RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/11/the-progressive-policy-community-ukraine-fantasy/

The Ukrainians merit our support as an enemy of Moscow, but they’re still a nasty, untrustworthy bunch.

‘A strong and independent Ukraine is critical to U.S. national security.” This is the gospel according to Lieutenant Alexander Vindman, self-proclaimed member of our federal government’s “policy community,” the interagency conglomerate of experts on which Democrats are staking their case for the impeachment and removal of President Trump.

We need Ukraine as a “strategic partner,” Vindman told Adam Schiff’s impeachment-inquiry panel. We need it to be “stable, prosperous, and democratic,” a nation that is “integrated into the Euro-Atlantic community.” On this our vital interests depend, we’re told, because Ukraine is a front-line state and a “bulwark against Russian aggression.”

This, indeed, is why we’re supposed to be appalled at a new disclosure in testimony last week by Ambassador Bill Taylor, another policy-community stalwart. He says someone told someone that someone heard the president say he cared more about getting Ukraine to investigate possible Biden-family corruption than he did about Ukraine itself.

Imagine not caring about . . . Ukraine!

I can. In fact, I don’t have to imagine it.

I am pretty sure I care more about Ukraine than President Trump does. That said, it’s a lousy country. I’m very sympathetic to the goal of supporting it as a thorn in the side of Vladimir Putin’s formidable anti-American regime. But I am certainly much more interested in knowing about what the Bidens were up to in Ukraine (and China), and in getting a full accounting of Ukraine’s collusion with Democrats in connection with the 2016 election, than I am in Ukraine.

The Impeachment ‘Partial Transcript’ Lie Just Got Blown Out Of The Water

https://thefederalist.com/2019/11/19/the-impeachment-partial-transcript-lie-just-got-blown-out-of-the-water/

In testimony before the House Intelligence Committee on Tuesday, both Jennifer Williams, an adviser to Vice President Mike Pence, and Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman stated that the transcript of the July 25 phone call between President Trump and Ukrainian President Zolodymyr Zelensky was substantively accurate.

In direct response to a question as to whether the transcript was complete and accurate, neither suggested that it was not, except for minor details they found in their notes of the call.

This testimony blows up a month-long lie pushed by Democrats and their media allies that the transcript was partial, or redacted, suggesting that the White House was potentially hiding important details. For weeks the baseless claim that the transcript was so doctored that we don’t really know what happened on the call has been floated all over mainstream media coverage.

 
Vindman Just Admitted To Leaking To The Anti-Trump Whistleblower

https://thefederalist.com/2019/11/19/vindman-just-admitted-to-leaking-to-the-anti-trump-whistleblower/

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.

Vindman Exaggerated His Resume In Prepared Congressional Statement

https://thefederalist.com/2019/11/19/vindman-exaggerated-his-resume-in-prepared-congressional-statement

Vindman claimed to be the “principal advisor to the National Security Advisor and the president on Ukraine.” Turns out, he’s never spoken to the president.

https://amgreatness.com/2019/11/18/the-swamps-swingline-stapler/

We are to believe that crying EPA employees, out-of-the-loop ambassadors, holier-than-thou law enforcement chiefs, and jobless assistant deputy undersecretaries for blah-blah affairs are the victims of a rogue president who must be removed from office for hurting their feelings and challenging their authority.

In December 2008, Barack Obama summarily fired every ambassador appointed by George W Bush.

The media did not care for four reasons. First, it was Barack Obama. Second, they recognized that the president controls the executive branch. Third, it was a parting shiv to Bush. Finally, it was Barack Obama.

Whether any of the ousted diplomats cried is unknown.

But now in the Trump era, as Obama-era somnambulists awake every day to a new outrage that heretofore had been considered standard operating procedure inside the Beltway, a dismissed ambassador is given hours to vent her thoughts and feelz in front of one of Capitol Hill’s most powerful committees. If you weren’t moved by the sad tale of former Ukrainian Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch—an Obama appointee—getting the ax by Donald Trump, according to Fox News anchor Chris Wallace, you don’t have a pulse.

Perhaps Wallace has a point. After becoming accustomed to heads of state referring to you as “Madame Ambassador” and “Your Excellency,” being addressed as “Ms. Y” by a dozen or so Georgetown University whippersnappers would bruise anyone’s ego. (Yovanovitch admitted that she still retains a position at the State Department at the same salary with no daily responsibilities but also is allowed to moonlight as a Georgetown fellow. Sweet gig.)

Further, being forced to move out of a mansion in Kyiv tended to by a doting staff that helps you host important receptions for important people would sting, too. In one telling moment, Yovanovitch explained that the night she learned of her pending dismissal, she was hosting a party for a Ukrainian anti-corruption activist. “I was at my house,” she told one Democratic lawmaker.

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/trump-impeachment-inquiry-democrats-whistleblo

Congressional Democrats are obstructing the impeachment inquiry.

You heard that right. It has become rote for House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and his fellow Democrats to chide the Trump administration for blocking testimony from White House staffers and the president’s private lawyer, Rudy Giuliani. Yet, those witnesses actually have confidentiality privileges that are well settled in federal law, shielding communications between the chief executive and his top advisers, and between attorney and client, from disclosure.

When a person asserts a privilege recognized by law, we don’t call that obstruction. We call it the law in action.

By contrast, Schiff is playing a lawless game with the so-called whistleblower: predicating the impeachment inquiry on this intelligence official’s complaint while blocking Republicans from questioning the official and other policy officials with whom he dealt. The suppression of relevant information obstructs the congressional investigation.

