Democrats closed out their witness lineup today with one witness who claims he partially overheard a vague call in a restaurant, and another who pointed back to a witness (Sondland) that already debunked his own claims yesterday.
This is not serious. Let's back to work.
— Mark Meadows (@repmarkmeadows) November 21, 2019
3:58 P.M. — Nunes notes Pelosi “made clear today” the USMCA won’t be enacted into law, says he hopes Schiff will “clarify” how much longer lawmakers will spend on this “impeachment crusade”
3:56 P.M. — Nunes: “What you’ve seen in the room over the last few weeks is a show trial.”
3:52 P.M. — Nunes begins delivers his closing statement’:
NUNES: The timeline will illustrate the attacks this administration has faced.
Says (roughly): He was subjected to a smear campaign to paint him as a Russian asset and efforts to impeach him.
— Olivia Beavers (@olivia_Beavers) November 21, 2019
3:48 P.M. — Hill compares what is described as conspiracies theories about Soros to the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”
3:47 P.M. — Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL) asks about remarks made by Roger Stone in which he accused her of being a “globalist leftist Soros insider.”
Hill rejects the allegations and replies: “I think my coal mining family would be very surprised to hear these things about me.”
3:40 P.M. — Hill asserts “It is not credible to me that [Sondland] was oblivious” that Burisma meant Biden with regard to investigations.
3:37 P.M. — Rep. Sean Maloney (D-NY) apologizes to Hill for what he describes as an “epic mansplaining” from Rep. Mike Turner (R-OH).
3:30 P.M. — Jordan highlights the past partisan activities of the so-called “whistleblower,” says the CIA analyst “worked with Joe Biden.”
3:24 P.M. — Rep. Denny Heck (D-WA) asks Holmes if Russia would occupy Ukraine if it could. Holmes replies yes, adding “without Ukraine, Russia’s just a country, but with it, it’s an empire.”
3:22 P.M. — Rep. Mike Conaway (R-TX) tells Holmes he should not have conveyed details regarding the Trump-Sondland telephone call with officials. Holmes replies: I think it was Gordon Sondland who showed indiscretion by having that conversation over a public phone line.”
3:19 P.M. —
🚨 Fiona Hill says, while sitting next to Putin at an event once, the she heard the Russian president directly say "he saw American fracking as a great threat to Russian interests” 🚨
— Ali Dukakis (@ajdukakis) November 21, 2019
3:15 P.M. —
both Fiona Hill and David Holmes answer "a very bad precedent" when Rep @joaquincastrotx asks them what sort of precedent does it set when an American President asks a foreign government to investigate a political rival
— Judy Woodruff (@judywoodruff) November 21, 2019
3:10 P.M. — Rep. Will Hurd (R-TX) says that while he “disagree with sort of bungling of foreign policy” of President Trump, “an impeachable offense should be overwhelming,” and he hasn’t “heard evidence of the President’s bribery.”
3:08 P.M. —
Rep. Stefanik blasts Dems’ handling of impeachment process: “reeks of political desperation”https://t.co/QlnusJwZ7w pic.twitter.com/7hezbOpV1Q
— RNC Research (@rncresearch) November 21, 2019
3:02 P.M. —
.@repstefanik makes the point Trump did meet with Zelensky. Diplomat David Holmes makes clear that meeting was not in the Oval Office. pic.twitter.com/6nWUZ5yeVD
— WNYT NewsChannel 13 (@wnyt) November 21, 2019
2:47 P.M. —
“We have gone from quid pro quo to bribery to extortion, seven weeks of hearings, 16 secret closed door sessions, 12 public hearings, now of which you are the last, hundreds of hours of testimony.” –@repchrisstewart pic.twitter.com/ywR8KuDd0O
— GOP (@gop) November 21, 2019
2:46 P.M. —
GOP UT Sen Chris Stewart says the House impeachment process "is the warm-up band" before the main act: The Senate trial. He calls the House "warm-up band" the "Sioux City Crooners."
— Chad Pergram (@chadpergram) November 21, 2019
2:41 P.M. —
Fiona Hill verifies the story about a classmate lighting her pigtail on fire during a test. She snuffed it out and finished the test.
Hill says she tells that story because it had very unfortunate consequences. Her mom gave her a bowl cut. "I looked like Richard the Third"
— Lauren Gambino (@laurenegambino) November 21, 2019
2:36 P.M. —
Rep. Wenstrup says that he’s seen hatred in action when Rep. Scalise was shot so it’s a shame the Democrats are engaging in a coup.
— GovTrack.🇺🇸 (@govtrack) November 21, 2019
2:30 P.M. — Hill on Yovanovitch: “Frankly, she was an easy target as a woman.”
2:28 P.M. — Meadows, Biggs, and other Republican lawmakers are in the house:
While Trump campaign has its own impeachment war room to defend the president, in many ways this group of GOP members in the hearing room has made themselves the Cap Hill impeachment version, live tweeting as they seek to defend the president and counter Dem arguments. pic.twitter.com/x3wZmIQMPO
— Olivia Beavers (@olivia_Beavers) November 21, 2019
2:27 P.M. — Not a good look for Holmes from earlier:
This was David Holmes' face while Jim Jordan questioned him pic.twitter.com/V3kDI5f32Z
— Colin Jones (@colinjones) November 21, 2019
2:24 P.M. — Hill says people have attempted to dox her by posting her address to social media.
2:20 P.M. — Hill: “I honestly don’t know what the definition of a Never Trumper is.”
2:11 P.M. — Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-TX) is now quizzing Holmes:
.@repratcliffe: "What did you hear President Trump say about @asvpxrocky?"
Holmes: "I did not hear what President Trump said about ASAP Rocky."
— Ben Siegel (@benyc) November 21, 2019
2:11 P.M. — Meadows cuts through the fog of Hill’s testimony: “For those seizing on the Fiona Hill comment about Sondland and a “domestic political operation” – you do realize we just heard from Sondland yesterday, who admitted @realdonaldtrump never asked him for a political quid pro quo, ever, and it was all his evidence-free assumption”
2:04 P.M. — Hill quips “I must have missed them,” when Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT) reads her President Trump’s tweets.
2:02 P.M. —
.@jim_Jordan, David Holmes and @repadamschiff spar mid-testimony:
SCHIFF: "Mr. Jordan you may not like the witness' answer, but — " JORDAN: "There wasn't an answer — this is filibuster."https://t.co/DK0UMQylhS pic.twitter.com/C2YAW7pF2A
— Face The Nation (@facethenation) November 21, 2019
2:01 P.M. —
HOLMES: "Did I go through every word in the call? No."
"It was obvious what the president was pressing for."
Amb. Taylor was not in that call…He was involved in a number of other interactions that outlined same conclusion.
— Olivia Beavers (@olivia_Beavers) November 21, 2019
1:58 P.M. — Jordan is now pressing Holmes:
Jordan now pressing Holmes on why Bill Taylor did not remember this July 26 call between Trump/Sondland. Goes down list of Taylor's conversations.
HOLMES: Immediately when I went back to embassy on 26, told deputy chief of mission, but says Taylor was on front lines.
— Olivia Beavers (@olivia_Beavers) November 21, 2019
1:54 P.M. — Hill tells Schiff that she believes “It was clear that Burisma was code for the Bidens.”
Fiona Hill: "It was clear that Burisma was code for the Bidens because Giuliani was laying it out there. I could see why Col. Vindman was alarmed and he said 'this is inappropriate, we're the National Security Council, we can't be involved in this" t.co/6y079tinvn pic.twitter.com/JWoQUkN52f
— This Week (@thisweekabc) November 21, 2019
1:50 P.M. —
FIONA HILL asked about being a UK born naturalized citizen "This for me really does make America great" that America is a nation of immigrants and she says criticism of Soviet born Col Vindman "dual loyalty" is "deeply unfair"
— Kelly O'Donnell (@kellyo) November 21, 2019
1:43 P.M. — Hill denies questioning Vindman’s judgment, but concedes she thought he lacked the political chops to handle what she describes as a “highly politically charged situation” regarding Ukraine.
1:37 P.M. —
Fiona Hill says Sondland was not coordinating with the National Security Council because "he was involved in a "domestic political errand" while she was involved in national security
— Tim Mak (@timkmak) November 21, 2019
1:35 P.M. — Hill says “I admit I was a bit rude” to Sondland when she asked him about his role in U.S. affairs with Ukraine.
