I Guess They Haven’t Learned Their Lesson

Obviously, the big news today is the release of the Durham Report. Unfortunately there will be no consequences for those who violated the law, but at least we now have the proof that they did. However, the FBI and the Justice Department do not seem to learn from experience that they are not supposed to be political.

On Monday, The New York Post reported:

The IRS on Monday removed the “entire investigative team” from its long-running tax fraud probe of first son Hunter Biden in alleged retaliation against the whistleblower who recently contacted Congress to allege a cover-up in the case, The Post has learned.

The purge allegedly was done on the orders of the Justice Department, the whistleblower’s attorneys informed congressional leaders in a letter.

“Today the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Criminal Supervisory Special Agent we represent was informed that he and his entire investigative team are being removed from the ongoing and sensitive investigation of the high-profile, controversial subject about which our client sought to make whistleblower disclosures to Congress. He was informed the change was at the request of the Department of Justice,” Mark Lytle and Tristan Leavitt wrote.

The whistleblower, who supervised the Hunter Biden probe since early 2020, hasn’t publicly identified the first son as the subject of the case that he says is being brushed under the rug, but congressional sources confirmed it.

The article concludes:

The federal investigation reportedly has looked at whether Hunter laundered money, violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act, and lied about his drug use on a gun purchase form. 

House Republicans, meanwhile, are investigating President Biden’s role in his family’s overseas dealings, through which Hunter Biden and first brother James Biden earned millions from partnerships with wealthy people in countries where their powerful relative held sway.

Joe Biden met with his relatives’ business associates on many occasions — including those from China, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Russia and Ukraine — and House Republicans allege that Biden family members offered no legitimate business services and were merely selling access to the US government.

I am waiting for someone to explain to me how the lifestyle of some of our ‘representatives’ matches up with their salaries. That alone would justify investigations into many of the people in Washington.

Slowly The Truth Is Coming Out

On Friday, The Daily Caller posted an article about some information coming from a whistleblower regarding January 6th. Many of us have long suspected that there was an aspect of January 6th that was a false flag operation. It seems as if we were not far from the truth.

The article reports:

The FBI’s Washington Field Office (WFO) affirmed that there may have been “undercover officers” and “confidential human sources” inside the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, according to whistleblower testimony obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The FBI’s Washington Field Office requested the Boston Field Office open investigations into 140 individuals who took buses from Massachusetts to D.C. on Jan. 6., but denied the office’s request to see video proving those individuals were inside the Capitol, FBI whistleblower George Hill said during a Feb. 10 interview with the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. The office claimed they needed to “protect” the identity of possible undercover agents, according to Hill.

Why? They made no effort to protect the identities of anyone else involved. Some people who were simply at the rally and went nowhere near the Capitol have been harassed by law enforcement.

The article concludes:

Many have speculated FBI agents were among the crowd on Jan. 6. In November, FBI Director Christopher Wray refusedto say whether or not the bureau had confidential human sources among Jan. 6 protestors when asked by Republican Louisiana Rep. Clay Higgins. Executive Assistant Director of the FBI National Security Branch, Jill Sanborn, similarly dodged the question when it was posed by Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz at a Jan. 11, 2023 Senate hearing.

“Our whistleblowers are brave individuals who risk their reputations and livelihoods to expose wrongdoing,” House Judiciary Chair and Republican Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “There are already immense obstacles in place deterring whistleblowers from coming forward and we hope Democrat leaks and partisan criticisms don’t chill other whistleblowers from coming forward.”

The FBI declined to comment.

The more we learn, the more this looks like a total setup. I question the wisdom of holding a rally in Washington on that day, but I don’t believe President Trump was at all responsible for what happened next.

Lying To Congress Is Only A Problem If You Are A Republican

Yesterday The Post Millennial posted an article yesterday that indicates Attorney General Merrick Garland lied to Congress when asked about using the Department of Justice Counterterrorism Division to investigate parents who were unhappy with the curriculum in their local schools.

The article reports:

In a letter addressed to US Attorney General Merrick Garland on Tuesday, Rep. Jim Jordan wrote that a whistleblower has revealed that the Federal Bureau of Investigation is using its Counterterrorism Division to investigate parents.

“Last month, during your testimony before the Judiciary Committee, you testified that the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation were not using federal counterterrorism tools to target concerned parents at local school board meetings,” Jordan’s letter began.

…”We are now in receipt of a protected disclosure from a Department whistleblower showing that the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division is compiling and categorizing threat assessments related to parents, including a document directing FBI personnel to use a specific ‘threat tag’ to track potential investigations,” the letter continues, calling into question the “accuracy and completeness of your sworn testimony.”

Jordan’s letter goes on to outline that during Garland’s Oct. 21 testimony, he stated that the Department and its components were not using counterterrorism statues and resources to target concerned parents, specifically stating that he could not “imagine any circumstance in which the Patriot Act would be used in the circumstances of parents complaining about their children.”

The letter states that they have received an FBI email from the whistleblower dated Oct. 20, the day before Garland’s testimony, sent “on behalf of” the FBI’s Assistant Director for the Counterterrorism.

…That document, which references Garland’s Oct. 4 directive to the FBI, reveals that the FBI created the threat tag “EDUOFFICIALS” with the purpose of tracking “instances of related threats.”

“We ask that your offices apply the threat tag to investigations and assessments of threats specifically directed against school board administrators, board members, teachers, and staff,” the document reads. “The purpose of the threat tag is to help scope this threat on a national level and provide opportunity for comprehensive analysis of the threat picture for effective management with law enforcement parters at all levels.”

“This disclosure provides specific evidence that federal law enforcement operationalized counterterrorism tools at the behest of a left-wing special interest group against concerned parents,” Jordan wrote.

Please follow the link above to read the entire article. It includes screenshots of the Whistleblower’s information.

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.

The More You Know…

John Hinderaker at Power Line Blog posted an article yesterday about some of the things we have learned as information about spying on the Trump campaign and transition team is declassified. One thing that I don’t think has been widely reported is that Obama Treasury Department officials were on the list of those making unmasking requests relating to General Michael Flynn.

The article reports:

When Acting DNI Richard Grenell released the list of individuals who made unmasking requests relating to General Michael Flynn, one of the curious facts that stood out was the presence of a number of Obama Treasury Department officials on the list. Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew and no fewer than five of his subordinates–Deputy Secretary, Under Secretary, Acting Assistant Secretary, and so on, all political appointees in the Obama administration–all made unmasking requests with regard to conversations that turned out to involve General Flynn, on the same day: December 14, 2016. Lew made a second request on January 12, 2017.

