James Comey

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Jesse Watters: The Democrats have done a lot of dumb things in Trump’s first term but putting Adam Schiff on television for two straight hours might be up there with the dumbest. The man looks like a rotten dandelion. Listening to him is like being in the room when someone’s vacuuming. You just can’t wait for it to stop.

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CNN Talking head tweeted this:

It went viral & then he admitted he made it up:

Of course, this led to online outrage about him lying:

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www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/01/22/adam-schiff-trashes-dershowitz-in-senate-impeachment-trial-again/

Lead House impeachment manager Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) used part of his opening argument at President Donald Trump’s Senate impeachment trial Wednesday to trash Harvard Law School professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz — for the second day in a row.

Schiff claimed that White House lawyers could not support the claim that “abuse of power” was not an impeachable offense under the Constitution’s standard for “high crimes and misdemeanors.”

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thefederalist.com/2020/01/22/adam-schiff-is-already-claiming-the-illegitimacy-of-a-trump-reelection/

Adam Schiff Is Already Claiming The Illegitimacy Of A Trump Reelection
The general election is still nine months away but that didn't stop Schiff from saying it will be corrupt if Trump is acquitted.
JANUARY 22, 2020 By David Marcus
During his monotonous two-hour rehashing of the case against the president, Democratic House Manager Adam Schiff argued that if president Trump is allowed to run for president this year, “we cannot be assured that the vote will be fairly won.” That’s right, nine months out from election day Schiff and the Democrats are laying the groundwork to call a Trump second term illegitimate, just as have they done for the entirety of the first term.

“The President's misconduct cannot be decided at the ballot box, for we cannot be assured that the vote will be fairly won,” lead impeachment manager Rep. Adam Schiff says during his opening statement at the Senate impeachment trial. t.co/14mXcvjVzh pic.twitter.com/F2OZhLYx7v
— CNN Newsroom (@cnnnewsroom) January 22, 2020

Remember the good old days, back in 2016 when there was no chance Hillary Clinton could lose and the only question was whether angry Trump voters, or even Trump himself would accept the outcome of the free and fair election? Boy did that narrative bust. Instead, the exact opposite happened. Trump won and it is the Democrats who now express grave concerns about the sanctity of our election results.

However ludicrous, Schiff’s statement is the necessary extension of the Democrats’ logic in bringing the case so quickly, without waiting for witnesses. And as it seems extremely likely the senate acquits Trump, then the same “emergency circumstances” will exist that caused the rush to impeach in the first place. Schiff is flat out telling voters that if Trump is not removed from office they should question the fairness of the outcome of the next election.

This is the corner the Democrats have painted themselves into. The Mueller investigation failed, this impeachment has failed to gain bipartisan support or even anything approaching a strong polling majority, and now when the impeachment trial inevitably fails, they will resort to arguing that their thwarted efforts have rendered the upcoming election corrupt.

This is the madness in all of this. A dispute in the White House as to whether to put a temporary hold on a foreign aid package that was released by the deadline has turned into a vast conspiracy that will the undermine the most important election in America. It is a deranged theory.

The excuses have started early for the Democrats. As their dull-as-a-doornail presidential primary prattles on with no candidates gaining wide and excited support, they are already preparing for the worst: a Trump win. They are already starting to question its validity.

But the American people are not stupid. They know an acquittal of Trump would in no way, shape or form undermine the November election. Instead, under the guise of defending our democracy, it is Schiff and the Democrats calling it illegitimate.

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amp.dailycaller.com/2020/01/22/ted-cruz-adam-schiff-hunter-biden-relevant

Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz told reporters on Wednesday that Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff’s day two impeachment arguments before the Senate made testimony by Hunter Biden “directly relevant” and “critical.”

“I think the House managers made a very serious strategic error today,” Cruz said, according to ABC News. “Adam Schiff’s arguments to open the day today directly drew into question Hunter Biden and made not only his testimony relevant which it already was but it is now critical.”

The Texas senator, who last week said he is “open to the possibility” of the Senate calling witnesses, including the whistleblower, contended that if the “House managers’ case is based on the allegations of corruption concerning Hunter Biden and Joe Biden being a scam,” then the Senate being able to hear from Biden is “directly relevant.”

“And I gotta say, the need for the Senate to hear the testimony of Hunter Biden and the need for the senate to grant the White House lawyers the ability to take that testimony has become all the more relevant,” he said per ABC. (RELATED: Adam Schiff Reportedly Released False Information In Ukraine Probe)

Despite the fact that the charges against President Donald Trump involve his alleged actions in trying to facilitate an investigation into possible criminal wrongdoing by Hunter Biden in Ukraine, Democrats have long insisted that testimony from former Vice President Joe Biden’s son is not relevant to their case against the president.

Trump attorney Jay Sekulow reportedly declined comment on Cruz’s statement:

“I have great respect for Sen. Cruz I am not going to comment on what testimony may or may not be relevant,” he told reporters, ABC News reported.

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www.cnsnews.com/blog/craig-bannister/dershowitz-pelosi-doesnt-understand-what-impeachment-if-trumps-acquitted?fbclid=IwAR3ReQRwhNkc8zr0YoWdALNCSBRW29u-RzX7qahXyp08Z5JQsJRuUEtenOk#utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=cns&utm_campaign=b-DershowitzIfAquittedImpeachmentDisappears

Dershowitz told Sean Hannity this week:

“Nancy Pelosi doesn’t understand what impeachment is.

“What she has said is, even if the president is acquitted, the impeachment stands – No.”

“That’s like saying that, if a person is indicted and the jury acquits 12-0 in five minutes, he’s still indicted.”

“No – the impeachment disappears. The impeachment is only a grand jury presentment.”

