A Complete Farce Of A Trial

Will millions of Americans tune in to watch Day Three of House impeachment managers repeating themselves endlessly and replaying clips of videos that are deliberately edited to remove all context?

Of course not.  Senators have been seen dozing off, passing notes, making paper airplanes, playing with fidget spinners and stress balls.

This whole thing revolves around a temporary hold on a foreign aid package that was released by the deadline and turned into some sinister act of treason, bribery and extortion.

I think it is fair to say the House Democrats have painted themselves into one hell of a corner.  

Their case against the President is neither “overwhelming” nor “uncontested”. Democrats rigged the House impeachment proceedings.  They rode rough-shod over witness lists, leaked selectively to complicit press poodles and rushed head-long to indict President Trump declaring breathlessly that every day the President is not impeached is another day the country is in peril.

The bipartisan support they hung their hat on never materialized.  They got squat from the Mueller Report.  The FISA Court just yesterday officially admitted that half of the secret surveillance applications it sought to spy on the Trump campaign were illegitimate.  There is no majority support for impeachment.  They haven’t moved the needle.  There has been no proof of high crimes and misdemeanors.  And now their worst fears are about to be realized:  a disastrous and thoroughly embarrassing Senate acquittal.

On Saturday, to quote Eddie Murphy from the movie 48 Hrs, there’s a new sheriff in town.

The seven House impeachment managers are about to cede the floor to the President’s legal team—perhaps for three full days.

UPDATE:  The attorneys general of 21 states have come forward with a blistering rebuke of the impeachment of President Trump, asserting in a letter to the U.S. Senate that it "establishes a dangerous historical precedent" and urged the chamber to reject the impeachment articles.

"If not expressly repudiated by the Senate, the theories animating both Articles will set a precedent that is entirely contrary to the Framers' design and ruinous to the most important governmental structure protections contained in our Constitution: the separation of powers," they wrote.

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.”

President Bobcat’s Warning

Ten days after President Trump was inaugurated a bobcat escaped its enclosure at the Smithsonian National Zoo in Washington, DC.  The feline freedom seeker was one of the last hopes in a world gone rotten.  A perfect mascot for a city of cubicled, uptight bureaucrats yearning to be free.

So captivated by the story was Comfortably Smug of Twitter fame that he launched a “President Bobcat” campaign.  His minions “swarmed” with approval at the novel idea.

Straightforward from here
1. Flynn testifies
2. Impeach Trump & Pence
3. Liberate DC Zoo bobcat
4. Bobcat led coup
5. President bobcat

— Comfortably Smug (@ComfortablySmug) March 30, 2017

The release yesterday of the Horowitz Report is a triumph for former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes who first blew the whistle on FISA abuse and excoriated Rep. Adam Schiff for his memo which stated FBI and DOJ officials did not abuse the FISA process.  Schiff had access to the same documents Nunes did yet he chose to misinform the American public.

According to the report, there were 17 separate problems with submissions to the FISA Court including the FBI’s overstatement of Christopher Steele’s credentials and failure to provide the court with exculpatory evidence.

Horowitz laid out facts demonstrating “extensive compliance failures” overstating some information, omitting vital information and “cherry-picking” certain details—a clear case of the Surveillance State and The Swamp at work.

As “purr” President Bobcat’s warning, “The next Democrat elected President will be impeached.” 

Jerry Nadler’s Zipper Vs. The Horowitz Report

As this decade draws to a close, the political calendar for Monday will feature the Heavyweight Fight Card of Fat Jerry Nadler’s Zipper versus The Horowitz Report.

At 9:00 AM from the Longworth House Office Building, the House Judiciary Committee will hold its second impeachment hearing entitled “The Impeachment Inquiry into President Donald J. Trump:  Presentations from the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and House Judiciary Committee.”

Sometime Monday morning DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz's report into the FBI’s intrusive wiretapping powers will be made public.  Release of the IG’s report follows revelations in October that a related—and equally politically charged—examination of the origins of the Russia investigation has shifted to a criminal probe.

Horowitz, during the more than a year-and-a-half investigation, has not commented on his investigation into FISA court abuses to issue secret warrants by “dirty cops” to monitor persons within the Trump campaign during the 2016 presidential election.  Warrants were renewed several times by judges based on uncorroborated information obtained by disgraced British spy Christopher Steele and paid for by Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

Thus far, four Inspector General reports and internal Justice Department documents have found senior FBI officers guilty of lying, insubordination, security violations, mishandling confidential material and personal biases against President Trump.

Media outlets whose implicit agenda has been to damage this president have deliberately downplayed the significance of Horowitz’s report.

If you believe, as many do, the Democrats are governed by the clock and the calendar in moving forward with Articles of Impeachment the facts are these:

Lindsey Graham, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee sent a letter to Horowitz on November 18th inviting him to testify before the committee on his findings.  Horowitz agreed to the date authorized by Graham which he set for December 11, 2019.

Horowitz Cc’d his letter to Dianne Feinstein who is the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee and to Jerry Nadler, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.  In addition, copies were sent to Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), Rep. Doug Collins (R-GA), Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI), Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH).

