As we begin to understand the general outline of how the Schiff Dossier was assembled, we are now starting to get into the specifics. First discovered by researcher Stephen McIntyre, there is now evidence surfacing showing the ICIG recently created an entirely new ‘whistleblower complaint form’ that specifically allowed for the filing of complaints “heard from others“.

Prior to the current “whistleblower complaint” the Intelligence Community Inspector General did not accept whistle-blower claims without first hand knowledge. However, the ICIG revised the protocol in August 2019 allowing for the EXACT type of complaint now registered from the CIA whistleblower.

The IGIC revision was made at the same time HPSCI Chairman Adam Schiff was tweeting in August about President Trump, Rudy Giuliani and holding back funding pending assistance with political opponents. Note the Date: (link)

The timing here is far too coincidental. This was a set-up.

Sean Davis from the Federalist is also hot on the trail.

• Sean Davis – Between May 2018 and August 2019, the intelligence community secretly eliminated a requirement that whistleblowers provide direct, first-hand knowledge of alleged wrongdoings. This raises questions about the intelligence community’s behavior regarding the August submission of a whistleblower complaint against President Donald Trump. The new complaint document no longer requires potential whistleblowers who wish to have their concerns expedited to Congress to have direct, first-hand knowledge of the alleged wrongdoing that they are reporting.
  
  The brand new version of the whistleblower complaint form, which was not made public until after the transcript of Trump’s July 25 phone call with the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky and the complaint addressed to Congress were made public, eliminates the first-hand knowledge requirement and allows employees to file whistleblower complaints even if they have zero direct knowledge of underlying evidence and only “heard about [wrongdoing] from others.”
  
  The internal properties of the newly revised “Disclosure of Urgent Concern” form, which the intelligence community inspector general (ICIG) requires to be submitted under the Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act (ICWPA), show that the document was uploaded on September 24, 2019, at 4:25 p.m., just days before the anti-Trump complaint was declassified and released to the public. The markings on the document state that it was revised in August 2019, but no specific date of revision is disclosed. (read more)

President Trump announced Joseph Macguire as the Acting ODNI on August 8th, 2019. (link) The CIA operative “whistle-blower” letter to Adam Schiff and Richard Burr was on August 12th (link). Immediately following this letter, the ICIG rules and requirements for “whistle-blowers” was modified, allowing hearsay complaints. On August 28th Adam Schiff begins tweeting about the construct of the complaint.


As Stephen McIntyre notes: “it appears almost certain that, subsequent to the CIA operative “WB” complaint, the DNI introduced a brand new Urgent Disclosure Form which offered a previously unavailable alternative to report allegations with no personal knowledge.”


The prior IGIC complaint form can be viewed via the Wayback Machine – SEE HERE and the new IGIC complaint form that allows hearsay can be compared HERE.

>>>The CIA whistleblower complaint is likely the VERY FIRST complaint allowed using the new IGIC protocol and standard.<<< Taken in combination with the timeline of the August 12th notification letter to Schiff and Burr and the Schiff tweet of August 28th, there’s little room for doubt this Ukraine whistleblower impeachment effort was pre-planned.

Additionally, this coordinated effort ties back-in Intelligence Community Inspector General, Michael K Atkinson.

The center of the Lawfare Alliance influence was/is the Department of Justice National Security Division, DOJ-NSD. It was the DOJ-NSD running the Main Justice side of the 2016 operations to support Operation Crossfire Hurricane and FBI agent Peter Strzok. It was also the DOJ-NSD where the sketchy legal theories around FARA [Foreign Agents Registration Act] violations (Sec. 901) originated.

The Intelligence Community Inspector General (ICIG) is Michael K Atkinson. ICIG Atkinson is the official who accepted the ridiculous premise of a hearsay ‘whistle-blower‘ complaint; an intelligence whistleblower who was “blowing-the-whistle” based on second hand information of a phone call without any direct personal knowledge, ie ‘hearsay‘.

Michael K Atkinson was previously the Senior Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General of the National Security Division of the Department of Justice (DOJ-NSD) in 2016. That makes Atkinson senior legal counsel to John Carlin and Mary McCord who were the former heads of the DOJ-NSD in 2016 when the stop Trump operation was underway.


[Irony Reminder: The DOJ-NSD was purposefully under no IG oversight. In 2015 the OIG requested oversight and it was Sally Yates who responded with a lengthy 58 page legal explanation saying, essentially, ‘nope – not allowed.’ (PDF HERE) All of the DOJ is subject to oversight, except the NSD.]

Put another way, Michael Atkinson was the lawyer for the same DOJ-NSD players who: (1) lied to the FISA court (Judge Rosemary Collyer) about the 80% non compliant NSA database abuse using FBI contractors; (2) filed the FISA application against Carter Page; and (3) used FARA violations as tools for political surveillance and political targeting.

Yes, that means Michael Atkinson was Senior Counsel for the DOJ-NSD, at the very epicenter of the political weaponization and FISA abuse.

Immediately after the Carter Page FISA warrant is approved, in the period where DOJ-NSD head John Carlin has given his notice of intent to leave but not yet left, inside those specific two weeks, the National Security Division of the DOJ tells the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) they have been breaking the law. The NSD specifically inform the court they are aware of contractors who have been using FISA 702(16)(17) database search queries to extract information on political candidates.

DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz has looked into the FISA application used against U.S. Person Carter Page. Additionally, U.S. Attorney John Durham is said to be looking at the intelligence communities’ use of systems for spying and surveillance.


the DOJ-NSD exploitation of the NSA database, and/or DOJ-NSD FISA abuse, and/or DOJ-NSD FARA corruption were ever to reach sunlight, current ICIG Atkinson -as the lawyer for the process- would be under a lot of scrutiny for his involvement.

Yes, that gives current ICIG Michael Atkinson a strong and corrupt motive to participate with the Schiff/Lawfare impeachment objective.

Atkinson’s conflict-of-self-interest, and/or possible blackmail upon him by deep state actors who most certainly know his compromise, likely influenced his approach to this whistleblower complaint. That would explain why the Dept. of Justice Office of Legal Counsel so strongly rebuked Atkinson’s interpretation of his responsibility with the complaint.

In the Justice Department’s OLC opinion, they point out that Atkinson’s internal justification for accepting the whistleblower complaint was poor legal judgement. [See Here] I would say Atkinson’s decision is directly related to his own risk exposure:

Within a heavy propaganda report from the New York Times there are also details about the Intelligence Community Inspector General that show the tell-tale fingerprints of the ICIG supportive intent (emphasis mine):

• […] Mr. Atkinson, a Trump appointee, nevertheless concluded that the allegations appeared to be credible and identified two layers of concern.
  
  The first involved a possible violation of criminal law. Mr. Trump’s comments to Mr. Zelensky “could be viewed as soliciting a foreign campaign contribution in violation of the campaign-finance laws,” Mr. Atkinson wrote, according to the Justice Department memo. (read more)

Does the “foreign campaign contribution” angle sound familiar? It should, because that argument was used in the narrative around the Trump Tower meeting with the Russian Lobbyist Natalia Veselnitskaya. More specifically, just like FARA violations the overused “campaign contribution” narrative belongs to a specific network of characters, Lawfare.

The “Schiff Dossier”, aka “whistle-blower” complaint was a constructed effort of allied members within congress and the intelligence apparatus to renew the impeachment effort. The intelligence team, including the ICIG, changed the whistleblower form to allow the CIA to insert the Schiff Dossier, written by Lawfare.

The Soft-Coup effort continues…

So given recent events it's time for the unofficial Impeaching Trump thread. I don't take impeachment lightly but to me hearing Trump ask a foreign government to investigate his political rival crosses a line.

Simply put if Obama had done this I would be very unhappy.

Before the rough transcript of Trump's call was released I wasn't on the impeachment bandwagon even though I saw Trump being unfit and corrupt. With '20 right around the corner and him being voted out of office is going to the best form of impeachment. I also doubt enough republicans would actually vote for it no matter what. But Trump crossed a line that I think most people can see. It might feel better attacking the other side but it still doesn't change what Trump did.

Fact check-Were the whistleblower blower rules change?

Another conspiracy theory debunked.

In addition, the intelligence community's inspector general, Michael Atkinson, deemed the complaint an "urgent concern" that he was required by law to provide to the congressional intelligence committees. But [acting Director of Nationa Intelligence Joseph] Maguire refused to do so on the advice of the Justice Department, resulting in a standoff with Congress that ultimately resulted in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi backing a formal impeachment inquiry against Trump.

Factcheck = Washington Post

Politifact = Tampa Tribune

Both are centerpieces of the Hate Trump (and really, Hate Republican) liberal media.

As I've cited before, 75% of their "factchecks" target Republicans, and only 25% of the time do they factcheck Democrats, to have some semblance of balanced non-partisan scrutiny.
And I've read many, MANY "factchecks" where I know for certain that Trump or some other Republican was 100% accurate in their public statements, but the "factcheck" sites label it as "partially true" or "somewhat true" by straining to find some context that wasn't covered in the comments. When Trump or whoever answers questions at a press conference for 10 minutes, or even 45 minutes, it is impossible to cover every nuance in a brief answer, no matter how much one tries.
And Republicans --of course!-- are subject to far more scrutiny in their comments, whereas liberal statements are just accepted as true without challence by liberal reporters and interviewers.

One comment I can recall by Trump was where he talked about islamic immigration to Sweden, that has resulted in a more than doubling of rape statistics there (roughly the time Trump made his "shithole nations" comment).
The liberal media and factcheckers labelled Trum ignorant and racist and "partly true" at best in his comments. Within a week, the true facts revealed that Trump's comments were 100% true.
And fuck the liberal "factcheckers". It is another attempt by the liberal media to hide behind a false veil of pseudo-objectivity, that they truly don't have. They are liberal media propagandists. And Snopes is another liberal apologist site. They are right sometimes, but even a broken clock is right twice a day.

by John Solomon, The Hill


Former Vice President Joe Biden, now a 2020 Democratic presidential contender, has locked into a specific story about the controversy in Ukraine.

He insists that, in spring 2016, he strong-armed Ukraine to fire its chief prosecutor solely because Biden believed that official was corrupt and inept, not because the Ukrainian was investigating a natural gas company, Burisma Holdings, that hired Biden's son, Hunter, into a lucrative job.

There’s just one problem.

Hundreds of pages of never-released memos and documents — many from inside the American team helping Burisma to stave off its legal troubles — conflict with Biden’s narrative.

And they raise the troubling prospect that U.S. officials may have painted a false picture in Ukraine that helped ease Burisma’s legal troubles and stop prosecutors’ plans to interview Hunter Biden during the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

For instance, Burisma’s American legal representatives met with Ukrainian officials just days after Biden forced the firing of the country’s chief prosecutor and offered “an apology for dissemination of false information by U.S. representatives and public figures” about the Ukrainian prosecutors, according to the Ukrainian government’s official memo of the meeting. The effort to secure that meeting began the same day the prosecutor's firing was announced.

In addition, Burisma’s American team offered to introduce Ukrainian prosecutors to Obama administration officials to make amends, according to that memo and the American legal team’s internal emails.

The memos raise troubling questions:

1.) If the Ukraine prosecutor’s firing involved only his alleged corruption and ineptitude, why did Burisma's American legal team refer to those allegations as “false information?"

2.) If the firing had nothing to do with the Burisma case, as Biden has adamantly claimed, why would Burisma’s American lawyers contact the replacement prosecutor within hours of the termination and urgently seek a meeting in Ukraine to discuss the case?

Ukrainian prosecutors say they have tried to get this information to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) since the summer of 2018, fearing it might be evidence of possible violations of U.S. ethics laws. First, they hired a former federal prosecutor to bring the information to the U.S. attorney in New York, who, they say, showed no interest. Then, the Ukrainians reached out to President Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani.

Ukraine’s new president, Volodymyr Zelensky, told Trump in July that he plans to launch his own wide-ranging investigation into what happened with the Bidens and Burisma.

“I’m knowledgeable about the situation,” Zelensky told Trump, asking the American president to forward any evidence he might know about. "The issue of the investigation of the case is actually the issue of making sure to restore the honesty so we will take care of that and will work on the investigation of the case.”

Biden has faced scrutiny since December 2015, when the New York Times published a story noting that Burisma hired Hunter Biden just weeks after the vice president was asked by President Obama to oversee U.S.-Ukraine relations. That story also alerted Biden’s office that Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin had an active investigation of Burisma and its founder.

Documents I obtained this year detail an effort to change the narrative after the [New York] Times story about Hunter Biden, with the help of the Obama State Department.

Hunter Biden’s American business partner in Burisma, Devon Archer, texted a colleague two days after the Times story about a strategy to counter the “new wave of scrutiny” and stated that he and Hunter Biden had just met at the State Department. The text suggested there was about to be a new “USAID project the embassy is announcing with us” and that it was “perfect for us to move forward now with momentum.”

I have sued the State Department for any records related to that meeting. The reason is simple: There is both a public interest and an ethics question to knowing if Hunter Biden and his team sought State’s assistance while his father was vice president.

The controversy ignited anew earlier this year when I disclosed that Joe Biden admitted during a 2018 videotaped speech that, as vice president in March 2016, he threatened to cancel $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees, to pressure Ukraine’s then-President Petro Poroshenko to fire Shokin. [Who was fired by the Ukranian president within 6 hours of the threat.]

At the time, Shokin’s office was investigating Burisma. Shokin told me he was making plans to question Hunter Biden about $3 million in fees that Biden and his partner, Archer, collected from Burisma through their American firm. Documents seized by the FBI in an unrelated case confirm the payments, which in many months totaled more than $166,000.

Some media outlets have reported that, at the time Joe Biden forced the firing in March 2016, there were no open investigations. Those reports are wrong. A British-based investigation of Burisma's owner was closed down in early 2015 on a technicality when a deadline for documents was not met. But the Ukraine Prosecutor General's office still had two open inquiries in March 2016, according to the official case file provided me. One of those cases involved taxes; the other, allegations of corruption. Burisma announced the cases against it were not closed and settled until January 2017.

After I first reported it in a column, the New York Times and ABC News published similar stories confirming my reporting.

Joe Biden has since responded that he forced Shokin’s firing over concerns about corruption and ineptitude, which he claims were widely shared by Western allies, and that it had nothing to do with the Burisma investigation.

Some of the new documents I obtained call that claim into question.

In a newly sworn affidavit prepared for a European court, Shokin testified that when he was fired in March 2016, he was told the reason was that Biden was unhappy about the Burisma investigation. “The truth is that I was forced out because I was leading a wide-ranging corruption probe into Burisma Holdings, a natural gas firm active in Ukraine and Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, was a member of the Board of Directors,” Shokin testified.

“On several occasions President Poroshenko asked me to have a look at the case against Burisma and consider the possibility of winding down the investigative actions in respect of this company but I refused to close this investigation,” Shokin added.

Shokin certainly would have reason to hold a grudge over his firing. But his account is supported by documents from Burisma’s legal team in America, which appeared to be moving into Ukraine with intensity as Biden’s effort to fire Shokin picked up steam.

Burisma’s own accounting records show that it paid tens of thousands of dollars while Hunter Biden served on the board of an American lobbying and public relations firm, Blue Star Strategies, run by Sally Painter and Karen Tramontano, who both served in President Bill Clinton’s administration.

Just days before Biden forced Shokin’s firing, Painter met with the No. 2 official at the Ukrainian embassy in Washington and asked to meet officials in Kiev around the same time that Joe Biden visited there. Ukrainian embassy employee Oksana Shulyar emailed Painter afterward: “With regards to the meetings in Kiev, I suggest that you wait until the next week when there is an expected vote of the government’s reshuffle.”

Ukraine’s Washington embassy confirmed the conversations between Shulyar and Painter but said the reference to a shakeup in Ukrainian government was not specifically referring to Shokin’s firing or anything to do with Burisma.

Painter then asked one of the Ukraine embassy’s workers to open the door for meetings with Ukraine’s prosecutors about the Burisma investigation, the memos show. Eventually, Blue Star would pay that Ukrainian official money for his help with the prosecutor's office.

At the time, Blue Star worked in concert with an American criminal defense lawyer, John Buretta, who was hired by Burisma to help address the case in Ukraine. The case was settled in January 2017 for a few million dollars in fines for alleged tax issues.

Buretta, Painter, Tramontano, Hunter Biden and Joe Biden’s campaign have not responded to numerous calls and emails seeking comment.

On March 29, 2016, the day Shokin’s firing was announced, Buretta asked to speak with Yuriy Sevruk, the prosecutor named to temporarily replace Shokin, but was turned down, the memos show.

Blue Star, using the Ukrainian embassy worker it had hired, eventually scored a meeting with Sevruk on April 6, 2016, a week after Shokin’s firing. Buretta, Tramontano and Painter attended that meeting in Kiev, according to Blue Star’s memos.

Sevruk memorialized the meeting in a government memo that the general prosecutor’s office provided to me, stating that the three Americans offered an apology for the “false” narrative that had been provided by U.S. officials about Shokin being corrupt and inept.

“They realized that the information disseminated in the U.S. was incorrect and that they would facilitate my visit to the U.S. for the purpose of delivering the true information to the State Department management,” the memo stated.

The memo also quoted the Americans as saying they knew Shokin pursued an aggressive corruption investigation against Burisma’s owner, only to be thwarted by British allies: “These individuals noted that they had been aware that the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine had implemented all required steps for prosecution … and that he was released by the British court due to the underperformance of the British law enforcement agencies.”

The memo provides a vastly different portrayal of Shokin than Biden's. And its contents are partially backed by subsequent emails from Blue Star and Buretta that confirm the offer to bring Ukrainian authorities to meet the Obama administration in Washington.

For instance, Tramontano wrote the Ukrainian prosecution team on April 16, 2016, saying U.S. Justice Department officials, including top international prosecutor Bruce Swartz, might be willing to meet. “The reforms are not known to the US Justice Department and it would be useful for the Prosecutor General to meet officials in the US and share this information directly,” she wrote.

Buretta sent a similar email to the Ukrainians, writing that “I think you would find it productive to meet with DOJ officials in Washington” and providing contact information for Swartz. “I would be happy to help,” added Buretta, a former senior DOJ official.

