Bad News For Everyone

The Conservative Treehouse is reporting today that President Joe Biden is freezing formerly approved military assistance for Ukraine.

The article reports:

Fast forward a little more than a year, Joe Biden meets with Putin, gets eviscerated and embarrassed by the diplomatic smack-down from the Russian President, and suddenly Joe Biden is freezing formerly approved military assistance for Ukraine.

Politico is reporting today:

The Biden White House has temporarily halted a military aid package to Ukraine that would include lethal weapons, a plan originally made in response to aggressive Russian troop movements along Ukraine’s border this spring.

The aid package would be worth up to $100 million, according to four people familiar with internal deliberations.

The National Security Council directed officials to put the package together, as Washington grew increasingly concerned over a massive Russian military buildup near the border with Ukraine and in the Crimean Peninsula, according to three of the people, who like the others asked not to be named in order to speak candidly about internal discussions. Officials at the State Department and Pentagon worked to assemble the proposal.

But officials on the National Security Council ended up putting the proposal on hold after Russia announced it would draw down troops stationed near Ukraine and in the lead-up to President Joe Biden’s high-stakes summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

President Trump was impeached because he was falsely accused of withholding military assistance from Ukraine because of a ‘special’ relationship with President Putin. It seems to me that it is time to take a closer look at some of the Biden family’s relationship with President Putin.

The Truth Has A Way Of Coming Out

John Bolton’s book is out today. He will probably make a lot of money by trashing President Trump after President Trump was nice enough to give him a job in the administration. John Bolton is probably a very smart man, but his ideas about when to go to war did not fit in with President Trump’s ideas about when to go to war. Those who dislike the President will praise the book. Those who were there seem to have a different opinion.

Yesterday The Western Journal posted an article by Sarah Sanders. She obviously has a different perspective on events involving John Bolton.

The article reports:

Former National Security Advisor John Bolton might have won a battle or two in publishing his “tell-all” memoir of his time in the Trump White House.

But he’s losing a war when it comes to preserving his reputation in the wake of his betrayal of President Donald Trump and his administration.

And when former White House press secretary Sarah Sanders used a lengthy Twitter thread Monday to lay into Bolton by publishing an excerpt of her own memoir, it was clear another front had opened.

In the excerpt, Bolton comes off as almost embarrassingly “arrogant and selfish”  — Sanders’ two words.

“Bolton was a classic case of a senior White House official drunk on power, who had forgotten that nobody elected him to anything,” she wrote.

By way of example, the excerpt in the Twitter thread recounted an incident during the 2019 presidential trip to London, where White House advisers — including then-acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin but without Bolton — traveled by a single bus from a hotel to the American ambassador’s residence, known as the Winfield House.

The group was supposed to be part of a motorcade United Kingdom security officials had arranged for White House staff because Trump would be traveling mainly by helicopter. Bolton, who traveled to the U.K. in a separate plane, was supposed to meet the rest of the staff with the motorcade at their hotel, Sanders wrote, but he never showed.

While the bus was en route, according to Sanders, police directed the vehicle to pull over to make room for a motorcade coming through – the motorcade carrying Bolton.

“The discussion on the bus quickly moved from casual chit chat to how arrogant and selfish Bolton could be, not just in this moment but on a regular basis,” Sanders wrote. “If anyone on the team should have merited a motorcade it was Mnuchin, but he was a team player.”

When the bus arrived at the Winfield House, Sanders wrote, Mulvaney (who’s now the U.S. special envoy to Northern Ireland) lit into Bolton.

“Mick made clear he was the chief of staff and Bolton’s total disregard for his colleagues and common decency was unacceptable and would no longer be tolerated,” Sanders wrote. “‘Let’s face it John,’ Mick said. ‘You’re a f—— self-righteous, self-centered son of a b——!’”

For an outsider reading that, the whole issue might sound a little petty – even funny.

But Sanders made it clear it was just an example that came from “months of Bolton thinking he was more important and could play by a different set of rules than the rest of the team.”