Horowitz gave assurances the “lengthy” report would be published with few redactions and without a need to prepare or issue “separate classified and public versions of the report.”

When asked if Chairman Nadler would hold a hearing on the FISA report once it is released, Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-TX) said, "No chance. Jerry Nadler is going to run, not walk, away from any opportunity to bring the Inspector General in to talk about these issues."

The ranking member on the Committee, Georgia Republican Doug Collins, has asked Nadler to schedule a hearing. "FISA oversight falls squarely within the Judiciary Committee’s jurisdiction. We must act swiftly to address concerns outlined in the Inspector General’s report," he wrote in a letter to Nadler.

“I’m not aware of any terrible problem with the FISA court and specifically not with the Carter Page application,” Nadler said.

More than two months later, a hearing focused on Horowitz's report has not been scheduled by the committee. A representative for Nadler did not respond to a request for comment.

Republican Reps. Jim Jordan and Mark Meadows also pressed House Oversight Committee Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney (she replaced Rep. Elijah Cummings who died recently) to hold a FISA report hearing, making the request in a letter. A representative for Maloney did not respond to a request for comment about whether such a hearing might be scheduled.

CNN’s War Against Devin Nunes

CNN has lost so much of its prior viewership and its reputation it would be wise for the network to shut down, fire its entire management team and most of its journalists and start over with an entirely new name and a code of ethics.

Their televised Trump Derangement Syndrome has but one agenda:  to abort the presidency of Donald J. Trump by any means necessary.  Their Orwellian “Ministry of Truth” now includes a good and decent man whom they view as an acceptable casualty in their war against the President—Ranking Member of the House Intelligence Committee, Devin Nunes.

When the American public learns of a completely false news story, CNN is usually at the center of the story.

Nunes said on Saturday he plans to sue CNN and the Daily Beast for stories that accused him of meeting with a former Ukraine prosecutor Viktor Shokin in Vienna, Austria last year in a hunt for dirt on former Vice President Joe Biden.

Joseph A. Bondy (pictured in the graphic above) is the “source” for the story.  Bondy is the Manhattan attorney representing Soviet-born Lev Parnas.  Bondy wants Parnas to testify before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence led by Adam Schiff.

Parnas is living under house arrest at his Florida home after federal prosecutors charged him with illegally funneling foreign money into U.S. political campaigns.

The unsavory Mr. Bondy was cheered on via Twitter by indicted anti-Trump attorney Michael Avenatti.

Mr. Nunes released an official statement regarding his lawsuit against the laughingstock cable news outfit:

“These demonstrably false and scandalous stories published by the Daily Beast and CNN are the perfect example of defamation and reckless disregard for the truth. Some political operative offered these fake stories to at least five different media outlets before finding someone irresponsible enough to publish them. I look forward to prosecuting these cases, including the media outlets as well as the sources of their fake stories, to the fullest extent of the law. I intend to hold the Daily Beast and CNN accountable for their actions. They will find themselves in court soon after Thanksgiving.”

Every American should be alarmed by the McCarthyism that is prevalent in the media and the Intelligence Community.  Devin Nunes has been at the heart of the scandals surrounding a coup attempt and the collection of intelligence that allegedly occurred during the Trump transition in November and December of 2016 and January of 2017.

“There was clearly significant information about President Trump and his team [Trump Tower wiretapping] and there were additional names that were unmasked,” said Nunes in March of 2017.

Tuesday evening, March 21:  Nunes took a phone call while sharing a ride with a staffer, according to The Washington Post. After the call, he switched cars without telling his team where he was going.  The unscheduled trip was to the White House, where an unnamed source provided Nunes with information about incidental collection of Trump and his associates.

Wednesday afternoon, March 22: Nunes held a press conference in the Capitol building outlining “incidental collection” of Trump and associates, as well as their “unmasking,” from FISA surveillance.

Monday, March 27: Nunes admits meeting secretly at the White House with intelligence officials to view the intelligence behind his claims in his March 22 press conference.

In response, Adam Schiff called on Nunes to “recuse himself from any further involvement in the Russia investigation” and all “oversight matters pertaining to any incidental collection of the Trump transition."

In early April 2017, the House Ethics Committee opened an investigation into whether Nunes broke rules governing the public disclosure of classified information when he told reporters he had obtained details about “American intelligence monitoring foreign officials who may have picked up communications of Trump transition team members.”

Eight months later the Ethics Committee closed the case against Nunes declaring, “The Committee does not determine whether information is or is not classified.  In the course of this investigation, the Committee sought the analysis of Representative Nunes’s statements by classification experts in the Intelligence Community. Based solely on the conclusion of these classification experts that the information that Representative Nunes disclosed was not classified, the Committee will take no further action and considers this matter closed.”

There are conflicting opinions about the upcoming report from Inspector General Michael Horowitz to be released on December 9th concerning abuse of the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).  Ex-Whitewater Independent Counsel Sol Wisenberg feels it will be “very, very hard-hitting.”  Others expect the report will find there were “mistakes in the FBI’s handling of the FISA process, but that those mistakes do not undermine the premise for the FBI’s investigation.”

