Archive for the ‘Civil Rights’ Category

Each time Speaker Pelosi or Sen. Schumer insist that they need additional witnesses, Republicans should remind them that the impeachment investigation wrapped up when the House Judiciary Committee voted to approve articles of impeachment. That vote signified the end of the impeachment investigation. In fact, a strong argument could be made that the Schiff Report to the House Judiciary Committee ended the investigation since the House Judiciary Committee didn’t call any fact witnesses.

The minute that the House voted to approve articles of impeachment is the moment that their authority died. The House, aka Speaker Pelosi, doesn’t have the constitutional authority to try the House’s articles of impeachment. Article I, Section 3, Clause 6 states “The Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments. When sitting for that Purpose, they shall be on Oath or Affirmation. When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside: And no Person shall be convicted without the Concurrence of two thirds of the Members present.”

It’s clear that the House has the authority to appoint impeachment managers who will present the House case to the Senate. Once that presentation is finished, however, the House should totally irrelevant. Apparently, Republicans have the votes to pass the rules governing the impeachment trial:

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Tuesday that he has the votes to set the ground rules of the impeachment trial for President Donald Trump — without Democrats’ support.

McConnell first made the remarks during a closed-door lunch with his fellow Republican senators on Capitol Hill, an official in the room told CNN, before McConnell made the announcement publicly during a news conference following the lunch. McConnell made clear he had no plans to move forward on a trial until the two articles of impeachment are sent to the Senate, as he has said publicly.

“We have the votes once the impeachment trial has begun to pass a resolution essentially the same, very similar to the 100-to-nothing vote in the Clinton trial, which sets up what’s best described as a phase one,” McConnell said Tuesday.

That’s excellent. It’s fantastic that Sen. McConnell can tell Speaker Pelosi to butt out. Now that Sen. McConnell has the votes to pass the Clinton Impeachment rules, Speaker Pelosi can pick her impeachment managers and transmit the House’s articles of impeachment to the Senate. I can’t imagine that the Senate Democrats running for president want this dragging out that long. They’d prefer getting this in the rear-view mirror ASAP. In fact, those Democrats probably want it done faster than President Trump wants this over.

For the past 3 weeks, we’ve heard one article after another about what a brilliant tactician Speaker Pelosi is. Quietly, I’ve noticed what a skilled negotiator Sen. Mitch McConnell is. This time, the skilled negotiator got the better of the brilliant tactician.

It’s time for President Trump’s legal team to expose the Democrats’ partisan impeachment attempt as the joke that it is. I’ve frequently said that the only testimony that the Democrats have is hearsay testimony, which isn’t admissible in federal courts except in rare exceptions.

This afternoon, GOP senators sent an unmistakable message to Speaker Pelosi. With Josh Hawley as the leading co-sponsor, co-sponsors “Sens. Rick Scott of Florida; Mike Braun of Indiana; Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee; Ted Cruz of Texas; Steve Daines of Montana; John Barrasso of Wyoming; Tom Cotton of Arkansas; Joni Ernst of Iowa; David Perdue of Georgia; and Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma” joined with him “to introduce a resolution allowing the chamber to dismiss articles of impeachment against President Trump for lack of prosecution, as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi delays sending the case for trial.”

Next, Sen. Hawley delivered this powerful, stirring speech:

Here’s part of what Sen. Hawley said in his speech on the Senate floor:

In the real world, when a prosecutor brings a case but refuses to try it, the court has the ability and the defendant has the right, the constitutional right, I might add, to have those articles, those indictments, those charges dismissed. That is precisely the action that I am proposing today.

Here’s the heart of Sen. Hawley’s official statement:

Speaker Pelosi started this bogus impeachment by claiming President Trump was an urgent ‘threat to democracy’ who had to be removed now. But after a bipartisan vote against the articles in the House, and with the public opposed to the Democrats’ partisan games, Pelosi has changed her tune. Now she wants to prevent a Senate trial, perhaps indefinitely. But the Constitution gives the Senate sole power to adjudicate articles of impeachment, not the House. If Speaker Pelosi is afraid to try her case, the articles should be dismissed for failure to prosecute and Congress should get back to doing the people’s business.

