Monday, September 30, 2019

Impeachment Coup Analytics: The Democrats have exhausted every other mechanism for destroying Trump—and they are running out of time before November 2020 election.


By Victor Davis Hanson  | American Greatness



Aside from the emotional issue that Democrats, NeverTrumpers, and celebrities loathe Donald Trump, recently Representative Al Green (D-Texas) reminded us why the Democrats are trying to impeach the president rather than just defeat him in the 2020 general election.

“To defeat him at the polls would do history a disservice, would do our nation a disservice,” Green said.  “I’m concerned that if we don’t impeach the president, he will get re-elected.”

Translated, that means Green accepts either that Trump’s record is too formidable or that the agendas of his own party’s presidential candidates are too frightening for the American people to elect one of them. And that possibility is simply not permissible. Thus, impeachment is the only mechanism left to abort an eight-year Trump presidency—on a purely partisan vote to preclude an election, and thus contrary to the outlines of impeachment as set out by the Constitution.

Consider it another way: Why is it that the House is controlled by Democrats, yet its leadership is not pushing through any of the policy proposals voiced so openly on the Democratic primary stage?

Why aren’t progressive representatives introducing bills to pay reparations to African Americans, to legalize infanticide in some cases of late-term abortion, to offer free medical care to illegal aliens, to confiscate AR-15s, to extend Medicare for all, to impose a wealth tax and raise top rates to between 70 and 90 percent, to abolish student debt and ensure free college for all, or to grant blanket amnesty to those currently living in the country illegally?

Simple answer: none of those issues poll anywhere near 50 percent approval. And no Democratic candidate would expect to beat Trump as the emissary of such an agenda.

If the economy was in a recession, if we were embroiled in another Iraq-like or Vietnam-sort of war, and if Trump’s polls were below 40 percent, then the Democrats would just wait 13 months and defeat him at the polls.

But without a viable agenda and because they doubt they can stop Trump’s reelection bid, they feel they have no recourse but to impeach. If Trump were to be reelected, not a shred of Barack Obama’s “fundamental transformation” would be left, and the strict constructionist Supreme Court would haunt progressives for a quarter-century.

Why Impeachment Now?

The Democrats have exhausted every other mechanism for destroying Trump—and they are running out of time before November 2020 election.

Think of what we have witnessed since the 2016 election. Do we even remember charges that voting machines in the 2016 election were rigged, and the efforts to subvert Electoral College voting, or to invoke the Logan Act, the emoluments clause, and the 25th Amendment?

The “collusion” and “obstruction” fantasies of the Mueller investigation now seem like ancient history. So do the James Comey leaks, the palace coup of Andrew McCabe, the Trump tax records, the celebrity rhetoric about blowing up, shooting, stabbing, burning and variously killing off the president of the United States—along with the satellite frenzies of Stormy Daniels, Michael Avenatti, Charlottesville, Jussie Smollett, the Covington Kids, and the Kavanaugh hearings.

What is left but to try the new “Ukraine collusion”—especially given three other considerations?

First, volatile and always changing polls appearing to favor impeachment roughly reflect Trump’s own popularity (or lack of same). Around 45-46 percent of Americans do not want him impeached and about the same or slightly more say they do.

Second, the hard left-wing of the party might not yet control all the Democrats, but it does not matter because they are clearly younger, more energized, and better organized. And they want something to show for all their social media and photo-op grandstanding, given their socialist agenda is mysteriously moribund.

Third, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is said to oppose impeachment on pragmatic grounds, but I am not sure that is right. It’s the equivalent of saying Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) was opposed to the progressive character assassination of Brett Kavanaugh. Neither is or was true.

A better description would be that Pelosi and Feinstein simply go along with the perceived 51-plus percent surge of their party, and sit back gleefully watching the fireworks happen, willing to jump in or pull back depending on the atmospherics and polling. Impeachment, remember, will make the Kavanaugh hearings look like a seminar on etiquette, and so everything and anything can happen once dozens of unhinged leftists are unbound.

Be prepared for a half-dozen Christine Blasey Ford-type witnesses to pop up, and 20 or so unhinged Cory Booker-esque “I am Spartacus” performance acts, along with a whole slew of new Steele dossiers—all interspersed with breathless CNN bulletins announcing new fake news developments with “the walls are closing in” and “the end is near” prognostications. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) is already reading fantasies to the House Intelligence Committee and passing them off as the text of Trump’s phone call to Ukraine’s new president. Only after he was called on such absurdities did he describe his performance as a parody.

