Don Surber Says It All

What else is new?

Surber starts out, The impeachment we need, by quoting an amusing piece at the Babylon Bee:

Poll: Majority Want Impeachment Hearings To Continue As Long As Possible So Congress Will Be Too Busy To Meddle With Our Lives

He then moves to Ann Coulter, who laments that impeachment is preventing the Senate from doing all sorts of good and necessary things--infrastructure, fixing Obamacare, fixing our border crisis, and so forth.

Then Surber lays it out:

I agree with both, and disagree with both. 

What we really need is for Congress to take a sober and unflinching review of Obama's Spygate, in which an American president used the FBI to spy on a political opponent. To get that power, the FBI lied 17 times to a federal judge. Not only that, but the FBI tried to entrap Donald John Trump's son and his son-in-law at Trump Tower in June 2016. Not only that but when Devin Nunes later informed the judge the FBI lied, she ignored it. 

This is the constitutional crisis we need to address because if we fail to put in place strict penalties for using the FBI to spy, the next Democrat president will do even worse. 

To be sure, John Durham is investigating but he's a Department of Justice lifer. He was supposed to start indicting in June. I am tired of waiting. I give up on him. He is the bus that will never arrive. I may as well start walking. 

Watergate was amateur hour. Obama's Spygate is Big Brother done by professionals. I would like to say that they almost got away with it, but because there has been no public outcry, I must tell the truth. 

They got away with it.

Powerful words, and not spoken recklessly. Unlike Surber, however, I haven't given up on Barr/Durham. As Surber says, the Russia Hoax was "Big Brother done by professionals," and Impeachment Theater is the continuation of the Russia Hoax through the Intel Community and the Legislative Branch (never mind what the Judicial Branch has been up to). It's the crime of the century, and you don't get to the bottom of that--which is where we need to get--in a few months. Progress is being made. As Lee Smith told Laura Ingraham last night, the plot is now clearly seen to have originated in the White House. That's real progress.

The House Assault On Law And The Constitution Explained

Over at CTH I found this Youtube video of Patrick Philbin, a member of President Trump's defense team. In the video Philbin explains why the Dem Impeachment Theater is constitutionally deficient, why the House "subpoenas" were invalid, why White House officials are absolutely immune from compelled testimony, and how the House Dems are attempting to permanently alter the constitutional relations between the House and the Senate.

Philbin isn't a dynamic speaker, but he is very clear and moves at a measured pace. It's well worth the listen for anyone who wants a clear exposition of the legal and constitutional issues at stake.

Basically, Philbin points out:

1) The Constitution grants the power of impeachment to the House as a body--not to an individual (the Speaker) or to any committee. That means that a vote must be taken by the House as a whole, since a legislature acts by vote.

2) Since no vote authorizing an impeachment inquiry was taken by the House, purported "subpoenas" issued by the House in this matter are simply invalid. Those "subpoenas" were rightfully rejected by the President, whose duty it is to defend the constitutional powers and prerogatives of his office.

3) The refusal by the President to make his officials available goes beyond "executive privilege" and gets to the heart of the Constitution--separation of powers. As such, the president is asserting not merely a privilege but an absolute immunity from compelled testimony, as a defense against a tyrannical Legislative Branch. Philbin cites AG Janet Reno to that effect.

4) The Constitution divides the duties of the re impeachment. The House investigates and votes on impeachment, while the Senate, acting as a court, conducts a trial on the evidence presented. Pelosi is attempting to unconstitutionally bend the Senate to the will of her Dem House by demanding that the Senate conduct the investigation that the Dem House didn't see fit to conduct. The Senate must reject this attempted coup against the Constitution.

Tweetatus Maximus Wins Again

Impeachment in our day--apparently Trump retweeted this. I can't wait for the SOTU speech:

Certified genius Schiff T. Coyote demonstrates the meaning of insanity in his relentless pursuit of the elusive Trump Runner.

UPDATED: Is There Some Sort of Current Event in D.C. Happening This Week?

That's the question that Steve Sailer asks. His post simply reads:

Feel free to comment upon it, whatever it is.

