by Caitlin Yilek, Washington Examiner November 08, 2019
A transcript of a former National Security Council official’s closed-door testimony revealed how a Republican lawmaker was ejected from the impeachment hearing. Rep. Matt Gaetz, a member of the House Judiciary Committee, was present when Fiona Hill began her deposition on Oct. 14. The Republican is not a member of the three committees leading the impeachment investigation into President Trump’s conduct toward Ukraine and was noticed by House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff a few minutes into the hearing.
“Excuse me, could we suspend?” Schiff said, according to the transcript released Friday. “Do we have any members here that are not members of the three committees authorized to be present? Mr. Gaetz, you’re not permitted to be in the room.”
“I’m on the Judiciary Committee,” Gaetz said.
“Judiciary Committee is not a part of this hearing,” Schiff responded.
“I thought the Judiciary Committee Committee had jurisdiction over impeachment,” Gaetz said.
“Mr. Gaetz, you’re not permitted to be in the room. Please leave,” Schiff replied.
“Mr. Chairman, really?” Republican Rep. Jim Jordan interjected.
“Yes, really,” Schiff said.
“You’re going to include members of Congress on committees that have roles of impeachment — “ Gaetz said.
“Mr. Gaetz, take your statement to the press. They do no good here. So, please absent yourself,” Schiff said.
“You’re going to have someone remove me from the hearing?” Gaetz shot back.
“You’re going to remove yourself, Mr. Gaetz,” Schiff urged.
Gaetz then said he had “a right” to be there and asked Schiff to cite the rule that did not permit him to be present. The two argued for several more minutes as to whether Gaetz was allowed to be in the room, with Jordan defending his Republican colleague.
“Mr. Gaetz, why don’t you take your spectacle outside? This is not how we conduct ourselves in this committee,” Schiff said.
“I’ve seen how you’ve conducted yourself in this committee, and I’d like to be here to observe,” Gaetz said.
Schiff said the hearing would not continue until Gaetz left the room, and the time used up by the Republican congressman would be taken from the minority’s time for questioning. Gaetz left the room shortly after.
On the evening of September 24, 2019, Pelosi announced that six committees of the House of Representatives would begin a formal impeachment inquiry into President Trump. Pelosi accused Trump of betraying his oath of office, U.S. national security, and the integrity of the country's elections.[37][38][39] The six committees charged with the task were those on Financial Services, the Judiciary, Intelligence, Foreign Affairs, Oversight and Reform, and Ways and Means.[40]
In October 2019, three congressional committees (Intelligence, Oversight, and Foreign Affairs) deposed witnesses including Ambassador Taylor,[41] Laura Cooper (the deputy assistant secretary of defense for Russian, Ukrainian and Eurasian affairs),[42] and former White House official Fiona Hill.[43] Witnesses testified that they believed that President Trump wanted Zelensky to publicly announce investigations into the Bidens and Burisma (a Ukrainian natural gas company on whose board Hunter Biden had served)[3][44] and 2016 election interference.[35] On October 8, in a letter from White House counsel Pat Cipollone to House speaker Pelosi, the White House officially responded that it would not cooperate with the investigation due to concerns including that there had not yet been a vote of the full House and that interviews of witnesses were being conducted behind closed doors.[45][46]
Rep. Gaetz is a member of the Judiciary Committee, is he not? One of the six committees involved in the impeachment inquiry. And the Judiciary Committee is where the formal impeachment by the House was done after, was it not? Yes. So there's no logical reason why Gaetz, a Judiciary Committee member, would be excluded.
Gaetz wasn’t on the 3 committee’s though. And he was very much a part of Trump’s effort to try to derail, disrupt and delegitimize the hearings. You really are part of that too. Evidence and testimony was blocked by Trump and when it gets down to it we both know why he needed to that. Trump supporters now know how OJ fans could celebrate his acquittal.
Gaetz wasn’t on the 3 committee’s though. And he was very much a part of Trump’s effort to try to derail, disrupt and delegitimize the hearings. You really are part of that too. Evidence and testimony was blocked by Trump and when it gets down to it we both know why he needed to that. Trump supporters now know how OJ fans could celebrate his acquittal.
It wasn't reasonable or logical to exclude Gaetz from SCIF-room impeachment inquiry, when the proceedings were going to Gaetz's Judiciary Committee for impeachment immediately after.
Yeah if you want to pretend his whole intent wasn’t about disrupting, derailing and delegitimizingthe hearings and have no problem with Trump trying to obstruct every bit of evidence with support from most of the republicans. How credible or principled do you think you sound outside of the Trump circle jerk though?
Yeah if you want to pretend his whole intent wasn’t about disrupting, derailing and delegitimizingthe hearings and have no problem with Trump trying to obstruct every bit of evidence with support from most of the republicans. How credible or principled do you think you sound outside of the Trump circle jerk though?
Based on what? Rep. Gaetz was in the room to listen to and observe the witness testify, and as a lawyer help the other Republicans and Trump lawyers strategize on how to go forward with the President's counter-defense. By depriving Gaetz of the ability to attend the deposition, Comrade-Commissar Adam Schiff was depriving Gaetz and other Republicans knowledge of firsthand testimony and therefore less able to plan an adequate defense, where both sides would not have an equal knowledge of the facts in testimony. It gave Democrats a one-sided access to all the facts and testimony.