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Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) desperately begged GOP Senators to vote with Dems to subpoena witnesses as the sham impeachment fizzled out.

Republican Senators have now voted NINE TIMES to block the Democrats from bringing in new evidence and witnesses, leaving Schumer floundering.

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So, Adam Schiff thinks it's a smart idea to "jokingly" threaten Senators with imprisonment, if they don't pay attention to the Democrat House Impeachment Managers:

Reactions:

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Nadler selectively edits Liberal Professor Turley's testimony to prove abuse of power:

Immediately gets called out and set straight:

Flashback:

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Mueller's convictions are in question now:

Judge James Boasberg, the current federal judge presiding over the FISA court, wrote in his order that at least two of the four FISA applications against Carter Page were unlawfully authorized. Additionally, according his order, the Department of Justice similarly concluded following the release of a sprawling investigate report on the matter by the agency’s inspector general that the government did not have probable cause that Page was acting as an agent of a foreign power. The FISA law states that American citizens cannot be secretly spied on by the U.S. government absent probable cause, based on valid evidence, that an American is unlawfully acting as a foreign agent.

In his January 7 order, Boasberg directed DOJ to retain and sequester all information and evidence relevant to both the Carter Page applications, the inspector general investigation of FISA abuse, and any additional DOJ investigations related to or spawned by the inspector general’s report. Boasberg told DOJ to provide all of the required information to the FISA court no later than January 28.

“DOJ assesses that with respect to the applications in Docket Numbers 17-375 and 17-679, ‘if not earlier, there was insufficient predication to establish probable cause to believe that [Carter] Page was acting as an agent of a foreign power,’” Boasberg wrote, referring to the final two of the four FISA applications to spy on Page. “The Court understands the government to have concluded, in view of the material misstatements and omissions, that the Court’s authorizations in Docket Numbers 17-375 and 17-679 were not valid.”

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dailycaller.com/2020/01/23/doj-carter-page-fisa-not-valid/

The Justice Department recently conceded that two of the four orders to wiretap former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page were “not valid,” Judge James Boasberg said in a court order unsealed Thursday.

The Justice Department made the surprising concession in response to an inspector general’s (IG) report that found “significant” errors and omissions in four applications submitted to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) to surveil Page.

While the IG report was highly critical of the FBI and Justice Department, it did not weigh in on the validity of the four surveillance applications, which were granted under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). (RELATED: FISA Judge Blasts FBI For Submitting False Information About Carter Page)

But Boasberg, who presides over the FISC, said in an order on Jan. 7 that the Justice Department concluded that the second and third renewals of the Page surveillance warrants “were not valid.”

Boasberg said that the government did not take a position on the validity of the initial application, granted on Oct. 21, 2016, and the first renewal, granted on Jan. 12, 2017.


Christopher Steele in London (VICTORIA JONES/GETTY IMAGES)
Boasberg also said that the Justice Department informed the FISC that prior to applying for the final two warrants, “there was insufficient predication to establish probable cause to believe that [Carter] Page was acting as an agent of a foreign power.”

The FBI’s FISA applications cited information from former British spy Christopher Steele to assert that there was probable cause to believe that Page was working on behalf of Russia. Steele alleged in a dossier that Page was part of a “well-developed conspiracy of cooperation” between the Trump campaign and Russian government to influence the 2016 election.

Investigators with the office of the inspector general found that FBI agents withheld information that undercut the idea that Page was conspiring with Russia. Agents also failed to disclose information to the FISC that cut against Steele’s credibility and reliability, the report said.

The most serious errors laid out in the IG report occurred after the FBI obtained its first warrant renewal in January 2017. The report said that days after the renewal was granted, Steele’s primary source disputed information in the dossier during an interview with FBI agents. The source, who was not identified, told agents that Steele misrepresented and embellished information attributed to him in the dossier.

The IG report documented other errors before the FBI applied for its first warrant on Page. It said that in August 2016, the FBI agent who led the investigation into Page failed to disclose information from the CIA that Page had been an “operational contact” for the spy agency.

The FBI also failed to disclose that Steele told agents during a meeting on Oct. 3, 2016 that he believed a key sub-source for the dossier was a “boaster” and “embellisher.”

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Except, they were Senator Hirono, with you being amongst them:

freebeacon.com/politics/dem-sen-its-a-conspiracy-theory-to-think-democrats-were-out-to-get-trump/

Dem Sen: It’s a ‘Conspiracy Theory’ to Think Dems Were Out to Get Trump

Sen. Mazie Hirono (D., Hawaii) on Tuesday said Republicans are spreading a “weird conspiracy theory” that Democrats wanted to impeach Donald Trump since he became president.

“What I found astounding was they’re still saying that we were out to get the president from day one, some sort of a weird conspiracy theory that I have to say, even [Supreme Court Justice Brett] Kavanaugh brought up,” Hirono said on MSNBC.

Hirono was referring to Kavanaugh’s contention in his confirmation hearing that “anger about President Trump and the 2016 election” led to an onslaught of unproven allegations. Kavanaugh did not mention impeachment in his hearing.

Flashback:

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nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/01/impeachment-ratings-show-americans-arent-tuning-in-on-tv.html

Within the Senate chamber, lawmakers were doing their best to endure the long hours of the Trump impeachment trial’s first two days, bringing crossword puzzles, falling asleep, and flaunting the no-electronics rule by communicating on smartwatches. At home, Americans haven’t sought these distractions, because the public is just not tuning in.

According to TV ratings for the first two days of the trial, the six news networks covering Trump’s impeachment averaged a little over 11 million viewers combined, with Fox News leading the pack with some 2,654,000 on their channel from 12:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. Viewership dropped by about 20 percent on Wednesday, with a total of 8,858,000 million watching; MSNBC led day two with 1,793,000 tuning in.

Compared to other televised political moments of historical importance, it’s a fairly weak showing. In 2018, the testimony of Christine Blasey Ford and Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh drew an audience of 20.4 million on the six broadcast networks. In 2018, the midterms also pulled in a substantial 36.1 million, a greater audience than the four previous midterms. And though it may not be totally fair to compare the impeachment trial to the last presidential election, the 2016 motherlode event drew an audience of 71 million.

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www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/01/23/joni-ernst-several-democrat-house-impeachment-managers-voted-against-lethal-aid-for-ukraine/

Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) told reporters during a break in the Senate trial of President Donald Trump on Thursday that several of the House Democrat impeachment managers had voted against bills providing “lethal aid” to Ukraine.

Democrats have accused Trump of abandoning Ukraine by holding aid for several weeks over the summer of 2019. Rep. Jason Crow (D-CO) even accused the president, falsely, of causing the deaths of Ukrainian soldiers.

In fact, Trump had previously sent Javelin anti-tank missiles to Ukraine, unlike President Barack Obama, who had only provided non-lethal aid.
Moreover, Ukraine did not even know about the hold on the aid until it was reported in the media several weeks later. And witnesses in the House of Representatives impeachment inquiry testified that the hold did not affect the Javelins.


Ernst made it clear she was irritated with what she portrayed as hypocrisy by the Democrats.

Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY), she said, voted against the most recent National Defense Authorization Act, “which included lethal aid to Ukraine.” Reps. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), Hakeem Jeffreys (D-NY), and Nadler (D-NY) voted against the last one, which also included such spending.

“This president has done more than they have, and he has done more than the previous administration did,” she said.

Ernst noted that Russia had invaded Crimea in 2014, and President Obama did nothing but send blankets and non-leah military aid. “Blankets don’t throw lead down-range,” said Ernst, a U.S. Army veteran.

In contrast, she noted, President Trump had armed Ukraine with actual weapons, giving it the opportunity to mount a defense against Russia.
“House Democrats, these House managers, did nothing of the sort to provide that assistance to Ukraine, and yet now they are on their high horse about President Trump not doing enough for Ukraine.

“This administration has done more than the previous administration did when Crimea was being invaded. I have very strong feelings about that.”
Ernst later added that the president’s temporary hold on security assistance had not affected current spending for Ukraine.

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dailycaller.com/2020/01/23/putin-trump-msnbc-claire-mccaskill/

Putin ‘Owns Donald Trump,’ Says MSNBC Analyst Claire McCaskill



MSNBC analyst and former Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill on Thursday accused President Donald Trump of being controlled by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

McCaskill said Putin “owns Donald Trump — lock, stock, and barrel.”


The former senator suggested Putin was the one who brought up alleged Ukrainian election interference to Trump.

“I think Putin told him about it,” said McCaskill. “This is all Putin pulling his string. He owns Donald Trump — lock, stock, and barrel.”

“So I think this was a twofer for Donald Trump — he could please Putin, which clearly he’s more worried about than pleasing many members of the American people, and at the same time, he had a perfect place to try to get Biden,” she said, referring to Trump’s request that Ukraine investigate Hunter Biden.

Primis Player Placeholder


None of the other MSNBC panelists challenged McCaskill, who once called Trump the “founder of ISIS.” (RELATED: White House Counsel Pat Cipollone Tells Jerry Nadler He ‘Should Be Embarrassed’)

McCaskill lost her Senate seat in the 2018 midterm elections, at which point the Democratic senator promptly joined MSNBC as a contributor.

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Highly respected Constitutional law expert and professor Jonathan Turley ripped the House Democrats on Thursday during an appearance on CBS.

“House is completely unmoored by history and by the law,” Turley said.

“I think that this will go down as one of the greatest historic blunders of a House of Congress,” he added.

WATCH:

He also accused the Democrats of abusing power.

WATCH:

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www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/01/23/fact-check-adam-schiff-lied-about-tim-morrisons-testimony-about-ukraine-call/

CLAIM: Former National Security Council official Tim Morrison reported the Ukraine phone call right away because it was political.

VERDICT: FALSE. Morrison saw nothing illegal — or political — about the call.




Lead House impeachment manager Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) claimed during President Donald Trump’s Senate impeachment trial on Thursday that several officials listening to his July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky reported “came forward in real time to report the president’s conduct.”

He specifically noted Morisson, though Morisson testified in the House Intelligence Committee that he saw nothing wrong with the call.

Morrison testified that he approached a National Security Council attorney about the call because he was worried that it would be misused, politically, by the president’s opponents in Washington — a prediction that has come true.

Schiff acknowledged that Morrison did not think there was anything illegal about the call, but played a clip of his public testimony in which the Democrats’ staff counsel tried to pressure Morrison to offer something more useful:

GOLDMAN: But you would agree, right, that asking a foreign government to investigate a domestic political rival is inappropriate, would you not?

MORRISON: It’s not what — it’s not what we recommended the president discuss.

Note that Morrison did not agree with the Democrats’ characterization of the call. But Schiff presented it that way to the Senate during his presentation in the impeachment trial. Schiff knew he was lying to the Senate — because Tim Morrison told Schiff himself that he saw nothing political about the call, in his previous closed-door testimony



THE CHAIRMAN: And you weren’t concerned that the President bringing up one of his political opponents in the Presidential election and asking a favor with respect to the DNC server or 2016 theory, you weren’t concerned that those things would cause people to believe that the President was asking his counterpart to conduct an investigation that might influence his reelection campaign?

MR. MORRISON: No.

THE CHAIRMAN: That never occurred to you?

MR. MORRISON: No.