In a column for Fox News K.T. McFarland noted:

Bolton, McFarland wrote, “was so convinced of his superior intelligence that he was condescending to everyone, including the president. He was increasingly isolated within the West Wing; cabinet officers ignored him and went behind his back directly to the president. He even avoided contact with his own National Security Council staff.”

That behavior might not have been a surprise in light of the anecdote McFarland opened her column with. She wrote that she ran into Bolton in the green room at Fox News on Election Day 2016 and asked if he’d voted yet.

Bolton replied, according to McFarland: “Yes, for Trump. He’s an idiot, but anybody is better than Hillary Clinton.”

Obviously, a national security advisor who thinks the president he serves is an “idiot” is not going to make an ideal counselor.

McFarland’s time at the White House did not overlap with Bolton’s, but she wrote that she was aware of his performance through her acquaintances who were still part of the National Security Council.

“I heard from several of my former NSC colleagues who remained at the White House after I left that Bolton spent most of his time – when he wasn’t in the Oval Office – sitting in his office behind closed doors,” she wrote. “His staff wasn’t sure what he did for those hours on end. Now we know – he was, in all likelihood, turning his copious notes into a manuscript, presumably in anticipation of getting a lucrative book deal, and rushing it into print quickly when the inevitable happened and he was fired.”

Bolton, McFarland wrote, was also a chronic leaker, playing the Washington game of talking to reporters when he didn’t get his way in the White House.

I am sure we will hear more stories like this as the book begins to circulate. Bolton has set a very bad precedent by writing a tell-all book about an administration still in office during a re-election campaign. That is just tacky.

Why It Matters

On Wednesday Real Clear Politics posted an article titled, “What the ‘Obamagate’ Scandals Mean and Why They Matter.” The article lists and details the scandals and why they matter. I will list them and then share the conclusion. Please follow the link to the article for further details.

The article lists the scandals:

Scandal No. 1: Massive, illegal surveillance of American citizens, using the database of the National Security Agency

Scandal No. 2: Spying on the Trump campaign

Scandal No. 3: Covering up this spying, continuing it during the new administration, charging that Trump was not legitimately elected, and impeding his presidency with major investigations, based on false charges

The article concludes:

Obama officials worked especially hard to remove incoming National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. Because Gen. Flynn was an experienced intelligence officer, he would surely uncover the surveillance of Trump’s campaign and transition and stop its continuation against the new administration. He had to go. Now we know just how low the Obama administration and Comey FBI sunk to make that happen: spying, unmasking, leaking classified phone calls, discarding FBI protocols to set up an entrapment interview based on a meaningless “legal violation,” and telling Trump directly, as Obama did, not to hire Flynn.

Beyond this destructive mission, Brennan loyalists at the CIA burrowed into Trump’s National Security Council while the FBI tried to plant agents in the White House itself. Most important of all, the Obama team and their congressional allies helped launch multiple, full-scale investigations of “Russian collusion” with no solid basis, plenty of contrived “evidence,” and breathless media headlines. It all failed, but not before it damaged Trump’s presidency and the basic tenets of liberal democracy.

It’s an ugly picture, one that goes beyond dirty tricks and the normal bounds of “loyal opposition.” We still have a lot to learn, but we already know a great deal. We know how grave the three scandals were. We know they fit together, forming something much larger. With each new tranche of declassified documents, we see something big and hideous emerging from the Swamp, a political scandal of profound import.

This information needs to be shouted to the American people. There are many Americans who still believe that President Trump did collude with the Russians, and they need to be told the truth. No one likes to admit that they believed a lie, but it is time to educate the American citizens on what the truth actually is.

Saving The Taxpayers Money While Draining The Swamp

Yesterday The New York Post reported that National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien has dramatically cut down the size of the National Security Council.

