1/28/2020
The Times reported on descriptions of the manuscript Sunday evening, as the President’s defense team prepares for day on two Monday of their rebuttal to the Democrat House Managers’ case against Trump. Bolton was blocked by Trump from testifying in the House impeachment inquiry on national security grounds of executive privilege, however Bolton has said he would testify in the Senate trial if he was issued a subpoena. Motions to allow witness testimony in the trail have been tabled until after the first stages of the trial are complete: Prosecution, defense and then questions from senators. The report by the Times is timed to influence the votes of Republicans to allow witnesses as the Democrats are all on record as being in favor.
The Times does not claim to have seen the manuscript, but is basing its report on anonymous sources who claim to have given The Times descriptions. There are no quotes from the manuscript.
President Trump told his national security adviser in August that he wanted to continue freezing $391 million in security assistance to Ukraine until officials there helped with investigations into Democrats including the Bidens, according to an unpublished manuscript by the former adviser, John R. Bolton.
The president’s statement as described by Mr. Bolton could undercut a key element of his impeachment defense: that the holdup in aid was separate from Mr. Trump’s requests that Ukraine announce investigations into his perceived enemies, including former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his son Hunter Biden, who had worked for a Ukrainian energy firm while his father was in office.
Mr. Bolton’s explosive account of the matter at the center of Mr. Trump’s impeachment trial, the third in American history, was included in drafts of a manuscript he has circulated in recent weeks to close associates. He also sent a draft to the White House for a standard review process for some current and former administration officials who write books.
Multiple people described Mr. Bolton’s account of the Ukraine affair.
The book presents an outline of what Mr. Bolton might testify to if he is called as a witness in the Senate impeachment trial, the people said. The White House could use the pre-publication review process, which has no set time frame, to delay or even kill the book’s publication or omit key passages.
…Key to Mr. Bolton’s account about Ukraine is an exchange during a meeting in August with the president after Mr. Trump returned from vacation at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J. Mr. Bolton raised the $391 million in congressionally appropriated assistance to Ukraine for its war in the country’s east against Russian-backed separatists. Officials had frozen the aid, and a deadline was looming to begin sending it to Kyiv, Mr. Bolton noted.
He, Mr. Pompeo and Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper had collectively pressed the president about releasing the aid nearly a dozen times in the preceding weeks after lower-level officials who worked on Ukraine issues began complaining about the holdup, Mr. Bolton wrote. Mr. Trump had effectively rebuffed them, airing his longstanding grievances about Ukraine, which mixed legitimate efforts by some Ukrainians to back his Democratic 2016 opponent, Hillary Clinton, with unsupported accusations and outright conspiracy theories about the country, a key American ally.
…In his August 2019 discussion with Mr. Bolton, the president appeared focused on the theories Mr. Giuliani had shared with him, replying to Mr. Bolton’s question that he preferred sending no assistance to Ukraine until officials had turned over all materials they had about the Russia investigation that related Mr. Biden and supporters of Mrs. Clinton in Ukraine…
End excerpt. The entire Times article can be read at this link at MSN.com. It includes Bolton going after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Attorney General William Barr.
Democrats have responded to the report with renewed calls for Bolton’s testimony.
The Democrat House Managers issued a statement:
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), “John Bolton has the evidence. It’s up to four Senate Republicans to ensure that John Bolton, Mick Mulvaney, and the others with direct knowledge of President Trump’s actions testify in the Senate trial.”
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT), “For months there just hasn’t been any question what happened. But Republicans hung on to the idea that if they kept Trump’s top people from testifying, they could plausibly deny he was behind it all.
The game is now up. Their coverup has fallen apart. BOLTON MUST TESTIFY.”
Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA), “Last month, I wrote in @nytimes that we need to hear from John Bolton—who shopped his testimony to book publishers instead of speaking with Congress—because he clearly has a lot to say. It’s undeniable now: Bolton must testify in Trump’s trial.”
More from Tinsley, “Bolton spokeswoman says he did not leak his own manuscript to the NY Times — and had only submitted it for pre-review to the National Security Council.”
And, “The ambassador transmitted a hard-copy draft of his manuscript to the White House for pre-publication review by the National Security Council. The ambassador has not passed the manuscript to anyone else, only the NSC.”
By The Babylon Bee
Schiff warned that if Trump is not impeached, the American people may have a chance to tamper with the next election.
“If President Trump is not impeached, the American people might get a say in who is president,” Schiff said gravely. “We simply can’t allow that to happen. We must diligently defend our electoral process against electoral outcomes we do not like. If that means seizing power through a sham impeachment trial, so be it.”