The Russia Hoaxers have apparently settled on “We did nothing wrong, but if we did, it was all the fault of some low-level employees in Cincinnati” as their primary spin on the Horowitz IG report, which they haven’t read (and isn’t even finished). https://t.co/lUHe4fOdAa

— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) November 22, 2019

You know it’s bad when CNN is reporting this...@PreetBharara on altering a document to obtain a FISA Warrant:
"really serious, it doesn’t get a lot more serious than that." pic.twitter.com/Z5QDd0dacA

— Benny (@bennyjohnson) November 22, 2019

UPDATE:  Welcome readers of Whatfinger News.

UPDATE II:  Welcome readers of Pirate’s Cove.  We are grateful to the Admiral for linking to this post.

Schiff: Dems Won't Revise FISA Memo Response

"Adam came down from Mount Ego. As he came down from the mountain with the two tablets of the FISA memo in his hand, Adam did not know that he was still bug-eyed after consulting with his puppetmaster.”

Ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff, said yesrday panel Democrats will not make any revisions to their response to the Republican memo alleging surveillance abuses by the FBI and DOJ in the Russia probe.

"We are not going to make any revisions to it. The only question is what redactions will be made. Obviously, we'd like to keep those to a minimum. The White House has a different interest," Schiff added. "Their interest is in redacting anything that doesn't reflect well in the White House."

Democrats say their 10-page memo provides more context to the GOP memo, which details how the FBI and DOJ applied for warrants from the FISA court to gather information on Carter Page which the President refused to declassify citing “significant concerns for national security and law enforcement interests.

The Steele dossier was paid for by Hillary, a fact that was never disclosed in the application for the warrant, according to the Devin Nunes memo.

While the President can be overridden by parliamentary procedures in the House, it is unclear how the Democrats’ decision not to revise their memo will impact his decision to allow its release to the public.

The Democrats deliberately booby trapped it.

I asked Schiff if FBI wants significant changes to his memo. He says: "We're not going to make any revisions to it. The only question is what redactions will be made, and obviously we'd like to keep those to a minimum." https://t.co/NVHlpcyr9g

— Manu Raju (@mkraju) February 14, 2018

Liberal Despair About Trump

Chuck Todd, NBC’s Meet the Press host, gave an impassioned monologue on MSNBC the other day.

“I’m not going to go full Howard Beale here, but close. It feels like we have reached a level of crazy in this White House, and it is difficult to take it anymore. Reality TV, tabloid gossip, conspiracy theories, name-calling, vulgarities, and a level of egomania few have ever seen in Washington — and that is saying something!”

Forty-two years ago, Metro Goldwyn Mayer (MGM) produced the film Network.  Howard Beale, the anchorman to which Todd referred, struggled to accept the ramifications of the social ills and depravities existing in the world.  Rather than provide Beale with the psychiatric help he needed, the network exploited him for higher ratings.

After receiving his two-week’s notice, Beale went on the air to tell his viewers he had “run out of bullshit.”  What followed won the film four Academy Awards.

“I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's worth; banks are going bust; shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter; punks are running wild in the street, and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it.”

“We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat. And we sit watching our TVs while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be!”

“We all know things are bad ─ worse than bad ─ they're crazy.”

“It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out any more. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we're living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, ‘Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials, and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone.’"

“Well, I'm not going to leave you alone. I want you to get mad! I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot. I don't want you to write to your Congressman, because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street.”

“All I know is that first, you've got to get mad. You've gotta say, ‘I'm a human being, goddammit! My life has value!’"

“So, I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window, open it, and stick your head out and yell, ‘I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!’"

Powerful stuff. Right?

Under President Trump the economy is booming, unemployment is the lowest it’s been in half a century, ISIS has been virtually destroyed, illegal immigration is tangibly being curtailed, jobs and manufacturing are returning to their highest levels in eight years and criminals from the Clinton/Obama era being identified. America is reaching, once again, for her best.

Prime Minister Winston Churchill spent years as an outsider whose warnings about the threats that England faced from Nazi Germany caused him to be reviled as a warmonger, imperial nationalist and alarmist until his warnings proved precisely right. Even after World War II broke out, Churchill’s leadership was only grudgingly accepted by the elites who had kept him in the political wilderness for years.

Perhaps nothing is as wrongheaded as the efforts by President Trump’s chorus of haters to cast George Orwell’s 1984 as a clarion call against the rise of a Trump-like fascist controlling us with a present-day version of the Ministry of Truth. 

If anything, we’ve learned that the NSA and the Intelligence Community did some of its most devilish work for Barack Obama and Democrat Party leaders who wanted to transmute the United States into a Russian-style intelligence dictatorship and the FBI into a KGB-style weapon to smear their political opponent.

UPDATE:  Welcome Bad Blue Uncensored News readers.  We are grateful to Doug Ross for linking to this post.