Dear Sen. Schumer, In An Era Of Video, Everyone Has Receipts

Cryin’ Chuck Schumer is painfully aware his colleagues in the House of Representatives failed so miserably in their impeachment inquiry that they managed to steer public opinion away from removing President Trump.

Democrats are staunchly in favor of impeachment.  Republicans staunchly disapprove of the farce.  Among independents, their support for impeachment, much less removal, erodes by the day.  Worst of all for Democrats, the battleground states and Congressional Districts won by President Trump in 2016 are even less supportive.

His pleadings to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to compel testimony from witnesses the House didn’t pursue through the courts and additional White House documents fell on deaf ears.

The House Intelligence Committee through the malignant liar Adam Schiff insisted “the evidence of the President’s misconduct is overwhelming, and so too, is the evidence of his obstruction of Congress.”

Not so fast.

On the very same day Sen. Schumer was playing the role of the Red Queen in Alice In Wonderland (Sentence First…Verdict Afterwards), Judge Rosemary Collyer of the FISA Court blistered the FBI declaring it misled the Justice Department and the court when it sought permission to wiretap a former Trump campaign aide.

"The frequency with which representations made by FBI personnel turned out to be unsupported or contradicted by information in their possession, and with which they withheld information detrimental to their case, calls into question whether information contained in other FBI applications is reliable," Collyer wrote. 

The judge ordered the FBI to outline by Jan. 10, 2020, any changes it has made or plans to make to improve surveillance allowed under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The law, enacted in 1978, outlines procedures investigators must follow when they ask judges for permission to conduct electronic surveillance of people suspected of acting as foreign agents. 

Sen. McConnell isn’t going to give in to Schumer's demands. "The Senate is meant to act as judge and jury, to hear a trial, not to re-run the entire fact-finding investigation because angry partisans rushed sloppily through it," he said.

Let’s hop in the Wayback Machine after the House took its historic vote to impeach Bill Clinton in 1998 when Schumer warned, “We’ve lowered the bar on impeachment so much that it will be used as a routine tool to fight political battles.  My fear is that when a Republican wins the White House, Democrats will demand payback.”