“When the Founders wrote that founding document thing, they never imagined there would be electoral outcomes that Democrats did not agree with.”
Democrats also said they even have hard evidence that the 2016 election was compromised by Republicans voting for Trump.
“We know this horrible outcome could happen, because it’s already happened once before.”ELE
1/23/2020
Trump launched a fresh broadside at Democrats after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi refused to say when she would turn over the articles of impeachment to the Senate, implying it might take a while.
Explaining her decision, Pelosi said that the documents would remain in the House until Democrats are satisfied with how the Republican-majority Senate will handle the trial. Trump argued that Democrats who have been rallying behind the impeachment cause since the beginning of his presidency should have no say in how the trial is managed by the GOP, since they themselves failed to ensure a fair process in the House.
“So after the Democrats gave me no Due Process in the House, no lawyers, no witnesses, no nothing, they now want to tell the Senate how to run their trial,” Trump tweeted, adding that he wants the trial to kick off as soon as possible.
Actually, they have zero proof of anything, they will never even show up. They want out. I want an immediate trial!
The House voted largely along party lines to pass two articles of impeachment on Wednesday evening, but while zero Republicans voted in favor of either article – “abuse of power” and “obstruction of Congress”– two Democrats voted against the first article and three against the second.
Trump argued that the lack of defectors among the GOP shows that “the Republicans have never been so united” while the lack of consensus among Democrats is yet another indicator that their case “is so bad that they don’t even want to go to trial!”
Pelosi indefinitely delaying turnover of impeachment docs to Senate kicks trial up a notch in absurdity
While Pelosi insists that her foot-dragging is all about ensuring the Republicans do not hijack the proceedings, speculation is rife that Democrats are hesitant to move forward with impeachment because its popularity sank among key groups of independent swing voters who can sway the outcome of the presidential election next year.
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DECEMBER 20, 2019
Within hours of President Trump being impeached by the House, the mainstream media was reporting that Adam Schiff “has declared war” on Mike Pence.
At this time of the year, most Americans are celebrating holidays and spending time with their families, but Adam Schiff continues to be deeply focused on his twisted obsession to take down the Trump administration.
When Rachel Maddow asked him if he was “actively looking at Vice President Mike Pence and his role in this scandal”, Schiff made it quite clear that he has targeted Pence.
Is Schiff doing this because he wants “justice”, or is there some deeper plot afoot?
Before we get into the specifics, let’s talk about a hypothetical scenario in which Nancy Pelosi could actually become the President.
If President Trump is removed from office by the Senate, Vice-President Mike Pence would move into the Oval Office and a replacement for Pence would be nominated.
But if Trump and Pence were both impeached and removed from office before a new Vice-President could be nominated and confirmed, then the next in line for the presidency would be Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.
In other words, if Trump and Pence were both suddenly out of the picture, Nancy Pelosi would become the President of the United States.
We have never actually seen the speaker of the House become the president in such a manner, and such a scenario would appear to be exceedingly unlikely, but it could hypothetically happen.
Up to now, the efforts by the Democrats to get rid of Trump have not gone well. According to a brand new survey that was just released, only 42 percent of all Americans support removing Trump from office at this point. And it is likely that support for removing Vice-President Pence from office would be even lower.
So why would the Democrats even bother trying?
I certainly can’t explain why Schiff suddenly has such a desire to go after Pence, because it doesn’t seem to be rational. According to the Daily Mail, Schiff has made the decision to declare “war” on Pence…
House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff has declared war on Vice President Mike Pence, barely a week after his panel finished its hearings on the impeachment of President Donald Trump.
As an impeachment vote loomed Wednesday, Schiff demanded Pence’s office declassify documents that he claims could show the vice president knee-deep in the Ukraine scandal that has brought Trump to the brink.
What Schiff is particularly obsessed about is a phone call between Vice-President Pence and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on September 18th.
Pence’s adviser Jennifer Williams listened in on that call, and she testified about it behind closed doors to Schiff’s committee. Her testimony was later classified, and Schiff has been badgering Pence to have it declassified. The following comes from the National Review…
Pence’s Russia adviser Jennifer Williams testified last month about the vice president’s September 18 phone call with Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Schiff requested ten days later that Pence declassify her testimony, contained in a November 26 letter from her lawyer, but Pence last week declined to do so in a letter to Schiff.
On Tuesday, Schiff sent a letter to Pence alleging that the testimony given by Williams “raises profound questions about your knowledge of the President’s scheme to solicit Ukraine’s interference in the 2020 U.S. presidential election”.