Burisma, Buretta and Blue Star continued throughout 2016 to try to resolve the open issues in Ukraine, and memos recount various contacts with the State Department and the U.S. embassy in Kiev seeking help in getting the Burisma case resolved.

Just days before Trump took office, Burisma announced it had resolved all of its legal issues. And Buretta gave an interview in Ukraine about how he helped navigate the issues.

Today, two questions remain.

One is whether it was ethically improper or even illegal for Biden to intervene to fire the prosecutor handling Burisma’s case, given his son’s interests. That is one that requires more investigation and the expertise of lawyers.

The second is whether Biden has given the American people an honest accounting of what happened. The new documents I obtained raise serious doubts about his story’s credibility. And that’s an issue that needs to be resolved by voters.

____________________________________

John Solomon is an award-winning investigative journalist whose work over the years has exposed U.S. and FBI intelligence failures before the Sept. 11 attacks, federal scientists’ misuse of foster children and veterans in drug experiments, and numerous cases of political corruption. He serves as an investigative columnist and executive vice president for video at The Hill. Follow him on Twitter @jsolomonReports.

John Solomon's prior columns:
https://thehill.com/author/john-solomon

September 30, 2019 By The Federalist Staff


On Fox News’ “Fox & Friends” Monday, Sean Davis explained the corruption within the intelligence community. Over the course of the past year, the intel community eliminated a requirement that whistleblowers must provide firsthand knowledge of alleged wrongdoings in order to file a complaint.

“The changes to eliminate the requirement for firsthand information in whistleblower complaints happened between May 2018 and August 2019. … When we asked the DNI and the IC IG for information on who changed it, when, and why, they straight up refused to answer that question,” Davis said.
Davis also talked about a possible collaboration between Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and the intelligence community.

On Aug. 28, Schiff tweeted information from the whistleblower complaint before it was made available to Congress in September.

By KENNETH P. VOGEL and DAVID STERN
01/11/2017


Donald Trump wasn’t the only presidential candidate whose campaign was boosted by officials of a former Soviet bloc country.

Ukrainian government officials tried to help Hillary Clinton and undermine Trump by publicly questioning his fitness for office. They also disseminated documents implicating a top Trump aide in corruption and suggested they were investigating the matter, only to back away after the election. And they helped Clinton’s allies research damaging information on Trump and his advisers, a Politico investigation found.

A Ukrainian-American operative who was consulting for the Democratic National Committee met with top officials in the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington in an effort to expose ties between Trump, top campaign aide Paul Manafort and Russia, according to people with direct knowledge of the situation.

The Ukrainian efforts had an impact in the race, helping to force Manafort’s resignation and advancing the narrative that Trump’s campaign was deeply connected to Ukraine’s foe to the east, Russia. But they were far less concerted or centrally directed than Russia’s alleged hacking and dissemination of Democratic emails.

Russia’s effort was personally directed by Russian President Vladimir Putin, involved the country’s military and foreign intelligence services, according to U.S. intelligence officials. They reportedly briefed Trump last week on the possibility that Russian operatives might have compromising information on the president-elect. And at a Senate hearing last week on the hacking, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said “I don't think we've ever encountered a more aggressive or direct campaign to interfere in our election process than we've seen in this case.”

There’s little evidence of such a top-down effort by Ukraine. Longtime observers suggest that the rampant corruption, factionalism and economic struggles plaguing the country — not to mention its ongoing strife with Russia — would render it unable to pull off an ambitious covert interference campaign in another country’s election. And President Petro Poroshenko’s administration, along with the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington, insists that Ukraine stayed neutral in the race.

Yet Politico’s investigation found evidence of Ukrainian government involvement in the race that appears to strain diplomatic protocol dictating that governments refrain from engaging in one another’s elections.

Russia’s meddling has sparked outrage from the American body politic. The U.S. intelligence community undertook the rare move of publicizing its findings on the matter, and President Barack Obama took several steps to officially retaliate, while members of Congress continue pushing for more investigations into the hacking and a harder line against Russia, which was already viewed in Washington as America’s leading foreign adversary.

Ukraine, on the other hand, has traditionally enjoyed strong relations with U.S. administrations. Its officials worry that could change under Trump, whose team has privately expressed sentiments ranging from ambivalence to deep skepticism about Poroshenko’s regime, while sounding unusually friendly notes about Putin’s regime.

Poroshenko is scrambling to alter that dynamic, recently signing a $50,000-a-month contract with a well-connected GOP-linked Washington lobbying firm to set up meetings with U.S. government officials “to strengthen U.S.-Ukrainian relations.”





A Ukrainian-American operative who was consulting for the Democratic National Committee met with top officials in the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington in an effort to expose ties between Trump, top campaign aide Paul Manafort (pictured) and Russia, according to people with direct knowledge of the situation.

A Ukrainian-American operative who was consulting for the Democratic National Committee met with top officials in the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington in an effort to expose ties between Trump, top campaign aide Paul Manafort (pictured) and Russia, according to people with direct knowledge of the situation. | Getty

Revelations about Ukraine’s anti-Trump efforts could further set back those efforts.

“Things seem to be going from bad to worse for Ukraine,” said David A. Merkel, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council who helped oversee U.S. relations with Russia and Ukraine while working in George W. Bush’s State Department and National Security Council.

Merkel, who has served as an election observer in Ukrainian presidential elections dating back to 1993, noted there’s some irony in Ukraine and Russia taking opposite sides in the 2016 presidential race, given that past Ukrainian elections were widely viewed in Washington’s foreign policy community as proxy wars between the U.S. and Russia.

“Now, it seems that a U.S. election may have been seen as a surrogate battle by those in Kiev and Moscow,” Merkel said.

•••

The Ukrainian antipathy for Trump’s team — and alignment with Clinton’s — can be traced back to late 2013. That’s when the country’s president, Viktor Yanukovych, whom Manafort had been advising, abruptly backed out of a European Union pact linked to anti-corruption reforms. Instead, Yanukovych entered into a multibillion-dollar bailout agreement with Russia, sparking protests across Ukraine and prompting Yanukovych to flee the country to Russia under Putin’s protection.

In the ensuing crisis, Russian troops moved into the Ukrainian territory of Crimea, and Manafort dropped off the radar.

Manafort’s work for Yanukovych caught the attention of a veteran Democratic operative named Alexandra Chalupa, who had worked in the White House Office of Public Liaison during the Clinton administration. Chalupa went on to work as a staffer, then as a consultant, for Democratic National Committee. The DNC paid her $412,000 from 2004 to June 2016, according to Federal Election Commission records, though she also was paid by other clients during that time, including Democratic campaigns and the DNC’s arm for engaging expatriate Democrats around the world.

A daughter of Ukrainian immigrants who maintains strong ties to the Ukrainian-American diaspora and the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine, Chalupa, a lawyer by training, in 2014 was doing pro bono work for another client interested in the Ukrainian crisis and began researching Manafort’s role in Yanukovych’s rise, as well as his ties to the pro-Russian oligarchs who funded Yanukovych’s political party.

In an interview this month, Chalupa told Politico she had developed a network of sources in Kiev and Washington, including investigative journalists, government officials and private intelligence operatives. While her consulting work at the DNC this past election cycle centered on mobilizing ethnic communities — including Ukrainian-Americans — she said that, when Trump’s unlikely presidential campaign began surging in late 2015, she began focusing more on the research, and expanded it to include Trump’s ties to Russia, as well.

She occasionally shared her findings with officials from the DNC and Clinton’s campaign, Chalupa said. In January 2016 — months before Manafort had taken any role in Trump’s campaign — Chalupa told a senior DNC official that, when it came to Trump’s campaign, “I felt there was a Russia connection,” Chalupa recalled. “And that, if there was, that we can expect Paul Manafort to be involved in this election,” said Chalupa, who at the time also was warning leaders in the Ukrainian-American community that Manafort was “Putin’s political brain for manipulating U.S. foreign policy and elections.”

She said she shared her concern with Ukraine’s ambassador to the U.S., Valeriy Chaly, and one of his top aides, Oksana Shulyar, during a March 2016 meeting at the Ukrainian Embassy. According to someone briefed on the meeting, Chaly said that Manafort was very much on his radar, but that he wasn’t particularly concerned about the operative’s ties to Trump since he didn’t believe Trump stood much of a chance of winning the GOP nomination, let alone the presidency.

That was not an uncommon view at the time, and, perhaps as a result, Trump’s ties to Russia — let alone Manafort’s — were not the subject of much attention.
That all started to change just four days after Chalupa’s meeting at the embassy, when it was reported that Trump had in fact hired Manafort, suggesting that Chalupa may have been on to something. She quickly found herself in high demand. The day after Manafort’s hiring was revealed, she briefed the DNC’s communications staff on Manafort, Trump and their ties to Russia, according to an operative familiar with the situation.

A former DNC staffer described the exchange as an “informal conversation,” saying “‘briefing’ makes it sound way too formal,” and adding, “We were not directing or driving her work on this.” Yet, the former DNC staffer and the operative familiar with the situation agreed that with the DNC’s encouragement, Chalupa asked embassy staff to try to arrange an interview in which Poroshenko might discuss Manafort’s ties to Yanukovych.

While the embassy declined that request, officials there became “helpful” in Chalupa’s efforts, she said, explaining that she traded information and leads with them. “If I asked a question, they would provide guidance, or if there was someone I needed to follow up with.” But she stressed, “There were no documents given, nothing like that.”

Chalupa said the embassy also worked directly with reporters researching Trump, Manafort and Russia to point them in the right directions. She added, though, “they were being very protective and not speaking to the press as much as they should have. I think they were being careful because their situation was that they had to be very, very careful because they could not pick sides. It’s a political issue, and they didn’t want to get involved politically because they couldn’t.”

Shulyar vehemently denied working with reporters or with Chalupa on anything related to Trump or Manafort, explaining “we were stormed by many reporters to comment on this subject, but our clear and adamant position was not to give any comment [and] not to interfere into the campaign affairs.”

Both Shulyar and Chalupa said the purpose of their initial meeting was to organize a June reception at the embassy to promote Ukraine. According to the embassy’s website, the event highlighted female Ukrainian leaders, featuring speeches by Ukrainian parliamentarian Hanna Hopko, who discussed “Ukraine’s fight against the Russian aggression in Donbas,” and longtime Hillary Clinton confidante Melanne Verveer, who worked for Clinton in the State Department and was a vocal surrogate during the presidential campaign.

Shulyar said her work with Chalupa “didn’t involve the campaign,” and she specifically stressed that “We have never worked to research and disseminate damaging information about Donald Trump and Paul Manafort.”
But Andrii Telizhenko, who worked as a political officer in the Ukrainian Embassy under Shulyar, said she instructed him to help Chalupa research connections between Trump, Manafort and Russia. “Oksana said that if I had any information, or knew other people who did, then I should contact Chalupa,” recalled Telizhenko, who is now a political consultant in Kiev. “They were coordinating an investigation with the Hillary team on Paul Manafort with Alexandra Chalupa,” he said, adding “Oksana was keeping it all quiet,” but “the embassy worked very closely with” Chalupa.

In fact, sources familiar with the effort say that Shulyar specifically called Telizhenko into a meeting with Chalupa to provide an update on an American media outlet’s ongoing investigation into Manafort.

Telizhenko recalled that Chalupa told him and Shulyar that, “If we can get enough information on Paul [Manafort] or Trump’s involvement with Russia, she can get a hearing in Congress by September.”

Chalupa confirmed that, a week after Manafort’s hiring was announced, she discussed the possibility of a congressional investigation with a foreign policy legislative assistant in the office of Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio), who co-chairs the Congressional Ukrainian Caucus. But, Chalupa said, “It didn’t go anywhere.”

Asked about the effort, the Kaptur legislative assistant called it a “touchy subject” in an internal email to colleagues that was accidentally forwarded to Politico.

Kaptur’s office later emailed an official statement explaining that the lawmaker is backing a bill to create an independent commission to investigate “possible outside interference in our elections.” The office added “at this time, the evidence related to this matter points to Russia, but Congresswoman Kaptur is concerned with any evidence of foreign entities interfering in our elections.”

•••

Almost as quickly as Chalupa’s efforts attracted the attention of the Ukrainian Embassy and Democrats, she also found herself the subject of some unwanted attention from overseas.

Within a few weeks of her initial meeting at the embassy with Shulyar and Chaly, Chalupa on April 20 received the first of what became a series of messages from the administrators of her private Yahoo email account, warning her that “state-sponsored actors” were trying to hack into her emails.

She kept up her crusade, appearing on a panel a week after the initial hacking message to discuss her research on Manafort with a group of Ukrainian investigative journalists gathered at the Library of Congress for a program sponsored by a U.S. congressional agency called the Open World Leadership Center.

Center spokeswoman Maura Shelden stressed that her group is nonpartisan and ensures “that our delegations hear from both sides of the aisle, receiving bipartisan information.” She said the Ukrainian journalists in subsequent days met with Republican officials in North Carolina and elsewhere. And she said that, before the Library of Congress event, “Open World’s program manager for Ukraine did contact Chalupa to advise her that Open World is a nonpartisan agency of the Congress.”
Chalupa, though, indicated in an email that was later hacked and released by WikiLeaks that the Open World Leadership Center “put me on the program to speak specifically about Paul Manafort.”

In the email, which was sent in early May to then-DNC communications director Luis Miranda, Chalupa noted that she had extended an invitation to the Library of Congress forum to veteran Washington investigative reporter Michael Isikoff. Two days before the event, he had published a story for Yahoo News revealing the unraveling of a $26 million deal between Manafort and a Russian oligarch related to a telecommunications venture in Ukraine. And Chalupa wrote in the email she’d been “working with for the past few weeks” with Isikoff “and connected him to the Ukrainians” at the event.

Isikoff, who accompanied Chalupa to a reception at the Ukrainian Embassy immediately after the Library of Congress event, declined to comment.

Chalupa further indicated in her hacked May email to the DNC that she had additional sensitive information about Manafort that she intended to share “offline” with Miranda and DNC research director Lauren Dillon, including “a big Trump component you and Lauren need to be aware of that will hit in next few weeks and something I’m working on you should be aware of.” Explaining that she didn’t feel comfortable sharing the intel over email, Chalupa attached a screenshot of a warning from Yahoo administrators about “state-sponsored” hacking on her account, explaining, “Since I started digging into Manafort these messages have been a daily occurrence on my yahoo account despite changing my password often.”

Dillon and Miranda declined to comment.

A DNC official stressed that Chalupa was a consultant paid to do outreach for the party’s political department, not a researcher. She undertook her investigations into Trump, Manafort and Russia on her own, and the party did not incorporate her findings in its dossiers on the subjects, the official said, stressing that the DNC had been building robust research books on Trump and his ties to Russia long before Chalupa began sounding alarms.

Nonetheless, Chalupa’s hacked email reportedly escalated concerns among top party officials, hardening their conclusion that Russia likely was behind the cyber intrusions with which the party was only then beginning to grapple.

Chalupa left the DNC after the Democratic convention in late July to focus fulltime on her research into Manafort, Trump and Russia. She said she provided off-the-record information and guidance to “a lot of journalists” working on stories related to Manafort and Trump’s Russia connections, despite what she described as escalating harassment.

About a month-and-a-half after Chalupa first started receiving hacking alerts, someone broke into her car outside the Northwest Washington home where she lives with her husband and three young daughters, she said. They “rampaged it, basically, but didn’t take anything valuable — left money, sunglasses, $1,200 worth of golf clubs,” she said, explaining she didn’t file a police report after that incident because she didn’t connect it to her research and the hacking.

But by the time a similar vehicle break-in occurred involving two family cars, she was convinced that it was a Russia-linked intimidation campaign. The police report on the latter break-in noted that “both vehicles were unlocked by an unknown person and the interior was ransacked, with papers and the garage openers scattered throughout the cars. Nothing was taken from the vehicles.”

Then, early in the morning on another day, a woman “wearing white flowers in her hair” tried to break into her family’s home at 1:30 a.m., Chalupa said. Shulyar told Chalupa that the mysterious incident bore some of the hallmarks of intimidation campaigns used against foreigners in Russia, according to Chalupa.

“This is something that they do to U.S. diplomats, they do it to Ukrainians. Like, this is how they operate. They break into people’s homes. They harass people. They’re theatrical about it,” Chalupa said. “They must have seen when I was writing to the DNC staff, outlining who Manafort was, pulling articles, saying why it was significant, and painting the bigger picture.”

In a Yahoo News story naming Chalupa as one of 16 “ordinary people” who “shaped the 2016 election,” Isikoff wrote that after Chalupa left the DNC, FBI agents investigating the hacking questioned her and examined her laptop and smartphone.

Chalupa this month told Politico that, as her research and role in the election started becoming more public, she began receiving death threats, along with continued alerts of state-sponsored hacking. But she said, “None of this has scared me off.”

•••

While it’s not uncommon for outside operatives to serve as intermediaries between governments and reporters, one of the more damaging Russia-related stories for the Trump campaign — and certainly for Manafort — can be traced more directly to the Ukrainian government.

Documents released by an independent Ukrainian government agency — and publicized by a parliamentarian — appeared to show $12.7 million in cash payments that were earmarked for Manafort by the Russia-aligned party of the deposed former president, Yanukovych.

The New York Times, in the August story revealing the ledgers’ existence, reported that the payments earmarked for Manafort were “a focus” of an investigation by Ukrainian anti-corruption officials, while CNN reported days later that the FBI was pursuing an overlapping inquiry.

Clinton’s campaign seized on the story to advance Democrats’ argument that Trump’s campaign was closely linked to Russia. The ledger represented “more troubling connections between Donald Trump’s team and pro-Kremlin elements in Ukraine,” Robby Mook, Clinton’s campaign manager, said in a statement. He demanded that Trump “disclose campaign chair Paul Manafort’s and all other campaign employees’ and advisers’ ties to Russian or pro-Kremlin entities, including whether any of Trump’s employees or advisers are currently representing and or being paid by them.”

former Ukrainian investigative journalist and current parliamentarian named Serhiy Leshchenko, who was elected in 2014 as part of Poroshenko’s party, held a news conference to highlight the ledgers, and to urge Ukrainian and American law enforcement to aggressively investigate Manafort.