The mystery of why President Obama’s Treasury Department was interested in electronic surveillance carried out for national security purposes may have been solved by this scoop in the Ohio Star: “The Treasury Department Spied on Flynn, Manafort, and the Trump Family, Says Whistleblower.”

President Barack Obama’s Treasury Department regularly surveilled retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn’s financial records and transactions beginning in December 2015 and well into 2017, before, during and after when he served at the White House as President Donald Trump’s National Security Director, a former senior Treasury Department official, and veteran of the intelligence community, told the Star Newspapers.

“I started seeing things that were not correct, so I did my own little investigation, because I wanted to make sure what I was seeing was correct” she said. “You never want to draw attention to something if there is not anything there.”

The whistleblower said she only saw metadata, that is names and dates when the general’s financial records were accessed. “I never saw what they saw.”

By March 2016, the whistleblower said she and a colleague, who was detailed to Treasury from the intelligence community, became convinced that the surveillance of Flynn was not tied to legitimate criminal or national security concerns, but was straight-up political surveillance among other illegal activity occurring at Treasury.

“When I showed it to her, what she said, ‘Oh, sh%t!’ and I knew right then and there that I was right – this was some shady stuff,” the whistleblower said.

“It wasn’t just him,” the whistleblower said. “They were targeting other U.S. citizens, as well.”

Only two names are listed in the whistleblower’s official paperwork, so the others must remain sealed, she said. The second name is Paul J. Manafort Jr., the one-time chairman of Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

The Star’s source says that she filed a formal complaint with the Treasury Department’s Inspector General in March 2017, but nothing was done. There is much more at the link.

Please follow the link to read the entire article–it is fascinating.

The article concludes:

We don’t know what Flynn communication these Obama officials were poring over, but we do know that the Treasury Department was never able to make any kind of a case against Flynn for financial misdeeds of any kind. It bears remembering that Jacob Lew was an unusually political Secretary of the Treasury. He was Obama’s Chief of Staff before taking over the Treasury Department. We have written about him several times, e.g. here.

Evidence continues to grow that the corruption of the executive branch of the U.S. government by Barack Obama was comprehensive and perhaps unprecedented.

Consequences are justified and needed.

The Question Of The Day

Theoretically the purpose of the nationwide lock-down was to insure that the healthcare infrastructure was not overwhelmed by the demand for hospital beds and respirators. Okay. That makes sense. As the coronavirus has continued to work its way through the nation, we have seen American ingenuity come to the forefront with additional hospital beds and respirators discovered or invented to meet the need. We have also seen that  the actual case load is only a fraction of what the ‘experts’ warned us about. Some of that is due to staying home, but some of that is due to estimates that were totally inaccurate. Now it is time to assess the damage the lock-down has done to America’s economy and search for a balance between the health and economic well-being of Americans.

The American Thinker posted an article today titled, “When Should Trump Restart the Economy?” That is definitely the question of the day.

The article reports:

As the world shudders into Easter and the death toll on the China virus continues to rise, the question is: should we quarantine or should we restart the economy before the shutdown kills us?

Or, more exactly, when should President Trump brave the sneers of the White House press corpse and proclaim that America is Back?

The answer, I think, is pretty clear. It will be midway between the point where only crazed libertarians propose a return to work and the point where Nancy Pelosi would announce that she is appointing a House Select Committee to investigate Trump’s criminal delay in restarting the economy.

In other words, effective political leadership is tricky.

The article notes how the media will treat any decision the President makes:

My prediction is that President Trump will issue a back-to-work order about two weeks before the geniuses in the media and left-wing hate groups catch up to reality. There will be two weeks where all the usual suspects are telling us that the walls are closing in on Trump. A couple of Inspectors General will change the rules on whistleblowers and leak to their favorite House committees which will start super-secret investigations in the House basement.

Then it will become evident to all that Trump made the right decision. However, he did it the wrong way.

Whatever the President does, he will be criticized in the press. He might as well do what he thinks is right and take the heat (as he has done all along). Frankly I am very grateful to have a businessman in the White House right now instead of a politician. Businessmen solve problems–politicians extend problems so that they can be re-elected.

Please follow the link above and read the entire article. It makes a lot of sense.

You Are Only Allowed To Be A Whistleblower On Certain Crimes

The Federalist posted an article today about the State of California’s legal case against David Daleiden. David Daleiden is director of the Center for Medical Progress, the group that exposed the sale of aborted baby body parts by Planned Parenthood.

The article reports:

An undercover reporter has been arraigned in California and charged with ten felonies for secretly recording conversations, and it’s time to revisit how the judiciary and the law can stifle the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of the press.

The accused, David Daleiden, used standard media undercover techniques to investigate and expose Planned Parenthood’s sale of aborted fetus body parts. While the use of undercover techniques like Daleiden’s is a controversial practice even within journalism circles, Daleiden’s upcoming jury trial has far wider implications for journalists.

Namely, can and should government criminalize undercover reporting, which historically has revealed otherwise hidden wrongdoing of all kinds?

The article cites the history of investigative journalism:

Let’s first put aside that Daleiden, as director of the Center for Medical Progress, is a pro-life activist—which is not a crime. He should have the same right to penetrate the practices of America’s abortion providers and report his findings just as other reporters and publications investigate other matters.

Consider the multitude of covertly conducted investigations exposing threats to public health and safety, racism, and various other injustices, dating back to the dawn of our republic. To mention a few: In a classic case of disguised reporters using hidden cameras, ABC “Prime Time Live” outed Food Lion’s alleged unsanitary food handling practices. “Dateline” NBC deployed decoys and hidden cameras to expose men who solicited sex with minors on the Internet. Vanity Fair had a clandestine reporter join a tour group to the Holy Land to probe then-President George W. Bush’s alleged ties to religious right leaders.

Undercover Chicago Tribune reporters, working from the inside as employees, exposed life-threatening conditions in nursing homes. Another Tribune reporter worked undercover in the city’s election board to reveal widespread election fraud. Chicago Sun-Times reporters, working inside, turned up dangerous practices at abortion clinics. The paper also opened a bar, the Mirage, in a sting using hidden cameras to bare shakedowns by city inspectors.

