James Comey

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www.dailywire.com/news/trump-accuses-pelosi-of-quid-pro-quo-suggests-impeaching-her

Trump Accuses Pelosi Of Quid Pro Quo, Suggests Impeaching Her

President Donald Trump ripped Democrat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Friday for withholding the articles of impeachment from the Senate, stating that was engaged in a “quid pro quo” and suggesting that she should be impeached.

Trump’s tweet comes as Pelosi continues to hold the partisan articles of impeachment against Trump from going to the Senate because she is worried that the political trial would be biased in favor of the president.

“Nancy Pelosi is looking for a Quid Pro Quo with the Senate,” Trump tweeted. “Why aren’t we Impeaching her?”

Following the Democrats’ vote on impeachment, Pelosi told reporters in reference to sending the articles of impeachment to the Senate, “So far we haven’t seen anything that looks fair to us. That would’ve been our intention, but we’ll see what happens over there.”

“Pelosi’s comments, which echo suggestions raised by other Democrats throughout the day, inject new uncertainty into the impeachment timetable and send the House and Senate lurching toward a potential institutional crisis,” Politico reported. “Though the House adopted two articles of impeachment charging Trump with abuse of power and obstruction of congressional investigations, it must pass a second resolution formally naming impeachment managers to present the case in the Senate. That second vehicle triggers the official transmission of articles to the Senate.”

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Noah Feldman, one of the Democrats’ top impeachment witnesses against Trump, wrote in a Bloomberg News op-ed on Thursday that the Democrats had not, in fact, impeached Trump because impeachment is not a vote, it’s a process. Feldman wrote:

The Constitution doesn’t say how fast the articles must go to the Senate. Some modest delay is not inconsistent with the Constitution, or how both chambers usually work.

But an indefinite delay would pose a serious problem. Impeachment as contemplated by the Constitution does not consist merely of the vote by the House, but of the process of sending the articles to the Senate for trial. Both parts are necessary to make an impeachment under the Constitution: The House must actually send the articles and send managers to the Senate to prosecute the impeachment. And the Senate must actually hold a trial.

If the House does not communicate its impeachment to the Senate, it hasn’t actually impeached the president. If the articles are not transmitted, Trump could legitimately say that he wasn’t truly impeached at all.

Attorney General William Barr said in an interview with Fox News following the vote on impeachment that the Democrats were “trivializing” impeachment and using it as a “political tool.”

“As a general matter, I think we have to be careful about trivializing the process and they put in a hurdle of high crimes – of treason, bribery, and other high crimes,” Barr told Fox News’ Martha MacCallum on “The Story.”


The attorney general added, “The articles of impeachment here do not allege a violation of law and it looks as if it’s going to be along partisan lines – I think – I’m concerned about it being trivialized and used as a political tool.”

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www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/12/20/biden-probe-gop-senators-request-ukraine-interview-with-dossier-hoaxer-victoria-nuland/

Victoria Nuland, a former senior official the Obama-era State Department who played a key role in disseminating the anti-Trump dossier, has been asked by three Senate GOP chairmen to provide an interview as part of the lawmakers’ investigation into possible corruption related to Ukraine and Joe and Hunter Biden.

The interview request, also sent to four other ex-Obama administration officials, may be particularly instructive since email chains reportedly show Nuland worked closely on Ukraine issues with Eric Ciaramella, whom Real Clear Investigations suggests is the likely so-called whistleblower.




Breitbart News further reported that Ciaramella was part of an Obama administration email chain celebrating the eventual signing of a $1 billion U.S. loan guarantee to Ukraine in addition to numerous other emails.

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Schumer: GOP Senators Will Never Call Hunter Biden to Testify, It Would 'Backfire'

Ciaramella also received emails about Ukraine policy from a top director at George Soros’s Open Society Foundations, Breitbart News recently reported. The emails informed Ciaramella and a handful of other Obama administration foreign policy officials that included Nuland about Soros’s whereabouts, the contents of Soros’s private meetings about Ukraine and a future meeting the billionaire activist was holding with the prime minister of Ukraine.

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Nuland served as assistant secretary of state for European affairs, where she worked closely with Ciaramella.

On Wednesday, Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) , Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) gave Nuland and the four others until Monday to respond to their requests. The senators chair the Judiciary, Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, and Finance committees, respectively.



The senators wrote: “These interview requests continue the chairmen’s oversight efforts … related to potential conflicts of interest and political influence by Ukrainian elements, including the natural gas firm Burisma, which employed Hunter Biden as a board member while his father was vice president and the public face of the Obama administration’s handling of Ukraine.”

Besides Nuland, the senators also asked for staff-level interviews with Under Secretary of State for Economic Growth, Energy, and the Environment Catherine Novelli, former Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken, former Biden energy adviser Amos Hochstein and David Wade, John Kerry’s fomer chief of staff.

Ciaramella’s name comes up in six Obama-era government emails that were released by the State Department as part of two previous Freedom of Information Act requests. At the time of the exchanges, Ciaramella served as the Director for Baltic and Eastern European Affairs for the Obama-era National Security Council, where he worked on Ukraine policy. He is now an analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency.



The email about the loan guarantee to Ukraine is one of several that shows Ciaramella in the loop with top officials such as Nuland working on Ukraine policy under the Obama administration.

The loan guarantee was pushed through after Ukraine agreed to several reforms, especially the firing of the nation’s top prosecutor, Viktor Shokin. This at a time that Shokin was reportedly investigating Burisma, the Ukranian natural gas company paying Hunter Biden. Joe Biden infamously boasted on video about personally threatening to withhold loan guarantees from Ukraine unless Shokin was removed.

Another released email shows Ciaramella himself sending a message to Nuland and others. Most of the contents are blocked out, including the email’s subject line. One non-classified section of that email shows a reply stating, “Embassy Kyiv — coordinated with our USAID mission folks — will have detailed input tomorrow.”


One email involving Nuland was sent two days before the loan guarantee was signed on June 3, 2016. “Can you confirm who will be doing the actual signing for each side?” the exchange asked.

Separate emails show Ciaramella and Nuland being updated by the Open Society about Soros’s Ukraine activities.

In one instance, Jeff Goldstein, senior policy analyst for Eurasia at the Open Society Foundations, sent a June 9, 2016 email to Nuland and Ciaramella, who were the missive’s primary recipients.

CC’d were three other State Department officials involved in European affairs, including Alexander Kasanof who worked at the U.S. embassy in Kiev.

The message read:

I wanted to let you know that Mr. Soros met with Johannes Hahn in Brussels earlier today. One of the issues he raised was concern over the decision to delay the visa liberalization for Georgia and the implications for Ukraine.

The email revealed that “GS” – meaning Soros – “is also meeting [Georgian] President [Giorgi] Margvelashvili today and speaking with PM Groyman,” referring to Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman.

The email stated that Soros told Hahn “that Ukrainian civil society is concerned that without reciprocity from the EU for steps Ukraine has taken to put in place sensitive anti-corruption and anti-discrimination legislation and institutions it will not be possible to continue to use the leverage of EU instruments and policies to maintain pressure for reforms in the future.”



Soros also “urged Hahn to advocate with member states to move ahead with visa liberalization for Ukraine,” the email related.

“I’m sure you’ve been working this issue hard; if you have any thoughts on how this is likely to play out or where particular problems lie I’d appreciate if you could let us know,” the email concluded.

Goldstein’s email text sent to Nuland and Ciaramella was not addressed to any one individual.

Nuland replied that she would be happy to discuss the issues by phone. Goldstein set up a phone call and wrote that Soros specifically asked that an employee from the billionaire’s “personal office” join the call with Nuland.

The email was released last August as part of a separate Freedom of Information Act request by the conservative group Citizens United. The FOIA request was unrelated to Ciaramella.

Johannes Hahn, referenced in the emails as meeting with Soros about Ukraine, is the European Commissioner for Neighborhood Policy and Enlargement Negotiations.

In 2015, Hahn participated with Nuland in the YES Summit, which bills itself as “the leading public diplomacy platform in Eastern Europe.”



Another summit participant was Vadym Pozharskyi, a board advisor to Burisma, the Ukranian natural gas company at the center of the impeachment trial and the allegations related to Hunter and Joe Biden.

On scores of occasions, Hahn was a featured speaker at roundtables and other events produced by the Atlantic Council think tank, which is funded by and works in partnership with Burisma.

The Atlantic Council is also financed by Soros’s Open Society Foundations and has been in the news for ties to various actors associated with the impeachment issue.

In one of several instances, Breitbart News reported, itinerary for a trip to Ukraine in August organized by the Atlantic Council reveals that a staffer on Rep. Adam Schiff’s House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence held a meeting during the trip with Acting U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Bill Taylor, now a key witness for Democrats pursuing impeachment. The Schiff staffer is also an Atlantic Council fellow, while Taylor has evidenced a close relationship with the Atlantic Council.

Breitbart News previously reported on other emails that show Ciaramella worked closely with Nuland.

Nuland has come under repeated fire for her various roles in the anti-Trump dossier controversy.

In their book, Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin’s War on America and the Election of Donald Trump, authors and reporters Michael Isikoff and David Corn write that Nuland gave the green light for the FBI to first meet with Steele regarding his dossier’s claims. It was at that meeting that Steele initially reported his dossier charges to the FBI, the book relates.

FBI notes cite career Justice Department official Bruce Ohr as saying that Nuland was in touch with Fusion GPS co-founder and dossier producer Glenn Simpson.

Sen. John McCain, who infamously delivered the dossier to then-FBI Director James Comey, reportedly first dispatched an aide, David J. Kramer, to inquire with Nuland about the dossier claims.



Meanwhile, looped into some other email chains with Ciaramella was then-Secretary of State John Kerry’s chief of staff at the State Department, John Finer.

An extensive New Yorker profile of Steele named Finer as obtaining the contents of a two-page summary of the dossier and eventually deciding to share the questionable document with Kerry.

Finer reportedly received the dossier summary from Jonathan M. Winer, the Obama State Department official who acknowledged regularly interfacing and exchanging information with Steele, according to the report. Winer previously conceded that he shared the dossier summary with Nuland.

After his name surfaced in news media reports related to probes by House Republicans into the dossier, Winer authored a Washington Post oped in which he conceded that while he was working at the State Department he exchanged documents and information with Steele.

Winer further acknowledged that while at the State Department, he shared anti-Trump material with Steele passed to him by longtime Clinton confidant Sidney Blumenthal, whom Winer described as an “old friend.” Winer wrote that the material from Blumenthal – which Winer in turn gave to Steele – originated with Cody Shearer, who is a controversial figure long tied to various Clinton scandals.

In testimony last year, Nuland made statements about a meeting at the State Department in October 2016 between State officials and Steele, but said that she didn’t participate.

At a June 2018 hearing, Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) revealed contents of the State Department’s visitor logs while he was grilling Nuland.

At the hearing, Burr asked: “I know you talked extensively with our staff relative to Mr. Steele. Based upon our review of the visitor logs of the State Department, Mr. Steele visited the State Department briefing officials on the dossier in October of 2016. Did you have any role in that briefing?”



“I did not,” Nuland replied. “I actively chose not to be part of that briefing.”

“But were you aware of that briefing?” Burr asked.

“I was not aware of it until afterwards,” Nuland retorted.

