Tuesday, January 28, was scheduled to be the final day for the President’s Defense Team to give the nation their defense of their client, who is facing two charges: Obstruction of Congress, and Abuse of Power.
Most will say the President’s team has blown away the hollow claims made by House managers with responsive facts presented that, in many cases, used video which the House managers used themselves. It seems that in numerous of such instances, House managers presented just snippets of those videos that, if allowed to play in full contained further testimony that refuted Democrats’ claims.
How did the day go? What were the outcomes of the Defense Team’s findings? What’s next?
Tuesday: the Trial
The final day of the Defense Team presentation of the case for the President included recaps of the salient points of evidence presented in the first two days. But when the case summary was detailed, the Team during their bullet-point presentation drove home several facts: neither of the two Articles of Impeachment is based on Constitutional requirements. All of the evidence presented by the House managers was incomplete, inconsistent with provisions for impeachment, and grossly misrepresented the facts. Once again, the Defense Team masterfully laced segments of the actual videos the House managers used to prove just how Dems manipulated presentation of their case twisting things said to “sell” their case. The problem is: when the evidence presented was put in context, not a single segment supported the Prosecution’s case.
But one thing has happened in the last several days that has thrown a wrench into the impeachment trial: John Bolton. The fired National Security Adviser submitted an advance copy of this book to the White House to determine if any and which parts of the book cannot be released due to their containing classified information. As usual, a “source” leaked to the New York Times that Bolton states in the book that President Trump told Bolton he DID tie the release of Ukrainian aid to the public announcement by President Zelensky of the resumption of the Ukraine investigation into the Bidens.
Honestly, the Bolton move was not surprising to me. John Bolton has throughout his professional career been a lightning rod for controversy. He has never been well thought of by many leaders of several foreign companies. And many Democrats dislike his foreign policy tendencies to move very quickly in any controversy with a foreign government from diplomacy to military actions.
No doubt, John Bolton felt jilted by President Trump — he was fired. He has shown a pretty vicious temper at times in his past. And as a jilted security adviser to the President, he certainly was embarrassed by being sent packing. That opened the door for payback.
But the Bolton book story and its sudden “leak” to the New York Times is now becoming not such a big mystery. The Buffalo Chronicle released this story about Bolton’s “payback” threats when fired:
In the hours after National Security Advisor John Bolton was fired by President Donald Trump on September 10th, he immediately began calling longtime political operatives in Washington, DC, sources tell The Chronicle. Many of those calls were made to Democrats and many of them in the national security establishment.
One of those contacts was the intelligence agency whistleblower who filed the now-famous complaint pertaining to the President’s call with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, that is now the subject of intense congressional scrutiny. That complaint was filed only weeks before, on August 12th. The source alleges that the whistleblower was given the information that comprises the contents of his complaint from Bolton himself, which if true would constitute an extraordinary breach of national security and an indictable offense punishable by imprisonment.
“It’s go time,” he began those conversations, multiple sources tell The Chronicle, as if to suggest that Bolton’s patience with the President had worn thin.
The source of the Chronicle’s story made it clear that Bolton was definitely angry at President Trump. But there’s more than just this. Their story continues:
While on the phone with one former government official who currently works on K Street, Bolton admitted that he was furious with the President, whom he lambasted with obscenities for more than five minutes. The President would learn his lesson, he told the lobbyist, who chalked it up to a disgruntled employee venting over his unexpected termination.
But now, he fears that Bolton is organizing a coup d’etat to oust President Trump from office. He cites Bolton’s contacts with journalists at major media outlets. Bolton has aggressively pushed for a military strike against Iran, putting him at odds with the President, who opposes unnecessary large-scale military interventions. In the days prior to his termination, he was engaged in a heated battled inside the White House over the administration’s response to Iran’s attack on Saudi oil infrastructure earlier this month.
Oh, there’s another twist in this story: Lt. Alexander Vindman — the only witness who testified before the House Judiciary Committee — works for the National Security Council in the White House. His twin brother works in the same place. But THAT Vindman brother is tasked to examine ALL the materials submitted to the NSC prior to being published.It is unknown now if Vindman “the twin” is the source of which the Times confirmed gave them the segment of the Bolton book.
Summary
This brought the impeachment process to a screeching whoa. Sen. Mitch McConnell was said to have made the comment Tuesday that after the Bolton story, Republicans now do not have the votes to stop a push for witnesses before the Senate. That means that apparently at least those four moderate Republicans who were waffling were pushed over the line by the Bolton story.
If this happens, God only knows how this will turn. Today, the trial agenda is for questions from Senators submitted to Chief Justice Roberts. He then will determine the process of handling the Q & A. It is assumed that later in the week, an intense debate will be initiated to determine a witness process acceptable to at least fifty-one Senators. If it is decided first to call witnesses and secondly the process for and who will be called to testify, the timeline will be determined also.
Do you know what the nightmare in all this will be? This process could continue for months! How so? The Democrats have made it clear they want testimony from Mick Mulvaney, Mike Pompeo, and John Bolton at least. Republicans certainly want to hear from Hunter Biden, also Joe, the Whistleblower, and maybe even Rep. Adam Schiff because in his handling of the Whistleblower, he became a “fact witness.”
It is likely that President Trump will exert executive privilege to block the testimony of at least John Bolton and Mick Mulvaney for the reason of National Security confidentiality. If that happens, the Senate will be forced to file an appeal with the D.C. District Court to rule on the executive privilege claim. If that court rules against the President, he will appeal it. It is certain it will make its way to the Supreme Court for an emergency review. Who knows what will happen from there.
One of the ironies of this entire mess was shown to be unconstitutional. Alan Dershowitz showed in a deliberate explanation with explicit examples that even “if” Bolton’s book says what The Times reported, “if” what Bolton did say it, and “if” Bolton’s word is taken as truth, President Trump doing that is not Constitutionally an impeachable offense.
Maybe today some of this cloud will be cleared away. But I doubt it. If we go to the witness process, it is almost certain we will be in this impeachment trial until March at least.
Stay close: we’re looking behind bushes for the facts and will share them as we find them.
Corruption
Even in the impeachment trial craziness, we will not forego our stories of government corruption during the Obama Administration.
Yesterday we provided the first link that contained full information about the massive corruption in the mortgage banking industry under the Obama Administration. The dollars and cents of that corruption will probably never be known in full. It will probably be several trillion dollars before the dust settles. But what IS known is that tens of thousands of Americans were taken advantage of by Wall Street mortgage bankers and those in the Obama Administration who are complicit in creating this monstrous fraud, implementing it with and for those big banks, all the while ignoring the American people who were caught in this travesty.
We did not summarize in that story or even give you any up-front information before the link. That was purposeful because we want to make certain you research this corruption to some degree on your own. It will be much more meaningful that way. Today and going forward we’re going to present the Obama corruption examples with a short explanation. But we still suggest you do some of your own research yourself.
Who is the subject of today’s Obama Administration recipient of corrupt benefits? Sen. Bernie Sanders. Here is the FOX News story which is actually a summary of an excerpt from Peter Schweizer’s new book. Feel free to go to the story by clicking the link or even check out the book itself: “Profiles in Corruption: Abuse of Power by America’s Progressive Elite.”
Sanders and his wife and daughter began years ago “gaming the system” for personal benefit. In the process, they garnered for themselves millions of dollars. In the offing, their greed and corrupt actions actually forced a university to close its doors in part because of the mismanagement of Bernie’s wife.
Take a look for yourself. Here’s the link to the FOX News summary story:
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/bernie-sanders-public-service-rich-peter-schweizer