Unfortunately, David Daleiden exposed something that the media did not want exposed.

The article concludes:

Even if the government’s action were bias-free, Daleiden’s pursuit still jeopardizes quality journalism. The California accusations are based on the claim his targets had an expectation of privacy even when the conversations were conducted in a public place, like a restaurant or hotel convention hall, where bystanders could hear them. It’s a ludicrous assertion, a gross misinterpretation, and an undue and overbroad extension of the law.

…The Los Angeles Times deemed the prosecution “disturbingly aggressive” and an “overreach.”

Possible prison sentences and burdensome fines attached to criminal conduct cannot be ignored in this debate. They are more than a disincentive to expose wrongdoing; they give the upper hand to criminal enterprises, powerful corporations, avenging politicians, ideologues, and special interests to protect themselves from public condemnation and costly penalties for misconduct. This is not a loophole that the Founding Fathers had in mind when they crafted the constitutional protection of freedom of the press.

Even those who disagree with Daleiden and his techniques but care about how the precedent-setting legal actions against him that could define press freedom in the future need to follow this case as it winds through the legal system, possibly all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Meanwhile, the problem with Planned Parenthood continues. Millions of aborted baby body parts continue to be sold. No one in Congress has the backbone to make this totally illegal–the Democrats are being paid off by Planned Parenthood PAC’s and the Republicans have no spine.

Further Proof That The Russians Did Not Hack The DNC’s Computers

Yesterday The Gateway Pundit posted an article with the following headline, “BREAKING EXCLUSIVE: Joe Biden’s Former IT Director, Warren Flood, Implicated in ‘Russia Hacked the DNC Email’ Narrative.” Periodically I post an article that I do not technically understand. This is one of those articles, so if you are a computer person, please forgive my feeble attempts at explaining this.

The article reports:

On June 16, 2019, we presented arguments against the Mueller gang’s assertion that the DNC was hacked by Russians. Cyber expert Yaacov Apelbaum posted an incredible report with information basically proving that the DNC was not hacked by the Russians.

Today we have support implicating an IT Direct0r, Warren Flood, connected to Joe Biden.  Flood is linked to the ‘Russia hacked the DNC hoax’.

Last year we reported a series of arguments proving that there is no proof that Russians hacked the DNC. These arguments came from cyber expert Yaacov Apelbaum whose first argument was this –

According to the WaPo (using CrowdStrike, DOJ, and their other usual hush-hush government sources in the know), the attack was perpetrated by a Russian unit lead by Lieutenant Captain Nikolay Kozachek who allegedly crafted a malware called X-Agent and used it to get into the network and install keystroke loggers on several PCs. This allowed them to see what the employees were typing and take screenshots of the employees’ computer.

This is pretty detailed information, but if this was the case, then how did the DOJ learn all of these ‘details’ and use them in the indictments without the FBI ever forensically evaluating the DNC/HRC computers? And since when does the DOJ, an organization that only speaks the language of indictments use hearsay and 3rd parties like the British national Matt Tait (a former GCHQ collector and a connoisseur of all things related to Russian collusion), CrowdStrike, or any other evidence lacking chain of custody certification as a primary source for prosecution?

A second point by Apelbaum was –

… that three of the Russian GRU officers on the DOJ wanted list were allegedly working concurrently on multiple non-related projects like interfering with the 2016 United States elections (both HRC and DNC) while at the same time they were also allegedly hacking anti-doping agencies.

Those are the basic questions that need to be asked, but there is more.

There is the issue of the speed of the transfer of information:

Esteemed NSA whistleblower Bill Binney reported in June 2019 that there was no way Russians hacked the DNC based on the speed of the transfer of the data that was hacked. But according to Apelbaum the transfer speeds is a minor issue here. It’s just an indicator that it would have been difficult for Guccifer 2 who was sitting in Romania to access the DNC system remotely.

The article contains a screenshot that also raises suspicions about what really happened along with further information about the hack:

But of course the Mueller gang never interviewed WikiLeaks in an effort to determine how they received the Clinton emails. Of course the Mueller team could not risk WikiLeaks saying the emails were not received from Russia which would destroy their Russia hacked the DNC fairy tale.

Today we identify Warren Flood, a Biden protege who appears to have helped create the ‘Russia Hacked the DNC’ narrative:

Apelbaum obtained a parts of the Word and PDF versions of the purported DNC Opposition research document showing the original English template and the pasted version into a Russian template and resulting subsequent broken hyperlink error messages in Russian

The article then explains the significance of the screenshot:

In the image above, on the left it shows the Word doc properties of the document created at 1:38 PM on June 15, 2016. The Company name is given as GSA. This appears to be the General Services Administration (US gov agency), which shows as the Company for MS Office documents created via GSA-contracted copies of MS Word.

(Note that the DNC server wasn’t supposed to be using a GSA-contracted MS Office suite. A number of Democratic politicians and aides (e.g,, many members of the US House of Representatives) had DNC email accounts, but the DNC is a private entity and should not have hosted GSA-contracted software.)

The supposed author of this document is Warren Flood as is noted at the bottom left of the diagram above.  He was Vice President Joe Biden’s IT Director at the White House (which does use GSA registered software).

The article concludes:

Based on the document metadata there is little doubt that either Warren Flood (who BTW, speaks Russian), or someone using his GSA licensed MS Word software created the Russian fingerprint. Also, it’s important to note that several other documents also show this type of manipulation, but they were created by users named “Blake” and “jbs836”.

In terms of the big picture, it is possible that whoever added the Russian fingerprint did this as part of laying the ground work or for future unmasking. We know that in June 2016 the Obama administration (via people like Susan Rice, John Brennan, and Samantha Power) started unmasking Trump campaign officials on the pretext of ‘Russian interference’.  This June 2016 activity overlaps with dates of the Guccifer 2.0 saga.

So, it is possible that Guccifer 2.0 and MSM outlets like the NYTimes who promoted him were part of a larger campaign to affirm Russian interference with the DNC hacks.

If this is indeed the case, then it means that the DNC email leak could implicate Obama administration officials who were doing all this document manipulation on government time and on GSA registered computers all in an effort to tie Russia to the DNC email heist.

Based on information available today, there is no way Russians hacked the DNC. This was made up from the start.  Now we know that the Obama White House, and specifically Warren Flood, is involved in the Russian hoax.

