Jonathan Turley

The 14th Amendment vs. Trump

Published by Papa Giorgio

This will be my first installment to a legal challenge just getting underway in keeping Trump from office. Some say this is new, it is not. Some say Trump being charged with “insurrection” isn’t needed, it is. David Frum correctly says the Court will decide in the end. Frum also notes that if this tactic is opened up, our body-politic will be riddled with keeping our political foes from office. More distortions of the law will surely come as the Left uses Lawfare to attack the “Democracy” they say they want to protect. As more is written on these challenges and the hyperbole from the MSM and politicians splash into our lives, I will be posting on this more in the future.

This old challenge reignited “anew” by a couple Federalist legal scholars [as well as some Leftist scholars] is that Trump can be barred from future office positions due to “insurrection.”

This will be a thing.

THE CHALLENGE EXPLAINED A BIT

  • Two Federalist Society law professors have published their findings stating that Trump is disqualified from serving as President based on the originalist interpretation of the 14th amendment ban on anyone who has engaged in insurrection against the United States from running for office. (MTN)
  • Donald Trump is ineligible to become president again, leading conservative scholars argue. “The Fourteenth Amendment, Section 3 says that anybody who takes an oath to uphold the Constitution and thereafter engages in or gives aid and comfort to an insurrection cannot hold any office under the United States, period,” Harvard University Carl M. Loeb University Professor of Constitutional Law Emeritus Laurence Tribe tells Joy Reid. (YAHOO NEWS)

Firstly, as much as the Left opines that an insurrection conviction isn’t needed, it is, in reality, in order to bar Trump from office. If the Left tries to push this thru without a solid legal ground, the electorate will clearly note this and there will be hell to pay.

And, I assume, in the end the Supes will need to get involved. Especially if pushed thru before the election like Trump’s 2nd shampeachment.

More on SCOTUS from David Frum below.

COURT CASE ALREADY STARTED

Here is a recent news story of a Florida case already being pushed thru:

A Florida lawyer is challenging former President Trump’s ability to run for president in 2024 under the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment, citing the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack.

Lawrence Caplan, a tax attorney in Palm Beach County, filed the challenge in federal court Thursday, pointing to a clause in the amendment that says those who “have engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the government cannot hold office.

(YAHOO NEWS)

Here is a video, also Left leaning, explaining the issue well:

  • MeidasTouch host Ben Meiselas reports on a new disqualification lawsuit filed against Donald Trump in Florida federal court under the 14th Amendment Section 3.

PUSHING BACK ON THIS IDEA

[As an aside: just to note officially on my site, the current cases against Trump are being rushed through the courts, however, Alan Dershowitz and Jonathan Turley both say isn’t going to happen.]

THE FEDERALIST has this response to a recent 126-page paper on Trump not being eligible for the Presidency:

….Despite the scenes of the attack on the Capitol and extensive investigations, the American people do not seem to agree that Trump took part in an insurrection or rebellion. Almost half the respondents in a THE HILL rejected the claim that the events of Jan. 6 were an actual “insurrection” (with the divide tracking partisan lines), and 76 percent viewed it as a “protest gone too far.”

Other considerations also call into question the claim that Trump instigated an “insurrection” in the constitutional sense. If it were clear that Trump engaged in insurrection, the Justice Department should have acted on the Jan. 6 Committee’s referral for prosecution on that charge. Special Counsel Jack Smith should have indicted him for insurrection or seditious conspiracy, which remain federal crimes. If it were obvious that Trump had committed insurrection, Congress should have convicted him in the two weeks between Jan. 6 and Inauguration Day. Instead, the House impeached Trump for indictment to insurrection but the Senate acquitted him.   

The Senate’s acquittal is the only official finding by a federal or state institution on the question of whether Trump committed insurrection. The failure of the special counsel to charge insurrection and the Senate to convict in the second impeachment highlights a serious flaw in the academic theory of disqualification.

According to Luttig and Tribe, it appears self-evident that Trump committed insurrection. They assume Trump violated the law without any definitive finding by any federal authority. According to their view, he must carry the burden of proof to show he is not guilty of insurrection or rebellion — a process that achieves the very opposite of our Constitution’s guarantee of due process, which, it so happens, is not just provided for by the Fifth Amendment, but reaffirmed in the same 14th Amendment that contains the disqualification clause. It would be like requiring Barak Obama to prove he was native-born (a constitutional prerequisite for being president) if state election officials disqualified him for being foreign-born.