Talk about a no-brainer! This week DJT will be the first POTUS ever to attend the annual Right To Life March in person. What other event happening in DC this week could possibly compete with that?

See you on Friday...Big Crowd! https://t.co/MFyWLG4HFZ

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 22, 2020

UPDATE: John Hinderaker says it well, re another alleged "current event" going on in DC this week:

I haven’t spent a minute watching the absurd impeachment proceedings in the Senate, and I don’t intend to. My time has value, and I refuse to let the Democrats dictate, on the feeblest of pretexts, how I spend it. ...

Is a single voter being influenced by this nonsense?

Who Thought This Was A Good Idea?

I mean, to have Hillary come out and trash Bernie? I assume that the major effect that Hillary's involvement could have is that if Bernie is denied the Dem nomination, some significant portion of his backers will believe that the nomination was stolen--again.

This comes as CNN is doing its best to obscure the fact that Sanders is leading the Dem pack, all howling at the moonbats:

Sanders supporters took issue with the fact that despite the Vermont senator's three point advantage over former Vice President Joe Biden, 27% to 24%, CNN in its headline declares that "Bernie Sanders surges to join Biden atop Democratic presidential pack" rather than acknowledging the lead. The network adds in the article that Sanders and Biden are "in a two-person top tier above the rest of the field." 

The disconnect between the Sanders lead — which is just within the 3.4 point margin of error — and the framing of CNN's piece on the poll was noticed by progressives and journalists.  

"The title of the article makes it sound like it's a tie," said Sanders surrogate Shaun King. "It isn't." 

Law and Crime reporter Colin Kalchember also took aim at CNN for not declaring Sanders in the lead. "CNN still cannot fathom stating the obvious here: Sanders is leading in their own national poll," said Kalchember. "Self parody."

Sanders also leads a new poll out Wednesday from crucial Super Tuesday state California, besting Biden by 28% to 24%, and gained on the former vice president in Morning Consult's weekly early-state polling.

Seems like a very bad idea to have Hillary trashing Bernie.

Re New Revelations About Ciaramella And Misko

Fool Nelson neatly capsulizes a major takeaway from Paul Sperry's lengthy article--Whistleblower Was Overheard in '17 Discussing With Ally How to Remove Trump. David Laufman looks more and more like a key Dem operative:

@DavidLaufmanLaw appears in every @realDonaldTrump hoax.

1. Exonerated @HillaryClinton of gross negligence

2. Interviewed the Primary Sub-source during the #RussiaHoax

3. Represented Monica McLean during the #KavanaughHoax

4. Advised Ciaramella to initiate the #UkraineHoax pic.twitter.com/EtLbQrtbun

— FOOL NELSON (@FOOL_NELSON) January 22, 2020

No Surprise: Powell Says Flynn Should Only Get Probation And Community Service

There's no point in spending much time on this. The original recommendation was for no jail time, and that's what Sidney Powell is suggesting. She has already moved to withdraw the plea, but she has to go through the motions on sentencing--from The Hill:

Former national security adviser Michael Flynn told a federal judge on Wednesday that he should be sentenced at a maximum to probation and community service over charges that he lied to the FBI. 

In a court filing Wednesday, Flynn’s attorneys repeatedly cited their client’s past military service and volunteer work as evidence that he does not deserve to serve time behind bars. 

“While the defendants in other cases cited by the government were working to benefit themselves, Mr. Flynn wrote a blank check on his life and put himself in harm’s way for more than five years in foreign deployments and thirty-three years of service to protect all Americans,” they wrote. “Mr. Flynn should receive a sentence, if any, of probation and community service.” 

The filing comes after Flynn moved to withdraw his guilty plea last week under an agreement he had made with Robert Mueller during the former special counsel's probe into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential race.

The motion to withdraw the plea is where the real action will be. The point of the sentencing is that, until there's a sentence imposed, Powell can't appeal any of Judge Sullivan's other rulings.

UPDATED: How Bad Is Schiff's Impeachment Theater?

I refuse to take the actual articles of impeachment seriously. So let's take a look at the theater aspect of it, which has always been what it's really about. And here is the depth to which our republic has descended.

