House Judiciary Committee Passes Resolution on Impeachment Inquiry Rules

By Joshua Caplan

The House Judiciary Committee on Thursday approved a resolution which defines the scope of a potential impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump.

The party-line 24-17 vote occurred after two hours of debate between Democrats and Republicans about the so-called inquiry’s parameters.

House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-NY) tried to clear up any misconceptions as the committee approved guidelines for impeachment hearings on President Trump. Some of Nadler’s fellow Democrats — including House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) — have stumbled over how to explain what they’re doing.

“Some call this process an impeachment inquiry. Some call it an impeachment investigation. There is no legal difference between these terms, and I no longer care to argue about the nomenclature,” Nadler said as he opened the meeting. “But let me clear up any remaining doubt: The conduct under investigation poses a threat to our democracy. We have an obligation to respond to this threat. And we are doing so.”

Republicans disagree with Nadler and they argue that the House has never voted to open an official inquiry. Rep. Doug Collins (R-GA), the top Republican on the committee, said the committee “has become a giant Instagram filter … it’s put in there to look like something, but it’s really not.”

Collins said Democrats are trying to have it both ways.

“My colleagues know very well they don’t have the votes to authorize impeachment proceedings on the House floor, but they want to impeach the president anyway,” Collins said. “So, they are pretending to initiate impeachment.”

Impeachment has divided Democrats who control the House. Democrats on Nadler’s committee, including some of the most liberal members of the House, have been eager to move forward with the process. But moderates, mostly first-term lawmakers who handed their party the majority in the 2018 election, are concerned about the committee’s drumbeat on impeachment and the attention that comes with that continued action.

With regard to impeachment, the biggest elephant in the room is House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), who has long opposed Congress taking the lead on ousting the president. Instead, Pelosi has insisted that committees continue their investigations into President Trump and his associates in search of possible wrongdoings. Earlier this week, the speaker dismissed concerns that Nadler’s recent maneuvers exhibit how she’s losing control over her caucus. “I think you should characterize it [the resolution] for what it is,” Pelosi told Fox News. “It’s a continuation of what we have been doing. You know, we all work together on these things”

Not only is Pelosi unwilling to move the ball forward on impeachment, but the speaker also believes the American people do not want to see lawmakers take up the matter at this time.

“The public isn’t there on impeachment. It’s your voice and constituency, but give me the leverage I need to make sure that we’re ready and it is as strong as it can be,” Pelosi said during a caucus-wide conference call last month.

“The equities we have to weigh are our responsibility to protect and defend the Constitution and to be unifying and not dividing. But if and when we act, people will know he gave us no choice,” she added.

Meanwhile, President Trump took to Twitter following the vote to seemingly underline the political motivations behind an impeachment inquiry and quoted Rep. Al Green (D-TX), who introduced articles of impeachment in June.

““We can’t beat him, so lets impeach him!” Democrat Rep. Al Green,” the president recounted the lawmaker proposing earlier this year.

September 12, 2019 0

FLASHBACK: On This Day in 2001, Bush Officials Announced That $2.3 Trillion Went Missing at the Pentagon

And then we all know what happened a day later…

By Shane Trejo

While the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon are remembered every year with heavy hearts, the bizarre and inexplicable events that happened the day before are usually glossed over, lost down the memory hole due to the war on terror that has gripped the nation for nearly 18 years now.

On Sept. 10, 2001, then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld announced that $2.3 trillion had gone missing at the Pentagon. He made a statement blaming the corrupt and inefficient bureaucracy for these funds vanishing essentially into thin air.

CBS News issued a report as apart of their “Eye on America” series about the loss of funds, and how that scandal was conveniently lost in the shuffle only a day after it was made public:

While Rumsfeld’s announcement could have garnered widespread outrage and eventually sparked an impetus to reform the out-of-control Pentagon bureaucracy, that was made impossible after the attacks as the public suddenly supported even more national defense spending to defeat global terrorism.

Since the attacks, the problem of disappearing defense funds has gotten exponentially worse. It was widely reported earlier this year that the Pentagon can not account for $21 trillion in spending as the military-industrial complex has swelled to unforeseen proportions while endless wars continue throughout the Middle East.