Hopefully. someone in the Inspector General’s office is honest enough and smart enough to investigate this.

This Story Needs To Stay In The News Until The Truth Is Found

The U.K. Daily Mail posted an article today about the death of Philip Haney. The police department that handled the case is expressing doubts that the death was a suicide.

The article reports:

Authorities have backtracked on initial reports that a Department of Homeland Security whistleblower committed suicide after his body was found with a gunshot wound by a California highway.

Philip Haney, who spoke out against his own agency during the Obama administration, was found dead in Plymouth, about 40 miles east of Sacramento, last Friday. 

His body was found in a park and ride area near Highway 16 and Highway 124.

The Amador County Sheriff’s Office initially said the 66-year-old was found with what appeared to be a ‘self-inflicted gunshot wound’.

They also said a firearm had been found next to Haney and his vehicle. 

The sheriff’s office have since described those initial reports as ‘misinformation’ and said they have asked the FBI for assistance in investigating Haney’s death. 

Let’s hope they get the honest FBI and not the deep state FBI.

The article reports information that might hold some clues to the cause of death:

Haney gained national attention in 2016 when he criticized the agency – which at the time was under the Obama administration – for its handling of radical Jihadists and Islamic extremists.

He testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee that the DHS ordered him in 2009 to delete hundreds of files that showed links between people and Islamic terror groups.

The whistleblower testified that several terror attacks in the U.S. could have been thwarted if some of those files had not been deleted. 

In an opinion piece for the Hill prior to his testimony, Haney wrote: ‘It is very plausible that one or more of the subsequent terror attacks on the homeland could have been prevented if more subject matter experts in the Department of Homeland Security had been allowed to do our jobs back in late 2009.

‘It is demoralizing – and infuriating – that today, those elusive dots are even harder to find, and harder to connect, than they were during the winter of 2009.’

At the time of Haney’s testimony, Republicans questioned former Obama-era DHS Secretary Jet Johnson about the allegations.

Senator Ted Cruz asked: ‘Was Mr Haney’s testimony that the Department of Homeland Security order over 800 documents… altered or deleted accurate?’

Johnson replied he had ‘no idea’ and denied knowing who Haney was.

‘I don’t know who Mr Haney is. I wouldn’t know him if he walked into the room,’ he said. 

Hopefully Mr. Haney left the information for his next book with a reliable person.

I don’t believe that Philip Haney committed suicide. I hope the investigation will be kept open until authorities know exactly what did happen.

The Murder Of An American Patriot

Philip Haney was well known in intelligence circles. He was an honest man who told the truth and blew the whistle on some of the ‘questionable’ practices of the Obama administration. He was well respected and totally honest in his assessments of terrorist threats. He was murdered in California earlier this week.

Law Enforcement Today posted an article this morning.

The article reports:

We have a quick update for the story we broke earlier today in the apparent murder of our friend, Philip Haney. We will continue to provide details as they become available.

While we and The Gateway Pundit are the only outlets covering this developing news, conversation on Twitter is exploding. 

LET broke this tragic news to the nation this morning. 

A screen shot taken from Frank Andrew Bostom’s Twitter feed shows what appears to be a statement from Frank Gaffney, the Executive Chairman of the Center for Security Policy. 

The statement reads: 

“As you may know, we lost this week one of our most brilliant, most dedicated and most devout comrades-in-arms: Philip Haney. 

While the details are sketchy at the moment, Phil went missing on Wednesday in the area he called home in northern California to which he returned after the passing of his beloved wife, Francesca, following a long struggle with a series of terrible health afflictions. On Friday morning, a sheriff’s deputy finally found his body with a gunshot wound to the chest. 

As of now, we have no word about suspects or motives. 

It is hard to overstate the magnitude of this loss to the cause of freedom…”

The article includes a screenshot of a tweet by Andrew Bostom:

I never met Philip Haney, but I am familiar with his work. He was a dedicated patriot. He will be missed. Hopefully those responsible for his death will be found quickly and arrested.

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.

Still Not Playing By The Rules Of Evidence

One of the aspects of justice in America is the idea that the evidence against the defendant has to be revealed to the defense so that they can prepare their case. That is part of the fairness that has been injected into the American justice system. Every American is entitled to have access to the evidence against him before he is tried for a crime. Unfortunately the Democrats have chosen not to honor this principle.

The Gateway Pundit posted an article today about the latest attempt by Congressional Democrats to deny basic civil rights to President Trump. Keep in mind that if the President can be denied his civil rights, any American can also be denied those rights.

The article reports:

Rep. Adam B. Schiff and his fellow colleagues on the House impeachment management team spent nearly 24 hours last week repeatedly hyping the testimony from 17 witnesses interviewed during the House’s impeachment inquiry.

But they seem to have forgotten all about the testimony from an 18th witness.

Michael Atkinson, the intelligence community’s inspector general, delivered 179-pages worth of testimony before House investigators. Atkinson, it turns out, has direct knowledge of the origins of a complaint from a whistleblower that kicked off the whole impeachment probe.

While Schiff and his colleagues talk openly about the testimony of the 17 witnesses, members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence who interviewed Atkinson are not permitted to talk about the IG’s testimony.

But Republicans on that committee say his testimony should see the light of day.

“The reason it hasn’t been released is it’s not helpful to Adam Schiff. It is not helpful to the whistleblower,” said Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-TX). And Ratcliffe knows: he is among the lawmakers who attended the October interview of Atkinson. “It raises credibility issues about both of them.”

Schiff, Ratcliffe said, “is trying to bury that transcript.”

Because Atkinson’s testimony has been deemed classified, only members of the House intelligence committee have seen it, and President Trump’s legal team has not been allowed to view the transcript.

It is denied a copy.

Atkinson’s interview before House lawmakers covered the origins of the whistleblower complaint that led to the two articles of impeachment, the Washington Times reported. “Mr. Trump’s supporters charge that the whistleblower was part of a scheme to take down the president and that the complaint was coordinated by Mr. Schiff, chairman of the intelligence committee and the lead House impeachment manager prosecuting the case.”

In a perfect world, the impeachment of President Trump would be tossed out because the President’s civil rights have been violated repeatedly. It will be interesting to see if the lack of this piece of evidence is mentioned by the President’s defense team this week.