In other words, Schiff is inferring that Vice-President Pence “abused his power” just like Trump supposedly did.
During a subsequent appearance on the Rachel Maddow Show, Schiff was specifically asked if he was “actively looking” at Vice-President Pence…
Are you actively looking at Vice President Mike Pence and his role in this scandal? And should we expect further revelations either related to the vice president or related to the other core parts of these allegations that have resulted in this impeachment tonight?
In response, he gave an answer that was classic Schiff …
Well, we have acquired a piece of evidence, classified submission by Jennifer Williams, something that she alluded to in her open testimony that in going back and looking through her records, she found other information that was pertinent to that phone call that we asked her about and made that submission. There is nothing that should be classified in that submission but yet, the vice president’s office has said they’re going to assert classification, or it’s classified.
It is not proper to classify something because it would be embarrassing or incriminating, and that summation does shed light on the vice president’s knowledge, and we think the American people should see it. Certainly, any senators in the trial should have access to it.
Schiff has got to realize that his actions are deeply dividing America, and the drama currently unfolding in Washington could set in motion a series of events that could tear this nation apart.
So why is he doing it?
Well, there is always the possibility that he could be so deluded that he actually believes that he is doing the right thing. And if he truly believes that he is seeking to have justice done, then that would help to explain why he just won’t let this thing go.
But the truth is that Schiff’s sick obsession with taking down the Trump administration goes back long before this Ukraine scandal first broke wide open.
Like so many other Democrats, he just can’t stand to see Donald Trump in the White House, and he won’t rest until he is gone for good.
If the Democrats could find a way to get Trump removed from office early next year, that would throw the Republican Party into a state of utter chaos and would give Democrats a massive edge heading into November 2020. And if they could get Mike Pence removed from office early next year as well, that would make it even tougher for the Republican Party.
In the end, maybe that is what all of this is primarily about. Yes, getting Nancy Pelosi into the White House would be a nice side benefit, but maybe what the Democrats really want to do is to keep Trump from winning again in 2020 by any means necessary.
Unfortunately for the Democrats, nothing they are doing is working.
It looks like Trump is going to be acquitted by the Senate, public approval for impeachment has been falling, and Trump now has a lead against all potential Democratic contenders.
If the Democrats had never attempted to remove Trump, they would have had a great chance of winning the White House next November.
But they just couldn’t resist, and so they have set the stage for a major political disaster for the Democratic Party less than a year from now.
December 20, 2019
When asked about who the infamous Maltese Professor Joseph Mifsud was working for this week, the DOJ IG deferred answering in public:
But Horowitz’s testimony did shed some light on prior reports released by Republican and Democrat leaders in the House and Christopher Wray’s FBI. It turns out that the Republican report from Devin Nunez was totally substantiated while the Democrat report from Adam Schiff was totally destroyed as a total lie:
This also indicates that Christopher Wray’s FBI totally lied along with Schiff and Rep. Nader from New York in claiming that Nunez’s report was a sham when indeed it was the truth.
ABC reported in February of 2018 that –
— — Only hours after President Donald Trump was caught on a live mic saying a controversial, Republican-drafted memo about government surveillance would be released to the public, the FBI says it has “grave concerns” about the memo’s accuracy.
Two weeks ago, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Devin Nunes, R-California, disclosed that his staff had drafted a memo, which many Republicans say accuses the FBI and Justice Department of abusing surveillance capabilities authorized by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act – or FISA. For days, Nunes refused to share the documents with House colleagues.
On Monday, over the objections of Democrats and Trump’s own Justice Department, Republicans on the House panel voted release the memo. And after Tuesday night’s “State of the Union” address, Trump was overheard telling Rep. Jeff Duncan, R-S.C., that he’s “100 percent” behind the release of the memo.
In an unexpected statement Wednesday, the FBI said that before the House vote, the FBI was “provided a limited opportunity to review this memo.”
“As expressed during our initial review, we have grave concerns about material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo’s accuracy,” the FBI statement said.
Schiff reportedly said at the time:
The lead Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Adam Schiff, recently called the memo a “profoundly misleading set of talking points drafted by Republican staff attacking the FBI and its handling of the investigation.”
It “may help carry White House water, but it is a deep disservice to our law enforcement professionals,” Schiff said.
Also, Rep. Nader reportedly said:
The top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-New York, said he has reviewed the classified source material Nunes’ staff used to craft the memorandum, and “those materials tell a very different story than the conspiracy theory concocted by Chairman Nunes and being repeated in the press.”
Hat tip D. Manny
12/18/2019
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