What did the House Intel Committee chairman know and when did he know it?

Kimberley A. Strassel - Oct. 3, 2019

The New York Times reported this week that the “whistleblower” who set off the latest inquisition provided an “early warning” to Mr. Schiff’s committee that he or she was filing a complaint over Donald Trump’s July 25 call to Ukraine’s president. The media is now at pains to stress that whistleblowers do sometimes reach out to Congress, that all “procedures” were followed, and that what really matters is the accusation that Mr. Trump pressured Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden.

Actually, it matters a great deal that Mr. Schiff knew about this early and withheld it deliberately from both the public and his House colleagues. He used his advance information to lay the groundwork steadily for later exploitation of the issue. He went so far as to charge the White House with a coverup—of a complaint he already knew about. The timeline of this orchestrated campaign is another knock to the legitimacy of the so-called impeachment inquiry. If the public can’t trust Mr. Schiff to be honest about the origins of his information, why should they trust his claim that the information itself is serious?

Mr. Schiff on Sept. 13, a Friday night, issued the explosive news that he had been alerted a few days earlier by the intelligence community’s inspector general of an “urgent” yet unspecified whistleblower complaint. But the complaint is dated Aug. 12, and news reports now say the whistleblower interacted with Mr. Schiff’s staff prior to then. So Mr. Schiff knew about the topic of the complaint for more than a month—while the public did not. It is now clear why the intelligence chairman in that month suddenly developed an interest in all things Ukrainian, and began aggressively previewing his impeachment mantra.

On Aug. 23, for instance, Mr. Schiff tweeted that Mr. Trump tried to “get dirt on a political opponent” via personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani’s interaction with the office of the Ukrainian president. On Aug. 28, the chairman tweeted his newfound concern that Mr. Trump was “withholding vital military aid to Ukraine.” And on Sept. 9, Mr. Schiff suddenly announced his committee would launch a full-fledged investigation into whether Mr. Trump was trying to “pressure Ukraine to help the President’s re-election campaign.” All this was priming the public and the media for what was to come—the better to take full advantage of the whistleblower “news.”

Yet even after news broke of the complaint, Mr. Schiff played dumb. On Sept. 17, he flatly (and falsely) stated on MSNBC: “We have not spoken directly with the whistleblower.” Two days later, he thanked the inspector general, Michael Atkinson, without whom “we might not have even known there was a whistleblower complaint.” Really? Mr. Schiff wanted to make it sound as if the Trump administration was muzzling the complainant, when in fact the process was working and Mr. Schiff knew all about it.

The chairman also actively kept his information secret from Republicans on his committee. GOP members confirm that Mr. Schiff had multiple opportunities to acknowledge his awareness of the coming complaint, but kept mum about his side’s early involvement. That included even during the committee’s closed-door Sept. 19 briefing with Mr. Atkinson.

The whistleblower’s early communication with the committee also bears on the complaint’s credibility. The Times story explains that the whistleblowing Central Intelligence Agency officer initially alerted the CIA’s top lawyer to concerns. Yet before even waiting for this procedure to play out, the officer went to Mr. Schiff’s staff. This act has to be measured in light of Mr. Atkinson’s acknowledgment that the source demonstrated an “arguable political bias . . . in favor of a rival candidate.” It has become urgent that Republicans demand more information about the whistleblower’s history and motivations—questions that are central to any whistleblower complaint, but particularly one being used as a basis for impeachment.

If all this has a somewhat familiar feel of subterfuge and ambush, it should. The episode is redolent of the sneak attack on Brett Kavanaugh. An unknown person levels nasty allegations; a Democratic lawmaker (in that case, Sen. Dianne Feinstein) conceals the claim before springing it at an opportune moment; the media jumps on board to distort and inflame the story. Lost in the carnage are little things like fairness, standards and due process.

Mr. Schiff’s staff is suggesting its interaction with the whistleblower was limited. Maybe, but given Mr. Schiff’s recent deceptions, it’s reasonable to ask more questions about how involved his committee was with the creation of this complaint. The Democratic claim that Mr. Trump’s Ukraine call rose to the level of impeachment was always absurd. But Americans have even more reason to doubt the legitimacy of this push in light of Mr. Schiff’s scheming exploitation of the whistleblower charge.

https://thefederalist.com/2019/10/04/testimony-from-ukraine-envoy-kurt-volker-directly-contradicts-democrats-impeachment-narrative/

Testimony From Ukraine Envoy 

Kurt Volker Directly Contradicts Democrats’ Impeachment Narrative

Testimony from Ukraine envoy Kurt Volker, which was obtained by The Federalist, blows holes directly through the impeachment narrative that congressional Democrats have crafted against President Donald Trump.

