Pelosi set to send impeachment articles to the Senate next week

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Friday that she expects to send the articles of impeachment against President Trump over to the Senate next week, breaking the standoff that had delayed the trial over his dealings with Ukraine. The move, which came amid increasing pressure on the Speaker to drop her hold on the articles, means Democrats will move forward in appointing impeachment managers who will make their case that Trump committed high crimes and misdemeanors in Phase Two of the trial, which will weigh whether the president should be removed from office. "I have asked Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler [D-N.Y.] to be prepared to bring to the Floor next week a resolution to appoint managers and transmit articles of impeachment to the Senate," Pelosi wrote in a letter to Democrats. The Senate trial could begin as early as Wednesday, according to Pelosi’s timeline. The announcement comes more than three weeks after the House passed two articles of impeachment, largely along party lines, alleging that Trump abused his power while pressuring the Ukrainian government to investigate his political opponents and obstructed Congress in Democrats’ inquiry...MORE

Inspector General Report Shows Special Counsel Replicated FBI Abuses

Margot Cleveland

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’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.
...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.”

READ ENTIRE COLUMN

An interesting question on impeachment

 Writing in POLITICO,  John J. Harris wants to hear from you if:

I want to hear from someone, anyone, who meets two standards. One, this person is a supporter of Donald Trump and his Republican backers in Congress who believes the impeachment proceeding is illegitimate and unfair. Two, this person is ready in good faith to convince me that he or she would also oppose impeachment and believe the whole matter to be terribly unfair if the facts in the Ukraine matter were exactly the same in every respect but these: That Hillary Clinton was in the White House and she had asked a foreign leader to investigate her potential GOP opponent in the 2020 reelection.

Read the entire piece with more particulars and a special email address to send your response should you care to comment.

I suppose the same question could be asked in reverse. If you supported impeaching Trump, and all the facts were the same except that it was Hillary Clinton who asked a foreign leader to investigate her potential GOP opponent, would you support impeaching Clinton?

And no, I'm not asking anyone to send me their comments on this. I just think it is an interesting and timely opportunity for everyone to make an honest assessment  of their own political principles and persuasions.

TIME Bombshell Blows Up Sondland Testimony

Rush Limbaugh

RUSH: There was a bombshell in TIME magazine yesterday. A bombshell story, and it’s been referenced this morning in the hearings. Don’t know if you’re watching them anymore. Wouldn’t blame you if you’re not. A bombshell from TIME magazine. I almost couldn’t believe it. It totally takes the entire foundation of the Schiff-Nadler impeachment proceedings out from under them. It totally destroys the basis on which they did all of this.
...The only witness with firsthand knowledge of anything close to a quid pro quo was Gordon Sondland. Gordon Sondland testified that he told president Zelensky’s adviser, Andriy Yermak, that he thought — he couldn’t remember for sure — he amended and revised his testimony at this point after hearing from Bill Taylor and Yovanovitch and some of the others.
He thought, he presumed that Trump wanted Zelensky to make a public announcement about investigating Burisma before he, Trump, would release the aid. Sondland then told Bill Taylor and others that, yes, he had told Yermak that. So then this gets passed around. Sondland therefore become the source for the story that Trump demanded a quid pro quo, and it was aid in exchange for Zelensky announcing the investigation into Burisma. Not starting it. Not doing it. Just announcing it.
These people claim Trump didn’t even care whether the investigation actually happened. He just wanted it announced. He wanted the announcement from Ukraine that they finally were gonna be looking into Burisma and Hunter Biden and Joe Biden.
Well, this has all blown up because TIME magazine went and talked to Andriy Yermak. Yermak, again, is Zelensky’s adviser, and he’s the guy that Sondland thinks — he said to this guy, “I think Trump wanted Zelensky to make a public announcement.” He wasn’t sure. He presumed so. Yermak told TIME magazine that Sondland never told him that. In fact, Andriy Yermak says the two of them never even spoke. Except for a few innocuous remarks in passing, they never had any kind of a private conversation ever.
...But it does more than cast doubt. It blows the entire case against Trump out of the water, because this was it. Gordon Sondland testifying that he thought Trump wanted Zelensky to make a public announcement — Sondland amended his testimony — now, we’ll get into what’s going on with Sondland here in a minute. But Sondland testified after he amended his testimony that he thought — he didn’t even say with certitude — he told Yermak that he thought Trump wanted Zelensky to make a public announcement. He presumed it based on other things that he had heard, but he didn’t know it for a fact.
Yermak has come along and said he didn’t even tell me that. We never had a meeting. We ran into each other coming off of an elevator. He never said a word to me about anything to do with a meeting, with an investigation. And TIME magazine knows this is bad. This is very bad. These comments cast doubt on an important moment in the impeachment inquiry’s reconstruction.

