Monday AM ~ TheFrontPageCover

TheFrontPageCover
~ Featuring ~
A FISC-Deep State Alliance?
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Arnold Ahlert  
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Trump lawyers respond to articles 
of impeachment: 'Constitutionally invalid'
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By foxnews.com ~ President Trump's legal team on Saturday issued a full-throttle defense to the articles of impeachment, refuting the substance and process of the charges while accusing House Democrats... of engaging in a "dangerous attack" on the right of the American people to freely choose their president. "This is a brazen and unlawful attempt to overturn the results of the 2016 election and interfere with the 2020 election -- now just months away," the legal filing said. "The highly partisan and reckless obsession with impeaching the president began the day he was inaugurated and continues to this day." "The articles of impeachment are constitutionally invalid on their face," the seven-page filing continued. The legal paperwork is the first formal response to the two articles of impeachment read in the Senate on Thursday for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. Trump's lawyers argued that the articles of impeachment "violate the Constitution" and are "defective in their entirety" because they were the product of invalid House proceedings that "flagrantly denied the President any due process rights." At the crux of Trump's defense is that he did nothing wrong in his July 25 phone call with the president of Ukraine when he asked for investigations into Democrats. The White House argues that military aid to Ukraine was ultimately released without any announcement of investigations into former Vice President loose lips liar-Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden. The lawyers contend House Democrats fail to allege any crime or violation of law whatsoever, let alone, high crimes or misdemeanors. "In order to preserve our constitutional structure of government, to reject the poisonous partisanship that the Framers warned against, to ensure one-party political impeachment vendettas do not become the 'new normal,' and to vindicate the will of the American people, the Senate must reject both Articles of Impeachment," Trump's legal team wrote. "In the end, this entire process is nothing more than a dangerous attack on the American people themselves and their fundamental right to vote."...   https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-lawyers-respond-impeachment-articles  
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Iranian Women Defy the Mullahs; 
Western Feminists Nowhere in Sight
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by Giulio Meotti
{ gatestoneinstitute.org } ~ In October 1979, in a rare interview with Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the late Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci charged that the veil was symbolic of the segregation into which the Islamic revolution women had cast women... "Our customs," Khomeini answered, "are none of your business. If you do not like Islamic dress, you're not obliged to wear it because Islamic dress is for good and proper young women." "That's very kind of you," Fallaci replied. "And since you said so, I'm going to take off this stupid, medieval rag right now." Fallaci removed her veil and left the room without saying another word. Iranian women, emulating Fallaci, are now leading protests against the regime. Soon after Iran's regime admitted having shot down a Ukrainian passenger aircraft on January 8, Iranian women outside Tehran began tearing down posters of the assassinated terrorist, General Qasem Soleimani. A few hours earlier, the ayatollahs had attacked the Ain al-Assad base in Iraq, which houses U.S. troops. Before that, a picture was circulated on social media of an Iranian referee at the Women's World Chess Championship, Shohreh Bayat, overseeing a game without wearing a headscarf. "People should have the right to choose the way they want to dress, it should not be forced," Bayat said, challenging Iran's rule that mandates a strict Islamic dress code for women. "Should I start with hello, goodbye or condolences? Hello oppressed people of Iran, goodbye noble people of Iran, my condolences to you people who are always mourning," Kimia Alizadeh, Iran's Taekwondo bronze medal champion, at the 2016 Rio Olympics, wrote after moving to Europe. She, too, protested the "obligatory veil." On January 13, three Iranian female television presenters resigned from the regime's broadcaster, Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB). "Forgive me for the 13 years I told you lies", Gelare Jabbari apologized in an Instagram post after state officials had denied for days that a Ukrainian passenger jet had been shot down by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, killing 176 passengers and crew. These self-exiling Iranian women are similar to the dissidents behind the Soviet Iron Curtain, who eventually found refuge in the West...   https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15464/iranian-women-western-feminists 
Aviv Kochavi: The military chief Israel needs?
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By ANNA AHRONHEIM
{ jpost.com } ~ It has been a year since Aviv Kochavi took the elevator to the 14th floor of the IDF’s Kirya Military Headquarters in Tel Aviv... and sat down at his new desk as Israel’s Chief of General Staff. It’s been a busy year for him – a year that has been almost unprecedented in Israeli history, both militarily and politically.  A year that saw Kochavi contend with multiple enemies on multiple fronts – from the North to the South and beyond – threatening the security of the State of Israel. A year in which the chief of staff has had to work with two defense ministers while implementing military plans and strategies against an enemy – Iran – extending its tentacles across the Middle East in an attempt to strangle Israel. A year in which Israel, according to one former senior air force officer, saw direct confrontation between the Jewish state and Iran. He is the chief of staff who might have to send troops to war, something the military has been able to prevent for the past five years, including during the term of predecessor Lt.-Gen. (ret.) Gadi Eisenkot.  Kochavi is known as a perfectionist, a reformer and an officer who thinks outside the box. And like his last name, he was looked at by many as the military’s brightest star even if he wasn’t Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s first choice for the top job. The news of his recommendation in late 2017 was announced along with a report that Netanyahu shouted at then-defense minister Avigdor Liberman when he was told that he would be recommending Kochavi as the 22nd IDF chief of staff. According to a report aired at the time on Army Radio, Liberman called Netanyahu – who was on a trip to Oman – to inform him that he was nominating Kochavi for the military’s top position, knowing that the prime minister preferred then-Southern Command head Maj.-Gen. Eyal Zamir for the role...