Sean Davis

Congressional testimony from the former top American envoy to Ukraine directly contradicts the impeachment narrative offered by congressional Democrats and their media allies. Ambassador Kurt Volker, who served for two years as the top U.S. diplomatic envoy to Ukraine, testified on Thursday that he was never aware of and never took part in any effort to push the Ukrainian government to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden or his son Hunter. He also stressed that the interactions between Giuliani and Ukrainian officials were facilitated not to find dirt on Biden, but to assuage concerns that the incoming Ukrainian government would not be able to get a handle on corruption within the country.

Volker’s full remarks, which were obtained by The Federalist, can be read here.

“As you will see from the extensive text messages I am providing, which convey a sense of real-time dialogue with several different actors, Vice President Biden was never a topic of discussion” during negotiations with Ukraine, Volker testified. Cherry-picked snippets of those texts were released by the office of Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., late Thursday evening.

“[A]t no time was I aware of or took part in an effort to urge Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Biden,” Volker told lawmakers.

Volker said that an advisor to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky asked Volker to connect the advisor to Rudy Giuliani, a personal attorney for President Donald Trump.

“[I]n May of this year, I became concerned that a negative narrative about Ukraine, fueled by assertions made by Ukraine’s departing Prosecutor General, was reaching the President of the United States, and impeding our ability to support the new Ukrainian government as robustly as I believed we should,” Volker said. “After sharing my concerns with the Ukrainian leadership, an advisor to President Zelensky asked me to connect him to the President’s personal lawyer, Mayor Rudy Giuliani.”

“I did so solely because I understood that the new Ukrainian leadership wanted to convince those, like Mayor Giuliani, who believed such a negative narrative about Ukraine, that times have changed and that, under President Zelensky, Ukraine is worthy of U.S. support,” Volker said. “I also made clear to the Ukrainians, on a number of occasions, that Mayor Giuliani is a private citizen and the President’s personal lawyer, and that he does not represent the United States government.”

Volker vehemently denied that he ever urged the Ukrainian government to dig up dirt on the Biden family.

“As you will see from the extensive text messages I am providing, which convey a sense of real-time dialogue with several different actors, Vice President Biden was never a topic of discussion,” he said.

Volker testified that he never even mentioned a delay on U.S. military assistance to Ukrainian officials until late August, when news reports indicated that funding had been put on hold. Volker’s statement directly undercuts claims that the funding was part of a quid pro quo meant to force the Ukrainians to take certain actions in order for the military aids to be released.

“I became aware of a hold on Congressional Notifications about proceeding with that assistance on July 18, 2019, and immediately tried to weigh in to reverse that position,” Volker testified. “I was confident that this position would indeed be reversed in the end, because the provision of such assistance was uniformly supported at State, Defense, NSC, the House of Representatives, the Senate, and the expert community in Washington.”

“As I was confident the position would not stand, I did not discuss the hold with my Ukrainian counterparts until the matter became public in late August,” he said.

Volker explained in his remarks that Trump had a dim view of the Ukrainian government given its involvement in 2016 efforts to damage Trump’s presidential campaign, and that the president’s view of rampant and widespread corruption in the country was a significant barrier to cooperation between the two nations going forward. According to Volker, the interactions between Giuliani and Ukraine were sought in an effort to persuade Trump that Zelensky’s government could be a trusted U.S. partner.

“It was clear to me that we had a growing problem in the negative narrative about Ukraine, built on these earlier accusations by Mr. Lutsenko, that was impeding the development of our bilateral relationship and the strengthening of our support for Ukraine,” Volker said. “I therefore faced a choice: do nothing, and allow this situation to fester; or try to fix it.”

“I tried to fix it,” he testified.

Volker said Giuliani eventually came to believe that the Ukrainian prosecutor, Yuriy Lutsenko, was not credible.

“To my surprise, Mr. Giuliani had already come to the conclusion on his own that Mr. Lutsenko was not credible and acting in a self-serving capacity,” Volker said. “He mentioned both the accusations about Vice President Biden and about interference in the 2016 election, and stressed that all he wanted to see was for Ukraine to investigate what happened in the past and apply its own laws.”

While Volker said he did not believe any of the accusations of corruption levied against Biden, he felt that allegations of Ukrainian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential elections were “plausible.” Contrary to Democratic assertions that Trump’s diplomatic team was actively demanding that Ukraine interfere in the 2020 U.S. presidential campaign, Volker said his team did the opposite.

“The point about Ukraine avoiding anything that could play into U.S. elections in 2020 is a message that I know our Chargé in Ukraine, Amb. Bill Taylor, reinforced in other meetings,” Volker said.

