Senator Ted Cruz appears on Meet The Press to discuss the fiasco of the impeachment effort…. and things immediately go south.  Chuck Todd flips though page of Share Blue and Media Matters talking points while attempting to interrupt and knock down arguments put forth by Senator Cruz.

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If Senator Lindsey Graham is correct – tomorrow the DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz will release a much anticipated review, looking into how the FBI and DOJ used an application to the FISA court to investigate the Trump campaign. There are wide-ranging opinions about what exactly this report may, or may not, outline.

The IG review has been ongoing for 21 months.  This report is anticipated to be a culmination of that investigative effort.  The ‘tick-tock club’ of Sean Hannity, Sara Carter, John Solomon and various Fox pundits have promised the report will be the most devastating outline of gross FBI and DOJ misconduct in the history of IG review.
Additionally, a network of financially dependent social media voices, book writers, podcast pundits and Q-theorists collectively known as the ‘trusty plan group’, have predicted criminal indictments, wide-scale arrests and a shock to the DC system that will fracture the foundation of the administrative state and simultaneously drain the swamp.
Meanwhile the Lawfare group has been the most visible advocacy network for the current and former DOJ and FBI officials who participated in setting up and using the FISA surveillance system now under IG review.   The Lawfare group has stated the IG report will exonerate all of their pre and post election activity; validate the justification for their predicate efforts; and leave the ‘tick-tockers’ and ‘trusty planners’ having to reconcile to their stunned audiences how they interpreted all the data so incredibly wrong.
A review of the last three IG reports which brush up against the same DOJ and FBI network: (1) IG review Clinton email/FBI conduct; (2) IG review of McCabe/media leaks; and (3) IG review of James Comey conduct; shows the IG report on FISA is likely to come down somewhere in the middle.  ie. mistakes were made; poor judgements were evident; some unprofessional conduct was found; some lack of candor was identified; department policies were not followed; but no direct evidence of intentional wrongdoing was attributable to a coordinated political effort.
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Planning for impeachment right after the 2018 mid-term election, HPSCI Chairman Adam Schiff hired former SDNY U.S. Attorney Daniel Goldman (link).  You probably saw Goldman doing the questioning for Schiff during the first public impeachment hearing.  Around the same time in 2018 Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler hired Obama Administration lawyer Norm Eisen and criminal defense attorney Barry Berke (link).

In addition to changing the House rules to align with the plan, the impeachment process we have been witnessing for two months was mapped-out in the congressional lame-duck session between November 2018 and January 2019.   Today Chairman Nadler announces who will present the impeachment file during the House hearing on Monday:

(Source Link – pdf)

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President Trump responds to today’s deadline set by House Democrats for the White House to say whether it would participate in the impeachment proceedings:

In summary:

“Nuts!”

HPSCI Ranking Member Devin Nunes responds to the possibilities of how HPSCI Chairman Adam Schiff gained private phone records for use in his impeachment effort.

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One of the possibilities is that Lev Parnas is a foreign national. SDNY gets a subpoena from the FISA court.  Rudy Giuliani is in contact with Parnas (1-hop). They then unmask and pull Giuliani’s records and get Nunes and Solomon (2-hops).
The question would then be how did the unmasked information in an active investigation that started in the FISC end up being sent to the House Intel Committee to be disclosed to the public?
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As the House impeachment of President Donald Trump becomes more of a forgone political conclusion it’s worth considering what terms and conditions Senate Leader Mitch McConnell will extract in order to preserve a Trump Presidency.
Most political pundits will not correctly outline the status of the possibilities, because most political pundits are willfully blind to the structure of the McConnell Senate.
First, McConnell doesn’t care about holding a majority position in the Senate.  Whether he is a majority leader or a minority leader doesn’t matter to McConnell. In fact McConnell’s political skill-set does better in the minority than the majority.
The preferred political position for Mitch McConnell is where he has between 45 and 49 republican Senators, and the Democrats hold the Majority with around 55.  Of course with Reid’s retirement, this would now be with Majority leader Chuck Schumer holding office.
Why does McConnell prefer the minority position?
The answer is where you have had to actually follow Mitch McConnell closely to see how he works.   When the Majority has around 52 to 55 seats, they need McConnell to give them 8 to 9 votes to overcome the three-fifths (60 vote) threshold for their legislative needs.  It is in the process of trade and payment for those 8 to 9 votes where McConnell makes more money, and holds more power, than as a sitting Majority Leader.
The 60 vote threshold, and McConnell’s incredible skillset in the minority, is where he shines.  Each of the needed votes to achieve sixty is worth buckets of indulgence to the minority leader.  This is why McConnell never changed the Senate rules for legislative passage.
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Earlier today President Trump responded to the House Judiciary Committee farcical construct of a constitutional academic panel:
Moments later, Speaker Pelosi announced her instructions to the House Chair to assemble articles of impeachment for House floor vote consideration.  In response to the Pelosi announcement President Trump tweeted:

With the House calendar extended to December 20th it now appears the full House vote on articles of impeachment will take place within this year. Today, Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced her instructions to House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler to assemble the formal articles of impeachment to be brought to the House floor.

~ Read Speaker Pelosi Announcement HERE ~

Speaker Pelosi did not provide many details; however, Democrats have said they are considering multiple articles of impeachment against Trump including abuse of power, obstruction of justice and obstruction of Congress. The House Judiciary Committee is expected to draw up articles of impeachment as soon as next week.
This is the first time in History that articles of impeachment will be assembled without an official full house vote to initiate the impeachment process. This is also the first impeachment effort without the House attaining recognized judicial enforcement authority.  The vote will take place before the Supreme Court weighs-in on the legal framework for the House effort. The House judicial enforcement authority, not being recognized by the Supreme Court, likely had a strong bearing on the timing.
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Representative Matt Gaetz confronted the jaw-dropping level of political bias and Trump Derangement Syndrome exhibited by Chairman Nadler’s panel of left-wing experts.
With a visible display of righteous indignation Mr. Gaetz dressed down the pompous liberal law professor, Pamela Karlan, and cut right to the heart of the matter with the entire panel.  WATCH:

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Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University law professor and not a supporter of President Trump, warned House lawmakers today against impeaching a President without merit. Mr. Turley said that to impeach Trump based on the current evidence “would be to expose every future president to the same type of inchoate impeachment.”
[Opening Remarks Below]

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[Transcript] Chairman Nadler, ranking member Collins, members of the Judiciary Committee, my name is Jonathan Turley, and I am a law professor at George Washington University where I hold the J.B. and Maurice C. Shapiro Chair of Public Interest Law.
It is an honor to appear before you today to discuss one of the most solemn and important constitutional functions bestowed on this House by the Framers of our Constitution: the impeachment of the President of the United States.
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