The article reports:

The job cuts are an attempt to streamline the foreign policy outfit, which ballooned under the Obama administration to almost 240 staffers — still up from 115 during Condoleezza Rice’s tenure as George W. Bush’s NSA in the early 2000s, a senior White House official said.

By the end of this summer, the NSC will consist of just 105 staff, the official said.

The changes come as O’Brien — Trump’s fourth national security adviser — tries to remake the forum in his image after replacing fiery predecessor John Bolton, who was ousted last October following a high-profile dispute with the president.

…Trump reportedly instructed O’Brien to substantially reduce the size of the agency shortly after he arrived at the White House — an effort O’Brien detailed in a Washington Post opinion piece.

At the time, the foreign policy operation was at the center of an impeachment inquiry sparked by a whistleblower complaint related to the agency’s work.

“Under previous administrations, the NSC more than doubled in size and duplicated many of the functions of DoD, State and the intelligence community,” O’Brien told The Post on Tuesday.

“Under President Trump, we have brought the NSC back to its proper size and role as a coordinating body,” he continued.

“To make that happen we require the best leaders, many of whom are women. Our goal is always to find the very best professionals for each job, and I am very proud of the team we have assembled at the NSC to further President Trump’s agenda,” he said.

In 2016, Republicans in both houses of Congress introduced bills that would have slashed the NSC staff to no more than 150 people — legislation the Obama administration opposed.

Created by President Harry Truman in 1947, the NSC is an interagency panel that advises and assists the president on national security and foreign policy.

It should also be noted that the President also cut 70 Obama-era holdovers from the National Security Agency in February.

The deep state is slowly being removed.

More Information About Russian Interference In The 2016 Presidential Election

I don’t fault people in Washington for having political beliefs. I do fault them when their political beliefs interfere with their ability to do their job honestly. Unfortunately we saw a lot of that during the Obama administration.

On Sunday, The Gateway Pundit posted a video of an interview of Fred Fleitz, former CIA Analyst and National Security Council Chief of Staff, by Jan Jekielek at American Thought Leaders.

The video is posted at the sight, but I would like to share an excerpt from the transcript:

Fred Fleitz: The House Intelligence Community discovered from the CIA that there was evidence that the Russians actually wanted Hillary Clinton to win the election and for Trump to lose. And this was strong intelligence. The reason was they thought Hillary was a known quantity. Trump was an unknown quantity and they were worried he would bring anti-Russian hawks into the administration. That information according to a House Intelligence staff, they told me this, was excluded over the objections of CIA analysts by Brennan. On the other hand, there was weak intelligence that the Russians wanted Trump to win. And according to House Intelligence Committee staffers this was included over the objection of CIA officers by Brennan. So Brennan actually slanted this analysis, choosing anti-Trump intelligence and excluding anti-Clinton intelligence. The problem is the House report, which I think is full of all these bombshells has been stuck at the CIA since the fall of 2018.

And, I’m hoping that Rick Grenell or maybe John Durham, who is doing an investigation of government misconduct surrounding the election. I’m hoping one of them is going to pry this loose because the American people have to know about it.

The article includes the following tweet:

Stay tuned.

How Soon They Forget

On Thursday, The Washington Times posted an article about President Trump’s naming of Richard Grenell as the new acting director of national intelligence. The political left is complaining about the nomination, claiming that Ambassador Grenell is not qualified. The article reports that when Leon Panetta was chosen by President Obama to lead the CIA, Panetta had no intelligence experience.

The article notes:

What’s wrong is Grenell is pro-Trump and he’s being appointed to head an agency with a deep state reputation filled with deep state resentments about this president. The left is panicked about the potential for light to shine on their anti-Trump — anti-American — covert activities.

So they’re pretending as if Grenell isn’t the right guy for the job based on his experience.

Grenell … is known to be fiercely loyal to Trump, but critics have noted that he has no background in intelligence and no top-level management experience,” NPR reported.

