Pelosi Faces Tough Decision On Formal Impeachment Vote As Case Against Trump Comes Under Pressure

By Tyler Durden

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is in a tough spot. After caving in to pressure from her party to launch an impeachment inquiry based on a CIA ‘whistleblower’ report that Trump abused his office to pressure Ukraine into investigating 2020 rival Joe Biden, Pelosi must now decide on whether to proceed with a formal vote amid mounting evidence that Trump did nothing wrong. 

Trump has pushed for a vote – which would allow Republicans to issue subpoenas, as well as grant the White House the ability to cross-examine witnesses. To that end, the White House outlined in a Tuesday letter that they will refuse to cooperate with an inquiry that is “invalid” due to Pelosi’s refusal to make it official.

“Never before in our history has the House of Representatives — under the control of either political party — taken the American people down the dangerous path you seem determined to pursue,” wrote White House counsel Pat Cipollone.

When asked on Wednesday if he would cooperate with Pelosi’s impeachment inquiry, Trump told reporters “we would if they give us our rights, it depends.” 

Pelosi, meanwhile, says the effort to force a vote is nothing more than a “Republican talking point.” 

“If we want to do it, we’ll do it. If we don’t, we don’t. But we’re certainly not going to do it because of the president,” said Pelosi in an interview last week with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

A decision whether to call the president’s bluff is likely to be a main topic when Pelosi convenes a conference call with House Democrats at the end of the week. Representative Dan Kildee of Michigan, one of the leadership’s vote counters, said Democrats could easily pass a resolution authorizing the impeachment inquiry with as many as 230 votes.

With the White House vowing to block any cooperation, Pelosi is scheduled to hold the conference call on Friday to chart the next steps. The committees conducting the investigation have already issued a salvo of subpoenas for testimony or records directed at administration officials such as Secretary of State Michael Pompeo as well as Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani. –Bloomberg

“We continue investigating and digging to uncover more of the truth. Nothing has changed,” said Pelosi spokeswoman Ashley Etienne on Wednesday, adding that Democrats have yet to settle on legal or tactical responses to the White House letter.

Pushback

House Republicans led by Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California have been “using ads, press releases and other efforts to hammer Democratic House members from GOP-leaning districts over impeachment,” according to Bloomberg.

Trump and Republicans also have complained about the fairness of the process, citing closed-door hearings, and what they say are limitations by committee Republicans to subpoena their own rebuttal witnesses, or for the White House to have legal counsel in the room during depositions. –Bloomberg

According to Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH): “If Democrats were interested in fairness, they would follow the same process as previous impeachment proceedings. Instead, they just make up the rules as they go along.” 

Quid Pro Nope

The House impeachment inquiry was launched after a CIA officer reported that President Trump pressured Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky to investigate Joe Biden and his son Hunter for alleged corruption.

After Democrats uncritically launched their impeachment inquiry based on the initial whistleblower report, the White House upset their strategy – releasing a transcript of the call between Zelensky and Trump and the whistleblower complaint itself – plain readings of which reveal that Trump did not threaten, pressure or suggest a quid pro quo in exchange for a Biden investigation. Furthermore, Zelensky himself has said as much.

So as the case against Trump continues to unravel, Pelosi and the Democrats have some tough decisions to make as we head into the 2020 election.

 

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

 

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.

President Trump: Paul Ryan BLOCKED SUBPOENAS of Democrats! — Ryan Was On The Other Side!

 

PAUL RYAN NEVER SUPPORTED DONALD TRUMP OR THE TRUMP AGENDA.

Paul Ryan would not support President Donald Trump and refused to campaign with Donald Trump.

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The Republican speaker shafted President Trump, Republican lawmakers and conservative-populist voters.

Paul Ryan repeatedly promised to fund the Trump Border Wall.
But at every opportunity he denied the Republican President funds for his border wall.

It was not until President Trump threatened to shut down the government the Speaker Paul Ryan FINALLY pushed legislation that included ONLY $5 BILLION to fund the border wall.

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President Trump promised to build a border wall with Mexico at nearly EVERY campaign stop he held in 2015-2016.

The president won the election in an electoral landslide with a promise to build a border wall with Mexico.

In January 2017 Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell promised to pass funding of $12-15 billion to build the Trump border wall.

Paul Ryan later told Tucker Carlson he would fund the Trump border wall.

It was all a lie.

 

Paul Ryan did not once include funding for the Trump border wall in any financial package since Trump’s election — until Trump threatened a shutdown.

Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell lied.
But they did fund a border security barrier in Tunisia and Jordan.

Last week President Trump called on the GOP Congress to finally pass funding for the border wall — With the threat of a shutdown Paul Ryan left the White House and finally included funding for the Trump border wall which passed with ease in the GOP House.

On Wednesday Breitbart.com released the latest segment of their interview with President Donald Trump.

In this segment President Trump told the pro-Trump news network that Speaker Paul Ryan BLOCKED SUBPOENAS of Democrats.
Breitbart.com reported:

President Donald Trump is not happy that former House Speaker Paul Ryan blocked subpoenas of people and entities Trump thinks the House GOP should have been investigating during the first two years of his administration.

Trump told Breitbart News in an exclusive lengthy Oval Office interview that Ryan blocked issuance of subpoenas to people he thinks should have been investigated on the political left, and now that the Republicans no longer have the majority in the House, people Trump says Ryan protected may have gotten away with whatever they did that warranted investigation.

Trump said that House Freedom Caucus Chairman Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC) and his predecessor and fellow conservative Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) wanted to be tougher with the left, but that Ryan would not let them.

“Paul Ryan wouldn’t give the right to have any subpoenas,” Trump told Breitbart News. “Okay? Now in all fairness, Meadows and Jordan and all these guys, they wanted to go tougher, but they weren’t allowed to by leadership.”

Trump’s comments came in a wider part of the conversation about how the left is more “vicious” than the right—and that the left in American politics plays “cuter and tougher.”

FIREWORKS! GOP Rep. Jim Jordan GOES OFF at Cohen Hearing, “CNN had Evidence Before We Did!” (VIDEO)

 

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President Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen is testifying before the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday morning as the president holds high-level peace talks with North Korean leader in Vietnam.

Cohen told the House committee that Trump had advance knowledge of plans to release Democratic emails during the 2016 campaign.

Republican Rep. Jim Jordan went off at the start of the hearing.
Jordan slammed the Democrats and Cohen team of leaking his testimony to CNN before the GOP had a chance to review the material.

Rep. Jim Jordan: “You know who had this material before all the members of the committee? CNN had it before it we did. CNN had the evidence before we did. I want to be recognized.”

Wow!

“You know who had this material before all the members of the committee? CNN had it before it we did. CNN had the evidence before we did. I want to be recognized.”

 

Rep. Jim Jordan Goes Off on Democrat Who Introduced Articles of Impeachment on First Day of New Congress

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Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan slammed Democrat California Rep. Brad Sherman for introducing articles of impeachmentagainst President Donald Trump for the second time on the first day of the 116th Congress.

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Jordan has been a strong supporter of the president and the America First agenda. In a tweet on Thursday he called out Sherman and stated that the Democrats are more interested in stopping Trump than helping the nation.

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“We knew they couldn’t help themselves. Rep. Sherman files articles of impeachment on the President. Dems are more focused on stopping Trump than building the Wall and helping the country,” Jordan tweeted on Thursday.

Jordan is the ranking member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and sits on the House Judiciary Committee, which holds jurisdiction over impeachment proceedings, The Hill noted.

Sherman previously introduced articles of impeachment in 2017.

Sherman alleges obstruction of justice for Trump’s firing of former FBI Director James Comey.

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