Forbes published an analysis by top economists of the astronomical military waste at the Pentagon:

Mark Skidmore and Catherine Austin Fitts, former Assistant Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, conducted a search of government websites and found similar reports dating back to 1998. While the documents are incomplete, original government sources indicate $21 trillion in unsupported adjustments have been reported for the Department of Defense and the Department of Housing and Urban Development for the years 1998-2015.

While government budgets can be complex, our government, like any business, can track receipts and payments and share this information in ways that can be understood by the public. The ongoing occurrence and gargantuan nature of unsupported, i.e., undocumented, U.S. federal government expenditures as well as sources of funding for these expenditures should be a great concern to all tax payers.

Taken together these reports point to a failure to comply with basic Constitutional and legislative requirements for spending and disclosure. We urge the House and Senate Budget Committee to initiate immediate investigations of unaccounted federal expenditures as well as the source of their payment.

While the credible reports of unprecedented government waste are disheartening enough, new developments show that more than bureaucratic incompetence may have proceeded the 9/11 attacks. A recent academic study commissioned by the University of Alaska-Fairbanks has concluded that office fires could not have caused the fall of building seven of the World Trade Center, casting aspersions on the official story offered by federal investigators.

Until a new independent investigation is commissioned, serious and troubling questions will always remain about arguably the most consequential day in American history.

September 11, 2019 0

SHIP CARRYING ‘CLIMATE CHANGE WARRIORS’ CONCERNED ABOUT MELTING ARCTIC ICE GETS STUCK IN ICE

Well, this is awkward.

Paul Joseph Watson | SEPTEMBER 11, 2019

A ship carrying passengers who included a group of ‘Climate Change Warriors’ who are concerned about melting Arctic ice got stuck in the ice halfway between Norway and the North Pole.

Oh, the irony.

“Arctic tours ship MS MALMO with 16 passengers on board got stuck in ice on Sep 3 off Longyearbyen, Svalbard Archipelago,” reports the Maritime Bulletin. “The ship is on Arctic tour with Climate Change documentary film team, and tourists, concerned with Climate Change and melting Arctic ice.”

The passengers were safely evacuated by helicopter.

“Something is very wrong with Arctic ice, instead of melting as ordered by UN/IPCC, it captured the ship with Climate Change Warriors,” joked Erofey Schkvarkin.

The story is similar to a 2014 incident when a Chinese icebreaker had to be sent to rescue dozens of global warming researchers and environmentalists who got stranded on a ship which got stuck in the Antarctic ice.

Poster child environmentalist Greta Thunberg has not commented on the latest incident.

September 11, 2019 0

Never Forget Images of 9/11: A Visual Remembrance

By Rebecca Mansour

The whole world experienced the attacks of September 11, 2001, in real time. Videos, photos, and audio captured the horror inflicted by Islamic jihadists and the heroism displayed by ordinary Americans. In our effort to never forget, Breitbart News provides you a visual and audial remembrance of that fateful day when the world changed forever.

From the time of its opening in 1973 to that fatal day in September 2001, the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center dominated the skyline of Lower Manhattan’s Financial District, as seen in this photo taken on September 5, 2001, just six days before the Towers fell:

Designed by Detroit architect Minoru Yamasaki, the Twin Towers were famously disparaged by New York Times’ architectural critic Ada Louise Huxtable, who offered this unintentionally prescient prediction in 1966: “The trade center towers could be the start of a new skyscraper age or the biggest tombstones in the world.”

Those words were long forgotten on that bright September morning before death rained down from blue cloudless skies.

Betty Ong, the flight attendant aboard American Airlines Flight 11, was the first person to notify authorities about the Islamic hijackers. The audio of Ong’s call to the American Airlines emergency number was included in this audio/video montage released by the TSA in 2018 to commemorate the 17th anniversary of 9/11:

The following video captured the moment of impact when Islamic hijackers flew American Airlines Flight 11 into the World Trade Center’s North Tower (1 WTC) at 8:46 a.m.

The first images of the burning North Tower quickly flashed across television sets. This video shows the first five minutes of cable news coverage:

Four minutes after the first plane hit the World Trade Center, Christopher Hanley, 35, called 911 from the 106th floor of the North Tower, where he was attending a conference at the restaurant Windows on the World that morning. This is the audio of his 911 call:

The whole world watched in horror as Islamic hijackers flew the second plane, United Airlines Flight 175, into the South Tower of the World Trade Center (2 WTC) at 9:03 a.m.