THE CHAIRMAN: Did you recognize during the — as you listened to the call that if Ukraine were to conduct these investigations, that it would inure to the President’s political interests?

MR. MORRISON: No.

Schiff lied to the Senate about what Morrison testified about his own impressions of the call, playing a selectively-edited video in which Democrats’ counsel used his own words, not Morrison’s, to describe his impression of the call.

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www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/01/23/adam-schiff-issues-disclaimer-impeachment-is-not-to-help-joe-biden/

Lead House impeachment manager Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) issued a disclaimer on the Senate floor Thursday afternoon: the impeachment trial is not an effort by House Democrats to help Joe Biden’s presidential campaign.

Schiff said he felt he needed to make the clarification after the previous speaker, Rep. Sylvia Garcia (D-TX), had used poll data showing Biden leading the incumbent president in the 2020 presidential race in 2019.


Garcia argued, and Schiff reiterated, that the fact that Biden was leading in the polls provided the motive for President Donald Trump to ask Ukraine to investigate Biden, which he had not done in previous years.

The Democrat House managers apparently ignored another, perhaps more obvious reason: the media had not reported the former vice president’s 2018 boast about forcing out a Ukrainian prosecutor until John Solomon reported it in The Hill in April 2019, several weeks before Biden announced that he would be running for president.

Nevertheless, Schiff said:

My colleague shared a number of slides showing the polling strength of Joe Biden vis-à-vis the president as a demonstration of his motive, the fact that he went after these political investigations to undermine someone that he was deeply concerned about. This is an appropriate point for me to make the disclaimer: the House managers take no position in the Democratic primary for president. I don’t want to lose a single more vote than necessary.

Schiff seemed to imply he expects to lose the votes of at least some Democratic Senators, although he may also have been trying — as he did in his opening remarks earlier Thursday morning — to make a joke.

Several critics have noted that many of Biden’s rivals — Senators Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), and Michael Bennet (D-CO) — are missing crucial campaign and fundraising activities in the last days before the Iowa caucuses because they are required by the Constitution to attend the impeachment trial.

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www.breitbart.com/national-security/2020/01/23/adam-schiff-remove-trump-because-he-didnt-follow-talking-points/

Lead House impeachment manager Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) told the Senate impeachment trial Thursday that President Donald Trump should be removed from office because he did not obey the talking points prepared by bureaucrats who work for him.

According to Schiff, the president — who has primary authority under the U.S. Constitution to determine U.S. foreign policy — did not follow “U.S. policy” in speaking with Ukraine’s president.


Schiff said:

I just want to underscore this: he’s not obligated to use his talking points. He’s not obligated to follow the recommendations of his staff no matter how sound they may be. But what this makes clear is it wasn’t U.S. policy that he was conducting. It was his private, personal interests that he was conducting. If it was U.S. policy, it probably would have been in the talking points and briefing material. But, of course, it was not.

The U.S. Constitution gives the President of the United States primary authority to determine U.S. foreign policy.

Article II, Section 2, includes the following:

The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States; he may require the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments, upon any Subject relating to the Duties of their respective Offices, and he shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.

He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.

The Constitution does not discuss “talking points” prepared by officials who report to the president himself.

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thefederalist.com/2020/01/24/grassley-letter-asks-whether-taxpayers-paid-russian-agent-to-help-start-the-collusion-hoax/

Grassley Letter Asks Whether Taxpayers Paid Russian Agent To Help Start The Collusion Hoax
Did Stefan Halper attempt to recruit Trump campaign officials as sources? And did he have the FBI (or another agency’s) green light to do so? Grassley’s letter raises these questions, and more.
Margot ClevelandBy Margot Cleveland
JANUARY 24, 2020

On Wednesday, Sen. Chuck Grassley’s office released a letter he penned to James Baker, the director of the Office of Net Assessments for the Department of Defense. Grassley’s letter ostensibly concerned fiscal oversight, but the details revealed by the finance committee chair raise new concerns about FBI confidential human source Stefan Halper.

Grassley’s letter began with a recap of his previous record requests, noting that in July 2019, the chair had requested “all records related to Professor [Stefan] Halper’s contracts with DoD.” Grassley then highlighted several revelations discovered during the finance committee chair’s review of those documents, including various weaknesses in Halper’s various proposals.


But it was Grassley’s discussion of a September 2015 ONA contract that proves the most significant:

In another contract, awarded in September 2015, Professor Halper lists former Deputy Foreign Minister for Russia, Vyacheslav Trubnikov, as a consultant and advisor to a paper delivered to ONA. Trubnikov is a known Russian intelligence officer, who was listed by Christopher Steele as a source in the now-debunked Steele dossier, which was used as a predicate to obtain a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant to surveil Trump Campaign adviser Cater Page. It is unclear from the contracting officer file whether Professor Halper paid Trubnikov for his assistance in gathering information for this paper, or in what capacity Professor Halper interacted with Trubnikov during the course of performing work for this contract. Further, reports indicate that Halper offered George Papadopoulos $3,000 for assistance in completing an energy study and met Carter Page at a Cambridge conference. Given Professor Halper’s intelligence connections and government funding, it is reasonable to ask whether he used any taxpayer money in his attempt to recruit Trump campaign officials as sources.

This paragraph raises several questions and concerns, but initially, one wonders what prompted Grassley to ask whether Halper used government funding “in his attempt to recruit Trump campaign officials as sources.” The IG report indicated that Halper served as a confidential human source for the FBI and that Halper was tasked with targeting Page and Papadopoulos, but also concluded that the Crossfire Hurricane team had not attempted to place a source within the Trump campaign.

But Grassley’s language suggests that Halper had sought to “recruit Trump campaign officials as sources.” Did he? Did Halper attempt to recruit Trump campaign officials as sources and if so, whom? And did he have the FBI (or another agency’s) green light to do so? Grassley’s letter raises these questions.