What can you say about a liberal whom Politico feels called up to, er, correct?

Schiff may have mischaracterized Parnas evidence, documents show

Unredacted material shows he may have referred to the wrong "Mr. Z."

House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff appears to have mischaracterized a text message exchange between two players in the Ukraine saga, according to documents obtained by POLITICO — a possible error the GOP will likely criticize as another example of the Democrats’ rushed effort to impeach President Donald Trump. 

Ya think?

The issue arose when Schiff (D-Calif.) sent a letter to House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) last week summarizing a trove of evidence from Lev Parnas, an indicted former associate of Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani. In one section of the letter, Schiff claims that Parnas “continued to try to arrange a meeting with President Zelensky,” citing a specific text message exchange where Parnas tells Giuliani: “trying to get us mr Z.” The remainder of the exchange — which was attached to Schiff’s letter — was redacted. 

But an unredacted version of the exchange shows that several days later, Parnas sent Giuliani a word document that appears to show notes from an interview with Mykola Zlochevsky, the founder of Burisma, followed by a text message to Giuliani that states: “mr Z answers my brother.” That suggests Parnas was referring to Zlochevsky not Zelensky.

I assume Politico is trying to get out ahead of this story to make it "old news". You have to get to the bottom, through all the spin, to find out what GOPers are saying about this:

A Republican aide said the assumption that “mr Z” is a reference to Zelensky is sloppy oversight work at best. 

“The most charitable view of the situation is that [Schiff’s] staff committed the equivalent of Congressional malpractice by not looking more than an inch deep to determine the facts before foisting this erroneous information on his colleagues and the American public,” said one senior GOP aide. 

“But given the selective redactions and contextual clues, it seems as though Chairman Schiff sought to portray an innocuous meeting with Ukrainian oligarch Mykola Zlochevsky as an insidious one with the President of Ukraine simply because both of their surnames start with the letter Z.”

UPDATED: "This is about the future of representative government."

That's what Joe diGenovoa said on Monday. I think that's pretty much in line with what commenter Tom S. said this morning (in part)

Kavanaugh was just the summer-stock rehearsal. That there was not a great outcry and "throwing down of idols" afterwards is telling. This is a symptom that the Republic is deeply corrupted, probably fatally so. What once was is gone forever. 
Tom S.

Here's the full interview with diGenova (that's a much younger diGenova):

The interview starts out with discussion of Parnas and another Ukrainian we've discussed in the past in connection with Andrew Weissmann--Dmitry Firtash. The discussion then shifts to Adam Schiff and the War on Trump.

Here, lifted from TGP, is a partial transcript of diGenova's comments in that regard--“Democrats Have “Adopted the Nazi Version of – the ‘BIG LIE’ As a Way to Impeach the President!”

The transcript is partial. Even the excerpts leave some bits out. But I think the ideas are important to get out there and may extend them later.

At the 7:30 mark:

The Democrats didn’t win the 2016 election and so they’ve decided that they are going to try and nullify it by impeachment and this is nothing more than the Nazi version of…you know the Nazis had something called the ‘Big Lie’ which Joseph Goebbels put forth to convince people to hate the Jews and hate other people.  That’s what the Democrats have done here.  They’ve adopted the big lie as a way to impeach the President.”

At the 9:17 mark:

Let’s remember what this is about, they [the Democrats] know they cannot get the 67 votes to remove the President.  So they intend to use this process to dirty up the President for the 2020 election and to dirty up the Senate Republicans in hopes of defeating enough Senate Republicans so that they can take over the Senate and then have full boar to impeach not only the President again after the election but to go after Brett Kavanaugh.  This is why this election is so important.  This is about the future of representative government.

At the 10:30 mark:

Our listeners need to understand that this is going to be the single most important election in 100 years because if the Democrats take over the Senate and keep the House, even if they lose the Presidency.  The government that we know today will come to an end.

At the 15:05 mark:

Remember this is a suicide mission by the Democrats.  They have given up everything.  They don’t care anymore.  They want to destroy Trump.  They want to subvert the Constitution.  They will do anything.  The risks to them are worth everything.”