The Electoral College Chooses Presidents, Not State Officials

If this academic view were correct, it would throw our electoral system into chaos. One of the chief virtues of the Electoral College system is that it decentralizes the selection of the president: State legislatures decide the manner for choosing electors, with each state receiving votes equal to its representation in the House and Senate. States run the elections, which means that hundreds, if not thousands, of city, county, and state officials could execute this unilateral finding of insurrection. A county state election official, for example, could choose to remove Trump’s name from printed ballots or refuse to count any votes in his favor. A state court could order Trump barred from the election. A state governor could refuse to certify any electoral votes in his favor. The decentralization of our electoral system could allow a single official, especially from a battleground state, to sway the outcome of a close race in the 2024 presidential election.

Allowing a single state to wield this much power over the federal government runs counter to broader federalism principles articulated by the Supreme Court. In our nation’s most important decision on the balance of power between the national government and the states, McCullough v. Maryland, Chief Justice John Marshall held that a single state could not impose a tax on the Bank of the United States. Marshall famously observed that “the power to tax is the power to destroy.”

Marshall may well have frowned upon single state officials deciding to eliminate candidates for federal office on their own initiative. The Supreme Court lent further support for this idea in United States Term Limits v. Thornton (1995), which held that states could not effectively add new qualifications for congressional candidates by barring long-time incumbents from appearing on the ballot. Writing for the majority, Justice Stevens argued that allowing states to add term limits as a qualification for their congressional elections conflicted with “the uniformity and national character [of Congress] that the framers sought to ensure.” Allowing state election officials to decide for themselves whether someone has incited or committed insurrection, without any meaningful trial or equivalent proceeding, would give states the ability to achieve what term limits forbid.

[….]

We are not apologists for Trump’s spreading of baseless claims of electoral fraud or his efforts to stop the electoral count on Jan. 6. But as with the weak charges brought by the special counsel, the effort to hold Trump accountable for his actions should not depend on a warping of our constitutional system. Prosecutors should charge him with insurrection if they can prove it and have that conviction sustained on appeal. Congress should disqualify Trump if it can agree he committed the crime. Ultimately, the American people will decide Trump’s responsibility for the events of Jan. 6, but at the ballot box in 2024’s nominating and general elections for president…

TRUMP NOT CHARGED with INSURRECTION

Insurrection is still key in this endeavor, and, as mush as Laurence Tribe thinks it is self evident, the case has not been made. In THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR has a great little article worthy of noting,

For 31 months, the Democrats and their allies in the corporate media have characterized the Capitol Hill chaos that erupted on Jan. 6, 2021 as an “insurrection.” The House of Representatives reinforced this version of events by impeaching then-President Trump for “incitement of insurrection.” The Senate acquitted him, of course. Nonetheless, the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th attack referred the case to the Justice Department for further investigation. Consequently, it was something of a surprise that the formal indictment unsealed last Tuesday by Special Counsel Jack Smith failed to charge Trump with fomenting insurrection.

This must have been particularly frustrating for those who have long insisted that the 14th Amendment prohibits Trump from serving a second presidential term. The primary purpose of the 14th Amendment was, of course, to grant citizenship to emancipated slaves. However, it also includes language in Section 3 that bars anyone who has “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the [United States]” from holding office in the federal government. This passage was included to prevent former officials of the Confederacy from returning to Congress and creating more mischief. The problem with using this clause against Donald Trump is explained by constitutional law professor Josh Blackman in Reason:

In some legal circles, advocates contend that it is so obvious that Trump committed insurrection. Yet, the special counsel, after studying the issue for months, opted not to bring that charge. Why? Perhaps Smith determined that he could not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump engaged in insurrection. Or maybe Smith determined there were considerable legal questions about how to obtain such a conviction – most critically, was there an actual insurrection? (Yes, for the Supreme Court to knock Trump off the ballot, you need five votes to say that there was an insurrection as a matter of law – good luck with that!)

It evidently never occurred to the victims of Trump Derangement Syndrome that “insurrection” is a legal term with an actual definition in the U.S. Code. In order to convict former President Trump of this crime, the Special Prosecutor must prove that he fits the following description in 18 U.S.C. § 2383: “Whoever incites, sets on foot, assists, or engages in any rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States or the laws thereof, or gives aid or comfort thereto.” Anyone convicted of insurrection can expect a long prison term and a hefty fine. It would be difficult to convict Trump under this statute, considering that not one participant in the Jan. 6 riot has been charged with insurrection…..

DAVID FRUM’S ATLANTIC PIECE

And it may be a 50-state attempt, which will push it to the Supes sooner rather than later. David Frum, a #NeverTrump guy, notes this will be a failed endeavor by simply stating in his ATLANTIC piece:

  • “The fourteenth amendment won’t save us from Donald Trump.”

