Author: Dan Newman

The most shocking thing about the current House Democrat closed-door hearings is that by locking-down those hearings, Dems are locking-out Congressional Republicans who are responsible for Congressional actions to the citizens they represent. In Monday’s 9-hour House Joint Committee hearing with Fiona Hill— a former State Department employee — reams of testimony from Ms. Hill are out there somewhere in the “blogosphere,” but in a place which is taboo to Republicans.

Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz attempted to enter the hearing but was told he could not. A Congressional parliamentarian who controls hearing access stated that because Rep. Gaetz is not a member of any of the three committees that joined together for this hearing, House rules precluded him from being in the room.

The House Intelligence Committee, chaired by California Democrat Adam Schiff, is running the meetings, but the investigation also includes the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, as well as the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Gaetz IS a member of the Judiciary Committee, which has the sole power to instigate impeachment proceedings against a president. Here’s what Gaetz said about that: “Judiciary Chairman [Nadler] claimed to have begun the impeachment inquiry weeks ago,” he wrote. “Now, his own Judiciary members aren’t even allowed to participate in it.”

So why all the secrecy? After all, these interviews and testimony are expressly for one purpose: to find evidence to use in the impeachment of the president of the United States. It is safe to say the Democrat game plan is to control all the information released about these hearings — including “their” version of testimony given. Why? They must control the context.

Context

“Context” defined by Merriam-Webster: “the parts of a discourse that surround a word or passage and can throw light on its meaning.”

Words on their own cannot be allowed outside the committee hearing walls. Democrats must filter all testimony and edit it down to just a few sentences — a few sentences that supposedly encompass all of the nine-ten hours of testimony.

That isn’t possible. Context — especially that in such a lengthy meeting replete with Q & A of members of Congress and a key witness — is necessary to capture the meanings of events and people investigated along with their testimony.

But Democrats cannot afford for the light of truth to be seen and heard by Americans outside of Washington. Democrats are afraid of the truth! In the case of President Trump, the truth is that there was no wrongdoing on his part — indeed, not anything impeachable. And what has been “leaked” to the media from these hearings is certainly benign at its worst and supportive of the President at its best. Neither of those narratives is what Democrats want to discuss in Breitbart, in the Wall Street Journal, or on FOX News. So what do they do? Simply delete any context.

Context in these hearings is required. Here’s a sample news story that illustrates the necessity of context:

”A six-year-old Salt Lake City child died in a horrible car crash on Nevada’s I-15 yesterday afternoon. The mother was the driver of the car. She lost control of her vehicle at mile marker 456, leaving the road running head-on into a bridge abutment. Blood tests are inconclusive as to the possible role  of alcohol in the wreck.”

Here’s the same story in context:

”A young girl riding in a car with her mother died in a car crash north of Las Vegas. The woman, who police say was driving below the speed limit, was driving north on Interstate 15 late yesterday afternoon. She along with her daughter who was in her booster chair were the only ones in their car. At mile marker 456, the driver of a late model Chevrolet pickup southbound on I-15 lost control, crossed the median striking the car occupied by the Salt Lake City mother and daughter. The young girl was pronounced dead at the scene while her mother is reported to be in serious condition at Valley Hospital in Las Vegas. She is expected to make a full recovery. Tests for possible alcohol influence of the truck driver is being investigated.”

You see, context can dramatically change the narrative given to those who have no firsthand knowledge of an event. The presentation is everything.

In all of these hearings conducted by Congressional Democrats behind closed doors are supposed to be either classified or purposely kept secret to “protect the witnesses from outside threats and harassment.” We all know now that it is nothing but nonsense. Their purpose is singular: to trap Americans with out-of-context narrative to paint a picture of facts that are NOT factual but are to make Democrats and their agenda appear palatable, accurate and truthful — even when they are anything but that.

Without Context What Do We Get?

Here’s the problem with the “Adam Schiff Hearing Plan:”

• It is impossible to know what questions were asked in the hearing. Who asked what? What were the witness’ answers?
• What exactly did the witness say in their answers to the questions?
• What was the demeanor of the witness? Did he/she get rattled? If so, as a result of which question? What exactly was their response?
• Who from the committee asked what questions?

Without the answers to these specific questions, it is impossible to put anything we are told from that hearing in context to give the full story, just like in the car wreck story given above. But in a natural setting, it is far less likely and much more secretive.

Do you remember the cries from Democrats when President Trump had the transcript of his conversation with Ukraine’s President Zelensky released to the media? The call transcript was ripped to shreds because “it was partisan, opinionated, and in snippets rather than being the actual phone call to allow House members to hear conversations to ascertain what was being asked and answered.”

So what is different from the Zelensky call transcript and the actions of the Democrats running these closed-door hearings? From the average American’s perspective, there is NO difference.