READ ENTIRE TRANSCRIPT

'Constitutional dilemma': Dershowitz says nothing impeachable as case heads to Senate

House Democrats are creating a "constitutional dilemma" for the Senate, where any impeachment trial would be held, contends Alan Dershowitz. The professor emeritus at Harvard Law School wrote in a column for the Gatestone Institute that the two grounds cited by House Democrats, abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, are not "among the criteria specified for impeachment." "Neither one is a high crime and misdemeanor. Neither is mentioned in the Constitution. Both are the sort of vague, open-ended criteria rejected by the framers," he said. "They were rejected precisely to avoid the situation in which our nation currently finds itself. "Abuse of power can be charged against virtually every controversial president by the opposing party. And obstruction of Congress — whatever else it may mean — cannot extend to a president invoking privileges and then leave it to the courts to referee conflicts between the legislative and executive branches." The founders, including Alexander Hamilton, "feared that vague criteria would allow a majority of the House to impeach a president from the opposing party just because they had more votes than the president's party." Hamilton called that "the greatest danger." "Madison worried that open-ended criteria, such as 'maladministration' would give Congress too much discretion and power, and turn our republic into a parliamentary democracy in which the chief executive serves at the will of the legislature," Dershowitz wrote. "House Democrats are simply ignoring these words and this history, because they have the votes to do so. They are following the absurd notion put forth by congresswoman Maxine Waters that when it comes to impeachment 'there is no law,' and the criteria are anything a majority of the House wants it be, regardless of what the constitution mandates."...MORE

Former FBI official calls revelations in IG report on FISA abuses 'terrifying'

So, what's the big deal about FISA warrants?

Here is former FBI Assistant Director Chris Swecker:

"These are serious abuses. FISA is the most intrusive technique you can use. You can put a microphone in someone's house, you can put a camera in their house. You can intercept their phone calls, you can intercept their emails, their texts, you can mirror their hard drives," he explained.
"You can look at every aspect of someone's life with a FISA order. It's extremely intrusive and to find out there were 17 different errors, omissions and unsupported assertions in there, is absolutely is terrifying to me," he concluded.

Now you know

Rolling Stone: An Inspector General’s Report Reveals the Steele Dossier Was Always a Joke