“I have to say that when women show anger it’s not always fully appreciated,” she adds.
1:25 P.M. — Hill says “it’s perfectly logical that Ambassador Sondland would play some kind of role” in the U.S.’s dealings with Ukraine.
1:22 P.M. — White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham issues a statement dismissing Hill and Holmes’s testimonies:
“As has been the case throughout the Democrats’ impeachment sham, today’s witnesses rely heavily on their own presumptions, assumptions and opinions. These two witnesses, just like the rest, have no personal or direct knowledge regarding why U.S. aid was temporarily withheld. The Democrats’ are clearly being motivated by a sick hatred for President Trump and their rabid desire to overturn the 2016 election. The American people deserve better.” 1:21 P.M. —
Nunes takes back over questioning; asks Holmes about Leshenko and if Holmes is aware that he provided information to Nellie Ohr. Holmes says yes to the first, no to the second. Nunes asks if Holmes is aware of the black ledger & that it’s not credible. Holmes says yes and no. +
— GovTrack.🇺🇸 (@govtrack) November 21, 2019
1:19 P.M. — Hill acknowledges she wasn’t initially in support of providing aid to Ukraine due to their military’s lack of experience with sophisticated weaponry. She co-wrote an opinion-editorial about why for the Washington Post in 2015.
1:18 P.M. —
"I was not," Fiona Hill tells GOP counsel when asked if she was "encouraged" that U.S.-Ukraine policy was "headed in the right direction" when she left the White House.
Hill says she was "very concerned" about the removal of Amb. Marie Yovanovitch t.co/Q5w6PVVxew pic.twitter.com/oFCrvEZUN6
— ABC News Politics (@abcpolitics) November 21, 2019
1:16 P.M. —
HILL believed that Obama's decision NOT to provide lethal defensive weapons was made on a political basis – to not provoke the Russians.
Interagency consensus was to provide this aid at the time.
No whistlebower complaint against Obama for disregarding interagency consensus. pic.twitter.com/71qXqVv6ai
— Rep Andy Biggs (@repandybiggsaz) November 21, 2019
1:14 P.M. — Hill says President Trump has the absolute right to remove an ambassador whenever he wants.
1:13 P.M. —
"We had no directive. We had not been told this." FIONA HILL testifies that she was told by Amb Sondland that he was given a Ukraine portfolio "It was the president who put him in charge of this."
— Kelly O'Donnell (@kellyo) November 21, 2019
1:06 P.M. — Exchange between Nunes and Hill on who paid for the dossier:
Nunes: did you know who paid for the dossier? Hill: not at the time. Nunes: now? Hill: DNC. Nunes: so the Clinton campaign? Hill: I don’t know about that.
— GovTrack.🇺🇸 (@govtrack) November 21, 2019
1:05 P.M. —Hill confirms Christopher Steele, the author of the discredited Trump dossier, was previously a counterpart of hers.
Nunes verifies that Christopher Steele was Hill’s counterpart in the past and that she occasionally met with him though not in 2016 that she recalls. Nunes also verifies that Hill was shown a copy of the Steele dossier the day before it was published in Buzzfeed.
— GovTrack.🇺🇸 (@govtrack) November 21, 2019
1:04 P.M. — The hearing has resumed. Nunes is asking Hill if she knows former DNC contractor Alexandra Chalupa, Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson, Justice Department Bruce Ohr and his wife Nellie Ohr.
Media Acknowledged Ukrainian Election Meddling Until It Hurt Their Impeachment Efforts Chrissy ClarkBy Chrissy Clark NOVEMBER 21, 2019 As the endless impeachment hearings drag on, congressional Democrats and the mainstream media are pushing the narrative that Ukraine meddling in the 2016 election is a fictitious theory. But that’s not what they said just after President Trump won the election.
“It’s not just that [Trump] subverted U.S. policy for this fictitious theory about Ukrainian meddling in the election. Which, by the way, the absolute, unanimous conclusion is it was Russia, not Ukraine, is a conclusion based on fact.” CNN’s Andy McCabe said.
However, the corporate leftist media were the ones that initially reported on Ukraine’s meddling in the 2016 election. Now, those facts contradict their narrative, which means we must ignore them.
Lucky for us, the internet doesn’t scrub their former reporting away. So, here are five times these outlets reported on Ukrainian meddling as fact.
1. Financial Times, 08/28/2016 The Financial Times reported Ukraine attempted to intervene in the U.S. election.
“The prospect of Mr Trump, who has praised Ukraine’s arch-enemy Vladimir Putin, becoming leader of the country’s biggest ally has spurred not just Mr Leshchenko but Kiev’s wider political leadership to do something they would never have attempted before: intervene, however indirectly, in a US election,” Financial Times reported.
2. Politico, 01/11/2017 Politico reported the Ukrainian government tried to help Hillary Clinton and undermine Trump.
“Ukrainian government official tried to help Hillary Clinton and undermine Trump by publicly questioning his fitness for office. They also disseminated documents implicating a top Trump aide in corruption and suggested they were investigating the matter, only to back away after the election,” Politico reported.
They also reported that a Ukrainian-American operative who was consulting for the Democratic National Committee met with top officials in the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington, D.C. in an effort to expose ties between Trump, Paul Manafort, and Russia.
Former National Security Council official Dr. Fiona Hill testified on Thursday that President Barack Obama had ignored the “interagency consensus” on sending weapons to Ukraine for “political” reasons. Under questioning from Republicans, Hill admitted that she herself had been against giving weapons to Ukraine to help it fight Russian invasion, and that she had written an op-ed in the Washington Post expressing those views.
She also said that the “interagency consensus” had actually been in favor of arming the Ukrainians; she herself was not in government service at the time, but working at the liberal Brookings Institution think tank.
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Hill noted that President Obama had ignored the “interagency consensus” for what she called “political” reasons. She explained that Obama was concerned that arming the Ukrainians could provoke the Russians.
On Tuesday, Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, who worked for Hill and remains at the National Security Council, testified that President Donald Trump’s decision to withhold aid from Ukraine temporarily went against the “interagency consensus” on Ukraine, though he also acknowledged that Trump had armed Ukraine while Obama had not.
Democrats say that Trump hurt U.S. national security by jeopardizing American support for Ukraine, and ignoring the “interagency consensus,” for what they claim are political reasons.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said during a press conference Thursday that she remains skeptical about the House passing the United States-Mexico-Canada (USMCA) trade agreement this year, as Congress’s lower chamber continues to focus on the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump. Speaker Pelosi cast doubt during the presser that Congress has enough time to pass the USMCA in 2019.
“I’m not even sure if we came to an agreement today that it would be enough time to finish [this year], but just depends on how much agreement we come to,” Pelosi said.
Last week, she said that a deal on USMCA was “imminent.”
“I’m eager to get this done,” the California Democrat said.
The USMCA’s delayed passage through the House arises as Pelosi and House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA) have launched an impeachment inquiry into President Trump.
Speaker Pelosi and House Ways and Means chairman Richard Neal (D-MA) will meet with U.S. Trade Rep. Robert Lighthizer to discuss the Democrats’ remaining concerns surrounding the USMCA.
Pelosi has faced increasing pressure from moderate Democrats, especially those from districts President Donald Trump won in the 2016 presidential election, to finalize the USMCA negotiations with Lighthizer. The moderate Democrats have become frustrated with the USMCA’s slow movement through the House as they face criticism from their constituents over their backing of the impeachment inquiry. “I keep telling the freshman class: ‘This is about legislation. It takes time,'” Pelosi said, attempting to reassure frustrated Democrats.
Pelosi’s comments follow the bipartisan House Problem Solvers Caucus’s call for the speaker to hold a “timely vote” on the USMCA. The caucus represents 48 House Republicans and Democrats.
The caucus said last week:
For the good of the American people, and a strong economy, the Problem Solvers Caucus believes both sides of the aisle should find a way to unite together behind passage of USMCA. We applaud the bipartisan efforts of both Speaker Nancy Pelosi and US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer on this important agreement that has the potential to bring NAFTA into the modern era, with added predictability and certainty for business growth. We are proud of the work by labor groups, American workers, the business community, and farmers who continue to be a part of the process in this matter.