This impeachment is a travesty. I’ve written multiple times that Democrats don’t have any proof of high crimes and misdemeanors. The Democrats’ case, if you can legitimately call it that, specializes in hearsay testimony. If this was being tried in a court of law, at least 75% of the Democrats’ testimony couldn’t be admitted because it was hearsay. Sen. Cruz added this statement:

Since the start of the impeachment process, Speaker Pelosi and House Democrats have made a mockery of our Constitution and abused impeachment for political gain. Now, they’re undermining the role of the Senate by attempting to dictate the terms of the Senate’s trial. Under our Constitution, the Senate has the sole authority to try impeachment. It is the Senate’s duty to take up these articles without delay, and to resolve them in a timely and constitutionally appropriate manner.

The Sixth Amendment requires the right to a speedy trial. Serious people question whether Pelosi’s Democrats are interested in upholding President Trump’s civil rights. Pelosi and Pelosi’s Democrat minions lied about the need to impeach President Trump on an expedited schedule. Then she decided to hold the official but flimsy articles of impeachment rather than transmit them to the Senate where a trial could be held.

Chairman Schiff told the American people that not impeaching President Trump on an expedited basis was the equivalent of arguing to just let him cheat one more time:

We were told that democracy itself hung in the balance. Now we’re being told that Speaker Pelosi wants to negotiate better terms for Senate Democrats by not transmitting the articles of impeachment. This afternoon, Josh Hawley essentially told Pelosi to butt out and let the Senate run the Senate.

The most unappreciated story of the year is the least reported story of the year. When the Mueller Report was published, the MSM didn’t report the fact that Special Counsel Mueller knew on Day 1 that the Clinton campaign had paid for the Steele Dossier and that the information in the dossier was unverified. Despite that, Robert Mueller’s team ignored this exculpatory information and kept ‘investigating’ for 2 additional years.

While they kept ‘investigating’, Mueller’s team divided the nation while crippling the president. This wasn’t just unnecessary. It was destructive to President Trump’s negotiations with dangerous foreign governments. It hung like a cloud over our economy, too.

As destructive as those things were, they aren’t the most disturbing aspect of the Mueller investigation. Despite spending 2 years and virtually $50,000,000 on the faux investigation, they didn’t investigate the FBI. Despite the fact that FBI hid exculpatory evidence from the FISC, despite the fact that an FBI lawyer doctored an email from the CIA from saying that Carter Page was a CIA source to saying that Carter Page wasn’t a CIA source, it’s inexcusable that Mueller didn’t investigate the FBI.

When Carter Page sues the FBI, he should also sue Mueller personally for protecting the agency he once directed. There’s no justification for not investigating the FBI when the special counsel was tasked with investigating Russian interference into the 2016 US presidential election. The Steele Dossier was nothing without Russian disinformation. That isn’t my opinion. That’s the finding of the Horowitz Report.

That’s the definition of cronyism. Compare the blind spot in the Mueller Report with the detailed work done by Michael Horowitz. IG Horowitz didn’t protect the FBI the way that Director Mueller protected the FBI. Horowitz told the truth about the FBI and the truth hurt.

Had people listened to Rep. Louie Gohmert, we might’ve gotten spared this lengthy national nightmare. This article lays out the case that Rep. Gohmert put together against Mueller:

Gohmert’s criticism of Mueller did not begin with Mueller’s FBI directorship, but rather, hearkened back to when Mueller was an assistant U.S. attorney in Boston in the 1980s, then Acting U.S. attorney, during the time that FBI agent John Connolly, who is now in prison on an unrelated conviction, protected Whitey Bulger, thereby allowing four innocent men to spend decades in prison, where two of them would later die before all were exonerated by a federal judge.

That’s the personification of corruption. Letting 4 innocent men languish in prison, with 2 of them dying while unjustly incarcerated, is the nastiest civil rights violations I’ve heard of in half a century. That shouldn’t ever have happened. As a Christian, it’s difficult to give Mueller the benefit of that doubt.

