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!”
Shortly after 6pm this evening Supreme Court Justice Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg put a prior 2nd Circuit ruling on hold until next Friday, December 13, at 5 p.m.
President Trump went to the Supreme Court after the House Financial Services and Intelligence Committees issued subpoenas to Deutsche Bank and Capital One seeking President Trump’s tax records. In his request to the court [Read Here] Trump asked SCOTUS to block the subpoenas on the ground they go beyond the committees’ powers.
Justice Ginsburg’s order tonight gives the justices time to rule on Trump’s request for a longer stay of the lower court’s decision while he files a petition for review. Ginsburg ordered the House of Representatives to file a response to Trump’s request by 11 a.m. on Wednesday, December 11.
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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.
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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House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler has announced the date for the next impeachment hearing. The date is Monday, December 9th – 2019 It appears from the announcement the HJC hearing will be set up to receive the impeachment recommendation(s) from Adam Schiff and the House Intelligence Committee:
(HJC) The Impeachment Inquiry into President Donald J. Trump: Presentations from the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and House Judiciary Committee (link)
Monday December 9th, is also the same date that IG Horowitz is expected to release the results of the 21-month-long FISA investigation.
Two days later on Wednesday December 11th, Michael Horowitz will be testifying to the Senate Judiciary Committee about his investigation…. Therefore we can expect Nadler, Pelosi and Lawfare to schedule another House event for Wednesday Dec. 11th.
The CIA primarily leaks PR spin to the Washington Post. The FBI primarily leaks PR spin to the New York Times; and the State Dept. primarily leaks PR spin to CNN. This narrative distribution model is the one constant in an ever changing universe.
Cue the audio visual… Obviously the prior Washington Post effort to conflate the Durham investigation with the Horowitz investigation didn’t get the desired result. As a consequence it only took a few days before the Washington Post was back at it (Matt Zapotosky and Devlin Barrett again) to try obfuscation 2.0; this time with Joseph Mifsud.
For three years the New York Times, Washington Post and CNN have sold the FBI claim that Professor Joseph Mifsud was a Russian operative passing information about Clinton’s emails to George Papadopoulos.
That essential point underpins their defense of the predicate for the CIA and FBI to open the July 31st investigation of the Trump campaign. Again, for three years Joseph Mifsud was sold as a Russian operative; working on behalf of Russian interests.
That “Mifsud is a Russian asset” claim is the fulcrum of Crossfire Hurricane. Mifsud has to be a Russian asset, or else… George Papadopoulos talking to Australian Diplomat Alexander Downer about Mifsud is simply political gossip without merit, value or bearing.
The key point is Mifsud has to be a Russian operative in order for all of the downstream FBI activity to be justified. If Mifsud ain’t Russian, the CIA and FBI have a problem.
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Devin Nunes appeared on Tucker Carlson to discuss the impeachment events of the day. However, thankfully they also discussed the revelation that HPSCI Chairman Adam Schiff randomly started issuing subpoenas for telephone information. That’s the part I find very troubling. Notice how the media simply ignores it? This is a pretty big damn deal.
Under what authority can congress arbitrarily send subpoenas for the private phone records of citizens, journalists, and fellow politicians? Can Nunes now start sending subpoenas for the phone records of Michael Isikoff around the time of the Flynn phone call leak?… and can congress publish those call records as a part of some possibly inquiry into the leak… and we can cross reference to identify the FBI leaker?….
At 10:00am ET the House Judiciary Committee will hold an “impeachment groundwork” hearing with a panel of left-wing resistance academics scheduled to help democrats justify their urgent partisan efforts to remove President Trump from office.
HJC Chairman Jerry Nadler will be aided by contracted Lawfare attorney Norm Eisen for the effort. Chairman Nadler promised his peers he will be very aggressive toward any opposition questioning that seeks to undermine the predetermined enterprise. The academic panel is scheduled to begin testifying to Mr. Eisen at 10:00am ET
C-SPAN Livestream Link – Fox News Livestream Link – Fox Business Livestream Link
The republican leadership from the U.S. House of Representatives held a press conference today as a rebuttal to the democrat impeachment inquiry report. House Judiciary Committee ranking member Doug Collins joined GOP leadership to discuss the significant issues with the impeachment process. WATCH:
AT&T provided the call records, likely under subpoena. (link)
Let’s hope Schiff received them under subpoena, because the alternative is much worse. The alternative is a criminal leak from an outside interest.
There’s a particular type of anger that surfaces when you realize the Schiff team who coordinated the origination effort with the CIA whistleblower; and then vehemently hide their coordination; are the same crew simultaneously using the power of their position to subpoena private phone call records from President Trump’s lawyers, members of congress, and journalists. [See Schiff Report pages 157, 158, 159 – pdf]
Yes, in essence Adam Schiff weaponized his committee authority toward the goal of removing President Trump in an identical way the prior administration intelligence officials, DOJ and FBI weaponized their authority toward removing candidate Trump, president-elect Trump and President Trump.
It is one long continuum of political corruption, weaponization, and fabrication of evidence to achieve a political objective. It is also disgusting in construct.
This crew doesn’t care one bit how much they have to destroy this country, so long as they can advance a left-wing political agenda based on an unquenchable thirst for power. I never thought we would see the possibility of a hot civil war in my lifetime. I was wrong.
The cattle cars are on the horizon, and the full Schiff report pdf is below.
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