“Given the impact on our economy, we request a timely vote on USMCA,” the caucus added.
An FBI official is under criminal investigation after allegedly altering a document related to 2016 surveillance of a Trump campaign adviser, several people briefed on the matter told CNN.
The possibility of a substantive change to an investigative document is likely to fuel accusations from President Donald Trump and his allies that the FBI committed wrongdoing in its investigation of connections between Russian election meddling and the Trump campaign.
The finding is expected to be part of Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s review of the FBI’s effort to obtain warrants under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act on Carter Page, a former Trump campaign aide. Horowitz will release the report next month.
Horowitz turned over evidence on the allegedly altered document to John Durham, the federal prosecutor appointed early this year by Attorney General William Barr to conduct a broad investigation of intelligence gathered for the Russia probe by the CIA and other agencies, including the FBI. The altered document is also at least one focus of Durham’s criminal probe.
It’s unknown how significant a role the altered document played in the FBI’s investigation of Page and whether the FISA warrant would have been approved without the document. The alterations were significant enough to have shifted the document’s meaning and came up during a part of Horowitz’s FISA review where details were classified, according to the sources.
Post by soonernvolved on Nov 22, 2019 5:18:03 GMT -6
Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy posted a letter signed by the House Intelligence Oversight Committee to Pencil Neck Adam Schiff.
In his letter Rep. McCarthy cites House Rule XI, Cause 2(j)(1) The Minority Rule on calling witnesses. This rule allows the Minority to call any witnesses they want on at least one day of a congressional hearing, upon notifying the Committee chairman, which the Republicans did this morning.
Here is a copy of the letter.
Pelosi and her Lawfare crew of condescending coup criminals overlooked the rule and didn’t change or strike it when they changed the other House rules for impeachment!
Here’s the rule in context:
The Minority Witness Rule (Clause 2(j)(1) of Rule XI) – The Minority is entitled to one additional day of related hearings at which to call their own witnesses if a majority of the Minority Members make their demand before the committee�s hearing is gaveled closed.
Update 2: The Washington Post claims that "Horowitz found that the employee erroneously indicated he had documentation to back up a claim he had made in discussions with the Justice Department about the factual basis for the application. He then altered an email to back up that erroneous claim, they said." The attorney forced out of the agency after the incident was discovered.
The Post says the conduct "did not alter Horowitz's finding that the surveillance application of former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page had a proper legal and factual basis."
The Justice Department inspector general has found evidence that an FBI employee may have altered a document connected to court-approved surveillance of a former Trump campaign adviser, but has concluded that the conduct did not affect the overall validity of the surveillance application, according to U.S. officials familiar with the matter.
The person under scrutiny has not been identified but is a low-level FBI lawyer who has since been forced out of the FBI.... -Washington Post
Post by soonernvolved on Nov 22, 2019 8:04:55 GMT -6
Rosemont Capital, an investment firm tied to Hunter Biden received over $130 million in special federal bailout money while Joe Biden was Vice President.
The profits were then routed through a subsidiary in the Cayman Islands, according to documents obtained by the Washington Examiner.
Recall, Rosemont Capital was run by Hunter Biden’s business partners Chris Heinz and Devon Archer.
An investment firm linked to Hunter Biden received over $130 million in federal bailout loans while his father Joe Biden was vice president and routed profits through a subsidiary in the Cayman Islands, according to federal banking and corporate records reviewed by the Washington Examiner.
Financial experts said the offshore corporate structure could have been used to shield earnings from U.S. taxes.
Rosemont Capital, an investment firm at the center of Hunter Biden’s much-scrutinized financial network, was one of the companies approved to participate in the 2009 federal loan program known as the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility, or TALF.
Under the program, the U.S. Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve Bank issued billions of dollars in highly favorable loans to select investors who agreed to buy bonds that banks were struggling to offload, including bundled college and auto loans.
Biden, Heinz, and Archer incorporated Rosemont Seneca Partners in Delaware on June 25, 2009. The “alternative investment and market advisory firm” was an offshoot of Rosemont Capital, which held a 50% stake in the new venture. Rosemont Seneca and Rosemont Capital shared the same office address in lower Manhattan and the same New York phone number, according to Securities and Exchange Commission documents.
Three weeks after Rosemont Seneca was incorporated, a subsidiary of Rosemont Capital, called Rosemont TALF SPV, received $23.5 million in federal loans through the TALF program. This included $13.4 million to invest in student loans and $11.1 million to invest in subprime auto loans. Over five months, the company received a total of $130 million from the program in multiple installments for investments in subprime credit cards and residential mortgages.
Last Edit: Nov 22, 2019 8:07:12 GMT -6 by soonernvolved
Former National Security Council official Fiona Hill told Congress on Thursday that Russians likely “played” Christopher Steele, the former British spy whose anti-Trump dossier the FBI used to conduct surveillance against the Trump campaign.
Appearing during the Trump impeachment hearings, Hill reportedly testified that she believed Steele’s investigation of President Donald Trump “was a rabbit hole.”
Hill’s testimony about Steele was just a small sample of what she said about the former British spy during a closed-door deposition Nov. 14.
In that interview, Hill told lawmakers she was “shocked” to learn Steele was the author of the dossier. She also said he was vulnerable to potential Russian disinformation because he was “constantly trying to drum up business” in the numerous meetings they had while she was a scholar at the Brookings Institution.
Hill said she last met Steele in 2016, and that she was not aware at the time he was investigating Trump.
She also explicitly stated that Russians might have fed Steele with disinformation in order to put a cloud over an eventual Trump presidency.
Fusion GPS, an opposition research firm working for the DNC and Clinton campaign, hired Steele in April 2016 to investigate Trump’s possible ties to Russia. He produced 17 memos that alleged a massive conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Kremlin operatives. The special counsel’s report undermined many of Steele’s major allegations. Attorney General William Barr testified May 1 that he was “concerned” that the dossier was Russian disinformation.
Hill was heavily critical of Steele, as well as the media, during her closed-door testimony.
“The point that actually hasn’t come out and, again, why I’ve been very cross in the media, is that the president was attacked as well, because the Russians sought to discredit him,” she said.
“There’s been a cloud over President Trump since the beginning of his presidency, and I think that’s exactly what the Russians intended,” she said later. (RELATED: Impeachment Witness Undercut Steele Dossier In Bombshell Testimony)
Though Hill’s deposition was positive for Trump, House Republicans largely avoided asking her about the same issues during the public hearing.
Post by soonernvolved on Nov 22, 2019 10:09:45 GMT -6
We’re going to look back at 2019 like what? They did nothing…What happened today? Somebody overheard a phone call? So what? He eve’s dropped? The President said I don’t give a blank about Ukraine? So what, neither does the country?
On Thursday, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C) threw down the gauntlet on the Joe Biden-Hunter Biden-Ukraine issue, firing off a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo requesting call summaries or transcripts between Biden and former Ukraine president Petro Poroshenko.
Graham wrote, “Today, I sent a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo requesting documents related to contacts between: Vice President Biden, Hunter Biden, other Obama administration officials and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko.”
As Twitchy noted, “Rasmussen reports that a recent poll showed that 46 percent of Americans think the current House hearings should be expanded to look into the Bidens and their dealings with Ukraine — something Rep. Adam Schiff has warned Republicans is out of the scope of President Trump’s impeachment hearings.”
Poll Tested: 46%
We didn't have to 'bribe" our U.S. national likely voter respondents for fully 46% of them to tell us that the current House hearings should be expanded to look at the Ukrainian involvement of Hunter & Joe Biden.
— Rasmussen Reports (@rasmussen_Poll) November 19, 2019
In his letter, Graham stated that he wants:
All documents and communications, including call transcripts or summaries, related to the Vice President’s phone calls with President Poroshenko on February 11, 18, and 19 and March 22 of 2016, especially with respect to whether Vice President Biden mentioned the Prosecutor General’s investigation into Burisma. All documents and communications between the Vice President and his office and President Poroshenko and his office after the raid on Mr. Zlochevsky’s home on February 2, 2016, until the dismissal of the Prosecutor General on March 29, 2016. All documents and communications related to a meeting between Devon Archer, a business partner of Hunter Biden, and Secretary of State John Kerry on March 2, 2016.
