1/31/2020
Why was Rand banned? Sen. Paul reveals his CENSORED question at Trump impeachment trial
As Senators gathered for the last day of questioning in President Trump’s impeachment trial, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul found his question censored in a way that may have revealed the identity of the mysterious whistleblower.
With the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump nearing its final stages, senators gathered on Capitol Hill on Thursday to question the Democratic prosecution team, and Trump’s defense attorneys. However, Paul (R-Kentucky) found his question shot down by presiding Chief Justice John Roberts, who declined “to read the question as submitted.”
Paul left the chamber after Roberts’ denial.
Taking to Twitter afterwards, Paul revealed that he planned on asking whether Obama-era “partisans” within Trump’s National Security Council conspired with House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff to engineer impeachment proceedings against Trump, by sounding the alarm on the now-infamous July phone call between Trump and Ukrainain President Volodymyr Zelensky.
“Are you aware that House intelligence committee staffer Shawn Misko had a close relationship with Eric Ciaramella while at the National Security Council together,” Paul’s question read. “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.”
Ciaramella, a CIA analyst, is widely believed to be the ‘whistleblower’ who kickstarted the impeachment inquiry by alleging that Trump tried to strong-arm Zelensky into reopening a corruption investigation into Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, and his business activities in Ukraine.
According to a recent RealClearPolitics report, Ciaramella was reportedly overheard in 2017 “plotting” with Misko to have Trump “removed from office.”
Schiff, the lead prosecutor in the impeachment trial, has both denied knowing the identity of the whistleblower and called the report of Ciaramella’s plot a “conspiracy theory.” Schiff has also repeatedly warned Republicans against naming the whistleblower, citing a need to protect his or her identity – though no statutory requirement for that actually exists.
However, Roberts’ refusal to read Ciaramella’s name and the media furor that followed Paul’s question – with mostly liberal pundits hounding the senator for “naming the whistleblower” – all but confirms that he is indeed Schiff’s source. Paul never mentioned the term “whistleblower” in his written question, yet Roberts still refused to read Ciaramella’s name. Earlier, Roberts had vowed not to read any question that might “out” the whistleblower.
Roberts was not compelled to censor Paul’s question by law. Rather, his decision was a personal one. Contrary to Schiff, the whistleblower does not enjoy a “statutory right to anonymity.” If Ciaramella is indeed the whistleblower, his only guarantee is that the intelligence community inspector-general may not name him as such.
Senators will likely vote on Friday on whether to allow testimony from additional witnesses, beyond those heard during the inquiry led by House Democrats. While Democrats have pushed for testimony from former National Security Advisor John Bolton, some Republicans have argued that if they even agree to witnesses, they intend to call on the whistleblower, conclusively revealing their identity and giving Trump his constitutional right to confront his accuser.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has made clear that he will move to block any additional witnesses from testifying, bringing the trial to a speedy conclusion and acquittal as soon as possible.
First two cases of coronavirus confirmed in Russia, both Chinese citizens
Russia has registered its first patients diagnosed with the new Chinese coronavirus, Deputy Prime Minister Tatiana Golikova has confirmed. The alarming news comes just a day after Moscow closed its Far Eastern border with China.
Golikova told reporters that the two sufferers are Chinese citizens, one in the Far Eastern Zabaikalsky Region, and the other in the Tyumen Region in western Siberia – which are separated by a distance of about 4,000km.
The patients in question have been subjected to “strict monitoring.” They have been put into quarantine and are receiving medical care. The head of Rospotrebnadzor (a state watchdog), Anna Popova, believes there is no immediate risk of the further spread of the coronavirus in Russia.
As a precautionary measure, Moscow will commence the evacuation of around 300 of its citizens from the virus-hit city of Wuhan, and another 341 from the surrounding area. Some 2,600 Russians holidaying on the island of Hainan will also be brought back home, the deputy prime minister announced.
Russia’s Ministry of Health names three drugs that can treat new Chinese coronavirus
To prevent the spread of the virus, Moscow is suspending most flights to and from China. The exceptions are Aeroflot routes to Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Hong Kong, as well as Chinese airlines arriving at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport. They will be restricted to Terminal F.