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Putin to decide Naama Issachar's 
fate during Israel visit 
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By TAMAR BEERI and TOVAH LAZAROFF
{ jpost.com } ~ Russian President Vladimir Putin could announce his intention to release Israeli-American Naama Issachar when he arrives in Israel for a visit... later this week, according to a report on Channel 12. She was arrested in April while on a stopover in Moscow as she was en-route from India to Ben-Gurion Airport. Russian authorities stopped her at the gate prior to boarding after claiming to have found 9.5 grams of cannabis in her checked luggage. Issachar has denied the charge.  The young woman is widely believed to have been jailed and sentenced last year as part of a failed diplomatic maneuver to prevent Israel from extraditing Russian computer hacker Alexei Burchov to the United States. As such, there is wide sympathy in Israel for her case, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is under public pressure to get her released. On Thursday, Netanyahu and Putin discussed Issachar’s case. On Friday, Netanyahu released a statement and a video in which he said he was “optimistic” about the situation. “I spoke to President Putin once again yesterday about Naama’s situation. I felt from him a true willingness to find a solution,” Netanyahu said. “I am more optimistic,” the prime minister said, “but I can’t elaborate.” He said that in the interim, “we will continue to do everything we can to bring Naama home. Until then, we will continue to support both her and her family.”  The Russian authorities have rejected a request by Naama’s mother Yaffa to visit her daughter in jail to update her with regard to the latest developments, according to Channel 12. The report added that Israel has asked the family and its supporters to keep a low profile at this point, so as not to sabotage efforts for her release. Putin will be one of 46 leaders to visit Israel this week to help Israel mark 75 years since the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp. The event is part of the Fifth World Holocaust Forum hosted by President Reuven Rivlin and Yad Vashem. Russian news Kommersant reported last week that Putin has not ruled out a pardon for Issachar...
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Democrats go to Mexico and blast 
Trump over border tent cities
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by Anna Giaritelli
{ washingtonexaminer.com } ~ House Democrats walked across the southern border into Mexico on Friday and reacted with outrage after seeing how thousands of migrants live as they await their day in a U.S. court... "What you see in terms of people sleeping on the ground and living in tents or under tarps is something that you would see in a refugee camp in Syria, and it's right across the border, and our country has created the circumstances to make this happen," Rep. Linda Sanchez of California, the former Congressional Hispanic Caucus chairwoman, said in a video post. The Congressional Hispanic Caucus-led tour of nearly 20 members started in the South Texas town of Brownsville. Lawmakers walked over a bridge that stretches over the Rio Grande to Matamoros, a border town in Mexico's Tamaulipas state, to see how asylum-seekers have been affected by a Trump administration policy that went into effect one year ago. The Migrant Protection Protocols were implemented by the Department of Homeland Security last January and force asylum-seekers who approach an official border crossing to remain in Mexico until their day in court comes, which can be months in the future. Asylum-seekers are then escorted into the United States for a court proceeding at "tent courts" in Brownsville, where legal proceedings take place in temporary facilities outdoors. At last count, 60,000 asylum-seekers had been turned back to Mexico to await court dates. Immigrant families are not allowed to be held in custody for more than 20 days, allowing the nearly half a million who were apprehended in fiscal 2019 to be released into the country and await the decision of a court date years down the road. Some never show for the court date and live illegally in the country. The Department of Homeland Security created the program in an effort to take those who present themselves at border crossings and those who illegally cross and make them wait outside the country during that process. The Congressional Hispanic Caucus said in a media advisory that Matamoros has the largest share of asylum-seekers stuck in Mexico out of all the border cities, but the exact population counts of this specific tent city varied between lawmakers. New Mexico Rep. Ben Lujan said  1,500 live at the camp, but Illinoisan Rep. Jesus Garcia said 2,500, and Rep. Peter DeFazio of Oregon reported 3,000 people...
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FBI Whistleblower Filed Complaint 
Against IG Michael Atkinson
by oann.com ~ FBI whistleblower Nate Cain recently revealed he has filed a complaint against Michael Atkinson... Atkinson is the Intelligence Community Inspector General who protected the CIA whistleblower, whose complaint led to President Trump’s impeachment. One America’s Richard Pollack has more from Washington.
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A FISC-Deep State Alliance?
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Arnold Ahlert:  Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock for the last three years, you recall that Barack scumbag/liar-nObama’s FBI used scumbag/liar-Hillary Clinton’s opposition research to generate a surveillance warrant against Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. Thus you’ll no doubt be relieved to hear that an scumbag/liar-nObama-era FBI apologist and left-wing blogger has been tapped to oversee reform.