Lindsey Graham summarizes things nicely in his closing statement:

Once the Russian sub-source said “everything in the dossier, I disavow.” The minute that’s revealed, what’s the justification for continuing the Mueller Investigation? The minute Mueller learned that Carter Page wasn’t a Russian asset should’ve been the instant Mueller should’ve stopped the investigation.

If we’d had a press that cared about civil rights and doing the right thing, this would’ve been a highly publicized story. Because we’ve got corrupt media organizations dotting the landscape, it was mostly overlooked. Here at LFR, I’ll just say this: not on my watch. The fact that Democrats sat silent says everything. Democrats should be ashamed of themselves.

Apparently, Democrats aren’t interested in the American people’s needs. That’s obvious since they’re talking about another impeachment investigation. This isn’t speculation. Democrats filed briefs “Monday related to their quest for testimony from former White House Counsel Don McGahn and secret grand jury material from former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation” that referenced another impeachment investigation.

Whether they’re serious about another impeachment investigation or not is almost immaterial. It’s clear that Democrats are serious about another round of investigations into President Trump. Keeping Democrats in the majority in the House means that Democrats won’t focus on the people’s business. It means that they’ll spend their time investigating President Trump in an attempt to hurt him internationally and electorally.

Democrats insist that President Trump’s phone call to President Zelenskiy hurt the US’s national security. Quite the opposite is true. The Democrats’ intentional timing decisions on their investigations has weakened President Trump’s position while he negotiated with China, North Korea and the EU. Democrats scheduled an investigative hearing for the day that President Trump started the Singapore Summit. They pulled the same stunt when President Trump met with Xi Jinping.

Democrats should continue acting like dictators. That’s what Pelosi is acting like. She has a lengthy history of that type of behavior, starting with shoving the ACA down our throat. The House Democrats’ leader’s latest dictatorial move was what might be called Pelosi’s hurry-up-and-wait impeachment drama. That’s where she rendered a verdict at the start, then finished with a vote that confirmed that pre-ordained verdict.

The Resist Movement, which Pelosi’s Democrats are part of, hate President Trump. They’re the ones approving of the Judiciary Committee’s Democrats changing the rules virtually on a daily basis. They’re the ones approving of the Intel Committee’s Democrats changing the rules virtually on a daily basis when they were taking depositions. These Democrats don’t represent the rule-of-law. These Democrats don’t value fairness or due process, either. Here’s how they value due process:

As long as the Resist Movement is giving House Democrats their orders, House Democrats will continue their impeachment attempts. That’s why it’s time to throw these tyrants into the dustbin of history. Lindsey Graham got it right with this tweet:

Democrats are treating impeachment as an open bar tab.

Time to cut them off, take their car keys away (put GOP in control of the House), and end this insanity.

— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) December 23, 2019

It’s understatement to say that Devin Nunes has taken more ill-deserved grief than any other congressman in recent history. In her latest article, Kim Strassel highlights then-Chairman Nunes’ efforts to root out FISC corruption and Judge Rosemary Collyer’s inaction.

It all started with a letter from then-Chairman Nunes to Judge Collyer. In that letter, Nunes wrote “‘the Committee found that the FBI and DOJ failed to disclose the specific political actors paying for uncorroborated information’ that went to the court, “misled the FISC regarding dissemination of this information,” and ‘failed to correct these errors in the subsequent renewals.'” That letter was dated Feb. 7, 2018.

According to the article, “Mr. Nunes asked the court whether any transcripts of FISC hearings about this application existed, and if so, to provide them to the committee.” What he got for his troubles is “a dismissive letter [from Judge Collyer] that addressed only the last request. The judge observed that any such transcripts would be classified, that the court doesn’t maintain a ‘systematic record’ of proceedings and that, given ‘separation of power considerations,’ Mr. Nunes would be better off asking the Justice Department. The letter makes no reference to the Intelligence Committee findings.”

Being the persistent fact-finder that he is, Nunes “tried again in a June 13, 2018, follow-up letter.” In that letter, Nunes wrote that Congress “uncovered evidence that DOJ and FBI provided incomplete and potentially incorrect information to the Court” and that “significant relevant information was not disclosed to the Court.”