I have argued from the outset that the “whistleblower” is not actually a whistleblower in the strict legal sense because the statute governing the protection of such sources is inapposite. (That is, the statute covers disclosures relating to activities of the intelligence services, not the president’s conduct of foreign relations.) For present purposes, though, let’s assume I am wrong and that the “whistleblower” is covered.

If this were a legal case, there is not a court in America that would keep the whistleblower’s identity and the details of his role in the origins of the Democrats’ Ukraine investigation under wraps.

Congressional Democrats are not merely withholding the identity of the whistleblower. They are denying committee Republicans the right to question other witnesses about relevant dealings with the whistleblower.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/purging-the-pro-lifers-11574122435

Anti-abortion Democratic officeholders are about as rare as pandas, but many in their party’s leadership won’t be satisfied until they’re extinct.

On Monday the Democratic Attorneys General Association decreed that it will only give money and strategic help to AG candidates who “publicly commit” to supporting access to abortion. The message: If you’re a pro-life Democrat, or merely one with misgivings about the party’s opposition to any restriction on abortion, don’t run for attorney general. Or for any other office.

Mark this as one more step toward making America’s two main political parties into warring cultural camps with no room for individual conscience. American politics was healthier, and less polarized, when Democratic ranks included pro-lifers and some Republicans favored abortion rights. Compromise and tolerance were easier to come by.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/11/focus-group-impeachment-farce-joseph-klein/

The Democrats are engaging in focus group impeachment proceedings. Led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, they are now accusing President Trump of “bribery,” an impeachable offense specifically identified as such in Article III, Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution.

“The devastating testimony corroborated evidence of bribery uncovered in the inquiry, and that the president abused his power and violated his oath by threatening to withhold military aid and a White House meeting in exchange for an investigation into his political rival — a clear attempt by the president to give himself an advantage in the 2020 election,” Speaker Pelosi told reporters. The Democrats’ switch from using the more esoteric Latin term “quid pro quo” came after they learned from focus groups organized by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in key battleground states that the charge of bribery resonated more with “ordinary” Americans. Democrat House Intelligence Committee member Jim Himes explained that “it’s probably best not to use Latin words.” Too confusing for folks living in the heartland, the Democrat elitists believe.

Looking to focus groups to validate the Democrats’ “bribery” charge against the president shows how desperate they are in trying to move vast numbers of undecided voters in their direction. They are counting on the public testimony of witnesses and shouting “bribery” over and over again from the rooftops to make their case. But, as the New York Times reported, “after hours of testimony, thousands of news reports and days of streaming headlines, one thing was clear: A lot of Americans weren’t listening.” And for those who are listening, they are deluged with competing narratives. The Democrats are contaminating public discourse by continuously leveling super-charged, unsubstantiated accusations against President Trump that now include bribery. Then they bristle when he fights back.

https://thefederalist.com/2019/11/18/lets-stop-pretending-every-impeachment-witness-is-a-selfless-hero/

It’s become clear that some witnesses in the impeachment probe have their own agenda, and not all of them are courageous martyrs for the truth.

Throughout this impeachment charade we’ve been told by the media and House Democrats that a cadre of unelected career bureaucrats in the State Department and the National Security Council who are cooperating with the impeachment inquiry are heroes, patriots, and paragons of virtue and self-sacrifice for defying President Trump and proclaiming the truth about Trump corruption and self-dealing in Ukraine.

Last week, the media portrayed former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch as a courageous martyr recalled from her post by Trump for no reason and then viciously attacked by him on Twitter while she was testifying before the House Intelligence Committee. Trump’s attack was immediately characterized as “witness intimidation” by House Democrats and the media, who played up the notion that Yovanovitch was a victim being punished for nothing more than her commitment to the truth.

We heard the same sort of praise for William Taylor and George Kent, the State Department officials who also testified last week, just as we’ve heard praise for all the career bureaucrats who have testified in closed-door sessions so far. Democrats and the media gave special praise to Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, the NSC Ukraine expert who told impeachment investigators he was alarmed by what he heard on the July 25 phone call between Trump and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine. As one of the only officials to have heard the call first-hand, Vindman was immediately hailed as a “star” witness in the impeachment probe, treated to glowing profiles in the New York Timesand the Washington Post, which said the Soviet émigré escaped to America with his family as a small child and grew up “determined to be as American as can be.”

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2019-11-16-the-trump-impeachment-what-is-the-crime-2

It was right around the time that I was writing my last post (“The Trump Impeachment: What Is The Crime?”) that House Democrats started using the word “bribery” to describe what they are looking into. OK, that’s a start. Shall we consider it further?

Bribery is a real crime, and it’s even mentioned in the Constitution as a basis for impeachment. But there are two major problems with trying to fit the square peg of the Trump/Ukraine fact pattern into the round hole of the impeachable crime of “bribery.” The first is that if providing to a politician some intangible political advantage can be characterized as a “bribe,” then most of what politicians do all day would become “bribery.” The second is that calling President Trump’s conduct as to Ukraine “bribery” invites comparison with the conduct of Joe and Hunter Biden in the same country, and calls for testing the conduct of each against the words of the applicable statute to see which is the better fit.

As discussed in the previous post, it’s only a “crime” if you can fit within the exact words of some criminal statute passed by Congress. In the case of the crime of bribery of a federal official, the main statute is 18 U.S.C. Section 201(b). Here are the words of the relevant portion:

(b) Whoever . . . (2) being a public official or person selected to be a public official, directly or indirectly, corruptly demands, seeks, receives, accepts, or agrees to receive or accept anything of value personally or for any other person or entity, in return for: (A) being influenced in the performance of any official act . . . shall be fined under this title . . . or imprisoned for not more than fifteen years, or both.