The diplomat also said he didn’t even know the Biden family had been referenced at all in Trump’s July 25 phone call with Zelensky.

“I was not on the July 25 phone call,” Volker said. “I received a general readout via our Chargé and my own State Department staffer, as well as from Mr. Yermak.”

“All said it was a good, congratulatory call, that they discussed the importance of fighting corruption and promoting reform in Ukraine, and that President Trump reiterated his invitation to President Zelensky to visit the White House,” he testified. “I was not made aware of any reference to Vice President Biden or his son, which I only learned about when the transcript of the call was released on September 25, 2019.”

The full statement from Volker can be read in its entirety here.

Constitutional Scholars: Warren’s..

https://freebeacon.com/politics/constitutional-scholars-warrens-lobbyist-tax-plan-may-violate-the-constitution

Constitutional Scholars: 

Warren’s Lobbying Tax May Violate Constitution

Massachusetts senator proposes heavy taxes for lobbying activities

Yuichiro KakutaniOctober 4, 2019 5:00 AM

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) / Getty Images

Presidential hopeful Elizabeth Warren's new anti-lobbying plan may infringe on free speech rights, according to several legal scholars.

Sen. Warren (D., Mass.) released a plan to target lobbyists with additional disclosure requirements, as well as "a new tax on excessive lobbying that applies to every corporation and trade organization that spends over $500,000 per year lobbying our government." Some constitutional scholars are skeptical such a tax—which goes up to 75 percent of total spending—could survive a Supreme Court challenge. The First Amendment's guarantee of the right of all citizens "to petition the Government for a redress of grievances" applies to paid advocates, according to Hans von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation.

"[Warren] completely forgets and ignores the fact that lobbying is a First Amendment right," von Spakovsky told the Washington Free Beacon. "The First Amendment says that you have a right to petition the government for a redress of grievances. That's what lobbying is, and her idea that it's somehow evil is just wrong. It's a basic constitutional right."

The Warren campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

Other scholars echoed von Spakovsky's concerns. Michael Barone, a resident fellow at the pro-free market American Enterprise Institute, said he could "see an argument that says this proposal would penalize the exercise of First Amendment rights," comparing it to "a confiscatory tax on newspaper." Trevor Burrus, a research fellow for the libertarian Cato Institute's constitutional studies center, concurred, saying "Sen. Warren has essentially proposed a tax on that fundamental right." He accused the Democratic presidential hopeful of attempting to "squelch political speech."

"She pushed for stricter regulations on banks and home loans, and then pushed—'lobbied' one might say—for the creation of the CFPB," Burrus said. "In short, Warren apparently believes in lobbying when she does it, or when it is done for causes she believes in. Her lobbying tax proposal would very likely be declared unconstitutional. The Constitution doesn't permit transparent attempts to squelch political speech."

Other legal scholars said the proposal would be appropriate. Ilya Shapiro, director of Cato's Constitutional Studies Center, said the lobbying tax is above board. While the policy might be misguided, Shapiro said, it is no different from excise taxes—taxes on goods and services—that are legal and imposed on those who purchase legal aid, political advertisements, and other speech-related services.

"Assuming there's federal jurisdiction in the first place—meaning that it affects interstate commerce—I don't really see a constitutional problem with it," he said. "There's special kinds of taxes on different kinds of products, alcohol for example, around the country. So this would be just one more of those."

Von Spakovsky said Warren's motivation for adopting such a reform could imperil its chances of surviving in court. He said an excessive excise tax, levied with the explicit intent of curbing certain forms of speech, would still be illegal.

"If an excise tax becomes excessive and burdensome, you are restricting the ability of individuals to engage in their First Amendment rights to lobby the government," he said. "And I think this goes too far in that direction that it does raise very serious constitutional issues."

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2019/10/04/irs-whistleblower-n2554165 

IRS Whistleblower: 

Is This The Next Front In The Democrats’ War on Trump?

Matt Vespa

Is this the next front in the Left’s impeachment push against Trump? Right now, the president is under siege by Democrats because he had a phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in July. The juicy story is that Trump, like a mob boss, threatened to withhold military aid unless Zelensky opened a probe into possible corruption committed by Hunter Biden, who sat on the board of an energy company. Hunter has zero experience in the energy sector. The allegation, and it’s not far-fetched, is that he was there selling access—all of this occurred under the Obama presidency.

The Trump White House released the transcripts and debunked the quid pro quo claims, but Democrats decided to launch an impeachment inquiry anyway without reading the whistleblower complaint reportedly from a CIA agent, which started this whole circus. 