UPDATE:  Terrific NRSC video that hits in its own way on some of the same themes:

How's The Impeachment Theater Going?

Will Chamberlain gives us his view. If the embed doesn't provide the pscp.tv, follow the link to Twitter. Twenty five words or less: Chamberlain believes Schiff did exactly what he needed to do to offend and alienate Republican senators, and Pat Cipollone shone. Schiff chose to lecture the senators on their own rules--arrogant and disrespectful of the Senate as an institution. By comparison, Cipollone made clear, forceful, persuasive arguments--distilled complex ideas into simple language. Chamberlain concludes that Dems have underestimated how offensive Schiff is. Pretty much what I commented earlier today.

#ImpeachmentTrial: Adam Schiff bloviates for 45 minutes, Pat Cipollone takes him to the woodshed in just ten https://t.co/HB4cl2D2XG

— Will Chamberlain 🇺🇸 (@willchamberlain) January 21, 2020

Mike Pompeo On "The Glory Of The American Experiment"

Pompeo said this at an event at Texas A&M University on April 15, 2019. It's the Deep State speaking:

Pompeo's boss spoke at Davos today. Here's part of what he said:

“America’s newfound prosperity is undeniable, unprecedented and unmatched anywhere in the world,” Trump said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, hours before his impeachment trial was set to begin in earnest back home. “America achieved this stunning turnaround not by making minor changes to a handful of policies, but by adopting a whole new approach centered entirely on the well-being of the American worker.”

“Every decision we make on taxes, trade, regulation, energy, immigration, education and more is focused on improving the lives of everyday Americans,” the president added. “Only when governments put their own citizens first will people be fully invested in their national futures.”

 Who should we trust?

UPDATED: Cocaine Mitch Deals

Monica Showalter sketches the outline of Mitch McConnell's impeachment trial rules at AmThinker: Cocaine Mitch hands the Democrats a dilemma. What's the dilemma? The dilemma is that McConnell intends to play fair, particularly with regard to witnesses.

Showalter quotes Axios re the witness rules:

Details: Under the resolution, House Democratic managers and Trump's defense team will each be given up to 24 hours over two days to present their cases.

• Senators will then have 16 hours to submit their questions to Chief Justice John Roberts.

• After the Q&A period, the Senate will vote on whether to consider and debate witness subpoenas.

• If the Senate votes no, no one will be permitted to call for new witnesses or documents, according to a Republican leadership aide.

• If the Senate votes yes, both sides will have an opportunity to motion to subpoena witnesses, then senators will debate and vote on them.

• Then the Senate will vote on whether to convict the president and remove him from office.

As Showalter summarizes:

Hear that, Dems? You all can pick whether you want witnesses to testify, any witnesses you like, but if you do, you'll have to let the Republican majority do the same. Even-steven. That's a dilemma.

That's a dilemma because that's not how Dems play. We wouldn't be at this point if it were, as we saw throughout the House Impeachment Theater.

Consider the scenario Showalter draws out for us:

[The Dems] can have all the Bolton they like, but Republicans will be allowed to issue equal subpoenas to all the people Adam Schiff nixxed earlier - Hunter Biden, Joe Biden, Eric Ciaramella, Schiff himself, John Brennan, James Comey, Alexandra Chalupa, a host of Ukrainian officials, maybe even the Ukrainian prime minister who says Trump did nothing wrong, all the people they wanted to call earlier. 

If Democrats are hungry for Bolton, Republicans are even hungrier for all these witnesses they couldn't call the first time around. 

The GOP witness wish list could only expose the whole Democrat-plotted rigging operation. It could expose the foundations of the whole slimey planned scam against Trump from the get-go. Sure, the Democrats could get their Magic Bolton. But then they'll have to choose between him and all the witnesses they don't want to see on the stands.  

It goes to show that Cocaine Mitch knows how to deal and he's opted for the cleverest of solutions, giving the Democrats exactly what they want .... good and hard.

Read it all.

UPDATE: For anyone who hasn't seen this interview with John Ratcliffe is very good. Ratcliffe states among MANY other things that he expects a short trial, no witnesses called, and an early acquittal. Listen to him--this guy knows what he's talking about: