There were two background press interviews between the media and President Trump’s legal team that were withheld from public release until today.
You can read INTERVIEW ONE – and – INTERVIEW TWO here.
During one question and answer period on Saturday, following the first round of defense points, the key framework of unconstitutional impeachment was raised:
[…] TRANSCRIPT – Question from Jeff Mason with Reuters: Can you walk us through the discrepancy between your side and the House impeachment managers with regard to the President — you guys alleging that the President was shut out from representation during the hearings? They preemptively said that that was false.
In an effort to improve page load-time we are breaking up the trial discussion threads.
There will be 24 hours of presentation by House Impeachment Managers (over 3 days); 24 hours of presentation by Defense team (over 3 days); 16 hours of Senate questioning; 4 hours of closing arguments, equally divided; and then a Senate debate/vote on further motions to include witnesses. If there are going to be witnesses, they will first be deposed prior to testimony. No witness testimony will be permitted without first being deposed.
The Senate Trial continues today on day six at 6:45pm ET with the evening session of the second day for the President Trump defense. Fox News Livestream – Fox Business Livestream – Alternate GST Livestream Link
There will be 24 hours of presentation by House Impeachment Managers (over 3 days); 24 hours of presentation by Defense team (over 3 days); 16 hours of Senate questioning; 4 hours of closing arguments, equally divided; and then a Senate debate/vote on further motions to include witnesses. If there are going to be witnesses, they will first be deposed prior to testimony. No witness testimony will be permitted without first being deposed.
The Senate Trial continues today on day six at 1:00pm ET. Today is the second day of the Trump defense and will continue with approximately 8 hours of presentation. Fox News Livestream – Fox Business Livestream – Alternate GST Livestream Link
The “House Bolton Maneuver” was a pre-planned operation to use a timed NSC ‘resistance’ leak to frame a new demand for testimony in the Senate. From the beginning the House intentionally constructed an impeachment process to avoid the judicial branch because the construction of the articles was dependent on an unconstitutional creation: impeachment by decree of the Speaker.
As a result of their approach, the House fully intended to usurp their lack of judicial subpoena authority by placing political pressure on the Senate to call the trial witnesses they knew were unattainable due to separation of powers within the constitutional process. By design the House plan puts the burden of compulsory witness testimony upon the Senate because the House refused to create their own authority with a vote to initiate the impeachment process.
The House effort was, and is, an end-run around the constitutional outline for impeachment. This was not a flaw; it was a feature of the House creation.
The timing, purpose and narrative engineering here are transparent in the extreme.
Tonight the New York Times (Schmidt and Haberman) write an article claiming to have exclusively gained portions of a transcript of a John Bolton book manuscript that was given to the White House National Security Council for pre-publication review.
Of course The Times attempts to frame the narrative around the need for John Bolton to testify in the Senate Impeachment Trial… all too transparent in motive. Timed to work around the House fraud; impeachment article construction without Judicial review for subpoenas; and timed to bolster House managers’ unconstitutional demand for Bolton as a Senate witness. ADD: POTUS Responds:
However, setting aside the nothing-burger details of the book as leaked, the leak itself might now reconcile an earlier event.
Remember the issue a little more than a week ago when the National Security Council senior director for European and Russian affairs, Andrew Peek, was escorted from the White House grounds and is said to be under a security-related investigation? (more…)
Senator James Lankford appears on ABC This Week with George Stephanopoulos to discuss his perspective around the ongoing senate trial of President Trump.
During the interview DNC operative Stephanopoulos attempts to retain an opposition false narrative and Senator Lankford just fillets the arguments with facts. Stephanopoulos is visibly upset with his inability to upend Lankford.
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*Posting late today because I’ve been deep in the weeds, assembling years of data, and solving a nagging question about Chris Steele’s primary sub-source [SEE HERE]. I’m now comfortable in predicting who that PSS is. I will outline more on that soon. (more…)
Last week the New York Times endorsed Liawatha, this week the Des Moines Register follows along. Neither endorsement matters much in the world of actual voting; however, when the Iowa progressive media support is combined with CNN’s previously coordinated hit against Bernie Sanders, to the specific benefit of Warren, these endorsements start to highlight where the institutional DNC is aligned.
