https://dailycaller.com/2020/01/27/alan-dershowitz-john-bolton-impeachment/
https://amgreatness.com/2020/01/27/its-time-to-question-michael-atkinson-on-fisa-abuses/
Now that the Justice Department and the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Court have confirmed at least two of the warrants for Carter Page were unlawfully obtained, it is time to ask Atkinson—in the open, for all to hear—what role he had in helping to orchestrate the illicit spying on the Trump campaign.
In a fair world—one with responsible media organizations that didn’t act as propagandists for the Democratic Party—the news that a secret government court admitted it authorized unlawful warrants to spy on an innocent American based on his political activity would be front-page news.
The January 7 order issued by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court revealing that at least two of the four warrants against Trump campaign associate Carter Page were “not valid”—meaning they were illegally obtained—would be on a nonstop loop at CNN and would dominate the news and opinion pages of the Washington Post.
But alas, the average CNN viewer or Post reader will be hard-pressed to find coverage of such a shocking disclosure; after all, how could either outlet report that bombshell when two signers of the garbage applications—former FBI Director James Comey and former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe—now work as paid contributors to those same news organizations?
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/27/cdc-is-monitoring-110-possible-coronavirus-cases-across-26-states-in-us.html
U.S. health officials are currently monitoring 110 people across 26 states for the coronavirus, including the five patients who contracted the deadly infection in China and brought it back to America.
The disease isn’t spreading within the community in the U.S. and the risk to the public right now is still considered low, the CDC says.
U.S. health officials are currently monitoring 110 people across 26 states for the coronavirus, including the five patients who contracted the deadly infection in China and brought it back to America.
The disease, which has killed at least 81 people in China and sickened more than 2,800 worldwide, isn’t spreading within the community in the U.S. and the risk to the public right now is still considered low, Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, told reporters on a conference call Monday.
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/01/john_bolton_preoccupied_the_media_today_but_its_clear_theres_no_there_there.html
The big news on Sunday was a leak claiming that John Bolton, Trump’s former National Security Adviser, has a book coming out that says Trump told Bolton that he wanted to force Ukraine to investigate Biden before releasing security assistance money. Democrats went wild with delight; Republicans opted to ask questions rather than to come up with instant, wrong answers. They were wise to do so.
Many people noticed that, despite the Democrats’ immediate insistence that it’s absolutely pivotal to their impeachment case that they question Bolton before the Senate, that wasn’t what they were saying last year. Last year, they invited Bolton to testify but he declined . . . only to add that he would appear if they subpoenaed him. That was a bridge too far. Fearing a fight in Court with Trump (which is the usual way disputes between the Executive and Congress are resolved when it comes to subpoenas), the House went full Roseanne Rosannadanna and said, “Never mind.” Apparently Bolton wasn’t that important after all.
The announcement’s timing also made people question its legitimacy. Coming as it did in the middle of the impeachment hearing, it reminded many people of the way in which Christine Blasey-Ford’s allegations suddenly popped up during the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearing. It let Democrats turn his hearing into a circus, so why not do the same to President Trump’s impeachment?
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-john-bolton-report-11580170841?mod=opinion_lead_pos3
EXCERPTS
The report that John Bolton’s book draft implicates President Trump more closely to ordering a delay in military aid to Ukraine is hardly a surprise and won’t—and shouldn’t—change the impeachment result. It does, however, complicate the trial task for Republican Senators, and our advice is for Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser to tell the public now what he says in his book.
The New York Times’s story contains no “bombshells,” notwithstanding the media hype. Anyone paying attention, or who has read Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson’s Nov. 18 letter to House Members, knows that Mr. Trump mistrusted Ukraine and considered cutting off aid. Anyone who read the rough transcript of Mr. Trump’s July 25 call with Ukraine’s President knows he wanted an investigation of Hunter and Joe Biden. All Mr. Bolton reportedly adds is news of a conversation in which Mr. Trump made a direct connection between the two that nearly everyone already assumed.
This still isn’t close to a high crime or misdemeanor. Mr. Trump’s reckless judgment was resisted by his staff and Senators like Mr. Johnson, and the President eventually changed his mind. Ukraine never opened an investigation, the U.S. aid was delivered on time, and Mr. Trump met with Ukraine’s President in New York. There was no crime, and Mr. Trump’s military support for Ukraine continues to be far more robust than Barack Obama’s.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/01/bolton-blows-up-trump-teams-foolhardy-quid-pro-quo-defense/
They advanced an argument they didn’t need to make, and now it will cost them.
Don’t build your fortress on quicksand.
That’s been my unsolicited advice for President Trump and his legal team. You always want the foundation of your defense to be something that is true, that you are sure you can prove, and that will not change.
Instead, the president and his team decided to make a stand on ground that could not be defended, on facts that were unfolding and bound to change. Last night, that ground predictably shifted. In a soon-to-be-published memoir, former White House national-security adviser John Bolton asserts that the president withheld $391 million in defense aid in order to pressure Ukraine into investigating Trump’s potential 2020 election opponent, former vice president Joe Biden.