Another Lie Exposed

The Gateway Pundit posted a video of some of the White House Defense team’s testimony before the Senate this morning. The focus was on facts–not ‘I presumed’ or ‘I felt’ or ‘it seemed to me.’ The article includes a short video of the testimony of Deputy White House Counsel Patrick Philbin.

This is a partial transcript of that testimony:

Patrick Philbin: What changed? At first Manager Schiff agreed we should hear the unfiltered testimony from the whistleblower. But then he changed his mind… There was something else that came into play. And that was something Manager Schiff had said earlier when he was asked about whether he had spoken to the whistleblower.

Schiff: (TV clip) Uh, we have not spoken directly to the whistleblower. We would like to.

Patrick Philbin: And it turned out that statement was not truthful. Around October 2nd or 3rd it was exposed that Manager Schiff’s staff – at least — had spoken with the whistleblower before the whistleblower filed the complaint. And potentially had given some guidance of some sort to the whistleblower. And after that point it became critical to shut down any inquiry into the whistleblower… And Manager Schiff was in charge. He was chairing the hearings. And that creates a real problem from a due process perspective, from a search for truth perspective. Because he was an interested fact witness at that point. He had a reason. Since he had been caught out saying something that wasn’t true… It was he who ensured there wasn’t any inquiry into that… The Mueller Report… determined there was no conclusion. That wasn’t true… Chairman Schiff has made so much of the House case about the credibility of interpretations that the House managers want to place, on not hard evidence, but on inferences. They want to tell you what President Trump thought. They want to tell you don’t worry about what Zelensky said we can tell you what Zelensky actually thought… It is very relevant to know whether the assessment of evidence he’s presented in the past are accurate.

Facts can be very inconvenient things to liars.

Why This Impeachment Show Is Bad For America

President Trump is being impeached on the basis of a telephone call we have a transcript of. The content of the call has been made public. The content of a second call has also been made public. It should be noted that Representative Adam Schiff totally made up the contents of the first call when he began the inquiry into impeachment. That should be a clue that something might not be totally above board.

Real Clear Investigations posted an article today that supports the conclusion that the impeachment show is simply a show.

The article reports:

Barely two weeks after Donald Trump took office, Eric Ciaramella – the CIA analyst whose name was recently linked in a tweet by the president and mentioned by lawmakers as the anonymous “whistleblower” who touched off Trump’s impeachment – was overheard in the White House discussing with another staffer how to remove the newly elected president from office, according to former colleagues.

Sources told RealClearInvestigations the staffer with whom Ciaramella was speaking was Sean Misko. Both were Obama administration holdovers working in the Trump White House on foreign policy and national security issues. And both expressed anger over Trump’s new “America First” foreign policy, a sea change from President Obama’s approach to international affairs.

“Just days after he was sworn in they were already talking about trying to get rid of him,” said a White House colleague who overheard their conversation.

“They weren’t just bent on subverting his agenda,” the former official added. “They were plotting to actually have him removed from office.”

Misko left the White House last summer to join House impeachment manager Adam Schiff’s committee, where sources say he offered “guidance” to the whistleblower, who has been officially identified only as an intelligence officer in a complaint against Trump filed under whistleblower laws. Misko then helped run the impeachment inquiry based on that complaint as a top investigator for congressional Democrats.

The probe culminated in Trump’s impeachment last month on a party-line vote in the House of Representatives. Schiff and other House Democrats last week delivered the articles of impeachment to the Senate, and are now pressing the case for his removal during the trial, which began Tuesday.

Think about this for a minute. What we have is a couple of holdovers from the Obama administration discussing undoing an American election because they did not like the result. That is the stuff of which banana republics are made. This impeachment show is setting a precedent–any time the President and the House of Representatives are from different political parties, we can expect an attempt at impeachment. That illustrates the fact that some of our representatives in Washington do not value the votes of the American people as much as they value power in the hands of their political party. The impeachment is a show–there is little doubt as to how it will end. Unfortunately the important thing about the impeachment is the impact it will have on the country our children and grandchildren grow up in. We are sorely in danger of becoming a country where the votes of the citizens do not matter to those who are part of the ruling class.

Complicated, But Important

Yesterday The Conservative Treehouse posted an article about the ongoing case of Sharyl Attkisson, a CBS journalist who was spied on by the government as she investigated the Fast and Furious scandal and later Benghazi.. I strongly suggest that you follow the link to the article as it includes a lot of detail about the case.

The article reports:

According to a recent court filing [Source Here] a person who was engaged in the “wrongful activity” has come forward to provide Ms. Attkisson with details about the operation.  As a result of those whistle-blower revelations Attkisson is able to name specific individuals who were running the operation

…Former DOJ Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein is named as the person who was in charge of the operation; and the former head of the FBI DC field office, Shawn Henry is also outlined.

Mr. Henry is the head of Crowdstrike, a contractor for the government and a politically connected data security and forensic company.  Those who have followed the aspects related to the FBI use of the NSA database to illegally monitor U.S. persons; and those who followed the DNC cover story of Russia “hacking”; will be familiar with Crowdstrike.

According to the updated lawsuit (full pdf below) Rod Rosenstein, as the U.S. Attorney for Maryland, was in charge of the Obama 2011 and 2012 operation to monitor journalists specific to Ms. Attkissons reporting on Fast-n-Furious and Benghazi.

The article concludes:

This is the same time-frame when DNI James Clapper falsely denied to congress about the U.S. government -through the NSA- collecting metadata on all U.S. electronic communication.  This is the same time-frame where CIA Director John Brennan was monitoring the computer networks of congressional intelligence oversight staff.

When you overlay the new information from the Attkisson lawsuit, what emerges is the picture of an intentional effort by the Obama administration to weaponize the ability to collect electronic information on domestic political opposition.  It’s one long continuum.

This is not acceptable government behavior in a representative republic. It remains to be seen what will be done about it.

Why Are We Always Hearing The Same Names?

I’m not real fond of conspiracy theories. I don’t know the details of the John Kennedy assassination, and I have no idea if a cure for cancer is being suppressed. But the electronic age makes it possible to trace connections between people and groups through email records. I suspect there are more than a few people walking around now that don’t appreciate that fact. One person that might not have wanted his emails exposed would be Eric Ciaramella, the person most like to be the unnamed whistleblower.