And this, from ex-FBI agent Clint Watts, on Twitter: “Grennell as DNI can only be seen as a way for Trump to achieve confirmation bias for his conspiracies & block real analysis and true assessments of threats. Not a serious nominee. How much tax payer money will be used to run down nonsense?”

And this, interestingly enough, from Iran Press: “Trump names incompetent person as acting spy chief.”

The article concludes:

Grenell, at least, is an ambassador — somebody who has to deal with national security issues while navigating complicated, oft-conflicting waters, while calming and soothing and wheeling-and-dealing with a variety of personalities, all expressing a variety of interests. In other words: Grenell is somebody who at least has some hands-on experience doing exactly what intel folk do.

But Grenell is pro-Trump.

And that’s why the deep state and globalist elites deem him unqualified.

If Panetta was qualified as CIA chief, Grenell is more than qualified as acting director of national intelligence.

On Friday, The Conservative Treehouse reported:

Kash Patel previously worked as Devin Nunes’ senior staffer on the House Intelligence Committee (HPSCI).  It was Patel who was the lead author of the Nunes memo exposing corrupt conduct of the FBI and DOJ officials during Crossfire Hurricane.

Patel joined the National Security Council’s International Organizations and Alliances directorate last February and was promoted to the senior counterterrorism role at the NSC mid-summer 2019.  According to recent reporting Patel is now joining Acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell as a Senior Advisor and Catherine Herridge is reporting the objective is to ‘clean house‘.

I wonder how much of this ‘housecleaning’ is going to put some members of Congress in a very bad light. Bring it on!

A Story You Have To Look Hard To Find

There was a certain amount of hysteria when Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman was escorted from the White House last week and when his twin, Lt. Col. Yevgeny Vindman, was also dismissed from the NSC. But there is a part of the story that the media seems to conveniently have overlooked.

The American Spectator posted the rest of the story today.

The article reports:

Within hours of the Vindmans being put out the door, Gordon Sondland, who testified about Trump’s Ukraine dealings during the House impeachment hearings, announced that “the president intends to recall me effective immediately as United States ambassador to the European Union.”

Sondland testified to his assumption that Trump had engaged in a quid pro quo exchange of U.S. military aid to Ukraine in return for that country’s assistance in investigating the corrupt Ukrainian dealings of Vice President Joe Biden and his wastrel son. Only after being pinned down on cross examination did Sondland finally admit that, contrary to Sondland’s assumptions, Trump had explicitly told him that he wanted nothing from the Ukraine other than for Zelensky to clean up that country’s culture of corruption.

As described by the hysterical media, you would think that President Trump had “settled all family business” in the manner portrayed in The Godfather’s climactic scene when Michael Corleone has the heads of New York’s five Mafia families whacked.

The article then reports:

But the truth is altogether to the contrary. In May of this year, Alexander Vindman will enroll in the Army War College. This is a highly sought and selective program and a singular opportunity to advance one’s military career. It is open only to the favored few who are being groomed for top leadership positions in the military.

Similarly, Yevgeny Vindman is set to work in the Office of General Counsel of the Army at the Pentagon. Neither this assignment nor the slot at the Army War College can be considered as punitive. Put another way, neither qualifies as the equivalent of being reduced in rank and placed in charge of the PX at Camp Frostbite, Alaska.

As for Sondland, he is a hotel magnate who was a big contributor to Trump’s 2016 campaign. Recalling him is not the equivalent of terminating the livelihood of a career State Department official. Sondland can go back to his day job of running his hotel empire. And, since the Obama regime is no longer in charge, he can do so without fear of the IRS auditing his company, OSHA inspecting his hotels, and ICE vetting his employees.

As retaliation goes, removing the Vindmans from the National Security Council and stripping Sondland of his ambassadorship is pretty weak stuff. Which raises the troubling question as to whether such pallid measures will be enough to deter others who may wish to emulate Sondland and the Vindman twins in any future coup attempt.