It’s worth remembering that then-Ranking Member Schiff published a competing ‘everything-is-fine’ memo. That memo has now been discredited. Here are some of the main claims from the Schiff Memo:

FBI and DOJ officials did not “abuse” the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) process, omit material information or subvert this vital tool to spy on the Trump campaign.

In fact, the DOJ and FBI would have been remiss in their duty to protect the country had they not sought a FISA warrant and repeated renewals to conduct temporary surveillance of Carter Page, someone the FBI assessed to be an agent of the Russian government. DOJ met the rigor, transparency and evidentiary basis needed to meet FISA’s probable cause requirements.

Thanks to the DOJ IG report, we now know that FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith altered the initial email from the CIA that said Carter Page was one of their sources to say that Page wasn’t a CIA source. IG Horowitz made a criminal referral on Clinesmith. Back to Ms. Strassel’s article:

Mr. Nunes asked Judge Collyer to “initiate a thorough investigation.” To assist her, the same month he separately sent FISC “a classified summary of Congress’s findings and facts” to that point. The letter was signed by all 13 Republican members of the Intelligence Committee.

Judge Collyer blew him off. Her letter on June 15, 2018, is four lines long. She informs Mr. Nunes she’s received his letter. She says she’s also received his classified information. She says she’s instructing staff to provide his info to “the judges who ruled on the referenced matters.” She thanks him for his “interest” in the court.

With Judge Collyer throwing the FBI under the bus and with the FBI feeling like it’s getting the short end of the stick from rubberstamp FISC judges, the odds of a major fight between the FISC and the FBI seems likely.

Frankly, the FISC judges seem disinterested. In fact, they don’t seem terribly interested in the details of their cases. That type of attitude is frightening to anyone who appreciates civil liberties. These FISC judges seem indifferent at best.

Finally, it’s apparent that the reputation that the Agenda Media attempted to give Devin Nunes is undeserved. Nunes, unlike Jim Comey and Adam Schiff, was vindicated.

Yesterday, Sen. Schumer laid out the Democrats’ agenda for the foreseeable future. That agenda is endless investigations and unlimited accusations. During his press conference yesterday, Sen. Schumer said “How, on such a weighty matter, could we avoid hearing this, could we go forward without hearing it? I haven’t seen a single good argument about why these witnesses shouldn’t testify — unless the president has something to hide and his supporters want that information hidden.”

Byron York has this figured out:

If Schumer gets what he wants, it seems hard to believe that will be the end of it. The request for more witnesses appears designed to lead not to closure but to reopening the case against Trump. In this way, if Democrats can introduce new testimony in the trial, they can say the new testimony has raised new questions that will require new investigation. And new investigation will require more new witnesses, which will surely lead to more new questions, which …

That won’t be the end of it. The minute that Trump won the election, they immediately started calling for his impeachment. When they retook the majority in the House, they started talking about the Mueller Report being the basis for impeachment. When that report flopped, they tried reviving it by having Mueller testify about it. Democrats insisted that Mueller’s testimony would “breath new life” into the Report. That hearing failed miserably.

Now Senate Democrats want to extend the investigation rather than act as the impeachment jury, which is what the Constitution gives the Senate the responsibility to do. These would be new witnesses. If they were central figures to the investigation, why didn’t Schiff, Nadler, Pelosi and the Democrats call them to testify? When President Trump invoked privilege on them, the House Democrats could’ve taken him to court to compel testimony. They chose not to:

“Every member I’ve spoken to wants to see it wrapped up in 2019 in the House of Representatives,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat on the Judiciary Committee. Given the potential for a long battle that ends in front of a conservative Supreme Court, “most of us don’t want to put our eggs in that basket.“

Implicit in that quote is that Democrats thought that the risk was too high to file a lawsuit. Democrats thought that they wouldn’t get the outcome they wanted. Further, they thought that these witnesses weren’t important enough.

