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.

When The Truth Doesn’t Work, Make Something Up

I have read the transcript of the telephone call between President Trump and President Zelensky.

This is how Adam Schiff characterized that call (The Federalist, September 26, 2019):

And what is the President’s response — well it reads like a classic organized crime shake down. In essence, what the President Trump communicates is this: We’ve been very good to your country. Very good. No other country has done as much as we have. But you know what, I don’t see much reciprocity here. You know what I mean? I hear what you want. I have a favor I want from you though. And I’m going to say this only seven times, so you better listen good. I want you to make up dirt on my political opponent, understand? Lots of dirt, on this and on that. I’m going to put you in touch with people, and not just any people. I’m going to put you in touch with the Attorney General of the United States — my Attorney General, Bill Barr — he’s got the whole weight of American law enforcement behind him. And I’m going to put you in touch with Rudy, you’re going to love him. Trust me. You know what I’m asking, so I’m only going to say this a few more times, in a few more ways. And don’t call me again. I’ll call you when you’ve done what I asked.

This is an inflammatory lie. There is nothing in the transcript that reads anything like that. One thing that you do take away from the transcript is that Ukraine is also dealing with issues of the deep state. They are looking for help and willing to offer help.

I have also scanned the whistleblower’s complaint (available here). It would not be admissible in a court of law as it is strictly hearsay. There is no direct link between the source and the information he is spouting.

It is truly sad to see members of Congress simply make things up to advance their political agenda. It would be nice if they would do something to advance the good of the country–like infrastructure, healthcare, national security, reducing spending–just to name a few.

Also, isn’t it rich that the party of the Christopher Steele dossier is complaining about foreigners interfering in American politics.

Twisted, Twisted, Twisted

The political left has been trying to impeach President Trump since the day he was elected. Those efforts have been futile, although extremely expensive to the American taxpayer. The latest effort describes a so-called ‘whistleblower’ reporting on what he considered an alarming conversation between the President and a world leaders. The mainstream media has strategically leaked that the world leader was from Ukraine and President Trump asked for a corruption investigation into the antics of Hunter Biden (Joe Biden’s son, not known for his upstanding lifestyle). These efforts are beginning to look like those used by Wile E. Coyote to catch the roadrunner.

The Atlantic posted an article today with the headline, “If This Isn’t Impeachable, Nothing Is.” Wow. They’re got him dead to rights now. Except for a few things left out of the story.

The Atlantic reports:

Now, however, we face an entirely new situation. In a call to the new president of Ukraine, Trump reportedly attempted to pressure the leader of a sovereign state into conducting an investigation—a witch hunt, one might call it—of a U.S. citizen, former Vice President Joe Biden, and his son Hunter Biden.

As the Ukrainian Interior Ministry official Anton Gerashchenko told the Daily Beast when asked about the president’s apparent requests, “Clearly, Trump is now looking for kompromat to discredit his opponent Biden, to take revenge for his friend Paul Manafort, who is serving seven years in prison.”

The Conservative Treehouse reported today:

In what appears to be an effort to extract Ukraine from the toxic environment of American media fake political news, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Vadym Prystaiko discusses the phone call between President Donald Trump and President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Minister Vadym Prystaiko was a participant in the discussions between the U.S. and Ukraine and has specific knowledge of the phone call. Minister Prystaiko says the phone call was long, friendly and covered a variety of important issues. There was no undue pressure or “coercion” from U.S. President Donald Trump.

The article includes a video:

 

It gets even more interesting. The Conservative Treehouse also reported:

The government of Ukraine under both Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, and now President Volodymyr Zelensky, had been trying to deliver information about Obama officials and Democrat party officials (DNC on behalf of Hillary Clinton) requesting the government of Ukraine to interfere in the 2016 election.

Both Poroshenko and Zelensky administrations had tried, unsuccessfully, to get information to current U.S. officials. U.S. State Department officials in Ukraine were refusing to give visa’s to Ukrainian emissaries because they did not want the damaging information sent to the President Trump administration.

Failing to get help from the U.S. State Department, the Ukranians tried a workaround, and hired a respected U.S. lawyer to hand deliver the documentary evidence directly to the U.S. Department of Justice. The contracted American lawyer hand-delivered the information to the U.S. Department of Justice in New York.

However, after delivering the information and not hearing back from the U.S. government, the Ukrainian government, now led by President Zelensky, interpreted the silence as the Trump administration and U.S. government (writ large) being upset about the Ukraine involvement overall. Out of concern for a serious diplomatic breakdown, the Zelensky administration made a personal request to the U.S. State Department for assistance.

About those impeachable offenses… The Acme Explosives Kit just blew up in Wile E. Coyote’s face.

One Can Only Hope The Truth Will Come Out

Yesterday Sara Carter reported on a public hearing that is going to take place today.

The article reports:

A trove of documents on the Clinton Foundation alleging possible pay for play and tax evasion have been turned over to the FBI and IRS by several investigative whistleblowers, who will be testifying in an open hearing before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Thursday, according to the committee and lawmakers.

Roughly 6,000 documents that are expected to reveal the nearly two-year investigation by the whistleblowers with a private firm called MDA Analytics LLC, which allegedly turned over the documents more than a year and a half ago to the IRS, according to John Solomon, who first published the report last week in The Hill. 

There is a connection between the whistleblowers and Robert Mueller:

However, a former whistleblower, who has spoken with agents from the Little Rock FBI field office last year and worked for years as an undercover informant collecting information on Russia’s nuclear energy industry for the bureau, noted his enormous frustration with the DOJ and FBI. He describes as a two-tiered justice system that failed to actively investigate the information he provided years ago on the Clinton Foundation and Russia’s dangerous meddling with the U.S. nuclear industry and energy industry during the Obama administration.