As Angelo Codevilla, former staff member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, put it, “Possibly the saddest fact about the intelligence deep state’s conspiracy against Trump is that at least some of the federal judges who sit on the FISA court apparently have been and continue to be part of it.”

Even as arguably the biggest scandal in the history of the nation was unfolding, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), created by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA), managed to remain immune from accusations of impropriety. Ostensibly, all the contemptible machinations — “mistakes,” according to Inspector General Michael Horowitz — that enabled the spying on Trump’s presidential campaign were committed solely by the FBI, the Justice Department, and the CIA.

Such assumptions are belied by reality. We begin with former FISC presiding Judge Rosemary Collyer sending a letter to the FBI in December 2019 criticizing it for misleading the court over its surveillance-application process and giving the agency until January 10 to come up with reforms.

Yet where has Collyer been? House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Devin Nunes (R-CA)  wrote a memo on February 2, 2018, explaining that “the Committee found that the FBI and DOJ failed to disclose the specific political actors paying for uncorroborated information” that went to the FISC, “misled the FISC regarding dissemination of this information,” and “failed to correct these errors in the subsequent renewals.”

Moreover, Nunes also wrote a letter to Collyer herself  illuminating the same details.

Collyer’s response? As Wall Street Journal columnist Kim Strassel puts it, Collyer “responded a week later, with a dismissive letter that makes no reference to the Intelligence Committee findings.” Incredibly, Collyer also asserted that the court does not maintain a “systematic record” of proceedings and that Nunes would be better off asking the DOJ to look into the matter, due to “separation of power” considerations.

As Fox News legal analyst Gregg Jarrett rightly notes, if the FISC was behaving legitimately, when it learned it was being lied to — a year and a half ago — “Collyer should have immediately ordered a ‘show cause contempt’ hearing demanding that Comey, Sally Yates, Andrew McCabe, Dana Boente and Rod Rosenstein all appear before the court to explain why they should not be held in criminal contempt for deceiving judges in the four warrant applications they signed.”

Jarrett’s conclusion for the failure to do so? “It means that the FISA court doesn’t really care that it was lied to by the FBI,” he adds.