And now we have one from the Internal Revenue Service alleging interference with an audit of the president and vice president’s tax returns (via The Hill):

An IRS official filed a complaint alleging that he was told that at least one Treasury Department official tried to interfere with an audit of President Trump's or Vice President Pence's tax returns, according to The Washington Post, citing people familiar with the complaint. 

The whistleblower spoke to the Post and confirmed that he had filed the complaint to Congress's tax-writing committees and the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration.

“I steadfastly refuse to discuss the substance or details of the complaint, but I have some legitimate concerns about reckless statements being made about whistleblowers,” he told the Post.

The Democratic-led House Ways and Means Committee first mentioned in court documents in August that it had received credible allegations from a federal employee of potentially inappropriate attempts to influence the IRS's mandatory audit program for presidential and vice presidential tax returns.

The Post's story provides details that had not been in court documents, including that the complaint was made by a career IRS employee and that it alleges potential interference in the audit program by a political employee at the Treasury Department.

This is all too good to be true. Sorry, it’s just too good to be true. Democrats have been wanting to view Trump tax returns for years and now that we have impeachment theater engulfing the Hill, some whistleblower comes out of the woodwork to allege interference in an audit at the IRS of the president’s tax returns. This is the cherry on top of the bull crap sundae.

The Trump-Ukraine phone call impeachment push was an offshoot of the Russian collusion myth, a move polished to say ‘look, look—he did it’ when (again) it was proven that none of this happened. Also, the “favor” mentioned in that discussion between Trump and Zelensky is a reference to the Department of Justice’s investigation into the origins of the Russian collusion investigation, which is not inappropriate in the slightest. Second, the Ukraine whistleblower is said to be a registered Democrat, this person contacted Rep. Adam Schiff’s (D-CA) staff; Schiff chairs the House Intelligence Committee. And Schiff knew about the contents of the complaint before it was formally filed. That’s collusion.

Slavic peoples and taxes—the two things Democrats lust to weaponize fully to destroy Trump. Sorry, it’s just a bit too convenient for my taste. Not that we should be shocked—but this whole push is a total politically orchestrated hit based on shoddy evidence that’s being quarterbacked by some of the most Trump deranged politicians on the Hill. And a lot of this stuff is being done in secret. It’s a secret impeachment war. Yeah, that sounds like something that will not stain American institutions at all—said by no one. 

The question is will Democrats loop this nonsense in with the Trump-Ukraine circus?

Every Right To Forgive..

Reason Magazine

Brandt Jean Has Every Right 

To Forgive Amber Guyger, the Ex-Cop Who Killed His Brother

America's justice system should leave more room for mercy.

Billy Binion10.4.2019 

(Screenshot, YouTube) 

"If you truly are sorry—I know I can speak for myself—I forgive you," said Brandt Jean before joining in a tearful embrace with his brother's convicted murderer, Amber Guyger.

It was a stunning display of mercy following a guilty verdict for the white ex-cop, who was sentenced to 10 years in prison this week for shooting and killing Botham Jean, a 26-year-old black man, after she entered his apartment, mistaking it for her own.

The backlash was stunning as well: not just against Guyger's sentence, but also in response to the compassion granted by Brandt Jean and the judge, Tammy Kemp, who gave Guyger a Bible, words of wisdom, and a hug before sending her on her way to prison.

"I have preached #forgiveness for 25 years, BUT using the willingness of Black people to forgive as an excuse to further victimize Black people is SINFUL," former NAACP President and ordained minister Cornell Brooks said. Jemele Hill, a staff writer at The Atlantic, took greater issue with Judge Kemp, who is also black. "How Botham Jean's brother chooses to grieve is his business," she tweeted. "He's entitled to that. But this judge choosing to hug this woman is unacceptable."

Echoing their sentiments, activists took to Dallas's streets this week to protest the sentence, which one attendee described as nothing more than a "time-out." Such reactions are understandable considering that black people in America have disproportionately suffered at the hands of the state and institutionalized racism. But the hasty desire to scrub our overly harsh criminal justice system of any vestige of mercy—whether it be in the form of a forgiving word or a "lenient" sentence—is essentially an effort to right wrongs with more wrongs.

Racial disparities in sentencing are shrinking, but the pendulum has moved in the wrong direction: Efforts to homogenize sentencing with mandatory minimums have only led to more excessive punishments across the board. That includes the less privileged of all races, who were already spending too much time locked away.

Crystal Mason, a black woman who was sentenced to five years in prison for illegally voting, has become a figurehead for the debate. After a jury announced Guyger's sentence, comparisons were immediately drawn between the two women.