Sen. McConnell highlights Sen. Schumer’s duplicitousness in this part of his speech:

The Democratic Leader’s letter to me, by way of the press, literally misquoted the Constitution. ‘Senator Schumer wrote that we should exercise, quote, ‘the Senate’s ‘sole Power of Impeachment‘ under the Constitution with integrity and dignity.’ He attributed to the Senate, quote, the ‘sole Power of Impeachment.’ ‘Well, there’s his problem. That’s the role the Constitution gives to the House! Article I, Section 2 says “The House of Representatives… shall have the sole Power of Impeachment.”

Susan Collins is upset with Sen. Schumer because he sent his letter to the press without first talking with Sen. McConnell:

“It seems to me unfortunate that Sen. Schumer wrote a letter which he released to the press prior to his sitting down and having the kind of discussion with Sen. McConnell,” Collins said.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that Sen. Schumer intentionally pulled this stunt. Further, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that Sen. Schumer is a partisan political hack. This proves it:

During a Monday interview on CNN’s New Day, Schumer was asked if he would strike a deal with Republicans to get testimony from those four witnesses in return for testimony from Biden, a witness many Republicans have requested. Schumer, however, said there was no justification to drag Biden in to testify.

In Sen. Schumer’s mind, not only does he want to do the House Democrats’ job but he also wants to continue the House Democrats’ practice of denying President Trump’s legal team the right to call witnesses.

Nobody is above the law. Minority leaders, though, don’t have the right to deprive presidents their due process rights. Defendants across the nation have the right to call witnesses to assist in their defense. Sen. Schumer, in addition to lying about the Senate’s role in impeachment, now wants to deprive a president he hates of his due process rights.

That’s the type of conduct you’d expect in a third world dictatorship or in the former Soviet Union. In the United States, we don’t just expect fair treatment of defendants. We demand that treatment.

If Adam Schiff isn’t worried, he isn’t getting good legal advice. Kim Strassel’s article highlights a multitude of crimes that Mr. Schiff might be prosecuted for. That’s the subject for others, though, so let’s unpack Ms. Strassel’s article.

In her article, she wrote “Mr. Schiff divulged the phone logs this week in his Ukraine report, thereby revealing details about the communications of Trump attorneys Jay Sekulow and Mr. Giuliani, ranking Intelligence Committee member Devin Nunes, reporter John Solomon and others.” A paragraph later, she continued, saying “If we’ve never had a scandal like this before, it’s in part because it is legally dubious. Federal law bars phone carriers from handing over records without an individual’s agreement. The statute makes some exceptions, including for federal and state law-enforcement agencies. But not for lawmakers. ‘There does not appear to be any basis to believe that a congressional committee is authorized to subpoena telephone records directly from a provider—as opposed to an individual,’ former Attorney General Michael Mukasey tells me.”

Members of Congress can’t access these phone logs because they fall outside the purview of their legislative responsibilities. For those saying that Schiff had additional authority thanks to impeachment, the reality is that Schiff requested these records a month before the House voted to initiate the impeachment inquiry. It was after Nancy Pelosi declared that they were starting the inquiry but that’s insignificant in the court’s eyes.

That’s because the Constitution gives the authority to “the House of Representatives.” Literally for decades, courts have ruled that the House hasn’t acted until it votes. Though Ms. Pelosi has frequently acted like a queen, it isn’t likely that a court will grant her queen status. It isn’t likely that a court will rule that a legislator, even a Speaker of the House, can unilaterally declare the start of impeachment.

The question is whether Mr. Schiff, in his zeal to bring down Mr. Trump, has made himself legally vulnerable. In Kilbourn v. Thompson (1881), the U.S. Supreme Court held that “a congressional investigation into individual affairs is invalid if unrelated to any legislative purpose.” Mr. Schiff might argue he has wider powers in an impeachment inquiry. But the House didn’t approve the inquiry until Oct. 31, a month after he issued his main AT&T subpoena.

Rep. Jim Banks wrote “It doesn’t take a constitutional lawyer to recognize that subpoenaing these call records violates the spirit of the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unlawful searches and seizures.”

Schiff didn’t go to court to get these records. He submitted the request directly to AT&T. The reason why legitimate requests go through the courts is to have the courts supervise the process.