Nuland did not explain how she can actively chose not to be part of Steele’s briefing, as she claimed, yet say she was unaware of the briefing until after it occurred. Nuland was not asked about the discrepancy during the public section of the testimony, which was reviewed in full by Breitbart News.

Nuland previously served as chief of staff to Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott under Bill Clinton’s administration, and then served as deputy director for former Soviet Union affairs.

Nuland faced confirmation questions prior to her most recent appointment as assistant secretary of state over her reported role in revising controversial Obama administration talking points about the 2012 Benghazi terrorist attacks. Her reported changes sought to protect Hillary Clinton’s State Department from accusations that it failed to adequately secure the woefully unprotected U.S. Special Mission in Benghazi.

Likely ‘whistleblower’

A RealClearInvestigations report by investigative journalist and author Paul Sperry named Ciaramella as best fitting the description of the so-called whistleblower.

Officials with direct knowledge of the proceedings say Ciaramella’s name has been raised in private in impeachment depositions and during at least one House open hearing that was not part of the formal impeachment proceedings.

Federal documents show Ciaramella also worked closely with Joe Biden and worked under Susan Rice, President Obama’s national security adviser. He also worked with former CIA Director John Brennan, an anti-Trump advocate who has faced controversy for his role in fueling the questionable Russia collusion investigation. Rice participated in Russia collusion probe meetings and reportedly unmasked senior members of Trump’s presidential campaign.

Sperry cites former White House officials saying Ciaramella worked for Biden on Ukrainian policy issues in 2015 and 2016, encompassing the time period for which Biden has been facing possible conflict questions for leading Ukraine policy in light of Hunter Biden’s work for Burisma.

Mark Zaid and Andrew Bakaj, the activist attorneys representing the so-called whistleblower, refused to confirm on deny that their secretive client is indeed Ciaramella.

“We neither confirm nor deny the identity of the Intelligence Community Whistleblower,” the lawyers told the Washington Examiner in response to an inquiry about Ciaramella.

Zaid and Bakaj added, “Our client is legally entitled to anonymity. Disclosure of the name of any person who may be suspected to be the whistleblower places that individual and their family in great physical danger. Any physical harm the individual and/or their family suffers as a result of disclosure means that the individuals and publications reporting such names will be personally liable for that harm. Such behavior is at the pinnacle of irresponsibility and is intentionally reckless.”

Soros funding and ‘whistleblower’ complaint

Besides Burisma funding, the Atlantic Council is also financed by Soros’s Open Society Foundations, Google, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Inc., and the U.S. State Department.

Google, Soros’s Open Society Foundations, the Rockefeller Fund, and an agency of the State Department each also finance a self-described investigative journalism organization repeatedly referenced as a source of information in the so-called whistleblower’s complaint alleging Trump was “using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country” in the 2020 presidential race.

The charges in the July 22 report referenced in the so-called whistleblower’s document and released by the Google and Soros-funded organization, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), seem to be the public precursors for a lot of the so-called whistleblower’s own claims, as Breitbart News documented.

One key section of the so-called whistleblower’s document claims that “multiple U.S. officials told me that Mr. Giuliani had reportedly privately reached out to a variety of other Zelensky advisers, including Chief of Staff Andriy Bohdan and Acting Chairman of the Security Service of Ukraine Ivan Bakanov.”

This was allegedly to follow up on Trump’s call with Zelensky in order to discuss the “cases” mentioned in that call, according to the so-called whistleblower’s narrative. The complainer was clearly referencing Trump’s request for Ukraine to investigate the Biden corruption allegations.

Even though the statement was written in first person – “multiple U.S. officials told me” – it contains a footnote referencing a report by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP).

That footnote reads:

In a report published by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) on 22 July, two associates of Mr. Giuliani reportedly traveled to Kyiv in May 2019 and met with Mr. Bakanov and another close Zelensky adviser, Mr. Serhiy Shefir.

The so-called whistleblower’s account goes on to rely upon that same OCCRP report on three more occasions. It does so to:

Write that Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko “also stated that he wished to communicate directly with Attorney General Barr on these matters.”
Document that Trump adviser Rudy Giuliani “had spoken in late 2018 to former Prosecutor General Shokin, in a Skype call arranged by two associates of Mr. Giuliani.”
Bolster the charge that, “I also learned from a U.S. official that ‘associates’ of Mr. Giuliani were trying to make contact with the incoming Zelenskyy team.” The so-called whistleblower then relates in another footnote, “I do not know whether these associates of Mr. Giuliani were the same individuals named in the 22 July report by OCCRP, referenced above.”
The OCCRP report repeatedly referenced is actually a “joint investigation by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and BuzzFeed News, based on interviews and court and business records in the United States and Ukraine.”

BuzzFeed infamously also first published the full anti-Trump dossier alleging unsubstantiated collusion betwe en Trump’s presidential campaign and Russia. The dossier was paid for by Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee, and was produced by the Fusion GPS opposition dirt outfit.

The OCCRP and BuzzFeed “joint investigation” resulted in both OCCRP and BuzzFeed publishing similar lengthy pieces on July 22 claiming that Giuliani was attempting to use connections to have Ukraine investigate Trump’s political rivals.

The so-called whistleblower’s document, however, only mentions the largely unknown OCCRP and does not reference BuzzFeed, which has faced scrutiny over its reporting on the Russia collusion claims.

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On Friday the Department of Justice declassified an order from FISA Judge Collyer written on December 5th on the fraud perpetrated on the court by Obama operatives. Conservative Treehouse posted a copy of the declassified report.


theconservativetreehouse.com/2019/12/20/fisc-releases-previously-classified-judge-collyer-order-what-other-fisa-cases-was-kevin-clinesmith-involved-in/#more-179071



The FISA Court also expanded its investigation to include ALL warrants brought before the court by far left FBI Attorney Kevin Clinesmith.

thehill.com/policy/national-security/475547-fisa-court-broadening-investigation-into-fbi-warrant-applications

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court (FISA) that approved FBI surveillance of former Trump campaign aide Carter Page is now investigating other applications it’s received from one of the agency’s attorneys accused of making an inappropriate change to the Page application.

The review, which was announced in an order released Friday, hints at a comprehensive effort by the secretive court to reevaluate surveillance after the Justice Department inspector general’s report found errors in the Page application process.

In the order, written on Dec. 5 and declassified Friday, the court requested that the executive branch identify “all other matters currently or previously before this Court” that involved FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith. The court also requested explanations of how the Justice Department and FBI are ensuring that Clinesmith’s submissions were accurate.

The order goes on to ask for information as to whether Clinesmith faces possible disciplinary action from the bar regarding the change he made in the application for surveillance on Page.

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www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/12/20/report-hunter-biden-says-requests-for-his-financials-unreasonable-in-child-support-case/

Hunter Biden’s lawyers have accused their client’s apparent baby mother of attempting to “embarrass” him as part of an increasingly bitter paternity lawsuit, according to a report.

The Daily Mail reports the former vice president’s son has complained that Lunden Roberts’s requests will make his business activities “open to the world’s media.” The younger Biden is also said to be fuming about having to partake in a deposition the night before Christmas Eve, new court papers obtained by the outlet show. Hunter’s lawyers write that the scheduled December 23rd interview could “unreasonably annoy, embarrass or oppress” the 49-year-old and his family.


The development comes as Roberts, a 28-year-old stripper, is demanding child support for her 16-month-old baby, who she had with Biden, per DNA test results revealed in court documents. Roberts filed a paternity lawsuit in May, alleging the pair first met at a Washington, D.C., strip club where she once worked.

Earlier this month, the Daily Mail reported that Roberts has requested information about how much Biden was paid as a board member of Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian gas company at the center of allegations of corruption against him and his father. Several reports indicate Hunter was paid up to $83,000 a month by the firm despite having no expertise in the energy space. Roberts also requested that Biden confirm whether he or an “entity owned, controlled or under your direction or supervision” received funds from a Chinese national or entity for investment purposes, court documents reportedly show.

Meanwhile, a judge in Independence County, Arkansas, has criticized both Biden and Roberts for not being transparent about their financial situations and asked for an affidavit of financial means from both parties.

“I do not want this drug out nor do I want to have to drag out the monies these individuals may have received in any form or fashion,” wrote Judge Don McSpadden. “It concerns me that the only information supplied to the court so far concerning employment of either party has been unemployment or under employment.”

The request comes as Biden’s dealings have received scrutiny from Republican Senators, who face calls to seek the former vice president’s son’s testimony as part of the Senate’s likely impeachment trial. On Wednesday, Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), and Ron Johnson (R-WI) requested interviews and records from former Obama administration officials as part of an inquiry into allegations of corruption against the younger Biden.

As he continues this legal fight, the newlywed Biden appears to be expecting his first child with wife Melissa Cohen Biden.

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And, back to the Russia well again.....

www.breitbart.com/clips/2019/12/20/dem-rep-torres-i-am-afraid-that-vladimir-putin-may-have-something-on-the-president/

On Friday’s broadcast of CNN’s “Right Now,” Rep. Norma Torres (D-CA) said she is afraid Russian President Vladimir Putin has negative information he is leveraging to control President Donald Trump.

Torres said, “I am afraid that Vladimir Putin may have something on the president. And it is the reason why the president has continued to play the handmaid to Vladimir Putin, inviting him to the White House and opening the doors and not having any advisers present, taking the notes from the interpreter and continuing to talk to him and continuing to parrot everything that he tells him.”




She added, “Russia is no friend of the U.S. They ever never been a friend to us. They continue to compromise us internationally. They continue to attack our friends and our allies overseas. So we have to be very careful, we have to keep a close eye on how this continues to evolve.”

Keilar said, “You said you think that Putin may have something, meaning compromising information, compromat, as it’s said in Russia, on President Trump? Do you have proof of that? Is there something specific that you’re thinking of when you say that.”

Torre said, “There is no other reason why President Trump continues to capitulate to what Putin is telling him. He doesn’t do that with anyone else. He doesn’t do that with his advisers. He doesn’t do that with his American Ambassadors, who are providing him time and time and time again. National security advisers that tell him that this is nothing but Russia propaganda that he continues to not believe our own intelligence over Putin.”

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www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/12/20/llawmakers-signal-impeachment-trial-details-will-remain-unsettled-into-the-new-year/

Senate leaders signaled on Thursday that the details of the Senate impeachment trial will largely remain a mystery heading into the New Year, as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) failed to reach an agreement on key details of the trial.

The two leaders had what McConnell described as a “cordial” conversation on Thursday but confirmed that they remain at an “impasse.”


McConnell said, according to the Hill:

As of today, however, we remain at an impasse because my friend, the Democratic leader, continues to demand a new and different set of rules for President Trump. We remain at an impasse on these logistics.

Those logistical questions revolve around documents and witnesses — including acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and former national security adviser John Bolton — which Schumer claims are necessary to “ensure a fair trial.”

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McConnell is expected to “consider Sen. Schumer’s proposal over the holidays,” according to Schumer spokesman Justin Goodman.

“Senator Schumer made clear to Sen. McConnell that the witnesses and documents are necessary to ensure a fair trial in the Senate,” Goodman stated, according to the Hill.



“Sen. Schumer asked Sen. McConnell to consider Sen. Schumer’s proposal over the holidays because Sen. Schumer and his caucus believe the witnesses and documents are essential to a fair Senate trial,” he added.