Matt Taibbi

...If the report released Monday by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz constitutes a “clearing” of the FBI, never clear me of anything. Holy God, what a clown show the Trump-Russia investigation was. Like the much-ballyhooed report by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, the Horowitz report is a Rorschach test, in which partisans will find what they want to find. Much of the press is concentrating on Horowitz’s conclusion that there was no evidence of “political bias or improper motivation” in the FBI’s probe of Donald Trump’s Russia contacts, an investigation Horowitz says the bureau had “authorized purpose” to conduct. Horowitz uses phrases like “serious performance failures,” describing his 416-page catalogue of errors and manipulations as incompetence rather than corruption. This throws water on the notion that the Trump investigation was a vast frame-up. However, Horowitz describes at great length an FBI whose “serious” procedural problems and omissions of “significant information” in pursuit of surveillance authority all fell in the direction of expanding the unprecedented investigation of a presidential candidate (later, a president). Officials on the “Crossfire Hurricane” Trump-Russia investigators went to extraordinary, almost comical lengths to seek surveillance authority of figures like Trump aide Carter Page. In one episode, an FBI attorney inserted the words “not a source” in an email he’d received from another government agency. This disguised the fact that Page had been an informant for that agency, and had dutifully told the government in real time about being approached by Russian intelligence. The attorney then passed on the email to an FBI supervisory special agent, who signed a FISA warrant application on Page that held those Russian contacts against Page, without disclosing his informant role. Likewise, the use of reports by ex-spy/campaign researcher Christopher Steele in pursuit of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) authority had far-reaching ramifications. Not only did obtaining a FISA warrant allow authorities a window into other Trump figures with whom Page communicated, they led to a slew of leaked “bombshell” news stories that advanced many public misconceptions, including that a court had ruled there was “probable cause” that a Trump figure was an “agent of a foreign power.” There are too many to list in one column, but the Horowitz report show years of breathless headlines were wrong. Some key points: The so-called “Steele dossier” was, actually, crucial to the FBI’s decision to seek secret surveillance of Page. Press figures have derided the idea that Steele was crucial to the FISA application, with some insisting it was only a “small part” of the application. Horowitz is clear: We determined that the Crossfire Hurricane team’s receipt of Steele’s election reporting on September 19, 2016 played a central and essential role in the FBI’s and Department’s decision to seek the FISA order.  The report describes how, prior to receiving Steele’s reports, the FBI General Counsel (OGC) and/or the National Security Division’s Office of Intelligence (OI) wouldn’t budge on seeking FISA authority. But after getting the reports, the OGC unit chief said, “receipt of the Steele reporting changed her mind on whether they could establish probable cause.” Meanwhile, the OI unit chief said Steele’s reports were “what kind of pushed it over the line.”  There’s no FISA warrant without Steele. Horowitz ratifies the oft-denounced “Nunes memo.”Democrats are not going to want to hear this, since conventional wisdom says former House Intelligence chief Devin Nunes is a conspiratorial evildoer, but the Horowitz report ratifies the major claims of the infamous “Nunes memo.” As noted, Horowitz establishes that the Steele report was crucial to the FISA process, even using the same language Nunes used (“essential”). He also confirms the Nunes assertion that the FBI double-dipped in citing both Steele and a September 23, 2016 Yahoo! news story using Steele as an unnamed source. Horowitz listed the idea that Steele did not directly provide information to the press as one of seven significant “inaccuracies or omissions” in the first FISA application...MORE

Forgive the lengthy excerpt, but this is significant as it was published in the left-leaning Rolling Stone. I encourage you to read the complete column.

We Just Got a Rare Look at National Security Surveillance. It Was Ugly.

When a long-awaited inspector general report about the F.B.I.’s Russia investigation became public this week, partisans across the political spectrum mined it to argue about whether President Trump falsely smeared the F.B.I. or was its victim. But the report was also important for reasons that had nothing to do with Mr. Trump. At more than 400 pages, the study amounted to the most searching look ever at the government’s secretive system for carrying out national-security surveillance on American soil. And what the report showed was not pretty. While clearing the F.B.I. of acting out of political bias, the Justice Department’s independent inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz, and his team uncovered a staggeringly dysfunctional and error-ridden process in how the F.B.I. went about obtaining and renewing court permission under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, to wiretap Carter Page, a former Trump campaign adviser. “The litany of problems with the Carter Page surveillance applications demonstrates how the secrecy shrouding the government’s one-sided FISA approval process breeds abuse,” said Hina Shamsi, the director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Security Project. “The concerns the inspector general identifies apply to intrusive investigations of others, including especially Muslims, and far better safeguards against abuse are necessary.” A spotlight on the people reshaping our politics. A conversation with voters across the country. And a guiding hand through the endless news cycle, telling you what you really need to know. Congress enacted FISA in 1978 to regulate domestic surveillance for national-security investigations — monitoring suspected spies and terrorists, as opposed to ordinary criminals. Investigators must persuade a judge on a special court that a target is probably an agent of a foreign power. In 2018, there were 1,833 targets of such orders, including 232 Americans. Most of those targets never learn that their privacy has been invaded, but some are sent to prison on the basis of evidence derived from the surveillance. And unlike in ordinary criminal wiretap cases, defendants are not permitted to see what investigators told the court about them to obtain permission to eavesdrop on their calls and emails. Civil libertarians for years have called the surveillance court a rubber stamp because it only rarely rejects wiretap applications. Out of 1,080 requests by the government in 2018, for example, government records showed that the court fully denied only one...But the inspector general found major errors, material omissions and unsupported statements about Mr. Page in the materials that went to the court. F.B.I. agents cherry-picked the evidence, telling the Justice Department information that made Mr. Page look suspicious and omitting material that cut the other way, and the department passed that misleading portrait onto the court...MORE