“The subpoenas aren’t related to legitimate congressional oversight,” says constitutional lawyer David Rivkin. Because there’s “no conceivable legislative purpose to obtaining these call logs and publicly disclosing this information, Mr. Schiff would not be able to benefit from the Speech and Debate Clause immunity that otherwise protects members of Congress from civil and criminal liability.” Mr. Rivkin adds that any of the targets could sue Mr. Schiff under state law for invasion of privacy or intentional infliction of emotional distress, and potentially even compel Mr. Schiff to turn over documents in discovery.

The other thing that should be considered is throwing Schiff out of the House for violating another congressman’s Fourth Amendment rights. Nobody is above the law, especially the chairmen of powerful committees.

Schiff’s actions are reprehensible. Ethics charges should be filed with the House Ethics Committee immediately against Chairman Schiff. If Democrats protect him against those charges, highlight which Democrats protected Schiff for his disgusting behavior in campaign ads. Let Democrats know that they’ll pay a steep price for protecting corrupt members of their party.

Adam Schiff hasn’t displayed the proper caution for his high-ranking position. He hasn’t been accurate with his statements or findings of facts. His accusations aren’t based on verified information. Simply put, he’s been reckless. That’s why he needs to be stopped permanently.

It’s becoming increasingly apparent that Adam Schiff, the Democrats’ Impeachment Committee Chairman, doesn’t care who he demolishes on his path to impeaching President Trump. Schiff’s latest act of intimidation was his “decision to publish the phone records of the president’s personal attorneys, a journalist, a fellow lawmaker, a National Security Council aide, and others.”

Schiff’s behavior since 2016 has been hostile and corrupt. The definition of corruption is “perversion of integrity” or “corrupt or dishonest proceedings.” If anyone personifies a “perversion of integrity”, it’s Schiff. He’s been caught lying so often that he’s often called ‘the little boy who cried wolf too often.’

Now Schiff’s depravity has reached a new low by releasing this private information. If Schiff is willing to do that about journalists and political opponents, why shouldn’t we think that he’ll next extend that behavior to anyone that stands in his way of impeaching President Trump. Unfortunately, Schiff can’t be arrested for this corrupt behavior because of the Speech and Debate Clause of the Constitution. What can be done is to expel him from the House the minute Republicans retake control of the House in 2021.

In a text exchange, I asked one Republican lawmaker with knowledge of the situation whether Schiff’s move raised any attorney-client issues:

Not legally. They used their subpoena authority. The decision to publish certain records is out of bounds as clearly political retribution, but it’s not illegal as far as I can determine.

Whether Schiff broke any laws is irrelevant. His actions were the personification of corruption. It isn’t a stretch to think that Schiff’s actions were meant as retribution against people who tried stopping his impeachment obsession.

Democrats who protect Schiff should be defeated at the next election. Schiff’s actions are reprehensible. Schiff has specialized in extreme lies. This is the most well-known example of Schiff’s lies:

What a worthless collection of human cells.

One thing that isn’t in question is whether House Democrats, starting with Chairman Schiff, (D-Calif.), rigged the rules to ensure an unfair impeachment process. Something that Chairman Schiff repeatedly made clear was that the CIA snitch’s identity would remain cloaked in anonymity. That’s foolishness. Eric Ciaramella’s identity will become known at some point.

Much bandwidth has been used to talk about the Sixth Amendment and whether its protections extend to impeachment hearings and trials. The simple answer is this: they do if the House and Senate write those protections into their impeachment rules. Ditto with federal rules of evidence. There’s nothing in the Constitution that prohibits these considerations from getting written into the House or Senate rules.