Facts Won’t Matter that Much

The Left is hellbent on impeachment and the absence of a case won’t matter. They do not care if they will sow the wind and reap the whirlwind.

In the coming days, after all, we will probably learn that the whistleblower’s “Schiff dossier” was prepared by ex-Lawfare-type lawyers in service to House Democrats, who just needed a vessel to pass off the hit as a genuine cry of the heart, rather than a scripted attack with all the Steele dossier/Mueller report/Comey memo fingerprints: classification obfuscations, footnotes to liberal media hit pieces, pseudo-scholarly references to court cases, and lawsuit-avoiding, preemptive disclaimers about not actually possessing firsthand knowledge of any of the evidence, prepped hearsay, supposition, and the subjunctive and optative mood composition.

In a sane world, the impeachers would worry their charges that Trump forced Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky to investigate his possible 2020 Democratic opponent Joe Biden might boomerang. After all, Trump never actually cut off Ukrainian aid. Nor did he outline a quid pro quo deal. Essentially he is accused of unduly asking a foreign president to clamp down on corruption in his midst going back to 2016. So what? Especially if there is something more to the strange antics of Hunter Biden and CrowdStrike.

Biden’s problems are not such thought crimes, but are confirmed by his own boasting: that he used the clout of the United States to help his own family financially, by threatening to cut off U.S. aid unless a Ukrainian state prosecutor looking into his own son’s suspicious lobbying was fired within six hours. And in Biden’s own words, “Son of a bitch,” he was fired.

In contrast, Trump might have been all over the map in his call, but he kept the aid to Ukraine coming without demanding the scalp of any Ukrainian official. In some sense, Trump’s culpability boils down to one issue: progressives believe that in not-too-veiled a manner, he threatened a foreign government to start going after the Biden family without cause, whose patriarch Joe might be Trump’s 2020 election opponent.

The other half of the country believes that what is material is not Biden’s current transient electoral status (he is not now and may not be the Democratic nominee), but the fact that he was vice president of the United States when he used his office to threaten the loss of foreign aid to stop investigations of his son, who was using his father’s position to further his own profiteering.

Given that Trump denies any quid pro quo and his call supports that fact, while Biden, on the other hand, openly brags that he made threats which made the Ukrainian to cave (“in six hours”), one can draw one’s own conclusions.

For now, we await more documents—with caveats that the canny Ukrainians, for their own self-interest, will predicate their release of information on the likelihood of which party will win the 2020 election.

The Left hints it has lots of incriminating documents outlining a quid pro quo threat; conservatives suspect that Ukrainian and legal documents will show the prosecutor was neither unethical nor uninterested in Hunter Biden, but was fired precisely because he was not corrupt and very much concerned with Biden.

As far as precedent, there is a good recent example. Barack Obama got caught promising to consider cuts in Eastern-European-based missile defense if Vladimir Putin would give him some room during his reelection campaign.

Translated into Adam Schiff’s Mafiosi parody lingo: Putin would calm down on the international stage to make the U.S.-Russia “reset” look good, Obama would then get rid of Eastern-European missile defense, and Obama would get reelected in 2012.

And all three of those events transpired as planned—one can surmise whether any of the three would have happened without Obama compliance with Russian conditions. Remember, Obama’s quid pro quo was caught on a hot mic on the premise that what he said to Russian President Medvedev was never supposed to be heard. “On all these issues, but particularly missile defense, this can be solved,” Obama said. “But it’s important for him [Putin] to give me space . . . This is my last election. After my election I have more flexibility.”

Once that understanding was excused, and the media was mute about such collusion, can any notion of collusion as a crime still exist?

Conspiracy Theories

Finally, who are the winners in these impeachment psychodramas, both short-term and long-term?

Short-term, Trump may lose traction due to the media frenzy. He lost some of his ongoing momentum that had recently seen his polls steadily creeping up. He gave a fine speech at the United Nations and sounded presidential in his talks with foreign leaders—all overshadowed or now forgotten due to the impeachment psychodrama.

Trump’s critics have become emboldened, Left and Right. The Drudge Report has flip-flopped and is as anti-Trump as Vox or Slate. Many at National Review call for or anticipate impeachment without much regret. Likewise, some at Fox News—Shepard Smith, Andrew Napolitano, and Chris Wallace—are nonstop critics of Trump and hardly disguise their contempt.

