Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY) discusses the upcoming drafting of a partisan report derived from witness testimony and the likelihood of an independent minority report. Unfortunately Rep. Zeldin, just like Adam Schiff and House leadership, is not sure what comes next (other than Thanksgiving).
Steve Bannon appears on Fox News with Maria Bartiromo to discuss the pros and cons of a partisan impeachment. Bannon was one of the early political observers who identified the likely entry of Mayor Michael Bloomberg into the 2020 race.
Bannon notes that Bloomberg has enough money to outlast the field; however, I doubt Bloomberg can fill a venue. If there’s no connection to the base party voter, candidate Bloomberg just can’t win the primary.
It would appear U.S. Attorney John Durham digging into the origin of the ‘vast Russian collusion-conspiracy’ has the founders of Fusion-GPS getting twitchy. The “Mamet Principle”of pretending not to know things was on full display today during a Meet the Press interview with Fusion founders Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch.
For obvious reasons fellow traveler Chuck Todd avoided the most damning lines of questioning including why they hired Nellie Ohr, why Simpson lied to the House intelligence committee, and why Glenn Simpson invoked the fifth amendment in refusing to testify to the House Judiciary Committee.
It was demonstrably evident that Glenn Simpson was working with Russian operative/lobbyist Natalia Velelnitskaya in a 2016 effort against the Trump campaign. However, during the interview today Glenn Simpson takes the defensive position that he was likely tricked by the Russian. WATCH:
Within the only impeachment resolution put forth by Speaker Nancy Pelosi to open an “impeachment inquiry” the resolution outlined a process. With only eight legislative days left in 2019; and considering the resolution as adopted; the calendar doesn’t match the democrat talking points. Here is a walk through of the timeline:
Congress returns from the Thanksgiving break on December 2nd and recesses again on December 12th. That leaves eight days in December to accomplish all the House tasks.
Democrats have said they anticipate an impeachment vote in mid-December, but a review of the House impeachment resolution calls for a transfer from HPSCI “inquiry” (Schiff) to HJC “investigation” (Nadler) as an outcome of a report from Adam Schiff’s intelligence committee.
Even if we assume the HPSCI report is being written during the Thanksgiving break by HPSCI/Lawfare staff there would still need to be a period where the report is reviewed by the congress members on the committee. Normally there would be a minority section to the report; and under all committee processes there would be a vote to advance the report.
Again, there’s only eight days in December and presumably HPSCI committee members would need to review the report prior to advancing it to the House Judiciary Committee (HJC). Once the report lands in the HJC, again – according to the prior resolution, that’s when President Trump would be able to call rebuttal witnesses and have White House counsel challenge and cross-examine HJC witnesses.
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I can’t stop laughing…. just too darned funny. CTH has long outlined how President Trump has taken the decades-long panda-mask game/approach of Beijing and mirrored it right back upon them. Today Chinese Coucillor Wang Yi, while delivering a strongly worded statement to G20 ministers, is positively verklempt in his open admission therein.
Our President Trump is the only person who could have delivered this wonderful outcome… well done. Beijing is very angry about how a U.S. President is disrupting a new world economic order that China has so artfully manipulated for the past two decades.
It is simply beyond delicious.
(Reuters) – The United States is the world’s biggest source of instability and its politicians are going around the world baselessly smearing China, the Chinese government’s top diplomat said on Saturday in a stinging attack at a G20 meeting in Japan.
Relations between the world’s two largest economies have nose-dived amid a bitter trade war – which they are trying to resolve – and arguments over human rights, Hong Kong and U.S. support for Chinese-claimed Taiwan.
It was evident several weeks ago that U.S. chargé d’affaires to Ukraine, Bill Taylor, is one of the current participants in the coup effort. It was Taylor who engaged in carefully planned text messages with EU Ambassador Gordon Sondland to set-up a narrative helpful to Adam Schiff’s political coup effort.
George Kent (left) – Bill Taylor (right), bagmen for the Foreign Service Office.
