Meanwhile, Durham continues his work on exposing this miscarriage of justice. Funny though, I missed any mention of this from US media. I wonder why……? 🙄
“Australian media reporting that US atty Durham has interviewed Alexander Downer”
“U.S. attorney John Durham is running an investigation into the Russia hoax that has been almost airtight. A fragment of information on his activities, however, comes our way via Australian media.
Alexander Downer’s meeting with George Papadopoulos at the Kensington Wine Rooms in 2016 played a key role in providing a rationale for an FBI investigation of the Trump campaign, including FISA warrants allowing wiretapping. At the time, Downer was the Australian high commissioner (ambassador) to the U.K. and had been Australia’s foreign minister earlier, a very senior diplomat to be entertaining a young Trump campaign volunteer.
The meeting, also attended by Aussie diplomat Erika Thompson, elicited the information from Papadopoulos that he had been told by mysterious Maltese professor Joseph Mifsud that the Russians had a trove of Hillary Clinton’s missing emails. When that information was duly passed along and reached the U.S., it became justification for investigating “collusion with Russia.”
————
Alexander Downer, the Clinton errand boy whose bizarre behavior at my meeting with him sparked the Durham probe, was on Australian tv today ranting like a lunatic against Trump and me. The probe is closing in on him. He’s feeling the heat.
Be quick, Trumpkins! Unplug your TVs! Cult priest Lindsey Graham doesn’t think you can handle listening to testimony from patriotic public servants with personal knowledge of Dear Leader’s Ukraine Extortion.
Lindsey Graham directs the Republican base: don't watch the impeachment hearings because they are "a danger to the presidency."
That pretty much says everything you need to know. Their ideas fail totally outside the carefully controlled narrative bubble, where facts still exist.
“Jeffrey Epstein was accused of being a serial sexual predator who ran a rape ring that included some of the world’s richest and most powerful men and victimized underaged girls.
Everything about Epstein’s supposed suicide stinks to high heaven. From the time he was mysteriously and inexplicably left alone, to the autopsy report.
According to the New York Times, “roughly 15 employees at the Metropolitan Correctional Center where Jeffrey Epstein killed himself in his jail cell have been subpoenaed as the criminal investigation into the events around his suicide intensifies.”
The warden and the head of the federal Bureau of Prisons have been reassigned. Two employees accused of sleeping on the job and falsifying records have been placed on administrative leave.
Now, roughly 15 employees at the Metropolitan Correctional Center where Jeffrey Epstein killed himself in his jail cell have been subpoenaed as the criminal investigation into the events around his suicide intensifies, according to a prison official and a person with knowledge of the matter.
The subpoenas, issued in recent days by federal prosecutors in Manhattan, are the latest sign of the heightened scrutiny over the suicide of the high-profile detainee at the chronically understaffed federal jail.
The United States attorney general, William P. Barr, whose Justice Department oversees the Bureau of Prisons, has complained about “serious irregularities at this facility.” On Wednesday he went further, telling reporters in Dallas, “unfortunately, there have been some delays because a number of the witnesses were not cooperative.”
“Few now doubt that the major U.S. media outlets, under the guise of journalism, function as political activists, saturating the airwaves and the internet with the talking points of the Democrat party.
There has long been liberal bias in the media, but deliberate efforts to undermine the traditional nonpartisan ideal of journalism took a giant leap forward with the 2007 founding of “Journolist.”
It was originally intended to be a gathering place for several hundred liberal journalists, academics and political activists to connect young writers to top sources, but Journolist quickly degenerated into the collusion and coordination for hackery and smears, as described by the Daily Caller:
“In a key episode, Journolist members openly plotted to bury attention on then-candidate Barack Obama’s controversial pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. The Washington Independent’s Spencer Ackerman, for instance, suggested an effective tactic to distract from the issue would be to pick one of Obama’s critics, ‘Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists.’”
At a more secret and sinister level, individuals, acting alone or in coordinated groups, promote the narrative of the establishment elite, often with the encouragement or under the guidance of intelligence agencies or their commercial surrogates.
For example, the Washington Post’s David Ignatius, long-considered a mouthpiece for U.S. and British intelligence agencies, has recently been identified as a media conduit for now-outed CIA and FBI informant Stefan Halper, providing more evidence that the intelligence community has co-opted the press to push anti-Trump conspiracy theories.
It is important to note that the October 24, 2019 court filing by the defense attorneys for General Michael Flynn alleges that James H. Baker, Director of the Office of Net Assessment at the Pentagon, leaked to the press copies of the transcripts from Flynn’s December 2016 telephone calls to then-Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Baker had regularly scheduled lunches with The Washington Post’s David Ignatius, who published an article about the calls in January 2017.
Over four years, the Office of Net Assessment, paid Stefan Halper, linked both to the Flynn case and the Trump-Russia collusion hoax, over $1 million for research papers of dubious value.
The targeted, coordinated and swarming feeding-freezing journalism for political ends appears to be, not just the product of individuals, but a collaborative effort between media outlets and the Deep State, which is transnational and may have been and may still be an intimate element in the perpetration of the anti-Trump narrative.
In many ways similar to Journolist, the British Integrity Initiative describes itself as an organizer of an international “network of networks” of “experts, opinion formers and policy makers” to “counter Russian disinformation.”