William D. Campbell’s story was first published by this reporter in 2017. He turned over more than 5,000 documents and detailed daily briefs to the bureau when he served as a confidential informant reporting on Russia’s nuclear giant Rosatom. Campbell worked as an energy consultant, gaining the trust of Russians and providing significant insight into Russia’s strategic plans to gain global dominance in the uranium industry. He reported on Russian’s intentions to build a closer relationship with Obama administration officials, to include then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, as reported. The documents he turned over to the DOJ, which were reviewed by this news site, showed Campbell had also provided highly sensitive information both related to the uranium case, as well as other intelligence matters, since 2006.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller was the director of the FBI at the time Campbell was a confidential informant and according to Campbell, the information was briefed to Mueller by his FBI handlers.

It seems as if the corruption and blindness in the FBI is not a new thing.

This Might Have Interesting Implications For American Politics

The Gateway Pundit is reporting today that Ecuadorian President Lenin Moreno said that the UK has provided written assurances that they will not extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to any country where he will face the death penalty.

I really don’t have an opinion about Julian Assange. Obviously he broke the law by leaking information that was classified. Whether or not those leaks put anyone in danger, I don’t know. I guess if you are concerned with Julian Assange and his leaks, you should also look at the information taken off Hillary Clinton’s private server that actually did put people in danger. At any rate, I don’t feel as if I know enough about what was actually leaked to understand his case. However, his problems with the American government began about 2008. The Obama administration was known to be harsh on any whistleblowers, and it is possible that Assange was simply a whistleblower. It is also possible that if Assange had successfully hacked into the files of the Obama administration he would be a reliable source on President Obama’s use of government agencies to target his political enemies. We know that happened with the IRS and conservative organizations, and it is becoming obvious that there were other instances where conservatives were spied upon–for example Sharyl Attkisson.

The article at The Gateway Pundit concludes:

It was recently revealed through a filing error that Assange has been secretly charged in the United States — though the nature of the charges remains unknown.

At the end of November, a judge heard arguments about unsealing the charges, but no decision was made.

The US government argued that the press and the public have no right to know what the charges against the publisher actually are. He explained that he would be willing to provide more information in a closed setting.

The UK has refused to acknowledge the findings of the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (UNWGAD), which found that he is being arbitrarily and unlawfully detained and must be immediately released and compensated.

As Matt Taibbi recently wrote in a must read op-ed for Rolling Stone, “the more likely eventuality is a prosecution that uses the unpopularity of Assange to shut one of the last loopholes in our expanding secrecy bureaucracy. Americans seem not to grasp what might be at stake. Wikileaks briefly opened a window into the uglier side of our society, and if publication of such leaks is criminalized, it probably won’t open again.”

Stay tuned.

When The Deep State Overrides The Constitution

Yesterday The Daily Caller posted an article about a recent FBI raid. The raid was conducted on the home of a legally protected whistleblower who had blown the whistle on some of the illegalities in the Uranium One deal and some of the financial dealings of the Clinton Foundation.

The article reports:

FBI agents raided the home of a recognized Department of Justice whistleblower who privately delivered documents pertaining to the Clinton Foundation and Uranium One to a government watchdog, according to the whistleblower’s attorney.

The Justice Department’s inspector general was informed that the documents show that federal officials failed to investigate potential criminal activity regarding former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the Clinton Foundation and Rosatom, the Russian company that purchased Uranium One, a document reviewed by The Daily Caller News Foundation alleges.

The delivered documents also show that then-FBI Director Robert Mueller failed to investigate allegations of criminal misconduct pertaining to Rosatom and to other Russian government entities attached to Uranium One, the document reviewed by TheDCNF alleges. Mueller is now the special counsel investigating whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia during the 2016 election.

“The bureau raided my client to seize what he legally gave Congress about the Clinton Foundation and Uranium One,” the whistleblower’s lawyer, Michael Socarras, told TheDCNF, noting that he considered the FBI’s raid to be an “outrageous disregard” of whistleblower protections.

The article continues:

A special agent from the FBI’s Baltimore division, who led the raid, charged that Cain possessed stolen federal property and demanded entry to his private residence, Socarras told TheDCNF.

“On Nov. 19, the FBI conducted court authorized law enforcement activity in the Union Bridge, Maryland area,” bureau spokesman Dave Fitz told TheDCNF. “At this time, we have no further comment.”

Cain informed the agent while he was still at the door that he was a recognized protected whistleblower under the Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act and that Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz recognized his whistleblower status, according to Socarras.

The article explains the whistleblower act:

The whistleblower act is intended to protect whistleblowers within the intelligence community, which includes the FBI.

“The [intelligence community] is committed to providing its personnel the means to report violations of law,” according to a 2016 intelligence community directive.

“The [whistleblower act] authorizes employees of contractors to take government property and give it to the two intelligence committees confidentially,” Socarras told TheDCNF.

The FBI has yet to talk to Cain’s attorney despite the raid, according to Socarras.

“After the raid, and having received my name and phone number from Mr. Cain as his lawyer, an FBI agent actually called my client directly to discuss his seized electronics,” Socarras told TheDCNF. “Knowingly bypassing the lawyer of a represented client is serious misconduct.”

The Justice Department and the IG both declined to comment.

Whoever authorized this raid and whoever was involved in it need to be fired from the FBI so that they can be replaced by people who respect the law and the U.S. Constitution.