For months, I’ve been arguing that the president’s team should stop claiming there was no quid pro quo conditioning the defense aid Congress had authorized for Ukraine on Kyiv’s conducting of investigations the president wanted. Trials and impeachment itself are unpredictable. You don’t know what previously undisclosed facts might emerge during the trial that could turn the momentum against you. So you want to mount your best defense, the one that can withstand any damaging new revelations.
https://www.nationalreview.com/news/bolton-denies-leaking-quid-pro-quo-book-excerpt-to-nyt-there-was-absolutely-no-coordination/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium
Former national security adviser John Bolton has denied providing the New York Times with an excerpt of his upcoming book that revealed President Trump told him the provision of military aid to Ukraine was contingent on the opening of an investigation into Joe Biden.
Bolton released a statement Monday afternoon pushing back against accusations from Republicans, who questioned the timing of the Sunday Times report, which dropped just before Bolton’s yet unpublished book became available for pre-order. Bolton said neither he nor his publisher nor literary agent coordinated with the newspaper to increase the hype surrounding the book in order to drive sales.
“Ambassador John Bolton, Simon & Schuster, and Javelin Literary categorically state that there was absolutely no coordination with the New York Times or anyone else regarding the appearance of information about his book, THE ROOM WHERE IT HAPPENED, at online booksellers. Any assertion to the contrary is unfounded speculation,” Bolton said in a statement.
Acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney suggested Monday that Bolton’s new allegations have “more to do with publicity than the truth.”
Trump’s legal team also downplayed the report of Bolton’s claims regarding aid to Ukraine, calling them “speculation.”
http://click1.srnemail.com/ViewMessage.do;jsessionid=60866FAC807674FA7EDBB338DE9
The story notes they are “all among people who traveled to the city at the center of the outbreak” (Washington Times). Some are urging Trump to declare a formal public health emergency (ABC News). China’s death toll is at 80 and the disease is spreading to other parts of the country (NY Times). From Hugh Hewitt: “According to the CDC, it’s likely that there will be more cases reported in the U.S. in the coming days and weeks, likely including person-to-person spread.” So don’t tell people on what flights/airports through infected patients traveled and times? (Twitter). Orange County, California has a confirmed case (OC Health Info). From former Senator Jim Talent: It’s been apparent for years that a global biological pandemic is the biggest single threat, other than a strategic nuclear war, to the health and economy of the United States. The pandemic could occur naturally, or it could be the product of a terrorist attack or even a laboratory accident. One of the worst-case scenarios involves a virus that is contagious through the air, which has a potentially deadly effect, and for which no vaccine or therapeutic can quickly be developed (National Review). Why hospitals aren’t ready for this (WSJ).
https://amgreatness.com/2020/01/26/target-trump-forever/
The Left has shown that the collusion exoneration last year by the heralded Robert Mueller investigation—all 22-months, the “dream team,” and $34 million of it—meant absolutely nothing.
Nor did it matter that Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz found no justification of “collusion” in the Steele dossier to justify the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants it issued to spy on Carter Page.
Both the Mueller and Horowitz investigations confirmed that even the partisan and warped FBI “Crossfire Hurricane” intrigues could find no Russian-Trump collusion.
And yet the House impeachment managers cannot finish a sentence without exclaiming “Russian collusion,” as if it has now transmogrified into some exotic foundational myth.
Remember, no sooner had Mueller found no collusion between Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and the Kremlin and no actionable obstruction than the progressives narrative was recalibrated into Ukrainian quid pro quo—albeit after brief detours in “Recession!” and “Racism!”
Yet it is now as if neither Mueller nor Horowitz ever existed, as if we have forgotten the thousands of hours of investigation that found no Russian collusion, but indeed discovered the systematic warping of the FISA court by allegations of such falsities. As if to prove that the Mueller investigation was never biased, Andrew Weissmann now appears on MSNBC as a legal analyst to continue what he once did for Mueller, in the manner of the post-Russian “collusion” careers of Andrew McCabe, James Comey, and James Clapper.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/he-is-a-dictator-11580075066?mod=opinion_lead_pos2
Rep. Jerrold Nadler rarely disappoints, and the always over-the-top impeachment manager came through again Friday as he summed up the Democratic case to remove President Trump from office: “This is a determination by President Trump that he wants to be all powerful. He does not have to respect the Congress—he does not have to respect the representatives of the people. Only his will goes. He is a dictator. This must not stand. That is another reason he must be moved from office.”
Let’s count the ways in which Mr. Trump is “all powerful.” Does he control elections? His party lost two governorships in 2017, the House and a net six governorships in 2018, and another governorship and the Virginia Legislature in 2019.
How about the courts? Mr. Trump’s policies were subject to some 40 national judicial injunctions in its first 32 months, compared to 20 for the Obama Administration in eight years. Mr. Trump often wins on appeal, but until he does his policy agenda has been blocked in the courts. Mr. Trump has not defied a judicial order.
Does he control or censor the press? Nearly every major media outlet spent two years promoting a false story of his collusion with Russia. The press overwhelmingly supports impeachment and opposes his agenda. His plea to change the libel laws has gone nowhere.