“I believe and understand the basis of these payments are totally against the law — we have the proof from these books,” Leshchenko said during the news conference, which attracted international media coverage. “If Mr. Manafort denies any allegations, I think he has to be interrogated into this case and prove his position that he was not involved in any misconduct on the territory of Ukraine,” Leshchenko added.

Manafort denied receiving any off-books cash from Yanukovych’s Party of Regions, and said that he had never been contacted about the ledger by Ukrainian or American investigators, later telling POLITICO “I was just caught in the crossfire.”

According to a series of memos reportedly compiled for Trump’s opponents by a former British intelligence agent, Yanukovych, in a secret meeting with Putin on the day after the Times published its report, admitted that he had authorized “substantial kickback payments to Manafort.” But according to the report, which was published Tuesday by BuzzFeed but remains unverified. Yanukovych assured Putin “that there was no documentary trail left behind which could provide clear evidence of this” — an alleged statement that seemed to implicitly question the authenticity of the ledger.

The scrutiny around the ledgers — combined with that from other stories about his Ukraine work — proved too much, and he stepped down from the Trump campaign less than a week after the Times story.

At the time, Leshchenko suggested that his motivation was partly to undermine Trump. “For me, it was important to show not only the corruption aspect, but that he is [a] pro-Russian candidate who can break the geopolitical balance in the world,” Leshchenko told the Financial Times about two weeks after his news conference. The newspaper noted that Trump’s candidacy had spurred “Kiev’s wider political leadership to do something they would never have attempted before: intervene, however indirectly, in a U.S. election,” and the story quoted Leshchenko asserting that the majority of Ukraine’s politicians are “on Hillary Clinton’s side.”

But by this month, Leshchenko was seeking to recast his motivation, telling Politico, “I didn’t care who won the U.S. elections. This was a decision for the American voters to decide.” His goal in highlighting the ledgers, he said was “to raise these issues on a political level and emphasize the importance of the investigation.”

In a series of answers provided to Politico, a spokesman for Poroshenko distanced his administration from both Leshchenko’s efforts and those of the agency that reLeshchenko Leshchenko leased the ledgers, The National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine. It was created in 2014 as a condition for Ukraine to receive aid from the U.S. and the European Union, and it signed an evidence-sharing agreement with the FBI in late June — less than a month and a half before it released the ledgers.

The bureau is “fully independent,” the Poroshenko spokesman said, adding that when it came to the presidential administration there was “no targeted action against Manafort.” He added “as to Serhiy Leshchenko, he positions himself as a representative of internal opposition in the Bloc of Petro Poroshenko’s faction, despite [the fact that] he belongs to the faction,” the spokesman said, adding, “it was about him personally who pushed [the anti-corruption bureau] to proceed with investigation on Manafort.”

But an operative who has worked extensively in Ukraine, including as an adviser to Poroshenko, said it was highly unlikely that either Leshchenko or the anti-corruption bureau would have pushed the issue without at least tacit approval from Poroshenko or his closest allies.

“It was something that Poroshenko was probably aware of and could have stopped if he wanted to,” said the operative.

And, almost immediately after Trump’s stunning victory over Clinton, questions began mounting about the investigations into the ledgers — and the ledgers themselves.

An official with the anti-corruption bureau told a Ukrainian newspaper, “Mr. Manafort does not have a role in this case.”

And, while the anti-corruption bureau told Politico late last month that a “general investigation [is] still ongoing” of the ledger, it said Manafort is not a target of the investigation. “As he is not the Ukrainian citizen, [the anti-corruption bureau] by the law couldn’t investigate him personally,” the bureau said in a statement.

Some Poroshenko critics have gone further, suggesting that the bureau is backing away from investigating because the ledgers might have been doctored or even forged.

Valentyn Nalyvaichenko, a Ukrainian former diplomat who served as the country’s head of security under Poroshenko but is now affiliated with a leading opponent of Poroshenko, said it was fishy that “only one part of the black ledger appeared.” He asked, “Where is the handwriting analysis?” and said it was “crazy” to announce an investigation based on the ledgers. He met last month in Washington with Trump allies, and said, “of course they all recognize that our [anti-corruption bureau] intervened in the presidential campaign.”

And in an interview this week, Manafort, who re-emerged as an informal advisor to Trump after Election Day, suggested that the ledgers were inauthentic and called their publication “a politically motivated false attack on me. My role as a paid consultant was public. There was nothing off the books, but the way that this was presented tried to make it look shady.”

He added that he felt particularly wronged by efforts to cast his work in Ukraine as pro-Russian, arguing “all my efforts were focused on helping Ukraine move into Europe and the West.” He specifically cited his work on denuclearizing the country and on the European Union trade and political pact that Yanukovych spurned before fleeing to Russia. “In no case was I ever involved in anything that would be contrary to U.S. interests,” Manafort said.

Yet Russia seemed to come to the defense of Manafort and Trump last month, when a spokeswoman for Russia’s Foreign Ministry charged that the Ukrainian government used the ledgers as a political weapon.

“Ukraine seriously complicated the work of Trump’s election campaign headquarters by planting information according to which Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign chairman, allegedly accepted money from Ukrainian oligarchs,” Maria Zakharova said at a news briefing, according to a transcript of her remarks posted on the Foreign Ministry’s website. “All of you have heard this remarkable story,” she told assembled reporters.

•••

Beyond any efforts to sabotage Trump, Ukrainian officials didn’t exactly extend a hand of friendship to the GOP nominee during the campaign.

The ambassador, Chaly, penned an op-ed for The Hill, in which he chastised Trump for a confusing series of statements in which the GOP candidate at one point expressed a willingness to consider recognizing Russia’s annexation of the Ukrainian territory of Crimea as legitimate. The op-ed made some in the embassy uneasy, sources said.

“That was like too close for comfort, even for them,” said Chalupa. “That was something that was as risky as they were going to be.”

Former Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk warned on Facebook that Trump had “challenged the very values of the free world.”

Ukraine’s minister of internal affairs, Arsen Avakov, piled on, trashing Trump on Twitter in July as a “clown” and asserting that Trump is “an even bigger danger to the US than terrorism.”

Avakov, in a Facebook post, lashed out at Trump for his confusing Crimea comments, calling the assessment the “diagnosis of a dangerous misfit,” according to a translated screenshot featured in one media report, though he later deleted the post. He called Trump “dangerous for Ukraine and the US” and noted that Manafort worked with Yanukovych when the former Ukrainian leader “fled to Russia through Crimea. Where would Manafort lead Trump?”

The Trump-Ukraine relationship grew even more fraught in September with reports that the GOP nominee had snubbed Poroshenko on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, where the Ukrainian president tried to meet both major party candidates, but scored only a meeting with Clinton.

Telizhenko, the former embassy staffer, said that, during the primaries, Chaly, the country’s ambassador in Washington, had actually instructed the embassy not to reach out to Trump’s campaign, even as it was engaging with those of Clinton and Trump’s leading GOP rival, Ted Cruz.

“We had an order not to talk to the Trump team, because he was critical of Ukraine and the government and his critical position on Crimea and the conflict,” said Telizhenko. “I was yelled at when I proposed to talk to Trump,” he said, adding, “The ambassador said not to get involved — Hillary is going to win.”

This account was confirmed by Nalyvaichenko, the former diplomat and security chief now affiliated with a Poroshenko opponent, who said, “The Ukrainian authorities closed all doors and windows — this is from the Ukrainian side.” He called the strategy “bad and short-sighted.”

Andriy Artemenko, a Ukrainian parliamentarian associated with a conservative opposition party, did meet with Trump’s team during the campaign and said he personally offered to set up similar meetings for Chaly but was rebuffed.

“It was clear that they were supporting Hillary Clinton’s candidacy,” Artemenko said. “They did everything from organizing meetings with the Clinton team, to publicly supporting her, to criticizing Trump. … I think that they simply didn’t meet because they thought that Hillary would win.”

Shulyar rejected the characterizations that the embassy had a ban on interacting with Trump, instead explaining that it “had different diplomats assigned for dealing with different teams tailoring the content and messaging. So it was not an instruction to abstain from the engagement but rather an internal discipline for diplomats not to get involved into a field she or he was not assigned to, but where another colleague was involved.”

And she pointed out that Chaly traveled to the GOP convention in Cleveland in late July and met with members of Trump’s foreign policy team “to highlight the importance of Ukraine and the support of it by the U.S.”
Despite the outreach, Trump’s campaign in Cleveland gutted a proposed amendment to the Republican Party platform that called for the U.S. to provide “lethal defensive weapons” for Ukraine to defend itself against Russian incursion, backers of the measure charged.

The outreach ramped up after Trump’s victory. Shulyar pointed out that Poroshenko was among the first foreign leaders to call to congratulate Trump. And she said that, since Election Day, Chaly has met with close Trump allies, including Sens. Jeff Sessions, Trump’s nominee for attorney general, and Bob Corker, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, while the ambassador accompanied Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze, Ukraine’s vice prime minister for European and Euro-Atlantic integration, to a round of Washington meetings with Rep. Tom Marino (R-Pa.), an early Trump backer, and Jim DeMint, president of The Heritage Foundation, which played a prominent role in Trump’s transition.

•••

Many Ukrainian officials and operatives and their American allies see Trump’s inauguration this month as an existential threat to the country, made worse, they admit, by the dissemination of the secret ledger, the antagonistic social media posts and the perception that the embassy meddled against — or at least shut out — Trump.

“It’s really bad. The [Poroshenko] administration right now is trying to re-coordinate communications,” said Telizhenko, adding, “The Trump organization doesn’t want to talk to our administration at all.”

During Nalyvaichenko’s trip to Washington last month, he detected lingering ill will toward Ukraine from some, and lack of interest from others, he recalled. “Ukraine is not on the top of the list, not even the middle,” he said.

Poroshenko’s allies are scrambling to figure out how to build a relationship with Trump, who is known for harboring and prosecuting grudges for years.

A delegation of Ukrainian parliamentarians allied with Poroshenko last month traveled to Washington partly to try to make inroads with the Trump transition team, but they were unable to secure a meeting, according to a Washington foreign policy operative familiar with the trip. And operatives in Washington and Kiev say that after the election, Poroshenko met in Kiev with top executives from the Washington lobbying firm BGR — including Ed Rogers and Lester Munson — about how to navigate the Trump regime.

Weeks later, BGR reported to the Department of Justice that the government of Ukraine would pay the firm $50,000 a month to “provide strategic public relations and government affairs counsel,” including “outreach to U.S. government officials, non-government organizations, members of the media and other individuals.”

Firm spokesman Jeffrey Birnbaum suggested that “pro-Putin oligarchs” were already trying to sow doubts about BGR’s work with Poroshenko. While the firm maintains close relationships with GOP congressional leaders, several of its principals were dismissive or sharply critical of Trump during the GOP primary, which could limit their effectiveness lobbying the new administration.

The Poroshenko regime’s standing with Trump is considered so dire that the president’s allies after the election actually reached out to make amends with — and even seek assistance from — Manafort, according to two operatives familiar with Ukraine’s efforts to make inroads with Trump.

Meanwhile, Poroshenko’s rivals are seeking to capitalize on his dicey relationship with Trump’s team. Some are pressuring him to replace Chaly, a close ally of Poroshenko’s who is being blamed by critics in Kiev and Washington for implementing — if not engineering — the country’s anti-Trump efforts, according to Ukrainian and U.S. politicians and operatives interviewed for this story. They say that several potential Poroshenko opponents have been through Washington since the election seeking audiences of their own with Trump allies, though most have failed to do do so.

“None of the Ukrainians have any access to Trump — they are all desperate to get it, and are willing to pay big for it,” said one American consultant whose company recently met in Washington with Yuriy Boyko, a former vice prime minister under Yanukovych. Boyko, who like Yanukovych has a pro-Russian worldview, is considering a presidential campaign of his own, and his representatives offered “to pay a shit-ton of money” to get access to Trump and his inaugural events, according to the consultant.

The consultant turned down the work, explaining, “It sounded shady, and we don’t want to get in the middle of that kind of stuff.”

President Trump may consider reported contact between the Ukraine whistleblower and Rep. Adam Schiff's, D-Calif., House Intelligence Committee as free reign to disparage the impeachment inquiry, according to Tom Bevan.
Schiff also appears to have not been completely forthright about said contact with the whistleblower in the past, the Real Clear Politics co-founder claimed Wednesday on "Special Report."

"This is a gift to Trump," he said.

"As everybody's racing to try and frame the narrative, this is a gift to Donald Trump in the sense that he can now muddy the waters and say 'look, this was a setup -- this was a fraud -- this is a hoax'."
Already, the president has called the impeachment inquiry over his transcribed phone call with Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky a "hoax" and earlier Wednesday called Schiff a "fraud."

spokesman for House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., had acknowledged for the first time on Wednesday that the whistleblower alleging misconduct in the White House had reached out to Schiff's panel before filing a complaint -- prompting President Trump, in an extraordinary afternoon news conference at the White House, to accuse Schiff directly of helping write the document.

Schiff had previously claimed in a televised interview that "we have not spoken directly with the whistleblower." A Schiff spokesperson seemingly narrowed that claim late Wednesday, telling Fox News that Schiff himself "does not know the identity of the whistleblower, and has not met with or spoken with the whistleblower or their counsel" for any reason.

"It shows that Schiff is a fraud. ... I think it's a scandal that he knew before," Trump said, as Finnish President Sauli Niinisto stood at an adjacent podium. "I'd go a step further. I'd say he probably helped write it. ... That's a big story. He knew long before, and he helped write it too. It's a scam."

On "Special Report," Bevan called the report "valuable" and also discussed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's apparent reticence to schedule a formal floor vote on impeachment.
He said Pelosi, D-Calif., has afforded herself maximum flexibility in that without the vote, her committees can issue subpoenas but the minority -- Republicans -- cannot petition for them.
On the flip side, he said, Republicans can tag the inquiry as mostly political because the San Francisco lawmaker [Pelosi] has not taken the formal step of making it a "serious inquiry."

I understand why you want to focus on that type of stuff instead of Trump asking a foreign government a favor of trying to dig up dirt on his political rival but the phone call transcript that was released was damming. The texts I read from the diplomats make clear that Trump was tying aid on the condition of Zelensky investigating Biden. I think republicans in office are going to have a hard time if they try to justify Trump's criminal ways on this one.

Its evident that foreign aid was used to ensure Trump's main biggest political rival was investigated by a foreign country.

Support for impeachment continues to grow for Trump. Today he barred a diplomat for giving testimony. After reading the texts I can see why.

After another week with impeachment in the news, registered voters nationwide are still divided on impeaching and removing President Trump from office, with 45 percent saying he should be impeached and removed and 49 percent opposing the idea, according to a Quinnipiac University national poll released today. This compares to last week's poll, in which voters were evenly split on impeaching and removing the president 47 - 47 percent. In a poll released on September 25, before any major news about impeachment, voters were clearly against impeachment 37 - 57 percent.

While nearly half of voters do not currently back impeachment, a majority of voters do still approve 53 - 43 percent of the impeachment inquiry being conducted by the U.S. House of Representatives in order to determine whether or not to bring impeachment charges against the president. A week ago, voters approved of the inquiry 52 - 45 percent.

After another week with impeachment in the news, registered voters nationwide are still divided on impeaching and removing President Trump from office, with 45 percent saying he should be impeached and removed and 49 percent opposing the idea, according to a Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pea-ack) University national poll released today. This compares to last week's poll, in which voters were evenly split on impeaching and removing the president 47 - 47 percent. In a poll released on September 25, before any major news about impeachment, voters were clearly against impeachment 37 - 57 percent.

While nearly half of voters do not currently back impeachment, a majority of voters do still approve 53 - 43 percent of the impeachment inquiry being conducted by the U.S. House of Representatives in order to determine whether or not to bring impeachment charges against the president. A week ago, voters approved of the inquiry 52 - 45 percent.

Are you unaware of the true factss, M E M?

The support for a Trump impeachment has gone down from a week ago, not up.

https://poll.qu.edu/national/release-detail?ReleaseID=3643



45% support an impeachment inquiry (not necessarily actual impeachment).
49% oppose it.

An overwhelming majority of both Republicans and independent voters oppose it. (When calling for actual impeachment, vs just an inquiry for potential impeachment.)

And I would lay money that a majority of Democrats support impeachment not because they think Trump is actually guilty of anything, but simply as a weapon to depose a Republican. And even if the Democrats, breaking every constitutional rule of fairness and process, were actually able to get the House majority vote needed to pass impeachment, that legislation would be dead on arrival as soon as it got to the Senate.

The Democrat actions in the House are unfair and don't even allow Republicans to summon witnesses for hearings, or otherwise investigate. And every week that goes by, as more details surface of the malicious abuse of the process on the Democrat side, voters are more aware of that.
The Democrat push for impeachment is waning in popularity, not rising, as the Democrats' partisan viciousness and unfairness in these "inquiry" pseudo-impeachment Democrat committee posturings, avoiding a push in the House for an actual investigation, become increasingly clear.

Without the lying propaganda and selective omission of the true facts by the liberal media, there would be no support for impeachment at all.

In other impeachment news Trump gave up any pretense of cooperation with the inquiry and is blocking witnesses from speaking. That's what guilty people do when the facts are not on their side. I would have thought he would have wanted his big donor testify today though but apparently even that guy was seen as doing damage.

In other impeachment news Trump gave up any pretense of cooperation with the inquiry and is blocking witnesses from speaking. That's what guilty people do when the facts are not on their side. I would have thought he would have wanted his big donor testify today though but apparently even that guy was seen as doing damage.

At some point I think you have to place the blame on Trump. Nobody forced him to call Ukrain and ask them as a favor to investigate his biggest political rival while withholding for aid money. If that was a rough transcript of Obama doing that you and Tucker would be screaming Impeach in unison with a ton of other partisans. Please correct me though if I'm wrong.