Earlier this month, Schiff, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, rejected the idea proposed by House Republicans for Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden to testify in the impeachment inquiry targeting President Trump. As Newsweek reported, “Current ranking member Republican Congressman Devin Nunes, in a letter to Schiff on Saturday, asked for Biden, the anonymous whistleblower and several others to testify as part of the impeachment probe, which will move from closed-door depositions to public hearings next week.” Nunes wrote, “We expect that you will call each of the witnesses listed above to ensure that the Democrats’ ‘impeachment inquiry’ treats the President with fairness, as promised by Speaker Pelosi. Your failure to fulfill Minority witness requests shall constitute evidence of your denial of fundamental fairness and due process.”
Newsweek added, “In addition to Biden and the whistleblower, House Republicans also asked for several other testimonies in an open settling, including from Devon Archer, an American businessman who served with Biden on the board of Burisma Holdings; Nellie Ohr, former contractor for opposition research firm Fusion GPS; and David Jale, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs.”
Schiff huffed, according to The Washington Post:
This inquiry is not and will not serve as a vehicle to undertake the same sham investigations into the Bidens or 2016 that the President pressed Ukraine to conduct for his personal political benefit or facilitate the President’s effort to threaten, intimidate, and retaliate against the whistleblower who courageously raised the initial alarm. The Committee is evaluating the Minority’s witness requests and will give due consideration to witnesses within the scope of the impeachment inquiry, as voted on by the House. As we move into the open hearing phase of the inquiry, the Committee is mindful that we are engaged in a sober endeavor rooted in the Constitution to determine whether the President of the United States engaged in misconduct that warrants impeachment by the House.
Was there linkage between the withholding of U.S. military aid and the U.S. demand for a Ukrainian state investigation of the Bidens?
“Was there a quid pro quo?”
This question has bedeviled this city for months now.
“The answer is yes,” said U.S. Ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland in sworn testimony on Wednesday.
Sondland added that President Donald Trump, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, national security adviser John Bolton and Vice President Mike Pence were all wired in to what was up:
“They knew what we were doing and why. … Everyone was in the loop. It was no secret.”
And so where are we headed now?
The House intel and judiciary committees will advance one or more articles of impeachment against Donald Trump to the House floor, where they will be agreed upon in party-line votes and sent to the Senate for trial.
Impeachment appears as inevitable as anything in politics today.
Some are pressing the House, after Sondland, to slow down, cast a wider net, and demand the sworn testimony of Pompeo, Mulvaney, Pence, Bolton and Giuliani. Others are urging the House to strike while the iron is hot, move impeachment swiftly, and get it all done before the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary.
As the goal of the more rabid anti-Trumpers is to impeach, convict and remove the president, and then proceed with civil and criminal charges, this looks to be a fight to the death.
Mulvaney may have shown the White House the way to fight a month ago. Asked whether the withholding of aid to Ukraine until an investigation of the Bidens had been announced was not the definition of a “quid pro quo,” Mulvaney blurted out:
“We do that all the time. … No question about it… That’s why we held up the money. I have news for everybody. Get over it. There’s going to be political influence in foreign policy.”
Welcome to the real world.
In return for meeting with President Volodymyr Zelensky, Trump had a right to demand that Ukraine initiate an investigation into its most corrupt company, Burisma. Especially since the ne’er-do-well son of Vice President Joe Biden had been given a $50,000-a-month seat on Burisma’s board just days after Joe demanded and got the resignation of the state prosecutor and signed off on a billion-dollar loan guarantee for this third-most corrupt regime on earth.
We read often that allegations of corruption in the smelly deal that put Hunter Biden on Burisma’s board are “unfounded.”
Who did the investigating?
And what are we to make of the crocodile tears of Democrats that Ukrainian soldiers battling secessionists and Russians in the Donbass have died for lack of U.S. weapons held up by Trump?
Is this not manifest hypocrisy?
Most Ukrainian government officials were not even aware that the military aid for which Congress voted was being held up. And from 2014, when Vladimir Putin’s Russia seized Crimea and backed the secessionists in the Donbass, to 2017, President Barack Obama confined military aid to the Ukrainians to “sending blankets and meals,” as said the late Sen. John McCain.
If Trump imperiled “national security” by withholding for two months this latest tranche of military aid, did not Obama more gravely imperil our national security by denying Ukraine lethal aid for years?
Among the foreign service professionals who testified to Adam Schiff’s intel committee this week, none chose to associate himself with charges of “crimes” or “bribery” having been committed during that controversial phone call of July 25.
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Your email... Indeed, the weakness of the Democratic case may be found in the endless escalation of the charges. First, Trump was guilty of a quid pro quo, and then an abuse of power, and then throwing fighting Ukrainian allies to the wolves. Next, it was bribery.
But how is it bribery for a president, responsible for seeing that the laws are faithfully executed, to insist that a regime dependent on U.S. aid investigate a conflict of interest and potential corruption when the enriched beneficiary is the son of the vice president of the USA?
Even before his first day in office, President Trump was in the gun sights of the “deep state” and its media auxiliaries.
And the origins of that “Get Trump!” conspiracy inside the “deep state” are now under investigation by the Inspector General of the Justice Department and the U.S. Attorney for Connecticut John Durham.
The issue at hand: Criminal misconduct inside the U.S. government to determine the outcome of an election, and, failing that, to remove a president our government elite cannot abide.
Bottom line: If this country is not to be torn apart for a decade, the decision to retain or remove President Trump should be made by those who put him in the White House and not by rabid partisans like Adam Schiff.
Let the people decide the fate and future of the president of the United States. After all, they were the ones who hired him.
Former National Security Council staffer Fiona Hill acknowledged that failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was only helping Russian President Vladimir Putin by questioning the validity of the 2016 election. Hill spoke about the 2016 election under questioning from Rep. Mike Conaway (R-TX) during Thursday’s impeachment hearings in the House Intelligence Committee.
He asked:
The loser in the 2016 election, for three years, has continued to argue that because she won the popular vote, that somehow the election was inappropriate and we shouldn’t trust it; that the electoral college victory, which was resounding, shouldn’t be trusted. Does that help Putin or play into the narrative that he would like for us to do, that our elections are somehow rigged and shouldn’t be trusted?
“Yes it does,” Hill agreed.
In September, Clinton blamed a long list of things for her loss to President Trump, complaining about the electoral college, Russia hacking, fake news, the media, propaganda, voter suppression, and racist and white supremacist websites.
Hill also agreed with Conaway about Putin pushing anti-fracking propaganda on RT, the Russia propaganda media outlet in the United States.
She recalled that she attended a meeting with Putin and other Americans in 2011, where the Russian president was adamant about the dangers of fracking while speaking.
“He started in 2011 making it very clear that he saw American fracking as a great threat to Russian interests, we were all struck at how much he stressed this issue,” she said.
Rosemont Capital, an investment firm tied to Hunter Biden received over $130 million in special federal bailout money while Joe Biden was Vice President.
The profits were then routed through a subsidiary in the Cayman Islands, according to documents obtained by the Washington Examiner.
Recall, Rosemont Capital was run by Hunter Biden’s business partners Chris Heinz and Devon Archer.
An investment firm linked to Hunter Biden received over $130 million in federal bailout loans while his father Joe Biden was vice president and routed profits through a subsidiary in the Cayman Islands, according to federal banking and corporate records reviewed by the Washington Examiner.
Financial experts said the offshore corporate structure could have been used to shield earnings from U.S. taxes.
Rosemont Capital, an investment firm at the center of Hunter Biden’s much-scrutinized financial network, was one of the companies approved to participate in the 2009 federal loan program known as the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility, or TALF.
Under the program, the U.S. Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve Bank issued billions of dollars in highly favorable loans to select investors who agreed to buy bonds that banks were struggling to offload, including bundled college and auto loans.
Biden, Heinz, and Archer incorporated Rosemont Seneca Partners in Delaware on June 25, 2009. The “alternative investment and market advisory firm” was an offshoot of Rosemont Capital, which held a 50% stake in the new venture. Rosemont Seneca and Rosemont Capital shared the same office address in lower Manhattan and the same New York phone number, according to Securities and Exchange Commission documents.