Continuing he states:

….The least of these problems is the legal one: whether Trump’s scheme to seize the presidency by fraud, then violence, amounts to a “rebellion” or an “insurrection” under the amendment. There will be a lot of disagreement on that point, enough to generate litigation. But let’s suppose that the excluders win in court or that the courts abdicate altogether, kicking the dispute back to the elected branches of government as a “political matter.”

In that case, the use of the section to debar candidates would not stop at Trump. It would become a dangerously convenient tool of partisan politics.

LET’S RECONSIDER the text:

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

Because Section 3’s meaning seemed so obvious in 1866, a lot of the hard questions about its interpretation and application were shrugged off. I’ll nominate just two examples.

First, the section does not apply only to candidates for president—it does not even mention the president. It mentions senators, House members, electors, and civil and military officers of the United States or any state. The section appears to apply to the presidency only as part of that final catchall category.

Second, that phrase “aid and comfort to the enemies thereof”—what does that mean? The language is copied from Article III, Section 3 of the Constitution. But there, the language was drafted to make it difficult to convict an accused person of crime: “Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.”

David H. Gans: The Fourteenth Amendment was meant to be a protection against state violence

Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment strips away all of the 1787 restrictions: the overt act, the two witnesses, the requirement of public confession. The question of what constitutes “aid and comfort” is left to the judgment of … wait—Section 3 gives no clue about how it should be enforced or by whom. Again, that’s understandable. In 1866, none of this looked complicated. But in a modern context, that enforcement question of a reactivated Section 3 will be nasty.

Consider the scenario in which Section 3 is invoked against Trump in 2024. Although he has won the Republican nomination, Democratic secretaries of state in key states refuse to place his name on their ballots, as a person who engaged in insurrection against the United States. With Trump’s name deleted from some swing-state ballots, President Joe Biden is easily reelected.

But only kind of reelected. How in the world are Republicans likely to react to such an outcome? Will any of them regard such a victory as legitimate? The rage and chaos that would follow are beyond imagining.

And then what? If Section 3 can be reactivated in this way, then reactivated it will be. Republicans will hunt for Democrats to disqualify, and not only for president, but for any race where Democrats present someone who said or did something that can be represented as “aid and comfort” to enemies of the United States. Didn’t progressive Representative Ilhan Omar once seemingly equate al-Qaeda with the U.S. military? Do we think that her political enemies will accept that she was making only a stupid rhetorical point? Earlier this year, Tennessee Republicans tossed out of the legislature two Black Democrats for allegedly violating House rules. Might Tennessee Republicans next deem unruly Democrats “rebels” forbidden ever to run for office again?

Where are the federal courts in all this? Do they actually stand aside as local officials exercise veto power over who’s a loyal enough American to be listed on the ballot for county commissioner? Do they really let the “elected branches” decide? And what would that mean in practice? The section transfers an otherwise presidential prerogative, the pardon power, to Congress. If the courts step back, does that not imply that the House and Senate must somehow find a way to wield the power of the section together?

That seems unlikely. But the alternative of judicial decision is fraught with institutional risks too. Imagine a serious effort to block Trump from appearing on ballots in 2024, and then suppose he challenges that block in court—and ultimately wins a ruling in his favor from the Supreme Court, by a margin of 5–4 or even 6–3. Now the rage and chaos would be reversed. A pro-Trump Thomas-Alito-Gorsuch-Barrett-Kavanaugh majority might obliterate whatever deference the Court still commands among Democrats and liberals. Although much is wrong with the present Court, this country will not be in a better or happier place if it loses its last, imperfect arbiter….

UPDATED ON 09/18/2023 | CNN Transcript

A CNN interview was just pointed out to me where a “not-fan of Trump” said rationally what David Frum said, and that is, allowing states to go down this path will create vindictive cross-fire that will spread through our body-politic:

STERLING: What we need to do is focus on the voters. We have a Constitutional Republic of laws that essentially empowers voters to make decisions. They make good ones. They make bad ones. They generally come out OK. We have to trust the voters in this. And anybody using an electoral scheme or a constitutional interpretation to remove anybody from the ballots is going to be a dangerous precedent.

Because I can guarantee you what happens, it start up from the Bork hearings in ’86. One side does one thing, the other side does something else. The other side blames the last side for doing it. There will be a Republican saying, you have violated your oath of office under the Constitution. I’m barring you from the ballot. That’s all we’re going to see happening. We need to have grown-ups in the room look at the long term implications of these things. Whether we disagree with the individual candidate or loved a individual candidate.

FRUM IS RIGHT

Bottom line?