The revelation that Halper listed former Deputy Foreign Minister for Russia Vyacheslav Trubnikov “as a consultant and advisor to a paper delivered to ONA” raises even more questions. A preliminary question concerns Halper’s relationship with Trubnikov and whether the FBI knew of Halper’s connection to the former Russian intelligence agent, and whether Halper’s “Delta” file—the database “FBI agents use to record their interactions with, and information received from” confidential human sources (CHSs)—detailed the extent of that relationship.


One of the many deficiencies the IG detailed in its 400-plus page report addressed a similar issue concerning Steele. The IG explained that it “found instances where information we deemed significant about Steele was not included in his Delta file, and therefore was not available” for a confidential human source validation review. Among other facts omitted from the Delta file was “the FBI Transnational Organized Crime Intelligence Unit’s concerns about the number of contacts that Steele purportedly had with Russian oligarchs.” Those concerns would apply equally to Halper’s contacts with Russian intelligence agents, such as Trubnikov.



But Halper’s contacts with Trubnikov trigger a more significant question: Was Halper a sub-source for the Steele’s dossier relaying supposed intel from Trubnikov to Steele’s primary sub-source?

We know Steele told the State Department’s Kathleen Kavalec that one of his sources included Trubnikov, and Grassley noted in his letter that Steele had listed Trubnikov “as a source in the now-debunked Steele dossier.” Additionally, in his July 30, 2016, conversation with DOJ attorney Bruce Ohr, Steele claimed “that he had information that a former head of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, the SVR, had stated to someone—I didn’t know who—that they had Donald Trump over a barrel.”


While Ohr didn’t name Trubnikov as Steele’s supposed source, “Trubnikov ran Russia’s SVR (the external intelligence service, analogous to our CIA) before Putin came to power,” indicating Steele meant Trubnikov.

Now, of course, Steele could have invented it all. But if he didn’t, then someone passed on Trubnikov’s supposed intel to Steele. We know this because the IG report concluded “that neither Steele nor the Primary Sub-source had direct access to the information being reported.” Instead, Steele received his “intel” from a primary sub-source and that the “primary sub-source used a network of sub-sources to gather the information that was relayed to Steele.”

So, who had access to Trubnikov? Halper did: As Grassley’s letter reveals, Halper listed Trubnikov as “a consultant and advisor to a paper delivered to ONA,” under the September 2015 contract.

But that was not Halper’s only connection to Trubnikov. As Svetlana Lokhova, the Russian-born British academic who is suing Halper for defamation, told The Federalist, Trubnikov twice spoke at seminars at the University of Cambridge—seminars that listed Halper as a “conveyor,” along with other U.K. intelligence-connected individuals, such as Christopher Andrew and Sir Richard Dearlove.


The online program of the May 2015 intelligence seminar lists Trubnikov as the May 11, 2015 speaker on “current relations between the Russian Federation and the West.” The program from the intelligence seminar that ran three years earlier likewise identified Trubnikov as a guest speaker, then addressing “the challenges faced while directing the Foreign Intelligence Service, his tenure as Ambassador to India, President Putin and the likely course of Russia’s relations with Britain and the US.”




That Trubnikov’s connection to Cambridge and Halper dates back to 2012 raises further flags because Trubnikov has been pegged for some time as either source A or source B (or both?) in the Steele dossier. And those sources purportedly claimed that “Russian authorities have been cultivating and supporting” Trump “for at least 5 years.”



Could it be Halper? Or maybe Dearlove or Andrew or another organizer of the Cambridge “intelligence seminar?”

We don’t know. But does the IG?

The IG reported that the FBI was able to determine the identity of some sub-sources, and that “the FBI determined it was plausible that at least some of the sub-sources had access to intelligence pertinent to events described in Steele’s election reporting.” The Cambridge seminars provided such access to Trubnikov, making it plausible that a sub-source involved in the seminars had “access to intelligence,” described by Steele.

So, was it there that Trubnikov supposedly spilled the beans about Trump? If so, since we know the dossier’s claims that Trump colluded with Russia are false, Trubnikov played the Cambridge team, feeding them Russia disinformation. And then someone passed that “intel” on to the Clinton-funded Steele, who put it in his dossier which the Obama administration then used to illegally spy on Carter Page and the Trump campaign.

Or was Trubnikov never really a source? Did someone with a plausible connection to Trubnikov invent the “intel” and feed it to Steele? If so, who? And did they act alone? Here, the title of another Cambridge “intelligence seminar” session suggests an answer: “The Secret Special Relationship: The UK/USA Intelligence Alliance.”

But Americans want more than suggestions—we want the truth. And we are still a long way from finding out the full unfiltered truth behind the targeting of Trump.

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thefederalist.com/2020/01/24/schiffs-call-to-invalidate-a-trump-re-election-is-a-revealing-attack-on-voters/

Schiff’s Call To Invalidate A Trump Re-Election Is A Revealing Attack On Voters
‘The president's misconduct cannot be decided at the ballot box,’ Rep. Adam Schiff said. ‘For we cannot be assured that the vote will be fairly won.’
Jarrett StepmanBy Jarrett Stepman
JANUARY 24, 2020

For all the accusations of “norm breaking” hurled at President Donald Trump, the early stages of the Senate impeachment trial have revealed that congressional Democrats are perfectly willing to flirt with toppling one of the few, and most essential, precedents in American history.

House managers of the trial, all Democrats, cut right to the chase: If this whole impeachment thing doesn’t work out, and Trump is acquitted, it doesn’t matter. A Trump victory at the ballot box in 2020 has been preemptively deemed illegitimate.