Progressive groups unhappy with articles of impeachment

Rep. Tlaib

Liberal firebrand and longtime impeachment advocate Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said Tuesday that the articles of impeachment against President Trump do not go far enough. The same sentiment coursed through progressive circles, as liberal activists and far-left lawmakers bristled that Mr. Trump got off easy. Ms. Ocasio-Cortez said she’ll settle for the two articles of impeachment — abuse of power and obstruction of Congress — that were unveiled on Tuesday. “Of course, I am in the camp where I feel that there should have been more articles. I think obstruction of justice absolutely should have been an article. I’m also supportive of emoluments being included in the articles,” the freshman New York Democrat said. “I understand that the caucus is where it’s at and it took so long for us to get to this point that I’m glad that we have two.” Rep. Al Green, a Texas Democrat who earlier had introduced articles of impeachment against the president three times, felt similarly, telling The Washington Times he conveyed as much to his colleagues in a recent memo. However, he wouldn’t say whether he planned to try to introduce additional articles before the House votes. “We can wait to see if the Senate will convict and remove. But if they don’t, then there’s still work to be done,” he said. Rep. Rashida Tlaib, who went viral for telling supporters on the night of her election that Democrats would “impeachment the m–––-r,” also criticized the scope of impeachment resolution as insufficiently racial. “Let’s be very clear: It’s *racist* abuse of power,” the Michigan Democrat tweeted. “This President targeted people solely based on their ethic background, their faith, disability, sexual orientation and even source of income.” Ms. Tlaib and Ms. Ocasio-Cortez are members of a group of liberal freshman Democratic women known as “The Squad.” The group put pressure on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat, to pursue impeachment long before the Ukraine scandal that led to the articles announced Tuesday...MORE

Barr thinks FBI may have acted in 'bad faith' in probing Trump campaign's links to Russia

In an exclusive interview with NBC News, Barr essentially dismissed the findings of the Justice Department's inspector general that there was no evidence of political bias in the launching of the Russia probe, saying that his hand-picked prosecutor, John Durham, will have the last word on the matter. "I think our nation was turned on its head for three years based on a completely bogus narrative that was largely fanned and hyped by a completely irresponsible press," Barr said. "I think there were gross abuses …and inexplicable behavior that is intolerable in the FBI." "I think that leaves open the possibility that there was bad faith." Barr said he stood by his assertion that the Trump campaign was spied on, noting that the FBI used confidential informants who recorded conversations with Trump campaign officials. "It was clearly spied upon," he said. "That's what electronic surveillance is … going through people's emails, wiring people up." Barr portrayed the Russia investigation as a bogus endeavor that was foisted on Trump, rather than something undertaken by career civil servants who were concerned about whether a foreign power had compromised a political campaign. "From a civil liberties standpoint, the greatest danger to our free system is that the incumbent government use the apparatus of the state … both to spy on political opponents but also to use them in a way that could affect the outcome of an election," Barr said. He added that this was the first time in history that "counterintelligence techniques" were used against a presidential campaign...MORE

John Durham’s Investigators ‘Do Not Agree’ with DOJ IG’s Findings on Origin of Russia Probe

U.S. Attorney John Durham issued a rare statement in the wake of the release of DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s Monday report, stating that his office does “not agree with” the report’s conclusions regarding the origins of the FBI’s 2016 Russia probe.  “I have the utmost respect for the mission of the Office of Inspector General and the comprehensive work that went into the report prepared by Mr. Horowitz and his staff,” Durham’s statement reads. “However, our investigation is not limited to developing information from within component parts of the Justice Department.” “Our investigation has included developing information from other persons and entities, both in the U.S. and outside of the U.S.  Based on the evidence collected to date, and while our investigation is ongoing, last month we advised the Inspector General that we do not agree with some of the report’s conclusions as to predication and how the FBI case was opened,” Durham’s statement concludes...Durham’s statement, however, challenges the report’s assertion that the FBI was acting properly in opening its investigation because it received information from a “Friendly Foreign Government” (FFG) that former Trump campaign foreign policy advisor George Papadopoulos received dirt on Hillary Clinton from Russia...MORE

The Legacy of Low-Bar Impeachment

 Folks, this is an Allison find and a very interesting column by Victor Davis Hanson...FD

From now on, impeachment can be used against any first-term president with a record of success. It will be used solely as a political strategy by the opposition party that controls the House to weaken a president’s reelection chances. That’s the Democratic Party’s legacy and Democrats will live to rue it.