Details from House Committee Hearings

They held a nine-hour hearing with former State Department employee Fiona Hill. What have you heard about the content of that hearing? After all, it was a confidential hearing of which NO ONE had the authority to leak hearing contents. Are you surprised details were leaked — to CNN?

Washington (CNN) Some of the White House’s most senior foreign policy officials were trying to raise the alarm about the administration’s potentially illegal activity in Ukraine well before President Donald Trump’s now notorious call with his counterpart in Kiev, according to stunning new testimony in the impeachment inquiry.

Fiona Hill, Trump’s former top Russia adviser, said in a startling deposition Monday that then-national security adviser John Bolton told her to tip off White House lawyers about the activities of Giuliani and others, according to sources familiar with her testimony. Bolton’s advice followed a meeting two weeks before the call between the two presidents on July 25, one source said.

House Democrats’ interest in Hill’s testimony goes beyond the Ukraine whistleblower issues. She’s an associate of Christopher Steele, the British ex-spy who produced the 2016 dossier on then-presidential candidate Trump, which included salacious allegations about his past activities in Moscow as a businessman. House Democrats hope that with Hill’s front row seat to Russia-related events, she can provide details about Trump’s conversations with Russian President Vladimir Putin and the May 2017 Oval Office meeting between Trump and two top Russian officials.

Summary: Soundbites

Here’s what is happening: Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), Eric Swalwell (D-CA), with the approval of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) are presenting an orchestrated fiasco in which secret hearings conducted in which they attack current and former Trump associates in desperate attempts to induce one or several to turn on Mr. Trump and provide dirt on the President. Even if there continues to be no dirt exposed about the President, you can bet Democrats have offered some deals if they’ll flip and even if they’ll say something negative even if not authentic!

Their primary interest in Fiona Hill is that she was an associate of Christopher Steele, who was the author of the Steele Dossier, used as THE evidence that prompted the electronic surveillance of Carter Page and the justification for the investigation of the Trump Campaign. They still feel they can tie the President to Russians, which will give them leverage in the 2020 election. To that end, they are using anything they can to confuse Americans.

Who had Russian dealings in the 2016 election? Not Donald Trump; it was Hillary Clinton! Her campaign funded the Steele Dossier. They depend on young Americans and their naïveté to overcome the tired and ineffective policies of the  “old folks” from the Great Old Party. That’s why Republicans are not allowed to attend these hearings. They’d see everything and would know the truth firsthand.

Democrats want to with soundbites only not present facts or quotes or even snippets of witness testimonies. They want Americans to “just trust us” and believe what they claim to be a factual hook, line, and sinker. And, sadly, there is a large number of Americans who will believe all that. After all, these are members of Congress. Surely they would not mislead the American public, right?

It all boils down to this: Securing and maintaining the viability of the Deep State is all that matters to Democrats and their publicity department — CNN and MSNBC. The question is: “Will it be a successful exercise, or will it destroy the small amounts of American trust and belief in Congress.”

Let’s hope that President Trump and his staff can keep themselves above the fray. If so, there will be a resounding beat-down in 2020 that will flood the streets of Washington with conservatives and also in cities across America.

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According to Bill Shakespeare, “The eyes are the windows to the soul.” Looking at Adam Schiff, (picture to the left) one would think his soul is full of some pretty nasty stuff!

An almost universal feeling for political savvy Americans is distrust of Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) who chairs the powerful House Oversight Committee. That Committee is charged with looking into operations of every department of every government entity in operation including financial and actual operating procedures.

As the makeup of Congress changes, so does the constitution of every committee. The majority party has a very attractive chore that House leadership gets to use to give their party legislative power over those in the minority party. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as do all Speakers carefully chose those to chair the most important  committees. For the House Judiciary Committee — where “real” impeachment must be initiated according to the U.S. Constitution — Pelosi appointed as chairman Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY). The arguably second most powerful committee — the House Oversight Committee — is led by the Democrat Party “Witchhunt Bulldog” Rep. Adam Schiff of California. Both committees since Democrats won House control have concentrated almost solely on getting rid of President Trump. (Forget about legislation: “Let’s Get Trump!) Both Schiff and Nadler have walked through the fields of harvested evidence ignoring the “real” crop of facts to daisy-pick any piece of evidence they think they can use to use against President Trump. Their problem has been that there are not very many pieces showing Trump wrongdoing. Never mind: they’re really good at manufacturing “evidence” to say what they need it to say.

Having no factual evidence against President Trump should end their nonstop committee hearings, one would think. Not so. They both continue to dominate the focus of the House with some new piece of “evidence” that requires virtually every minute of their committees’ time to investigate rather than to conduct the normal business of the House of Representatives.