The Integrity Initiative was founded by a former member of British military intelligence and funded by the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, which also oversees both the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the British equivalent to the National Security Agency, and the Secret Intelligence Services (SIS), commonly known as MI6, the British counterpart of the Central Intelligence Agency.
Listed among the UK “cluster,” one of the documents hacked from the Integrity Initiative, is the name “Andrew Wood.”
Sir Andrew Wood, former British ambassador to Russia, was identified in a court case as an Associate in Orbis Business Intelligence Limited, the British company which includes Christopher Steele, the author of the now debunked Trump dossier.
Wood, who first became aware of the contents of the Trump dossier during a meeting with Steele in August 2016, informed Senator John McCain in November after the Presidential election.
Sir Andrew also appears as a member of the “Russian Workgroup” headed by Robert Otto, who reported to Victoria Nuland at the U.S. State Department. The purpose of this group remains obscure, but it contained members from the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, two from the British Secret Intelligence service MI6 and Charles Kupchan, presumed boss of the alleged White House “whistleblower” Eric Ciaramella.
Listed among the U.S. – Canadian “cluster” is Evelyn N. Farkas, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Russia/Ukraine/Eurasia, who already in October of 2016 said:
“And actually, if Donald Trump were elected I believe he would be impeached pretty quickly or somebody else would have to take over government. And I am not even joking.”
I am up early as always on Wednesday since today is the day when I babysit my grandson. We will be playing tag, basketball and building with Legos. I might catch a little of the hearing during his nap, but I am counting on you to keep me informed.
“This is a bare-bones IANAL summary of the positions. The government contends that DACA was an internal government policy decision on how best to enforce the law given limited resources. As such, the decision is not reviewable by the courts. Plus, even if the courts do review it, the reasoning given by the government is more than adequate to support it. The pro-open-borders crowd sees it differently. They claim that once Sessions said the law was likely illegal that courts could review it. That once the government has said one thing is a reason they are forbidden from finding other supporting factors. Further, they claim, that the DACA memo was essentially rule-making and the rule could not be rescinded without going by the procedures of the Administrative Procedures Act.
For a more detailed summary read this at SCOTUSBlog where they are very sympathetic to keeping DACA.
As folks always tell us, you can’t know how justices will vote based on their questions, but the questions today pointed to a very clear 5-4 or 6-3 decision in favor of the government. My unofficial barometer is the length of time elapsed before a summary of oral arguments appears on Twitter on in the media. Today, for quite a long period of time, there was radio silence. I suspect it was as Supreme Court reporters compared notes and decided that the overriding message was that you never know how justices will vote based on their questions. Here are some highlights.
Politico: Dreamers get little traction with Supreme Court’s conservative justices
The court’s conservative majority gave little sign of openness to the contention by proponents of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program that the Trump administration’s decision to shut down the initiative was legally flawed.
Some liberal justices seemed to endorse Trump’s authority to end the program, but said he needed to embrace the consequences, rather than pawning them off on a disputed legal memo from Attorney General Jeff Sessions that concluded DACA was both illegal and unconstitutional.
“Where’s the political decision that was made that this not about the law, but about our choice to destroy lives?” Justice Sonia Sotomayor asked.
This is quintessential #OrangeManBad bullsh**. The decision to pull the plug on DACA was either legal or it wasn’t. If it was, who Trump blames is irrelevant. If it wasn’t, Trump taking the heat for it is similarly irrelevant.
Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch acknowledged that the case’s “sympathetic facts … speak to all of us,” but he said the large number of people affected and the impact ending DACA would have on employers and entire communities was taken into consideration.
The court’s four liberal justices argued that the decision to end DACA should rise or fall on the administration’s tenuous claim that it was illegal, rather than what Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said might be a more legitimate reason: “We don’t like DACA, and we’re taking responsibility for that, instead of trying to put the blame on the law.”
Ginsberg rather grotesquely mischaracterized the argument and implies that she’s fine with federal agencies ignoring the law so long as they arrive at her favored outcomes.”
“David Ignatius of the Washington Post instructs us to remember that “while Trump was playing politics on Ukraine, people who depended on U.S. military aid were getting killed and wounded.” Quite possibly, but Ignatius doesn’t present evidence that this is so. Instead, he cites casualties that occurred after Trump released the military aid:
On Oct. 5, a man and a woman died after a grenade exploded in their apartment in Kurakhove; on Oct. 24, a man was injured by shrapnel near Luhansk; on Nov. 1, a man was injured by shelling in Spartak.
There is zero reason to believe that any of these events would have been averted had Trump not held up aid for a few months. Indeed, even if Ignatius had pointed to deaths or injuries that occurred while aid was withheld, I doubt he could tie these occurrences to the absence of aid. (Actually, it’s possible that the release of aid would have led to more fighting and thus more deaths.)
An easier task would be to point to casualties that resulted as a result of President Obama’s unwillingness to provide lethal military aid to Ukraine. It’s quite likely that this longstanding policy resulted in loss of Ukrainian life.
I understand the distinction between denying aid to Ukraine for policy reasons (unwise) and withholding it in the hope of setting back a political rival (improper). Obama did the former, Trump did the latter.
Still, it’s intellectually dishonest for Ignatius to display outrage over a Ukrainian death and two injuries that occurred after Trump released aid, without acknowledging all of the deaths that occurred while Obama was denying aid outright.”
I’m glad Anon is doing something useful.
I am taking TSWITW to the Adult Center.
I heard on TV this morning, saying, “These guys are lawyers, a lawyer wants facts, not theater.”
Maybe so. But if you don’t have facts, theater will do.
Likely what we will get. I may watch part of it.
After a while, these things get repetitious.
Hillary reminds us again why we now have Donald Trump in the White House.
Yeah just tell the truth: Thatcher didn’t meet their ideological purity tests. She is one of the great female leaders of all history. https://t.co/nMirbOBRu9
— Atticus Finch (of Georgia) 🇺🇸🇺🇦🇮🇱 (@Atticus59914029) November 13, 2019
There’s no chance this is true. The whistleblower sent him a letter on August 12. His aide met with the whistleblower. Produce the full letter, that will show one way or the other. Or just put the aide on the stand to testify to what he told Schiff.
—————
And Nunes once again speaks truth, and the left and NTers will once again slander him for the truth.
I’m no fan of Trump, as you all know, but this is an interesting timeline in an opinion piece by Sharyl Attkisson looking at what has been an effort to essentially “un-elect” him since 2016. Seems like it has been a nonstop challenge and focus for the Democrats for three years.
How long will these hearings go on? I’m guessing the core audience will be primarily made up of the more loyalist Democrats (not that we shouldn’t all be watching or otherwise be keeping up daily, but life and jobs and dog walking must go on). I’ll look to the WSJ and World Magazine for wrap-ups each day. Growing weary …
Mr. Rob went right to sleep, so I am getting to see a lot of the hearing. It is going as I expected. Taylor’s testimony is devastating for Trump and The Cult. Schiff has been firm but patient with the Trumpkins, treating them as one would handle undisciplined and foolish children. Nunes and the other Trumpkins have embarrassed themselves and the entire GOP.
He seems nervous, stumbles over dates repeatedly, keeps confusing what happened when, and just keeps sharing second hand accounts of what claims he was told was said, not what he actually heard.
What’s that phrase you lawyers say…..?
Hearsay. Inadmissable in court.
But I guess it’s OK in Ricky and the Dem’s Kangaroo Kourt. The press will dutifully ignore the obvious abuse of due process, because Orange Man Bad.
The rest of it? Nothing rises to the level of a crime or reason to impeach.
But hey, keep trying there Champ. Sooner or later you’ll get a shot in.
“Kent Confirms U.S. Has Always Had Conditions on Loans to Ukraine
“The pervasive and longstanding problem of corruption in Ukraine included exposure to a situation involving the energy company Burisma.”
“George Kent, a diplomat in the State Department, testified that America has always placed conditions on all loans to Ukraine:
“There are and always have been conditionality placed on our sovereign loan guarantees for Ukraine. Conditions include anti-corruption reforms, as well as meeting larger stability goals and social safety nets. The International Monetary Fund does the same thing. Congress and the executive branch work together to put conditionality on some security assistance in the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative.”
“During his testimony, Taylor revealed one of his aides had overheard a conversation between President Donald Trump and European Union ambassador Gordon Sondland in which the president pressed the ambassador to get Ukraine on board with “the investigations” into former Vice President Joe Biden.”
—–
Can you see the problem here, or has your hate blinded you to the obvious?
“Putting aside that legal judgment, the glaring absence of any articles of impeachment related to Russia would raise a rather obvious problem. If these criminal or impeachable acts are so clear, why would Democrats not include them in the actual impeachment? There are only two possible reasons why these “clearly established” crimes would not be included. Either they are not established, as some of us have argued, or Democratic leaders do not actually want to remove Trump from office.
For three years, some of us have warned that Democratic leaders clearly were running out the clock on impeachment and doing little in terms of building a case against Trump. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been openly hostile to impeachment. Now, after moving at a glacial pace, Democratic leaders are insisting on an impeachment vote on the basis of a presidential phone call made this summer. They are in such a hurry that they have said they will not even seek to compel the testimony of key witnesses like former national security adviser John Bolton.
Ironically, the strongest impeachment was the one that never happened with President Nixon. It was so strong that he resigned shortly before a vote. The contrast with the Nixon impeachment is so concerning in the current context. In the Nixon impeachment, public opinion shifted after months of public hearings and testimony. The evidentiary record showed that Nixon knew of criminal acts and sought to conceal them.
The result was a deeply developed evidentiary record. A presidential impeachment requires this period of maturation of allegations to swing public opinion. In contrast, after years of discussing Russia allegations, Democrats want to move forward on a barely developed evidentiary record and cursory public hearings on this single Ukraine allegation. Democrats also are moving forward on a strictly partisan vote.
That brings us back to architecture. Bad buildings often are built in slapdash fashion. The infamous Fidenae Stadium in Rome was built in a rush to restart the gladiator games, an atmosphere not unlike the current bread and circus frenzy in Washington. It eventually collapsed, killing or injuring 20,000 spectators. The two prior impeachments show the perils of building slender and tall. ”
But will Nunes ask Taylor about those “tapps” on poor Trump’s phone?
Looks like Nunes is going to focus entirely on a debunked conspiracy theory. Debunked by our own intelligence community. One Trump’s own administration officials have told me is nuts.
To sway middle-ground public opinion, this can’t look to be as political as it already does, frankly.
Being impeached, which he will be with the house vote, won’t be good for Trump, but probably isn’t very good for the Democrats either. The danger is that many voters will be entirely fed up with everyone in Washington by the time this is over.
Jordan is destroying their star witness, his timeline, previous testimony, and the hearsay he heard as we speak. The days of selective leaks of testimony are over. Your witnesses are lacking under cross examination. :).
Muscial factoid: The music in AJ’s 6:46 am YouTube post, long associated with circuses and clowns, was composed by Julius Fuczik in 1897 as a military march, “Entrance of the Gladiators”.
As the U.S. House of Representatives’ televised impeachment hearings kicked off Wednesday morning, Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., called them “nothing less than an impeachment process in search of a crime.” Acting U.S. Ambassador to the Ukraine William Taylor and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State George Kent are the first witnesses to testify in front of TV cameras. Both have already answered questions behind closed doors.
What do lawmakers expect to learn from the hearings? Democrats said the American people will hear for themselves evidence that President Donald Trump leveraged military aid to Ukraine for political favors. But defenders of the president pointed out that no witnesses have openly accused the president of proposing a quid pro quo. GOP representatives have submitted a list of witnesses they would like to question, but Democrats have the final say on who testifies, and it’s unclear if they’ll accept any of the names on that list.
___________________________
Just minutes after President Trump took his oath of office on Inauguration Day 2017, the Washington Post ran a piece ushering in the beginning of his impeachment.
The Democrats have attempted to undo the 2016 election results since day one. This latest push is no different. pic.twitter.com/4gBN7D3lu8
4 inconvenient facts for the Democrat impeachment fantasy:
– Call transcript shows zero link between aid and political investigations – Aid was released WITHOUT any new investigations – Ukraine didn’t know aid was withheld during the call – Trump/Zelensky both say: zero pressure
‘Cuz somebody was. And perjury is still a thing, right?
In light of Taylor's testimony that Sondland discussed an investigation into Biden in July, worth remember this from Sondland's testimony under oath. pic.twitter.com/mTxlL1I4Gn
And don’t look now, but the last charade is about to be exposed too. And firings and indictments are expected. This will further expose the treasonous ways still be employed by deep staters now.
“Attorney General William Barr said Wednesday that the release of an inspector general’s report on FBI’s surveillance of the Trump campaign is “imminent.”
Multiple news outlets reported Tuesday that Michael Horowitz, the Justice Department inspector general, has invited witnesses interviewed in connection with the investigation to review portions of the forthcoming report. The step is routine in investigations conducted by inspectors general, and typically signals that the release of the report is near.
“Horowitz told lawmakers in June that his investigators had interviewed more than 100 witnesses and reviewed more than 1 million documents during the investigation, which began in March 2018.
Barr confirmed during a press conference on Tuesday that the Horowitz report is forthcoming.
“It’s been reported and it’s my understanding that it is imminent,” Barr told reporters in Memphis, according to Politico.
“A number of people who were mentioned in the report are having an opportunity right now to comment on how they were quoted in the report, and after that process is over which is very short, the report will be issued. That’s what the inspector general himself suggests.”
————–
“Horowitz submitted a draft of his report to the FBI and Justice Department on Sept. 13 for a review of classified material contained in the document. On Oct. 24, he notified lawmakers that the declassification process was nearing completion, and that the report would be “lengthy.”
Republicans have raised expectations that the report will be a damning for former FBI and Justice Department officials who led the Trump-Russia investigation.”
“The Ukrainian President stood in front of a world press and repeatedly, consistently, over and over again, interview after interview, said he had no knowledge of military aid being withheld, meaning no quid pro quo." @RepRatcliffe destroys dem arguments. pic.twitter.com/Xg7tPnTJ1I
In what court of law in this country would the statement “After I testified, my aide told me he overheard Trump through a cell phone tell another guy something about the investigation” be admissible as evidence?
The biggest problem is that these "witnesses" claimed to have psychic powers to be able to mindread the people who were on the call, without providing any evidence of their psychic prowess. Schiff should've asked them to guess what number he was thinking.
Wandering Views 
Today is the day the circus comes to town! 🙂
First, some fitting music to listen to…..
—————–
And next…. Send in the Schifty clowns! 🤡🤡🤡🤡
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Meanwhile, Durham continues his work on exposing this miscarriage of justice. Funny though, I missed any mention of this from US media. I wonder why……? 🙄
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/11/australian_media_reporting_that_us_atty_durham_has_interviewed_alexander_downer.html
“Australian media reporting that US atty Durham has interviewed Alexander Downer”
“U.S. attorney John Durham is running an investigation into the Russia hoax that has been almost airtight. A fragment of information on his activities, however, comes our way via Australian media.
Alexander Downer’s meeting with George Papadopoulos at the Kensington Wine Rooms in 2016 played a key role in providing a rationale for an FBI investigation of the Trump campaign, including FISA warrants allowing wiretapping. At the time, Downer was the Australian high commissioner (ambassador) to the U.K. and had been Australia’s foreign minister earlier, a very senior diplomat to be entertaining a young Trump campaign volunteer.
The meeting, also attended by Aussie diplomat Erika Thompson, elicited the information from Papadopoulos that he had been told by mysterious Maltese professor Joseph Mifsud that the Russians had a trove of Hillary Clinton’s missing emails. When that information was duly passed along and reached the U.S., it became justification for investigating “collusion with Russia.”
————
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Be quick, Trumpkins! Unplug your TVs! Cult priest Lindsey Graham doesn’t think you can handle listening to testimony from patriotic public servants with personal knowledge of Dear Leader’s Ukraine Extortion.
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Things that make you go Hmmmmmmm…….
https://legalinsurrection.com/2019/11/epstein-suicide-inquiry-subpoenas-roughly-15-jail-employees-others-reassigned-placed-on-leave/
“Epstein Suicide Inquiry Subpoenas Roughly 15 Jail Employees, Others Reassigned, Placed on Leave
Everything about this stinks to high heaven”
—
“Jeffrey Epstein was accused of being a serial sexual predator who ran a rape ring that included some of the world’s richest and most powerful men and victimized underaged girls.
Everything about Epstein’s supposed suicide stinks to high heaven. From the time he was mysteriously and inexplicably left alone, to the autopsy report.
According to the New York Times, “roughly 15 employees at the Metropolitan Correctional Center where Jeffrey Epstein killed himself in his jail cell have been subpoenaed as the criminal investigation into the events around his suicide intensifies.”
The warden and the head of the federal Bureau of Prisons have been reassigned. Two employees accused of sleeping on the job and falsifying records have been placed on administrative leave.
Now, roughly 15 employees at the Metropolitan Correctional Center where Jeffrey Epstein killed himself in his jail cell have been subpoenaed as the criminal investigation into the events around his suicide intensifies, according to a prison official and a person with knowledge of the matter.
The subpoenas, issued in recent days by federal prosecutors in Manhattan, are the latest sign of the heightened scrutiny over the suicide of the high-profile detainee at the chronically understaffed federal jail.
The United States attorney general, William P. Barr, whose Justice Department oversees the Bureau of Prisons, has complained about “serious irregularities at this facility.” On Wednesday he went further, telling reporters in Dallas, “unfortunately, there have been some delays because a number of the witnesses were not cooperative.”
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Something to keep in mind as the press breathlessly reports on the farce in Congress.
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/11/how_the_deep_state_media_operate.html
“Few now doubt that the major U.S. media outlets, under the guise of journalism, function as political activists, saturating the airwaves and the internet with the talking points of the Democrat party.
There has long been liberal bias in the media, but deliberate efforts to undermine the traditional nonpartisan ideal of journalism took a giant leap forward with the 2007 founding of “Journolist.”
It was originally intended to be a gathering place for several hundred liberal journalists, academics and political activists to connect young writers to top sources, but Journolist quickly degenerated into the collusion and coordination for hackery and smears, as described by the Daily Caller:
“In a key episode, Journolist members openly plotted to bury attention on then-candidate Barack Obama’s controversial pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. The Washington Independent’s Spencer Ackerman, for instance, suggested an effective tactic to distract from the issue would be to pick one of Obama’s critics, ‘Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists.’”
At a more secret and sinister level, individuals, acting alone or in coordinated groups, promote the narrative of the establishment elite, often with the encouragement or under the guidance of intelligence agencies or their commercial surrogates.
For example, the Washington Post’s David Ignatius, long-considered a mouthpiece for U.S. and British intelligence agencies, has recently been identified as a media conduit for now-outed CIA and FBI informant Stefan Halper, providing more evidence that the intelligence community has co-opted the press to push anti-Trump conspiracy theories.
It is important to note that the October 24, 2019 court filing by the defense attorneys for General Michael Flynn alleges that James H. Baker, Director of the Office of Net Assessment at the Pentagon, leaked to the press copies of the transcripts from Flynn’s December 2016 telephone calls to then-Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Baker had regularly scheduled lunches with The Washington Post’s David Ignatius, who published an article about the calls in January 2017.
Over four years, the Office of Net Assessment, paid Stefan Halper, linked both to the Flynn case and the Trump-Russia collusion hoax, over $1 million for research papers of dubious value.
The targeted, coordinated and swarming feeding-freezing journalism for political ends appears to be, not just the product of individuals, but a collaborative effort between media outlets and the Deep State, which is transnational and may have been and may still be an intimate element in the perpetration of the anti-Trump narrative.
In many ways similar to Journolist, the British Integrity Initiative describes itself as an organizer of an international “network of networks” of “experts, opinion formers and policy makers” to “counter Russian disinformation.”
The Integrity Initiative was founded by a former member of British military intelligence and funded by the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, which also oversees both the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the British equivalent to the National Security Agency, and the Secret Intelligence Services (SIS), commonly known as MI6, the British counterpart of the Central Intelligence Agency.
Listed among the UK “cluster,” one of the documents hacked from the Integrity Initiative, is the name “Andrew Wood.”
Sir Andrew Wood, former British ambassador to Russia, was identified in a court case as an Associate in Orbis Business Intelligence Limited, the British company which includes Christopher Steele, the author of the now debunked Trump dossier.
Wood, who first became aware of the contents of the Trump dossier during a meeting with Steele in August 2016, informed Senator John McCain in November after the Presidential election.
Sir Andrew also appears as a member of the “Russian Workgroup” headed by Robert Otto, who reported to Victoria Nuland at the U.S. State Department. The purpose of this group remains obscure, but it contained members from the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, two from the British Secret Intelligence service MI6 and Charles Kupchan, presumed boss of the alleged White House “whistleblower” Eric Ciaramella.
Listed among the U.S. – Canadian “cluster” is Evelyn N. Farkas, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Russia/Ukraine/Eurasia, who already in October of 2016 said:
“And actually, if Donald Trump were elected I believe he would be impeached pretty quickly or somebody else would have to take over government. And I am not even joking.”
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And there’s our favorite leftist tool with the left’s latest hot take, right on cue….
Morning Ricky. You’re up early. The Dems must need you to work overtime today spreading their lies, amirite? 🤡🤡🤡🤡
Of course I am…… It’s what you do.
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I am up early as always on Wednesday since today is the day when I babysit my grandson. We will be playing tag, basketball and building with Legos. I might catch a little of the hearing during his nap, but I am counting on you to keep me informed.
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Looks like another piece of Obama’s legacy is hopefully going to bite the dust. Or not. One never knows when liberal judges are involved.
https://www.redstate.com/streiff/2019/11/12/daca-rough-day-supreme-court/
“DACA Has A Very Rough Day At The Supreme Court”
—–
“This is a bare-bones IANAL summary of the positions. The government contends that DACA was an internal government policy decision on how best to enforce the law given limited resources. As such, the decision is not reviewable by the courts. Plus, even if the courts do review it, the reasoning given by the government is more than adequate to support it. The pro-open-borders crowd sees it differently. They claim that once Sessions said the law was likely illegal that courts could review it. That once the government has said one thing is a reason they are forbidden from finding other supporting factors. Further, they claim, that the DACA memo was essentially rule-making and the rule could not be rescinded without going by the procedures of the Administrative Procedures Act.
For a more detailed summary read this at SCOTUSBlog where they are very sympathetic to keeping DACA.
As folks always tell us, you can’t know how justices will vote based on their questions, but the questions today pointed to a very clear 5-4 or 6-3 decision in favor of the government. My unofficial barometer is the length of time elapsed before a summary of oral arguments appears on Twitter on in the media. Today, for quite a long period of time, there was radio silence. I suspect it was as Supreme Court reporters compared notes and decided that the overriding message was that you never know how justices will vote based on their questions. Here are some highlights.
Politico: Dreamers get little traction with Supreme Court’s conservative justices
The court’s conservative majority gave little sign of openness to the contention by proponents of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program that the Trump administration’s decision to shut down the initiative was legally flawed.
Some liberal justices seemed to endorse Trump’s authority to end the program, but said he needed to embrace the consequences, rather than pawning them off on a disputed legal memo from Attorney General Jeff Sessions that concluded DACA was both illegal and unconstitutional.
“Where’s the political decision that was made that this not about the law, but about our choice to destroy lives?” Justice Sonia Sotomayor asked.
This is quintessential #OrangeManBad bullsh**. The decision to pull the plug on DACA was either legal or it wasn’t. If it was, who Trump blames is irrelevant. If it wasn’t, Trump taking the heat for it is similarly irrelevant.
Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch acknowledged that the case’s “sympathetic facts … speak to all of us,” but he said the large number of people affected and the impact ending DACA would have on employers and entire communities was taken into consideration.
The court’s four liberal justices argued that the decision to end DACA should rise or fall on the administration’s tenuous claim that it was illegal, rather than what Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said might be a more legitimate reason: “We don’t like DACA, and we’re taking responsibility for that, instead of trying to put the blame on the law.”
Ginsberg rather grotesquely mischaracterized the argument and implies that she’s fine with federal agencies ignoring the law so long as they arrive at her favored outcomes.”
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Once again, the WaPo writer is fudging the facts and employing a huge double standard.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2019/11/what-were-the-consequences-of-temporarily-withholding-aid-to-ukraine.php
“David Ignatius of the Washington Post instructs us to remember that “while Trump was playing politics on Ukraine, people who depended on U.S. military aid were getting killed and wounded.” Quite possibly, but Ignatius doesn’t present evidence that this is so. Instead, he cites casualties that occurred after Trump released the military aid:
On Oct. 5, a man and a woman died after a grenade exploded in their apartment in Kurakhove; on Oct. 24, a man was injured by shrapnel near Luhansk; on Nov. 1, a man was injured by shelling in Spartak.
There is zero reason to believe that any of these events would have been averted had Trump not held up aid for a few months. Indeed, even if Ignatius had pointed to deaths or injuries that occurred while aid was withheld, I doubt he could tie these occurrences to the absence of aid. (Actually, it’s possible that the release of aid would have led to more fighting and thus more deaths.)
An easier task would be to point to casualties that resulted as a result of President Obama’s unwillingness to provide lethal military aid to Ukraine. It’s quite likely that this longstanding policy resulted in loss of Ukrainian life.
