RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/469880-adam-schiffs-ham-sandwich-not-an

The most familiar metaphor about criminal investigations is, of course, that a prosecutor could get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich. Like all good metaphors, there’s enough exaggeration in it to make a strong impression. It resonates, though, because it conveys the entirely accurate sense that a grand jury is a one-sided affair. We’re wired to believe there are two sides — at least — to every story. That’s why the grand jury rubs us the wrong way.

And that’s why the impeachment show — not inquiry show — that Democrats are running should really rub us the wrong way. 

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and his House Intelligence Committee are taking the show public this week. The inquiry he’s been running is, he claims, analogous to a grand jury investigation: It’s a preliminary investigative stage before the inquiry’s transfer to the Judiciary Committee for the formal consideration of articles of impeachment. 

Grand juries, however, never go public. And that is precisely because they are intentionally one-sided. They are kept secret by law to avoid prejudicing the suspect.

Prejudice is exactly what Schiff is aiming for, however. The point is not impeachment; it is to wound President Trump politically.

To be clear, Schiff’s grand jury analogy is bogus. Congress is not a grand jury. Grand juries are designed to be at least somewhat objective — a body of impartial citizens who, by constitutional mandate, must be satisfied there is probable cause that a crime has been committed before the state is permitted to indict and try a citizen presumed to be innocent. In theory, the grand jury is there to protect the suspect from an overbearing prosecutor. Here, House Democrats are the overbearing prosecutor, not the protective grand jurors.

What is happening in the House is a political exercise. Schiff is a hyper-partisan. With the anti-Trump media leaving his absurd grand jury analogy unchallenged, he exploits it when it is useful, namely, when telling Republicans they will not be permitted to call their witnesses, and he puts the analogy aside when it is not useful, namely, in convening one-sided public hearings.

As a matter of due process, Schiff’s made-for-TV spectacle is a bad joke. That was underscored this past weekend when (a) Democrats gave Republicans a ridiculously short deadline to propose their own witnesses, whom Chairman Schiff reserved the right to veto; (b) Republicans duly proposed witnesses on the issues of Democrats’ collusion with Ukraine in the 2016 election campaign and in possible corruption; and (c) Schiff, as predictably as sunrise, ruled the GOP’s witnesses irrelevant.

In point of fact, the witnesses that Republicans seek to call are entirely relevant to what would be at issue in an impeachment trial, to wit: Is any misconduct by the president alleged in an article of impeachment sufficiently egregious that he should be removed from power?

But, see, a grand jury is not a trial. 

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/private-speech-bolton-suggests-some-trump-s-foreign-policy-decisions-n1080651

The former national security director was especially critical of the president’s handling of Turkey, according to multiple sources present for his remarks.

Former national security adviser John Bolton derided President Donald Trump’s daughter and son-in-law during a private speech last week and suggested his former boss’ approach to U.S. policy on Turkey is motivated by personal or financial interests, several people who were present for the remarks told NBC News.

According to six people who were there, Bolton also questioned the merits of Trump applying his business acumen to foreign policy, saying such issues can’t be approached like the win-or-lose edict that drives real estate deals: When one deal doesn’t work, you move on to the next.

The description was part of a broader portrait Bolton outlined of a president who lacks an understanding of the interconnected nature of relationships in foreign policy and the need for consistency, these people said.

Bolton has kept a low public profile since he left the administration on Sept. 10, and efforts by Democrats to have him testify in the House impeachment inquiry into the president have stalled. But his pointed comments, at a private gathering last Wednesday at Morgan Stanley’s global investment event in Miami, painted a dark image of a president and his family whose potential personal gain is at the heart of decision-making, according to people who were present for his remarks.

https://amgreatness.com/2019/11/11/son-of-convicted-weather-underground-cop-killers-raised-by-ayers-and-dohrn-elected-da-in-san-francisco/

The son of Weather Underground domestic terrorists convicted of felony murder for their role in the Brinks armored car robbery in 1981, has won a tightly contested race for district attorney in San Francisco.

Chesa Boudin won after campaigning to reform the the criminal justice system in a city already known for having a very liberal criminal justice system.

In October of 1981, Boudin’s parents, Kathy Boudin and David Gilbert, joined other members of the Weather Underground and the Black Liberation Army to rob a Brink’s armored car at the Nanuet Mall, in Nanuet, New York.

While in the process of stealing $1.6 million from the armored car, the self-professed revolutionaries killed Sgt. Edward Grady, Officer Waverly “Chipper” Brown, and Brinks guard Peter Paige, as well as wounded Paige’s partner Joseph Trombino.

Paige and Trombino were shot during the first shootout at the mall. When the police caught up to the U-Haul truck with David Gilbert and Kathy Boudin in the front seats, they weren’t sure they had the right vehicle because the suspects had been described as black, while the occupants of this truck were white. This was a deliberate part of the plan, designed to fool the police.

When officers approached the truck with their guns drawn, Boudin feigned innocence and pleaded with them to put their guns down. Once they dropped their guard and lowered their guns, “six men armed with automatic weapons and wearing body armor emerged from the back of the truck and began firing upon the four police officers.”

Officer Brown was hit repeatedly by rifle rounds and collapsed on the ground. One robber then walked up to his prone body and fired several more shots into him with a 9mm handgun, ensuring his death. Keenan was shot in the leg, but managed to duck behind a tree and return fire.