MORE

https://amgreatness.com/2019/12/08/the-legacy-of-low-bar-impeachment/

Pelosi: House will vote on articles of impeachment against Trump

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced the House will pursue articles of impeachment against President Trump for his “failure to faithfully execute the law.” The California Democrat said the House has gathered evidence from weeks of testimony that shows the president abused his office and obstructed Congress in an effort to undermine his political rival, former Vice President Joe Biden. “The president leaves us no choice but to act because he is trying to corrupt once again, the election for his own personal benefit,” Pelosi said. “Today I am asking our chairman to proceed with articles of impeachment.” Pelosi did not describe the impeachment articles or the timeline, but Democrats have outlined a case that will likely center on abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. Democrats have been eager to finish impeachment “expeditiously,” and are hoping to vote on the articles before the House adjourns for the year on Dec. 20. The Judiciary Committee will be tasked with drafting the articles and advancing them to the House floor...MORE

Trump-Ukraine Impeachment Inquiry Report

Was released today. You can review or download it here.

Here are some of the headlines:

A grave charge and a momentous turn in the Trump impeachment inquiry -CNN

Impeachment Report Says Trump Solicited Foreign Election Interference
-New York Times

'Even President Richard Nixon...': 10 important lines from Democrats' impeachment report -NBC

The First Glimpse into Horowitz’s FISA-Abuse Report

Andrew McCarthy

...Press stories, based on unnamed sources who’ve seen a draft of the IG’s magnum opus, indicate that Horowitz will conclude that the FBI attorney’s document tampering did not affect the overall validity of the warrant application.
I presume this means it was not make-or-break on the issue of probable cause. Under federal jurisprudence, false information does not necessarily invalidate a warrant. Instead, the warrant is deemed valid if, were the false information stripped out, the remaining information would still have been sufficient to establish probable cause.
It should go without saying by now that what’s being reported is but a fraction of the problematic information provided to the FISC. I would briefly rehearse four points:
1. The Steele-dossier claims formed a substantial basis for the warrant application. McCabe has assessed that there would not have been probable cause without them; others have indicated that it was a 50–50 proposition, at best. It is impossible for us to make a judgment about this without knowing the totality of the non-dossier information.
2. What we do know is not reassuring. While much has been made of the Steele dossier’s blatant unreliability, not enough attention has been paid to another matter on which the FBI and DOJ relied: the attempts by Russian spies to recruit Page as an asset between 2008 and 2013.
The government made much of this in the warrant application. Downplayed, however, were the facts that Page cooperated with the government in the prosecution of the spies; that the Justice Department used Page’s information in its arrest complaint; that Page submitted to numerous interviews by the federal investigators, including as late as spring 2016, when (according to Page) he was being prepared to testify as a government witness, which testimony became unnecessary when the spy pled guilty; and that the Russian spies against whom he cooperated regarded him as an “idiot” in communications intercepted by the feds.
Did the FBI tell the FISC everything it should have been told about the spy case? If so, what made the FBI believe that Russia, with its highly competent intelligence services supposedly in a high-stakes conspiracy with Trump, would trust as a key conspirator a man who (a) the Kremlin believed was incompetent and (b) had helped the U.S. prosecute the Kremlin’s operatives?
3. The FBI’s many interviews with Page are highly relevant. So is the fact that, while the FBI was pushing for the warrant, Page — in reaction to the Steele-generated negative publicity against him — fired off a letter to FBI director James Comey, pleading to meet with agents in order to assuage any concerns they might have about his contacts with Russians.
As I’ve pointed out a number of times, federal law requires agents seeking an eavesdropping warrant to explain to the court why less intrusive alternative investigative techniques would not be adequate to obtain the information they claim to need. Why did the FBI and DOJ believe they needed an eavesdropping warrant enabling them to monitor all of Page’s communications (and to review prior stored texts, emails, and phone messages), if Page was more than willing to submit to an interview — under circumstances where there was a long history of such interviews, and where the government had found Page’s information sufficiently credible to rely onit in an arrest complaint (and to prepare him to testify as a government witness, Page says)?
What did the FBI and DOJ tell the court about why interviewing Page would not adequately serve their purposes?
4. Much of the information offered as probable cause involved Russia’s history of anti-American operations and its cyber-meddling in the 2016 election. These matters are not in dispute, but they do not mean that Carter Page and the Trump campaign were complicit as clandestine agents of the Putin regime.
This last point brings us back to the question raised earlier: Are the investigators and their media allies laying the groundwork to argue that, because Russia did interfere in the 2016 campaign, any “mistakes” in using FISA or other investigative tactics do not detract from the overall validity of the investigation?
If evidence tampering by a low-ranking FBI lawyer ended up making no difference to the validity of the Carter Page FISA warrants, that is hardly the stuff of scandal. It would be small-scale misconduct of the kind that unavoidably happens from time to time, and that the government has handled appropriately — by forcing the culprit out of the FBI and referring him to U.S. attorney Durham for possible prosecution.