Democrats and Republicans stood shoulder to shoulder on the steps of the Capitol that evening in a show of national unity. At the end of their remarks, they sang “God Bless America.”

And over the years, the country rebuilt and the memorials arose…

September 11, 2019 0

“I Want You To Panic Say” Child Activist

16 year old Climate Activist Greta Thunburg made the comments at the World Economic Forum after her publicity stunt of sailing across the Atlantic rather than flying was exposed to not be as green as was promised.

The next time I take advice from someone with a mental illness is when I ask an obese person for dietary opinions

September 11, 2019 0

Deep State FBI Given Hard Evidence of Hillary Clinton-Linked $66 Billion Libya Scheme — Launched Junk Investigation Against Trump-Russia Hoax Instead

by Jim Hoft September 10, 2019

In February 2018 Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) joined “Fox and Friends,” and revealed shadowy Clinton figure, Sidney Blumenthal, who was involved in the Benghazi scandal, appears to have been a key source for dossier author Christopher Steele.

Partial transcript via The Daily Caller:

“The names we keep hearing are Sidney Blumenthal and Cody Shearer — people who have been around the Clintons as being a part of this. But I also think it’s kind of interesting because what it looks like is, they paid Steele to put together the dossier and told him what to put in,” Jordan said. “Talk about rigging the game and putting together a document that will serve your purposes as an opposition research document.”

“That is what the Clinton team did and then when you see names like Sidney Blumenthal coming up. We deposed this guy during the Benghazi hearings,” Jordan continued. “

He has been with the Clintons forever. He was knee deep in the whole Libya, Benghazi story, particularly the story where they weren’t square with the American people about what was the actual catalyst of the attack, and they tried to blame it on video.”

But now there is more to the story.

According to Zero Hedge recently made public FBI records reveal that the agency virtually ignored evidence from private GOP-backed sources about a scheme in which Hillary Clinton associates tried to exploit her position as Secretary of State in order to profit from the 2011 turmoil in Libya she helped to create, according to RealClearInvestigations.

The documents, provided to the FBI in June 2016 as the agency was kicking its Trump-Russia investigation into high gear, allege that Clinton confidant Sidney Blumenthal sent her “a series of detailed memos and reports about Libya,” which were intended as a “quid pro quo” which might help a post-Gaddafi Libya recover as much as $66 billion in offshore funds hidden by the slain strongman.

According to the private investigators funded by Judicial Watch: “Our evidence shows that Mr. Blumenthal was involved with a group of intelligence professionals seeking to repatriate asset[s] which were plundered and then exfiltrated by the [Gaddafi] family and hidden in various offshore localities.”

According to the private investigators funded by Judicial Watch: “Our evidence shows that Mr. Blumenthal was involved with a group of intelligence professionals seeking to repatriate asset[s] which were plundered and then exfiltrated by the [Gaddafi] family and hidden in various offshore localities.”

If successful, Blumenthal and associates “stood to gain a brokers’ cut of perhaps hundreds of millions of dollars.”

The private Libya inquiry leaves important issues unsettled. The documents do not include emails or other original source material to support the allegations within. While claiming to possess evidence that Blumenthal and his associates had contracts and offshore accounts to repatriate the money, the documents say “no concrete evidence” was found suggesting Clinton acted to support the effort.

Yet if verified, the files might shed light on why Clinton kept her emails, tens of thousands of which have gone missing, out of normal government communication channels. –RealClearInvestigations

The documents are labeled by the FBI as having been received on June 6, 2016 – a month before the first of Comey’s two exonerations of Hillary Clinton before the 2016 election.

This was roughly seven weeks before the FBI opened its counterintelligence probe of the Trump campaign based on nothing.

Read the rest of the report here.

September 10, 2019 0

Hannity: Dems not interested in passing any laws to protect our country

House Democrats return to Congress focused on impeaching President Trump.

Democrats are becoming a real danger to America. Everything they propose is detrimental to this country.

Anyone in the “now” has figured this out a long time ago. It’s no secret that the news media in whole is dead or dying

September 10, 2019 0

They’re Making It Too Easy for Me!

Mark Dice

Published on Sep 10, 2019

you know you’re stupid,when fredo cuomo looks smart in comparison.