IN THE END, SCOTUS SAVES THE DAY

And Frum is exactly right on this point as well: Republicans will hunt for Democrats to disqualify. As much as I love the GOP using the Dems tactics against them. Take for instance Mitch McConnell’s warning to Harry Reid, which came to fruition when the Republicans [thankfully] used to get judges onto the bench that were center-right. If this “insurrection/sedition” tactic is unleashed, our system will have a ton of these potholes, forever disrupting the turnover of power peaceably.

ALREADY TRIED

The WASHINGTON TIMES also notes that this effort has already been unsuccessful with other Republican candidates

….According to the Congressional Research Service, a nonpartisan shared staff to congressional committees and members of Congress, “Invocation of the Disqualification Clause raises a number of novel legal questions involving the activities that could trigger disqualification, the offices to which disqualification might apply, and the mechanisms to enforce disqualification.”

CRS’ analysis of the 14th Amendment relating to the Capitol events adds, “The clause has been seldom used, and the few times it has been used in the past mainly arose out of the Civil War—a very different context from the events of January 6.”

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington have joined Free Speech for People with plans to hit Mr. Trump‘s campaign with legal broadsides under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.

They have written letters to state election officials requesting them to block Mr. Trump from the ballot and are preparing voter lawsuits and state election board complaints.

Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, enacted after the Civil War during Reconstruction, disqualifies someone from holding office after taking an oath to uphold the U.S. Constitution but later engages in “insurrection or rebellion” against the country.

The clause was intended to deal with Confederate rebels who went to war against the Union or provided aid or comfort to national enemies.

Throughout 2022, liberal organizations such as Free Speech for People and Our Revolution sent letters urging election officials in all 50 states to disqualify Mr. Trump and his allies from qualifying for the ballot.

The groups cited the 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868, to make a case for barring lawmakers and the former president from running campaigns because of their perceived role in inciting the protest.

Liberal activists’ 2022 legal attempts under the 14th Amendment, however, to throw Republican House lawmakers they contended were “insurrectionists” off ballots in their home states were all unsuccessful.

These lawmakers were Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Paul Gosar and Andy Biggs of Arizona, Tom Tiffany and Scott Fitzgerald of Wisconsin, Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina and Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin.

A law firm recently filed a lawsuit arguing that former President Donald Trump can be disqualified from the elections. And while this is new, it pulls from an agenda that the establishment has been proposing since 2021. The basis is Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868 just after the Civil War. It says a person can be banned from election or appointment to any level of government office if they “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the [United States], or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.” The establishment has been arguing this could apply to President Trump’s actions to challenge the 2020 election, and for his alleged role in Jan. 6.

HOWEVER, as pointed out, Joshua Philipp points out this has already been tried, and failed:

MORE TO COME IN THE FUTURE, FOR SURE.

Federalist Bonus
John Yoo & John Malcolm

Below are four excerpts from a longer FEDERALIST SOCIETY discussion between John Malcolm and John Yoo: “A Conversation on the Right: The Current State of Presidential Power”.

EXCERPT ONE:
John Yoo Says That January 6th Was “Thee Most Important Legal Event”

In this excerpted discussion John Yoo notes that the January 6th stuff is not nearly as strong as the Mara-Lago case (and in the fuller video he throws cold water on that as well). John Malcolm also discusses the ability of counsel to delve into all sorts of avenues of legal thought and advice. Jack Smith laid out an argument that undercuts his and Georgia’s entire case [should watch the above linked video for more]:

3. The Defendant had a right, like every American, to speak publicly about the election and even to claim, falsely, that there had been outcome-determinative fraud during the election and that he had won. He w6as also entitled to formally challenge the results of the election through lawful and appropriate means, such as by seeking recounts or audits of the popular vote in states or filing lawsuits challenging ballots and procedures. Indeed, in many cases, the Defendant did pursue these methods of contesting the election results. His efforts to change the outcome in any state through recounts, audits, or legal challenges were uniformly unsuccessful. (HERITAGE FOUNDATION)

EXCERPT TWO:
Insurrection and Sedition Not Part of Indictments | PLUS: Trump’s State of Mind

In this excerpted discussion John Yoo notes the lack of “insurrection” or “sedition” in the indictments. John Malcolm speaks to Trump’s clear words of “peacefully and patriotically marching” – which he says is not in the record of the indictment. Trump’s state of mind is discussed a bit.

EXCERPT THREE:
Brad Raffensperger/Trump Phone Call Dissected by John Malcolm

In this excerpted discussion John Malcolm quickly notes the failure of any criminal law breaking in the phone call between Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and Donald Trump regarding the “finding” of votes. The worst of intentions is applied to Trump by those that dislike him, however, the law done well looks beyond people’s opinions of him.