In a further move, Russian citizens will be prohibited from crossing the border with Mongolia.
So far, there have been 213 recorded deaths from the new coronavirus, and more than 9,800 reported infections. The vast majority took place in China but about a hundred cases have been registered in another 20 countries. Now, Russia has become the 21st. On Thursday, the World Health Organization declared the outbreak a global health emergency.
First US person-to-person case of coronavirus reported in Chicago. ‘We believe people in Illinois are at low risk.’
The first U.S. case of the coronavirus spreading from one person to another was reported in Chicago on Thursday, the husband of a woman who caught the disease while in China.
It’s the second case that’s been confirmed in Illinois, and the sixth case in the U.S., since the respiratory virus first started to spread in Wuhan, China.
A Chicago woman who returned from caring for her sick father in China earlier this month was the first local person diagnosed with the illness, health officials reported Friday. The woman, who is in her 60s, traveled to Wuhan, China, in late December and returned to Chicago on Jan. 13. Her spouse, who had not traveled to China, is the second Illinois case and first instance of person-to-person spread in the U.S., the Illinois Department of Public Health said.
Health officials said the man has not attended any mass gatherings or taken the “L” train recently, and is currently sharing details of his activities from the last several weeks. Officials declined to say how many people they’re monitoring for illness who’ve been in contact with the couple but said they are “actively monitoring all close contacts.” The CDC considers close contact to consist of 10 minutes or more of face-to-face contact with a person.
In all, health officials are investigating 21 possible cases of the virus in Illinois.
Shortly after the announcement of the second Chicago case, the World Health Organization declared the outbreak a public health emergency.
Despite the news Thursday, the director of the Illinois Department of Public Health Dr. Ngozi Ezike said, “We believe people in Illinois are at low risk.”
“This person to person spread was between two very close contacts, a husband and wife,” Ezike said at a news conference. “The virus is not spreading across the community at this time.”
Coronaviruses are often spread through close personal contact, said Dr. Allison Arwady, commissioner of the Chicago Department of Public Health.
“We know this new patient had close contact with his wife after she began to develop symptoms so it’s not unexpected,” Arwandy said.
DuPage County public health officials said Tuesday they are tracking multiple county residents who may have come in contact with the woman, but none had reported symptoms. The couple lives in Chicago but may have come into contact with people in DuPage County, said Don Bolger, a spokesman for the DuPage County Health Department.
There have been 7,818 cases reported worldwide, mostly in China, and 170 deaths from the illness in China, according to the World Health Organization.
On Wednesday, the U.S. government evacuated 195 Americans from Wuhan. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has also advised Americans to avoid all nonessential travel to China.
Symptoms of the virus can include fever, cough and shortness of breath. It’s believed symptoms appear anywhere from two to 14 days after exposure. The CDC has said it’s still unclear how easily the virus spreads from person to person.
Local health officials say it’s not necessary for Chicagoans to stay home or cancel activities amid the news.
More to come.
Airport screening ‘not effective’ in containing coronavirus outbreak
1/30/2020
It blows my mind that it’s a surprise that the current screening methods aren’t working…. IT. IS. TRANSMITTABLE. BEFORE. SYMPTOMS. ARISE..
World Health Organization Chief Blames ‘Human Error’ on Calling Coronavirus Threat ‘Moderate’
World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus blamed “human error” on Wednesday for the United Nations agency initially downplaying the global threat of the deadly coronavirus.
WHO is walking back its assessment after publishing a report this week, in which it called the risk surrounding the killer Chinese illness “moderate.”
“WHO deeply regrets the error in this week’s situation report, which inserted the word ‘moderate’ inaccurately in the #coronavirus global risk assessment,” Ghebreyesus wrote on Twitter Wednesday. “This was a human error in preparing the report. I have repeatedly stated the high risk of the outbreak.”
The striking admission comes after Ghebreyesus met with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and praised the communist government’s measures against the killer virus.
Breitbart News reported:
Ghebreyesus said his organization is advising foreign countries that evacuating their citizens from Wuhan and the surrounding Hubei province is unnecessary. Chinese state media eagerly promoted his remarks in a bid to control the political fallout from the outbreak.