There are, however, partisan reasons why Democrats wouldn’t write the federal rules of evidence into their rules. Ditto with omitting Sixth Amendment protections from their rules. The simple explanation is that Democrats didn’t insist on applying the federal rules of evidence into their hearings because those rules would utterly gut their case. Without hearsay testimony, the Democrats’ storyline collapses immediately. Remember this hearsay:

If that doesn’t qualify as hearsay, nothing does. WOW! Then there’s Mike Turner’s cross-examination of Ambassador Sondland:

Rep. Mike Turner: No one on this planet told you that President Trump was tying aid to investigations. Yes or no?
Ambassador Sondland: Yes.
Rep. Mike Turner: So, you really have no testimony today that ties President Trump to a scheme to withhold aid from Ukraine in exchange for these investigations?
Ambassador Sondland: Other than my own presumption.
Rep. Mike Turner: Which is nothing.

By not excluding hearsay testimony, each testifier was able to provide a juicy-sounding soundbite to the Agenda Media, which then dutifully splashed that “bombshell” across their website all day. The Agenda Media didn’t care that the soundbite got ripped to shreds on cross-examination. They had their juicy-sounding headline, their click-bait.

Democrats understood that, in these impeachment hearings, hearsay was their friend. Democrats understood that because their case was exceptionally weak. Had Democrats been interested in fairness, they wouldn’t have put the nation through this. That wasn’t their mission. The Democrats’ mission was to utterly demolish the president they’ve hated since he was elected.

That’s why Democrats approved the rules they approved.

Democrats understood that the CIA snitch would get ripped to pieces the minute his identity was confirmed, too. Without hearsay testimony, which got started with the CIA snitch, the Democrats don’t have anything. They have nice-sounding testimony from people with impressive resumes but they don’t have the evidence they’d need to win a high-profile case like this.

Democrats wanted this impeachment so badly that they’d do anything for it. In the final summation, that sums things up best. Democrats wanted this so bad that they ignored the needs of the country.

How sick is that?

Yesterday, for the umpteenth time, Democrat Impeachment Committee Chairman Schiff insisted that the Sixth Amendment’s protections shouldn’t protect President Trump. It’s time to out the CIA snitch, then demand that he testify. Lt. Col. Vindman essentially admitted that he spoke to the CIA snitch during questioning from Republican Ranking Member Devin Nunes:

Lt. Colonel Alexander Vindman admitted to the House Intelligence Committee Tuesday to leaking information to the anti-Trump whistleblower at the center of the Democrats’ partisan impeachment proceedings. “Lieutenant Colonel Vindman, did you discuss the July 25 phone call with anyone outside the White House on July 25 or the 26 and if so, with whom?” Republican Rep. Devin Nunes of California inquired.

“Yes. I did,” Vindman answered in the affirmative. When pressed on who Vindman spoke with about the call, Vindman said he spoke with two individuals not in the White House, including Deputy Assistant Secretary George Kent and another individual in the intelligence community that Vindman refused to name before being cut off by Democratic Chairman Adam Schiff.

“We need to protect the whistle-blower. Please stop. I want to make sure that there is no effort to out the whistle-blower through these proceedings,” Schiff interjected. “If the witness has a good faith belief that this may reveal the identity of the whistle-blower, that is not the purpose that we’re here for. I want to advise the witness accordingly.”

At this point, it’s time to end this theatre. It’s disgusting that Adam Schiff is working with Trump-hating lawyer Mark Zaid to protect Zaid’s client. If House Democrats impeach President Trump, the CIA snitch will be forced to testify or be put in jail. (If the CIA snitch refuses to appear after getting slapped with a Senate subpoena, Mitch McConnell will march into court and demand that the court uphold the Sixth Amendment’s protections. At that point, the judge will quickly rule in the Senate’s favor. At that point, Eric Ciaramella will be forced to testify or go to jail.)

Republicans should confront Schiff on this constitutional issue. Forget about the ICWPA statute. The Sixth Amendment guarantees President Trump’s attorneys the right to confront his accuser.

Democrats, especially Schiff and Pelosi, have played hardball with impeachment. It’s time to confront them. These Democrats have shown that they aren’t interested in ending this stalemate. These Democrats are interested in extending this stalemate. Force vulnerable Democrats to s–t or get off the pot. This is truly a ‘you’re with us or you’re against us’ moment. This isn’t nuanced. This isn’t complicated. It’s just one of those situations where diplomacy should get replaced with brass knuckles and RPGs.