It wasn't the first time, however, that Mason landed in the mainstream conversation around issues of race, crime, and sentencing: actress Felicity Huffman's 14-day prison sentence elicited similar outrage. But just because Mason received a ridiculously unjust and excessively penal sentence, does not mean that Guyger, Huffman, and whoever else should, too. As I wrote last month:

To answer in the affirmative is to say our criminal justice system is bad because it penalizes people disproportionately. But that is not, in fact, the primary problem. The problem is that it excessively penalizes so many people at all, generally by criminalizing everything under the sun. Throwing Huffman behind bars and tossing away the key would do nothing to address our unenviable distinction of having the highest incarceration rate in the world.

Locking Guyger away 20 years, or 30 years, or the rest of her natural life, would not help Mason. It would not bring back Bothan Jean. It would likely not even change the way police officers in America interact with the people they are supposed to protect and serve. It would just hurt Guyger.

What's more, Guyger's case is not a great example of police brutality, which is why the jury correctly refused to make an example of her on those grounds. "This case was not like any other case. You can't compare this case to any of those other unarmed officers killing unarmed black men," Juror 21, a black woman, told ABC News. She added that Guyger "showed remorse," and will have to deal with this "for the rest of her life."

That likely won't be enough for those who want retribution—not just for Jean, but for all of the black men and women and boys and girls killed by police officers, as well as those who have been given outrageously long prison sentences. It is possible to ache for them and advocate for them without insisting that, until things change, everyone must suffer as they suffer.

Punishing Guyger in every way imaginable, from a harsher sentence to giving her the cold shoulder during a victim impact statement, was a chance to get vengeance. But hurting her to the maximum extent under the law is not justice. Nor is scolding the people who saw her as a flawed human and chose to show her compassion.

Wealthy Democrats Quietly Saying

Townhall

Reports: 

Wealthy Democrats Quietly Saying 

They'll Back Trump If Warren Is The Nominee

Matt Vespa

Posted: Oct 04, 2019 1:08 PM

Elizabeth Warren may be hauling in cash, not as much as the Republicans, but she may bring new headaches to the Democratic Party should she win the nomination. For starters, she’s avoided like the plague the question about her health care plan and whether it will increase taxes on the middle class. Of course, they will. There’s no way this Democratic action item works without everyone’s taxes going up in exchange for sub-par quality health care. She finally admitted that her Native American heritage claim was straight trash, though she owed it to family stories as the explanation for the mix-up. As Charlemagne tha God of New York’s Breakfast Club noted, Warren is the original Rachel Dolezal, a white woman who faked being black four years ago. Yet, Warren could also face lackluster support from traditionally deep-pocketed donors from within the Democratic Party. 

CNBC reported recently that were rumbles that Wall Street Democrats might either withhold donation or even support Trump should Warren win the nomination. In an election year that’s going to be expensive and exceptionally brutal, you need every penny you can put in the war chest. Trump and the GOP are going to have a billion-dollar war chest easy. The Republican National Committee raised $125 million in the third quarter; the Republicans have the small donor army now. So, Warren can either risk losing access to a lot of cash or hold a pow wow with this crew and downplay their concerns that she’s pretty much Lenin in a dress (via CNBC):

CNBC

✔

@CNBC

Wall Street executives are fearful of an Elizabeth Warren presidency, according to @MadMoneyOnCNBC's @JimCramer. 

https://

cnb.cx/2UOpK4n

Democratic donors on Wall Street and in big business are preparing to sit out the presidential campaign fundraising cycle — or even back President Donald Trump — if Sen. Elizabeth Warren wins the party’s nomination.

In recent weeks, CNBC spoke to several high-dollar Democratic donors and fundraisers in the business community and found that this opinion was becoming widely shared as Warren, an outspoken critic of big banks and corporations, gains momentum against Joe Biden in the 2020 race.

“You’re in a box because you’re a Democrat and you’re thinking, ‘I want to help the party, but she’s going to hurt me, so I’m going to help President Trump,’” said a senior private equity executive, who spoke on condition of anonymity in fear of retribution by party leaders. The executive said this Wednesday, a day after Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that the House would begin a formal impeachment inquiry into Trump.

[…]

The business community’s unease about Warren’s candidacy has surged in tandem with her campaign’s momentum. CNBC’s Jim Cramer said earlier this month that he’s heard from Wall Street executives that they believe Warren has “got to be stopped.” Warren later tweeted her response to Cramer’s report: “I’m Elizabeth Warren and I approve this message.”

Some big bank executives and hedge fund managers have been stunned by Warren’s ascent, and they are primed to resist her.

“They will not support her. It would be like shutting down their industry,” an executive at one of the nation’s largest banks told CNBC, also speaking on condition of anonymity. This person said Warren’s policies could be worse for Wall Street than those of President Barack Obama, who signed the Dodd-Frank bank regulation bill in the wake of the 2008 financial meltdown.

Hey, folks, we’re a big tent party—all are welcome. It just shows how the business community knows that Warren and the Democrats could wreck the economy, which has been going strong since 2016. 

Consumer and small business confidence have reached records highs. Paychecks are bigger. Jobs are being created, over three million thus far. Unemployment hit 3.5 percent under the Trump administration, a 50-year low. 

All Democrats Drop Out ..

The Babylon Bee

All Democrats Drop Out Of Presidential Race Since 

The World Is Ending From Climate Change And There's No Point

October 3rd, 2019

U.S.—The recent U.N. conference on climate change and especially the words of 16-year-old activist Greta Thunberg have had a profound impact on the Democratic presidential candidates, so much so that they are now turning words into action and dropping out of the presidential race since they now think there’s no point to it.

“We’re all going to die, so why am I wasting my time on this?!” cried Cory Booker as he collapsed to his knees. “There’s nothing we can do!”

“Why am I fighting for abortion on demand at 39 weeks when we’re all going to die anyway?!” screamed Elizabeth Warren. “It’s all pointless! All my plans are pointless!”

“Here I was worrying about billionaires when it’s the sun that’s my enemy!” yelled Bernie Sanders as he shook his fist at the sun. “I should have taxed the sun!”

The only Democrat not dropping out is Joe Biden, who seemed to not quite understand what’s going on, only remarking, “Yep. Climate stuff is pretty bad,” before going into a long story about his rival Corn Pop.

President Trump also seemed unfazed by it all. “So the planet is warming a bit. Who cares?” he said. “We got A/C. Losers.”

President Trump Is Absolutely Right

The Federalist

President Trump Is Absolutely Right 

To Assume Federal Agencies Are Against Him

Too many of the unelected bureaucrats who staff the alphabet soup agencies seem to feel entitled to circumvent the will of the American people when it conflicts with their priors.

Inez Feltscher Stepman

The real scandal of the Ukrainian debacle that continues to lead every cable broadcast is that, once again, the actions of unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats have deeply affected an election in United States.

In recent days, it has come out not only that the intelligence community inspector general changed policy about secondhand information to fit this particular whistleblower complaint, but also that the whistleblower him- or herself was working with House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff and House Democrats before filing the complaint.

President Trump called the whistleblower complaint a “scam” in a press conference with the Finnish president on Wednesday, and White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller called it a “partisan hit job” in a contentious interview earlier in the week.

“The president of the United States is the whistleblower, and this individual is a saboteur trying to undermine a democratically elected government,” Miller said on Fox News Sunday.

Among the revelations of the past week has been that the president has to “hide” his phone calls from much of his own administration to reduce leaks. This move might seem to indicate guilt—and is certainly being spun that way by Democrats and the media—but for the knowledge that the president isn’t wrong to mistrust his own workforce.

Federal employees are anything but neutral administrators of the law. Fully 95 percent of donations from those working for agencies went to Hillary Clinton in 2016. And a web of civil service laws built over the past century effectively inures them to the consequences of defying the elected and appointed officials tasked by our political process with captaining the ship of state.

It takes up to two years to fire a federal worker, even those convicted of felonies while on the job. Four different appeal routes and a flowchart’s worth of avenues prevent most managers from even trying to rid themselves of incompetent or outright insubordinate employees.

“At the DOJ, we can’t really get fired,” a career employee chuckles over coffee in an undercover video from Project Veritas, while outlining how she uses her position to undermine the administration. As early as the winter of the president’s inauguration, federal employees were already publicly trading tips on how to “#resist” from within.

When President Trump claims to be an outsider in his own administration, in a very real sense, he’s not wrong. Say what you want about Trump (and I’ve said plenty) he represents a real challenge to the post-war liberal order, both foreign and domestic, of the last 70 years.

Many of what are really just political heresies are instead labeled dangerous or insane by a ruling class that has mistaken its consensus of the last few decades for the foundational pillars of democracy. Instead of meeting the Trumpian challenge within the boundaries of the normal political process, too many of the unelected bureaucrats who staff the alphabet soup agencies seem to feel entitled to circumvent the will of the American people when it conflicts with their priors.

Our political moment contains more than a few parallels to the Jacksonian era, among them a rough-and-tumble president who horrifies the denizens of Washington and a restless voting public that has deep disagreements with the business as usual that has been taken for granted among the chattering classes for decades.

We’ve fortunately greatly expanded the franchise since Andrew Jackson’s time, but in some ways our government is much less responsive to the outcomes of elections themselves. In the early nineteenth century, government employment was the opposite of permanent; officeholders were expected to hand in their resignation letters with every election.