Senate leaders, however, say additional witnesses are unnecessary, as Democrats should have already made their case in the House.

“The Senate is meant to act as judge and jury to hear a trial, not to rerun the entire fact-finding investigation because angry partisans rushed sloppily through it,” McConnell said on Tuesday.

He continued:

So now the Senate Democratic leader would apparently like our chamber to do House Democrats’ homework for them. He wants to volunteer the Senate’s time and energy on a fishing expedition to see whether his own ideas could make Chairman Schiff’s sloppy work more persuasive than Chairman Schiff himself bothered to make it.

So, madame president, this concept is dead wrong. The Senate is meant to act as judge and jury to hear a trial, not to rerun the entire fact-finding investigation because angry partisans rushed sloppily through it. The trajectory that the Democratic leader apparently wants to take us down or before he’s even heard opening arguments could set a nightmare nightmarish precedent for our institution.

If the Senate volunteers ourselves to do House Democrats’ homework for them, we will only incentivize an endless strain of dubious partisan impeachments in the future, and we will invite future Houses to paralyze future Senates with frivolous impeachments at will.

I am not going to support witnesses being called for by the president. I am not going to support witnesses being called for by Sen. [Charles] Schumer [D-N.Y.],” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said Wednesday.

“I continue to believe that the unanimous bipartisan precedent that was good enough for President Clinton ought to be good enough for President Trump,” McConnell added on Thursday. “Fair is fair.”

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Maxine Waters went on with MSNBC News this week following the Democrat Party vote to impeach Trump. Maxine warned MSNBC after the vote that if Trump is exonerated by the Senate, “He will bring Putin into the White House for a meeting!” Apparently, this is a bad thing.

For clarification purposes Maxine, would that be the same Putin that 0bama lifted the Bush sanctions on?, the same Putin Hillary gave the plastic “Reset Button” to?, the same Putin 0bama told “I’ll be more flexible after my re-election”?, the same Putin that annexed Crimea while 0bama sat on his hands??

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More deaths of Democrat allies who became liabilities. Reportedly, Joseph Mifsud is dead.

www.ilgiornale.it/news/politica/mifsud-ora-giallo-sospetto-procura-quasi-certamente-morto-1801685.html

But who was Mifsud? And what did he do? Until 2013, the Maltese professor was president of the university center of Agrigento. In its management, however, something went wrong: budget holes and crazy expenses risked killing the institution. For this reason, the Agrigento prosecutor has launched an investigation against him. But there has been no trace of Mifsud since 31 October 2017 and now, as highlighted on InsideOver, a tragic suspect is winding through the corridors of the Agrigento court: Mifsud may be dead. A hypothesis that prosecutor’s sources believe “80%” true: “The chances that he died confirm by the court are very high”.

Investigative reporter Sara Carter reached out to Department of Justice officials and they declined to comment on the ongoing investigation or Mifsud. Sara Carter also said she spoke to Roberto Vivaldelli on Friday about this new development.

saraacarter.com/italian-prosecutors-believe-that-joseph-mifsud-the-man-who-started-russiagate-is-dead/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=social-pug

I spoke to Roberto Vivaldelli Friday, and he affirmed that the newest details regarding Mifsud came as a result of their investigation into Mifsud’s time as president of a university in the southern Italian city of Agrigento, Sicily. Currently, prosecutor’s in Agriengento, Sicily are investigating Mifsud’s alleged misuse of university finances and unexplained expenses.

“Mifsud is under investigation for his management of the university and for some crazy expenses,” Vivaldelli told me. “From the information we have gathered, the Italian prosecutors are convinced that the professor is most likely not alive.”

Vivaldelli said a person sent an audio file to the offices of two Italian newspapers last November 11, “but according to an expert we consulted this audio is fake. I personally think it’s incredible that no one knows where Mifsud is, alive or dead.”

DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz was asked this week if Mifsud was a Russian spy and Horowitz declined to answer in an open setting.

A few weeks ago Buzzfeed reported that Mifsud’s passport and wallet sat for 17 months in a Portuguese airport.

The items were found by police in a picturesque coastal town in Madeira, a Portuguese island off the coast of Morocco that’s popular with tourists and best known for being the birthplace of soccer superstar Cristiano Ronaldo. The passport and wallet were found on Aug. 5, 2017, some three months before Mifsud disappeared from public view and six months after he was questioned by FBI officers investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election.


Mifsud reportedly was in fear for his life.

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www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/12/21/jeff-flake-suggests-senate-republicans-put-country-over-party-for-trump-impeachment/

Former Republican Sen. Jeff Flake (AZ) has called on his former colleagues to “put country over party” throughout President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial in a new op-ed for the Washington Post.

“President Trump is on trial. But in a very real sense, so are you. And so is the political party to which we belong,” Flake wrote.




Flake, who represented Arizona in the U.S. Senate from 2013 until 2019, urged his former colleagues to undergo a “simple test,” which involves questioning how former President Barack Obama would have been treated under the same circumstances.

“What if President Barack Obama had engaged in precisely the same behavior?” Flake asked rhetorically. “You would have understood with striking clarity the threat it posed, and you would have known exactly what to do.”

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In the piece, Flake, who has been a frequent critic of President Trump from within the Republican Party, affirms that he believes President Trump has engaged in questionable behavior.

“But what is indefensible is echoing House Republicans who say that the president has not done anything wrong,” Flake stated. “He has.”



According to Flake, Americans have witnessed the “appalling spectacle” where House Republicans “bend to the president’s will by attempting to shift blame with the promotion of bizarre and debunked conspiracy theories.”

“If there ever was a time to put country over party, it is now,” Flake concluded. “And by putting country over party, you might just save the Grand Old Party before it’s too late.”

Earlier this year, in March, Flake suggested that he would rather a Democrat prove successful in the 2020 presidential election than President Trump.

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www.nationalreview.com/2019/12/trump-impeachment-congress-indispensable-power-revisiting-faithless-execution-book/

Impeachment and Second Thoughts
By ANDREW C. MCCARTHY
December 21, 2019 6:30 AM

Revisiting Faithless Execution and Congress’s “indispensable” power.
NRPLUS MEMBER ARTICLE
On impeachment, am I part of the problem? I don’t think so . . . but it’s a fair question. After all, as I’m frequently reminded on Twitter, particularly by people who clearly did not read the book, I am the author of a little 2014 ditty entitled, Faithless Execution — Building the Political Case for Obama’s Impeachment.


I’m proud of the book, but I’ve always had regrets about the subtitle. On books, I strain the brain to come up with a pithy title. Regrettably, subtitles are a staple of the non-fiction biz. I hate them. They attempt to sum up what a book is about in a line catchy enough to interest people in plunking down the sales price. Often, books on complicated topics cannot be fairly summarized in a line, so even a subtitle that is accurate is apt to be incomplete, and hence misleading. This is a problem, not least because many more people will glance at a book’s cover than will peruse its pages.

My subtitle told readers that the book was about building the political case for President Obama’s impeachment due to his failure to execute the laws faithfully. This was accurate, but not complete. The book’s thesis is that (a) impeachment is a political remedy, a precondition for which is the making of a political case that persuades the public that the president should be removed; and (b) unless the public is strongly persuaded, such that two-thirds of the Senate is moved to convict, it would be a mistake for the House to impeach in the first place.

It would be reasonable, then, for a person who just spied the cover of my book to assume I was calling for President Obama’s impeachment. To the contrary, I argued that it would be a mistake for the then-Republican-controlled House to impeach Obama, even if he had committed impeachable offenses and was threatening our constitutional order (as I believed was the case), unless it was plausible that a Senate supermajority would vote to oust him. I conceded that this was highly unlikely, but that one would never know for sure unless one tried to make the public case. Trying (as I did) to make that case was worth doing irrespective of whether a formal impeachment attempt in the House would ultimately be reasonable; public pressure might induce the president to mend his ways.

In the Trump impeachment misadventure, I’ve described our conception of impeachment as “bipolar.” This is a leitmotif of Faithless Execution. On the one hand, we have an abstract legal understanding of what an impeachable offense is. Derived from British common law and colonial experience, it is best explained by Hamilton in Federalist No. 65. On the other hand, we have a practical political understanding that an impeachable offense must be so egregious that it justifies going through the upheaval that removing a president necessarily entails. This is also addressed in Federalist No. 65, with Hamilton observing that impeachment is committed to the Senate rather than a court because it should be decided by a numerous tribunal of statesmen exercising sound judgment, free from the legal constraints that bind prosecutors and judges.

In attempting to resolve this tension, I was not quite as cynical as the late President Gerald R. Ford had been about the impossibility of imposing a fixed legal test on impeachment. In 1970, when he was the House minority leader making a futile attempt to impeach Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, Ford famously said that “an impeachable offense is whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers [it] to be at a given moment in history.” I did, however, opine that you could have a hundred impeachable offenses in the abstract legal sense, but you don’t truly have any impeachable offense absent abominable executive excess that galvanizes the public, and thus the Senate.

In retrospect, maybe my subtitle should have been “Why Obama Is Impeachable, But Not Impeachable” — though I doubt that would have been much better.

In any event, Faithless Execution addressed a deep flaw in modern American governance: the erosion of restraints on executive power.

The Framers decided, after some hesitation and with reluctance, to include impeachment in the Constitution because it was “indispensable” (Madison’s word). The presidency needed to be powerful, but that gave it a unique potential to damage, or even destroy, the republic and its new constitutional order. That aside, the sophisticated men who designed our system knew there would be plenty of executive overreach and error. This “maladministration” would be bad, but not bad enough to warrant removal. The Framers thus assumed that Congress’s principal check on the president would be the power of the purse: Control of funding could gut a president’s dubious initiatives and incentivize a president to behave lawfully. The Senate would also have the power to deny confirmation of officials the president would need to carry out programs.

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Trump Impeachment Vote
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), center, speaks to the media with (from left) House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA), House Oversight and Reform Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, House Foreign Affairs Chairman Eliot Engel (D-NY), House Ways and Means Chairman Richard Neal (D-MA), and House Financial Services Chairwoman Maxine Waters (D-CA) after voting on two articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump on Capitol Hill, December 18, 2019.

Tom Brenner/Reuters

The problem, after a century of progressive governance, is that these checks do not work anymore. The federal government and its administrative state have grown monstrously big. Federal money is now as much tied to social welfare as to traditional government functions. Budgeting is slap-dash and dysfunctional. To threaten to deny funds or leave agencies leaderless is to be seen, not as reining in executive excess, but as heartlessly harming this or that interest group. Lawmakers would rather run up tens of trillions in debt than be portrayed that way.


The only real check left is impeachment. It is rarely invoked and (until very recently) has atrophied as a credible threat. But that doesn’t make it any less indispensable.


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The problem was exacerbated by the Clinton impeachment fiasco, which history has proved foolhardy. (I supported it at the time, but I was a government lawyer then, not a public commentator.) Republicans were sufficiently spooked by the experience that they seemed to regard impeachment as obsolete. Faithless Execution countered that this was the wrong lesson to take from the affair. Clinton’s impeachment was a mistake because (a) his conduct, though disgraceful and indicative of unfitness, did not implicate the core responsibilities of the presidency; and more significantly, (b) the public, though appalled by the behavior, strongly opposed Clinton’s removal. The right lesson was that impeachment must be reserved for grave misconduct that involves the president’s essential Article II duties; and that because impeachment is so deeply divisive, it should never be launched in the absence of a public consensus that transcends partisan lines.