Schiff is without question the most partisan, the angriest, and most vile member of House leadership. He’s so vile, he makes fellow Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) look like a kindergarten school teacher. We will not chronicle all the lies he has told through the last few years — we’ve done that before. But what we will do is ask some questions in an attempt to discover if he is hiding and what he is hiding from Americans. Why would we think he is hiding something? Just follow this line of reasoning:

• The House is contemplating pursuing the most impactful act to our nation’s political institution and its structure: the impeachment of President Donald Trump.
• The House of Representatives is known as the “Peoples’ House” — they are supposedly chosen to serve a short term of two years and while doing so representing those like-minded other citizens from their communities. They are to speak “our” minds not their own.
• Following that line of reasoning, one’s expectation should be they are to reflect the people of one’s own district in writing bills and passing bills into law, strictly for the betterment of their districts first but put into the context of what’s best for the Nation.
• Impeachment is not a legal issue. The House is constitutionally required to investigate a president when applicable for the commitment of “High crimes and Misdemeanors.”  The House does not conduct a trial for impeachment. The House investigates, gathers evidence, and determines if the evidence is sufficient to pass Articles of Impeachment that then go to the Senate which holds the sole Constitutional authority to try those impeached.

So why does this House of Representatives (led by Schiff rather than House Speaker Pelosi) insist on privately conducting what are called “classified” hearings with witnesses rather than conduct these hearings with full television and radio coverage so that Americans can see and hear the testimony of witnesses? Both Schiff and Nadler have continually maintained they have “sufficient evidence to justify the impeachment of President Trump.” That’s the question we are working to answer for you — hopefully today.

What Does it Take to Justify Impeachment?

“Treason, High Crimes and Misdemeanors.” According to Article II Section IV of the Constitution, these elements must in whole or even in part be evident and verifiable to successfully impeach a President. So what does that phrase actually mean?

The charge of high crimes and misdemeanors covers allegations of misconduct by officials, such as dishonesty, negligence, perjury of oath, abuse of authority, bribery, intimidation, misuse of public funds or assets, failure to supervise, dereliction of duty, unbecoming conduct, refusal to obey a lawful order, chronic intoxication, or tax evasion. Offenses by officials also include ordinary crimes, but perhaps with different standards of proof and punishment than for non-officials, on the grounds that more is expected of officials by their oaths of office. The word “High” refers to the offense and not the office. Any elected government official may be impeached. There are some who posit that “High” refers to the level of office. But that interpretation is false, and lowers a standard of similarity, whereby the US Constitution refers to Treason and Bribery, and other crimes that are “High”—of equivalence to Treason and Bribery. Some also akin “Misdemeanors” as current lower crimes in many jurisdictions. At the founding there was no reference to a misdemeanor in criminal law. High Crimes and Misdemeanors provides for other malfeasance at a level similar to Treason and Bribery. Indeed the offense may not even be a breach of criminal statute. (See Harvard Law Review) The majority view is that a president can legally be impeached for “intentional, evil deeds” that “drastically subvert the Constitution and involve an unforgivable abuse of the presidency — even if those deeds didn’t violate any criminal laws.”

Just to be totally transparent, President Trump to be impeached does not have to have broken any laws of any kind. That means, of course, no American president should break any laws. That is troubling to millions of Americans, as it should be. The conclusion for all of us should be that President Trump can be impeached for committing an act or acts that do not reveal any criminal wrongdoing.

Members of Democrat Party leadership in the House have exhibited not a single choke or filter on their stated and obvious plans to impeach President Trump. We previously showed you a live report from a sitting member of the House who two days before Donald Trump had even taken the oath of office stated he would vote for articles of impeachment of Donald Trump as President.

But back to Adam Schiff. So far, the Oversight Committee hearings, for the most part, have been held behind closed doors. The reasoning provided by Schiff for the secrecy is to both protect the identities of those who testify, and to make certain that those who would “literally attack these witnesses will not have possible ammunition for any attacks. We know they are out there,” said Schiff.

Any reasonable person who has watched Schiff’s actions since 2o16 know he and his cohorts have one purpose for their anti-Trump rhetoric and now with House power are fulfilling: Stop Donald Trump!

Rep. Adam Schiff: “Full Speed Ahead!”

Schiff did not just get started with impeachment. Schiff impeachment calls began in earnest shortly after Mr. Trump moved into the White House. Republicans pointed to a March 2017 appearance on MSNBC in which Schiff said “there is more than circumstantial evidence now” of a relationship between Russia and Trump’s associates. In December of that year, Schiff said on CNN: “The Russians offered help, the campaign accepted help. The Russians gave help and the president made full use of that help. That is pretty damning, whether it is proof beyond a reasonable doubt of conspiracy or not.”