By contrast, today’s sprawling administrative state, long cabined as a concern for legal scholars and conservative academics, has now inserted itself into our politics in a nakedly partisan way. 2.8 million federal employees never leave power, remain totally unaccountable to voters, and enjoy virtually ironclad protection against losing their jobs for defying their political bosses.

The Robert Mueller investigation, and now this impeachment attempt over the president’s call with Ukraine, are waking Americans up to the consequences of allowing such an insulated and permanent class to wield enormous power over the country’s policies.

If it was ever viable, the Wilsonian experiment of rule by politically detached experts is over. In its place are high-ranking bureaucrats who are displacing the people’s judgement on policy and politics with their own. If we cannot get rid of the administrative state, we must at least tame it by empowering those who actually have to stand before the American people for their blessing every two, four, or six years.

That means rolling back the civil service laws that serve as a protective patina over what now must and should be considered political actors, so that they may be held accountable in a democratic republic.

Inez Feltscher Stepman is a senior contributor at The Federalist. She is also a senior policy analyst at Independent Women's Forum and the Thursday editor of BRIGHT, a women's newsletter. Find her on Twitter @inezfeltscher.

Sent from my iPad

How to Arrest Trump Officials

https://freebeacon.com/politics/tlaib-democrats-looking-into-how-to-arrest-trump-officials/

Tlaib: Democrats Looking Into How to Arrest Trump Officials

Graham PiroOctober 3, 2019 3:35 PM

Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.) said Democratic lawmakers are exploring how to arrest White House officials who do not comply with congressional subpoenas.

Tlaib told Detroit constituents at her "Congress, Coffee, and Conversation" event on Tuesday that lawmakers are focused on how best to take cabinet members into custody. "This is the first time we've ever had a situation like this," she said. "So they're trying to figure out, no joke, is it the D.C. police that goes and gets them? We don't know. Where do we hold them?"

An America Rising PAC tracker caught Tlaib on video speculating what could happen to Trump administration officials held in contempt of Congress. The congresswoman pointed to Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross and Attorney General William Barr, who were both held in criminal contempt of Congress for defying congressional subpoenas.

The House of Representatives voted to ask the Justice Department to prosecute Barr and Ross by a margin of 230 to 198. It was the second time in U.S. history a sitting cabinet member was held in criminal contempt of Congress. The first was former attorney general Eric Holder, whom the Republican-controlled House held in contempt in 2012 after Holder refused to turn over documents pertaining to the Operation Fast and Furious gunrunning scandal.

Tlaib said her colleagues are "trying to tread carefully" in this "uncharted territory."

"I will tell them they can hold all those people right here in Detroit," she joked. "We'll take care of them and make sure they show up to the committee hearings."

With the House's impeachment inquiry underway, questions remain as to how House Democrats will compel the Trump administration to cooperate.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo sent a letter to Congress on Tuesday informing lawmakers that State Department officials would not be testifying in front of congressional committees. He characterized subpoena efforts as an "attempt to intimidate, bully, and treat improperly the distinguished professionals of the Department of State."

One former State Department official already testified Thursday despite Pompeo's objections.

Tlaib's colleague, Rep. Maxine Waters (D., Calif.), tweeted that President Trump "needs to be imprisoned & placed in solitary confinement." She later clarified she was not serious about the demand.

Art of the Strategy

Spectator.org

Donald Trump’s Art of the Strategy 

Donald Trump is a master strategist. His opponents are at an enormous disadvantage.

He is relentless. They can’t keep up with him. Every day he does something they deem unacceptable. He keeps them perpetually confused. He has boundless energy. He never backs down.

He takes them so far out of their comfort zone that they have no idea how to get back. They’ve given up trying to understand him. They can’t even understand his humor. They can’t begin to derive effective counter-strategies.

In contrast to Obama, Trump loves his country. He has stimulated a patriotic rebirth. People feel good about their own love of their country, and they love him for making that popular again. Trump makes his followers feel good. The Democrats make their followers feel bad.

Trump gets his opponents to self-destruct. He sets traps for them that should be obvious, but somehow they cannot resist walking right into them.

Trump has hypnotized his opponents. It’s as if he has selected for them the worst imaginable presidential candidates and then tricked those candidates into advocating bizarre policies, policies that are wildly unpopular and will doom any chance they have of winning. Worst of all for them, he has tricked them into being honest about who they are and what they believe.

His opponents’ outlandish behavior doesn’t just happen. Trump is largely responsible for their descent into insanity. It is as though a mole has infiltrated the Democrat Party and set off a neutron bomb, destroying their judgment but leaving their bodies intact.

Trump’s values and objectives have been consistent for decades. He has set records for how many of his campaign promises he has kept, or at least tried hard to keep. The demented Democrats change so often and abruptly that it gives their supporters whiplash.

Unlike the Democrats, Trump entertains people. Even his opponents are unable to look away. His over-the-top rhetoric is irresistible. When the smartest tactic would be to ignore him, nobody can. That allows him to monopolize the news.

Trump’s opponents have been compared to the Road Runner cartoon character Wile E. Coyote. They never learn. How many times have the Democrats promised their acolytes that they had Trump dead to rights? The Democrats’ learning curve has a negative slope. Why they have any credibility left is a mystery.

Trump is emotionally bulletproof. As Victor Davis Hanson has observed, after three years of vicious attacks, the wonder is not merely that he’s still president; it’s that he’s still standing.

Trump’s opponents hate him with a passion. They hate him because he threatens their most cherished obsessions. Before their very eyes they are witnessing the dismemberment of the swamp, climate hysteria, political correctness, economic stagnation, excessive regulations, unlimited abortion, the corrupt media, and illegal immigration. In other words, they hate Donald Trump because his strategies work.

Unmask the Whistleblower

Spectator.org

Unmask the Whistleblower

Let’s read the Constitution, shall we?

Specifically Article II, Section IV, which reads as follows, with bold print for emphasis supplied:

The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.

Then move along to the Sixth Amendment, which reads in its entirety as follows, with bold print for emphasis supplied:

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.

In other words, the Constitution clearly stipulates that impeaching a president means the president is being accused of “high crimes.” And the Sixth Amendment clearly stipulates that in “In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right … to be confronted with the witnesses against him.”

Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Congressman Adam Schiff, by hiding the identity of the whistleblower, are denying President Trump his Sixth Amendment right to confront his whistleblower accuser.

Congress impeached both presidents Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton. There were whistleblowers quite publicly involved in each case.

In Nixon’s case the whistleblower was his own White House Counsel — John Dean. In Clinton’s case the whistleblower was Pentagon employee Linda Tripp, along with Arkansas state employee Paula Jones. All three made their accusations against the president they were involved with in extraordinarily public fashion.

Yet in Trump’s case there is all this gnashing of teeth that the current whistleblower must have his or her identity hidden to protect his or her security.

Baloney. No one cared about the security of the Nixon and Clinton accusers. And they are still, years later, alive and well. In John Dean’s case he got a book deal for his tale, Blind Ambition. Not to mention that in the Trump era he is now a CNN contributor. You can be certain that if the Trump whistleblower is unmasked both a book deal and a TV contributor gig at either CNN or MSNBC will quickly come his or her way.

The other day the president quite accurately tweeted,

Like every American, I deserve to meet my accuser, especially when this accuser, the so-called “Whistleblower,” represented a perfect conversation with a foreign leader in a totally inaccurate and fraudulent way….

In addition, I want to meet not only my accuser, who presented SECOND & THIRD HAND INFORMATION, but also the person who illegally gave this information, which was largely incorrect, to the “Whistleblower.”

Bingo. The president is 100 percent within his constitutional right — as expressly stated in the Sixth Amendment — to make this demand.

The oath of office taken by a member of the U.S. House of Representatives when he or she is sworn in reads as follows, bold print for emphasis supplied:

I, (name), do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion, and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.

If Speaker Pelosi and Congressman Schiff persist in hiding the identity of the Trump accuser, not only are they denying the President his constitutional right to “to be confronted with the witnesses against him” — but in so doing they are in direct violation of their own oath of office as Members of the U.S. House of Representatives that says they must “support and defend the Constitution of the United States” as well as “bear true faith and allegiance to the same.”

If Speaker Pelosi and Congressman Schiff persist in hiding the identity of the Trump accuser — and we now know that Schiff’s aide knew about the identity of the whistleblower when the latter came to the Schiff House Intelligence Committee staff to discuss the subject — not only are Pelosi and Schiff denying the President his constitutional right to “to be confronted with the witnesses against him,” but they are in direct violation of their own oath of office as Members of the U.S. House of Representatives that says they must “support and defend the Constitution of the United States” as well as “bear true faith and allegiance to the same.”

For which both Pelosi and Schiff should be censured — or expelled from the House completely.

And a footnote? CNN’s Jake Tapper has now reported this in a tweet:

Breaking — A source familiar with the investigation prompted by the whistleblower tells me that the “indicia of bias of an arguable political bias on the part” of the whistleblower referred to by the Intel Community IG, is that the whistleblower is a Registered Democrat.

Shocking. Not.