Trump said do me a favor because he was completely asking for one. He specifically asks Zelensky to investigate his biggest political rival. Like I said you would never tolerate that from a democratic president. Zelensky may not have known it was being delayed by Trump himself but he certainly knew the aid hadn't arrived yet. And you ignore that there isn't just Trump asking a foreign government to specifically investigate his political rival. There are also diplomats texting about quid pro quo's. Trump has his personal lawyer down there. And now it's okay not to ignore the House's legal and oversight duties? Trump crossed line just by asking a foreign government to investigate a political rival but it looks like there's even worse corruption yet to be exposed.

What was wild speculation? We know he specifically asked a foreign government to investigate his biggest political rival. The House has the texts from the diplomats where quid pro quo was discussed. Ghoulini himself talked about being in the Ukrain.

And other than Trump and henchman making accusations while blocking testimony where's the evidence on Biden?

Here is the Ukrainian diplomat that Trump got rid of... CNN

Apparently the two Guilliani associates that were just arrested wanted her out because she actually wasn't corrupt. The same two that were funneling foreign money to republican campaigns. m

Nunes is just a Trump toady though. And while she served under Obama she had a long career under republicans too. Trump of course can replace diplomats but this looks like it was because she did fight corruption. You might want to read up on those Guilliani associates that were just arrested for funneling foreign money into GOP campaigns. And while Trump claims he doesn't know them, they say they knew him. If he has the facts on his side why is he trying to block them?

by Kerry Pickett
October 11, 2019


House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff recruited two former National Security Council aides who worked alongside the CIA whistleblower at the NSC during the Obama and Trump administrations, the Washington Examiner has learned.


Abigail Grace, who worked at the NSC until 2018, was hired in February, while Sean Misko, an NSC aide until 2017, joined Schiff's committee staff in August, the same month the whistleblower submitted his complaint.

The whistleblower was an NSC official who worked with former Vice President Joe Biden and who has expertise in Ukraine, the Washington Examiner has reported.

A career CIA analyst with Ukraine expertise, the whistleblower aired his concerns about a phone conversation between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to a House Intelligence Committee aide on Schiff’s staff. He had previously informed the CIA’s legal counsel's office.

Schiff initially denied he knew anything about the complaint before it was filed, stating on Sep. 17: “We have not spoken directly with the whistleblower. We would like to."

But it later emerged that a member of his staff had spoken to the whistleblower before his complaint was submitted on Aug. 12. The Washington Post concluded that Schiff "clearly made a statement that was false."


Grace, 36, was hired to help Schiff’s committee investigate the Trump White House. That month, Trump accused Schiff of "stealing people who work at White House." Grace worked at the NSC from 2016 to 2018 in U.S.-China relations and then briefly at the Center for a New American Security think tank, which was founded by two former senior Obama administration officials.

A Schiff aide commented in February: "We have hired staff for a variety of positions, including the committee's oversight work and its investigation. Although none of our staff has come directly from the White House, we have hired people with prior experience on the National Security Council staff for oversight of the agencies, and will continue to do so at our discretion." Schiff himself said, "If the president is worried about our hiring any former administration people, maybe he should work on being a better employer."

Misko, 37, worked in the Obama administration as a member of the secretary of state’s policy planning staff under deputy chief of staff Jake Sullivan, who became Hillary Clinton's top foreign policy official during her 2016 presidential campaign. In 2015, Misko was the director for the Gulf states at the NSC, remaining there into the Trump administration’s first year.

A source familiar with Grace's work at the NSC told the Washington Examiner, “Abby Grace had access to executive privilege information, and she has a duty not to disclose that information. She is not authorized to reveal that information.”

The same source said that Misko had not been trusted by Trump appointees. "There were a few times where documents had been signed off for final editing before they go to the national security adviser for signature," the source said. "And he actually went in and made changes after those changes were already finished. So he basically tried to insert, without his boss' approval.

"There were meetings in which he protested very heavily, and next thing you know, there's an article in the paper about the contents of that meeting."

Misko often clashed with other NSC personnel at meetings, another source said. Both Grace and Misko were close to Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, Trump's national security adviser from Feb. 2017 until May 2018.

Misko was a CNAS fellow in 2014. Misko's name surfaced in the Hillary Clinton email controversy when he worked in the State Department during the Obama administration.

In a Dec. 1, 2009, email released by Judicial Watch, Clinton adviser Huma Abedin sent classified information regarding foreign military contributions to the Afghanistan war effort to her private email account. That email originated with Misko, who wrote to Sullivan that he initially “accidentally” sent it on the “high side” (secure) but was sending the email again.

The intelligence committee did not respond to a request for comment.

The problem for Trump is the transcript he released backs up what the whistleblower was saying. It's not okay for any President to ask another country to try to dig up dirt on a political rival. There isn't a question that Trump misused his office in that way. His corruption was on full display. And with the two Rudy/Trump thugs illegally running around funneling money into GOP campaigns and also connected to the Ukrain scandal I don't think the GOP can just blindly and obediently follow and protect him without paying a price at election time.

No, it doesn't support what the "whistleblower"/CIA-leaker-rat was alleging.

The transcript shows there was no intimidation, no coercion by Trump. Zelensky in multiple on-camera interviews since has made clear it was a very friendly call, as the transcribed de-classified phone call also confirms. At no time in the call did Trump intimidate or threaten Zelenskyy.
While Trump used the term "hey, do me a favor..." (as he has used on many people in a non-threatening way, even in multiple rallies to his audience of supporters), at no time was there a threat connected. To any neutral observer, the call was very friendly. To Zelenskyy himself, it was friendly.

The one bit that Democrats cling to is that planned aid to Ukraine was held up, but was never discussed in the call between Trump and Zelenskyy, and thus was never used as a threat. Zelenskyy has independently of that conversation said that he was completely unaware the U.S. aid to Ukraine was delayed, and only learned of it 30 days after the Trump/Zelenskyy phone call, at which point the aid had already resumed. It was witheld to be screened for potential corruption, not as a threat, completely independent of Trump and Zelenskyy's phone call.

The 'whistleblower"/CIA-leaker-rat's allegations are highly suspect for multiple reasons:
* The leaker rules were changed by the CIA just months before his "whistleblower" report was made.
* No one in the CIA is willing to to take credit for precisely when the whistleblower report form was changed, or who authorized the change, but it had to ultimately be approved by director Gina Haspel.
* Gina Haspel is the protege of John Brennan, and Brennan is the most vocal and bitter of Trump's attackers, that he does pretty much daily as a "consultant" pundit from anti-Trump propaganda headquarters CNN.
* Several of Gina Haspel's closest assistants were assistants to John Brennan, and one of them came out of retirement to be her assistant.
* The "Russia collusion hoax" coup is believed to have originated from Brennan, and Gina Haspel is Brennan's chosen successor at the CIA.
* The CIA is where the "Russia collusion" narrative was created, and now this newest "whistleblower" coup again originates from a CIA agent, and those "additional whistleblowers" are likely other CIA co-workers. Another CIA agent interviewed calls this by the intelligence community propaganda technique term "looping", where you don't have new information, you just allege new sources, but they are in fact part of the original whistleblower's report. A standard CIA psy-ops tactic. Which by the way, is what was done with the evidence presented for the FISA warrants submitted to FISA Court judges on Carter Page, four times, where Christopher Steele's "Russia dossier" was presented as evidence, with two articles that allegedly backed it up, but were in fact sourced from and just repeating what was in the Russia Dossier.
* The disproven "Russia Collusion" hoax originated from the CIA/ FBI/ DNI intelligence community, and this latest "whistleblower" report originates from the same intelligence community and involves many of the same players.

You and other Democrats are so desperate to create any rationalization to impeach Trump that you are willing to believe anything alleged about Trump, no matter how suspicious, no matter how disproven.
But regardless, it's a scam. You're just too ideologically blind to see it.

After the failure of the Mueller investigation to depose President Donald Trump, in September 2019 Democrats manufactured evidence to begin an "impeachment inquiry". Under new House Rules adopted by Democrats in December 2018, Republicans are excluded from questioning witnesses while Articles of Impeachment are being drafted.

The timing of the impeachment inquiry was to blunt information coming out regarding the fraudulent counterintelligence investigation opened up on the 2016 Trump campaign, and the Russia collusion hoax perpetrated by the Obama intelligence community in collusion with the Democratic National Committee, the 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign, foreign governments and intelligence agencies to meddle in American media, public opinion, sway elections and attack American democracy. [ Timing planned to eclipse and discredit the reports coming out on these DOJ, FBI, CIA, DNI and FISA court abuses, about to be exposed in reports by attorney general William Barr, U.S. attorney John Durham, and inspector general Horowitz that will thoroughly discredit the investigations of Trump. This "Deep State 2.0" is designed to overwhelm and mask the exposures of those investigations.]

Candidate Donald Trump had questioned why the United States was shouldering the burden of European Union defense costs while Europeans enjoyed free healthcare and Americans did not, and why China was taking over $500 billion in American wealth out of the country annually by trade deficits while Americans' communities were being destroyed.[3] The military industrial complex and corporate globalists considered Trump a threat to their security.

The alleged "whistleblower" filed a questionable hearsay complaint in an area outside the statutory purview of the intelligence community inspector general. The same day, August 12, 2019, the Congressional Research Service (CRS), a supposedly "non-partisan" research service that provides legal analysis to committees and Members of both houses, issued an updated version of its report, The Impeachment Process in the House of Representatives.[4] "Coincidentally," six weeks later the CRS again issued a faulty report, using no statutory citations, informing Members that hearsay evidence was acceptable under the Whistleblower Act just two days before the alleged "whistleblower" complaint was received by House Intelligence Committee.

How is that different from the what the DNC, the Hillary Clinton campaign (Christopher Steele/Fusion GPS/Ukraine/direct agents of Russian intelligence), and what Democrat senators Leahy, Durbin and Menendez did, that I linked above?
The only Trump supporters who are voicing doubts are the Establishment/never-Trumpers in the GOP who have previously never missed a similar opportunity to attack Trump.
Trump still has an unprecedented 95% support from his Republican base, who are not buying it, and are not leaving Trump.

As Kim Strassell of the Wall Street Journal said, there is nothing Democrats are accusing Trump of, that the Democrats themselves have not done, and egregiously more so.

Mark Levin in his Sunday night program, perfectly sums up the Democrat lies and hypocrisy of the Democrat leadership, and the unconstitutional coup they are unleashing on the country and their elected president:

Life, Liberty, Levin program, Sunday, Oct 13 2019
https://www.facebook.com/foxnewsniceshow/videos/432461077407676/


Levin uses their own written statements and the written law to incriminate them and expose their lawlessness.

I'm constantly amazed that anyone could watch an hour of CNN, and then watch an hour of programs like this on Fox News, and not realize that CNN is lying to them.

That's bullshit. Hiring somebody to dig up dirt is not the same thing as using the office of the presidency to ask foreign countries to investigate your biggest political rivals. That is corruption in its purest form. But because it's Trump you can't even call it for what it is. And I think there's more to it than Trump doing that given the lengths he's trying to obstruct the inquiry.

Congress didn't just get the right to subpoena people though. You're correct Trump is making those arguments but the house still has the right to subpoena and a duty of oversight. I get where the delaying tactic might be preferable for Trump but it's not really a great legal argument he's making.

No offense but I just don't view videos like that from either side. I have read that argument from other republicans though. Basically it boils down to trying to say that a change in procedure somehow voids whatever you don't want.

That of course doesn't hold true for what you do. For example the GOP senate changing the rules to load the Supreme Court with who they wanted. I suspect you do feel those seats are illegitimate.

The republicans on those committees are allowed to question witnesses btw.

It's also not a new rule that non committee members can just sit in on anything they want.

The House according to the Constitution has the power to impeach. It does not go into great detail on how that happens. So far the democrats have not done anything unconstitutional in the process. Trump is just flat out lying when he says that. Lying and trying to get foreign countries to investigate his political rivals while trying to block testimony. You don't seem to have a problem with some really major ethical lapses there!

If the House votes to impeach it than goes to the Senate for trial.

Trump has his bitches ready so I think that's going to be truly your soviet style kangaroo court. Moscow Mitch has already teased about it. However America is watching and right now support for impeachment and removal is around or above fifty percent so they might actually have to do a real trial.

And the Judiciary committee wasn't one of the three committees conducting the inquiry.

I think if positions were reversed you would be more than fine with impeaching a democrat for abusing their office like Trump has in this situation. Nor do I see how this could be a Hail Mary type thing considering the GOP controls the Senate. Removal will require bipartisan support.

Oh and the G7 meeting will be held at a Trump property and no we don't get to see any documents on the decision making behind choosing his own property.

Gaetz isn't on any of the 3 committees conducting the impeachment inquiry. That isn't a new rule. The republicans on that committee can ask questions. It's true they don't have equal control but this isn't the trial. That will happen in the GOP controlled senate. And given the performances of many of them I'm being kind by referring to them as Trump's bitches. There isn't even a pretense of objectivity among the likes of Lindsey Graham.

In other news Mulvaney admits Trump withheld aid to Ukrain to pressure them for an investigation. Apparently he didn't realize he admitted that it was a quid pro quo.

by Susan Ferrechio
October 14, 2019


A Republican member of the House Judiciary Committee was ejected from a closed-door impeachment hearing.


Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida tried to enter a hearing Monday in which lawmakers from three different committees are interviewing President Trump’s former top aide on Russia, Fiona Hill.

Gaetz said he believed he should be allowed to attend the hearing because impeachment inquiries traditionally are handled by the House Judiciary Committee, and he serves on that panel.

But the House parliamentarian told Gaetz he is not allowed to attend the hearing because he does not sit on either the Intelligence, Foreign Affairs, or Oversight panels, which are the official committees conducting the impeachment inquiry.

"Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler claimed to have begun the impeachment inquiry weeks ago," Gaetz said on Twitter after leaving the hearing room. "Now, his own Judiciary members aren’t even allowed to participate in it. And yes - my constituents want me actively involved in stopping the #KangarooCourtCoup run by Shifty Schiff."

Republicans and Trump have criticized the impeachment inquiry for failing to follow precedent, which includes a House vote, referral to the Judiciary Committee, and bipartisan agreement on rules for the inquiry.

Gaetz has called for an end to the impeachment inquiry.

That might be true, if the person in the reverse position (Republican or Democrat) had done ANYHING WRONG!


It's infuriating that your side:
1) completely bypasses any pretense of fairness and impartiality as they rig the investigation and exclude any openness or mutual sharing of facts to allow for Trump's defense.

and
2) That your side hypocritially wants to impeach Trump on the slightest whiff of a scandal, while simultaneously turning a blind eye to >>>>>FAR<<<<< more egregious abuse of power by Obama, Hillary, Biden, son Hunter, Menendez, Leahy, Durbin, Comey, McCabe, Strzok, Page, Bruce and Nellie Ohr, Lois Lerner, Koskinin, on and on!


It truly scares me that your party could ever egain regain power. It would be a complete marginalization of Republicans, banning them from any platform in news media or social media, exclusion from employment, and purge of all dissenting thought, even Democrat thought, that doesn't follow the party line. Just ask Tulsi Gabbard about that one, or Nicholas Sandmann, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Pam Bondi, or the hundreds of attackss on Republicans for thingsa as simple as wearing a MAGA hat. Control of all three branches would bring about a Democrat-led purge in the U.S. akin to the Great Terror of the French Revolution.

It is not the with the slightest exagerration that I refer to the Democrats as the Bolshevik party. Intimidation, violence, slander, whatever serves the Revolution. Mob rule, authoritarian and vindictive use of power. The complete abandonment of rule of law.

What occurred for 8 years under Obama (the IRS targeting conservatives, "Fast and Furious" running guns by ATF to Mexican drug cartels, illegal FISA warrants on the Trump campaign...), and that Trump has attempted to turn away from, to restore rule of law and trust in government.

Which the Trump administration is holding at cost, NOT for profit. A nice selective omission (i.e., lie) on your part.


As opposed to Joseph Biden and son Hunter Biden, who enriched themselves for tens of millions, through blackmail and corrupt use of power.

Eric Trump, We made our money before entering public office, Dem ocrats and their children went in poor and enriched themselves selling their office Martha McCallum, Oct 8 2019



In another interview I can't find with Laura Ingraham on Oct 15 or 16th, Eric Trump says that his family are the first ones who have lost money once entering public service, that they put all their assets in blind trusts run by others, and have lost hundeds of millions in potential deals.
And that not only Trump, but also Ivanka, Jared Kushner and Eric have all not accepted any salary while in public service. Trump annually gives away his presidential salary to a charity every year. I was aware Trump did this, I was not aware the other Trumps do this as well. And yet doing this, they are demonized by Dams.

Name me ONE Democrat, one other political leader period, who doesn't even take a salary for their public office.

Honestly i wasn't trying to be deceptive WB. We don't know what "at cost" ends up being. We just had Trump here in MNand you had problems with the that number the mayor gave. Even if it was at cost though he benefits from having such an event held on his own property. And where is the evidence on the Biden's? You don't seem to require much to make accusations like that. I do get that his son was making money because of his last name but the VP didn't use his position to get him a job at the WH or bend the rules to get him security clearances to have those jobs. Nor did Biden give him jobs like solving the peace process in Israel.

That might be true, if the person in the reverse position (Republican or Democrat) had done ANYHING WRONG!


It's infuriating that your side:
1) completely bypasses any pretense of fairness and impartiality as they rig the investigation and exclude any openness or mutual sharing of facts to allow for Trump's defense.

and
2) That your side hypocritially wants to impeach Trump on the slightest whiff of a scandal, while simultaneously turning a blind eye to >>>>>FAR<<<<< more egregious abuse of power by Obama, Hillary, Biden, son Hunter, Menendez, Leahy, Durbin, Comey, McCabe, Strzok, Page, Bruce and Nellie Ohr, Lois Lerner, Koskinin, on and on!