I just happened to see this again, and it still makes me laugh, where Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) walks committee chair Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) into a trap, exposing Schiff as a liar.
In questioning Lt.Col. Vindman, Jordan walks through how there were only 3 people listening in on the Trump/Zelensky July 25th call: Morrison (Vindman's boss), Ms. Williams (seated next to Vindman here), and Vindman. Morrison disclosed everyone he spoke to about the call. Williams disclosed everyone she spoke to about the call. Vindman refuses to disclose who he spoke to about the call. But assures everyone, scout's honor, that it was someone with security clearance to warrant hearing it.
Then Adam Schiff freaks out, that Jordan's questions will reveal who the whistleblower is.
As Jordan makes clear, if no one knows who the whistleblower is, how can these questions reveal the whistleblower? JORDAN: "The witness [Vindman] has testified he doesn't know who the whistleblower is. [To Schiff] You have said even though no one believes you, that you don't know who the whistleblower is. So how is it revealing the whistleblower to know who this individual is [that Vindman spoke to]?"
But obviously Schiff does know who the whistleblower is, and that's why he was trying so hard not to have the whistleblower's name spoken, that would compel media coverage to reveal who he is [CIA analyst Eric Ciaramella, with ultra-Democrat-Left loyalties, and the chain of conspiracy between Ciaramella and Schiff's office]. And once known who he is and his partisan ideology, the Whistleblower would be discredited for the partisan conspirator that he is. And both him and Vindman might be up on charges for leaking top secret/confidential documents, and possibly other conspiracy charges.
Ciaramella also previously held Vindman's job at the NSC. Both of them rabid Democrat loyalists, moles inside the Trump White House and NSC.
It delights me to no end that Vindman and his brother (the latter of whom likely was part of the leaking of John Bolton's new book, one last smear by the treasonous rat brothers) were releived of their duties and escorted out of the NSC and White House. While still employed by the military, I hope their next assignment is a shit detail under an officer fiercely loyal to Trump.
But regardless, Rep Jordan did a splendid job of, if not outing the whistleblower, certainly outing Adam Schiff for the lying pile of steaming excrement that he is.
This wasn't posted yet when I mentioned it earlier. What the liberal media and Democrat pinheads portrayed as "dark" and "mean spirited" (CNN that I watched in the 15 minues immediately after), is actually at many points playful, funny, and mostly thanking the lawyers and House and Senate Republicans who helped him through the months of impeachment, many of whom he credits that he would not still be there if not for their efforts on his behalf.
And then not even 6 days later, Democrats opened up "Impeachment 3.0", their latest slander campaign against Trump. I wish I could say I was surprised.
Despite an overwhelmingly biased liberal media that gives him between 93% -100% negative coverage, despite a partisan FBI and DOJ that collaborated with the Hillary Clinton campaign/Fusion GPS/Christopher Steele/the Russians to slander Trump, despite the fraudulent FISA warrants that should never have been issued, and whose fraudulent origins should have had all surveillance thrown out of court by the FISA judges who authorized them. Despite the contrived and illegitimate Mueller special investigation made up of 17 partisan Trump-hating fanatics, despite whistlblower partisan Eric Ciaramella, despite the contrived impeachment, and even despite the Coronavirus outbreak the Democrats daily try to politicize... despite all this Trump more days than not has a net positive favorability rating. And at the very least is within the zone of 50%, even on his worst days.
As compared with Obama who the media adored, the media who was the wind at his back, who still on many days was lower in the polls than Trump, on any given day at the same point in Obama's presidency.
As Newt Gingrich said a few months ago: "I've never seen a president who had 93% negative coverage, and could still remain so high in the polls." That's testament to how resonant Trump's message is to both his base, and to many independents and former Democrats. And how thoroughly disproven and untrustworthy the Democrats and the media are at this point. And really, at any point in the last three years.
We kind of already intuitively knew that, didn't we?
Vindman and his Democrat-Bolshevik comrades were essentially Democrat moles, for years, undermining the Obama-expanded NSC, who stayed to leak in the Trump administration, leaking to damage and embarass the Trump administration. Until the Trump administration saw what Obama had pit in place, and newly appointed national security advisor cleaned out the rat'ss nest Obama had appointed to the NSC.
Vindman's complaint, falsely accusing Trump of a bullying phone call to incoming Ukraine president Zelenskyy, was a lie, a contrived false accusation against Trump.
We know now that , far from one guy named Vindman, the initial complaint was not one guy, but an amalgam of stuff contrived by both Alexander Vindman, and Eric Ciaramella.
And we know now that even the collaborated false"whistleblower" complaint against Trump, weaponized as a contrived basis for impeachment (at this point we can call it "impeachment 1 of Trump") by Vindman (and Ciaramella) wasn't neutrally submitted, but was brainstormed out of Rep. Adam Schiff's office, and the final complaint was drafted by a team of leftist lawyers in Adam Schiff's office, drafted for weeks. It wasn't neutrally reported to both House Democrats and Republicans at once, it was created and weaponized completely from Schiff's office.
And none of these NSC staffers, not Schiff, not his lawyer team, not the assisting conspirators at the CIA such as Ginaa Haspel, ever paid any price for this deception. Nor have Mike Morell, John Brennan and others for even further abuses revealed since then.