There are now reports that the House Democrats are gearing up for another impeachment. Given the positive effect that the last impeachment had on Trump’s approval rating and campaign fund raising, you might think that the House Democrats would be disinclined to do it again. But then such a conclusion would be premised on the belief that these people are rational. They are not. When it comes to Trump, they are bat-guano crazy and consumed by the kind of frustration and uncontrolled rage that drove Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi to publicly debase and embarrass herself by tearing up the President’s State of the Union address.

The article concludes:

That is why President Trump should seriously consider taking firm and decisive punitive action to discourage all deep state partisans from promoting yet another impeachment hoax. In that regard, he has a positive obligation to the nation to make clear to one and all that they will pay a heavy price if they meretriciously participate in any future attempted coup.

The Vindmans and Sondland got off relatively unscathed. But, if other deep state denizens remain to be called to account, the President needs to take off the gloves.

Meanwhile, the mainstream media is hysterical because the twins have been moved. Somehow they failed to note that the moves were not disciplinary.

The Question Justice Roberts Refused To Read

One of the few interesting moments in the impeachment drama was the refusal of Chief Justice Roberts to read aloud a question submitted by Senator Rand Paul.

The Gateway Pundit posted the question yesterday:

“Are you aware that House intelligence committee staffer Shawn Misko had a close relationship with Eric Ciaramella while at the National Security Council together and are you aware and how do you respond to reports that Ciaramella and Misko may have worked together to plot impeaching the President before there were formal house impeachment proceedings.”

Senator Paul commented:

My question is not about a “whistleblower” as I have no independent information on his identity. My question is about the actions of known Obama partisans within the NSC and House staff and how they are reported to have conspired before impeachment proceedings had even begun.

The article notes:

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) has released the question that was blocked Wednesday and Thursday by Chief Justice John Roberts in the Senate impeachment trial of President Trump. Paul’s question deals with the origins of the impeachment inquiry and employs the name of the alleged whistleblower, not in that context but with regard to his relation with a NSC co-worker who moved on to the staff of Lead House Manager Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and whether they plotted to impeach Trump before the House impeachment proceedings started.

Impeachment may or may not end today, but I can assure you that whatever happens this will not be the end of the Democrats efforts to block any successful policies of President Trump.

What An Amazing Coincidence!

Pj Media posted an article today about the latest ‘bombshell’ relating to President Trump’s impeachment. The ‘bombshell’, of course, is the excerpt supposedly leaked from John Bolton’s not yet released book about his time working in the White House. The timing of this ‘bombshell’ is very interesting. The ‘bombshell’ just happened to be released as the President’s defense lawyers were making their case. The ‘bombshell’ obviously provides good publicity for sales of John Bolton’s book when it comes out.

The article reports:

Over the weekend the New York Times leaked a newsy item reportedly from former National Security Council Adviser John Bolton’s as yet unpublished book. The book reportedly includes information about President Trump’s desire to hold up aid for Ukraine – aid that was, in fact, given to the troubled country.

…As PJ Media reported, the pre-sales for Bolton’s book were opened on Amazon the same day as the leak.

Did Bolton orchestrate the leak? Such a leak would subject him to sanctions before his book was properly vetted to prevent the release of classified information. No, Bolton’s attorney told The Washington Times. The leak showed “the prepublication review process [at the NSC] has been corrupted.”

So how did information about the book get leaked while it is still under the prepublication review process?

The article provides a major clue:

But now a Breitbart News report may shed some light on where the leak from the unpublished book came from.

A source in the White House told Breitbart that Lt. Colonel Yevgeny Vindman is a senior ethics lawyer who vets materials for classified information, such as books and articles, before they’re allowed to be published. Breitbart reports that Vindman vetted Bolton’s book in December.

Vindman … Vindman… why does that name seem so familiar?

The last time you heard of a guy named Vindman he was testifying against the president of the United States at the House impeachment inquiry. His beef? He didn’t like President Trump’s Ukraine policy.

At the time, you learned Army Lt. Colonel Alexander Vindman had worked with the man largely thought to be the impeachment whistleblower who was working over at the CIA. We also learned that Vindman had a twin brother who worked on the NSC staff. His name is Yevgeny.

Wow! What an amazing coincidence! Yevgeny Vindman could be totally innocent of the leak, but he would probably be the first person I asked about it if I were looking for the source.

Judicial Watch Uncovers Information That Leads To More Questions

Judicial Watch posted the following Press Release yesterday:

Logs Also Show DNC Contractor Who Allegedly Worked with Ukraine to Investigate Trump/Manafort Visited Obama White House 27 times

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today analysis of Obama-era White House visitor logs that detail meetings of controversial CIA employee Eric Ciaramella, who had been assigned to the White House. Ciaramella reportedly was detailed to the Obama White House in 2015 and returned to the CIA during the Trump administration in 2017. The logs also reveal Alexandra Chalupa, a contractor hired by the DNC during the 2016 election who coordinated with Ukrainians to investigate President Trump and his former campaign manager Paul Manafort, visited the White House 27 times.

The White House visitor logs revealed the following individuals met with Eric Ciaramella while he was detailed to the Obama White House:

    • Daria Kaleniuk: Co-founder and executive director of the Soros-funded Anticorruption Action Center (AntAC) in Ukraine. She visited on December 9, 2015

The Hill reported that in April 2016, during the U.S. presidential race, the U.S. Embassy under Obama in Kiev, “took the rare step of trying to press the Ukrainian government to back off its investigation of both the U.S. aid and (AntAC).”

    • Gina Lentine: Now a senior program officer at Freedom House, she was formerly the Eurasia program coordinator at Soros funded Open Society Foundations. She visited on March 16, 2016.
    • Rachel Goldbrenner: Now an NYU law professor, she was at that time an advisor to then-Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power. She visited on both January 15, 2016 and August 8, 2016.
    • Orly Keiner: A foreign affairs officer at the State Department who is a Russia specialist. She is also the wife of State Department Legal Advisor James P. Bair. She visited on both March 4, 2016 and June 20, 2015.
    • Nazar Kholodnitzky: The lead anti-corruption prosecutor in Ukraine. He visited on January 19, 2016.

On March 7, 2019, The Associated Press reported that the then-U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch called for him to be fired.

    • Michael Kimmage: Professor of History at Catholic University of America, at the time was with the State Department’s policy planning staff where specialized in Russia and Ukraine issues. He is a fellow at the German Marshall Fund. He was also one of the signatories to the Transatlantic Democracy Working Group Statement of Principles. He visited on October 26, 2015.
    • James Melville: Then-recently confirmed as Obama’s Ambassador to Estonia, visited on September 9, 2015.

On June 29, 2018, Foreign Policy reported that Melville resigned in protest of Trump.

    • Victoria Nuland: who at the time was assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian Affairs met with Ciaramella on June 17, 2016.

(Judicial Watch has previously uncovered documents revealing Nuland had an extensive involvement with Clinton-funded dossier. Judicial Watch also released documents revealing that Nuland was involved in the Obama State Department’s “urgent” gathering of classified Russia investigation information and disseminating it to members of Congress within hours of Trump taking office.)

    • Artem Sytnyk: the Ukrainian Anti-Corruption Bureau director visited on January 19, 2016.

On October 7, 2019, the Daily Wire reported leaked tapes show Sytnyk confirming that the Ukrainians helped the Clinton campaign.

The White House visitor logs revealed the following individuals met with Alexandra Chalupa, then a DNC contractor:

    • Charles Kupchan: From 2014 to 2017, Kupchan served as special assistant to the president and senior director for European affairs on the staff of the National Security Council (NSC) in the Barack Obama administration. That meeting was on November 9, 2015.
    • Alexandra Sopko: who at the time was a special assistant and policy advisor to the director of the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, which was run by Valerie Jarrett. Also listed for that meeting is Alexa Kissinger, a special assistant to Jarrett. That meeting was on June 2, 2015.
    • Asher Mayerson: who at the time was a policy advisor to the Office of Public Engagement under Jarrett had five visits with Chalupa including December 18, 2015, January 11, 2016, February 22, 2016, May 13, 2016, and June 14, 2016.