EXCERPT FOUR:
A Question About What Type Of Legal Advice John Eastman Gave

This is a question regarding John Eastman’s legal advice from the Q & A portion of the video.

Media Changes Narrative To Protect Biden

Published by Papa Giorgio

Over the past four years, President Biden has said that he did not know about, and did not benefit, from Hunter Biden’s business dealings.

BRIETBART has more on the exact dates these lies were spoke:

President Joe Biden “lied” at least 16 times about his family’s elaborate business schemes, the House Oversight Committee recounted Thursday.

The committee says Joe Biden lied in five different ways about his family’s foreign business endeavors:

1) That Joe Biden never spoke to his family about their business dealings;
2) His family did not receive $1 million through a third party;
3) Hunter Biden never made money in China;
4) Hunter Biden’s dealings were ethical;
5) and his son did nothing wrong.

This is a bit of a FLASHBACK PIVOT, but one worth making as it leads into a new talking point. Remember, the previous lkie told to get Biden across the finish line was that the laptop was Russian disinfo:

A MATT TAIBBI FLASHBACK

Burying the lede just a bit, the New York Times on March 16th published a long, spirited piece about the federal tax investigation of Hunter Biden. This is the 24th paragraph:

People familiar with the investigation said prosecutors had examined emails between Mr. Biden, Mr. Archer and others about Burisma and other foreign business activity. Those emails were obtained by The New York Times from a cache of files that appears to have come from a laptop abandoned by Mr. Biden in a Delaware repair shop. The email and others in the cache were authenticated by people familiar with them and with the investigation.

In confirming that federal prosecutors are treating as “authenticated” the Biden emails, the Times story applies the final dollop of clown makeup to Wolf Blitzer, Lesley Stahl, Christiane Amanpour, Brian Stelter, and countless other hapless media stooges, many starring in Matt Orfalea’s damning montage above (the Hunter half-laugh is classic, by the way). All cooperated with intelligence officials to dismiss a damaging story about Biden’s abandoned laptop and his dealings with the corrupt Ukrainian energy company Burisma as “Russian disinformation.” They tossed in terms thought up for them by spooks as if they were their own thoughts, using words like “obviously” and “classic” and “textbook” to describe “the playbook of Russian disinformation,” in what itself was and still is a wildly successful disinformation campaign, one begun well before the much-derided (and initially censored) New York Post exposé on the topic from October of 2020…..

(READ IT ALL)

NOW THEY REJECT RUSSIAN DISINFO

Now that it has been confirmed, Democrat politicians and the MSM have switched gears, saying, that there is no evidence that Biden benefited from these [now proven] transactions. Let me re-word it how the MSM and Dems do:

“NO DIRECT EVIDENCE OF BENEFIT.”

BREITBART again notes this newest pivot by Dems and media:

….After Devon Archer, Hunter Biden’s best friend in business, testified Monday before the House Oversight Committee, Democrats and members of the media used a joint talking point to try to discredit his testimony.

Archer told House investigators that then-Vice President Joe Biden spoke on speakerphone over 20 times with Hunter Biden’s business associates to promote the Biden “brand.”

Breitbart News reported that Archer’s testimony produced evidence implicating Joe Biden in a bribery scheme in which a foreign company paid Hunter Biden in return for use of the Biden “brand.”

“So far they [Republicans] have not been able to prove any evidence of wrongdoing,” a reporter said on ABC News’ Good Morning America.

“House GOP members continue to try and link Hunter’s business dealings to the president, though they have yet to produce any concrete evidence,” NBC News’ Today morning show claimed. “Now it is important to keep in mind while Republicans believe that there is a tie between Hunter Biden’s business dealings and the president himself, they have yet to provide any hard evidence that the president himself has done anything wrong.”

“Republicans have not tied the president, Joe Biden, to profiteering from them,” MNSBC reported. “They didn’t have the evidence yet.”

“Where’s the evidence?” Rep. Madeleine Dean (D-PA) asked on CNN. “There is no evidence of any wrongdoing by the President.”

“There is today zero evidence — zero evidence — that Joe Biden, the president United States, knew about what his son was doing,” Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT) claimed.

    • “And if the President of the United States committed the kind of offenses that in the Republican fever dreams they’re saying he committed without any evidence,” he continued, “there is at this point zero evidence that Joe Biden is guilty of anything. What the Republicans are doing, of course, is they’re just very, very angry that their guy got impeached twice, and so they’re just casting about for a way of revisiting retribution on the Democrats and this is their latest fever dream.”