Three weeks after Rosemont Seneca was incorporated, a subsidiary of Rosemont Capital, called Rosemont TALF SPV, received $23.5 million in federal loans through the TALF program. This included $13.4 million to invest in student loans and $11.1 million to invest in subprime auto loans. Over five months, the company received a total of $130 million from the program in multiple installments for investments in subprime credit cards and residential mortgages.
This is unbelievable. I know this happend on both sides of the isle, but the further we go down this rabbit hole the more corruption we see from the Bidens.
Not to mention the scheme here, if i have it right. Government loans 130mil at no interest to Rosemont to buy bonds no one wants. then acourding to WIKI 100 percent of any profit is retained by the borrower, but the Fed and the Treasury absorb any losses. No risk at all. This is criminal. We got Super fucked
Rosemont Capital, an investment firm tied to Hunter Biden received over $130 million in special federal bailout money while Joe Biden was Vice President.
The profits were then routed through a subsidiary in the Cayman Islands, according to documents obtained by the Washington Examiner.
Recall, Rosemont Capital was run by Hunter Biden’s business partners Chris Heinz and Devon Archer.
An investment firm linked to Hunter Biden received over $130 million in federal bailout loans while his father Joe Biden was vice president and routed profits through a subsidiary in the Cayman Islands, according to federal banking and corporate records reviewed by the Washington Examiner.
Financial experts said the offshore corporate structure could have been used to shield earnings from U.S. taxes.
Rosemont Capital, an investment firm at the center of Hunter Biden’s much-scrutinized financial network, was one of the companies approved to participate in the 2009 federal loan program known as the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility, or TALF.
Under the program, the U.S. Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve Bank issued billions of dollars in highly favorable loans to select investors who agreed to buy bonds that banks were struggling to offload, including bundled college and auto loans.
Biden, Heinz, and Archer incorporated Rosemont Seneca Partners in Delaware on June 25, 2009. The “alternative investment and market advisory firm” was an offshoot of Rosemont Capital, which held a 50% stake in the new venture. Rosemont Seneca and Rosemont Capital shared the same office address in lower Manhattan and the same New York phone number, according to Securities and Exchange Commission documents.
Three weeks after Rosemont Seneca was incorporated, a subsidiary of Rosemont Capital, called Rosemont TALF SPV, received $23.5 million in federal loans through the TALF program. This included $13.4 million to invest in student loans and $11.1 million to invest in subprime auto loans. Over five months, the company received a total of $130 million from the program in multiple installments for investments in subprime credit cards and residential mortgages.
This is unbelievable. I know this happend on both sides of the isle, but the further we go down this rabbit hole the more corruption we see from the Bidens.
Not to mention the scheme here, if i have it right. Government loans 130mil at no interest to Rosemont to buy bonds no one wants. then acourding to WIKI 100 percent of any profit is retained by the borrower, but the Fed and the Treasury absorb any losses. No risk at all. This is criminal. We got Super fucked
Also, don't forget that Schiff has connections to Burisma, etc as well and it is no small wonder as to why the Democrats do not want this investigated.
Post by soonernvolved on Nov 22, 2019 11:31:16 GMT -6
President Trump: What you’re going to see, I predict, will be perhaps the biggest scandal in the history of our country, political scandal. Political scanda, but that’s the biggest… I think you’re going to see things that are going to be incredible if it’s done right. And I purposely stay out until Bill Barr to handle everything. I wouldn’t have to. I could get very much involved. But I purposely don’t.
President Donald Trump previewed Friday the release of the Department of Justice inspector general report set down for December, describing the information as “historic.” “They were spying on my campaign and it went right to the top and everybody knows it and now we’re going to find out,” Trump said.
The president gave an interview to Fox and Friends on Friday morning, in a phone conversation aired on the network.
Trump said he was not personally involved with the investigation, leaving it to Attorney General Bill Barr.
“He’s a great attorney general we would maybe have ended this thing a lot sooner had he been there originally,” Trump said.
Trump commented after reports leaked an FBI lawyer was under investigation for possibly altering a document to get a FISA warrant.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham announced Thursday that DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz would be released on December 9 and would testify about the report on December 11.
“What you’re going to see, I predict, will be perhaps the biggest scandal in the history of our country,” Trump said.
Trump recalled his March 2017 claim that former President Barack Obama was spying on his campaign and repeated the scandal likely went all the way to the top of the West Wing in the White House.
He cited the actions of former CIA Director John Brennan, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and President Obama’s National Security Adviser Susan Rice, suggesting it would be “impossible” for them to be doing what they did without permission from Obama.
“I think it goes to the highest level, I hate to say it, I think it’s a disgrace, they thought I was going to win and they said, ‘How can we stop him,'” Trump concluded.
The Impeachment Hearings Have Been Useless By DAVID HARSANYI November 21, 2019 4:47 PM
Rep. Adam Schiff (center), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, speaks during a hearing as part of the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump, November 13, 2019. (Erin Scott/Reuters) As it stands now, the entire effort is drenched in partisanship. Democrats on the Intelligence Committee have spent the vast majority of their impeachment hearings trying to persuade voters that bureaucrats believe Donald Trump is impulsive, self-serving, and misguided — all of which is unsurprising, and completely irrelevant to the matter at hand.
Quite often, in fact, the most breathless coverage of these tedious hearings has absolutely nothing to do with the allegedly impeachable offenses of quid pro quo or “bribery” — or whatever focus group-tested terminology Democrats are deploying today. Take the newest blockbuster witness, Fiona Hill, a Russia expert whose testimony nearly every outlet promised would be “explosive.” She “lashes Rs for siding w Russian theory instead of us on 2016,” Politico’s Jake Sherman informs us.
Having a witness repeat “Russia” a whole bunch of times in front of the House Intelligence Committee’s impeachment panel isn’t nearly as fascinating or significant as reporters might imagine. Certainly, it has little to do with the supposed investigation undertaken to ferret out impeachable behavior.
For one thing, Hill’s broader contention is dubious. While Trump hasn’t called out Russia for interference, various other GOP leaders have done so on numerous occasions, including in a Senate intel report. And a person can simultaneously believe that both the Russians and Ukrainians meddled in 2016 to various degrees (and the Iranians.)
Even if one doesn’t, though, failing to adopt the Democrats’ histrionic tone over the threat of Twitter bots is neither criminal nor unconstitutional. (Reacting to 2016 as if it were Pearl Harbor, in fact, is likely quite pleasing to Putin.) If selling conspiracy theories to the American public for partisan reasons were a crime, Representative Adam Schiff would be serving consecutive life sentences in Supermax.
Hill ended up making a compelling case that she, and others, disapproved of the White House’s haphazard handling of foreign policy. But she offered no evidence of “bribery.” Yesterday, Ambassador Gordon Sondland also offered compelling testimony that he disapproved of how the White House was conducted foreign policy over Ukraine. Yet, Sondland, like all other bombshell witness, offered no real evidence of any arrangement proving Trump traded on U.S. military aid for a Biden investigation. Indeed, Sondland basically conceded that he didn’t believe Trump cared one way or another whether Zelensky launched an investigation — Trump simply wanted the Ukrainian president to announce one.
110 NOW WATCH: 'Trump says He'll 'Strongly Consider' Testifying in Impeachment Hearings'
None of this means it didn’t happen, it only means that the dramatic tone of the coverage is unwarranted and the hearings have been a waste of time. Everything we know now that matters we already knew when first reading the report of Trump’s call with Volodymyr Zelensky. Either you believe Trump should be impeached for asking a foreign leader to investigate his opponent’s son for corruption or you do not. It’s unlikely we will ever have any hard proof of whether or not there was a quid pro quo.
To me, there’s little question such a call from the president — whether he was explicitly favor trading or not — is at the very least unethical and at most an abuse of power. Is it impeachable? That’s a political decision. Because, no matter how hard liberals try and convince you otherwise, the Trump presidency doesn’t operate in a vacuum. Republicans believe they’ve been living life under two sets of rules. Considering what previous administrations have gotten away with — and what many of the people now clamoring for impeachment helped them get away with — it’s difficult to blame them. Perhaps if Democrats and operatives within government hadn’t spent three years cooking up a fantastical Manchurian Candidate conspiracy to delegitimize Trump this impeachment inquiry might be playing out differently. As it stands now, the entire effort is drenched in partisanship. Which makes it extremely unlikely that many voters will be pried from their previously held positions. Nothing that’s been said during these hearings changes that fact.