This is why, unlike many opponents of President Trump’s impeachment, I have never questioned the legitimacy of the Democratic-controlled House’s investigations of misconduct allegations against the president. I believe the House must act as a body (investigations should not be partisan attacks under the guise of House inquiries), and it must respect the lawful and essential privileges of the executive branch; but within those parameters, Congress has the authority and responsibility to expose executive misconduct.

Moreover, while egregious misconduct will usually be easy to spot and grasp, that will not always be the case. When members of Congress claim to see it, they should have a fair opportunity to expose and explain it. To my mind, President Obama was the kind of chief executive that the Framers feared, but this was not obvious because he was not committing felonies. Instead, he was consciously undermining our constitutional order. He usurped the right to dictate law rather than execute it. His extravagant theory of executive discretion to “waive” the enforcement of laws he opposed flouted his basic constitutional duty to execute the laws faithfully. He and his underlings willfully and serially deceived Congress and the public on such major matters as Obamacare and the Benghazi massacre. They misled Congress on, and obstructed its investigation of, the outrageous Fast and Furious “gun-walking” operation, in connection with which a border patrol agent was murdered. With his Iran deal, the president flouted the Constitution’s treaty process and colluded with a hostile foreign power to withhold information from Congress, in an arrangement that empowered (and paid cash ransom to) the world’s leading sponsor of anti-American terrorism.

My critics fairly noted that I opposed Obama politically, and therefore contended that I was masquerading as a constitutional objection what was really a series of policy disputes. I don’t think that is right, though, for two reasons.

First, my impeachment argument was not that Obama was pursuing policies I deeply opposed. I was very clear that elections have consequences, and the president had every right to press his agenda. My objection was that he was imposing his agenda lawlessly, breaking the limitations within which the Framers cabined executive power, precisely to prevent presidents from becoming tyrants. If allowed to stand, Obama precedents would permanently alter our governing framework. Impeachment is there to protect our governing framework.

Second, I argued that, my objections notwithstanding, Obama should not be impeached in the absence of a public consensus for his removal. Yes, Republicans should try to build that case, try to edify the public about why the president’s actions threatened the Constitution and its separation of powers. But they should not seek to file articles of impeachment simply because they could — i.e., because control of the House theoretically gave them the numbers to do it. The House is not obliged to file impeachment articles just because there may be impeachable conduct. Because impeachment is so divisive, the Framers feared that it could be triggered on partisan rather than serious grounds. The two-thirds supermajority requirement for Senate conviction guards against that: The House should not impeach unless there is a reasonable possibility that the Senate would remove — which, in Obama’s case, there was not.

I also tried to focus on incentives. If impeachment were a credible threat, and Congress began investigating and publicly exposing abuses, a sensible president would desist in the misconduct, making it unnecessary to proceed with impeachment. On the other hand, a failed impeachment effort would likely embolden a rogue president to continue abusing power. If your real concern is executive lawlessness, then impeaching heedlessly and against public opinion would be counterproductive.


I’ve taken the same tack with President Trump.

The objections to Trump are very different from those to Obama. He is breaking not laws but norms of presidential behavior and decorum. For the most part, I object to this. There are lots of things about our government that need disruption, but even disruptive presidents should be mindful that they hold the office of Washington and Lincoln and aspire to their dignity, even if their greatness is out of reach.

That said, impeachment is about serious abuse of the presidency’s core powers, not behavior that is intemperate or gauche. Critics must be mindful that the People, not the pundits, are sovereign, and they elected Donald Trump well aware of his flaws. That he turns out to be as president exactly what he appeared to be as a candidate is not a rationale for impeaching him.

The president’s misconduct on Ukraine is small potatoes. Democrats were right to expose it, and we would be dealing with a more serious situation if the defense aid appropriated by Congress had actually been denied, rather than inconsequentially delayed. If Democrats had wanted to make a point about discouraging foreign interference in American politics (notwithstanding their long record of encouraging it), that would have been fine. They could have called for the president’s censure, which would have put Republicans on the defensive. Ukraine could have been incorporated as part of their 2020 campaign that Trump should be defeated, despite a surging economy and relative peace.

Conducting an impeachment inquiry is one thing, but for the House to take the drastic step of impeaching the president is abusive on this record. Yes, it was foolish of Trump to mention the Bidens to President Zelensky and to seek Ukraine’s help in investigating the Bidens. There may well be corruption worth probing, but the president ought to leave that to researchers in his campaign. If there is something that a government should be looking into, leave that to the Justice Department, which can (and routinely does) seek foreign assistance when necessary. The president, however, should have stayed out of it. Still, it is absurd to posit, as Democrats do, that, by not staying out of it, the president threatened election integrity and U.S. national security. Such outlandish arguments may make Ukraine more of a black eye for Democrats than for the president.

But whoever ultimately bears the brunt of the impeachment push, I have to ask myself a hard question: Is this the world I was asking for when I wrote a book contending that, for our system to work as designed, impeachment has to be a credible threat? I don’t think so . . . but I do worry about it.

Back to the Clinton impeachment. I tried to make the point that that impeachment effort — against public opinion, and based on misconduct that, while dreadful, was not central to the presidency — has contributed significantly to the poisonous politics we have today. Democrats have been looking for payback ever since, and now they have it — in a way that is very likely to make impeachment more routine in the future.

I don’t see how our constitutional system can work without a viable impeachment remedy. But I may have been wrong to believe that we could be trusted to invoke the remedy responsibly. I used to poke fun at pols who would rather hide under their desks than utter the dreaded I-word. Turns out they knew something I didn’t.

[soonernvolved]

Kind of important:

dailycaller.com/2019/12/21/fisa-carter-page-fbi-review/

FISA Judge Orders FBI To Identify All Cases Involving Lawyer Who Allegedly Altered Carter Page Email

The top judge on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court ordered the FBI to review cases involving a bureau attorney who allegedly altered an email regarding Carter Page.

Judge Rosemary Collyer ordered the review in a secret filing Dec. 5. The FISC released it Friday.

Collyer criticized the FBI for submitting “false” and “misleading” information in order to obtain surveillance warrants against Page.

The judge presiding over the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) ordered the FBI in a secret court filing earlier in December to identify all cases handled by a former FBI lawyer who allegedly altered an email during the investigation of former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.

Judge Rosemary Collyer ordered the review Dec. 5, several days before the release of a Justice Department inspector general’s (IG) report that found the FBI made “significant inaccuracies” in applications to surveil Page.


The report said a now-former FBI lawyer who has been identified as Kevin Clinesmith altered an email from the bureau’s liaison to the CIA in June 2017 to say Page was “not a source” for the agency. (RELATED: FISA Judge Blasts FBI For Withholding Information About Carter Page)

Shortly after altering the email, the FBI and Justice Department submitted a final application to renew surveillance against Page.

Clinesmith was one of the FBI’s top lawyers on Crossfire Hurricane before it was handed over to the special counsel’s office. He took part in a February 2017 interview with George Papadopoulos, another Trump campaign adviser.

Clinesmith, who recently resigned from the FBI, has also been identified as the FBI employee who sent anti-Trump text messages discussed in a separate IG report released in 2018. According to the report, a lawyer identified as Clinesmith wrote Nov. 21, 2016, to a colleague, “Viva le [sic] Resistance!,” during a discussion about opposing Trump.

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The Justice Department notified the FISC of Clinesmith’s actions in a letter Nov. 25. Federal guidelines require that the government inform the FISC if it discovers that surveillance warrant filings “contained a misstatement or omission of material fact.”

In her order, Collyer said the Justice Department now has to “identify all other matters currently or previously before this Court that involved the participation of the FBI OGC attorney.” She set Friday as the deadline to hand over the information.

Collyer also ordered the FBI to disclose whether Clinesmith has been referred to any bar associates for investigation or disciplinary action. The Justice Department is reportedly conducting a criminal investigation into Clinesmith’s actions.

Collyer released another order Tuesday blasting the FBI for submitting “false” and “misleading” applications for the surveillance warrants. That order said the Justice Department reported other omissions in the Carter Page applications to the FISC in July 2018.


Collyer’s order does not address the activities of other FBI employees who withheld information from the court, including “Case Agent 1,” an FBI counterintelligence agent who is criticized heavily in the IG report.

“Case Agent 1 was primarily responsible for some of the most significant errors and omissions in the FISA applications,” the IG report stated.

The agent is not accused of altering documents, but the report laid out six areas where he withheld information that was exculpatory for Page or derogatory for Christopher Steele, the former British spy whose dossier the FBI used in the Page applications.

The agent played a key role in several aspects of the investigation. He was the FBI handler for Stefan Halper, an informant who the bureau used to make contact with Page and George Papadopoulos, another Trump campaign aide.

The IG report stated Case Agent 1 failed to tell the Justice Department and FISC about exculpatory remarks that Page and Papadopoulos told Halper.

The agent also took part in a January 2017 interview with the main source for Christopher Steele’s dossier. The source disputed key parts of the dossier during that interview, and said that Steele had passed along rumor and speculation as fact. The agents failed to disclose the derogatory information about Steele to the FISC.

The agent, who initiated the FISA application against Page, also failed to tell Justice Department attorneys in August 2016 that the Trump adviser was an “operational contact” for the CIA. The agent falsely stated that Page’s relationship with the CIA ended far earlier than it actually did.

[kcrufnek]

Dec 21, 2019 13:22:08 GMT -6 soonernvolved said:

Good interview with Barr by Martha McCallum. He lets us know that Durham doesn't write reports. He issues indictments. 

www.foxnews.com/shows/the-story

[kcrufnek]

I've seen some reports where some think Joseph Mifsud is dead

[soonernvolved]

President Trump shined light on Paul Pelosi’s shady dealings with Ukraine:

[soonernvolved]

Texas Republican Representative Michael Burgess revealed during an interview on Friday that Democrats are still refusing to release transcripts of depositions that were conducted in secret by Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA).

[soonernvolved]

www.zerohedge.com/commodities/maddow-meltdown-defense-oan-lawsuit-host-argues-her-words-are-not-facts

Maddow Meltdown: In Defense To OAN Lawsuit, Host Argues Her Words Are Not Facts

Back in September, we reported that TV network OAN had filed a lawsuit against Rachel Maddow for the time the host said that OAN “really, literally is paid Russian propaganda.”

Now, Maddow finds herself having to come up with a defense for her statement in court. And she has also apparently hired Lionel Hutz as her legal adviser.

According to Culttture, her lawyers argued in a recent motion that "…the liberal host was clearly offering up her ‘own unique expression’ of her views to capture what she saw as the ‘ridiculous’ nature of the undisputed facts. Her comment, therefore, is a quintessential statement ‘of rhetorical hyperbole, incapable of being proved true or false."

Oh, it's capable of being proved false, alright. Maddow had previously claimed, on air, about one of OAN's reporters:

In this case, the most obsequiously pro-Trump right wing news outlet in America is really literally is paid Russian propaganda,” and added, “Their on-air politics reporter (Kristian Rouz) is paid by the Russian government to produce propaganda for that government.”

The testimony of UC Santa Barbara linguistics professor Stefan Thomas Gries, however, stands at odds with Maddow's defense. Gries said: “It is very unlikely that an average or reasonable/ordinary viewer would consider the sentence in question to be a statement of opinion.”