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On the other hand, if the Horowitz report is going to take the tack that, because Russia did in fact meddle in the 2016 campaign, any investigative overreach amounts merely to regrettable but understandable overzealousness, that would be a very big deal — and not in a good way.
The question is not whether Russia meddled. On four separate occasions, the FBI and the Justice Department solemnly told the FISC there were grounds to believe that Carter Page and others in the Trump campaign, potentially including Donald Trump himself, were complicit in a criminal conspiracy with the Kremlin. The question is: What was their compelling basis for making that explosive representation, which breached the American norm against government intrusion in our political process?

READ ENTIRE COLUMN 

Impeachment inquiry: It's a question of who should run the show

Sharyl Attkisson

Many will debate the substance of the public impeachment testimony against President Trump. To me, each of the Democrats’ witnesses of the past two weeks appeared to be well-intentioned and hard-working, and seemed genuinely to believe they know what’s best.
But a picture also emerged of U.S. diplomats who appear to believe they, rather than the U.S. president, have the ultimate authority to determine our foreign policy. And if the president doesn’t go along? He clearly must be wrong — in their view. Or, even worse, he’s a traitor. He’s to be obstructed. Taken down.
In an odd turnabout, they actually make the case for President Trump’s mantra that we need to “drain the swamp.”
One can first look at the language witnesses used as they vented about Trump’s tutelage in ways that veered far from relevance to the impeachment allegations. They conveyed hurt feelings, bruised egos and strong differences of opinion. At times, the testimony sounded a bit like a human resources conference or psychotherapy session.
The diplomats testified that they were “shocked and devastated” to learn that Trump and Ukraine’s new president did not have faith in them. They complained that, under Trump, “foreign service professionals are being denigrated and undermined” and the State Department isn’t getting the “attention and respect” it deserves. They expressed “disappointment” that Trump had the nerve to defy the federal agencies by not discussing “any of our interagency agreed-upon talking points” in Trump’s first call with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky. They were “embarrassed” in front of Ukrainians when they didn’t have answers about U.S. policy.
Former Ambassador William Taylor called the team that Trump relied on the “irregular channel.” Taylor was among those who described feeling excluded or left out, at times, along with former National Security Council official Fiona Hill, diplomat George Kent, and Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, the U.S. national security adviser who oddly confirmed under oath that he’d been repeatedly approached and offered the job of defense minister in Ukraine earlier this year.
It was hard not to notice that virtually the entire U.S. diplomatic staff never spoke about executing U.S. foreign policy as determined by the president of the United States — the man in charge, according to the Constitution. Instead, they spoke as if their primary mission was to advocate for Ukraine and its new, unproven president whom President Trump was sizing up. They spoke of protecting “longstanding” or “official” policy — against Trump’s wishes. When Trump differed with their assessments and relied on his chosen adviser, his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, they collectively lost their minds.
Strangely, these diplomats seemed determined to prevent, at all costs, President Zelensky from making a real commitment to investigate corruption, even when it allegedly involved U.S. money, U.S. elections and/or U.S. political figures. Strange, because that seems at odds with admissions by the same diplomats that corruption is a major problem in Ukraine, that a corruption probe into the Ukrainian company Burisma was stopped midstream in 2014 — just before the company hired then-Vice President Joe Biden’s son, a hire that raised broad concerns about the appearance of a possible conflict of interest — and that Ukraine should resume its investigation into Burisma.