And in May of 2018, Schiff said on ABC that the Russian trolling of Democratic National Committee emails is “like Watergate in the sense that you had a break-in at the Democratic headquarters, in this case, a virtual one, not a physical break-in, and you had a president as part of a cover-up,” he said. Schiff said later that the Russia investigation is “size and scope probably beyond Watergate.”

On numerous occasions, Schiff said publicly that he had plenty of evidence of Mr. Trump’s wrongdoing that was sufficient to impeach him and successfully try and convict him in the Senate. So why has that not happened until these latest attempts? There’s a simple answer: Schiff lied; there’s no “irrefutable evidence” that supports impeachment; he’s pushing forward in hopes of finding someone from the White House to turn on President Trump and provide damning evidence against him. That did not happen in 2018 or so far in 2019. But Adam Schiff has made it abundantly clear: he will not quit until he drives Donald Trump from office.

What’s Hidden?

One must first believe there really is something hidden that Schiff and Company are desperately keeping from Americans.  The “and Company” (of “Schiff and Company) would be the likes of James Clapper, John Brennan, Andrew McCabe, Nellie Ohr, Bruce Ohr, and many officials in the former Administration. It appears that much of the investigatory findings of such wrongdoing that occurred before and during the Russia Collusion investigation are about to be dumped on the American public — in fact as early as Friday, October 18th. Like most Americans who are waiting for that information certain to be included in the Inspector General’s report, one would think members of the House of Representatives would be psyched— psyched that the truth will finally be released. It should include details of the matters surrounding 2016 election tampering and the alleged wrongdoing by government employees accused of illegal investigations against Mr. Trump. It is safe to say that Rep. Adam Schiff is not one of those Americans hoping to get to the truth. In fact, Mr. Schiff is trying to hide the truth. Let me explain.

• There’s MUCH at stake for MANY people. John Brennan, James Clapper, James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strozk, and others who were operatives whose communications have shown extreme animus for Mr. Trump will certainly be fingered in this report. Any of those who have been exposed for committing illegal activities should and probably will be referred to the Justice Department for prosecution. Those could very well be the list of those included in the previous sentence and even others. And there probably will be trials and prison sentences for some of those exposed and referred for prosecution.
• How could the 2.5 year Mueller investigation with 30 fulltime investigators and staff who spent $30 million dollars investigating these claims against the President be so inept as to miss any Trump wrongdoing? Obviously, there was none. But that’s not good enough for Mr. Schiff.
• Remember the “Ukraine-Gate” Schiff initiated investigation? Remember that first whistleblower who certainly had dirt on the President regarding that phone call with Ukraine President Zelensky? “The American people need to hear from that Whistleblower who has evidence of pressure put on President Zelensky to investigate President Trump’s leading opponent in 2020’s election,” said Rep. Schiff. Guess what — Schiff said this on CBS October 13th: “Our primary interest right now is making sure that that person is protected,” Schiff stated. “Indeed, now there is more than one whistleblower, that they are protected. And given that we already have the call record, we don’t need the whistleblower, who wasn’t on the call, to tell us what took place during the call. We have the best evidence of that.” Schiff could not care less about the whistleblower. He, some from his staff, and probably other committee members met with the first whistleblower long before the claim was made. There is actually evidence that Schiff and Company assisted in the preparation of the whistleblower filing. We already know that the whistleblower is a former CIA operative who was loyal to former CIA Director John Brennan who is alleged to have taken part in this whistleblower action. Schiff is just concerned about being implicated in his own actions.

Summary

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) is treading water as hard and fast as possible. What are he and other members of his committee hiding? The answer to that is apparently their personal involvement in cover-ups and lies for which they are personally responsible. They are petrified that the Friday October 18 release of Inspector General Michael Horowitz’ report on wrongdoing in the 2016 Trump election investigation will implicate them in multiple ways.

Their evidence of wrongdoing must be significant. Why? D.C. politicians have historically been able to hide most of their wrongdoing — especially political corruption. With this President and his commitment to “draining the Swamp,” they are really nervous — and they should be. Mr. Trump has pulled the plug on the tub these swamp creatures have called their own for decades. And when the water that they have used for cover is drained away, the critters in the swamp are fighting for survival.

But what is the purpose — the single purpose — of Democrats closing of the hearings to the public? They must control the narrative of what comes to the public from these hearings. What we’ve seen so far in their endeavors is only couched stories that are incomplete replete with cherry-picked tidbits when taken out of context of the full hearings can make the President look bad. They do not want the American to see and hear any of this testimony in context. They MUST control the narrative to have any hope of getting Mr. Trump.

Their attacks on their “foe” of three years have apparently been unsuccessful. Why? Because Mr. Trump has apparently kept his nose clean. Their actions since 2016, however, have been exactly opposite of President Trump’s.

They should be nervous — maybe even more than just nervous. With the information that has oozed out of the IG report, some of them should be concerned about who will be their cell mates!

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