Gries continued: “I am the second most widely-cited cognitive linguist and sixth most widely-cited living corpus linguist. The field of cognitive linguistics draws from both linguistics and psychology and studies how language interacts with cognition.”

OAN had filed the defamation suit in federal court in San Diego, according to AP. OAN is a small, family owned conservative network that is based in San Diego and has received favorable Tweets from the President. It is seen as a competitor to Fox News.

OAN's lawsuit claims that Maddow's comments were retaliation after OAN President Charles Herring accused Comcast of censorship. The suit said that Comcast refuses to carry its channel because “counters the liberal politics of Comcast’s own news channel, MSNBC.”

It was about a week after Herring e-mailed a Comcast executive when Maddow opened her show by referring to a Daily Beast report that claimed an OAN employee also worked for Sputnik News, which has ties to the Russian government.

Maddow said: “In this case, the most obsequiously pro-Trump right-wing news outlet in America really literally is paid Russian propaganda. Their on-air U.S. politics reporter is paid by the Russian government to produce propaganda for that government.”

Except Maddow, likely still upset from spending 3 years trying to promulgate a Russian hoax that didn't exist, didn't quite get her facts straight. Big surprise.

[soonernvolved]

Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) announced on Friday if Democrats DO NOT deliver their articles of impeachment to the US Senate as is required by the US Constitution he will introduce a measure to dismiss Pelosi’s slapdash articles of impeachment on Monday January 6th.

Nancy Pelosi was on notice

She had three days to decide but did not act.

Senator Hawley, the former Attorney General in Missouri, tweeted this warning out on Thursday.

Senator Josh Hawley: Dems said impeachment was URGENT. Now they don’t want to have a trial, because they have no evidence. In real world, if prosecution doesn’t proceed with case, it gets dismissed. So on Monday, I will introduce measure to dismiss this bogus impeachment for lack of prosecution. This will expose Dems’ circus for what it is: a fake impeachment, abuse of the Constitution, based on no evidence. If Dems won’t proceed with trial, bogus articles should be dismissed and @realdonaldtrump fully cleared.

On Monday Senator Hawley came through on his promise and introduced the resolution to allow dismissal of the “bogus impeachment” against President Trump.
The resolution gives Speaker Pelosi 25 days to turn over the Articles of Impeachment or face dismissal of the charges.
That means Pelosi has until Sunday January 25th to turn over the documents.

Senator Hawley today thanked his fellow Republican senators for supporting the measure:

From Senator Josh Hawley’s website:

www.hawley.senate.gov/sen-hawley-introduces-resolution-allow-dismissal-bogus-impeachment-against-president-trump

Monday, January 6, 2020
In response to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s unprecedented attempt to prevent an impeachment trial in the U.S. Senate, Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) today introduced a resolution to update Senate rules to allow a motion to dismiss articles of impeachment for lack of prosecution. Senators Rick Scott (R-Fla.), Mike Braun (R-Ind.), Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Steve Daines (R-Mont.), John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), David Perdue (R-Ga.), and Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) are original cosponsors of the proposed Hawley rule.

Senator Hawley said, “Speaker Pelosi started this bogus impeachment by claiming President Trump was an urgent ‘threat to democracy’ who had to be removed now. But after a bipartisan vote against the articles in the House, and with the public opposed to the Democrats’ partisan games, Pelosi has changed her tune. Now she wants to prevent a Senate trial, perhaps indefinitely. But the Constitution gives the Senate sole power to adjudicate articles of impeachment, not the House. If Speaker Pelosi is afraid to try her case, the articles should be dismissed for failure to prosecute and Congress should get back to doing the people’s business.”

Senator Rick Scott said, “Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer are making a mockery of our government. Democrats have wanted to impeach Donald Trump since he came down that escalator four years ago. They just hate Trump. But Chairman Schiff did a great job showing the American people that the President did nothing wrong and that this is just an effort to undo the 2016 election. If Nancy Pelosi doesn’t want to send the articles to the Senate, we should dismiss the articles of impeachment and get back to work on all the things that aren’t getting done, like securing the border, passing No Budget, No Pay and lowering the cost of prescription drugs.”

Senator Braun said, “Nearly three weeks ago, Nancy Pelosi and her liberal cohorts voted to impeach President Trump, but rather than fulfill their constitutional duty and send the articles of impeachment to the Senate they’ve opted to play more partisan games. In the real world, it’s put up or shut up, which is why I’m introducing a mandate that forces Speaker Pelosi to deliver the articles of impeachment within 25 days. If Pelosi doesn’t think her case is strong enough to deliver within that timeframe then the Senate should be allowed to dismiss the case so we can get back to real problems like lowering the price of prescription drugs and passing USMCA.”

Senator Blackburn said, “After three years of searching for a reason to impeach this president, Democrats in the House cannot seem to find the time to send over the articles of impeachment. Impeachment ought to be reserved for high crimes and misdemeanors – acts that, if identified, require the timely and prompt removal of a president. If House Democrats are so confident in their findings, they ought to have no problem sending the articles over within a 25 day deadline.”

Senator Cruz said, “Since the start of the impeachment process, Speaker Pelosi and House Democrats have made a mockery of our Constitution and abused impeachment for political gain. Now, they’re undermining the role of the Senate by attempting to dictate the terms of the Senate’s trial. Under our Constitution, the Senate has the sole authority to try impeachment. It is the Senate’s duty to take up these articles without delay, and to resolve them in a timely and constitutionally appropriate manner.”

Senator Daines said, “It’s time to put up or shut up, and stand up to Nancy Pelosi. House Democrats have been obsessed with impeaching President Trump before he was even sworn into office. First, they rushed through a rigged process, now they have cold feet. Enough with the political games. It’s time to get back to work for Montana and the American people.”

Senator Barrasso said, “Democrats have been obsessed with impeaching President Trump since day one. They know they don’t have a credible case against the president. Speaker Pelosi cannot dictate how the Senate operates. If she refuses to send the articles of impeachment to the Senate, the Senate should be able to dismiss them.”

Senator Cotton said, “By failing to deliver the articles of impeachment, the Democrats are admitting they bumbled their partisan impeachment. If the articles aren’t delivered in a timely manner, they should be dismissed.”

Senator Ernst said, “Iowans are fed up with this political exercise that’s slowing us down from getting important things done, like passing the USMCA — a trade deal that will create over 175,000 jobs across this country. Speaker Pelosi and House Democrats have been trying to impeach President Trump since day one, and now after voting on the articles, she’s stalling. Why? Because she knows she made a mistake. Iowans aren’t going to put up with this. Speaker Pelosi and her squad need to send over the articles so that we can get back to the people’s business. This resolution sets an important time table that will allow us to do just that.”

Senator Perdue said, “The Democrats’ impeachment process in the U.S. House of Representatives was nothing more than a partisan show trial. Now, Speaker Pelosi and Leader Schumer are trying to play the same political games in the U.S. Senate. President Trump deserves his day in court, and the Senate is fully-prepared to conduct a fair trial. However, if the House refuses to send over the articles, the Senate should have the ability to dismiss and move on to finding real solutions for the American people.”

Senator Inhofe said, “Democrats continue to prove that the impeachment articles are solely about politics. President Trump has clearly done nothing wrong – there was no abuse of power or obstruction of Congress. But now, Speaker Pelosi and top Democrats want to postpone a Senate trial altogether, maybe even indefinitely. I want to clear President Trump’s name once and for all after this ridiculous and unprecedented impeachment process is over and get back to working on issues that actually matter to families in Oklahoma.”

Background
The Senate has adopted a set of 26 rules that govern all impeachment proceedings, known as the “Rules of Procedure and Practice in the Senate When Sitting on Impeachment Trials.” Those Rules presume prompt delivery of the articles of impeachment to the Senate following their adoption by the House. Historically, the House delivered articles of impeachment to the Senate for action almost simultaneously with the vote to impeach. During the Clinton impeachment, for example, the articles were transmitted to the Senate the same day they were approved. Consequently, the current Senate rules have no mechanism to address Speaker Pelosi’s unprecedented attempt to prevent a Senate trial by withholding the articles after the President has been impeached.

Speaker Pelosi’s gambit raises grave constitutional concerns. Article 1, Section 3 gives the Senate the “sole” power to try impeachment cases. But if the Speaker refuses to transmit the articles after the President has been impeached, she could prevent the Senate from exercising its constitutional prerogative, perhaps indefinitely.

Senator Hawley’s resolution would amend the Senate’s impeachment rules to prevent this abuse of the Constitution and protect the Senate’s sole power to try impeachment. The resolution would allow the Senate to dismiss for lack of prosecution any articles of impeachment that the House of Representatives has delayed transmitting for 25 calendar days or more. Under this new rule, any Senator would be entitled to move to dismiss once the allotted time period had elapsed. Any motion to dismiss would be voted upon by the full Senate.

Text of the proposed Hawley rule:
Title: Amending the Rules of Procedure and Practice in the Senate When Sitting on Impeachment Trials.
Resolved, That rule I of the Rules of Procedure and Practice in the Senate When Sitting on Impeachment Trials is amended to read as follows:

“I. Whensoever the Senate shall receive notice from the House of Representatives that managers are appointed on their part to conduct an impeachment against any person and are directed to carry articles of impeachment to the Senate, the Secretary of the Senate shall immediately inform the House of Representatives that the Senate is ready to receive the managers for the purpose of exhibiting such articles of impeachment, agreeably to such notice.

If, following adoption of such articles, the House of Representatives does not so notify the Senate or otherwise provide for such articles to be exhibited to the Senate within 25 calendar days from the date of adoption of such articles, as recorded in the Journal of the House of Representatives, such articles shall be deemed exhibited before the Senate and it shall be in order for any Senator to offer a motion to dismiss such articles with prejudice for failure by the House of Representatives to prosecute such articles. Such motion shall be adopted by an affirmative vote of a majority of the Senators, duly chosen and sworn, without debate by the yeas and nays, which shall be entered on the record.”.

...............................................

House Speaker Pelosi, you have been put on notice.

[soonernvolved]

Hunter Biden, the gift that keeps on giving:

www.breitbart.com/2020-election/2020/01/06/court-docs-hunter-biden-accused-of-identity-theft-to-hide-drug-addiction/

Court Docs: Hunter Biden Accused of Identity Theft to Hide Drug Addiction

Hunter Biden’s long history of drug abuse and the efforts taken to conceal that addiction are taking center stage in the ongoing paternity suit against him in Arkansas.

A private investigator hired by Lunden Roberts, a one-time stripper with whom Biden sired a child, filed documents in Arkansas circuit court on Monday alleging Biden engaged in identity theft to hide his addiction. In particular, the private investigator cited the instance—that Breitbart News first broke last year—in which Biden’s personal effects were found in a rental car in Prescott, Arizona.




Inside the vehicle, which Biden initially rented from a Hertz location in California, was “a white powdery” residue, later confirmed to be cocaine, and a a pipe used to smoke the illegal substance, according to a police report obtained by Breitbart News. Also found was evidence linking the car to Biden, including two drivers’ licenses and credits cards with his legal name, “a secret service business card,” and a Delaware attorney general’s badge from his late-brother’s tenure in the position.