I understand the distinction between denying aid to Ukraine for policy reasons (unwise) and withholding it in the hope of setting back a political rival (improper). Obama did the former, Trump did the latter.
Still, it’s intellectually dishonest for Ignatius to display outrage over a Ukrainian death and two injuries that occurred after Trump released aid, without acknowledging all of the deaths that occurred while Obama was denying aid outright.”
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I’m glad Anon is doing something useful.
I am taking TSWITW to the Adult Center.
I heard on TV this morning, saying, “These guys are lawyers, a lawyer wants facts, not theater.”
Maybe so. But if you don’t have facts, theater will do.
Likely what we will get. I may watch part of it.
After a while, these things get repetitious.
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Besides.
If anything important happens, Rush’l tell me.
LOL
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Hillary reminds us again why we now have Donald Trump in the White House.
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Opening salvos.
Schiff lies again.
There’s no chance this is true. The whistleblower sent him a letter on August 12. His aide met with the whistleblower. Produce the full letter, that will show one way or the other. Or just put the aide on the stand to testify to what he told Schiff.
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And Nunes once again speaks truth, and the left and NTers will once again slander him for the truth.
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Nunes full statement.
https://republicans-intelligence.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=996
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I’m no fan of Trump, as you all know, but this is an interesting timeline in an opinion piece by Sharyl Attkisson looking at what has been an effort to essentially “un-elect” him since 2016. Seems like it has been a nonstop challenge and focus for the Democrats for three years.
How long will these hearings go on? I’m guessing the core audience will be primarily made up of the more loyalist Democrats (not that we shouldn’t all be watching or otherwise be keeping up daily, but life and jobs and dog walking must go on). I’ll look to the WSJ and World Magazine for wrap-ups each day. Growing weary …
https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/469504-the-curious-timeline-for-taking-down-trump
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Mr. Rob went right to sleep, so I am getting to see a lot of the hearing. It is going as I expected. Taylor’s testimony is devastating for Trump and The Cult. Schiff has been firm but patient with the Trumpkins, treating them as one would handle undisciplined and foolish children. Nunes and the other Trumpkins have embarrassed themselves and the entire GOP.
Lots of comments here:
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Taylor’s testimony has been no such thing.
He seems nervous, stumbles over dates repeatedly, keeps confusing what happened when, and just keeps sharing second hand accounts of what claims he was told was said, not what he actually heard.
What’s that phrase you lawyers say…..?
Hearsay. Inadmissable in court.
But I guess it’s OK in Ricky and the Dem’s Kangaroo Kourt. The press will dutifully ignore the obvious abuse of due process, because Orange Man Bad.
The rest of it? Nothing rises to the level of a crime or reason to impeach.
But hey, keep trying there Champ. Sooner or later you’ll get a shot in.
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As an example, here’s some easy to see holes in their story. Trump did what past president’ have done. Nothing more, nothing less.
It’s quid pro no.
https://legalinsurrection.com/2019/11/kent-confirms-u-s-has-always-had-conditions-on-loans-to-ukraine/#more-300304
“Kent Confirms U.S. Has Always Had Conditions on Loans to Ukraine
“The pervasive and longstanding problem of corruption in Ukraine included exposure to a situation involving the energy company Burisma.”
“George Kent, a diplomat in the State Department, testified that America has always placed conditions on all loans to Ukraine:
“There are and always have been conditionality placed on our sovereign loan guarantees for Ukraine. Conditions include anti-corruption reforms, as well as meeting larger stability goals and social safety nets. The International Monetary Fund does the same thing. Congress and the executive branch work together to put conditionality on some security assistance in the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative.”
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Pointing out the obvious.
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Oh yeah Ricky, that’s some bombshell…..
Oh wait, no…. that’s hearsay.
And shouldn’t you already know that?
From your RawStory link…..
“During his testimony, Taylor revealed one of his aides had overheard a conversation between President Donald Trump and European Union ambassador Gordon Sondland in which the president pressed the ambassador to get Ukraine on board with “the investigations” into former Vice President Joe Biden.”
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Can you see the problem here, or has your hate blinded you to the obvious?
Hearsay. Put the aid on the stand, or try again.
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https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/09/30/president-trumps-hearsay-defense-is-absurd/%3foutputType=amp
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Another law proffeser chimes in on the Dems lack of a case.
He says you have nothing, except a cup of weak tea.
https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/470217-are-democrats-building-a-collapsible-impeachment
“Putting aside that legal judgment, the glaring absence of any articles of impeachment related to Russia would raise a rather obvious problem. If these criminal or impeachable acts are so clear, why would Democrats not include them in the actual impeachment? There are only two possible reasons why these “clearly established” crimes would not be included. Either they are not established, as some of us have argued, or Democratic leaders do not actually want to remove Trump from office.
For three years, some of us have warned that Democratic leaders clearly were running out the clock on impeachment and doing little in terms of building a case against Trump. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been openly hostile to impeachment. Now, after moving at a glacial pace, Democratic leaders are insisting on an impeachment vote on the basis of a presidential phone call made this summer. They are in such a hurry that they have said they will not even seek to compel the testimony of key witnesses like former national security adviser John Bolton.