On Thursday, the Washington Examiner reported that an investment firm central to Hunter Biden's financial dealings received more than $130 million in federal bailout loans while Joe Biden was vice president.
Devon Archer (far left) is pictured with Joe and Hunter Biden. (Screenshot from Twitter)
Rosemont Capital - named after former Secretary of State John Kerry's 90-acre Heinz family estate outside of Fox Chapel, Pennsylvania - was founded by Hunter Biden, Christopher Heinz, and longtime friend Devon Archer.
According to the report, Rosemont was one of just 177 firms to participate in Obama's 2009 Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility (TALF), which issued billions of dollars in favorable loans to investors who agreed to buy bonds from struggling banks, including college and auto loans.
The Federal Reserve funded as much as 90% of the investments. If the bonds were profitable, the borrowers benefited. If not, the department agreed to take over the depreciated assets with no repercussions for the borrowers.
...
Under the terms for the program, any U.S. company looking to invest in select categories of bonds was eligible to apply for the loans. However, the Treasury Department and Federal Reserve maintained the “right to reject a borrower for any reason,” and the internal selection process was criticized by some lawmakers as opaque and open to corruption.
...
One of the firms that benefited was Rosemont Capital, a company led by Hunter Biden’s business partners, Chris Heinz and Devon Archer. The firm received the loans at a crucial time for Hunter Biden. The younger Biden had stepped down from his lobbying business in late 2008, reportedly due to pressure on his father’s vice presidential campaign. -Washington Examiner
And while the Examiner reviewed "federal banking and corporate records" for their report, the MSM is completely silent about this obvious graft.
CNN, NBC, MSNBC, ABC, CBS and FOX have all been radio silent on this report.
Imagine if an investment firm established by Trump Jr., Nicholas Pompeo and a college roommate received a similar government handout?
"This is a great example of the suspicion of many Americans that these bailouts were used to benefit connected insiders while ordinary Americans went broke," said Tom Anderson, director of the Government Integrity Project at the National Legal and Policy Center, an organization that was critical of TALF at the time.
Who else got handouts?
According to the report, "In April 2011, Rolling Stone reported that millions in TALF loans had been issued to the wife of Morgan Stanley Chairman John Mack, Miami Dolphins owner H. Wayne Huizenga, and Wall Street titan John Paulson, dubbing the program “welfare for the rich.”"
"Our jaws are literally dropping as we're reading this," said Bernie Sanders aide, Warren Gunnels. "Every one of these transactions is outrageous."
Post by soonernvolved on Nov 22, 2019 12:55:11 GMT -6
A former Ukrainian lawmaker has released a document with information on a transaction in 2013 where Biden family-related companies allegedly received a $12 million illegal kickback while Joe Biden was Vice President of the United States. The lawmaker Oleksandr Onyshchenko alleges the payment was made to gain Biden’s influence in affairs of the group of companies called Burisma.
Former Ukrainian MP Oleksandr Onyshchenko has provided CD Media with information on a transaction in 2013 where Biden family-related companies allegedly received a $12 million illegal kickback while Joe Biden was Vice President of the United States. Onyshchenko alleges the payment was made to gain Biden’s influence in affairs of the group of companies called Burisma owned by Ukrainian oligarch Mykola Zlochevsky, who sold a port facility in Ukraine and shifted partial proceeds of the sale to Hunter Biden. CD Media has already reported on ‘off the books’ payments to Hunter Biden by Burisma.
Onyshchenko alleges that during the sale of the port of Kherson on the Dnepr River in Ukraine in 2013 for approximately $32M, Biden received $12M of that amount illegally.
Post by soonernvolved on Nov 22, 2019 12:59:20 GMT -6
Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham announced this week that he will hold a public hearing on Dec. 11 featuring Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz.
And the Deep State-media complex is already spinning ahead of the IG report on FISA abuses which is expected out before the hearing on Wednesday December 11th.
CNN reported Thursday that one FBI official is under criminal investigation for altering surveillance documents on Carter Page.
New updated reports on this FBI official reveal it is a ‘low-level FBI lawyer’ and WaPo stealth-deleted the portion of its report claiming the individual worked underneath former counterintelligence chief Peter Strzok.
Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz has found evidence that an FBI lawyer manipulated a key investigative document related to the FBI’s secretive surveillance of a former Trump campaign adviser — enough to change the substantive meaning of the document, according to multiple reports.
The new evidence concerning the altered document, which pertained to the FBI’s FISA court warrant application to surveil Page, is expected to be outlined in Horowitz’s upcoming report. CNN first reported the news, which was largely confirmed by The Washington Post.
But the Post, hours after publishing its story, conspicuously removed the portion of its reporting that the FBI employee involved worked “beneath” Peter Strzok, the FBI’s since-fired head of counterintelligence. The Post did not offer an explanation for the change, which occurred shortly after midnight. Earlier this week, the DOJ highlighted a slew of anti-Trump text messages sent by Strzok when he was leading the Hillary Clinton email investigation and the probe into the Trump campaign.
“The person under scrutiny has not been identified but is not a high-ranking official — they worked beneath former deputy assistant director Peter Strzok, according to people familiar with the investigation who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss material that has not yet been made public,” The Post wrote in its now-deleted paragraph.
Just how serious is last night’s CNN scoop about an FBI attorney altering documents submitted to the FISA court supporting the Carter Page warrant? Bad enough to shake up longtime Donald Trump critic Preet Bharara. In the same segment in which Evan Perez introduces his bombshell development in the Russia-collusion case, an equally shaken Wolf Blitzer turns to the former US Attorney, who confirms that “it doesn’t get more serious” than purposeful misrepresentations to the FISA court.
The main concern of the two CNN reporters, however, seems to be of the “Republicans pounce” potential that such a finding will generate:
BLITZER: So FBI agents under investigation. Clearly, this is going to reverberate and provide ammunition to the president and his allies that this whole Russia investigation was criminally wrong.
PEREZ: Exactly. I mean, look, this is exactly what people close to the president have been saying, that the FBI committed wrongdoing in starting this investigation. And so the question now obviously is what are the details are going to be part of the Horowitz report that’s going to be released on December 9th and how much political hay the president’s allies are going to make about it.
Is that the real story here? Or is that the nation’s top law enforcement and domestic intelligence agency lied to the court to surveil someone connected to a presidential campaign? I mean, they’re both stories, but in terms of impact and actual damage to the legal and political process, the latter is leagues ahead of the former.
To his credit, Bharara is much more concerned about the latter
BLITZER: Let me bring Preet Bharara, the former U.S. attorney at the Southern District of New York. What’s your reaction, Preet?
BHARARA: Well, that’s kind of an alarming bit of news. Obviously, based on what Evan is saying, there’s a lot we don’t know. But the given — the description he has provided, if there was an FBI agent sworn to uphold the Constitution who can be proven to have altered a document in connection with illegal proceeding, including the obtaining of a FISA warrant, that’s really serious. It doesn’t get a lot more serious than that.
And I’d like to know the details of what the nature of the change was, if there was a mistake in some way. Based on that reporting it doesn’t sound like it was. I want to keep an open mind about it. But that’s not a good thing. It’s a terrible thing.
The law enforcement agents and prosecutors who work with them are sworn to uphold the Constitution, sure, but actually even exceed the protection of the Constitution. They have to be of the utmost integrity and the utmost candor and especially making a representation to the court, which is what a FISA application is. It’s got be on the up and up.
And I know there has been political fighting about whether or not there was proper candor, and there was this back and forth within the House Intelligence Committee when the positions were reversed between Devin Nunes and Adam Schiff. And that looked like a lot of politics. This particular thing that Evan Perez has just broken the story on does sound serious to me it.
Exactly. The politics surrounding this might be intriguing in every sense of the word, but this looks like actual intrigue. Why would an FBI attorney corrupt a process that is meant to protect US citizens from undue domestic intelligence surveillance? And why did it take this long — far after Robert Mueller’s probe finished — to find out that the basis for the surveillance had been partially falsified?