The police report, filed shortly after the car was returned, also described the strange circumstances the car rental site’s employees were subject to in the aftermath of the vehicle’s appearance:

The next morning, according to the police report, a man who identified himself as “Joseph McGee” called the Hertz rental car counter to inform them of how the keys to the car were left in the vehicle’s gas cap rather than in the normal spot. “McGee” informed the rental car company employee, according to police, that “his friend was feeling sick so they didn’t know what to do” when the car was returned. Police, according to a supplemental report filed by a Prescott Police Department detective, sought and obtained a subpoena to discover the source of the “Joseph McGee” phone call—and traced it to a phone number owned and operated by a renowned “Colon Hydrotherapist” in the region.

Police attempted to find and interview “Joseph McGee,” but were unable to–and they also, per the documents, attempted to call Hunter Biden himself from the phone numbers he provided to the rental car company. Prescott Police Department officials were unable to reach Hunter Biden during the investigation for an interview on the matter, though, according to the documents, they did attempt to call him. One of the Prescott Police Department officers who responded to the initial scene wrote that according to his Sergeant, described in the report as “Sgt. Small,” the Secret Service had informed the local police that “Robert Biden had been located by the Secret Service and was well.”

Roberts’ private investigator argues that Biden, in fact, was “Joseph McGee” and the behavior fit a pattern of reckless actions, including identity theft, utilized to conceal his addiction.

The revelations come as Biden’s past indiscretions haunt his father, former Vice President Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign. Initially, the younger Biden was supposed to play a key role in the campaign, but those plans were squashed after Breitbart News first reported on the car rental story.

Biden later admitted to The New Yorker that the Breitbart scoop, which broke the day before the former vice president entered the 2020 race, was the reason for his absence from the campaign launch.

[soonernvolved]

thefederalist.com/2020/01/06/inspector-general-report-shows-special-counsel-replicated-fbi-abuses/

Inspector General Report Shows Special Counsel Replicated FBI Abuses
The report established that the special counsel’s office was complicit in the FISA abuse, the probe was a witch hunt, and its report was a cover-up for systematic government malfeasance.
Margot ClevelandBy Margot Cleveland
JANUARY 6, 2020
Shortly after the release of the special counsel report last year, I posited that Robert Mueller’s failure to investigate whether Russia interfered with the 2016 presidential election by feeding dossier author Christopher Steele disinformation established that Mueller was either incompetent or a political hack. Now, with the release of the inspector general’s report on FISA abuse, we know the answer: He was both.

The IG’s report on the U.S. Department of Justice and FBI’s handling of the Carter Page surveillance applications established 17 significant inaccuracies and omissions in the FISA application and renewals. (Eighteen if you include the one the IG missed). The 400-page report also established that the special counsel’s office was complicit in the FISA abuse, the probe was a witch hunt, and Mueller’s report was a cover-up for systematic government malfeasance.

Mueller Was As Bad as James Comey

Mueller’s appointment as special counsel prompted bipartisan praise, with the accolades focusing on his stellar reputation as the FBI director under Republican President George W. Bush and Democrat President Barack Obama. But Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report revealed a sad reality: The special counsel’s office under Mueller’s charge was just as inept at investigating the false charges of Russia collusion as the FBI was under James Comey’s lead.

As the IG report noted, “on May 17, 2017, the Crossfire Hurricane cases were transferred to the Office of the Special Counsel,” and the FBI agents and analysts then began working with the special counsel. A little more than a month later, the FBI asked the Department of Justice to seek a fourth extension of the Page surveillance order. That fourth renewal obtained under Mueller’s leadership included the 17 significant inaccuracies and omissions the IG identified.

Further, it wasn’t merely a matter of Mueller’s team repeating the same falsehoods. Several of the inaccuracies and omissions presented to the FISA court in the late-June renewal application arose in mistakes or misconduct that occurred after Mueller took the reins of the investigation.

Kept Showing False Information to the FISA Court
Most significantly, in June 2017, the FBI’s office of general counsel falsely represented that Page had not been a source for another federal agency, when, in reality, Page had been approved as an “operational contact” and the FBI’s attorney had been told so in an email. Yet the final surveillance renewal application failed to inform the FISA court that, while Page had connections with individuals connected to Russian intelligence, he had provided information about those contacts to another agency as an approved source.


While blame for this mistake might be put down to the malfeasance of the attorney who altered the email to obscure Page’s relationship with the other agency, given that Page publicly—and likely in private interviews with the FBI—paraded his relationship with the unnamed U.S. agency, Mueller’s team should have done more—not just for purposes of the FISA application, but as part of the special counsel investigation.

Mueller’s inept team instead parroted the point in the special counsel report, stating “Russian intelligence officials had formed relationships with Page in 2008 and 2013” and “Page acknowledged that he understood that the individuals he had associated with were members of the Russian intelligence services, but he stated that he had only provided immaterial non-public information to them.” But Mueller made no mention of Page’s status as an “operational contact” for another agency.

Not only did Mueller’s team continue to push the same inaccuracies and omissions to the FISA court in the June 2017 renewal, the FISA court was not informed of the many mistakes and omissions for another year—even though the special counsel’s investigation should have uncovered many of the errors contained in the applications early on in the probe.

For instance, the IG noted that the FBI’s interview with Steele in September 2017 “was conducted by an FBI agent and analyst on assignment to the Special Counsel’s Office.” That interview “further highlighted discrepancies between Steele’s presentation of information” in the dossier reports relied upon in the FISA applications, and what Steele’s primary sub-source had told FBI agents. Yet the FISA court was not provided this information until July 2018.

Faulty Investigation, Fraudulent Info to the Court

Mueller’s team also knew, by July 2017 at the latest, that Joseph Mifsud—the Maltese professor who supposedly tipped then-Trump aide George Papadopoulos to the Russians having dirt on Hillary Clinton—had denied telling Papadopoulos that the Russians could assist the Trump campaign by leaking negative information on Clinton. Prior to the special counsel’s appointment, the FBI had interviewed Papadopoulos and Mifsud, but it would be the special counsel’s office that indicted Papadopoulos in late July 2017, charging him with lying to the FBI.

By that time, then, the special counsel’s team must have reviewed the notes from the Papadopoulos and Mifsud interviews. Yet Mueller did nothing at that point to ensure the FISA court learned of Mifsud’s denials. The IG found the omission of “Joseph Mifsud’s denials to the FBI that he supplied Papadopoulos with the information Papadopoulos shared with the FFG (suggesting that the campaign received an offer or suggestion of assistance from Russia)” was a significant omission.

In short, the special counsel’s team proved itself equally incompetent in investigating and screening the “intel” used to obtain the Page surveillance orders, and in failing to accurately and fully inform the FISA court (FISC) of the evidence gathered by the FBI. As the IG noted “that so many basic and fundamental errors were made on four FISA applications by three separate, hand-picked teams, on one of the most sensitive FBI investigations that was briefed to the highest levels within the FBI and that FBI officials expected would eventually be subjected to close scrutiny, raised significant questions regarding the FBI chain of command’s management and supervision of the FISA process.” That also means Mueller and his chain of command.

Perpetuating the FBI’s Misconduct
It also wasn’t mere incompetence on display: The special counsel’s office also engaged in much of the same misconduct the IG identified. For instance, emblematic of Mueller’s complicity in misconduct Horowitz identified is the fact that the special counsel continued to use Bruce Ohr as a conduit to feed “intel” to the FBI from Steele after Steele was terminated as a confidential human source.


The IG concluded that “while the Crossfire Hurricane team did not initiate direct contact with Steele after his closure, it responded to numerous contacts made by Steele through Ohr.” While “Ohr himself was not a direct witness in the Crossfire Hurricane investigation,” “his purpose in communicating with the FBI was to pass along information from Steele.”

The IG concluded that “given that there were 13 different meetings with Ohr over a period of months, the use of Ohr as a conduit between the FBI and Steele created a relationship by proxy that should have triggered, pursuant to FBI policy, a supervisory decision about whether to reopen Steele as a CHS or discontinue accepting information indirectly from him through Ohr.”

Significantly, the IG noted that after June 2017, “an agent from the Special Counsel’s Office became Ohr’s final point of contact through November 2017.” Thus, Mueller’s team made a concerted decision to continue to use Ohr to obtain “intel” from Steele—a decision the IG condemned.

In fact, the special counsel’s use of Ohr appears even more problematic than the FBI’s prior mishandling of their meetings with Ohr: At least prior to Mueller’s appearance, the FBI documented the details of their conversations with Ohr in FD-302 forms, but as the IG report noted, while Ohr continued to communicate with Steele through the end of November 2017 and passed on the details of those conversations to the FBI, “the FBI did not memorialize any meetings its agents had with Ohr after the Crossfire Hurricane investigation was transferred to the Special Counsel’s Office in May 2017.”

Further, while the special counsel’s team continued to meet with Ohr during this time, no one from Mueller’s group informed DOJ leadership of Ohr’s involvement in the investigation nor his meetings with Steele until “after Congress requested information from the Department regarding Ohr’s activities in late November 2017.”

Hiding Their Activities From Investigators
That the special counsel’s team engaged with Ohr without notifying to Ohr’s superiors shouldn’t surprise, though, as that was the M.O. of Mueller’s pit bull, lawyer Andrew Weissmann. The IG report exposed this reality, in detail. Specifically, the IG report explained that shortly after Trump was elected president

between November 16, 2016 and December 15, 2016, Ohr participated in several meetings that were attended, at various times, by some or all of the following individuals: Swartz, Ahmad, Andrew Weissmann (then Section Chief of CRM’s Fraud Section), Strzok, and Lisa Page. The meetings involving Ohr, Swartz, Ahmad, and Weissmann focused on their shared concern that the [Money Laundering and Asset Recovery Section] MLARS was not moving quickly enough on the Manafort criminal investigation and whether there were steps they could take to move the investigation forward. The meetings with Strzok and Page focused primarily on whether the FBI could assess the case’s relevance, if any, to the FBI ‘s Russian interference investigation. MLARS was not represented at any of these meetings or told about them, and none of attendees had supervisory responsibility over the MLARS investigation….

On January 31, 2017, one day after Yates was removed as DAG, Ahmad, by then an Acting CRM Deputy Assistant Attorney General, after consulting with Swartz and Weissmann, sent an email to Lisa Page, copying Weissmann, Swartz, and Ohr, requesting a meeting the next day to discuss ‘a few Criminal Division related developments.’ The next day, February 1, Swartz, Ohr, Ahmad, and Weissmann met with Strzok, Lisa Page, and an FBI Acting Section Chief. None of the attendees at the meeting could explain to us what the ‘Criminal Division related developments’ were, and we did not find any.

Meeting notes reflect, among other things, that the group discussed the Manafort criminal investigation and efforts that the Department could undertake to investigate attempts by Russia to influence the 2016 elections. MLARS was not represented at, or told about, the meeting.

The IG report further revealed that, even though Weissmann had no role or responsibility in the MLARS investigation of Manafort, he arranged to meet an AP reporter in late March or early April to obtain information from the media contact “regarding Manafort having a storage locker in Virginia.” This meeting and the “collective interest” Weissmann, Ohr, Swartz, and Amhad had in the MLARS investigation prompted the IG report to note that “given their high-ranking positions in the Department, their ‘unusual level of interest’ in the Manafort investigation could create a perception that the Department was investigating Manafort for inappropriate reasons.”