Bill Taylor was formerly U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine (’06-’09) and later helped the Obama administration to design the laundry operation providing taxpayer financing to Ukraine in exchange for back-channel payments to U.S. politicians and their families.
Today Rudy Giuliani has released a letter to Senator Lindsey Graham outlining how Bill Taylor has blocked VISA’s for Ukrainian ‘whistle-blowers’ who are willing to testify to the corrupt financial scheme. Unfortunately, Senator Graham, along with dozens of U.S. Senators currently serving, may very well have been a recipient for money through the aforementioned laundry process. So, good luck with the visas.
U.S. senators write foreign aid policy, rules and regulations thereby creating the financing mechanisms to transmit U.S. funds. Those same senators then received a portion of the laundered funds back through their various “institutes” and business connections to the foreign government offices; in this example Ukraine. [ex. Burisma to Biden]
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Earlier this morning President Trump called in to Fox and Friends for an hour-long interview about the breaking story of FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith manipulating FISA documents to gain surveillance on the 2016 Trump campaign.
President Trump notes the current trickle of information is only the beginning and the background story could be the biggest political scandal in modern U.S. history. President Trump awaits the final reports showing the full scope of the investigations and the likelihood of FBI spying and surveillance on his campaign and administration.
Additionally, President Trump discusses the frustrating political agenda behind the Pelosi and Schiff partisan impeachment effort at great length. WATCH:
At 8:15pm last evening Washington Post journalist Devlin Barrett posted a supportive article for the CNN (Manu Raju) news exclusive that outlined an “FBI Official” who was under criminal investigation as an outcome of the inspector general review of FISA.
The original WaPo article by Devlin Barrett noted the FBI official was actually a “line-level” lawyer who worked “under FBI Agent Peter Strzok.”
At 12:15am, the WaPo article was significantly edited, two more journalists (Ellen Nakashima and Matt Zapotosky) were added to the byline. Unfortunately, no explanation or notation of the changes were given.
~ Above: 8:15pm Washington Post Screen Grab prior to 12:15am edit ~
However, that said, the edit(s) help to identify the identity of the FBI lawyer. The updated article removed the references to Peter Strzok, and identifies the line-level lawyer thus:
[…] The person under scrutiny is a low-level FBI lawyer who has since been forced out of the agency, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss material that has not yet been made public.
The employee was forced out of the FBI after the incident was discovered, two U.S. officials said. Horowitz found that the employee erroneously indicated he had documentation to back up a claim he had made in discussions with the Justice Department about the factual basis for the application. He then altered an email to back up that erroneous claim, they said. (link)
If you have followed the case closely, the intentional removal of Peter Strzok in combination with the explanation of the lawyer’s FISA responsibilities; and in combination with prior reporting of FBI lawyer 2; it seems pretty obvious the line-level lawyer was Kevin Clinesmith.
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Former foreign policy adviser to President Trump Carter Page discusses the breaking reports of FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith altering documents in the 2016 Russia probe to gain a FISA Title-1 surveillance warrant on him and the Trump campaign.
Last week we outlined the likely schedule for all of the rapidly surfacing DC issues to include: (A) Pelosi and Schiff’s impeachment effort; (B) the IG FISA abuse report being released; and (C) the narrowing timeline of court decisions for all three of Pelosi’s impeachment committees.
Today we have some new background to help see the narrative race and legal race. Pelosi and Schiff are not only racing the impeachment vote against the IG report, they are also racing against the Judicial branch wiping out all prior “impeachment inquiry” validity.
Effective at the end of business today the House is now in recess for the Thanksgiving holiday. CNN is reporting:
The House returns on December 3rd and recesses again for Christmas break on December 12th. That is the window for Pelosi to cram in all of the House needs; eight days.
Remember, the House Democrats punted the budget with a short term CR so that has to get done. We were hopeful Pelosi would put the USMCA ratification up for a vote; however, that now appears to be off the table until 2020. So the budget and impeachment vote are inside this eight day window.
But that is not all that is inside this window.
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