So says House manager Rep. Adam Schiff, arguing to impeach Trump without the accusation of an actual crime.

“The president’s misconduct cannot be decided at the ballot box,” Schiff said. “For we cannot be assured that the vote will be fairly won.”

The California Democrat, who sought impeachment before the story about Trump’s Ukraine call ever broke, accused Trump of using the power of the presidency to “cheat in an election” and again brought up the debunked Russia-collusion narrative. So, if Schiff and fellow impeachment managers can’t convince the Senate to toss Trump from office, Americans must accept the will of House Democrats and perhaps ignore the result of the next election?

So much for being the party of upholding “norms” against the Trumpian norm-breakers. Saying that Americans should outright ignore an election result is an absurd attack on an underappreciated hallmark of American exceptionalism.


While free elections and peaceful transfers of powers are now almost globally expected, there was a time this was far from the case. It almost didn’t happen in the early stages of American history.

When Ballots First Triumphed Over Bullets
The presidential election of 1800, which pitted incumbent President John Adams against Thomas Jefferson, was a notoriously brutal affair of gutter politics and mostly accurate accusations of foreign meddling. Partisans of Adams, a Federalist, were accused of being sops to Great Britain and secret monarchists. Jefferson was portrayed as a bloodthirsty revolutionary, long derided as having a “womanish attachment to France.”

The infant republic looked doomed by its failed experiment in self-rule; an anarchic laughingstock in the courts of Europe. When Jefferson’s republicans won the election, with a near constitutional crisis revolving around a tie vote between Jefferson and his vice-presidential candidate Aaron Burr (this was the days before the 12th Amendment and the unified ticket), the potential for civil war was high.

But that war never came.


It’s hard to understate the precedent the 1800 election established. It marked the first transition of power from one party—however loosely defined at that time—to another under the Constitution. That it occurred without incident, other than Adams grumpily leaving Washington without attending Jefferson’s inauguration, seems unremarkable to us today, but our view of history is often skewed by our success.

In fact, the late historian and political philosopher Harry Jaffa remarked in his book, “A New Birth of Freedom,” that “the idea of deciding who should govern by means of a free election by a whole people was something that the world had never known before the American Revolution.”

In Jefferson’s inaugural address, where he famously said that “we are all republicans, we are all federalists,” he was not declaring an end partisan politics. Far from it. Instead, he was reiterating that under the Constitution, the rights of all Americans will be protected and respected, that deliberation and the political process must and will triumph under this experiment in liberty.

Most of mankind has lived under one form of tyranny or another. Transfers of power, if they ever occurred, only occurred through violence and civil war. Legitimacy stemmed from force, not the consent of the governed. Consider that France has gone through five republics, two empires, two monarchies, and several quasi-governmental dictatorships while we have enjoyed one sustained form of government under the Constitution.


Under that Constitution, a mandate for leadership came through ballots, not bullets. It’s a streak that Americans have kept alive for two centuries, save one interlude in the 1860 when Abraham Lincoln, the Union army, and providence saved government of the people, by the people, and for the people from annihilation.

Democrats Against Democracy
Although hyperbolism in politics is practically a national pastime, the precedent of 1800 is nevertheless being eroded by leftist politicians who have spent nearly four years making the case that the 2016 election was illegitimate. For all the talk that Trump wouldn’t accept election results in 2016 if he lost, the opposite has been true.

Saying that 2020 is preemptively illegitimate is even worse, signaling to voters that they should finally take the sophomoric “not my president” bumper stickers seriously, and now perhaps literally.

Fortunately, most Americans—who are paying little attention to the impeachment saga—have no appetite for ignoring elections. But the continual attempts by a sordid junto of politicians, journalists, and deep state bureaucrats to invalidate this and future elections signals to the people that perhaps they don’t live in a republic after all.

Perhaps all the talk of championing “democracy” is a farce and they really are being ruled by a little pseudo elite in a far-off place that thinks it knows their interests better than they do. No wonder America is gripped by populist fervor.

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thefederalist.com/2020/01/24/national-reviews-impeachment-advice-to-gop-senators-is-deeply-naive/

National Review’s Impeachment Advice To GOP Senators Is Deeply Naïve
Admitting that Trump was wrong but he shouldn’t be impeached is a terrible idea that assumes too much goodwill from Democrats.
John Daniel DavidsonBy John Daniel Davidson
JANUARY 24, 2020

In an editorial published Wednesday at National Review, the editors argue that an “unspoken consensus” has emerged among Republican senators that what President Trump did was wrong but it doesn’t warrant his removal from office. The editors think this a “reasonable” position and that Republicans should make the case for it publicly, but they can’t because of the president’s “obstinacy” in defending his actions vis-à-vis Ukraine.

Instead of insisting that Trump “cannot be impeached for any abuse of power unless that abuse took the form of a criminal violation of a statute,” they write, “Republicans would be better off arguing that in this case the president’s behavior, while objectionable, should be left, as scheduled, to the judgment of the voters directly.”


My colleague David Marcus yesterday pointed out some serious problems with this argument, not least of which is that there is no evidence of an emerging unspoken consensus among GOP senators that what Trump did was objectionable—just the opposite, in fact, as the impeachment trial drags on.

But one aspect of Marcus’ argument deserves more fleshing out because it gets to the heart of the divisions on the right over Trump generally and impeachment specifically. He writes:

The notion that a Trump apology over his call, accompanied by grave-faced GOP officials decrying the act but begging that Trump be given a second chance, would have led to Democrats backing down on their impeachment push is pure fantasy. Just as Rep. Adam Schiff tried to do in his arguments yesterday, the Democrats would have seized on Trump’s admission of any flaw in his approach as just one in a chain of illegal acts they believe the president has committed.