…
Foreign Minister Wang Yi acted quickly to capitalize politically on the WHO director’s comments.
“With the strong leadership of comrade Xi Jinping and the advantage of the socialist system, as well as the experience from SARS, we are more resolute in tackling this epidemic with more forceful and quicker action. We are totally confident that we have the ability and resources to defeat this epidemic,” he said.
While the WHO has been quick to praise China over its handling of the coronavirus, Republican lawmakers such as Sens. Tom Cotton (R-AR) and Josh Hawley (R-MO) have expressed doubt about Beijing’s quarantine measures and transparency. In a Tuesday letter to top Trump administration officials, Cotton urged the federal government to institute a “target travel ban” on China.
“Given the latest developments and the many unknowns about this virus, we ought to follow Benjamin Franklin’s maxim: an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. America is blessed with world-leading researchers and laboratories on the cutting edge of medical science and epidemiology,” he wrote to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, and acting Homeland Security Director Chad Wolfe. “Working in tandem with them, I’m confident our federal research agencies can develop a vaccine in record time.”
The U.S. has expanded screenings to 20 airports around the country and CDC officials said they are racing to develop a vaccine to treat the virus.
United Airlines and American Airlines announced this week that the airlines have canceled several flights from the U.S. to China, citing health concerns and a sharp decline in demand.
FLASHBACK: John Bolton Described Trump and Zelensky Call as “Warm and Cordial” Back in August Before He Was Fired (VIDEO)
January 29, 2020
Well, this didn’t make any headlines this week.
Just one month before former National Security Advisor John Bolton was fired he praised President Trump in his phone call with Ukrainian President Zelensky.
In an interview in August John Bolton praised President Trump and called his call with Zelensky “warm and cordial.”
Cristina Laila reported this Bolton interview with Radio Free Europe in August.
Via Mark Levin.
Here is the full interiew.
Inside Wuhan: Daily life in China’s coronavirus quarantine zone
1/29/2020
The thing is, this guy could already be sick without knowing it.
CHINA CURBS TRAVEL TO HONG KONG AS PROJECTIONS SHOW 300,000 MIGHT ALREADY BE INFECTED
Top health officials share grim statistics
JANUARY 28, 2020
On Tuesday morning, China’s top health officials shared some grim statistics essentially confirming that the novel coronavirus believed to have emerged from a shady food market in Wuhan is on track to confirm some of the more dire projections shared by epidemiologists.
As we reported late yesterday, the death toll in China has soared past 100 while the number of confirmed cases doubled overnight. Health officials around the world have confirmed more than 4,500 cases, more than triple the number from Friday. All but a few of the deaths recorded so far have been in Wuhan or the surrounding Hubei province, per the SCMP.
Panic has swept across the region as border closures appear to be the overarching theme of Tuesday’s sessions. Even North Korea, which relies on China for 90% of its foreign trade, has closed the border with its patron. More than 50 million remain on lockdown in Hubei, and transit restrictions have been imposed by cities and regions around the country.
An ‘extension’ of the Lunar New Year holiday is threatening GDP growth, as economists try to size up the knock-on potential impact on the global economy. The virus has now spread across China and another 17 countries/autonomous territories globally, according to BBG.
But the most important announcement made overnight – at least as far as global markets are concerned – was Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam’s decision to suspend high-speed rail and ferry service, while halving the number of flights between HK and the mainland.
This news helped send US stock futures higher in early trade, after health experts yesterday urged Lam to use ‘draconian’ measures to curb the spread, for fear of a repeat of the SARS epidemic, which killed some 300 people, according to the BBC.
“The flow of people between the two places needs to be drastically reduced” amid the outbreak, Ms Lam told the South China Morning Post.
China, meanwhile, said it would stop individuals from traveling to Hong Kong to try and curb the virus.
Jiao Yahui, deputy head of the NHC’s medical administration bureau, said during a press conference Tuesday that shortages of medical supplies in Wuhan were still a serious problem.
CDC has issued new travel recommendations urging people to avoid all non-essential trips. But officials remained reluctant to declare a global emergency, instead insisting that this is merely an emergency “in China”. Of course, after yesterday’s brutal pullback, that’s to be expected.
