Dershowitz certainly could have been clearer, but the Trump team’s argument is this: A lawful quid pro quo in service to U.S. interests is not illegal or impeachable, regardless of whether it benefits the president politically. Thus, even if Democrats’ allegations are true, Trump’s “offense” doesn’t rise to an impeachable one. Of course, there’s also an inconvenient truth: There was no actual quid pro quo, though one was attempted. Ukraine got its military aid and Volodymyr Zelensky got his presidential meeting, all without opening the investigations Trump requested.
In any case, Trump’s request regarding the corruption of a previous and potentially future American administration is absolutely in U.S. interests, though Trump was unwise to ask this of one of Europe’s most corrupt countries.
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand exemplified the hyperventilating on the Left, arguing that Dershowitz “essentially said that if President Trump believes his election is for the good of the American people that he could do whatever he wants.” That’s a false representation of what Dershowitz actually argued, and leftists know it.
Patrick Philbin, one of the president’s lawyers, bolstered Dershowitz’s point: “If there is something that shows a possible public interest” in what Trump said, “that destroys [the Democrats’] case.”
scumbag/liar-Adam Schiff, one of the leading and most dishonest of the Democrat impeachment managers, disagreed. “If any part of the president’s motivation was a corrupt motive,” he insisted, “it would be enough to convict under criminal law.”
To illustrate his preposterous contention, scumbag/liar-Schiff engaged in another bit of absurd B-movie theater, mockingly saying, “Let’s … see how you feel about this scenario:”
President [Barack] scumbag/liar-nObama, on an open mic, says to [then-Russian President Dimitri] Medvedev, “Hey, Medvedev, I know you don’t want me to send this military money to Ukraine because they are fighting and killing your people. I want you to do me a favor, though. I want you to do an investigation of rino-Mitt Romney. And I want you to announce you found dirt on rino-Mitt Romney. If you’re willing to do that, quid pro quo, I won’t give Ukraine the money they need to fight you on the front line.”
Do any of us have any question that Barack scumbag/liar-nObama would be impeached for that kind of misconduct? Are we really ready to say that that would be okay if Barack scumbag/liar-nObama asked Medvedev to investigate his opponent and withhold money from an ally that needed to defend itself to get an investigation of rino-Mitt Romney? That’s the parallel here.
The especially brazen aspect of scumbag/liar-Schiff’s latest attempt to win an Oscar is that he comes fairly close to what scumbag/liar-nObama actually did. Unknowingly on a hot mic, scumbag/liar-nObama told Medvedev in 2012 that he would have “more flexibility” after his reelection to make changes to U.S. defense policy sought by our Russian geopolitical foes and detrimental to our European allies. scumbag/liar-nObama was not impeached, of course, though Democrats — four years too late — eventually realized that Russia is in fact a threat to U.S. interests.
No, rino-Romney was not mentioned in the real conversation, but scumbag/liar-nObama had to defeat rino-Romney before he could give Medvedev’s puppet master, Vladimir Putin, what he wanted: American capitulation on missile defense. Nothing Trump said is even remotely close to being that bad for U.S. interests.
Meanwhile, as John Bolton and his leaked book allegations have dominated the news this week, there’s more misinformation and distortion coming out of even libertarian and conservative news outlets. Without getting lost in the weeds, any book written by a top administration official like Bolton must be reviewed by the National Security Council (NSC) to determine if any classified information is revealed.
In a letter to Bolton’s publisher, the NSC contended that there was indeed classified information — some of it TOP SECRET — in Bolton’s manuscript. That would need to be removed before the book could be published. This was not a ham-handed attempt at “muzzling” Bolton, and it wasn’t a “threat” to block his book entirely, either. The NSC review is standard procedure that Bolton rightly submitted to in order to honor his own nondisclosure agreements.
The NSC letter is dated January 23, three days before the New York Times blockbuster revealing that Bolton says there was a quid pro quo with Ukraine. The Times depended on a well-timed leak of Bolton’s manuscript, leaving us to wonder whether the leaker — one of the Vindman twins? — violated federal law by disclosing classified information.
Democrats still want Bolton to testify before the Senate, though that is increasingly unlikely. But we thought it would be enlightening to highlight scumbag/liar-Schiff’s long history of denigrating Bolton. In 2005, scumbag/liar-Schiff complained of Bolton’s “lack of credibility.” And all the way back in 2018, he groused about Bolton’s “love of conspiracy theories.”
Now we have to hear from Bolton? What changed, Mr. scumbag/liar-Schiff?