READ ENTIRE COLUMN

Democrats aim to impeach Trump by Christmas

House Democrats are moving aggressively to wrap up their historic, weeks-long investigation into President Trump before 2020, potentially setting up a climactic vote to impeach him just before Christmas. The timeline has come into sharper focus as Democrats have made a series of critical moves signaling they are shutting down the closed-door fact-finding phase of the inquiry and shifting now to Phase 2: making the case for impeachment to the American public. Congressional investigators, led by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), appear to have wrapped up the last of 15 private depositions of current and former Trump administration officials. This week they began publishing thousands of pages of transcripts from those interviews. And next week, Democrats will launch the first public, televised hearings of their nearly seven-week-long impeachment inquiry, calling three career foreign service officials who have already testified that Trump, his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and their allies were seeking a brazen quid pro quo with Ukraine. “I think, without being hasty, again, but being expeditious and deliberative, that the House ought to set for themselves a target of having dealt with this in the Intelligence Committee and Foreign Affairs and Oversight and the Judiciary Committee and on the floor by Christmas,” Rep. Denny Heck (D-Wash.), a member of the Intelligence Committee, told CNN’s “The Situation Room” on Thursday night. “That's a tough schedule. But it's a doable schedule, given where we're at and all the work that's been done thus far,” Heck said. There are other signs that Democrats are charging toward a December floor vote to make Trump just the third president in U.S. history to be impeached. Several top Trump officials who played pivotal roles in the administration's dealings with Ukraine — including Energy Secretary Rick Perry and acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney — have defied subpoenas compelling them to testify behind closed doors, but Democrats have shown little appetite to resolve the matter in court. After watching their Mueller and Russia probes get bogged down in never-ending court battles, Democrats appear to be moving on without testimony from those key witnesses rather than engage in another lengthy lawsuit against the administration....MORE

EDITORIAL: Did Obama, Brennan And Clinton Illegally Collude To Take Trump Down?

...The release of the FISA application by the FBI to investigate alleged collusion between Russia and President Trump's campaign and recent comments made by top officials are eye opening.
Not only did President Obama know about the investigation, he seems to have pushed it from the very beginning.
But don't take our word for it. Here's what Obama's Director of National Intelligence, the nation's former spy master, James Clapper, told CNN's Anderson Cooper:
"If it weren't for President Obama we might not have done the intelligence community assessment that we did that set up a whole sequence of event which are still unfolding today, including Special Counsel (Robert) Mueller's investigation. President Obama is responsible for that. It was he who tasked us to do that intelligence community assessment in the first place."
As Kimberley Strassel wrote in the Wall Street Journal, Brennan in particular has revealed himself to be a total anti-Trump partisan to an extent that's shocking for a public official. His animus is raw and deep, as his actions suggest.
"The record shows (Brennan) went on to use his position — as head of the most powerful spy agency in the world — to assist Hillary Clinton's campaign (and keep his job)," Kimberley Strassel wrote last week in the Wall Street Journal.
Brennan's manic partisanship could be seen last week in an over-the-top, bizarrely unhinged tweet following Trump's press conference after his mini-summit with Vladimir Putin. Brennan called Trump's remarks "nothing short of treasonous" and said they exceeded "the threshold of 'high crimes & misdemeanors.' "
While Brennan's hate for the GOP nominee may be public now, it wasn't in the summer of 2016. His evidence for collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia was so weak neither the FBI nor Clapper would commit to it.
Knowing his role as CIA head forbade him from intervening in domestic spying and trying to take the investigation from a low simmer to a high boil, Brennan got the ball rolling in August of 2016 by telling thenformer Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid a tale of Russians interfering in our election on Trump's behalf.
It worked. Pushed on by Brennan, Reid, then the most powerful person in Congress, wrote a letter to FBI Director James Comey citing "evidence of a direct connection" between the Trump campaign and seeking an investigation.
Not only did Brennan share intelligence with the FBI, but soon after, the Democrat-linked opposition research firm Fusion GPS began leaking the "Trump Dossier" to the media. The fix was in.
As the release late last week of the FBI's FISA court application used to spy on former Trump aide Carter Page indicates, the dossier was used extensively for the application. That's contrary to what the FBI had maintained.
Moreover, an influential article written by Michael Isikoff detailing the dossier's contents and Harry Reid's letter to the FBI were likewise used to get approval for the FISA court application.
What do they all have in common? They all go back to the same phony dossier, written by former British spy Christopher Steele for Fusion GPS. It was never verified or validated by the FBI. It was bought and paid for by Hillary Clinton and her pals at the Democratic National Committee, solely to smear Trump.
Give Hillary credit: She was adept at insinuating her phony oppo research document into the public record and at using it to weaponize U.S. intelligence agencies on behalf of her failed campaign.
But then, we all knew this had happened. What's stunning is the casual way Clapper let us know that President Obama "was responsible" for the whole shebang.