It truly scares me that your party could ever egain regain power. It would be a complete marginalization of Republicans, banning them from any platform in news media or social media, exclusion from employment, and purge of all dissenting thought, even Democrat thought, that doesn't follow the party line. Just ask Tulsi Gabbard about that one, or Nicholas Sandmann, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Pam Bondi, or the hundreds of attackss on Republicans for thingsa as simple as wearing a MAGA hat. Control of all three branches would bring about a Democrat-led purge in the U.S. akin to the Great Terror of the French Revolution.

It is not the with the slightest exagerration that I refer to the Democrats as the Bolshevik party. Intimidation, violence, slander, whatever serves the Revolution. Mob rule, authoritarian and vindictive use of power. The complete abandonment of rule of law.

What occurred for 8 years under Obama (the IRS targeting conservatives, "Fast and Furious" running guns by ATF to Mexican drug cartels, illegal FISA warrants on the Trump campaign...), and that Trump has attempted to turn away from, to restore rule of law and trust in government.

There's more than a whiff of scandal here WB, I would think even you would have to admit that. Trump asked a foreign government to investigate the political rival he views as his biggest threat. Plus it looks like he had his personal lawyer running some type of shadow state department. If they have facts and testimony that actually cleared them of wrongdoing than why the effort to shut down the inquiry and lack of cooperation? And even the Trump administration passed on the IRS thing. When I read up on it I can see why. It was a fake scandal but a very good one for tax cheats as the GOP cut its funding.

Hunter Biden's past business dealings at home and abroad are increasingly coming under scrutiny, as the former vice president's son broke his silence in a nationally televised interview this morning -- and 12 Democratic presidential candidates are preparing to debate Tuesday evening in Ohio.

Speaking to ABC's "Good Morning America," Biden maintained he did nothing improper in serving on the board of a Ukrainian gas company but acknowledged it was "poor judgment" on his part. In his first interview since his overseas business dealings came under scrutiny, Biden said he did not discuss the board seat with his father except for one "brief exchange" that was previously reported.

Although President Trump repeatedly has hammered Hunter Biden's ties to China and Ukraine, the latest cloud of suspicion came as Republicans pointed to resurfaced 2008 reports in The New York Times and The American Spectator. The articles, written as Barack Obama and John McCain vied for the White House, found that Hunter Biden received consulting fees from the financial services company MBNA from 2001 to 2005 -- while his father, then a senator, was pushing successfully for legislation that would make it harder for consumers to file for bankruptcy protection.

The precise amount of the payments was unclear, but a company official once said Hunter Biden was receiving at least a $100,000 per year retainer, the Times reported. Hunter Biden, now 49, previously had been an executive at MBNA beginning in 1996, but the consulting fees came years after his departure from the company as a full-time employee.

Aides to then-presidential candidate Barack Obama at the time denied that any lobbying had occurred, and insisted the payments were proper.

However, that explanation was treated with skepticism. On Monday, the Trump campaign posted a contemporaneous interview in which an incredulous Tom Brokaw asked Joe Biden whether it was "inappropriate" for the then-senator to have his son "collecting money from this big credit card company while you were on the [Senate] floor protecting its interests."

Hunter Biden's previous work as an executive at MBNA from 1996 to 1998 also has raised what critics called red flags.

Rachel Mullen, a former senior personal banking officer at MBNA from 1994-2001 who later went into Republican politics, tweeted Monday that managers referred to the younger Biden as "Senator MBNA" after he was hired into a lucrative management-prep track right after he graduated from Yale Law School.

An MBNA source who previously worked at the company told Fox News on Monday that other employees heard Biden boasting that his salary was unusually high, even for the management-prep track -- which was widely seen in the company as a way to groom and pamper well-connected executive candidates with powerful family members.

The source said Biden's "Senator MBNA" nickname was not politically motivated, but rather reflected a widely held belief among managers -- who did not work directly with Biden -- that he essentially was engaged in lobbying.
In a January 2008 article entitled "The Senator from MBNA," columnist Byron York recounted how then-MBNA vice chairman John Cochran paid "top dollar" for Biden's home in February 1996, just prior to his Senate re-election bid, and that "MBNA gave Cochran a lot of money—$330,000—to help with 'expenses' related to the move."

The $1.2M sale was a "pretty darned good deal for Biden," York wrote, noting that "Cochran simply paid Biden’s full asking price" even though the "house needed quite a bit of work; contractors and their trucks descended on the house for months after the purchase."

Asked how Cochran and Biden found each other for the sale, an MBNA spokesperson told York: "That’s a very personal question."

Federal election records also showed top MBNA executives apparently made a "concerted" effort to donate to Biden's campaign, York reported.

It remained unclear whether, and to what extent, the resurfaced accounts of possible misconduct by the Bidens could affect the 2020 presidential race. An ABC News interview with Hunter Biden is set to air beginning Tuesday, and the issue might come up during Tuesday night's presidential primary debate.

Under intense scrutiny from Republicans, Hunter Biden announced this past Sunday he will step down from the board of directors of a Chinese-backed private equity firm at the end of the month as part of a pledge not to work on behalf of any foreign-owned companies should his father win the presidency. At the same time, the Bidens have denied wrongdoing.

Biden revealed his plan in an Internet post written by his attorney, George Mesires, who outlined a defense of the younger Biden’s work in Ukraine and China, which has emerged as one of Trump’s chief lines of attack against Hunter’s father.

"Hunter makes the following commitment: Under a Biden Administration, Hunter will readily comply with any and all guidelines or standards a President Biden may issue to address purported conflicts of interest, or the appearance of such conflicts, including any restrictions related to overseas business interests. In any event, Hunter will agree not to serve on boards of, or work on behalf of, foreign-owned companies," Mesires wrote.

He continued: "He will continue to keep his father personally uninvolved in his business affairs, while availing himself as necessary and appropriate to the Office of the White House Counsel to help inform his application of the Biden Administration’s guidelines or standards to his business decision-making."

From late 2013 through this month, Hunter Biden has served on the board of BHR (Shanghai) Equity Investment Fund Management Company, which was "formed with the stated intent to invest Chinese capital outside of China." Mesires insisted Biden's initial role was that of an unpaid member of the board and that in October 2017, Biden "committed to invest approximately $420,000 USD to acquire a 10 percent equity position in BHR, which he still holds."

Separately, Joe Biden has acknowledged on camera that in spring 2016, when he was vice president and spearheading the Obama administration's Ukraine policy, he successfully pressured Ukraine to fire top prosecutor Viktor Shokin. At the time, Shokin was investigating Burisma Holdings — where Hunter had a lucrative role on the board despite limited relevant expertise. Shokin also was widely accused of corruption.

Critics alleged Hunter Biden, in effect, might have been selling access to his father, who had pushed Ukraine to increase its natural gas production.

"Impossible to justify $50k/month for Hunter Biden serving on a Ukrainian energy board w zero expertise unless he promised to sell access," political scientist Ian Bremmer tweeted.

by Beth Baumann, Oct 15 2019


We know that Hunter Biden sat on the board for Burisma, a Ukrainian gas company, despite having no natural gas experience. He was being paid $50,000 a month for his "contributions" to the board (whatever those may be) while his father, then-Vice President Joe Biden, was handling affairs with Ukraine on behalf of the Obama administration.

We know that MBNA, a Delaware-based banking company, hired Hunter straight out of law school. Then-Sen. Biden had received campaign contributions from the company during previous elections and was even working on a bill MBNA backed.

Now, it turns out that Hunter received a position on Amtrak's board of directors in 2006. His qualification? He rode trains...a lot.

According to the Washington Free Beacon, the revelation came about when Sen. Tom Carpenter (D-DE) offered the sole nomination speech for Hunter in front of the Senate Commerce Committee.

"Hunter will be an excellent addition to the Amtrak Board. He is a graduate of Georgetown and Yale. He has served as senior vice president at MBNA America and as executive director of e-commerce policy coordination at the U.S. Department of Commerce. And, five years ago, he founded a law firm here in D.C. that now represents over 100 clients, mostly nonprofit organizations and educational institutions," Carpenter said.

Here's where Hunter's real qualification come in.

"But more significantly, Hunter has spent a lot of time on Amtrak trains," Carpenter said. "Like his father, Rep. Mike Castle and myself, Hunter Biden has lived in Delaware while using Amtrak to commute to his job in Washington, D.C. You learn a lot about what works and what could work better at Amtrak by riding those trains. You also see the huge economic benefit that a region receives from having a strong passenger rail corridor – something that should be available in more of the count."

Hunter admitted it was highly unlikely that he would have received positions on any board of directors, including Burisma, if his last name wasn't Biden.

“I don’t know. I don’t know, probably not,” he said. “You know, I don’t think there’s a lot of things that would have happened in my life if my last name wasn’t Biden.”

Actually Biden just came out with some anti corruption plans that would raise the bar that Trump has lowered for his children. Yeah I get that Hunter Biden made money and got jobs because of his last name but the Trump's also have a long history of that.

And none of that doesn't change the fact that Trump asked a foreign country for the favor of investigating somebody he views as his biggest political rival. And it looks like the House is getting the testimony that backs up that there was more going on than just that phone call too. It's a little surreal that you can't see that as not being obviously corrupt but also buy into that it must not be investigated.

Please cite where the Trumps have divested themselves from their business? I googled this just yesterday and Trump hasn't done what all other previous presidents have done in the past to divest himself from his business.

President-elect Donald Trump is separating himself from his far-flung global business empire by transferring all assets into a trust and putting his two sons, Eric and Donald Jr., in charge, a Trump lawyer said on Wednesday.

Along with plans to hire an ethics adviser, Trump is taking the steps to avoid inevitable questions about a potential conflict of interest between his businesses and the office of the presidency, although his lawyer insisted he was not required to take them.

Republican Trump, who is to be sworn in on Jan. 20, has been under pressure to take these steps before he moves into the White House.

Trump operates a variety of golf resorts and hotels around the world. The lawyer, who spoke to a small group of reporters on condition of anonymity, said all profits generated at Trump‘s hotels by foreign governments will be donated to the U.S. Treasury.

Trump is to resign from all positions he holds with Trump Organization entities, and his daughter, Ivanka, is to have no further involvement with management authority in the group.

Ivanka Trump is the wife of Jared Kushner, who Trump has appointed to a senior advisory role in the White House.

The Trump Organization will not enter any new deals while Trump is president, according to the lawyer.

Since Trump sold all his stocks last year, the Trump trust is to hold only liquid assets such as cash and business operating assets, the lawyer said.

Many ethics experts had urged Trump to completely divest or set up a blind trust for his assets. The lawyer said Trump opted against these steps because it was not a realistic possibility.

Trump was aided in setting up the trust by lawyer Fred Fielding, a former White House counsel to Republican presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush.

Interviews are being conducted in the search for an ethics adviser for the trust, the lawyer said.

“The written approval of the ethics adviser will be required for new deals, actions and transactions that could potentially raise ethics or conflict of interests concerns,” the lawyer said.

Trump has terminated all pending business deals to clear the way for becoming president. His access to information about his businesses will be sharply limited, the lawyer said.

The moratorium on new deals does not apply to contracts that are entered into by the Trump Organization and its affiliates in the ordinary course of business.
Remaining debt will stay in place and will be dealt with during the ordinary course of business, the lawyer said.

...And when you spend time here defending Trump's decision to have the G-7 at his own resort...

...or pressing a foreign country to try to dig up dirt on his political rival you think those are not obvious double standards?

A trust that isn't blind and one he can withdraw funds from I might note. Not really a solution there to avoid conflicts of interests. I also would add that we only have the liar's word on a lot of what he announced back than.

Apparently holding Trump to any standard is infuriating to you. Sorry I actually love my country, it's sad that you even go there. Principles and ethics like love of country are not owned by either party. When Trump uses his office to pressure a foreign country to investigate his political rivals or chooses his own properties to host an event like the G-7 and you're playing defense for him, I'm not the one with a problem.

So yesterday a bunch of republicans stormed the impeachment inquiry. That didn't happen when Lindsey Graham was having closed door depositions during the Clinton impeachment.

The impeachment inquiry will become public very soon and who really thinks that was actually the issue?

But Nixon & Clinton both started out with witnesses giving testimony behind closed doors. The House is gathering the facts for this one and there will be public testimony and a vote. This is all being done with republican members on those committees having equal time to ask witnesses questions. This is all within the rules that republicans actually used during the Benghazi investigation. Considering you have no problem with Trump pressuring a foreign country to investigate his political rivals I fail to see how you can have a real issue with this but I doubt you'll be happy when the testimony becomes public. It's really about protecting a corrupt president.

Well if you're good with Trump asking a foreign country to investigate his political rivals than we have different definitions of what corruption truly is.

...or pressing a foreign country to try to dig up dirt on his political rival you think those are not obvious double standards?

You are using the Moscow Central Committee tactic of repeating a lie so often that it takes on the appearance of being true.

As I said, the evidence is that Joseph Biden did that, intimidating the Ukranian president into firing his attorney general, by threatening to withold $1 billion in U.S. aid to Ukraine if he didn't, and Biden OPENLY BOASTED ABOUT DOING SO, ON CAMERA.

Likewise as I listed above, where >>>DEMOCRAT<<< Senators Menendez, Leahy and Durbin sent a threatening letter to the Ukranian government for compromising information about Trump before the 2016 election.

And let it not be forgotten that the Hillary Clinton campaign >>>AND<<< the DNC paid millions to Glenn Simpson/Fusion GPS/Christopher Steele (a former British foreign agent), to get dirt for their Russia Dossier directly from Russian agents, two of them high-level Russian intelligence officials, for which the Democrats paid MILLIONS to Russian officials.

It's absolutely amazing that you can allege this stuff about Trump, when ALL the evidence is there to show Democrats clearly did with a clear paper and money trail and plenty of witnesses, what they allege with mere smoke and mirrors about Trump.

The democrats are gathering the evidence and testimony in the best way to prevent witnesses from aligning stories. When their done gathering the facts the inquiry will become public.

Given how team Trump operates I think their being smart. I've been reading the bits of testimony and it's more than just Trump asking Ukraine to investigate Biden. It looks like they have him on withholding the foreign aid money to try to help him beat Biden in '20.

You have a very liberal interpretation of that transcript of the call. He specifically brings up Biden being investigated. And the testimony by the diplomats backs up that the aid was being withheld by Trump to try to smear Biden. Does it make sense to you that he's trying to block testimony and records that would support his story?

A kangaroo court is a court that ignores recognized standards of law or justice, and often carries little or no official standing in the territory within which it resides.[1] The term may also apply to a court held by a legitimate judicial authority who intentionally disregards the court's legal or ethical obligations. The defendants in such courts are often denied access to legal representation and in some cases, proper defence and the right of appeal.

Prejudicial bias of the decision-maker or from political decree are among the most publicized causes of kangaroo courts.[citation needed] Such proceedings are often held to give the appearance of a fair and just trial, even though the verdict was already decided before the trial actually began.

A kangaroo court could also develop when the structure and operation of the forum result in an inferior brand of adjudication. A common example of this is when institutional disputants ("repeat players") have excessive and unfair structural advantages over individual disputants ("one-shot players").[2]

WSJ: Sondland testified that it was a quid pro quo

I've noticed that some conservatives are making the argument that Trump needs to stop trying to argue that it wasn't a quid pro quo because it obviously was and the House has the evidence. The argument should be that it's not an impeachable offense. Such a gross corrupt use of power though still leaves Trump getting impeached.

I'm not the one painting an entire side as anything that suits someone 's propagandist needs at the moment. If I think the news sucks I can't dismiss it by declaring it fake. Accusations are not facts because I want them to be. Sondland' testimony like Taylor's show there was a push by Trump to pressure a country to investigate the guy Trump knows can beat him in the upcoming election. You've made allegations of corruption for far less than that. Now it's different because?

I think you way overestimate bias but regardless bias doesn't automatically equate to lies. Bias certainly becomes okay it seems when it's leaning conservative. The House has always had the right to subpoena witnesses and documents. Pelosi is using the same rules republicans used on Clinton via Benghazi. And it is all going to be public very soon. I suspect Trump still isn't going to cooperate because the WH records are not going to help him.

"If the gentleman would hear me out, I suspect we'd find agreement," [Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK)] said, as [Rep. James McGovern (D-MA)] began to interrupt. "Let me stipulate that I am absolutely asking for something that was not given to Democrats in the Clinton inquiry. I was here during the Clinton inquiry I'm absolutely asking for something that was not granted to the minority in that time. But I'm asking for it anyway because I think it's important."

Cole went on to argue that the Democrats' new process was meaningfully different. "During [the Clinton inquiry,] whether it was the chair or the ranking member, if one of those disagreed with issuing a subpoena, then the entire committee voted on whether or not to move forward. That is not the rule you have created here.

"Once again, in what seems to be very petty partisanship, because it makes no functional difference because of how the committee operates," Cole continued, "you say that if the ranking member [minority judiciary committee leader Rep. Doug Collins (R-GA)] asks for a subpoena and it's denied, the full committee will vote; but if the chairman [judiciary committee majority leader Rep. Jerry Nadler (R-NY)] asks for a subpoena, and the ranking member [Rep. Doug Collins (R-GA)] doesn't like it, that's just too bad, the full committee won't vote to validate the ranking member's position."

Cole also said that it was "unprecedented" that Democrats were denying Republicans the right to grant their time to other members, and for Democrats to draw up the impeachment procedures resolution with no GOP input.

This was all acceptable when republicans changed the rules to investigate Benghazi. And if it's acceptable for the president to defy subpoena's and use military aid to try to force another country to investigate his biggest political rival for republicans this isn't about principles but protecting the corruption. Remember when your party was the rule of law party? You kissed that goodbye for Trump.

Lol, Russia helped him get the presidency and thanks him for Syria. And Trump using foreign aid to get another country to investigate his biggest political rival wasn't invented. He did it. If I thought there was a chance you would be okay with a democrat trying to do that I would cut you some slack but I know you wouldn't. We impeached for a lot less. Trump will deserve this one.

ADAM SCHIFF'S OWN UKRAINE CONNECTION COMES UNDER SCRUTINY

1) Rep. Schiff was indifferent to Russia's invasion of Ukraine or providing for Ukraine's defense... until a Ukrainian immigrant begame a large campaign contributor, and then Schiff (in exchange for large donations) suddenly became a strong advocate of Ukranian military aid. Which, by the oddest coincidence, his campaign donor made a fortune providing.