And finally, Chief Justice John Roberts, who is presiding over the president’s trial, refused to read a question submitted by Sen. Rand Paul because Paul named the whistleblower. The worst-kept secret in the swamp is that Eric Ciaramella is likely the whistleblower. Federal law protects whistleblowers only from retribution, not from being named, so the continued charade of keeping his name a “secret” is absurd. Not only should Ciaramella’s name be spoken, he should have testified before the House. ~The Patriot Post
{ spectator.org } ~ Rep. scumbag/liar-Adam Schiff said that if Barack scumbag/liar-nObama encouraged a foreign power to investigate a political opponent, then the last president would have committed an impeachable offense... “Under no circumstances do you go outside of your own legitimate law enforcement process to ask a foreign power to investigate your rival, whether you think there’s cause or you don’t think there’s cause,” scumbag/liar-Schiff explained during the impeachment trial. “And you certainly don’t invite that foreign power to try to influence an election to your benefit.” scumbag/liar-Schiff strangely spoke as though addressing a hypothetical. Not only did the scumbag/liar-nObama administration link arms with foreigners to take down a political rival, but scumbag/liar-Schiff also ran interference for that propaganda effort by falsely claiming to know of “more than circumstantial evidence” that the Donald Trump campaign colluded with Russia to win the 2016 election, a charge invalidated by the Mueller Report and much else. Did scumbag/liar-Schiff really forget his raison d’être for the first two and a half years of the Trump administration? A joint operation of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), the scumbag/liar-Hillary Clinton campaign, and, ultimately, the scumbag/liar-nObama Justice Department, Christopher Steele’s opposition research — euphemistically rechristened an “intelligence dossier” in the press — peddled false information obtained by a bought foreign agent utilizing bought sources in a foreign country, i.e., Russia, to smear the Republican presidential nominee. The meddling former MI6 agent, unsurprisingly, found what he and his paymasters were looking for. In Steele’s so-called dossier, he describes Source A as “a senior Russian Foreign Ministry figure,” Source B as “a former top level intelligence officer still active in the Kremlin,” and Source C as “a senior Russian financial official.” Did Barack scumbag/liar-nObama sic the Justice Department on those using foreigners to derail an ostensibly free and fair American presidential election? No, scumbag/liar-nObama’s Justice Department, which had paid Steele as a source in the past, actually authorized payments to Steele as a result of his opposition research gathered as a bought agent of the scumbag/liar-Clinton campaign, which, like the DNC, laundered its funding to Steele in an end-around on Federal Election Commission transparency rules through a law firm and then an opposition research firm. This succeeded in misleading the public, the press, and a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court into imagining the “dossier” as the product of a legitimate investigation rather than one bought by the most interested party possible on the face of the earth...
https://spectator.org/the-pot-kettle-black-impeachment/?utm_source=American%20Spectator%20Emails&utm_campaign=d75f5e3125-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2020_01_31_02_14&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_797a38d487-d75f5e3125-104608113
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control, generally far ahead of the rest of the world regarding potential pandemic threats, is always watching this and other bugs for early warning signs of spread in the U.S. Taking additional measures, the Trump administration’s Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar has empaneled a task force to ramp up preparedness and response to the spread of this contagion. Azar declared, “Americans should note this is a potentially very serious public health threat.”
Officially, the communist Chinese government claims about 220 deaths and 10,000 infections. Our sources indicate that the actual rates of infection and deaths in China are much higher, and, in fact, official reports may only represent 5-7% of the actual dead and infected. The so-called “popup hospitals” now being constructed in Hubei province where the coronavirus outbreak originated double as isolation morgues.
In the U.S., the CDC is now reporting human-transmitted cases and has confirmed five cases in Arizona, Washington state, Illinois, and California, while officials are investigating four more — two in Washington, DC, and one each in Maryland and Virginia. The CDC is waiting on test results for more than 100 other patients suspected of coronavirus infection. Accordingly, the U.S. has issued a strong travel advisory for China, but we believe the CDC should increase the isolation period for those who are suspected of being infected to 14 days.
What do you need to know — and do?
First some perspective. Global deaths from the Ebola epidemic originating in 2014 are estimated now at more than 13,200. But deaths from the the 2009 H1N1 Swine Flu outbreak, while officially put at 18,449, are now estimated by one CDC study to be as high as 284,000. The vast majority of these deaths occurred in third-world nations where containment and treatment are rudimentary. Most deaths were at both ends of the age spectrum — the young and old.
While domestic concern about the coronavirus is warranted, it is worth noting that the current influenza B/Victoria viral strain in the U.S. is deadly. There have been more than 8,000 deaths associated with influenza across the country in this flu season. “Influenza is going to cause thousands more hospitalizations and I’m afraid many, many deaths that will make the coronavirus impact on our country very tiny in comparison,” said Dr. William Schaffner, a Vanderbilt University infectious-disease specialist. He added, “The risk from influenza is real and present.” (Did you get that flu shot this year?)
What can you do?
Be prepared. As I noted in “The REAL Pandemic Threat,” “Clearly, there are significant pandemic threats posed by viral infections that mutate into much more contagious forms and can spread regionally, nationally, and internationally, causing significant loss of life. I have advised for years that the primary defense against such contagions is the capacity to shelter in place. What originates in China or Africa one week can be in your suburb the next.”
For that reason, years ago we developed a resource page on Disaster Preparedness Planning, including a Two Step Individual Readiness Plan and a section on how to shelter in place.
We encourage you to visit each of these pages, because national preparedness begins with individual preparedness. ~The Patriot Post
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