All of the above history was necessary to give context to the latest machinations, which involve the man appointed to oversee the reforms demanded by Collyer, who has since retired. FISC’s new presiding Judge James Boasberg has appointed former scumbag/liar-nObama-era Justice Department official David Kris to do the job.

To say that Kris brings a bit of “baggage” with him to the job is an understatement. “Kris appeared in locations that pushed the false Russia collusion narrative, such as Rachel Maddow’s MSNBC show, the Lawfare blog, and Twitter, to defend the FBI and attack President Trump and other critics of the harmful surveillance campaign,”  explains columnist Mollie Hemingway. “He once wrote that Trump ‘should be worried’ that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into treasonous collusion with Russia meant ‘the walls are closing in.’”

As Fox News reveals, Kris has “also written extensively in support of the FBI’s surveillance practices.” In a published piece at Lawfare, a leftist blog site run by scumbag-James Comey’s friend Benjamin Wittes, Kris asserted  that the now-vindicated Nunes memo “tried to deceive the American people in precisely the same way that it falsely accused the FBI of deceiving the FISA Court.” He further asserted that the agency had “probable cause” to conclude former Trump aide Carter Page “was a Russian agent.”

Per the IG report, Americans now know that evidence pertaining to Carter was deliberately doctored.

In a piece for The Washington Post, Kris also defended the Steele dossier. He conceded that while some parts “apparently remain both salacious and unverified,” he argued that “other parts may well have been verified by independent investigation” and thus “would strengthen the credibility of the remainder.”

The truth? The IG report revealed the FBI withheld evidence undercutting that very idea. It also noted the agency failed to disclose damaging information about Steele’s credibility and reliability, despite the fact that one of Steele’s main dossier sources told FBI agents in January 2017 that Steele had misrepresented and exaggerated the dossier’s contents.

Kris’s take on the IG report itself? “First, the report repudiates the claims of a coup and related deep-state conspiracies in the FBI as advanced by President Trump and his supporters,” he tweeted on December 9, 2019.

His take on the FISC is equally biased. In September 2018, he asserted that that “FISA applications are subjected to exacting … and serious scrutiny” and “the FISA Court is not a rubber stamp.”

Really? In 33 years of of surveillance requests the FISC has rejected 0.03% of them, as in only 12 of 38,169 requests for surveillance warrants between 1979 and 2015.

Moreover, there have been no rejections since 2009.

And for those who only see the potential for abuse through a partisan lens, Codevilla reminds us that if the FISC had existed in 1972, “Nixon’s ‘plumbers’ would easily have gotten a warrant to get everything they wanted out of the DNC secretly. Their application need only have cited the McGovern campaign’s plentiful links to North Vietnam and the Communist world.”

Nunes has Kris’s appointment exactly right. “The FBI lied to the FISC, and to help make sure that doesn’t happen again, the FISC chose an FBI apologist who denied and defended those lies,” he asserted. “The FISC is setting its own credibility on fire.”

Or, maybe they’ve had help. One might ask where Chief Justice John Roberts has been. He has named every member of the current court and the separate three-judge panel called the Court of Review that hears appeals of FISC orders. His silence is hardly reassuring — at best.

At worst? America is heading toward a new “post-constitutional” normal where “justice” is whatever secret courts, unelected bureaucrats, documented apologists, and conspiracy theorists say it is — all championed by useful-idiot “resisters” naive enough to believe they are insulated by their ideological bona fides.

Until they aren’t.   ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/67942?mailing_id=4805&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4805&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

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Comments

  • Bonnie

    They decided to come here illegal and its their chose to live that way not ours or the President. I say end immigration but thats not going to happen. Its been going on for centuries and will continue but did it legally.

  • House Democrats walked across the southern border into Mexico on Friday and reacted with outrage after seeing how thousands of migrants live as they await their day in a U.S. court... MY GOD HOW DISGUSTING.   THERE IS NO REASON FOR ANYONE TO CARE HOW THEY LIVE.   THEY LIVE IN OTHER COUNTRIES AND DARE TELL US LET US INTO YOUR COUNTRY SO WE CAN LIVE I SAY END ALL IMMIGRATION FOR 10 YRS.  PERIOD

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