Mayerson was previously an intern at the Center for American Progress. After leaving the Obama administration, he went to work for the City of Chicago Treasurer’s office.

Mayerson met with Chalupa and Amanda Stone, who was the White House deputy director of technology, on January 11, 2016.

On May 4, 2016, Chalupa emailed DNC official Luis Miranda to inform him that she had spoken to investigative journalists about Paul Manafort in Ukraine.

“Judicial Watch’s analysis of Obama White House visitor logs raises additional questions about the Obama administration, Ukraine and the related impeachment scheme targeting President Trump,” stated Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “Both Mr. Ciaramella and Ms. Chalupa should be questioned about the meetings documented in these visitor logs.”

Spreadsheets of visitor records are grouped alphabetically by last name and available below:

A – Coi
Coig – Gra
Graz – Lau
Laug – Pad
Padd – Sor
Sorr – Zyz

It is looking like the impeachment of President Trump was not a spur-of-the-moment activity. Those involved in the planning needs to face the consequences of their actions.

This Obviously Did Not Go As Planned

Theoretically a lawyer interrogating a witness is never supposed to ask a question that he doesn’t already know the answer to. Asking a question you don’t know the answer to can lead to all sorts of bad things. Adam Schiff is a lawyer–he should know that. Well, evidently he had a moment when he forgot that principle.

The Gateway Pundit posted an article today about the testimony before the basement committee being run by Adam Schiff. Tim Morrison, the National Security Council’s Senior Director for European Affairs, was testifying. Mr. Morrison was in on the call, so he is not a hearsay witness.

This is the quote from the testimony from CBS News:

I also reviewed the Memorandum of Conversation (“MemCont’) of the July 25 phone call that was released by the White House. I listened to the call as it occurred from the Situation Room. To the best of my recollection, the MemCon accurately and completely reflects the substance of the call. I also recall that I did not see anyone from the NSC Legal Advisor’s Office in the room during the call. After the call, I promptly asked the NSC Legal Advisor and his Deputy to review it. I had three concerns about a potential leak of the MemCon: first, how it would play out in Washington’s polarized environment; second, how a leak would affect the bipartisan support our Ukrainian partners currently experience in Congress; and third, how it would affect the Ukrainian perceptions of the U.S.-Ukraine relationship. I want to be clear, I was not concerned that anything illegal was discussed.

It is interesting that Mr. Morrison understood that the contents of the call would be twisted and used for political purposes. He was right. At this point I would also like to note that it is very likely that Joe Biden’s son was not the only relative of an American politician tied up in Ukrainian oil corruption. I suspect that as more information comes out about Ukrainian corruption we will see other names we recognize.

 

Political Attacks On Good People

Paul Mirengoff posted an article at Power Line today about the appointment of Fred Fleitz as chief-of-staff of the National Security Council. The smear campaign against a good man has begun. Yesterday the Washington Monthly posted an article calling Fred Fleitz a Neo-Nazi.  He is not a neo-Nazi–but he is a man who understands the threat of radical Islam. They describe him as the anti-Muslim senior vice-president of an Islamaphobic think tank and now NSC chief of staff. The think tank they are referring to is the Center for Security Policy headed by Frank Gaffney. The Center for Security Policy has been one of the few honest sources for information on Sharia Law and the attempts to infiltrate Sharia into our government. They are described as Islamaphobic just as anyone who understands the threat of Sharia extremists in America is described.

The article at Power Line concludes:

The previous administration did not take the danger seriously. Or maybe it just couldn’t discern an Islamic radical group when it saw one.