For the sake of argument, let’s say that the editors of National Review (and full disclosure: over the years I’ve occasionally written for both NRO and the print magazine) are right about this unspoken consensus among Republicans. And let’s say they follow the editors’ advice and concede that Trump should never have asked Ukraine for an investigation into Burisma or the Bidens or possible 2016 election interference. They argue that this was very bad, very objectionable, but surely it doesn’t rise to the level of impeachment. Surely, we must leave this to the voters.

Let’s say they make that case. What do the editors think would be the outcome? Do they think it would persuade even one Senate Democrat to vote for acquittal? Do they think it would satiate Resistance Democrats who have been calling for Trump’s impeachment and removal since November 2016? Do they think it would endear Senate Republicans to Trump voters, who will see that, yes, these senators are indeed principled and serious people, and deserve our confidence and respect?


I should say, if the editors really believe what Trump did was wrong but he shouldn’t be impeached over it, fine. But to counsel GOP senators to engage this sort of argument as a political strategy against a Democratic Party marching in lock-step for impeachment is deeply naïve. After all, we’re talking about a Democratic Party that to date has voted four times on impeachment in the House, beginning with a vote in December 2017 on articles of impeachment for the high crime of criticizing NFL players for kneeling during the national anthem. Fifty-eight Democratic members of the House supported it.

A month later, 66 Democrats voted for impeachment after Trump’s “sh-thole countries” comment. In July of last year, 95 Democrats—more than 40 percent of House Democrats—voted to impeach Trump for tweeting that members of the Squad should “go back” to their home countries if they don’t like America. Clearly, a significant portion of House Democrats are not all that concerned about the reason for Trump’s impeachment, so long as he’s impeached.

Democrats Want to Destroy Trump ‘Thoroughly’
This of course has been their plan all along. When Democrats gained a majority in the House in the 2018 midterms, House Judiciary Chairman Rep. Jerry Nadler was overheard on the Acela train from New York to Washington talking about how House Democrats were ready to go “all-in” on impeachment. This was the entire purpose of the Robert Mueller probe and the Russia collusion hoax, which turned out badly for Democrats when, after more than two years of investigating, Mueller turned up nothing.

Even before the Mueller probe, Democrats have been angling to destroy Trump. Four months before the 2016 election, President Obama’s former campaign manager David Plouffe wrote in a since-deleted tweet, “It is not enough to simply beat Trump. He must be destroyed thoroughly. His kind must not rise again.” Elaborating on this to a New York Times reporter, Plouffe said, “This could still be a relatively close race, but it’s more likely to be a blowout than a Trump win.” (Funnily enough, Plouffe has a book coming out in March called, “A Citizen’s Guide to Defeating Donald Trump.”)


The point is that Democrats are not interested in subtle arguments about what’s an impeachable offense and what isn’t. They aren’t even interested in basic details of their own case against the president, like whether there was a legitimate basis for Trump to ask for an investigation into a notoriously corrupt Ukrainian energy company. Did Trump ask President Zelensky of Ukraine for an investigation, or did he ask him to fabricate dirt on a political rival?

As National Review’s own Andrew McCarthy pointed out this week, Rep. Adam Schiff has from the start ignored that distinction, instead simply asserting that there was no legitimate reason for Trump’s request—as if his say-so should be enough to put the matter to rest and move forward with the removal of a duly elected president.

Only the most rabid partisan would find that convincing in the least—the sort of partisan who would take any admission by Senate Republicans of Trump’s wrongdoing as proof positive that he must be removed from office, niceties about what constitutes an impeachable offense be damned. As it happens, those are precisely the kind of partisans now in charge of the Democratic Party, and they won’t stop until Trump has been destroyed thoroughly.

[soonernvolved]

In his next two tweets Undercover Huber notes that the Court is asking the FBI to sequester the data and information related to the Carter Page FISA warrants. Undercover Huber suggests that actions in any cases that relied on any of the ‘fruit of the poisonous tree’ could be overturned, including indictments from the corrupt Mueller gang:

[soonernvolved]

www.breitbart.com/the-media/2020/01/24/watch-george-stephanopoulos-makes-throat-slitting-gesture-to-cut-away-from-trump-lawyer/



ABC news anchor George Stephanopoulos made a throat-slitting gesture to cut away from Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow during live coverage of the Senate’s impeachment trial Thursday.

According to Tim Graham, executive editor of NewsBusters, Stephanopoulos was spotted on camera making the motion around 3:00 P.M. EST. The clip begins with a Capitol Hill reporter asking Sekulow for his thoughts on Attorney General William Barr, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), and renowned lawyer Alan Dershowitz having previously made the argument that abuse of power is impeachable.

“We’ve got something very different from what you’re hearing up here,” Sekulow begins.

“We’ve got lawyers that will be put forward when our side of the case goes that represents multiple schools of thought on what is an impeachable offense,” the president’s personal attorney continues. “They have one thing in common: that the actions alleged and the actions of the president do not reach that level — no matter which school of thought you’re on.”

“We’re not afraid to put out both of those schools of thought because our position is you still have to meet basic, fundamental constitutional obligations and they haven’t,” he concluded.

As Sekulow takes another question, Stephanopoulos orders staff situated off-camera to end the broadcast’s feed by making a throat-slitting gesture. The ABC News anchor then segues into a panel segment to discuss the Trump lawyer’s comments.

[soonernvolved]

www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/01/24/robert-barnes-the-unconstitutional-impeachment-of-president-trump/

Robert Barnes: The Unconstitutional Impeachment of President Trump

Neither of the impeachment charges against President Donald Trump is indictable. As such, neither is impeachable. The Constitution compels the Senate tp acquit President Trump as a matter of law.