‘Department leaders cannot…be held accountable for the Department’s actions, if subordinates intentionally withhold information from them.’
The acting chief of the MLARS also indicated concern about the meetings between Ohr, Swartz, Weissmann, and Amhad, telling the IG that she had only learned about those November 2016 to February 2017 meetings as a result of her IG interview.

Ohr, Swartz, Ahmad, and Weissmann also told the IG that they had not advised their supervisors of their meetings concerning Manafort, and senior department officials were also unaware of them. Swartz stated “that he specifically did not advise political appointees leading the Criminal Division of the meetings,” because he sought to keep “the MLARS investigation from being ‘politicized.”” While Weissmann claimed that “he thought not telling Department leadership was an ‘incorrect judgment call,’” he did not remember telling Swartz or Ahmad that, and instead kept their conversations concerning Manafort secret.

The IG report noted that “after [Obama Deputy Attorney General Sally] Yates learned during her OIG interview of the meetings involving Ohr, Swartz, Ahmad, and Weissmann,” she stated “that a decision not to advise political appointees ‘trouble[d]’ her because the Department does not ‘operate that way.’” There is not “a career Department of Justice and a political appointees’ Department of Justice. It’s all one DOJ,” Yates told the IG.

The IG agreed with these concerns, stating “Department leaders cannot fulfill their management responsibilities, and be held accountable for the Department’s actions, if subordinates intentionally withhold information from them in such circumstances,” such as Weissmann had.

What Else Did the Special Counsel Hide?
These details from the IG report raise further concerns about Weissmann’s involvement in the special counsel probe, which prompts two other questions: Besides Weissmann, how many other DOJ employees or FBI agents responsible for the inaccuracies and omissions identified in the IG report moved over to the special counsel team? Did those individuals cause the special counsel’s report to include significant inaccuracies and omissions?

Besides Weissmann, how many other DOJ employees or FBI agents responsible for the inaccuracies and omissions identified in the IG report moved over to the special counsel team?
While it may be some time before we know whether the special counsel report included significant inaccuracies, given the details contained in the IG’s report, it is now clear that the Mueller report omitted significant evidence relevant to whether there was collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. In fact, while the special counsel report claimed “this report embodies factual and legal determinations that the Office believes to be accurate and complete to the greatest extent possible,” the IG report provided more perspective on the question of Russia collusion than the entire $30-million special counsel probe.

In fact, Mueller’s failure to address the veracity, or rather the fallacy, of Steele’s dossier cements the reality that the special counsel sought not to discern the truth, but to bury Trump. As the Wall Street Journal editorial board recognized, “the Steele dossier was central to obtaining the Page warrant, and the leaks about the dossier fanned two years of media theories about Russian collusion that was one reason Mr. Mueller was appointed as special counsel. Mr. Mueller owed the public an explanation of how much of the dossier could be confirmed or repudiated.”

Yet, as “the Horowitz report makes clear, the FBI knew that most of the Steele dossier’s claims were unreliable,” and “Team Mueller made a deliberate choice to tiptoe around it,” even telling Congress in his opening statement, that “he would not address ‘matters related to the so-called Steele dossier,’ which he said were out of his purview.”

“This makes no sense,” the editorial board reasoned. But it does. It makes eminent sense once you realize the special counsel office served to continue a witch hunt, and once those efforts proved unsuccessful, Mueller’s team reverted instead to obscuring that fact.

Margot Cleveland is a senior contributor to The Federalist. Cleveland served nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk to a federal appellate judge and is a former full-time faculty member and current adjunct instructor at the college of business at the University of Notre Dame. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.

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thefederalist.com/2020/01/07/senators-are-not-supposed-to-be-impartial-jurors-during-impeachment/

Senators Are Not Supposed To Be ‘Impartial Jurors’ During Impeachment
JANUARY 7, 2020 By Tristan Justice

As the Senate prepares for the coming impeachment trial on the articles passed by the House last month, Democrats and their allies in the mainstream media are gearing up for the proceedings by urging Republican lawmakers to act as impartial jurors.

South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham garnered criticism last month when he rejected the idea and declared he would refuse to play jury as impeachment proceedings get underway in the upper chamber.


“I think impeachment is going to end quickly in the Senate. I would prefer it to end as quickly as possible,” Graham said at an event with CNN International in Qatar. “I am trying to give a pretty clear signal I have made up my mind. I’m not trying to pretend to be a fair juror here.”

The reality is however, Graham shouldn’t be. The impeachment process is a primarily political trial put through Congress, not a criminal proceeding.

Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky joined Graham in rejecting the idea of senators serving as impartial jurors in considering presidential removal.

“Anyone who understands American history or understands the Constitution knows that a senator’s role in an impeachment trial knows that nothing, nothing like the job of jurors in the legal system,” McConnell said on the floor of the Senate Friday.

While the political aspects of a quasi-jury are undeniable, it is neither entirely one of the other, but is instead something in between where senators have no obligation to forgo their biases in judging the proceedings.

Chief Justice William Rehnquist made this clear in his first ruling during the Clinton impeachment proceedings in 1999. At the start of the trial, Rehnquist upheld a challenge by former Iowa Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin that the senators ought not to be referred to as “jurors,” as did members of the House.

Harkin cited Section 2 of Article III of the Constitution stating, “The trial of all crimes, except in cases of impeachment, shall be by jury.” The Iowa Democrat argued that the clause mounted to “a tremendous exculpatory clause when it comes to impeachments.”

Harkin also pointed to Federalist Paper 65 written by Alexander Hamilton which outlined the founder’s justification for tasking the Senate with handling impeachment.

“There will be no jury to stand between the judges who are to pronounce the sentence of the rule and the party who is to receive or suffer it,” Hamilton wrote.

Justice Rehnquist agreed. “The chair is of the view that the senator from Iowa’s objection is well-taken, that the Senate is not simply a jury, it is a court in this case,” ruled the chief justice.

While the distinction might seem minor, it is a significant one. Democrats are attempting to apply pressure on McConnell and the Republicans in the Senate to conduct a criminal trial to re-litigate proceedings in the House that failed to bring any incriminating evidence to light. By pushing Republicans to serve as “impartial jurors,” who would then exonerate the president under the label regardless, Democrats creep closer to scoring additional witnesses at the trial to testify who should have been subpoenaed during the House proceedings.

The impeachment process itself might not be entirely political, but it is also not totally legal. The founders never intended for impeachment to become a political weapon wielded by the majority party in power to oust a president for made-up crimes, just as Democrats have done in the last year.

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www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/01/07/report-mitch-mcconnell-prepared-to-start-impeachment-trial-without-deal-on-witnesses/

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is ready to begin the Senate’s impeachment trial without an agreement with Democrats on witnesses, according to a report.

Politico reports:

www.politico.com/news/2020/01/07/mcconnell-prepares-to-move-forward-on-impeachment-trial-rules-without-democrats-095537?nname=playbook-pm&nid=0000015a-dd3e-d536-a37b-dd7fd8af0000&nrid=00000159-21fd-d273-a55d-b1ff14960000&nlid=964328

McConnell has locked down sufficient backing in his 53-member caucus to pass a blueprint for the trial that leaves the question of seeking witnesses and documents until after opening arguments are made, according to multiple senators.

That framework would mirror the contours of President Bill Clinton’s trial and ignore Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s demands for witnesses and new evidence at the outset.

No final decision has been made to move forward with a partisan approach, but in a brief interview, McConnell said he would address the possibility of spurning Democrats on Tuesday afternoon. He’s already won key backing from the handful of Republican swing votes heading into the trial.

On Monday, moderates senators Susan Collins (R-ME) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) voiced support for McConnell’s strategy, stating the trial should call additional witnesses later in the process, akin to then-President Bill Clinton’s trial in 1999.

“The process moved to a period during which the Senate debated and voted that three witnesses should be deposed. I believe that this process — the Clinton approach — worked well,” Collins told reporters.

Murkowski said: “I think we need to do what they did the last time they did this unfortunate process and that was to go through a first phase and then they reassessed after that.”

The development comes as McConnell and Schumer remain at an impasse over the Senate minority leader’s demand to allow four current and former White House officials to testify at the trial. John Bolton, former White House national security advisor, said Monday that he will testify if subpoenaed.


“The House has concluded its Constitutional responsibility by adopting Articles of Impeachment related to the Ukraine matter. It now falls to the Senate to fulfill its Constitutional obligation to try impeachments, and it does not appear possible that a final judicial resolution of the still-unanswered Constitutional questions can be obtained before the Senate acts,” Bolton said in a statement. “Accordingly, since my testimony is once again at issue, I have had to resolve the serious competing issues as best I could, based on careful consideration and study. I have concluded that, if the Senate issues a subpoena for my testimony, I am prepared to testify.”



Bolton’s willingness to testify places additional pressure on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), who has delayed transferring two articles of impeachment to the Senate, claiming Schumer’s proposed witnesses need to be heard to ensure a “fair” trial.

In a recent floor speech, McConnell slammed Pelosi’s demand as a “non-starter” and a “fantasy.”

Nonetheless, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) pledged Tuesday to force votes for witnesses at the beginning of the trial, even though Republicans have the votes to block the demand.

“Make no mistake, on the question of witnesses and documents, Republicans may run but they can’t hide. There will be votes at the beginning on whether to call the four witnesses we’ve proposed and subpoena the documents we’ve identified,” said Schumer. “If every Republican senator votes for a rigged trial that hides the truth, the American people will see that the Republican Senate is part of a large and awful cover-up.”

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Marco Rubio
✔
@marcorubio
Worth repeating.

The testimony & evidence considered in a Senate impeachment trial should be the same testimony & evidence the House relied upon when they passed the Articles of Impeachment.
Our job is to vote on what the House passed,not to conduct an open ended inquiry.

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www.dailywire.com/news/hunter-biden-is-the-father-of-d-c-s-stripper-child-judge-rules

Hunter Biden IS The Father Of D.C.’s Stripper Child, Judge Rules

Hunter Biden is a new dad.

But this time around, he might not be all that happy about it.

A judge ruled on Tuesday that the 49-year-old son of former Vice President Joe Biden is the father of a 17-month-old he sired with an ex-stripper. Biden has repeatedly denied he was the father.


Judge Holly Meyer officially deemed Biden “the biological and legal father” of Lunden Alexis Roberts’ baby, born in August 2018, and ordered that a new birth certificate be issued.

“The Arkansas Department of Health shall issue a new or substituted birth certificate listing Lunden Alexis Roberts as the mother and Robert Hunter Biden as the father,” Meyer wrote in her order, filed Tuesday in Independence County Circuit Court.

DNA test results showed “with near scientific certainty” that Biden is the father of the child, Meyer wrote.

Biden at first denied he was the father of the baby, who was previously referred to as “Baby Doe” in court papers. Biden met Lunden Roberts, 28, while she worked as a stripper in Washington, D.C. Biden at the time was dating Halle Biden, 45, widow of his brother Beau, when Roberts became pregnant. Beau Biden died of brain cancer in 2015.


In earlier court filings, Roberts said Biden “had no involvement in the child’s life since the child’s birth, never interacted with the child, never parented the child,” and “could not identify the child out of a photo lineup.”

The judge on Tuesday also awarded to the mother “primary physical and legal custody” of the child, adding that Biden “shall have visitation with the child as agreed between the parties.”

Biden is expecting his fifth child with his new wife, Melissa Cohen Bide, 32. He has three grown children with former wife, Kathleen Buhle.