Adam Kredo of the Washington Examiner argues that members of the Obama administration are instrumental in the slander of Fleitz. He notes that “organizations closely tied to the Obama administration” have led the charge. Kredo cites the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Southern Poverty Law Center. He also includes or Anti Defamation League which is currently headed by Jonathan Greenblatt, a former Obama administration official.

Desperate to defend Obama’s major legacy item — the Iran nuclear deal — Team Obama has a strong interest in bringing down John Bolton and Fred Fleitz, as it brought down Michael Flynn. But CAIR, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and even the Washington Post aren’t the FBI. These outfits are just shouting into the wind. But that doesn’t make some of the shouting any less despicable.

There are many places in our government that need to be revamped after the damage done by the last presidential administration. The National Security Council is one of those places. The appointment of Fred Fleitz is definitely a step in the right direction.

 

The Swamp Is A Danger To American National Security

On August 4th, Daniel Greenfield posted an article at Front Page Magazine about National Security Council head H.R. McMaster.  Daniel Greenfield has concluded that McMaster is part of the deep state and is working against the interests of both America and the Trump Administration. At this point I should mention that like it or not, Donald Trump is the President, and working against Donald Trump is working against the interests of America. It is not patriotic to oppose anything and everything the Trump Administration proposes–it is obstructionism. The Washington establishment’s worst nightmare is for the Trump Administration to succeed–that will be the end of their stranglehold on our government and their success as an elite class.

The article notes:

Derek Harvey was a man who saw things coming. He had warned of Al Qaeda when most chose to ignore it. He had seen the Sunni insurgency rising when most chose to deny it.

The former Army colonel had made his reputation by learning the lay of the land. In Iraq that meant sleeping on mud floors and digging into documents to figure out where the threat was coming from.

It was hard to imagine anyone better qualified to serve as President Trump’s top Middle East adviser at the National Security Council than a man who had been on the ground in Iraq and who had seen it all.

Just like in Iraq, Harvey began digging at the NSC. He came up with a list of Obama holdovers who were leaking to the press. McMaster, the new head of the NSC, refused to fire any of them.

McMaster had a different list of people he wanted to fire. It was easy to make the list. Harvey was on it.

All you had to do was name Islamic terrorism as the problem and oppose the Iran Deal. If you came in with Flynn, you would be out. If you were loyal to Trump, your days were numbered.

And if you warned about Obama holdovers undermining the new administration, you were a target.

One of McMaster’s first acts at the NSC was to ban any mention of “Obama holdovers.” Not only did the McMaster coup purge Harvey, who had assembled the holdover list, but his biggest target was Ezra Watnick-Cohen, who had exposed the eavesdropping on Trump officials by Obama personnel.

It seems as if the NSC under McMaster has turned political,  gotten totally out of control, and needs to be promptly reined in.

The article continues:

Ezra Watnick-Cohen had provided proof of the Obama surveillance to House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes. McMaster, however, was desperately working to fire him and replace him with Linda Weissgold. McMaster’s choice to replace Watnick-Cohen was the woman who helped draft the Benghazi talking points which blamed the Islamic terrorist attack on a video protest.

After protests by Bannon and Kushner, President Trump overruled McMaster. Watnick-Cohen stayed. For a while. Now Ezra Watnick-Cohen has been fired anyway.

According to the media, Watnick-Cohen was guilty of “anti-Muslim fervor” and “hardline views.” And there’s no room for anyone telling the truth about Islamic terrorism at McMaster’s NSC.

McMaster had even demanded that President Trump refrain from telling the truth about Islamic terrorism.

Another of his targets was Rich Higgins, who had written a memo warning of the role of the left in undermining counterterrorism. Higgins had served as a director for strategic planning at the NSC. He had warned in plain language about the threat of Islamic terrorism, of Sharia law, of the Hijrah colonization by Islamic migrants, of the Muslim Brotherhood, and of its alliance with the left as strategic threats.

Please follow the link to read the entire article. It is chilling to think that a group of people have become so entrenched in a government agency that they will risk the security of America to remain in power.