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'Smokescreen': Trump 'quid pro quo' a presidential duty, legal scholars say

S.A. Miller

The alleged quid pro quo transaction at the heart of House Democrats’ case against President Trump is closer to typical Oval Office deal-making than a high crime or misdemeanor worthy of impeachment, legal scholars say. Bartering with foreign leaders, they say, is part of a president’s job description. “All this discussion of quid pro quo is really a smokescreen,” said Robert G. Natelson, a constitutional scholar with the Independence Institute, a libertarian-leaning think tank in Denver. “Even if it were a quid pro quo, I think it is rather clearly neither a felony nor a misdemeanor.” The Constitution’s criteria for impeachment — treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors — refer to felonies and serious breaches of fiduciary duty or the obligation to act in the best interest of the U.S., he said. “It is not a breach of fiduciary duty for a president to make aid to another country conditional, and it is certainly not a breach of fiduciary duty for the president to ask the other country to investigate possible involvement in an American election,” Mr. Natelson said. Mr. Trump also prodded Kyiv to investigate Ukraine’s suspected interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Robert Ray, a former independent counsel who conducted the probe in the Whitewater scandal involving Bill and Hillary Clinton, said the quid pro quo — “something for something” in the original Latin — also doesn’t qualify as impeachable bribery. “If what the Democrats are pointing to is bribery, it is a long way short of that. You have to have more than a quid pro quo,” he told Fox Business Network’s Neil Cavuto. He said the deal-making would have to be blatantly illegal to qualify as bribery. “It has to be corrupt, which is to say something that the law is prepared to recognize as clearly and unmistakably illegal,” Mr. Ray said. The argument has gained credence with the Republican senators who will judge Mr. Trump if impeachment goes to a Senate trial. Sen. Lindsey Graham, South Carolina Republican, told reporters this week that he wasn’t convinced a quid pro quo by itself was impeachable...MORE

Whistleblower’s attorneys break off negotiations with House

Schiff

Ed Morrissey

Looks like we won’t have the Ukraine-Gate whistleblower to kick around in the impeachment follies after all. Despite his touching off the latest scandal for Democrats’ use in their years-long effort to remove Donald Trump from the presidency, attorneys representing the career CIA analyst have broken off negotiations for his appearance in both the House and the Senate. That may not end up being the last word if this goes to a trial, however:

A source familiar with the discussions told the Washington Examiner that talks halted over potential testimony from the whistleblower and there is no discussion of testimony from a second whistleblower, who supported the first’s claims.
“There is no indication that either of the original whistleblowers will be called to testify or appear before the Senate or House Intelligence committees. There is no further discussion ongoing between the legal team and the committees,” the person said.
The whistleblower is a career CIA officer with expertise in Ukraine policy who served on the White House National Security Council during the Obama administration, when 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden was “point man” for Ukraine, and during the early months of the Trump administration.
Schiff spokesman Patrick Boland did not respond to requests for comment. “I’m not aware of any discussions” on having the whistleblower testify, said a House Republican source familiar with the inquiry.

The Washington Examiner’s Steven Nelson points out that this is quite a turnaround from six weeks ago. At that time, Adam Schiff declared that the whistleblower was only awaiting “guidance from the Acting DNI” to testify.
Ever since then, however, questions have arisen about contacts between Schiff and/or his staff and the whistleblower prior to his complaint, as well as the whistleblower’s connections to potential Donald Trump challengers in the 2020 election. It didn’t help matters to have Schiff lie about the former, and rumors about connections to Joe Biden keep coming up.
...If Democrats vote to impeach Trump, a trial must begin in the Senate, where Republicans will control all of the processes that Schiff currently controls. It’s all but certain that Senate Republicans will take a very keen interest in just how this all started, and might start issuing subpoenas to House attorneys to testify as to their contacts with this whistleblower. They could also subpoena the whistleblower himself, although certain safeguards would still apply, but it might be sufficient to force transparency on House committee staffers in establishing who participated in this whistleblowing, at what time, and for what purpose.
At any rate, the fact that Democrats no longer want the whistleblower to participate in this process is not going to deter Republicans from pursuing this issue. In fact, it might just raise a big red flag for Lindsey Graham when — or if — he gets the case.

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