Yesterday Breitbart posted an article with the following headline, “Emails: Open Society Kept Alleged ‘Whistleblower’ Eric Ciaramella Updated on George Soros’s Personal Ukraine Activities.” Eric Ciaramella is a CIA Analyst who worked for the Obama and Trump administrations. Why would he be receiving Open Society (a George Soros organization) emails (along with then-Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, who played a central role in the anti-Trump dossier affair)?

The article reports:

The emails spotlight Soros’s access to national security officials under the Obama administration on the matter of Ukraine.

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

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

The message read:

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

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

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

Is it possible that the current hearings focused on the actions of President Trump and the Ukrainian President trying to deal with the corruption in Ukraine are being staged to distract us from the extreme corruption that was going with the cooperation of the Obama administration?

It Will Be Interesting To See If He Keeps His Word

Breitbart is reporting today that Senator Lindsey Graham made the following statement on Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Morning Futures.” Senator Graham stated, “It’s impossible to bring this case forward in my view fairly without us knowing who the whistleblower is and having a chance to cross-examine them about any advice they may have, if they don’t call the whistleblower in the House, this thing is dead on arrival on the Senate.”

Representative Adam Schiff, who has appointed himself to decide who the Republicans can have as witnesses in the impeachment hearings has already stated that he does not see the need for the whistleblower to testify.

The article at Breitbart continues quoting Lindsey Graham:

He continued, “Well, if the whistleblower comes from Brennan world would be stunning, I think if the whistleblower had connection to Democratic candidate, that would be stunning. The only way you can fairly deal with this issue for us to find out who the whistleblower. No American can be accused of a crime based on an anonymous allegation. The whistleblower is foundational to what they are doing to the House and the fact that they don’t want to call him tells you everything that you need to know how about valid the effort is to impeachment the president.”

He added, “What’s going to happen, When you find out who is the whistleblower is, I’m confident you are going to find out it’s somebody from the deep state. You are going to find out they had interactions with the Schiff, and this thing’s going to stink to high Heaven. The only reason we don’t know who the whistleblower is it hurts their cause, they are not trying to find the truth here.”

I am hoping this means that the Republicans are going to develop a backbone. I’m not entirely optimistic, but I am hoping.

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 Is Frightening

Yesterday The Gateway Pundit posted an article about attorney Mark Zaid, who represents the anti-Trump CIA “whistleblower” Eric Ciaramella (Ciaramella’s name was accidentally released by Adam Schiff last night, so his identity has been revealed).

The article notes:

“Coup has started. First of many steps. #rebellion. #impeachment will follow ultimately. #lawyers” Zaid tweeted on January 30, 2017, barely a week after Trump’s Inauguration Day.

The article includes screenshots of a number of Mark Zaid’s tweets:

A coup is treason. Treason is a crime. The road is going to get very bumpy in the next few weeks as the people involved in this attempted coup try to save themselves from the consequences of their actions. Remember, a Grand Jury has been convened and is investigating this. Indictments will be coming. I am totally impatient for this to be over so that President Trump can continue to undo the damage done to America by President Obama, but justice takes time, and the people involved in this are extremely powerful and well-connected. I believe justice will prevail, but I also believe it will take time.

You Might Want To Keep The Popcorn Handy

The Gateway Pundit posted an article today about some recent events in Ukraine. The article begins by noting that Adam Schiff sent a staff member to the Ukraine after receiving the ‘whistleblower’ report.

The article notes:

This trip was sponsored by a think tank that receives funding from a program of left-wing billionaire George Soros’ Open Society Foundation called “Open Society Initiative for Europe”

…They met directly with former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, who lost to current president Volodymyr Zelensky in a landslide 73-25 victory.

Okay. You mean the same former President who has been accused in major interference in the 2016 American presidential election?

There are two parts of the article that are likely to become very significant in the near future. Both are based on reports from CD Media:

1. KYIV — CD Media broke news yesterday of allegations by intelligence sources of extensive money laundering and corruption by former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko. We will be releasing detailed information on the schemes to embezzle hundreds of millions of IMF aid money to Ukraine and we can confirm that investigations are under way by the Ukrainian special prosecutor’s office.

In the meantime, we think it very interesting that reports are coming out of Ukraine of tens of trucks emptying Poroshenko’s palace of belongings in Kyiv.

His right-hand man, Oleg Gladkovskiy-Svinarchuk, was arrested two days ago on corruption charges by the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU). His other confidant Ihor Kononenko has apparently ran away according to reports.

Unofficial – suspected war crimes oligarch Petro Poroshenko is preparing to escape abroad, reported Ukrainian news outlet Vremya [Time].

2. Our source has seen the data from within the Ukrainian General Prosecutor’s Office. CD Media can confirm the prosecutor’s office is ready to cooperate with the FBI and the information has been recently provided to FBI agents.

The first thing readers must realize is that the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) was an organization set up (extra-judicially) by the Obama Administration within Ukraine to help the Democrats cover up the vast corruption that had been going on, and as a tool to go after then-candidate Donald J. Trump. In fact, the initial head of the bureau engineered by the U.S. State Department in Ukraine, Artem Sytnyk, has been tried and convicted of conspiring to help presidential candidate Hillary Clinton defeat Donald Trump in the 2016 election. Sytnyk’s group was the office that released the so-called ‘black ledger’ against Paul Manafort, who was then Trump’s campaign manager and now sits in jail, convicted by the Mueller investigation.

CD Media’s editor-in-chief reported on the shakiness of the black ledger evidence at the time when writing for The Washington Times.

CD Media has access to numerous documents and will be posting updates this week from Ukraine.

It would be nice to see some of the corruption uncovered and those responsible held accountable.

Is We Can Read The Transcript, Why Do We Need The Whistleblower?

This entire news narrative about the ‘whistleblower’ has been a farce from the beginning. As usual, President Trump handled the situation beautifully by releasing the transcripts of his conversation with the Ukrainian President. He should not have had to do that, but because of all the accusations the Democrats are so freely throwing around, it was the best thing to do. It was also the thing that the Democrats hurling the accusations assumed that the President would not do. It blew a hole right in the middle of their little scheme. When the actual transcript was released, the ‘whistleblower’ became moot. He wasn’t needed anymore. In fact, he was a liability because it became obvious that his report had little to do with what actually happened. Now the story has a new twist.