This is no mere electoral concern, either. Congress passed FISA to limit domestic intelligence surveillance of US citizens in the wake of Watergate, in which intelligence assets got abused for political gain. It was a recognition of a need to have the option in rare circumstances while severely limiting the FBI and other agencies from doing what apparently happened here. Bharara would know more than most that a massive abuse of FISA to interfere with an election will almost certainly result in legislation further limiting that ability or possibly eliminating it altogether, with potentially dire results for national security. If the FBI cooked the warrant application in any way, they may have also cooked their own goose in the long term.
And after 9/11, we all know it doesn’t get a lot more serious than that, either. It’s one hell of a lot more serious than whether Republicans get to pounce, regardless of where CNN prioritizes that point.
Last Edit: Nov 22, 2019 13:51:15 GMT -6 by soonernvolved
Finally, you’re left with that image of Adam Schiff sitting stock straight in the big chair with pursed lips and eyes bugged out, as in a very certain species of lunacy heretofore only seen in Canis latrans of Cartoon-land when, say, he has overrun the cliff’s edge clutching an anvil to his bosom. What was he thinking when he hatched this latest quixotic chapter in the ignominious crusade to reverse the 2016 election?
That he’d never get caught? On Wednesday he witlessly did gave away the game on nationwide TV, telling the witness, heroic Col. Vindman, to not state which intel agency (of 23 !) employed the one still-unnamed person he blabbed to about the epic Phone Call to Ukraine — because it would reveal the name of the “Whistleblower.”
How could that be? Both Mr. Schiff and Col. Vindman claimed to not know the identity of the “WB?” If so, it would be logically impossible to reveal the “Whistleblower” by just naming an agency with thousands of little worker bees. Of course, he walked right into the trap set by minority member, Mr. Ratcliffe of Texas. Who doesn’t get that Col Vindman knows exactly who the “Whistleblower” is because he was the “Whistleblower’s” accomplice? And Mr. Schiff knows, too.
If the senate majority poohbahs were wise, they would warmly welcome a trail based on articles of impeachment, which would, of course, feature no artificial limits on the witness list, nor on questions that might be asked. The list might start with the UkraineGate “Whistleblower.” Among the many untruths uttered by Adam Schiff was the nonexistent law that gave that shadowy figure a right to anonymity. And besides, in any trial based on due process, the accused has an absolute right to face his accuser.
Oddly, a month ago Mr. Schiff was avid to stick his “Whistleblower” in the witness chair, and perhaps not with a black hood over his head. Then it was discovered that the “Whistleblower” had been consorting at least with Mr. Schiff’s staff members before blowing his fabled whistle, and that they had likely assisted in the assembly of his complaint, and in connecting him to the right lawyers in the Great Blue Okefenokee backwaters of DC lawyerdom, and, naturally, nobody from sea to shining sea over age nine who had paid attention to these antics believed that Mr. Schiff could not know who this “Whistleblower” was. Likewise, the brave Col. Vindman. Both of them deserve some time in a senate witness chair, and Mr. Schiff especially is due some sort of penalty for subjecting the country to his three years of dishonorable, seditious shenanigans — beginning with expulsion from the House and perhaps proceeding to a trial of his very own.
\ These UkraineGate hearings of the past two weeks raised some additional questions that have not otherwise been discussed in the public arena, chiefly, exactly how much does the US government seek to control the affairs of Ukraine? And how did we become the superintendent of this partially failed state? The parade of State Department diplomats in charge of this-and-that suggests that Ukraine is virtually an occupied territory. Do we realistically suppose that, in the natural course of things, we can shield Ukraine forever from the influence of its neighbor (and former sovereign), Russia?
It is also astounding to see media shills like Rachel Maddow still carrying on hysterically about Russia. She must have cried “Russia” twenty-seven times in the ten minutes of her act I caught on Thursday night. She’s far exceeded even the paranoid raptures of the John Birch Society a half century ago when they were screaming about communists in every broom closet of America. This incessant war-cry can’t be good for the country.
Now we’ve turned the corner into that enchanted season known as “the holidays” and a multi-dimensional showdown after three years of perfidious nonsense looms over the turkeys and silver bells and holy pageantry like a freak winter hurricane out in the dark ocean barreling landward.
I am sincerely wondering how the public will process the storm of indictments coming down at the cabal of government employees who devised the RussiaGate persecution at the same time the Senate prepares to go to a trial that will humiliate and possibly annihilate the Democratic Party. No political faction in history has begged so persuasively to be put to death, or deserved it more.
Attorney Andrew Weissmann, a former prosecutor for Robert Mueller’s special counsel and legal analyst for MSNBC, speculated President Donald Trump took an unsecured telephone call from U.S. Ambassador Gordon Sondland in Ukraine because he does not care whether Russia wiretapped it — because, Weissman argues, he anticipates Kremlin support in the 2020 election.
“There’s an interesting aspect to that call, leave out the irony that this president ran against Hillary Clinton for using an insecure email server,” Weissmann, known as Mueller’s “pit bull,” began. “Here you have a call on a cellphone, lots of discussions about sending emails and texts, but this is one where you’ve heard from everyone who is in Ukraine who knows–you worry about everything being tapped,” he said of the Trump-Sondland call.
Weissmann then possed the question: “You know that call is going to be monitored by the Russians… Do you care about the Russians having it?”
“Why weren’t the president and Ambassador Sondland worried about the fact that the Russians would undoubtedly in Ukraine be able to hear this conversation?” he then asked.
Weissmann’s pair of questions prompted MSNBC anchor Nicole Wallace to ask under what circumstances would the president be comfortable about the call’s possible interception by the Kremlin.
“If your thinking is ‘I don’t care because the Russians will be siding with me in the 2020 election,’ then you’re all on the same team,” the former Mueller prosecutor hypothesized.
Critics point to President Trump’s July 26 call with Sondland as evidence implicating the president in a “quid pro quo” scheme to exchange U.S. military aid to Ukraine for an investigation into allegations of corruption against former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden. A CIA analyst’s mischaracterization of President Trump’s call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on July 25 is the subject of a “whistleblower” complaint, which sparked House Democrats to launch an impeachment inquiry.
Testifying before the House Intelligence Committee on Wednesday, Sondland said it was likely he told the president that Zelensky “loves your ass” and stands ready to work together on a host of issues. On Thursday, State Department official David Holmes testified that he overheard President Trump asking Sondland, “So, he’s gonna do the investigation?” a reference to Zelensky launching a probe into the Bidens. Holmes said Sondland replied, “He’s gonna do it,” and told the president that Ukraine’s president would do “anything you ask him to.”
Andrew McCarthy: Schiff games Trump impeachment show – In legitimate proceedings, you can't have it both ways
“Self-serving and not credible.” At Tuesday’s public hearing in the House impeachment inquiry, former U.S. envoy Kurt Volker offered that assessment of allegations that former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, may have engaged in corrupt self-dealing in Ukraine.
At Tuesday’s marathon session in Intelligence Committee proceedings, that continue on Wednesday and Thursday, other witnesses were invited to testify that they knew of no basis to believe Ukrainian officials had interfered in the 2016 election. Indeed, Democrats continued to press their disingenuous storyline that Ukraine could not have meddled in our presidential campaign because Russia did, as if it were not possible that both countries meddled – as it is virtually certain that both did, on opposite sides.
There has been a common thread in the testimony on these two subjects, potential Biden corruption and 2016 Ukrainian collusion with Democrats: There is no basis to believe, and none has been offered, that the witnesses Democrats permitted to be called have any relevant information about these matters.
SEN. THOM TILLIS: DEMOCRATS DENY TRUMP DUE PROCESS IN IMPEACHMENT PUSH
This testimony would not be allowed in a court proceeding under rules of evidence and due process, where witnesses are permitted to address only matters about which they have direct knowledge. If they only know what they’ve read in the papers, their testimony isn’t any more reliable than ours would be.
This is why, for all the formal trappings and somber tones, Democrats are running a kangaroo court.
The hearings are taking place under one-sided rules that enable Chairman Adam Schiff, a fierce partisan, to determine which witnesses are permitted to testify.