Ironically, the strongest impeachment was the one that never happened with President Nixon. It was so strong that he resigned shortly before a vote. The contrast with the Nixon impeachment is so concerning in the current context. In the Nixon impeachment, public opinion shifted after months of public hearings and testimony. The evidentiary record showed that Nixon knew of criminal acts and sought to conceal them.
The result was a deeply developed evidentiary record. A presidential impeachment requires this period of maturation of allegations to swing public opinion. In contrast, after years of discussing Russia allegations, Democrats want to move forward on a barely developed evidentiary record and cursory public hearings on this single Ukraine allegation. Democrats also are moving forward on a strictly partisan vote.
That brings us back to architecture. Bad buildings often are built in slapdash fashion. The infamous Fidenae Stadium in Rome was built in a rush to restart the gladiator games, an atmosphere not unlike the current bread and circus frenzy in Washington. It eventually collapsed, killing or injuring 20,000 spectators. The two prior impeachments show the perils of building slender and tall. ”
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This house of cards will collapse.
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Can’t have a circus without some clowns.
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The “r” word again rears its ugly head.
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But will Nunes ask Taylor about those “tapps” on poor Trump’s phone?
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To sway middle-ground public opinion, this can’t look to be as political as it already does, frankly.
Being impeached, which he will be with the house vote, won’t be good for Trump, but probably isn’t very good for the Democrats either. The danger is that many voters will be entirely fed up with everyone in Washington by the time this is over.
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Today is very embarrassing for Republicans. There are many more embarrassing days to come. But what should we have expected. After all:
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Don’t look Ricky.
Jordan is destroying their star witness, his timeline, previous testimony, and the hearsay he heard as we speak. The days of selective leaks of testimony are over. Your witnesses are lacking under cross examination. :).
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Muscial factoid: The music in AJ’s 6:46 am YouTube post, long associated with circuses and clowns, was composed by Julius Fuczik in 1897 as a military march, “Entrance of the Gladiators”.
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In brief, from World Magazine’s Sift
https://world.wng.org/content/public_hears_impeachment_testimony
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Public hears impeachment testimony
As the U.S. House of Representatives’ televised impeachment hearings kicked off Wednesday morning, Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., called them “nothing less than an impeachment process in search of a crime.” Acting U.S. Ambassador to the Ukraine William Taylor and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State George Kent are the first witnesses to testify in front of TV cameras. Both have already answered questions behind closed doors.
What do lawmakers expect to learn from the hearings? Democrats said the American people will hear for themselves evidence that President Donald Trump leveraged military aid to Ukraine for political favors. But defenders of the president pointed out that no witnesses have openly accused the president of proposing a quid pro quo. GOP representatives have submitted a list of witnesses they would like to question, but Democrats have the final say on who testifies, and it’s unclear if they’ll accept any of the names on that list.
___________________________
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Don’t forget that eventually, the other guy gets to hit back…
https://thefederalist.com/2019/11/11/5-reasons-a-senate-trial-would-be-a-nightmare-for-democrats/
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This is true.
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Sorry Ricky.
It’s game over.
As I said, Jordan dismantles this charade.
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https://twitter.com/RepDougCollins/status/1194672824427991041
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Life’s a you know what under cross examination…..
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Need a new meme. This one’s been broken today.
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So quick question for Ricky…..
Which of the star witnesses today was lying?
#1….. or #2?
‘Cuz somebody was. And perjury is still a thing, right?
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And don’t look now, but the last charade is about to be exposed too. And firings and indictments are expected. This will further expose the treasonous ways still be employed by deep staters now.
https://dailycaller.com/2019/11/13/william-barr-fisa-report-imminent/
“Attorney General William Barr said Wednesday that the release of an inspector general’s report on FBI’s surveillance of the Trump campaign is “imminent.”
Multiple news outlets reported Tuesday that Michael Horowitz, the Justice Department inspector general, has invited witnesses interviewed in connection with the investigation to review portions of the forthcoming report. The step is routine in investigations conducted by inspectors general, and typically signals that the release of the report is near.
“Horowitz told lawmakers in June that his investigators had interviewed more than 100 witnesses and reviewed more than 1 million documents during the investigation, which began in March 2018.
Barr confirmed during a press conference on Tuesday that the Horowitz report is forthcoming.
“It’s been reported and it’s my understanding that it is imminent,” Barr told reporters in Memphis, according to Politico.
“A number of people who were mentioned in the report are having an opportunity right now to comment on how they were quoted in the report, and after that process is over which is very short, the report will be issued. That’s what the inspector general himself suggests.”
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“Horowitz submitted a draft of his report to the FBI and Justice Department on Sept. 13 for a review of classified material contained in the document. On Oct. 24, he notified lawmakers that the declassification process was nearing completion, and that the report would be “lengthy.”
Republicans have raised expectations that the report will be a damning for former FBI and Justice Department officials who led the Trump-Russia investigation.”
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More holes than Swiss cheese.
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https://twitter.com/MaxHammer2018/status/1194721082344968192
Yep. 🙂
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Ken Starr nails it.
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https://twitter.com/Robust346/status/1194729863938269184
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The whistleblower has been outed! 🙂
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Poor Ricky. Even CNN disagrees with him.
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And to do so is quite un-American and an assault on due process.
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🙂
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https://twitter.com/CilJennings/status/1194701524686917632
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