However, 15 pieces of evidence strongly suggest Joe Biden was involved in his family’s business dealings:

  1. Biden family Suspicious Activity Reports of wire transfers
  2. Texts
  3. Emails
  4. WhatsApp messages
  5. Photos of Joe with Hunter’s business partners
  6. Joe Biden’s voicemail to Hunter Biden
  7. Five individuals referencing Joe Biden as the “big guy”
  8. Two whistleblower testimonies
  9. FBI FD-1023 form alleging recorded phone calls and text between Biden and Burimsa executive
  10. FBI informant alleging bribes 
  11. Video of Joe Biden bragging about firing the Ukrainian prosecutor
  12. Hunter’s statements about giving half his income to his dad
  13. Ex-White House Aide saying FBI ignored Joe Biden’s role in Ukraine business dealings
  14. Millions flowing into Biden family bank accounts
  15. Hunter Biden paying for Joe Biden’s expenses

(READ IT ALL)

THEY THINK THEIR VIEWERS ARE DUMMIES

Professor Turley make the most salient point when discussing the Democrats position:

  • “Being a crook doesn’t mean you’re a moron, and it would take a moron to do a direct deposit into an account to the Biden family or send him some Zelle transfer. It’s not done. The Bidens are very good at this,”

Here is more from DAILY CALLER:

George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley said that the media and Democrats were offering “ridiculous” excuses about bribery allegations involving Hunter Biden.

“The media is now acknowledging that, sure, Hunter Biden was selling influence and access but it was an illusion and there’s no proof that Joe Biden got an envelope full of money or a direct deposit to his account; therefore, there’s nothing here,” Turley told Fox News host Laura Ingraham. “Democrats have constantly said stop asking questions because you don’t have that type of direct evidence of benefits. Well, that’s just ridiculous. I mean, obviously, all of these payments benefit Joe Biden. It’s going to the Biden family fund.”

[….]

“Being a crook doesn’t mean you’re a moron, and it would take a moron to do a direct deposit into an account to the Biden family or send him some Zelle transfer. It’s not done. The Bidens are very good at this,” Turley said. “They have been in the influence peddling business for decades. There’s been articles, not just Hunter but the president’s brother openly selling his access according to critics, so they have been at this a long time.”

“Here’s the weird thing is that you have got this labyrinth of accounts, right? Two dozen different shell companies’ accounts that have no discernible pursuance except to hide the money transfers going to the Biden family and, yet Democrats are demanding the one thing that is the least likely to appear,” Turley added. “Despite that whole apparatus to transfer money, someone was giving a direct deposit slip to Joe and Jill Biden. I mean, how crazy is that? So we have to, I think, deal with the reality that this is what influence peddling is.”

Eric Schwerin, a former business partner of Hunter Biden who visited the White House at least 19 times during the Obama administration when President Joe Biden served as vice president, will testify before the House Oversight Committee, Republican Rep. James Comer told Fox Business host Larry Kudlow earlier Thursday.

(DAILY CALLER)

CAVING TO FACTS… SLOWLY

Much like their other positions, this narrative is [grudgingly] starting to [have to] conform to evidence.

It’s so bad that like the “trump called NAZI’s good” lie, CNN has caved again to facts after a long holdout:

Maybe this fact will someday make the MSM?

9 VS. 6

Remember, Democrats challenged more states electors in 2016 with the election of President Trump in 2020, which is that in 2017 Democrats challenged nine state’s electors and in 2021 Republicans challenged six state’s electors:

…In the 2016 presidential election, Trump won 304 electoral votes to Hillary Clinton‘s 227. During the joint session on January 6, 2017, seven House Democrats tried to object to electoral votes from multiple states.

According to a C-SPAN recording of the joint session that took place four years ago, the following House Democrats made objections:

  1. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) objected to Alabama’s votes.
  2. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) objected to Florida’s votes.
  3. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) objected to Georgia’s votes.
  4. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.) objected to North Carolina’s votes.
  5. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) objected to the votes from North Carolina in addition to votes from South Carolina and Wisconsin. She also stood up and objected citing “massive voter suppression” after Mississippi’s votes were announced.
  6. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) brought up allegations of Russian interference in the election and malfunctioning voting machines when she objected following the announcement of Michigan’s votes.
  7. Maxine Waters (D-Calif) rose and said, “I do not wish to debate. I wish to ask ‘Is there one United States senator who will join me in this letter of objection?'” after the announcement of Wyoming’s votes.

[….]

In 2017, House Democrats objected to votes from Alabama, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Wisconsin. Objections also were made after the announcement of votes from Mississippi, Michigan and Wyoming, adding up to nine states. None of the nine objections was considered because they lacked the signature of a senator.

[….]

In total, Republicans made objections to votes from six states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. By the end of the joint session, Biden’s 306 electoral votes were certified, just as Trump’s votes had been certified in 2017….