The leftist media is on uppers, and completely ecstatic in moth-to-flame fashion, as if it were May 2017 again and Trump’s demise was a day away.

Because Joe Biden faces far more legal exposure than Trump, he is mentioned (if even to contextualize and exonerate him) in every news account of Ukraine. Whether or not Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) or her erstwhile henchwoman, Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), was behind this gambit, does not matter. (Nothing much from either one had worked to slow down Biden in the last six months). Biden is simply not physically or mentally up to a year of cross-examination. And Hunter Biden is more unsteady than Joe and will thus be hard to locate.

We are starting to see the outlines of a progressive fantasy on the horizon: Biden will be sacrificed. The party will unite around Warren. The left-wing media narrative will be, “We took out one of our own, now it is your turn to depose Trump.” Chaos overload for two or three weeks might keep Trump’s polling low.

Long-term, however, Trump wins.

We still have a number of government audits coming from Michael Horowitz, John Durham, and John Huber—and the targets are not Trump. The Senate will not convict the president under any foreseeable circumstances. The full story of the whistleblower has not been told, but there are a lot of narratives to come about the sudden rules allowing hearsay, DNC involvement, and who knew far in advance about the complainant’s writ. Once the Democratic debates continue, the candidates’ screaming and hysterics return, and the impeachment hearings descend into a Kavanaugh-esque farce, the public will begin to get scared again by the Left’s shrieking Jacobins. Schiff’s “parody” is a small foretaste of what’s to come. Voters soon will surmise that the only thing between their 401k plans and socialism is Donald J. Trump.

Warren or her possible facsimile is a weaker candidate than even the enfeebled Biden. Her lack of viability will be of enormous advantage in NeverHillary-fashion to Trump. His fundraising, already ascendant, will hit the stratosphere. The idea that the new and old NeverTrumpers will be on the side of socialism will finally discredit them. Wall Street and Silicon Valley will keep trashing Trump, but privately write checks to stop Warren’s wealth tax that would be only the beginning of her Venezuelization of America.

So if Trump’s health holds out, if we don’t have a recession, if there is not an optional war, and Trump endures the next few weeks of 360-degree, 24/7 targeting, 2020 will be far more favorable than ever imaginable for him.


Victor Davis Hanson is an American military historian, columnist, former classics professor, and scholar of ancient warfare. He was a professor of classics at California State University, Fresno, and is currently the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. He has been a visiting professor at Hillsdale College since 2004.


Adam Schiff Received the Whistleblower Complaint a Month Ago and Didn't Report It Until Now, Why?


By Katie Pavlich | Townhall



Source: (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

As Democrats move full speed ahead with their impeachment efforts and false claims of "collusion" or election meddling, holes continue to be blown through their allegations. 

The full whistleblower complaint against President Trump's alleged behavior during a phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was released. The call took place in July, but the date on the letter and who it was sent to are raising questions. 

The complaint is in fact dated August 12. It was sent to House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff in addition to Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr. The news of the complaint didn't break until last weekend. 




Two weeks ago and just before this news broke, the Department of Justice Inspector General announced he has completed the investigation in FISA abuse and the origins of the Russia investigation. I'm sure the timing is coincidental. 

In the meantime, President Trump has called on Schiff to resign and be investigated. 

-----



Rep. Adam Schiff totally made up my conversation with Ukraine President and read it to Congress and Millions. He must resign and be investigated. He has been doing this for two years. He is a sick man!

-----

Recommended:


Sunday, September 29, 2019

Did You Know There’s a Treaty Between the USA & Ukraine Regarding Cooperation For Prosecuting Crimes?



My goodness. It was passed when Joe Biden was a member of the U.S. Senate and then signed by then-President Bill Clinton.

A comprehensive treaty agreement that allows cooperation between both the United States and Ukraine in the investigation and prosecution of crimes. 

It appears President Trump was following the law to the letter when it comes to unearthing the long-standing corruption that has swirled in Ukraine and allegedly involves powerful Democrats like Joe Biden and others.