That's in addition to:

2) the Russian radio-show hosts who pranked Schiff, pretending to be Russian agents who could give him compromising "naked Trump" photos of Trump. While Schiff led the charge alleging Trump's Russia collusion, Schiff was attempting with every fibre of his being to collude with these Russian guys.

Russian comedians prank phone call US representative Adam Schiff


For weeks after their prank phone call (that they played on-air) Schiff and his staff called them back over and over trying to get compromising info on Trump from who Schiff knew to be Russian nationals.

“The president was not exculpated for the acts that he allegedly committed,” Mueller told the House judiciary committee, adding that Trump could theoretically be indicted after he leaves office.

“We did not address ‘collusion,’ which is not a legal term,” Mueller added. “Rather, we focused on whether the evidence was sufficient to charge any member of the campaign with taking part in a criminal conspiracy. It was not.”

You like Trump are pushing a false narrative of Mueller 's investigation WB. And Trump is at this very moment having his Justice Department investigate that investigation. This is the same JD that found nothing of value when the IG went to them with the whistleblower complaint and tried to keep it hidden.

Schiff unlike team Trump contacted the FBI about the call. You understand that is an important detail to leave out?

By Paul Sperry, RealClearInvestigations
October 30, 2019



For a town that leaks like a sieve, Washington has done an astonishingly effective job keeping from the American public the name of the anonymous “whistleblower" who triggered impeachment proceedings against President Trump — even though his identity is an open secret inside the Beltway.

More than two months after the official filed his complaint, pretty much all that’s known publicly about him is that he is a CIA analyst who at one point was detailed to the White House and is now back working at the CIA.

But the name of a government official fitting that description — Eric Ciaramella — has been raised privately in impeachment depositions, according to officials with direct knowledge of the proceedings, as well as in at least one open hearing held by a House committee not involved in the impeachment inquiry. Fearing their anonymous witness could be exposed, Democrats this week blocked Republicans from asking more questions about him and intend to redact his name from all deposition transcripts.

RealClearInvestigations is disclosing the name because of the public’s interest in learning details of an effort to remove a sitting president from office.
Further, the official's status as a “whistleblower” is complicated by his being a hearsay reporter of accusations against the president, one who has “some indicia of an arguable political bias … in favor of a rival political candidate" -- as the Intelligence Community Inspector General phrased it circumspectly in originally fielding his complaint.

Federal documents reveal that the 33-year-old Ciaramella, a registered Democrat held over from the Obama White House, previously worked with former Vice President Joe Biden and former CIA Director John Brennan, a vocal critic of Trump who helped initiate the Russia “collusion” investigation of the Trump campaign during the 2016 election.

Further, Ciaramella (pronounced char-a-MEL-ah) left his National Security Council posting in the White House’s West Wing in mid-2017 amid concerns about negative leaks to the media. He has since returned to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.

“He was accused of working against Trump and leaking against Trump,” said a former NSC official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters.

Also, Ciaramella huddled for “guidance” with the staff of House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, including former colleagues also held over from the Obama era whom Schiff’s office had recently recruited from the NSC. Schiff is the lead prosecutor in the impeachment inquiry.

And Ciaramella worked with a Democratic National Committee operative who dug up dirt on the Trump campaign during the 2016 election, inviting her into the White House for meetings, former White House colleagues said. The operative, Alexandra Chalupa, a Ukrainian-American who supported Hillary Clinton, led an effort to link the Republican campaign to the Russian government. “He knows her. He had her in the White House,” said one former co-worker, who requested anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter.

Documents confirm the DNC opposition researcher [Charlupa] attended at least one White House meeting with Ciaramella in November 2015. She visited the White House with a number of Ukrainian officials lobbying the Obama administration for aid for Ukraine.



With Ciaramella’s name long under wraps, interest in the intelligence analyst is so high that a handful of former colleagues have compiled a roughly 40-page research dossier on him. A classified version of the document is circulating on Capitol Hill, and briefings have been conducted based on it. One briefed Republican has been planning to unmask the whistleblower in a speech on the House floor.

On the Internet, meanwhile, Ciaramella's name for weeks has been bandied about on Twitter feeds and intelligence blogs as the suspected person who blew the whistle on the president. The mainstream media are also aware of his name.

“Everyone knows who he is. CNN knows. The Washington Post knows. The New York Times knows. Congress knows. The White House knows. Even the president knows who he is,” said Fred Fleitz, a former CIA analyst and national security adviser to Trump, who has fielded dozens of calls from the media.

Yet a rare hush has swept across the Potomac. The usually gossipy nation’s capital remains uncharacteristically — and curiously — mum, especially considering the magnitude of this story, only the fourth presidential impeachment inquiry in U.S. history.

Trump supporters blame the conspiracy of silence on a “corrupt” and "biased” media trying to protect the whistleblower from justified scrutiny of his political motives. They also complain Democrats have falsely claimed that exposing his identity would violate whistleblower protections, even though the relevant statute provides limited, not blanket, anonymity – and doesn’t cover press disclosures. His Democrat attorneys, meanwhile, have warned that outing him would put him and his family “at risk of harm," although government security personnel have been assigned to protect him.

“They’re hiding him,” Fleitz asserted. “They’re hiding him because of his political bias."



A CIA officer specializing in Russia and Ukraine, Ciaramella was detailed over to the National Security Council from the agency in the summer of 2015, working under Susan Rice, President Obama’s national security adviser. He also worked closely with the former vice president.

Federal records show that Biden’s office invited Ciaramella to an October 2016 state luncheon the vice president hosted for Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi. Other invited guests included Brennan, as well as then-FBI Director James Comey and then-National Intelligence Director James Clapper.

Several U.S. officials told RealClearInvestigations that the invitation that was extended to Ciaramella, a relatively low-level GS-13 federal employee, was unusual and signaled he was politically connected inside the Obama White House.

Former White House officials said Ciaramella worked on Ukrainian policy issues for Biden in 2015 and 2016, when [Biden] the vice president was President Obama's "point man" for Ukraine. A Yale graduate, Ciaramella is said to speak Russian and Ukrainian, as well as Arabic. He had been assigned to the NSC by Brennan.

He was held over into the Trump administration, and headed the Ukraine desk at the NSC, eventually transitioning into the West Wing, until June 2017.

“He was moved over to the front office” to temporarily fill a vacancy, said a former White House official, where he “saw everything, read everything.”

The official added that it soon became clear among NSC staff that Ciaramella opposed the new Republican president’s foreign policies. “My recollection of Eric is that he was very smart and very passionate, particularly about Ukraine and Russia. That was his thing – Ukraine,” he said. “He didn’t exactly hide his passion with respect to what he thought was the right thing to do with Ukraine and Russia, and his views were at odds with the president’s policies.”

“So I wouldn’t be surprised if he was the whistleblower,” the official said.

In May 2017, Ciaramella went “outside his chain of command,” according to a former NSC co-worker, to send an email alerting another agency that Trump happened to hold a meeting with Russian diplomats in the Oval Office the day after firing Comey, who led the Trump-Russia investigation. The email also noted that Russian President Vladimir Putin had phoned the president a week earlier.

Contents of the email appear to have ended up in the media, which reported Trump boasted to the Russian officials about firing Comey, whom he allegedly called “crazy, a real nut job.”

In effect, Ciaramella helped generate the “Putin fired Comey” narrative, according to the research dossier making the rounds in Congress, a copy of which was obtained by RealClearInvestigations.

Ciaramella allegedly argued that “President Putin suggested that President Trump fire Comey,” the report said. “In the days after Comey’s firing, this presidential action was used to further political and media calls for the standup [sic] of the special counsel to investigate ‘Russia collusion.’ “

In the end, Special Counsel Robert Mueller found no conspiracy between Trump and Putin. Ciaramella’s email was cited in a footnote in his report, which mentions only Ciaramella’s name, the date and the recipients “Kelly et al.” Former colleagues said the main recipient was then-Homeland Security Director John Kelly.

Ciaramella left the Trump White House soon after Mueller was appointed. Attempts to reach Ciaramella were unsuccessful, although his father said in a phone interview from Hartford, where he is a bank executive, that he doubted his son was the whistleblower. “He didn’t have that kind of access to that kind of information,” Tony Ciaramella said. “He’s just a guy going to work every day.”

The whistleblower's lawyers did not answer emails and phone calls seeking comment. CIA spokesman Luis Rossello declined comment, saying, “Anything on the whistleblower, we are referring to ODNI.” The Office of the Director of National Intelligence did not respond to requests for comment.

In his complaint, the whistleblower charged that the president used “the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election.”
Specifically, he cited a controversial July 25 phone call from the White House residence in which Trump asked Ukraine’s new president to help investigate the origins of the Russia “collusion” investigation the Obama administration initiated against his campaign, citing reports that “a lot of it started with Ukraine," where the former pro-Hillary Clinton regime in Kiev worked with Obama diplomats and Chalupa to try to “sabotage” Trump’s run for president.

Later in the conversation, Trump also requested information about [Joseph Biden] and his son [Hunter Biden], since “Biden went around bragging that he” had fired the chief Ukrainian prosecutor at the time a Ukrainian oligarch, who gave Biden’s son a lucrative seat on the board of his energy conglomerate [Burisma], was under investigation for corruption.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Intelligence Committee Chairman Schiff argued the whistleblower's complaint, though admittedly based on second-hand information, amounts to an impeachable offense, and they subsequently launched an impeachment inquiry that has largely been conducted in secret.

The whistleblower filed his “urgent” report against Trump with the intelligence community inspector general on Aug. 12, but it was not publicly released until Sept. 26.

Prior to filing, he had met with Schiff’s Democratic staff for “guidance." At first, the California lawmaker denied the contacts, but later admitted that his office did, in fact, meet with the whistleblower early on.

Earlier this year, Schiff recruited two of Ciaramella’s closest allies at the NSC — both whom were also Obama holdovers -- to join his committee staff. He hired one, Sean Misko, in August — the same month the whistleblower complaint was filed.

During closed-door depositions taken in the impeachment inquiry, Misko has been observed handing notes to the lead counsel for the impeachment inquiry, Daniel Goldman, as he asks questions of Trump administration witnesses, officials with direct knowledge of the proceedings told RealClearInvestigations.

Republicans participating in the restricted inquiry hearings have been asking witnesses about Ciaramella and repeatedly injecting his name into the deposition record, angering Schiff and Democrats, who sources say are planning to scrub the references to Ciaramella from any transcripts of the hearings they may agree to release.

“Their reaction tells you something,” said one official familiar with the inquiry.

For example, sources said Ciaramella’s name was invoked by GOP committee members during the closed-door testimony of former NSC official Fiona Hill on Oct. 14. Ciaramella worked with Hill, another Obama holdover, in the West Wing.

During Tuesday’s deposition of NSC official Alexander Vindman, Democrats shut down a line of inquiry by Republicans because they said it risked revealing the identity of the whistleblower. Republicans wanted to know with whom Vindman spoke within the administration about his concerns regarding Trump’s call to Ukraine. But Schiff instructed the witness not to answer the questions, which reportedly sparked a shouting match between Democrats and Republicans.

Determined to keep the whistleblower's identity secret, Schiff recently announced it may not be necessary for him to testify even in closed session. Republicans argue that by hiding his identity, the public cannot assess his motives for striking out against the president. And they worry his political bias could color inquiry testimony and findings unless it’s exposed.

Rep. Jim Jordan, the top Republican on the House Oversight Committee, asserted the American people have the right to know the person who is trying to bring down the president for whom 63 million voted.

“It’s tough to determine someone’s credibility if you can’t put them under oath and ask them questions,” he said.

Added Jordan: “The people want to know. I want to get to the truth."


In an open House Natural Resources Committee hearing last week, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) seemingly out of left field asked a witness about “Eric Ciaramella of the Obama National Security Council,” in what the Washington press corps took as a bid to out the whistleblower.
[Rep. Gohmert] later told a Dallas radio station he knew the whistleblower’s name. “A lot of us in Washington know who it is,” Gohmert said, adding he’s a “very staunch Democrat” who was “supposed to be a point person on Ukraine, during the time when Ukraine was its most corrupt, and he didn’t blow any whistles on their corruption."

The Washington Post ran a news story over the weekend critical of Republicans for allegedly trying to “unmask” the whistleblower, for attempting to do the job journalists would normally do. Last week, the paper ran an op-ed by the whistleblower’s attorneys claiming he was no longer relevant to the inquiry and beseeching the public to let their client slip back into obscurity.

For its part, the New York Times ran a story last month reporting details about the whistleblower’s background, but stopped short of fully identifying him, suggesting it didn’t know his politics or even his name. “Little else is known about him,” the paper claimed.

On Thursday, Democrats plan a House vote on new impeachment-inquiry rules that would give Republicans for the first time the ability to call their own witnesses. Only, their requests must first be approved by the Democrats. So there is a good chance the whistleblower, perhaps the most important witness of all, will remain protected from critical examination.

Oh, you are such a liar!

* Schiff's staff met with the "whistleblower"/CIA mole, they helped the mole craft his whistleblower report for 18 days (they are supposed to be submitted within 5 days).
* A whistleblower report is supposed to be shared with both Democrat and Republican members of the intelligence committee. It was instead conceived and crafted for maximum damage to Trump in secrecy, and not reviewed jointly with Republicans. The intel Republicans found out with the rest of America when it was leaked to the media, for maximum damage to Trump.
* Adam Schiff stood at a podium, and alleged he had not spoken with or met with the "whistleblower" in advance of the report. In truth, his office SELECTED HIS LAWYER! And Schiff's office helped to draft the whistleblower report for 18 days, before releasing it!
* Two staffers from Obama and then Trump's national security council (Abigail Grace, Sean Misco), Democrat deep state anti-Trump loyalists, left the White House NSC staff a few months ago, and then took positions with Adam Schiff's staff. Just in time to help craft this whistleblower report. Just by the wildest coincidence.

If Rep. Adam Schiff is supoenaed and forced to testify under oath about what he knew and when he knew it, it will be Schiff who will be facing federal charges for perjury, obstruction of justice, and malicious prosecution, among other charges, not Trump. By the day, the credibility of this "whistleblower" report and related Ukranian scandal are falling apart and helping Trump as the true facts reveal themselves.

All Democrats have on their side is secret testimony, selective leaks, and other deceptions. Smoke and mirrors. When the true facts come out, it's game over for the Democrats.

Our legal process either finds someone "guilty" or "not guilty".
That is a verdict of insufficient evidence, and therefore "not guilty".
You would like to twist the legal system and have Trump proven not innocent, and guilty until proven innocent.



Again, that is a "not guilty" verdict.



No, I'm absolutely not pushing a false narrative. Theree previous federal investigations, and then a $30 million-dollar Mueller special investigation loaded with 17 partisan Democrats who hated Trump's guts and did everything they could to destroy him, ultimately came to the conclusion that Trump was not guilty.

Period. The end. Despite some weaselly language in the Mueller report that left the door open for House Democrats to open still more pointless investigations. But if it couldn't be found with the unlimited legal resources of a Mueller special investigation, there is no evidence to be found. This is all partisan Democrat theatre, to try and smear Trump in the court of public opinion, in the absence of real evidence.

Deception, slander, intimdation, threats and mob violence. The Democrat way. Whatever serves your Bolshevik revolution.

Mueller quite clearly said they didn't consider collusion so it's just not true to say the report cleared him of that. And Mueller was very clear that Trump could be inficted after he leaves office. Weasel words=whatever doesn't suit your false narrative.

by Debra Heine, November 4, 2019



A retired Army officer who worked with Democrat “star witness” Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman in Grafenwoher, Germany, claims Vindman “really talked up” President Barack Obama and ridiculed America and Americans in front of Russian military officers.

In an eye-opening thread on Twitter last week, retired U.S. Army Lt. Colonel Jim Hickman said that he “verbally reprimanded” Vindman after he heard some of his derisive remarks for himself. “Do not let the uniform fool you,” Hickman wrote. “He is a political activist in uniform.”

Hickman’s former boss at the Joint Multinational Simulation Center in Grafenwoehr has since gone on the record to corroborate his story.

Hickman, 52, says he’s a disabled wounded warrior who served in Iraq and Afghanistan and who received numerous medals, including the Purple Heart.

The retired officer said that Vindman, a naturalized U.S. citizen born in Ukraine, made fun of the United States to the point that it made other soldiers “uncomfortable.” For example, Hickman told American Greatness, that he heard Vindman call Americans “rednecks”—a word that needed to be translated for the Russians. He said they all had a big laugh at America’s expense.


Vindman, who serves on the National Security Council (NSC), appeared last week before the House Intelligence Committee and testified that he’d had “concerns” about the July phone call between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Vindman’s testimony rested on his negative opinions of the call, rather than any new facts about the call.

Vindman’s former boss, NSC Senior Director for European Affairs Tim Morrison, threw cold water on Vindman’s claims in his own testimony later in the week, saying he didn’t have concerns that “anything illegal was discussed” in the phone call. Morrison also testified that Ukrainian officials were not even aware that military funding had been delayed by the Trump Administration until late August 2019, more than a month after the Trump-Zelensky call.



“COMPLETELY BEYOND REPROACH”

Hickman said he decided to come forward because Vindman “disobeyed a direct order from the commander-in-chief, his boss,” made his testimony “about his foreign policy opinions versus facts,” and “wore his Army service uniform to make a political statement” against the president.

“Then right on cue, the mainstream media began calling him a war hero with a purple heart, and completely beyond reproach,” Hickman wrote in a statement to American Greatness and another journalist. “Knowing his political bias, backed by his somewhat radical left-leaning ideology, it was my obligation, indeed my duty, to come forward with this information. I couldn’t go to the same mainstream media to put it out, nor could I go to the Army, as they’re backing Vindman, so I took to Twitter, a source for getting the truth out,” he added.

According to Hickman, Vindman was the Defense Department attaché at the Russian embassy in Germany when he met him in 2013. He told American Greatness that he also met Vindman’s twin brother Lt. Col. Yevgeny Vindman while he was stationed in Germany.