The Daily Caller posted an article today reporting that Representative Adam Schiff has stated that the House Intelligence Committee might not have to interview the ‘whistleblower.’  Oddly enough, Representative Schiff seemed to lose interest in interviewing the ‘whistleblower’ after it was learned that the person had contact with a Schiff aide prior to filing the complaint Aug. 12. Wow. What a coincidence.

The article concludes:

House Democrats have given indications that they were shifting away from pushing for the whistleblower’s testimony.

House Democrats were considering disguising the whistleblower during any potential interview in order to prevent Republicans from leaking the whistleblower’s identity, The Washington Post reported Tuesday.

A Republican source familiar with the matter told the Daily Caller News Foundation in response to that report that it appeared Schiff was “laying the groundwork” to announce the whistleblower will not testify, “and to blame that on Republicans.”

“Schiff may not want the whistleblower to testify anymore because the whistleblower would have to reveal more details about this cooperation with Schiff,” the Republican source told the DCNF.

I wonder how many Americans realize how totally contrived and dishonest this ‘impeachment investigation’ is. The President’s civil rights are being violated, and the Republicans are being as quiet as mice. Does anyone in Washington have enough backbone to stand up for the Constitution?

When You Poke The Bear

There were two articles posted at The Federalist yesterday (here and here) about the current circus in the House of Representatives. I suspect this is not going exactly the way the Democrats had intended.

The first article notes:

In tense testimony before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) on Friday, the inspector general for federal spy agencies refused to disclose why his office backdated secret changes to key whistleblower forms and rules in the wake of an anti-Trump whistleblower complaint filed in August, sources told The Federalist.

As The Federalist reported and the Intelligence Community Inspector General (ICIG) confirmed, the spy watchdog secretly changed its whistleblower forms and internal rules in September to eliminate a requirement that whistleblowers provide first-hand evidence to support any allegations of wrongdoing. In a press release last week, the ICIG confessed that it changed its rules in response to an anti-Trump complaint filed on August 12. That complaint, which was declassified and released by President Donald Trump in September, was based entirely on second-hand information, much of which was shown to be false following the declassification and release of a telephone conversation between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

The first article concludes:

Several top lawmakers in the Senate raised similar concerns about Atkinson’s behavior in a separate letter.

“Why did the IC IG initially require first-hand information in its May 2018 disclosure form?” the senators asked. “Why did the IC IG remove the requirement for first-hand information?”

Atkinson has not answered their questions, either, raising questions that his behavior following his receipt of the anti-Trump complaint might not be completely above board. Atkinson ignored legal guidance from both the director of national intelligence and the Department of Justice that the anti-Trump complaint was statutorily deficient and forwarded it to HPSCI even though it did not meet the legal definition of an “urgent concern” that is required to be given to Congress.

The embattled ICIG also admitted on Friday that the anti-Trump complainant lied on his whistleblower complaint form by concealing the complainant’s previous secret interactions with House Democratic staff prior to submitting the complaint. Atkinson never even bothered investigating potential coordination between the complainant, whom DOJ said showed evidence of partisan political bias, and House Democrats prior to the filing of the anti-Trump complaint.

The second article is more of a history of the entire Ukraine scandal. It mentions the fact that there are genuine concerns about Ukraine interference in the 2016 American presidential election.

The second article also suggests some motivation behind this current circus:

The Democrats’ case for impeachment is hopeless, but their motivation is simple. They whipped up their base into such a delusional frenzy during the “Russia investigation,” they have to keep the narrative going at all costs. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi faces a rebellion from her caucus if she doesn’t go along with it.

There may be a more serious motivation behind this:

But there’s a group of intelligence bureaucrats at work here, and their motivation is a bit different. An immediate motive may be to prevent an investigation into how the Russia probe started. This includes an investigation into how a document the Hillary Clinton campaign created — using anonymous Russians and a British national tied to Russia — was used by our intelligence agencies to investigate Trump.

The other possible motivation is more complex. During the “Russia investigation,” many in the intelligence agencies worked to subvert Trump’s foreign policy and remove Trump, through spying, a large series of leaks, and articles planted with friendly outlets. Trump’s campaign was even spied on before the election, via something called the “two-hop rule,” once a secret court granted a warrant to spy on Trump campaign officials such as Carter Page.

Because of this, the White House moved to cut off the broader “intelligence community” — inexorably tied to America’s foreign policy establishment that Trump ran against — from information the White House knew many in the intelligence agencies would use to selectively leak.

That could mean some of what’s going on today, at least from the CIA angle, is intelligence bureaucrats “striking back” because they lost their access to diplomatic communications, a coveted source of the intelligence community’s power. But even the Obama administration liked to hide diplomatic calls from the broader intelligence community, which should tell us something about that bureaucracy.

The second article includes the following statement:

In other words, the real big takeaway here is that we have a problem with our Washington bureaucracy, including our intelligence agencies, which have routinely crossed the line into policymaking. How much of the impeachment mess is due to CIA bureaucrats being incensed that Trump, who is elected, would dare to question military aid to Ukraine, and would dare to curtail their eavesdropping on diplomacy?

What we see here is an illustration of the reason why we need to drain the swamp.

One Question That Needs Answering

The Federalist posted an article yesterday about a question surrounding the latest attempt to impeach President Trump.

The article notes:

Republican lawmakers in both the Senate and House on Monday demanded answers from the Intelligence Community Inspector General (ICIG) about secret revisions to the office’s guidance on “urgent concern” whistleblower complaints. The Federalist first reported last week that between May 2018 and August 2019, the ICIG secretly eliminated its requirement that potential whistleblowers provide only first-hand evidence of alleged wrongdoing.

In their letter to Michael Atkinson, the ICIG, Reps. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), and Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) noted that the anti-Trump complainant offered no direct, first-hand evidence of alleged wrongdoing against President Donald Trump. Instead, the complaint is littered with gossip, hearsay, and rumor. The lawmakers specifically asked the ICIG to explain when the whistleblower guidance was revised, by whom, and for what reason.

“Based on the language on [the May 24, 2018] form, it appears that the requirement for first-hand information has been an ICIG policy regardless of how a whistleblower makes an urgent concern report,” they wrote. “Curiously the urgent disclosure form that now appears on the Office of the Director of National Intelligence website has recently changed and no longer contains this explicit first-hand information requirement.”

“[T]he timing of the removal of the first-hand information requirement raises questions about potential connections to this whistleblower’s complaint,” the lawmakers continued. “This timing, along with numerous apparent leaks of classified information about the contents of this complaint, also raise questions about potential criminality in the handling of these matters.”