“To the Senate of the United States: With a view to receiving the advice and consent of the Senate to ratification, I transmit herewith the Treaty Between the United States of America and Ukraine on Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters with Annex, signed at Kiev on July 22, 1998. I transmit also, for the information of the Senate, an exchange of notes which was signed on September 30, 1999, which provides for its provisional application, as well as the report of the Department of State with respect to the Treaty. The Treaty is one of a series of modern mutual legal assistance treaties being negotiated by the United States in order to counter criminal activities more effectively. The Treaty should be an effective tool to assist in the prosecution of a wide variety of crimes, including drug trafficking offenses. The Treaty is self-executing. It provides for a broad range of cooperation in criminal matters. Mutual assistance available under the Treaty includes: taking of testimony or statements of persons; providing documents, records, and articles of evidence; serving documents; locating or identifying persons; transferring persons in custody for testimony or other purposes; executing requests for searches and seizures; assisting in proceedings related to restraint, confiscation, forfeiture of assets, restitution, and collection of fines; and any other form of assistance not prohibited by the laws of the requested state. I recommend that the Senate give early and favorable consideration to the Treaty and give its advice and consent to ratification.”
WILLIAM J. CLINTON.


Saturday, September 28, 2019

Hypocrites: Senate Dems Sent Letter Pressuring Ukraine To Investigate Trump In May 2018


By Timothy Meads | Townhall


Source: AP Photo/Alex Brando

If you have not learned by now, virtually every Conservative "scandal" in recent memory has been nothing more than leftists projecting their own personal problems onto their political opponents.

Sexism and abuse against women? Meet Bill Clinton and Harvey Weinstein.

Racism? Meet the blackface donning Gov. Ralph Northam and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Trump pressuring Ukraine to interfere in the 2020 election? Meet the Democrats in May 2018. Yes, the very same Democrats who are now supposedly aghast that President Trump asked the president of Ukraine to look into Joe Biden's family corruption, actually sent Ukraine a letter saying "U.S. assistance" was at stake unless the Ukrainian government complied with the bogus special counsel Robert Mueller investigation and conducted their own investigation into the president and his former aid Paul Manafort.

Marc Theissen of the Washington Post brought this up, and after seeing what the president actually said to his call to the newly elected president Volodymyr Zelensky, it looks like the Democrats have nothing but egg on their face. 
Here's what Theissen reported: 

It got almost no attention, but in May, CNN reported that Sens. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) and Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) wrote a letter to Ukraine’s prosecutor general, Yuriy Lutsenko, expressing concern at the closing of four investigations they said were critical to the Mueller probe. In the letter, they implied that their support for U.S. assistance to Ukraine was at stake. Describing themselves as “strong advocates for a robust and close relationship with Ukraine,” the Democratic senators declared, “We have supported [the] capacity-building process and are disappointed that some in Kyiv appear to have cast aside these [democratic] principles to avoid the ire of President Trump,” before demanding Lutsenko “reverse course and halt any efforts to impede cooperation with this important investigation.”

So, it’s okay for Democratic senators to encourage Ukraine to investigate Trump, but it’s not okay for the president to allegedly encourage Ukraine to investigate Hunter Biden?

The senators in question are defending their actions. Sen. Leahy tweeted:

"So, so wrong. Again. Our letter was about concern **EVEN IN 2018** about WH pressure on Ukraine, to benefit you personally. And unlike you, we have strongly and consistently supported assistance to Ukraine as it struggles with Russian aggression.”

But that seems like a flimsy excuse. The letter clearly shows they were threatening to withhold assistance unless the Ukrainian government did as they demanded. Between this uncovered letter and former Vice President Joe Biden bragging about intimidating the Ukrainian prosecutor, this whole thing is boomeranging on the Dems. Here comes Trump 2020, folks, steamrolling into the White House (again). 

----



FLASHBACK to 2018 when Joe Biden bragged about bribing Ukraine with $1 BILLION to fire the prosecutor who was investigating his son, Hunter Biden's company.





________________


RELATED ARTICLES

Whistleblower Requirements Recently Amended to Allow Hearsay

BY STEPHEN KRUISER  P J Media


Senate Minority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer of N.Y. holds up a copy of a White House released rough transcript of a phone call between President Donald Trump and the President of Ukraine as Schumer speaks to the media about an impeachment inquiry on President Trump, Wednesday Sept. 25, 2019, on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Those who have been receiving the news about the whistleblower allegations against President Trump with skepticism rather than glee have mostly focused on the rather tenuous second-hand knowledge nature of the claims. It appears that, until recently, those claims wouldn't have been allowed in a whistleblower complaint:

---



BREAKING: The intelligence community secretly eliminated a requirement that whistleblower complaints contain only direct, first-hand knowledge of wrongdoing allegations.

A new version of the complaint form allowing hearsay was secretly revised last month.





----

This may actually be a bigger bombshell than the report itself.


Between May 2018 and August 2019, the intelligence community secretly eliminated a requirement that whistleblowers provide direct, first-hand knowledge of alleged wrongdoings. This raises questions about the intelligence community’s behavior regarding the August submission of a  whistleblower complaint against President Donald Trump. The new complaint document no longer requires potential whistleblowers who wish to have their concerns expedited to Congress to have direct, first-hand knowledge of the alleged wrongdoing that they are reporting.

The brand new version of the whistleblower complaint form, which was not made public until after the transcript of Trump’s July 25 phone call with the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky and the complaint addressed to Congress were made public, eliminates the first-hand knowledge requirement and allows employees to file whistleblower complaints even if they have zero direct knowledge of underlying evidence and only “heard about [wrongdoing] from others.”

This none-too-subtle morphing of actual whistleblowing into rumor spreading has "slippery slope" written all over it. It's another one of those political daggers that seems like a good idea as long as it is being used against one's opponents. Little thought is given by those first employing the tactic about the day when it may be used against them.

Political journalism in the Trump era has been defined by weak, anonymous sourcing and "reporting" that requires a thesaurus-full of qualifying words. That's dangerous enough in the hands of the press, and is even creepier if used as in-house political attack tools.

This none-too-subtle morphing of actual whistleblowing into rumor spreading has "slippery slope" written all over it. It's another one of those political daggers that seems like a good idea as long as it is being used against one's opponents. Little thought is given by those first employing the tactic about the day when it may be used against them.

Political journalism in the Trump era has been defined by weak, anonymous sourcing and "reporting" that requires a thesaurus-full of qualifying words. That's dangerous enough in the hands of the press, and is even creepier if used as in-house political attack tools.

Here are some examples of what I'm talking about from a recent article about the complaint in The Hill.

The article purports to examine the "most serious charges" from the complaint. Here is how The Hill presents what is considered to be the most serious of the bunch:

The big revelation in the whistleblower’s complaint is the suggestion that the White House sought to hide the word-for-word transcript of the call.

This move was allegedly motivated, at least in part, because those with knowledge of the call realized “they had witnessed the President abuse his office for personal gain.”

We have a "suggestion" of something that may or may not have happened, along with the assertion of what the people who were not the official whistleblowers were "allegedly motivated" by. All from someone who admits having zero direct knowledge of any of it.

Whether any of it turns out to be true -- my skepticism is even stronger now -- the problem that whistleblowing and rumor-mongering have been officially conflated remains.

Despite Trump being labeled an existential threat to everything by Democrats, the only ones who can make that claim are career federal bureaucrats. To them, he's an interloper who, to their horror, isn't solely focused on bloating and maintaining federal government's vampiric leeching off the American taxpayers.

I'm not one for conspiracy theories, but the Deep State thing is growing on me lately. Ten years ago I probably wouldn't have believed that a substantial number of people in the federal behemoth would want to unravel a presidency via a catty rumor mill, but here we are.

I will never be so comfortable with a president that I don't think he or she should be held accountable for wrongdoing. Political lynching via hearsay is a bit Soviet for my tastes, however.

___

PJ Media Associate Editor Stephen Kruiser is the author of “Don’t Let the Hippies Shower” and “Straight Outta Feelings: Political Zen in the Age of Outrage,” both of which address serious subjects in a humorous way. Monday through Friday he edits PJ Media’s “Morning Briefing.”


_________________


Impeachment Depravity: 'Inquiry' Proves Democrats Know They Can't Win

BY MARK ELLIS | P J Media


House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) speaks to reporters after a news conference in San Francisco on Aug. 21, 2018. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)
Depravity: the state of being morally bad, or an action that is morally bad. 
Impeachment depravity: a campaign by Democrat politicos intended to excite the extremist Democrat base and simulate impeachment without the requirement of any grounds for impeachment nor any substantive steps that might trigger real impeachment proceedings. 

That’s where we stand in the wake of the fake whistleblower scandal and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s empty impeachment inquiry threat, although new developments break minute by minute.

The day Pelosi leveled her toothless threat, Mike Huckabee, guesting on The Story with Martha MacCallum, spoke for millions of loyal Trump supporters when he challenged Democrats to get real and put impeachment to a floor vote.

“Pull the rope, let’s get this engine started,” said the former Arkansas governor.
They won’t pull the rope, because they haven’t got the goods, never have had, and they know it.


Instead, what is about to take place is an extended impeachment depravity reel which will illustrate the obscene depths the Democrat Party will sink to in their attempts to undermine the success and rising popularity of President Donald Trump—now enjoying higher poll ratings than Barack Obama had at this point in his presidency.

The impeachment “enactment” will be a perversion of the Constitution and an abomination before the American people. Scores of elected Democrat officials, their operatives, and the leftist media’s stable of bias-infected hosts and analysts will lay down like Stormy Daniels for the production.

Speaker Pelosi didn’t want this. Her ideology may be anathema to conservatism, but she’s politically savvy. Before “whistle-gate” broke she wisely dissuaded her party from green-lighting what will go down in history as a monument to political prurience.

Front and center for this titillation-fest will be co-directors Adam Schiff and Jerrold Nadler, enabled by a production crew comprised of veterans of previous productions: Collusion! Racism! Recession! The stars of the show will be newcomers like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who has stridently proclaimed that expedited impeachment (the real thing, not a flaccid inquiry) is exactly what her district is clamoring for.

Good luck taking this depraved impeachment fantasy into the heartland.

While rank and file Trump supporters will recoil, yell at their television sets, flood comment sections and, in outlier cases, vow armed insurrection if Trump is removed from office, it is the pro-Trump legal and pundit class that will provide the quasi-psychological analysis as this display of Democrat hate-lust plays out. Professionals close to the drama, like Jay Sekulow, Joe diGenova, Victoria Toensing, Mollie Hemingway, Charles Hurt, and many others will provide reality checks when the unhinged passions of the angry left erupt and sully the electoral run-up to 2020.

But there is one core truth that the legions in Trump Country, including 90%+ of Republicans, will not need the print, radio, and broadcast seers to figure out.

The Democrats know they can’t beat Trump. The premiere of Impeachment Depravity proves it.

One theory is that whistle-gate is a covert Democrat operation aimed at mortally wounding Joe Biden’s campaign. If true, that means they don’t think he can win. More conventionally, even if this is not an orchestrated Dem design, polling data suggests that Biden, the real Ukrainian malefactor, is on the way out. Because they don’t think he can win.

Which sets the stage for Elizabeth Warren, about whom Republican spokesperson Reince Preibus recently opined “has no chance of winning in [blue-collar] Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.”

No other Democrat currently in the race, including Bernie Sanders, has a ghost of a chance.

They can’t win, and they know it.

A justified impeachment, for real high crimes and misdemeanors, would be an organic governmental response that arose out of a real threat to the republic. That’s not what’s going on here.

Instead of a crafted alternative message to counter the winning message President Trump has fought hard for and in many cases followed through on, we get from the Democrat Party a sad and sordid traverse through the muck and mire of leftist fantasyland, a sojourn into political depravity performed by a shameless troupe that despairs of returning to power in the near future.

Mark Ellis is the author of A Death on the Horizona novel of political upheaval and cultural intrigue. He came aboard at PJ Media in 2015. His literary hangout is Liberty Island. Follow Mark on Twitter.


___________________

BUSINESS AS USUAL



Democrats and the media are making a huge deal out of the supposed notion that the Trump admin did something unusual by storing transcripts on a secure server.

Well, it turns out the Obama admin did the exact same thing.

Obama’s National Security Adviser Susan Rice admitted to it!

From releasing the transcript for the whole world to read to employing the same practice of storing calls with foreign leaders as the Obama administration did, this further solidifies the fact that the Democrats’ and media narrative alleging a cover-up is patently ridiculous.

Stop the madness. This double standard the media and Democrats are employing between President Obama and President Trump is inexcusable.

---------------

Susan Rice: Obama Put Call Transcripts On Top Secret Server, Too

By David Marcus




Former national security adviser Susan Rice acknowledged last night that the Obama administration moved transcripts of conversations with foreign leaders onto the same top-secret server where the Trump administration stored his recent phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.



Appearing at the Texas Tribune Festival, Rice was asked how often this practice was engaged in during the Obama administration, but did not answer that question, saying instead, “We never moved them over unless they were legitimately, in the contents classified.” Rice did not explain what standard the Obama administration used to determine what was legitimately classified. She said it is rare, although not impossible, that a presidential conversation could be classified to that highest level.

The revelation from Rice comes amid media reports and comments from political leaders that have painted the use of this top secret server as proof that Trump was trying to cover up the contents of his conversation with the Ukrainian leader, a full transcript of which the administration has now released to the public.

While Rice admitted that the Obama administration also used this server to protect sensitive presidential phone calls, she left open the question of whether the Trump administration used the server in this particular case to save the president from damaging, perhaps even impeachable, comments he made to Zelensky regarding investigations into political rival Joe Biden.

But reporting from ABC News shows that this practice of securing presidential phone transcripts has been in use in the White House since early 2017, after sensitive conversations with foreign leaders were leaked to the press.

From ABC News: “The two calls in early 2017, with leaders from Australia and from Mexico, leaked early in Trump’s administration, and sources said the procedure to store them quickly changed — many calls between the president and world leaders instead were stored in a secure server to avoid leaks. The sources who talked to ABC News did caution that it’s unclear if the calls being stored were done so for national security or for political concerns.”

One source cited by ABC News described the practice as “basically standard operating procedure.”

So from Rice we now know the decision to store the conversation on the top-secret server was not unprecedented, but a decision that Obama’s administration made multiple times as well, using its own discretion, just as the Trump administration has. And from ABC News’ reporting we know that this has been a long-standing practice in the Trump White House to protect against a high level of leaks.

Both of these revelations undermine the theory that in this specific case, some unique and bizarre method was used to hide the transcript and engage in a cover up. Rather, the Trump administration appears to have been engaging in business as usual.

Thursday, September 26, 2019

DEEP STATE: Reports Point to the Trump-Ukraine Whistleblower Being a CIA Agent


By Matt Vespa | Townhall


 Source: AP Photo/Evan Vucci

So, who is this Trump-Ukraine whistleblower? Yes, the identities of whistleblowers are protected, but we all know pieces about who these folks are trickles down to the press. This is the Trump White House. The liberal media hates the president. They will do anything to destroy him, even outing the identity of the CIA agent. The New York Times reported that three anonymous sources told them the whistleblower is a member of The Company, though of course, Langley didn’t comment and the legal team for this person said such reporting was “dangerous.” This agent was assigned to the White House (via NYT) [emphasis mine]:

The whistle-blower who revealed that President Trump sought foreign help for his re-election and that the White House sought to cover it up is a C.I.A. officer who was detailed to work at the White House at one point, according to three people familiar with his identity.

The man has since returned to the C.I.A., the people said. Little else is known about him. His complaint made public Thursday suggested he was an analyst by training and made clear he was steeped in details of American foreign policy toward Europe, demonstrating a sophisticated understanding of Ukrainian politics and at least some knowledge of the law.

The whistle-blower’s expertise will likely add to lawmakers’ confidence about the merits of his complaint, and tamp down allegations that he might have misunderstood what he learned about Mr. Trump. He did not listen directly to a July call between Mr. Trump and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukrainethat is at the center of the political firestorm over the president’s mixing of diplomacy with personal political gain.

This complaint is the hill Democrats have decided to die on concerning impeaching Trump. This whistleblower alleges that President Trump coerced Ukrainian leaders to open a corruption probe into former Vice President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, or risk having military aid withheld. That did not happen.

In fact, a transcript of the call showed that it was the Ukrainians who brought up Biden and Trump’s “favor” was merely asking them to help with the Department of Justice’s investigation into the origins of the Russia collusion circus. This whistleblower also wasn’t in on the call. 

The Trump-Russia collusion myth, which the Democrats had hoped to find something impeachable, was already a shoddy reason to engage in this nonsensical crusade to undo the 2016 election. This wild goose chase is even more pathetic. There was nothing illegal here. There was no quid pro quo. And the president can say whatever he wants to foreign leaders. It’s not the job of the intelligence community to snitch on the president.


Now, remember the reporting on the whistleblower story has since been pretty bad since Day One, with many of the media's sources being proven wrong when all the documents were made public. This could change too, so we'll keep you posted.