“I know LTC Alex Vindman from a Combined US-Russian exercise called Atlas Vision [13] in Grafenwoher,” Hickman wrote on Twitter. “He worked with the Russian Embassy and I was assigned to the JMTC (Joint Multinational Training Command), within USAREUR (US Army Europe). He worked coordination w/the Russian 15th Peacekeeping Brigade, and I was in charge of all Simulations planning, as well as assisting the USAREUR Lead Planner as the Senior Military Planner.”

Hickman provided American Greatness with a picture of himself and his wife while he was on vacation in Venice during that time period.

He noted that he and Vindman had “interacted on several different occasions throughout the planning cycle, but it was during the actual execution of the exercise that we had an issue relevant to his recent testimony.”



LAUGHING AT AMERICANS' EXPENSE

Hickman said he had pretty much forgotten about Vindman until recently.

“When I saw him, and understood what he was trying to accomplish, I knew immediately he was involved in this mess as a partisan Democrat,” Hickman said in his statement.

He explained on Twitter that Vindman, who was a Major in 2013, sat in on the US-Russian exercises that were conducted in “Virtual Battle Simulations 2 (VBS2) classrooms simulation.”

According to Hickman, Vindman spoke with “U.S. and Russian Soldiers, as well as the young officers and GS employees about America, Russia, and Obama.”

Hickman’s Oct. 31 tweets continue below in paragraph form for easier reading:

• "He was apologetic of American culture, laughed about Americans not being educated or worldly, & really talked up Obama & globalism to the point of (sic) uncomfortable.
  
  He would speak w/the Russian Soldiers & laugh as if at the expense of the US personnel. It was so uncomfortable & unprofessional, one of the GS [civil service]employees came & told me everything above. I walked over & sat w/in earshot of Vindman, & sure enough, all was confirmed.
  
  One comment truly struck me as odd, & it was w/respect to American’s falsely thinking they’re exceptional, when he said, “He [Obama] is working on that now.” And he said it w/a snide ‘I know a secret’ look on his face. I honestly don’t know what it meant, it just sounded like an odd thing to say.
  
  Regardless, after hearing him bash America a few times in front of subordinates, Russians, & GS Employees, as well as, hearing an earful about globalization, Obama’s plan, etc., I’d had enough. I tapped him on the shoulder & asked him to step outside. At that point I verbally reprimanded him for his actions, & I’ll leave it at that, so as not to be unprofessional myself.
  
  The bottom-line is LTC Vindman was a partisan Democrat at least as far back as [2013]. So much so, junior officers & soldiers
  felt uncomfortable around him. This is not your professional, field-grade officer, who has the character & integrity to do the right thing. Do not let the uniform fool you… he is a political activist in uniform. I pray our nation will drop this hate, vitriol & division, & unite as our founding fathers intended!"

Thomas Lasch, Hickman’s boss at the time, corroborated his story on Twitter.

“Jim, I remember exercise ATLAS VISION and this incident. I was your Boss at the time and was satisfied when you told me that you ‘took care of it’ (meaning then MAJ Vindman’s disparaging comments about the U.S. to the Russians ) and I just put things together this past week,” Lasch tweeted.

Lasch is a highly respected simulation strategist at the Joint Multinational Simulation Center in Grafenwoehr, Germany where he is responsible for the “Live Virtual Constructive and Gaming simulation program for all U.S. Forces in Europe.”

Lasch vouched for Hickman in a second tweet: “Everyone on this thread should know that Jim Hickman’s patriotism and honesty is unparalleled. He is one of my personal heroes.” He added: “This is not about Trump! This is about an officer [LTC Vindman] that is disloyal to the United States of America.”

American Greatness was able to reach Lasch through his LinkedIn account. He verified that the recently established Twitter account in his name vouching for Hickman was indeed his.


“Yes this is my LinkedIn account. It is really me. And the Twitter account is mine as well,” Lasch said.

In his statement, Hickman explained why Lasch remembered the incident with Vindman: “I did question his patriotism to our nation, and the lack of respect given to Americans in general. I was indeed furious and that’s most likely why my boss Tom Lasch remembers it so clearly.”

“I corrected him solely as a superior officer witnessing a junior officer doing something wrong,” Hickman explained. “We as officers are not supposed to talk about our political leanings, especially in front of subordinates, and never are we to talk down about Americans and our culture.”

Hickman further explained to American Greatness that Vindman spoke favorably of the United Nations, and appeared contemptuous of Americans who didn’t appreciate the U.N.
Vindman, Hickman said, believed that “the U.N. should have broader powers” and “talked about how the American people weren’t worldly.”

He noted that Vindman actually used the word “globalism” during the conversation and “talked about American culture versus European culture,” unfavorably, essentially suggesting that “the U.S. has no culture.”

Hickman also told American Greatness that Vindman talked about “Obama changing America” and that it reminded him of Obama’s infamous “Fundamentally transforming America” speech of October 2008.

The former officer stressed that he was not seeking recognition or praise but instead, “to just get the facts and truth out that are relevant to the current situation.”

Hickman said in his statement that he began his Army career in military intelligence and was commissioned in 1996 as a field artillery officer.

He retired from the service in 2017 and now resides near Tampa, Florida.

Reading the transcripts it's pretty clear to me they don't need to put up the whistleblower. Other witnesses cover what he alleged in the report. And we have the rough transcript of Trump's conversation with Zelensky. It's damning and all republicans have is accusations and partisan game playing in an attempt to provide cover for his corruption. I look forward to voters weighing in '20

Holding foreign aid to try to get a country to help his campaign sounds like solid grounds to impeach. Pretty easy to see that he did that.

I wouldn't lie nor would I even need to. Testimony I think establishes that Ukraine was aware that aid was conditional on investing Biden. On a side note Zelensky was booked to appear on CNN to announce the investigation Trump was trying to get. He canceled when the aid was received. Btw very glad to see Roger Stone got what he deserved today.

BBC

Link to news that several people overheard Trump talking to Sondland about investigating Biden. That would not be second hand hearsay.

The volume on the Trump/Sondland call was so loud others could here what Trump was saying. Yovanovich's testimony adds to the picture of how Trump was using Guilliani and others to try to get Ukraine to investigate Biden. Trump can get rid of diplomats like her but it matters if it was done so to shake down another country for personal gain. That is corruption and an abuse of his office. From your vantage point who is actually seeking truth and who's trying to dodge it? Hint: the ones avoiding subpoena and talking under oath may be the actual corrupt ones.

Obviously somebody hearing Trump on a phone call talking to Sondland about investigating Biden is exactly new evidence. It's right there in front of your face WB. And where are the republicans who want the WH to hand over the documents and texts that in your mind should exonerate Trump?

You mean the same pollsters who said Hillary Clinton would win in a landslide in 2016, and that Trump couldn't overcome the electoral "blue wall"? It was only after the election that Democrat leadership and the Newspeak liberal media ever changed the subject from that electoral vote, and after relentlessly talked about the popular vote.

As I've said before, liberal pollsters rig the polls and stack the polls with a heavier sample of Democrat voters, to psychologically undermine Republicans and convince them of the inevitability of a Dukakis, Bill Clinton, Gore, Kerry, Obama, or Hillary Clinton victory. Dukakis was projected to win in 1988 by 17 points, how'd that election actually work out?

Regarding the released phone conversation, I'm capable of reading too.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trumps-ukraine-call-transcript-read-the-document
I just don't buy the liberal spin of it.

If the phone conversation said what you allege it does, piece-of-excrement Rep. Adam Schiff would have quoted it, not lyingly paraphrased, not "parodied".
It doesn't say what you and the Bolsheviks in your party allege.

Zelensky has even said that Trump's battle against establishment corruption is what inspired him to run for president of Ukraine and pursue a similar battle against corruption. And AGAIN, Trump since his inauguration has been giving vast amounts of military aid to Ukraine that Obama never provided in the first 3 years of Russia's invasion. So spare me the posturing about Trump threatening or witholding aid. Democrats did nothing for Ukraine, for years.
Likewise in Syria.
Likewise Iran.
Likewise North Korea.

Trump has been pushing back against aggression on all fronts.
Democrats accuse Trump of weakness, to create a false narrative, and distract from the record of [Democrat weakness.

WHISTLEBLOWER'S COMPLAINT ON TRUMP'S UKRAINE CALL: READ THE DOCUMENT

Lt. Col Alexander Vindman today let on that he had THREE TIMES been offered to be commannder of all armed forces for the nation of Ukraine.

Gee, where would they get the idea that Vindman would leave the U.S. and have a first loyalty to another nation?
Could it possibly because he habitually badmouthed the United States and the U.S. military in the company of Russians and other foreign officials, and even around U.S. military staff, which many U.S. officials overheard and reported, and for which his superior officer verified and reprimanded Vindman for?

And why is globalist and a leaker, who habitually badmouths the military he serves in, allowed to continue serving in the National Security Council, or in the U.S. military period?

It's exactly hearsay. As Sen. Lindsey Graham said, at least 95% of these hearings would be thrown out as hearsay the moment it got out of Schiff's House committee, and into a Senate trial.

The hard evidence is the transcribed phone call. What we've seen in these hearings is second, third and fourth-hand opinion hearsay about that transcribed call.

...

This is what a smear looks like. He actually was wounded fighting for this country and is guilty of getting job offers? That type of attack says more about the attacker's character than anything else. Shame on you

Lindsey sure turned into Trump's little bitch, lol. Outside of the republican cult hearsay doesn't mean anything you don't like though. In the real world somebody hearing Trump saying something is actually first account testimony. Lindsey has made it clear that he's going to put party over country when he declared he wouldn't read the transcripts of testimony that displeases his boss.

If you weren't so brainwashed, you would realize Lindsey Graham is citing the rule of law. You can't criminally punish and destroy soimeone just because you wish they were guilty, and because it helps you Democrat party.

The same situation as with Brett Kavanaugh a year ago.

And Nicholas Sandmann and the Covington, KY high school kids your side wanted to lynch.

And wanting to abolish the electoral college (because it keeps them from winning elections)

And wanting to stack the U S Supreme Court (because elections and rule of law have allowed more Republican-appointed judges, that obstructs their far-left goals)

And they open borders (because that again provides more Democrat voters, and a permanent Democrat majority. If illegals voted overwhelmingly Republican, Democrats would be rabidly in support of border security, building a wall, and deporting illegals)

The Democrats have completely lost their minds, and side now against all the institutions and Constitutional protections this country has been built on for over 200 years. They have become the Bolshevik party, and they're pretty unapologetic about it. Insane. They support policies that guarantee we will fragment as a nation and destroy ourselves, for their short-term political gain.

By S.A. Miller - The Washington Times -
Thursday, November 21, 2019



A larger share of American voters now oppose the impeachment effort against President Trump, revealed a new poll released Thursday.

An Emerson College national survey found 45% of voters oppose impeachment, compared to 43% that support it.

That’s a reversal of public opinion from the same poll in October before House Democrats held public hearings to showcase their impeachment case against Mr. Trump. In October, 48% supported impeachment and 44% opposed it.


“The biggest swing is among Independents, who oppose impeachment now 49% to 34%, which is a reversal from October where they supported impeachment 48% to 39%,” said the pollsters.

Mr. Tump’s approval rating also increased to 48%, a bounce from 43% approval last month.

Lindsey lost any shred of credibility when he announced he wasn't going to read the transcripts of testimony while trying to shut down the impeachment proceedings. History will show that he and many others worked to protect a corrupt president.

“Thank God no one is accusing us of interfering in the U.S. elections anymore," Putin said at an economic forum in Moscow, according to the Associated Press. "Now they’re accusing Ukraine.”

So that would be your party, the Democrats, doing the propagandist bidding of Vladimir Putin?

Lindsey made a point of saying he wasn't reading the transcripts while he was scurrying around trying to stop the House impeachment inquiry. Not really great principles imho. I believe he recently met with Trump with other republican senators to coordinate the likely impeachment trial. Not even an attempt to act like a potential juror. To busy trying to protect the corruption.

Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz has found evidence that an FBI lawyer manipulated a key investigative document related to the FBI's secretive surveillance of a former Trump campaign adviser -- enough to change the substantive meaning of the document, according to multiple reports.

The show-stopping development comes as Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., told Fox News that Horowitz's comprehensive report on allegations of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant abuse against former Trump campaign aide Carter Page will be released on Dec. 9. "That's locked," Graham said.

The new evidence concerning the altered document, which pertained to the FBI's FISA court warrant application to surveil Page, is expected to be outlined in Horowitz's upcoming report. CNN first reported the news, which was largely confirmed by The Washington Post.

But the Post, hours after publishing its story, conspicuously removed the portion of its reporting that the FBI employee involved worked "beneath" Peter Strzok, the FBI's since-fired head of counterintelligence. The Post did not offer an explanation for the change, which occurred shortly after midnight. Earlier this week, the DOJ highlighted a slew of anti-Trump text messages sent by Strzok when he was leading the Hillary Clinton email investigation and the probe into the Trump campaign.

"The person under scrutiny has not been identified but is not a high-ranking official — they worked beneath former deputy assistant director Peter Strzok, according to people familiar with the investigation who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss material that has not yet been made public," The Post wrote in its now-deleted paragraph.

WAYBACK MACHINE SHOWS ORIGINAL VERSION OF WASHINGTON POST'S STORY, BEFORE STEALTH DELETION

The paper eventually added a correction to the bottom of its piece, reading, "Correction: An earlier version of this story erroneously stated that the FBI employee being investigated for altering a document worked underneath former Deputy Assistant Director Peter Strzok. The employee was a low-level lawyer in the Office of General Counsel and did not report to the deputy assistant director."

Nevertheless, Horowitz reportedly found that the FBI employee was involved enough in the FISA process to falsely state that he had "documentation to back up a claim he had made in discussions with the Justice Department about the factual basis" for the FISA warrant application, the Post reported. Then, the FBI employee allegedly "altered an email" to substantiate his inaccurate version of events. The employee has since been forced out of the bureau.


In its initial 2016 FISA warrant application, the FBI flatly called Page "an agent of a foreign power."

Sources told Fox News last month that U.S. Attorney John Durham's separate, ongoing probe into potential FBI and Justice Department misconduct in the run-up to the 2016 election through the spring of 2017 has transitioned into a full-fledged criminal investigation -- and that Horowitz's report will shed light on why Durham's probe has become a criminal inquiry.

FBI AGENTS MANIPULATED FLYNN FILE, AS CLAPPER ORDERED 'KILL SHOT,' FILING SAYS


Durham has reportedly taken up Horowitz's findings concerning the falsified FISA document, meaning the ex-FBI lawyer who made the changes is now under criminal investigation. The Post indicated, however, that the document was not central to the legality of the FISA warrant obtained against Page.

Republicans have long argued that the FBI's alleged FISA abuses, which came as the bureau aggressively pursued ultimately unsubstantiated claims of criminal links between the Trump team and Russia during the 2016 presidential campaign, were politically motivated. In recent months, a series of unearthed documents has strengthened those claims.

Just nine days before the FBI applied for its first FISA warrant to surveil Page, bureau officials were battling with a senior Justice Department official who had "continued concerns" about the "possible bias" of a source pivotal to the application, according to internal text messages previously obtained by Fox News.

The 2016 messages, sent between Lisa Page and then-FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, also revealed that bureau brass circulated at least two anti-Trump blog articles, including a Lawfare blog post sent shortly after Election Day that called Trump possibly "among the major threats to the security of the country."


DOJ OUTLINES STRZOK 'SECURITY VIOLATIONS'; FINDS 'PARANOID' CASE AGENT NOTICED STRZOK WAS SITTING ON WEINER LAPTOP


Fox News is told the texts were connected to the ultimately successful Page application, which relied in part on information from British ex-spy Christopher Steele – whose anti-Trump views are now well-documented – and cited Page’s suspected Russia ties. In its warrant application, the FBI inaccurately assured the FISA court on numerous occasions that media sources independently corroborated Steele's claims, and did not clearly state that Steele worked for a firm hired by Hillary Clinton's campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC).

Much of the Steele dossier has been proved discredited or unsubstantiated, including the dossier's claims that the Trump campaign was paying hackers in the United States out of a non-existent Russian consulate in Miami, or that ex-Trump lawyer Michael Cohen traveled to Prague to conspire with Russians. Special Counsel Robert Mueller also was unable to substantiate the dossier's claims that Carter Page had received a large payment relating to the sale of a share of Rosneft, a Russian oil giant, or that a lurid blackmail tape involving the president existed.

Despite being accused by the FBI of being a Russian agent in the FISA application, and being secretly surveilled for more than a year, Page has not been charged with any wrongdoing. He has since sued numerous actors -- including the DNC -- for defamation related to claims that he worked with Russia.


DISPUTE ERUPTS AS BRENNAN, COMEY APPEAR TO DISPUTE WHO PUSHED THE STEELE DOSSIER

"OI [Office of Intelligence] now has a robust explanation re any possible bias of the chs [confidential human source] in the package," Lisa Page wrote to McCabe on Oct. 12, 2016. "Don't know what the holdup is now, other than Stu's continued concerns."

It's unclear whether the confidential source in question was Steele or another individual. "Stu" was an apparent reference to Stuart Evans, then the DOJ's National Security Division deputy assistant attorney general. In one previously unearthed and since-unredacted text message, Strzok texted Page that he was "Currently fighting with Stu for this FISA" in late 2016.

Page is not the only Trump official to allege misconduct by the FBI. Last month, an explosive court filing from Michael Flynn’s legal team alleged that FBI agents manipulated official records of the former national security adviser’s 2017 interview that led to him being charged with lying to investigators. Flynn's attorneys demanded the FBI search its internal "Sentinel" system to find more evidence of allegedly doctored files.

CNN'S CUOMO FAILS TO ASK EX-INTEL OFFICIALS ABOUT HIS NETWORK'S OWN BOMBSHELL REPORT



Newly released text messages involving text messages between Strzok and former FBI lawyer Lisa Page revealed that Page -- who was not present for the Flynn interview -- had apparently made "edits" to the so-called "302" witness report in the case, which was key to Flynn's prosecution on a false statements charge. Page told Strzok on February 10, 2017 that she “gave my edits to Bill to put on your desk.”