There are three critical reasons for the principle that impeachable offenses be indictable offenses




First, the plain text of the Constitution requires it; second, the protection of the people’s right to select the president cannot make the president serve at the pleasure of Congress; and third, the due process rights of the president prevent nebulous, vague undefined “offenses” being the basis of punitive impeachment.

Indeed, this argument is far from new: the only Supreme Court Justices ever to argue on the Senate floor on impeachment agreed; the only active Judges to ever argue on the Senate floor on impeachment agreed; and Founding Fathers who debated impeachment on the Senate floor back to 1805 agreed.

The Text of the Constitution Limits Impeachable Offenses to Indictable Offenses

The Constitution only authorizes impeachment for three reasons: treason, bribery, and “other High Crimes and Misdemeanors” akin to treason or bribery. As the current impeachment charges do not even allege treason, bribery or comparable “other high crimes,” this impeachment of President Trump offends the Constitution.

This understanding of the Constitution is not new.

As Alan Dershowitz recently noted, past former Supreme Court Justices made the same argument on the Senate floor in past impeachments.

As you can read in the journals of past infamous impeachment trials, Founding Fathers, respected jurists, and legal scholars each argued near the very founding of our country: “[n}othing is impeachable that is not also indictable.” (Source: Hinds’ Precedents, Volume 3, Chapter 72, “The Impeachment and Trial of Samuel Chase,” published by the U.S. Government Publishing Office, found at this site: www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-HPREC-HINDS-V3/html/GPO-HPREC-HINDS-V3-21.htm)

Equally, as Dershowitz commented, former Justice Benjamin R. Curtis concurred in the impeachment trial of Andrew Johnson. (The opening argument of former Supreme Court Justice Curtis can be found here: famous-trials.com/johnson/482-curtisopening).

Harvard law professor Nikolas Bowie has recognized the significance of this precedent, in his response to Laurence Tribe in Harvard Law Review. (https://harvardlawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/vol132_Bowie.pdf).

Indeed, every judge or justice to take the floor of the Senate and argue about impeachment — for president or judges — has agreed since 1805: impeachment requires a crime.

First, in 1805, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase argued that “impeachment might be invoked only for indictable offenses.” As the journal of the proceeding itself admits, “counsel for Mr. Justice Chase argued elaborately that the power of impeachment applied only to indictable offenses.”

The counsel for Justice Chase included Judge Joseph Hopkinson, himself the astute and learned son of the famous signer of the Declaration of Independence, Francis Hopkinson.

Another fellow member of the Constitutional Convention also joined the defense of Justice Chase: Luther Martin, rightly identified as one of the “Founding Fathers” himself. Martin, Chase and Hopkinson all concurred that it would be shocking if any official could be “impeached and deprived of his office when he has done nothing which the laws of his country prohibited.”

Yet that is precisely what has occurred to President Trump.

A near half-century later, former Chief Justice Curtis successfully argued the same on behalf of the first president ever impeached, Andrew Johnson: “when the Constitution speaks of treason, bribery and other high crimes and misdemeanors it refers to, and includes only, high criminal offenses against the United States, made so by some law of the United States existing when the acts complained of were done.”

Why else would impeachment be referenced in the power to pardon, if not based on criminally offensive conduct? Were it otherwise, we could have impeachment “by no crime” and a trial “by no court,” subjecting the people’s elected president to the capricious whim of Congress on the vaguest of charges, a parliamentary form of power the Constitution directly discarded. Our forebears considered it a “wild idea” that impeachment could occur where the impeached “has violated no law of the country.”

Since 1805, jurists and counselors recognized how the entire constitutional structure requires limiting impeachments to indictable offenses. References to the pardon power, to conviction, to subsequent post-impeachment criminal prosecutorial power – all reveal the Constitution’s intent to limit impeachment to a peculiar form of criminal conduct.

Each state constitution mirrored this principle as well, as “impeachment has been considered by all of them as a criminal prosecution for the punishment of defined offenses against the laws.”



The President Serves at the Will of the People, Not Congress

As James Madison himself objected at the time of the crafting of the Constitution, allowing impeachment for “vague” terms like “maladministration” (which was adopted precisely to target so-called “abuses of power”), would be making the President serving at the “pleasure of the Senate.” (Report of the Committee of Eleven, published by Yale Law School, avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/debates_908.asp).

The argument was revisited in both the Chase trial in 1805 and the Johnson trial in 1868: loosening the definition of impeachment to cover conduct not criminalized by existing law inescapably endangered the separation of powers.

Due Process Principles Prohibit Impeachment For Vague, Undefined Charges

Due process requires limiting impeachments to indictable offenses. Were it otherwise, the House could merely “create the offense, and make any act criminal and impeachable at their will and pleasure,” offending the Constitution’s ex post facto and bill of attainder limits on congressional power.

Just as a grand jury has no “general power to make anything indictable which they might disapprove,” so it is that the House has no general power to make anything impeachable which they might disapprove. How can the House be allowed a power denied all government “to create crimes and inflict the most serious penalties on actions never before suspected to be criminal” merely through “exercise of their power of impeachment”?

Judge Joseph Hopkinson called that the “code of the Roman tyrant,” not the Constitution of the free United States of America. As Judge Hopkinson ably argued, an undetermined definition of impeachable offenses placed a sword over the unconscious head, and put quicksand where safe land appeared to be.

A president is not above the law, but he is not below the law either.

Conclusion

The wise words of our predecessors can still be heard in the echoes of the Senate Chamber. Future Senator Robert Harper defined these limitations on impeachment as an “anchor of personal rights and political privileges” that protects all against “the storms of party rage, personal animosity and popular caprice.” Justice Curtis warned illicit impeachments would “return to plague its inventors.”

Acquittal as a matter of law should be the Senate answer to this House hoax.