The big piece of evidence that the WHO is purportedly looking for is human-to-human transmission outside China. Zhong Nanshan, a leading expert on SARS and other communicable diseases in China, confirmed human-to-human transmission in at least one case in Wuhan and two cases in Guangdong Province.
Meanwhile, as we noted yesterday, one case of possible human-to-human transmission is being investigated in Canada, while Vietnam and Japan have now each confirmed one cases.
Japan revealed on Tuesday that a bus driver in his 60s, who recently carried passengers from Wuhan, has been found to have the virus.
During a meeting in Beijing, President Xi told World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus that the safety of the people is his government’s first priority, and that he recognizes the situation is “very serious.”
“This was supposed to be a time for rest, but because of the pneumonia outbreak caused by the novel coronavirus, the Chinese people right now are faced with a very serious battle,” Xi said. “This is something we take very seriously because in our view nothing matters more than people’s safety and health. That is why I myself have been personally deploying, planning, and guiding all the efforts related to containment and mitigation of the outbreak.”
That’s ironic, considering Beijing’s sluggish response after the first cases were discovered in December. After all, Wuhan Mayor Zhou Xianwang on Tuesday spoke out against the deluge of criticism he has faced to accuse Beijing of tying his hands. This comes after President Xi and the party tried to scapegoat him and other local party officials for the crisis.
This was supposed to be a time for rest, but because of the pneumonia outbreak caused by the novel coronavirus, the Chinese people right now are faced with a very serious battle,” Chinese President Xi Jinping tells in Beijing.
Speaking at a press briefing in Beijing on Tuesday, Jiao Yahui, deputy head of the NHC’s medical administration bureau, said shortage of medical supplies was a major constraint in China’s efforts to contain the outbreak and treat infected people.
Tens of thousands of patients are under observation in China after displaying one or more symptoms of the virus. In the US, roughly 100 people are in isolation. But former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb told CNBC that China is obscuring the true number of cases – a suspicion that’s widely held among American infectous-disease experts.
According to some projections, there might be up to 300,000 cases in China, and there are likely dozens of people who have died of pneumonia who in reality died from nCoV – but those deaths will never be recorded. Although China is “behaving better” than it did during the SARS outbreak, they’re still concealing information from the international community.
“They’re still not behaving well. They’re concealing information, including the spread to health care workers, which we didn’t know until last week” Gottlieb said.
China is already in a “full-blown epidemic.” The US will likely face some limited outbreaks, but Gottlieb said we have the tools to suppress the virus and prevent the same thing from happening in the US.
Jiao said China was sending about 6,000 medical personnel to Hubei from around the country – with more than 4,000 already there and 1,800 more due to arrive by Tuesday evening – to work in Wuhan and seven other cities in the province.
In Wuhan, more than 10,000 hospital beds have been made available for patients, he said, while another 100,000 are being prepared.
In Beijing, CNBC’s Eunice Yoon reported that the local government is strongly encouraging the wearing of facemasks in public.
Police guarding Beijing’s public transit are wearing full hazmat suits, and anybody hoping to board a train must be wearing a mask, and must submit to a temperature check via infrared thermometer. If an individual is found to have a fever, they’re sent to a hospital to be quarantined.
As Beijing tries to telegraph to the world that it has the situation under control, health experts have raised new questions about the government’s response. One infectious disease specialist told the NYT that they were skeptical about the Wuhan quarantine’s ability contain the virus (unsurprising considering that 5 million left the city before the lockdown began).
Beijing and Guangzhou, a port city northwest of Hong Kong, have broken ground on new hospitals, mimicking the speedy construction of not one but two new hospitals in Wuhan to treat patients infected with the virus.
Beijing is also reopening a hospital used to fight the SARS outbreak in 2003, while 6,000 medical staff have been sent to Hubei.
“At this stage of the outbreak, the things that make the most difference are finding people, diagnosing people, and getting them isolated,” said Dr. Tom Inglesby, an infectious diseases specialist and director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.
“If you isolate the city, then my question and my concern is that you’re making it harder in a number of ways to do those things you need to do,” including ferrying critical supplies and ensuring that infected victims receive adequate treatment.
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