Republicans have asked to call such witnesses as Hunter Biden, Nellie Ohr, and Alexandra Chalupa. Biden the younger was lavishly compensated by a Ukrainian energy company, Burisma, while his father was running Obama administration Ukraine policy and demanding that Kiev fire a prosecutor who was investigating Burisma.
Ken Starr on Gordon Sondland's impeachment hearing testimony: 'One of those bombshell days'Video Ohr was a researcher at Fusion GPS, the Clinton campaign opposition research arm that produced the bogus Steele dossier.
She testified in a 2018 House investigation that Fusion’s informants included Ukrainian parliamentarian Serhiy Leshchenko – an overt Clinton supporter.
In late 2018, a Ukrainian court found the Leshchenko and an official of Ukraine’s anti-corruption police meddled in the 2016 American election by, among other things, leaking information damaging to Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort – who was forced to resign. Leschchenko was reportedly also a source for Chalupa, a Ukrainian-born DNC consultant and Hillary Clinton supporter.
For all the formal trappings and somber tones, Democrats are running a kangaroo court. The hearings are taking place under one-sided rules that enable Chairman Adam Schiff, a fierce partisan, to determine which witnesses are permitted to testify.
Schiff has denied Republicans the opportunity to call these witnesses, just as he has denied the GOP the ability to ask questions about the so-called whistleblower who instigated the Ukraine impeachment push (a CIA official who is known to have consulted with Schiff’s staff while preparing his complaint).
According to Schiff, the Republicans must not be permitted to question their preferred witnesses because possible Biden corruption and Ukrainian interference in the election for the benefit of Hillary Clinton are not relevant topics. The only matter in focus is President Trump’s dealings with Ukraine’s government – i.e., the slow-walking of defense aid to pressure Kyiv to conduct investigations “that would benefit Trump politically.”
This, of course, is absurd. In their tunnel vision, what Democrats call the investigations that “would benefit Trump politically” are precisely Biden corruption and Ukrainian meddling in the 2016 election.
Schiff & Co. mulishly insist that Trump was motivated by nothing other than his political fortunes in the 2020 campaign. Obviously, if the fact-finding inquiry is legitimate, the president and Republicans must be entitled to try to demonstrate that Trump had proper motivations.
Contrary to Schiff’s deceptive claim at the start of the inquiry (in his “parody” version of the July 25 Trump-Zelensky phone call), the president was not asking Ukraine to “make up dirt on my political opponent.” There was abundant good-faith reason to suspect self-dealing by the Bidens.
More from Opinion Andrew McCarthy: Trump impeachment inquiry obstructed by Democrats' 'whistleblower' secrecy charade Gregg Jarrett: Trump may hope Schiff's impeachment carnival never stops Jason Chaffetz: Rep. Rashida Tlaib may test Democratic claims that no one is above the law There is, similarly, a bounty of evidence of Ukrainian interference in the election. The president reasonably contends that his interests were not so much in the politics of 2020 as in accountability for election-meddling in 2016 – a matter Democrats purport to be interested in when the country at issue is Russia and the bottom line helps them politically.
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More to the point, though, while Schiff claims that Biden corruption and Ukrainian election meddling have no relevance to the inquiry, he is not conducting the hearings that way. To the contrary, Democrats are raising these matters at will … with witnesses of their choosing, who have no relevant information.
Democrats then use the witnesses’ professions that they’ve heard nothing of Biden corruption or Ukrainian collusion as if it were evidence that these things did not happen.
In a legitimate proceeding, you can’t have it both ways.
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Schiff is plainly hiding the ball when he claims the defense the president and Republicans want to pursue is irrelevant, but then asks safe (i.e., uninformed) witnesses about this defense in order to pretend that there is no evidence.
The chairman’s own conduct shows that the Bidens and the 2016 shenanigans of Ukrainian officials are germane to the inquiry and would be probative of why President Trump wanted Ukraine to investigate. If the inquiry is to be something other than a political stunt masquerading as serious impeachment business, Republicans must be permitted to present their side of the story.
Game Over: I See No Bribery Or Extortion Here, Says Moderate Republican Will Hurd
I use the term “game over” advisedly, as it was popular yesterday among some anti-Trumpers during Gordon Sondland’s testimony.
Superficially it makes no sense for Trump critics to be declaring “game over” about a process which we know will inevitably end in acquittal. But that was my point in the Fiona Hill post — the “game” for anti-Trumpers at this point isn’t removal, since that assuredly won’t happen, but the catharsis inherent in watching Trump’s own diplomats serially undermine his NO QUID PRO QUO! narrative. Having a toady like Sondland, who bought his ambassadorship with a million-dollar donation, tell the country that yeah, of course he and everyone else down the chain believed there was a quid pro quo was maximum catharsis. Hence, “game over.”
But the real game, whether the president will be removed or whether not a single Republican will join the effort to remove him, is also essentially over after this Will Hurd speech during today’s hearings. Take four minutes to watch it as it’s the best possible version of a “bad but not impeachable” argument in Trump’s defense. The call was inappropriate, Hurd says. The White House’s two-track handling of Ukraine policy, with Sondland doing one thing and the regular bureaucracy doing another, was “bungling.” We shouldn’t be playing games with Ukraine’s security. But removing a president from office mid-term is the gravest choice Congress can make. And the evidence of a high crime just isn’t compelling enough based on what we’ve heard to justify making that choice.
He also complains that every day the intelligence community spends bogged down on impeachment is a day that it’s not busy advancing U.S. interests abroad. That’s true, but whose fault is that, Will? Go ask the guy who decided that military aid to help Ukraine fend off Russia wasn’t as important as an announcement that Ukraine would start to investigate Joe Biden’s son.
Anyway, why is this so important? Hurd’s a Republican and it’s the opposite of surprising for a House Republican to oppose impeachment, right? Right, but remember that Hurd used to be a member of the intel community himself. He worked undercover in Pakistan for the CIA before running for Congress. If anyone in the GOP might be a bit more sympathetic to IC grievances against Trump, he would be. Hurd is also a moderate, enough so to have criticized Trump in the past on immigration. (His home district in Texas runs along the border and is overwhelmingly Latino.) On top of that, Hurd is retiring from Congress next year, partly out of frustration at the direction of the party under Trump. He was as free as a Republican could conceivably be to join the impeachment effort — but he’s not biting. Maybe that’s because he has ambitions for a political comeback down the road or maybe it’s because he’s genuinely unconvinced by the evidence he’s seen, but either way the universal verdict on his speech is the correct one: If Democrats can’t get Hurd, they can’t get anyone.
*Maybe* Francis Rooney, a Romney pal who’s been critical of Trump and who’s also retiring, will flip. But that may be Pelosi’s and Schiff’s only shot.
It’s easy to imagine Hurd’s speech today becoming a model for Trump-skeptic Republican senators. After all, he’s not endorsing the Trumpy claims that it was a PERFECT CALL with Zelensky and that there was NO QUID PRO QUO. He’s not indulging Devin Nunes’s conspiracy theories about that Chalupa person or whatever. He’s critical of the president on the merits. Mitt Romney may very well crib from this speech after Trump’s trial, excoriating the president for how he handled the Ukraine business … while also concluding that it’s just not so grave an affront that removal from office is warranted, especially so close to an election. Trump should be ecstatic to know that Will Hurd is still in the fold and willing to provide a template like this for other wary GOPers to support him.
But he’ll probably be mad since it’s never enough to go to bat for him. Republicans have to assure him that his judgment is correct in all matters. That’s no big deal for him in an individual case like Hurd’s, but if we see a drumbeat of speeches like this in the Senate (a … “Hurd mentality”?) beating him up for his Ukraine conduct before voting to acquit, he’ll probably lash out. Even though some of the Republicans knocking him, like Cory Gardner, will be doing so simply to try to play both sides of the electorate in their battleground home states before facing voters next fall.
In lieu of an exit question, here’s the closest thing to a rebuttal of Hurd’s speech, today’s closing statement from Adam Schiff. He finished with a flourish every day this week. The zinger this time was “The difference between then and now is not the difference between Nixon and Trump. It’s the difference between that Congress and this one.” We are better than that, he bellows, referring to Trump’s apparent attempt to involve another foreign country in a U.S. election. For the second time today I must correct a Democrat on that point: Dude, we are not.