(NEWSWEEK)

THE BIG LIE DEM VS. GOP

Democrat’s “Stolen” Election Claims | “Stolen” 2016 Election

The NEW YORK TIMES notes the following about the Democrats 21st century strategy:

…Few objections were filed in accordance with the Electoral Count Act in the 20th century. But starting with George W. Bush’s victory in the 2000 presidential election, Democrats contested election results after every Republican win.

In January 2001, Representative Alcee Hastings of Florida objected to counting his state’s electoral votes because of “overwhelming evidence of official misconduct, deliberate fraud, and an attempt to suppress voter turnout.” Representative Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas referred to the “millions of Americans who have been disenfranchised by Florida’s inaccurate vote count.” Representative Maxine Waters of California characterized Florida’s electoral votes as “fraudulent.”

Vice President Al Gore presided over the meeting in 2001. He overruled these objections because no senator joined them. Part of the reason they didn’t join, presumably, was that Mr. Gore conceded the election a month earlier.

In January 2005, in the wake of Mr. Bush’s re-election, Democrats were more aggressive. Senator Barbara Boxer of California joined Representative Stephanie Tubbs Jones of Ohio to lodge a formal objection to Ohio’s electoral votes. The objection compelled Congress to spend two hours in debate, even though Mr. Bush won Ohio by more than 118,000 votes.

Representative Barbara Lee of California claimed that “the Democratic process was thwarted.” Representative Jerrold Nadler of New York said that the right to vote was “stolen.” Ms. Waters objected too, dedicating her objection to the documentary filmmaker Michael Moore, whose 2004 movie “Fahrenheit 9/11” painted a dark (and at times factually debatable) picture of the Bush presidency.

The motion failed, but not before 31 members of the House, and Ms. Boxer in the Senate, voted to reject Ohio’s electoral votes — effectively voting to disenfranchise the people of Ohio in the Electoral College.

In January 2017, after Donald Trump’s victory, Democrats in Congress once again challenged the election outcome. Representative Jim McGovern of Massachusetts cited “the confirmed and illegal activities engaged by the government of Russia.” Ms. Lee of California argued that Michigan’s electoral votes should be thrown out because “people are horrified by the overwhelming evidence of Russian interference in our elections.” She also cited “the malfunction of 87 voting machines.”

There were objections against the votes in at least nine states. To his credit, Vice President Joe Biden rejected each objection on procedural grounds, stating that “there is no debate” and “it is over.”

Then as now, each member of Congress was within his or her rights to make an objection. But the objections were naïve at best, shameless at worst. Either way, the readiness of members of Congress to disenfranchise millions of Americans was disconcerting…..

The NYT article went on to say Hillary conceded, but so did Trump — as much as Hillary did:

“Rigged” Election Claims | Trump 2020 vs Clinton 2016

Not only that, but, Also, remember, more “unfaithful” electors went to Hillary than they did Trump. An often forgotten stat.

DEM VS. GOP FAITHFULNESS

GATEWAY PUNDIT did what I wanted to do… and GP notes the following: “…Hillary Clinton lost more electors than any politician in the last 100 years. Not since 1912 has a candidate lost more electors.” The Final Count:

8 Clinton defectors

  • 4 WA (successful)
  • 1 HI (successful)
  • 1 MN (attempted)
  • 1 ME (attempted)
  • 1 CO (attempted)

2 Trump defectors

  • TX (successful)

Gateway Pundit goes on to list past “unfaithful electors” of the past, a great summary of our history in this regard, here’s the list:

The popular belief was that many electorates were going to defect (called, “unfaithful”) from Trump. In the end, more “unfaithful electorates” defected from Hillary Clinton than from Donald Trump. I find this HILARIOUS! Why? Because Trump even came out a winner in this arena as well. As Powerline notes, only two electors were “unfaithful” to Trump. Four ignored Clinton’s win in their states. In fact, there would have been more unfaithful electorates for Hillary if state law didn’t prohibit it, like the “chaos” over state rules in Colorado:

(MORE AT RPT)

THE BIG LIE MSNBC

Katie Phang is still [April 2023] saying that Trump stole the election!

RPT FLASHBACK

DEMOCRATS WERE FOR CHALLENGING ELECTORS
BEFORE BEING AGAINST IT

  • The last three times a Republican has been elected president — Trump in 2016 and George W. Bush in both 2000 and 2004 — Democrats in the House have brought objections to the electoral votes in states the GOP nominee won. In early 2005 specifically, Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., along with Rep. Stephanie Tubbs, D-Ohio, objected to Bush’s 2004 electoral votes in Ohio.