The letter informs the ICIG that he must provide answers to their questions about the timing and rationale of the secret changes to the whistleblower guidance by noon on Thursday, October 3. The lawmakers told the ICIG to treat the letter as a formal demand to preserve all evidence related to the changes to the internal ICIG whistleblower rules.

The timing of this change, along with the willingness to ignore Vice-president Biden’s obvious successful attempt to leverage aid to Ukraine to prevent an investigation into some questionable business dealings of his son, is questionable at best. It does appear that there are un-elected people inside our government working with elected officials and a compliant media to undo the results of an election. Those people, along with their allies, need to face consequences for their actions–they are undermining our republic.

There is also the obvious question, “Why is the Intelligence Community Inspector General, who is supposed to be investigating the intelligence community, investigating the President?” That investigation is outside of his authority. The ‘whistleblower,’ who is actually simply a leaker, is not acting within the law as it is written.

When The Rules Don’t Work For You, You Simply Change Them

This article is based on two recent posts from The Conservative Treehouse, one posted today and one posted yesterday.

Today’s post has to do with a House of Representatives rule change the Democrats made when they took over.

The article reports:

Back in December 2018 CTH noted the significant House rule changes constructed by Nancy Pelosi for the 116th congress seemed specifically geared toward impeachment. {Go Deep} With the House going into a scheduled calendar recess, those rules are now being used to subvert historic processes and construct the articles of impeachment.

A formal vote to initiate an “impeachment inquiry” is not technically required; however, there has always been a full house vote until now.  The reason not to have a House vote is simple: if the formal process was followed the minority (republicans) would have enforceable rights within it.  Without a vote to initiate, the articles of impeachment can be drawn up without any participation by the minority; and without any input from the executive.  This was always the plan that was visible in Pelosi’s changed House rules.

Keep in mind Speaker Pelosi selected former insider DOJ official Douglas Letter to be the Chief Legal Counsel for the House.  That becomes important when we get to the part about the official full house impeachment vote. The Lawfare group and DNC far-left activists were ecstatic at the selection.  Doug Letter was a deep political operative within the institution of the DOJ who worked diligently to promote the weaponized political values of former democrat administrations.

Speaker Pelosi has authorized the House committees to work together under the umbrella of an “official impeachment inquiry.”  The House Intelligence (Schiff) and Judiciary Committees (Nadler) are currently working together leading this process.

From recent events we can see the framework of Schiff compiling Trump-Ukraine articles and Nadler compiling Trump-Russia articles.  Trump-Ukraine via Schiff will likely focus on a corruption angle; Trump-Russia via Nadler will likely focus on an obstruction angle.

How many articles of impeachment are finally assembled is unknown, but it is possible to see the background construct as described above.  Unlike historic examples of committee impeachment assembly, and in combination with the lack of an initiation vote, Pelosi’s earlier House Rule changes now appear intentionally designed to block republicans during the article assembly process.  The minority will have no voice.  This is quite a design.

This is simply ugly. It should be unconstitutional, but the House is allowed to set its own rules.

The second article reports another significant rule change in the rules regarding whistleblowers.

The article reports:

Folks, this “Ukraine Whistleblower” event was a pre-planned event.  As we begin to understand the general outline of how the Schiff Dossier was assembled, we are now starting to get into the specifics.  First discovered by researcher Stephen McIntyre, there is now evidence surfacing showing the ICIG recently created an entirely new ‘whistleblower complaint form’ that specifically allowed for the filing of complaints “heard from others“.

Keep in mind that the phone call between President Trump and President Zelensky took place on July 25, 2019.

If this does not make you furious, you are not paying attention. When President Trump was elected (if not before), the Democrats began planning his impeachment. It didn’t matter what he did, he was going to be impeached. Impeachment, contrary to the wishes of our Founding Fathers, was going to be a political weapon used to remove a political opponent from office.

There are two purposes to this move–the first is the hope that it will prevent President Trump from being re-elected. Barring a serious financial decline, President Trump will be re-elected. The Democrats know this and are trying to prevent it. The second purpose is even worse. If President Trump is re-elected and there is a vacancy on the Supreme Court, the cry of the Democrats will be, “A President under the shadow of impeachment should not be allowed to appoint a Supreme Court Justice.”

We could debate whether or not the actions of the Democrat party in this matter are technically legal. However, they are not in line with their Oath of Office which says they will defend the Constitution. This is a total undermining of the Constitution. I hope voters are awake enough to see what is going on. If not, we will lose our Republic.

Following The Money

Lawyers are expensive. In Washington, D.C., lawyers are really expensive. Comments I am hearing suggest that the ‘whistleblower’s report’ is written as a legal brief–not by an intelligence agent. Those familiar with the verbal cadence of an intelligence report have expressed doubt that this report was written by an intelligence agent. So who hired the lawyers and where did the money come from?

Yesterday Breitbart posted an article yesterday that provides some answers to these questions.

The article reports:

Sections of a so-called whistleblower’s complaint alleging President Donald Trump was “using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country” in the 2020 presidential race relies upon a self-described investigative journalism organization bankrolled massively by billionaire activist George Soros.

The complainer admits, “I was not a direct witness to most of the events described.” Still, the so-called whistleblower goes on to allege that Trump pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Joe Biden and his son, Hunter.

The transcript of the phone call authorized for release by President Trump evidences no such pressure or quid pro quo and shows the request to investigate alleged corruption involving Biden and his family was a small part of the call.

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

That footnote reads:

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

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

    • Write that Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko “also stated that he wished to communicate directly with Attorney General Barr on these matters.”
    • Document that Trump adviser Rudi Giuliani “had spoken in late 2018 to former Prosecutor General Shokin, in a Skype call arranged by two associates of Mr. Giuliani.”
    • Bolster the charge that, “I also learned from a U.S. official that ‘associates’ of Mr. Giuliani were trying to make contact with the incoming Zelenskyy team.” The so-called whistleblower then relates in another footnote, “I do not know whether these associates of Mr. Giuliani were the same individuals named in the 22 July report by OCCRP, referenced above.”

The OCCRP report repeatedly referenced is actually a “joint investigation by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and BuzzFeed News, based on interviews and court and business records in the United States and Ukraine.”

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

Somehow we keep hearing the same names.