Lyin’ Liz Warren is currently polling in fourth place in Iowa with 15 percent. Bernie leads with 25%, Buttigieg with 18%, Biden with 17% and then Warren with 15%. {LINK}
Warren is a very inauthentic candidate but holds the support of elitist limo-liberals, pontificating professors, grad school woke crowd, High School media girls, and the gender focused democrats within Hollywood Inc.
Liawatha is an insufferable coastal candidate and generally unlikable. However, that said…. it appears The DNC Club prefers Warren; so look for new hits against Bernie in the next few days. Keep an eye on Obama’s crew, they’re running out of time. (more…)
Several days ago we anticipated a potentially important point we hoped would start the impeachment defense for President Donald Trump. Today, attorney Patrick Philbin delivered. The issue is a critical constitutional component that needed emphasis, and it is good to see pundits finally starting to realize the significance.
White House Counsel Patrick Philbin explains why House subpoenas were illegitimate: the subpoena power was never authorized; the initiating subpoena power was never voted on.
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Additionally, and specifically by design, absent a penalty for non-compliance, which factually makes a subpoena a ‘subpoena’, the Executive Branch had no constitutional pathway or process to engage an appellate review by federal courts. Make no mistake, this was a pre-planned purposeful trick within the Pelosi, Schiff and Lawfare road-map.
The House motive here, the forethought within their design, is very important now because it explains why they are vociferously demanding witnesses in the Senate. The House plan was to work around the ability of the executive branch to go to court. The managers are now attempting to execute that plan, along with a manufactured political talking point, in the Senate trial.
The House intended for this to unfold exactly as it is happening. (more…)
A quiet (oral) request from the DOJ/FBI is noted in a late Friday release from FISA Court Presiding Judge James Boasberg. [LINK]
The previous deadline was January 28th. As noted the FISC has granted a one week extension until February 5th. [Some Possible Ramifications Outlined Here]
This is a hot mess. Remember, IG Horowitz said he only found evidence of a FISA warrant against Carter Page, no other Trump campaign or Trump administration official was investigated using a FISA application. That statement is a little more important now.
As I go back through my notes seeing if I can identify the downstream consequences impacted by a rather stunning sequestration effort, I find myself wondering if the HJC case(s) for 6(e) material and Don McGahn testimony might even be part of the pull-back material as a derivative of the special counsel probe’ use of the Carter Page Title-1 surveillance warrant. After all, there had to be an investigative reason for Mueller to want the renewal on June 29, 2017, long after Carter Page was gone from the Trump orbit.
Remember, the special counsel team used some form of pre-existing warrant authority to capture all of the Trump transition team emails and communication from the GSA, and then lied about it to the Trump White House. Perhaps National Security Letters (NSL’s). (more…)
Did the original scope memo from Rod Rosenstein in May 2017 authorize Team Mueller to investigate allegations in the Steele Dossier?… Allegations that were already debunked by the FBI four months earlier in mid-January 2017?
There’s more than a little irony in this brief CNN soundbite where Evan Perez is discussing the FBI’s fraudulent FISA applications. On January 10th, 2017, it was the same Evan Perez along with CNN’s Jim Sciutto, who were operating as conduits from the FBI ‘small group’ to push the Steele Dossier as a valid investigative document. {Go Deep}
Evan Perez, Jim Sciutto, Jake Tapper and Carl Bernstein were working together with the FBI group headed by James Comey, to push the legitimacy of the Steele Dossier.
While the CNN crew was coordinating with the FBI; literally two days before the FBI renewed the FISA warrant on January 12th; and shortly after CNN pushed the narrative; FBI agents visited the U.K, interviewed Steele’s primary sub-source and determined the dossier was garbage. It was the Steele Dossier being identified as garbage that made the FISA renewals invalid…. the same Dossier that Evan Perez was promoting in 2017:
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Inspector General Michael Horowitz informs us in his report the FBI determined the dossier was bunk “shortly after” the January 12, 2017, FISA renewal. (more…)