There’s much more ahead. On Jan. 29, the court will address “temporary child support for the minor child and other matters,” the judge wrote. Another hearing is set for March 13 to hash out other issues, with a final hearing on May 13 to establish “permanent child support for the minor child.”


DNA testing released in November proved Biden is the father of the child.

The younger Biden’s paternity of a stripper’s child had plagued his father’s campaign for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.

Joe Biden clashed with a Fox News reporter in November who asked if he had “a comment on this report, and court filing, out of Arkansas, that your son Hunter just made you a grandfather again.”

“No, that’s a private matter and I have no comment,” Biden fired back before attacking the reporter.

“Only you would ask that,” Biden said to Fox News’ Steve Doocy. “You’re a good man. You’re a good man. Classy.”

The New York Post in November reported that Biden was “suspected of smoking crack inside a strip club where he dropped ‘thousands of dollars’ during multiple visits.”

“The incident, which took place at Archibald’s Gentlemen’s Club in Washington, DC, late last year, represents the most recent alleged drug use by Biden, 49, who has acknowledged six stints in rehab for alcoholism and addiction that included a crack binge in 2016,” the Post reported. “Workers at Archibald’s, located about three blocks north of the White House, said Biden was a regular there, with two bartenders and a security worker all instantly recognizing his photo and one worker identifying him by name.”

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www.dailywire.com/news/pelosi-spurns-mcconnell-no-articles-until-mcconnell-publishes-senate-impeachment-trial-details

Pelosi Spurns McConnell: No Articles Until McConnell Publishes Senate Impeachment Trial Details

Monday night, after two “moderate” Republican members of the Senate, Rep. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and Rep. Susan Collins (R-ME) declared that they were fine abiding by the Senate impeachment rules set in 1998 — at the dawn of then-President Bill Clinton’s Senate trial — reports indicated that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) had enough votes to go forward with the second half of President Donald Trump’s impeachment proceedings without having to negotiate with Democrats on the subject.

As soon as Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) submits the articles of impeachment to the Senate, a trial can go forward — only Pelosi now says she won’t turn over the House articles until McConnell publishes details of how the Senate trial will be conducted, bring the process to an impasse.

Tuesday night, Pelosi released a note, sent to McConnell, demanding that McConnell give House Dems an outline of the Senate trial and “immediately” publish a resolution detailing the Senate trial rules, according to CNN.


“It is important that he immediately publish this resolution, so that, as I have said before, we can see the arena in which we will be participating, appoint managers and transmit the articles to the Senate,” Pelosi wrote.

She also, according to the Washington Post, “told Democrats in a closed-door meeting Tuesday that she will not send articles of impeachment to the Senate until she learns more about how the chamber would conduct a potential trial, according to three people present for her remarks who were not authorized to comment publicly.”

Pelosi, unfortunately, has no control over the Senate, and the Senate can begin a trial with or without Pelosi’s assent — something Democrats apparently didn’t consider when they pledged to withhold the articles of impeachment from McConnell until McConnell agreed to allow witnesses to testify during the Senate trial.

They also didn’t expect that McConnell exercises near-expert control over his caucus. Sen. Chuch Schumer (D-NY) tried, valiantly, to make witnesses a “wedge” issue among the GOP, in the hopes that middle-of-the-road legislators like Murkowski and Collins would pressure McConnell to allow witnesses, so that the trial would appear “fair,” even though House Democrats could have allowed key White House officials like acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney to testify in their impeachment inquiry but chose not to, likely out of fear that Mulvaney — and former national security advisor John Bolton — would provide information that would exonerate, not implicate, President Donald Trump.


McConnell has been steadfast in his opposition to witnesses, referencing the 1998 rules repeatedly and mentioning, regularly, that they passed by unanimous, bipartisan consent. He’s also been clear in noting that Democrats only want to call witnesses in the Senate trial because the House impeachment inquiry left open questions and Rep. Adam Schiff’s (D-CA) Intelligence Committee hearings didn’t conclusively prove any criminal behavior on the part of the White House or President Trump and Schumer and Pelosi want desperately to correct that oversight.

The 1998 rules allow for both sides to present their cases to the Senate, and then a question and answer period can begin, at which point, the Senate body overseeing the trial may decide to call witnesses in order to complete the story. That’s good enough for McConnell, and, apparently, for Murkowski and Collins, who, Monday, ruined Schumer’s dream of a GOP fracture.

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thefederalist.com/2020/01/08/nancy-pelosi-continues-withholding-articles-of-impeachment-from-senate/

Nancy Pelosi Continues Withholding Articles Of Impeachment From Senate
JANUARY 8, 2020 By Tristan Justice
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told Democrats behind closed doors Tuesday that the she would continue to hold the passed articles of impeachment back from the upper chamber until Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell offered details on how a trial will be conducted.

Pelosi’s comments as reported by the Washington Post showcase the Democrats’ latest power grab to bend the impeachment proceedings in the Senate to their will demanding the testimony of new witnesses.


After the House passed two articles of impeachment, one for abuse of power and one for obstruction of Congress by an almost uniform partisan vote, Pelosi announced she would be withholding the articles from moving forward to the Senate.

Pelosi’s decision to bring a halt to the impeachment process comes as Democrats aim to amp up pressure on Republicans to conduct the trial in the Senate on the Democrats’ terms even after operating an unfair process rushed in the House.

The impeachment proceedings lodged against President Donald Trump were kicked off by an anonymous whistleblower complaint alleging Trump conspired with the Ukrainian president to interfere in the next U.S. presidential election. The complaint, marked credible and urgent by the intelligence community inspector general but not by the Department of National Intelligence sparked rampant speculation by impeachment-hungry Democrats and the mainstream media as a smoking gun to end the Trump presidency.

Soon after knowledge of the complaint surfaced in the media however, the White House declassified and released an unredacted transcript of the July 25 phone call in question under the complaint between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Democrats have tried incessantly to paint the call as damning evidence illustrating that Trump invited Ukraine to get involved in the next election by investigating the Biden family in exchange for nearly $400 million in military aid. The withheld aid was ultimately released without a Ukrainian investigation.

In reality, a true and honest reading of the transcript exposes an American president urging the Ukrainian leader to root out corruption in the eastern European nation and requesting that Zelensky investigate the origins of Ukraine’s peddling of the Russian collusion hoax in the United States.

In more than two months of rushed proceedings, Democrats failed to unearth evidence worth of a “high crime and misdemeanor,” that warrants the extreme measure of impeachment despite the entire process run in the lower chamber being slanted to disadvantage Republicans. To the contrary, the Democrats’ own witnesses exonerated Trump of any wrongdoing regarding Ukraine.

Democrats impeached the president anyway, and now Democrats are demanding the Senate call additional witnesses to prolong the process and find the incriminating evidence to oust Trump from the Oval Office. Incriminating evidence will be hard to find however, as the House hearings exposed to the public, there isn’t any.

Pelosi’s present play to prohibit the process from moving onward has further undercut the entire premise of a rushed procedure in the House, which sought to remove the president from office as quick as possible citing Trump’s hold on power as an urgent threat to the survival of the republic.

McConnell has made clear his desire for a fair and quick trial in the Senate and has pushed back on Democratic demands to call more witnesses to prolong a process that has been a sham from the start launched in a desperate effort to reverse the results of the 2016 election.

Republican Senator from South Carolina Lindsey Graham proposed changing the Senate rules regarding impeachment altogether to remove Pelosi from the process and begin the trial proceedings without the House speaker’s approval.

Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, joined by a dozen Republican senators has proposed dismissing the impeachment trial altogether.

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It's not good when Feinstein is calling out Pelosi:

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www.dailywire.com/news/watchdog-group-suing-adam-schiff-over-release-of-private-phone-records

The conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch announced Wednesday that it has filed a lawsuit against Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and the House Intelligence Committee for information relating to the acquirement and release of the phone records from Rudy Giuliani, Devin Nunes, and others.

“We are seeking records about [Schiff’s] controversial subpoenas that led to his publishing the private phone records of President Trump’s lawyers and other innocent Americans including: President Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani, Congressman Devin Nunes, and journalist John Solomon,” the group said in a video announcing the lawsuit. “The lawsuit seeks all subpoenas by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence to telephone providers, including, but not limited to, AT&T.”

“Adam Schiff and his Committee ran roughshod over the rule of law in pursuit of the abusive impeachment of President Trump,” Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton said. “This lawsuit serves as a reminder that Congressman Schiff and Congress are not above the law.”


In early December The Daily Wire reported that House Democrats received the private phone records for Giuliani, Solomon, and Nunes as part of their investigation into Lev Parnas for the Trump impeachment inquiries. At the time Parnas spoke to Solomon (as a source for an article) the former Giuliani associate was not under indictment for campaign finance charges. The release of the phone records was deliberately designed to make the people in question look like accomplices, even though there is no evidence the issues surrounding Parnas were discussed during his calls with Giuliani, Nunes, or Solomon.

In a statement to The Daily Wire at the time, Nunes said publishing the phones records was “a gross abuse of power.”

“The Democrats’ impeachment charade is flailing, and desperate people do desperate things,” he said. “So, Schiff suddenly published phone records of myself, current and former Republican staff members, and a journalist whose reporting he doesn’t like. It’s a gross abuse of power for a congressman to go after his political opponents, staffers, and reporters in this way, but it’s characteristic of the way Schiff has run this entire show. He’s going to need a long rehabilitation period when this is over.”

Schiff told Politico at the time that it was “deeply concerning that at a time when the president of the United States was using the power of his office to dig up dirt on a political rival, that there may be evidence that there were members of Congress complicit in that activity.”


Of course, phone records aren’t conclusive evidence that anyone was “complicit” in the activity.

Solomon responded to the release of his phone calls in The Wall Street Journal shortly after the news broke.

“If the executive branch, and by extension the courts that enforce these privacy protections, observe the need for such sensitivity, it seems reasonable that Congress should have similar guardrails ensuring that the powers of the state are equally and fairly applied,” Solomon wrote.

Solomon wrote that Schiff’s subpoena “trampled the attorney-client privilege of Mr. Trump and his lawyers,” and “intruded on my First Amendment rights to interview and contact figures like Mr. Giuliani and the Ukrainian-American businessman Lev Parnas without fear of having the dates, times and length of private conversation disclosed to the public.”

[soonernvolved]

dailycaller.com/2020/01/09/nancy-pelosi-impeachment-idea-cnn-john-dean-report/

Speaker Nancy Pelosi reportedly got the idea to withhold articles of impeachment from the U.S. senate while watching CNN, according to a Time Magazine profile of the speaker published Thursday.

Pelosi heard former White House counsel and Watergate star witness John Dean during an early December CNN appearance, according to Time, where Dean floated the idea of withholding impeachment articles against the president. (RELATED: The Tide Is Turning Against Democrats On Impeachment)

The Time profile titled: “Why Nancy Pelosi Is Going All In Against Trump” stated:

Pelosi, according to an aide, had been mulling the tactic since she heard former Nixon White House counsel John Dean float the idea on CNN on Dec. 5. In the committee meeting, she added that she believed McConnell would be motivated to move. “Somebody said to me today that he may not even take up what we send. [But] then [Trump] will never be vindicated,” she said, according to the aide in the room. “He will be impeached forever. Forever. No matter what the Senate does.”