After the 2018 mid-terms, and in preparation for the “impeachment” strategy, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler hired Lawfare group members to become House committee staff.

In 2018 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 (above).  Meanwhile Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler hired Obama Administration lawyer Norm Eisen and criminal defense attorney Barry Berke (link).
However, with a horrible start to the impeachment construct; an outcome of day-one hearings where State Department officials George Kent and Bill Taylor provided no baseline for the impeachment narrative to build upon; Pelosi and Schiff are going outside for more legal assistance.  Per Chad Pergram:

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Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH) was moved to the House Intelligence Committee because the HPSCI has become the impeachment committee.  Mr. Jordan is an articulate representative with a unique skillset in his ability to boil down issues to their essential elements, and then drill home the key point.  Jordan thinks fast and can respond quickly during congressional hearings.
Yesterday, as Jordan questioned the witnesses, the value of moving him to the impeachment committee was evident.  Mr. Jordan was excellent.
Today Mr. Jordan shares his perspective of the hearing during a media interview:

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During the impeachment hearing today State Department officials George Kent and Bill Taylor both stated they never heard of any claims of Ukrainian political interference in the 2016 U.S. election.  Additionally, both claimed to have no knowledge of any U.S. investigation that might overlap with Ukraine.
When pressed with specifically cited reports about DNC operatives engaging with Ukraine government officials to gather opposition research against candidate Donald Trump, both Mr. Kent and Ambassador Taylor denied any knowledge of the outlined reporting.

However, what everyone in the media –and on Capitol Hill– seems to forget is a letter in July, 2017 [LINK HERE], written by U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley to Dept. of Justice Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, specifically outlining 2016 election interference by Ukrainian government officials; and specifically asking for an U.S. DOJ investigation therein:
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Day One of the Pelosi, Schiff and Lawfare effort to publicly construct support for the impeachment of President Trump ends.  Within the questioning of State Department officials George Kent and Bill Taylor the value of adding Jim Jordan to the hearings became clear.
Jim Jordan, Elise Stefanik and John Ratcliffe methodically deconstructed the false premise advanced by the impeachment crew.  It became clear that both Kent and Taylor held no specific and direct knowledge of the substance behind the claims made by the democrats leading the effort.  Here’s a few highlights starting with Jim Jordan:
Jordan pressed Taylor on how he came to have a “clear understanding” that the U.S. aid to Ukraine was dependent on opening an investigation into Trump’s political rivals. Jordan said there was no “linkage” and Ambassador Taylor said he came to his “clear conclusion” based on what other people said about what other people heard about conversations with other people.

Here’s the visual to help (tweet embed video):

A visual recap of the “clear understanding” of Ambassador Taylor’s knowledge of what happened. #ImpeachmentHearings
.@Jim_Jordan pic.twitter.com/5sZD2CozfL

— Mad Liberals (@mad_liberals) November 13, 2019

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
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Earlier today President Trump and First Lady Melania welcomed President Recep Erdogan from Turkey and his wife to the White House.  Prior to bilateral discussions the leaders held a joint availability in the oval office. [Video and Transcript below]

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[Transcript] – PRESIDENT TRUMP: Okay. Thank you very much. It’s a great honor to be with President Erdoğan and Mrs. Erdoğan. Thank you very much. We very much appreciate you being here. First Lady, thank you very much. And I know you’re going to go out to lunch after this. Great honor to have you.
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Here’s the opening statement from HPSCI Ranking Member Devin Nunes:

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HPSCI Theatrical Director Adam Schiff waited until the last moment to release his rules for the public impeachment performance.  [SEE HERE] The rules include no talking about the CIA ‘whistle-blower’, or else it’s curtains for your political career, curtains:
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The Washington Post jumps-in to the Horowitz ‘principal review’ timeline adding that some of the opportunities for witnesses to review the final draft report are “still being negotiated”, likely by the attorney’s for the principals.
Take all reporting on this two-week review phase with a grain of salt. Despite the NDA’s there will be a rush to control the narrative.  “People familiar with the matter” will start popping up in the Washington Post, New York Times, Politico, Buzzfeed and CNN.
There is likely to be a flood of spin from the PR teams behind each principal outlined in the report.  Lawyers for James Comey and Andrew McCabe will be using every angle of Lawfare imaginable to attempt to shape their clients image within the report.

Lawyers, Lawfare legal teams, and DC-based PR consultants for Sally Yates, John Carlin, Mary McCord, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, Hillary Clinton, James Baker, Michael Kortan, Rod Rosenstein, Robert Mueller, Andrew Weissmann, Chris Steele, Glen Simpson, Nellie Ohr, Bruce Ohr, John Brennan, James Clapper and many more will all be working at courtroom rates to control any report damage for their clients.
The Obama administration will be working in the background, while Fusion-GPS takes in fees and pays their primary journalists and narrative engineers premium rates for column inches that protect their client interests.  This is one big confab of interests all positioning to control any negative impressions and highlight their magnanimous patriotic activity.
Watch and we will see full deployment of the justification defense and “outrage trap“.  After all, according to their predictable defenses, there was evidence, even if slight, that President Trump was a Russian asset belonging to Vladimir Putin…. it had to be taken seriously, etc.  Even the Republicans in congress were alarmed.
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We finally have confirmation of a procedural process that allows us to anticipate the timing for public release of the FISA report from Inspector General Horowitz.

According to the Associated Press:

The Justice Department’s watchdog is nearing the release of its report on the early stages of the FBI’s Russia investigation, a document likely to revive debate about a politically charged probe that shadowed President Donald Trump’s administration from the outset.

The inspector general in recent days has invited witnesses and their lawyers who were interviewed for the report to review portions of a draft this week and next, a critical final step toward making the document public, according to multiple people familiar with the process who insisted on anonymity to discuss it.

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As the public impeachment hearings begin tomorrow, here’s the transcript of the phone call between President Trump and President Zelenskyy.
[White House September 25th] President Donald J. Trump released a declassified, unredacted transcript of his telephone conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy from July 25th, 2019. The transcript can be read HERE.
[scribd id=427409969 key=key-VGm7DyayAPURqtX76cpg mode=scroll]
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You can see when you read the transcript, despite the media narrative to the contrary, President Trump did not ask President Zelenskyy to investigate former Vice-President Joe Biden.

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