September 10, 2019 0

JUST IN: Nadler Accuses Trump of ‘Crimes and Corruption’ – Schedules Vote on Procedures For Impeachment Investigation Against Trump

by Cristina Laila September 9, 2019

House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) announced on Monday that his committee will vote this Thursday to officially formalize procedures to set up hearings to determine whether the Dem-controlled House will introduce articles of impeachment against President Trump.

Nadler said in a statement on Monday that President Trump’s “crimes and corruption extend beyond what is detailed in the Mueller report.”

The Hill reported:

Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) said the committee will vote Thursday on a resolution that would solidify several key policies, including that the panel’s staff be allowed to question witnesses for an additional hour — split equally between the majority and minority — after each committee member goes through their five-minute line of questioning.

Judiciary’s subcommittees would also be able hold hearings as part of the probe, paving a way for Nadler to punt less-important witnesses down the line and save time.

The Democrats would also allow Trump’s legal counsel to respond in writing to evidence and testimony presented to the committee.

“The adoption of these additional procedures is the next step in that process and will help ensure our impeachment hearings are informative to Congress and the public, while providing the President with the ability to respond to evidence presented against him,” Nadler said in a statement. “We will not allow Trump’s continued obstruction to stop us from delivering the truth to the American people.”

“Trump’s crimes and corruption extend beyond what is detailed in the Mueller report,” Nadler said. “The President is in violation of the emoluments clauses of the Constitution as he works to enrich himself, putting the safety and security of our Nation at risk. He has dangled pardons, been involved in campaign finance violations and stonewalled Congress across the board, noting that he will defy all subpoenas.”

Chairman Nadler is currently running an ‘impeachment investigation’ stemming from Mueller’s probe and he keeps roving to new areas.

It was recently reported that Nadler is investigating Trump’s role in the ‘hush payments’ made to porn star Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal during the 2016 election.

Nadler also said that his committee will be holding hearings this Fall related to the issue of pardons over a joke Trump made about pardoning DHS officials, according to Politico.

The Democrats no longer legislate. All they do is use time and resources to harass Trump with Soviet-style show trials.

September 9, 2019 0

The end is nigh: Scottish cops blasted for panic-inducing ‘preparedness bag’ tweet

Police Scotland are under fire for a worrying tweet advising citizens to prepare a grab bag with emergency supplies for immediate use, sparking wild speculation, meme-making and understandable concern among the masses.

“September is preparedness month. Emergencies can happen at any time and it’s recommended to have a #GrabBag ready containing essential items including medication, copies of important documents, food/water, torch, radio and other personal items,” the police tweeted as part of their ‘30 days 30 ways’ campaign.

The anxiety-inducing advice proposed packing a bag with food, water, and medication, as well as a pen and notepad, phone charger, whistle, and first aid kit. However, a Sunday morning may not have been the best time to urge people to prepare for some undisclosed disaster headed their way, judging by the reactions online, most of which centered around a single theme: “Do they know something we don’t?”

“What emergencies do you envisage? Brexit? War? Civil disturbance? Flood? Pestilence? Nuclear accident? Martial Law?”wrote one user, while another offered a variety of betting odds on what the impending doom might be: “Asteroid 4/1 Tsunami 8/1 Nuclear war 14/1 Alien invasion 22/1 Zombie Apocalypse 33/1 No deal Brexit 1000/1.”

Others adopted a more tongue-in-cheek approach.

One commenter quipped: “Some advice please on #grabbag regarding ‘seasonal clothing’. I have packed some fancy dress for Hallowe’en and then a Santa suit for Christmas. Will that be enough do you think?”

Alien invasion, zombie apocalypse, and calamity in the form a Boris Johnson-led Brexit were all recurring themes as Scots piled on the police for such a needlessly panic-inducing tweet.

pic.twitter.com/Nvhju1YNXh

— Richy (@RJB__29) September 8, 2019

Some, however, called for calm (sincerely) and claimed not to see the big fuss while humble-bragging about their multitude of emergency preparedness plans.

The whole kerfuffle reportedly stems from an initiative initially introduced by the US Department of Homeland Security that has been widely picked up by various institutions and public bodies across the UK.

The timing couldn’t be worse, however, as the tweet only added to online speculation that British Prime Minister Boris Johnson might declare a national emergency in order to force through a no-deal Brexit, effectively weaponizing the Civil Contingencies Act of 2004 against his political opponents.

September 9, 2019 0