Rand Paul’s Question Rejected… Again

Kentucky Senator Rand Paul’s whistleblower question blocked in Senate impeachment trial by Chief Justice John Roberts. (Watch that moment HERE)

LEGAL INSURRECTION adds some thoughts to this:

So do people know the whistleblower’s identification? If not then let Paul ask his question.

Chief Justice John Roberts once again rejected a question from Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) since it supposedly names the impeachment whistleblowereven though supposedly NOBODY knows the identification of the whistleblower.

He asked: “Are you aware that House intelligence committee staffer Shawn Misko had a close relationship with Eric Ciaramella while at the National Security Council together and are you aware and how do you respond to reports that Ciaramella and Misko may have worked together to plot impeaching the President before there were formal house impeachment proceedings.”

POWERLINE continues with Rand Paul’s question rephrased (<< video at link):

  • I believe that Senator Ron Johnson rephrased the question Senator Paul submitted to Chief Justice Roberts as set forth in the adjacent post. Chief Justice Robert having declined to read the question, Senator Johnson gave it another go. The question alludes to the RCP columm by Paul Sperry that we also published last week in “Whistleblower overheard.” Not surprisingly, Chief House impeachment manager and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff declines to answer the question.

 

Whistleblower and Schiff Staffer In 2017 Coup Talks (UPDATE)

(UPDATE: I had to edit out the name of Eric Ciaramella in the description in order for YouTube to publish this audio. The monolithic thought is amazing to me, and the 1984 beginnings are unmistakable. Obviously no Federal or State law says a person’s name cannot be used… and, in fact, the “whistleblower” statute merely protects the person from on the job harassment by superiors. Not to nix his name from the public. Weird.)

Real Clear Investigations and Red State (linked below respectively) have great stories on these two colleagues (comrades?) discussing how to remove Trump from office 2-weeks after he was inaugurated — insurance policy 2.0 two-weeks after Trump was inaugurated (!):

RED STATE:

……Source 1 said, “Just days after he [Trump] was sworn in, they [Ciaramella and Misko] were already talking about trying to get rid of him. They weren’t just bent on subverting his agenda. They were plotting to actually have him removed from office.”

Sources told Sperry that Misko had been the Schiff staff member whom Ciaramella had “reached out to” for “guidance” before submitting his complaint with the Intelligence Community Inspector General, Michael Atkinson.

Sperry writes:

The coordination between the official believed to be the whistleblower and a key Democratic staffer, details of which are disclosed here for the first time, undercuts the narrative that impeachment developed spontaneously out of the “patriotism” of an “apolitical civil servant.”

Two former co-workers said they overheard Ciaramella and Misko, close friends and Democrats held over from the Obama administration, discussing how to “take out,” or remove, the new president from office within days of Trump’s inauguration. These co-workers said the president’s controversial Ukraine phone call in July 2019 provided the pretext they and their Democratic allies had been looking for.

[….]

Source 1 said, “They were popping off about how they were going to remove Trump from office. No joke.”

[….]

He had also heard Ciaramella tell Misko, “‘We can’t let him enact this foreign policy.’“

Source 2 said he reported what he’d overheard to his superiors. “It was so shocking that they were so blatant and outspoken about their opinion,” he recalled. “They weren’t shouting it, but they didn’t seem to feel the need to hide it.”

The co-workers, [sources 1 and 2] didn’t think much more about the incident…..