Horowitz told congressional lawmakers in an October letter that his investigation and ensuing report were nearing their conclusion.

FBI BLAMES SYSTEM-WIDE SOFTWARE FAILURE FOR MISSING STRZOK TEXTS -- PHONE FROM MUELLER DAYS TOTALLY WIPED

The "lengthy" draft report "concerns sensitive national security and law enforcement matters," Horowitz wrote in the letter, adding that he anticipated "the final report will be released publicly with few redactions."

Horowitz noted that he did not anticipate a need to prepare or issue "separate classified and public versions of the report."

"After we receive the final classification markings from the Department and the FBI, we will then proceed with our usual process for preparing a final report, including ensuring that appropriate reviews occur for accuracy and comment purposes," Horowitz wrote in the letter. "Once begun, we do not anticipate the time for that review to be lengthy."

From USA Today...
"
WASHINGTON – Sen. Lindsey Graham, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, told reporters on Tuesday he does not plan to read the newly released transcripts of testimony in the House impeachment inquiry, calling the entire process an illegitimate "sham."

"I've written the whole process off," Graham said, according to CBS News and The Associated Press. "I think this is a bunch of B.S."

Every major news outlet carried this story from the looks of a google search. So you are incorrect WB. When testimony started showing evidence of a quid pro quo Lindsey did say he wasn't going to read the transcripts he had previously demanded be made public. He is truly Trump's little bitch these days.

So that would be your party, the Democrats, doing the propagandist bidding of Vladimir Putin?

I think your smart enough and aware of current events to know how silly your being there. Just this Sunday I watched Wallace on his show ask senator Kennedy about the Russia/Ukraine election interference stuff and Kennedy went with a "we don't know" answer on it. Our intelligence as Chris Wallace brought up does know though. Because it's embarrassing though to Trump we get republicans parroting Russian troll farms garbage.

Actually Wallace stated what all our intelligence has found. It's Trump and company that ends up downplaying the findings. Kennedy when he says he doesn't know actually does know because even the republican lead investigation came up with the same conclusion. Chris Wallace isn't a liberal. These days though if a conservative doesn't tow the Trump partisan line on a lot of things they get labeled as such. He's still a serious journalist who can't just go with the lies.

Sondland's testimony as well as others is evidence even if you don't want to admit it. And any obstruction article would certainly be worthy. Do you really think Trump is blocking records and testimony that he thinks would actually clear him? How would that even make sense?

Rudy Giuliani tried to score big bucks in Ukraine

He needs to testify under oath as well as the other players in holding the Ukrainian foreign aid.

Powerful, wealthy people commit crimes all the time. And I would point to Trump and Rudy as being "vicious, unprincipled and scorched earth" instead.

After all who is preaching that one side hates America? Who is fighting like hell to stop any investigation into their actions into Ukraine? Documents and testimony that you would think an innocent party would want released is being blocked by Trump.

All that hatred whipped up for Trump is so sad. I hope at some point you look at what he's done to this country and stop worshipping him. Trump could be providing the documents and testimony that would be his defense WB. Instead he's trying to block it. You would never tolerate that from a democrat. And instead of thoughtful responses you rant out your hatred for your fellow Americans. I didn't withhold foreign aid to try to shakedown a country that is fighting our enemy. Nor did I use a charity so fraudulently that I had to pay huge fines. Those are things corrupt bad people do. Open your eyes, I'm not your enemy

Impeaching Trump btw is a lot more popular by the public than Clinton's or even Nixon's up till when he resigned.

WB when you post stuff like this..."Democrats have played their last vicious and desperate hand. To the division and detriment of the nation. I have never been so enraged by the overt deceit, malice, and politics of personal destruction of the Democrats. From Brett Kavanaugh to Nicholas Sandmann, to this. I wouldn't risk going to jail to do it, but these malicious Democrats, stoking division just for their short-term gain, destroying the country and the rule of law, deserve a death like Hitler or Mussolini or Benedict Arnold. Killed in the streets. I would be delighted to turn on Fox or CNN and see that someone else had made them die screaming. What the Democrats have done is so vile, so divisive, so treasonous, that is the punishment they truly deserve.
..."
and than go on about an entire political party having all the hate just simply isn't credible. Nor is Trump cooperating with the impeachment inquiry. The documents and testimony that I think we both know wouldn't clear him but further damn him he's illegally withholding. Trump is earning his impeachment.

Off topic but if it helps I do believe history shifts out the garbage who try to build their greatness by trying to tear down others. Trump will likely be impeached on the facts. More will come out to further damn him. He won't be able to block all that evidence forever and we know enough already.

In other news not surprisingly Trump passes on having lawyers at the inquiry to participate.

Newt's a partisan shill. A turd that keeps floating up after many flushes.

Jonathan Turley is the ONLY one before hearings who cited a universal standard for impeachment, and in his detached politeness made the Democrats on the House Committee, and the liberal activist law professors sitting next to him, all look like fools.

He felt differently during the Clinton impeachment so no need to try to trick me WB on him being a nonpartisan.

Yeah on that WB nobody should be threatened like that. It happens on both sides but it doesn't make it okay. However I would criticize Turley for having very different views when it was a democrat being impeached. Than he argued that a President didn't even need to commit a crime to warrant impeachment.

by Gregg Jarrett


It turns out that the most revealing aspect of the long-awaited Justice Department’s inspector general’s report on the origins of the Russia collusion hoax comes from Attorney General William Barr’s damning assessment of it.

In unmistakably terse language, Barr denounced “a small group of now-former FBI officials” for their “misconduct,” “malfeasance and misfeasance,” and “clear abuse of the FISA process.”


Inspector General (IG) Michael Horowitz, issued a 476-page report Monday that broadly examined: (1) how and why the FBI initiated an investigation of candidate Donald Trump and his campaign in July 2016; and (2) the decision to seek a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant to surveil a Trump campaign associate.



SEAN HANNITY ON IG REPORT: 'WE WERE RIGHT EVERY STEP OF THE WAY'



As to the first action, Barr concluded that the IG report “makes clear that the FBI launched an intrusive investigation of a U.S. presidential campaign on the thinnest of suspicions that, in my view, were insufficient to justify the steps taken.”

In plain terms, Barr is convinced that the FBI was wrong to investigate Trump and his campaign, because the evidence was conspicuously deficient. Barr noted that the FBI “pushed forward” with its investigation even in the face of “consistently exculpatory” evidence.



As to the second action, Barr condemned those same FBI officials who “misled the FISA court, omitted critical exculpatory facts from their filings, and suppressed or ignored information negating the reliability of their principal source.”

The FBI relied on Christopher Steele as its major source for information presented to the FISA Court. The ex-British spy had assembled his unverified “dossier” of hearsay information from supposed sources that were largely anonymous.

The FBI knew Steele was unreliable, yet the bureau vouched for him as credible. Evidence was concealed and the FISA Court was deceived.

Barr announced that current FBI Director Christopher Wray will implement a “comprehensive set of proposed reforms” to ensure that such egregious abuse never happens again. Wray agreed, telling ABC News that FBI officials “failed to follow our policies, neglected to exercise appropriate diligence, or fell short of the standard of conduct and performance that we expect of all our employees.”




The attorney general’s skeptical view of the IG report was shared by John Durham, the U.S. attorney in Connecticut specially appointed by Barr to investigate the origins of the FBI’s Trump-Russia probe.

Durham revealed that “last month we advised the Inspector General that we do not agree with some of the report’s conclusions as to predication and how the FBI case was opened.”

Durham pointed out that the IG’s investigation was limited to the Justice Department. In contrast, Durham has greater investigative authority and has developed “information from other persons and entities, both in the U.S. and outside the U.S.” Horowitz readily acknowledged this on the very first page of his report.

Barr’s harsh criticism of the FBI stands in stark contrast to the findings offered by the inspector general.

Although Horowitz identified at least 17 significant errors of omission in the FBI’s application to surveil former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, Horowitz opined that the warrant application was “properly predicated.”
That is impossible, given the sheer volume of mistakes –and Barr surely knows it.

Horowitz also stated: “We did not find documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced the FBI’s decision.” Of course he didn’t. No one is foolish enough to confess to biased decision-making or reduce it to writing.



What’s baffling is how the IG seems to have blindly accepted the stories peddled by former FBI officials like Director James Comey, Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and General Counsel James Baker – not to mention Steele himself. Horowitz wrote that it was not his role “to second-guess discretionary judgments.” Then why did he examine them?

Nonetheless, there are some stunning revelations in the report that should trouble all Americans about how easy it is for the FBI to open an investigation of anyone and convince a FISA judge to permit court-sanctioned surveillance.

Lies and deception were the key. The FBI relied almost exclusively on Steele’s uncorroborated “dossier,” despite Comey’s public statements to the contrary. The IG found numerous instances in which the court was given “inaccurate, incomplete, or unsupported” information.

For example, the FISA Court was never told that the Hillary Clinton Campaign and the Democratic National Committee paid for Christopher Steele to put together his “dossier” – a major omission that clearly should erode the credibility of Steele’s report.

The court was also never told that Steele had lied in the past and had serious problems with his credibility and “poor judgment;” that Steele’s primary sub-source was a “boaster” known to embellish and who later cast doubt on the “dossier”; nor that Steele had a known bias against Trump and was “desperate that he not get elected.”

The sub-source was interviewed by the FBI three times in 2017, advising agents that Steele had misstated or exaggerated his information, which came from “word of mouth and hearsay” over beers. Some of the statements had been made in jest and were just “rumors and speculation,” the unidentified sub-source said.

None of this was disclosed to the FISA Court. Instead, the FBI assured the court that the sub-source was truthful, suggesting that his information was all corroborated --when the FBI knew it was not.

In addition, the court was never told that a top FBI lawyer [Kevin Clinesmith, lawyer for FBI FISA Division, who also was exposed fortexting "Viva La Resistance!" in in Trump-hating partisan text messages to Peter Strzok and Lisa Page] doctored evidence to create a false and negative impression of Carter Page that was then used for one of the FISA warrants.

The FISA Court was also never told that a Yahoo News article cited as an independent source also came from Steele. Nor was the court told that evidence was uncorroborated and the sub-source information was unverified.

Further, the FISA Court was never made aware of exculpatory evidence that Carter Page had previously helped the U.S. government [working for the CIA]; nor was the court told of multiple exculpatory statements by Carter Page gathered by an undercover informant.

These are some – but not all – of the 17 material deceptions identified in the IG report that were made by the FBI to a succession of FISA judges over the course of four warrant applications to spy on Page. The facts were manipulated to mislead the court. Even after Steele was fired by the FBI for leaking and lying about it, the bureau continued to rely on him as its source.

These are not mere “performance failures,” as the IG describes them. Collectively, they constitute a deliberate and successful effort to violate Carter Page’s civil liberties and constitutional rights. The misuse of power was knowing and purposeful.

The FBI brazenly told the FISA Court that Carter Page was a spy. The bureau knew he was not. This was rampant, unconscionable abuse of the rule of law. Despite Horowitz’s claims, the FBI invented probable cause where none existed. The true target was Donald Trump.

Horowitz also accepted without question the FBI’s explanation that the opening of its investigation of Trump on July 31, 2016, was justified because campaign adviser George Papadopoulos heard a rumor that Russians were in possession of Hillary Clinton’s emails and might use them during the campaign. Yet, it is not a crime to hear a rumor, or even to pass it along.

Under FBI regulations, a formal investigation can only be initiated if there is a reasonable basis to believe that a crime has been (or will be) committed.

Additionally, there must be specific “articulable facts” in support of that crime. Here, neither were present. This leaves a largely phony “dossier” as the only remaining evidence. Absent verification that the FBI never secured, it was no evidence at all.



This is likely the reason that both Durham and Barr have refused to accept the IG’s conclusion that the original investigation of candidate Trump and his campaign was justified. With greater investigative authority than Horowitz and the power to compel witnesses through grand jury subpoenas, they may already have developed actionable evidence of lawlessness and corruption.

There was never any credible evidence that Donald Trump was a Russian asset or that his campaign had engaged in a criminal “collusion” conspiracy with the Kremlin to steal the 2016 presidential election. This claim was a pernicious lie and the dirtiest political trick ever perpetrated.

It was, as Trump called it, a hoax and a witch hunt.

Yet, for more than two years Americans were told by Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., countless other Democrats and the mainstream media mob that it was all true. Until the report by Special Counsel Robert Mueller said it was not.


Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., will question I G Michael Horowitz at a public hearing Wednesday. After reading the IG report, Graham called the FBI’s actions a “criminal enterprise” that ran off the rails.

Senator Graham is now armed with 476 pages of proof.

____________________________


Gregg Jarrett is a Fox News legal analyst and commentator, and formerly worked as a defense attorney and adjunct law professor. He is the author of the No. 1 New York Times best-selling book The Russia Hoax: The Illicit Scheme to Clear Hillary Clinton and Frame Donald Trump. His latest book is the New York Times bestseller Witch Hunt: The Story of the Greatest Mass Delusion in American Political History

As to your complaint about this not being a bipartisan impeachment, that would be nice but i really don't see any chance of that happening with republicans. Lindsey Graham originally said it would be deeply troubling if the President engaged in a quidproquo.

When Sondland testified under oath that there was one Graham stated he stopped reading the transcripts.

The one republican that was for impeachment was attacked for breaking ranks and is no longer a republican.

Even if it somehow costs the democrats votes I think it's important to make Trump's attempts to withhold foreign aid for an investigation of his political rival an impeachable offense.

And now today, the Democrats at about 9 AM finally crossed the threshold and announced they will pursue actual impeachment. They are committing political suicide, and have done, are doing, a lot of damage to the country in the process.



DEMOCRATS TO UNVEIL ARTICLES OF IMPEACHMENT, FOCUSED OB "ABUSE OF POWER", AND "OBSTRUCTION OF CONGRESS"



I caught only a part of Rep. Nadler's statement, I heard Rep. Adam Schiff's full prepared statement. It made me want to vomit, the insincerity and blatant falsehoods he was fronting. And then they quickly fled the scene, without taking any questions from reporters. Indicating they don't really believe what they are saying, and don't want to be cross-examined on it too closely.

An hour or so later, I caught Rep Kevin McCarthy's response, which expressed the verifiable facts, that easily deconstructed the whoppers by Democrats in what they are alleging.

A month ago, Steve Bannon, interviewed by Maria Bartiromo, said that Democrats were not going to turn back, that they can't at this point do so politically, even though this is the path to Democrat suicide:
"They've come ashore, they've burned the boats, they're advancing inland, there's no turning back."

That has turned out to be prophetic.

The IG report is obviously a problem for Trump. While it found mistakes it also directly undercuts Trump's conspiracy theory. And I feel very badly for Horowitz because he will pay for presenting a report that contradicts Trump. Whatever Barr presents will have to be rock solid. That means if sources are from former Ukrainian officials that were kicked out for being corrupt and are now living in Russia, forget it outside the Trump cult.

LISA PAGE: Trump isn't going to be president, right? RIGHT?!?

PETER STRZOK: No. No he won't. We will stop it.

PETER STRZOK: I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy's office that there's no way he gets elected -- but I'm afraid we can't take that risk. It's like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you're 40...

LISA PAGE (to Strzok): “The last thing you need [is Hillary Clinton] going in there loaded for bear,” Page continued. “You think she’s going to remember or care that it was more [DOJ] than [FBI]?”

[i.e., they thought Hillary Clinton was definitely going to be the next president, and Page was recommending they don't go after her too aggressively in their investigation, because she would be the next president, and would be angered that they as top FBI agents had pushed too hard to investigate her, that could make her "loaded for bear" (angry, seeking revenge, wanting to fire or demote the FBI agents who pushed too hard to investigate her. Keep in mind that Strzok and Page were deeply supportive of Hillary in 2016, and even they were afraid of her. ]

PETER STRZOK: Hillary should win 100 million to zero

KEVIN CLINESMITH: Viva la resistance!

[ Clinesmith is also the high-level lawyer in FBI's FISA division who excluded exculpatory information to make Carter Page look guilty when they KNEW he was not, just so they could get FISA warrants to spy on the Trump campaign. And then proceeded to use the same lies in 3 more FISA warrants, to spy on the elected president Trump's transition team, and then on Trump's inaugurated administration officials. ]

Nothing will change. People will grow more tired of political squabbles between team red and team blue. We will take a few clear strides to civil war and authoritarianism.

Both Trump and Biden probably abused their power and no one wants to take a panoramic view because that would force them to realize how similar their preferred party is to the side they regularly refer to as shit.

See ya again in a few months to a year.

-Iggy

I would argue that things have changed. Holding foreign aid to an ally that is fighting a foe for political favors should never be acceptable. Trump will likely not be removed from office but the impeachment will historically forever mark his corruption. I would agree we are more into sides these days but basic concepts of right and wrong can't be all be dismissed because of it.

Lindsey Graham not even pretending...“I am trying to give a pretty clear signal I have made up my mind. I’m not trying to pretend to be a fair juror here,”

No morals just a lap dog protecting his master.

As to your complaint about this not being a bipartisan impeachment, that would be nice but i really don't see any chance of that happening with republicans. Lindsey Graham originally said it would be deeply troubling if the President engaged in a quidproquo. When Sondland testified under oath that there was one, Graham stated he stopped reading the transcripts. The one republican that was for impeachment [Rep. Amash of Michigan, formerly an R, now a D] was attacked for breaking ranks and is no longer a republican. Even if it somehow costs the democrats votes I think it's important to make Trump's attempts to withhold foreign aid for an investigation of his political rival an impeachable offense.

Lindsey Graham not even pretending...“I am trying to give a pretty clear signal I have made up my mind. I’m not trying to pretend to be a fair juror here,”

No morals just a lap dog protecting his master.

Graham said that early on and once it became clear there was a quid pro quo he went into attack mode for his master. I only give him credit for at least being clear that the oath he's taking about being impartial is a lie. While the Ukrainians were fighting for democracy Trump withheld foreign aid for political favors. That will be attached to him for history.

Trump officially impeached.