Over the past 20 years, Democrats have on three separate occasions objected to the validity of electoral votes on the floor of Congress. Wednesday, Jan. 6, will mark the first time Republicans choose do so in the past two decades.

(DAILY WIRE)

My sons and I have discussed the January 6th issues, and, some historical aspects as well. Firstly, people saying Trump should be impeached are just as radical as the people breaking into the Capital. The throwing around of the “sedition” label is funny, and shows how people are not aware of the recent history of the lawful process of debate in Congress about just such topic. Here is one blogger noting Chuck Todd’s biased lack of awareness:

…NBC host Chuck Todd, who is always in the running to overtake CNN’s Brian Stelter as the dumbest newsman in the news media, had it out with Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) over a number of Republican members of Congress who are planning to dispute the certification of Joe Biden winning the 2020 election due to questions of massive election fraud.

After being accused of trying to thwart the democratic process, Johnson hit back by telling sleepy eyes Todd that they are trying to protect it.

“We are not acting to thwart the democratic process, we are acting to protect it,” Johnson said to Todd.

[….]

Todd and others in the Fake News media are acting like the Republicans contesting the election results is an unprecedented affair.

Let me remind them that the last three times a Republican won a presidential election the Democrats in the House brought objections to the Electoral votes the Republican won.

Lest they forget that the House Democrats contested both elections of former President George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004 and President Trump’s win in 2016.…

(DJ-MEDIA)

PJ-MEDIA however has an excellent notation of this history when they point out Democrats outrage that Republicans objected to the certification of electoral votes. “It’s ‘conspiracy and fantasy,’ says Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.” PJ further states,

“The effort by the sitting president of the United States to overturn the results is patently undemocratic,” the New York Democrat said. “The effort by others to amplify and burnish his ludicrous claims of fraud is equally revolting.”

“This is America. We have elections. We have results. We make arguments based on the fact and reason—not conspiracy and fantasy,” he added.

There’s only one problem with Chucky’s “argument based on fact and reason.” Democrats have been challenging the electoral vote certification for two decades.

The last three times a Republican has been elected president — Trump in 2016 and George W. Bush in both 2000 and 2004 — Democrats in the House have brought objections to the electoral votes in states the GOP nominee won. In early 2005 specifically, Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., along with Rep. Stephanie Tubbs, D-Ohio, objected to Bush’s 2004 electoral votes in Ohio.

Illinois Senator Dick Durbin appears to be even more incensed at Senator Josh Hawley’s plan to object to the Electoral College vote.

Fox News:

“The political equivalent of barking at the moon,” Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said of Hawley joining the challenge to electoral slates. “This won’t be taken seriously, nor should it be. The American people made a decision on Nov. 3rd and that decision must and will be honored and protected by the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives.”

Brave Sir Dick seems to forget he was singing a different tune in 2005. Then, it was Democrats questioning the results of the Ohio vote, which went narrowly for George Bush.

Durbin had words of praise for Boxer then:

“Some may criticize our colleague from California for bringing us here for this brief debate,” Durbin said on the Senate floor following Boxer’s objection, while noting that he would vote to certify the Ohio electoral votes for Bush. “I thank her for doing that because it gives members an opportunity once again on a bipartisan basis to look at a challenge that we face not just in the last election in one State but in many States.”

In fact, the Ohio electoral vote challenge was only the beginning. Rumors and conspiracy theories swirled around the outcome on election night that saw Bush winning Ohio by a close, but the surprisingly comfortable margin of  120,000 votes. So why are so many of these headlines familiar to us today?

(READ THE REST)

And THE BLAZE also referenced it’s readers to the same issues in their post (BTW, these are the two videos I used for my upload):

TheBlaze’s Chris Enloe noted this weekend that while Democrats are rebuking Republicans for planning Wednesday to oppose the Electoral College certification of Joe Biden’s presidential victory due to fraud concerns, Democrats themselves have a robust history of doing that very thing.

And a damning, resurfaced video underscores what’s already on the public record.

The video is a compilation of clips from congressional sessions following the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections, both won by Republican George W. Bush — and in the clips Democrats launched protests against Bush’s electoral votes.

[….]

That wasn’t all. The Washington Post reported that during the January 2001 session, words such as “fraud” and “disenfranchisement” were heard above Republicans calling for “regular order.”

More from the paper:

The Democratic protest was led by Black Caucus members who share the feeling among black leaders that votes in the largely African American precincts overwhelmingly carried by [then-Democratic presidential nominee Al] Gore were not counted because of faulty voting machines, illicit challenges to black voters and other factors.

“It’s a sad day in America,” Rep. Jesse L. Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.) said as he turned toward Gore. “The chair thanks the gentleman from Illinois, but . . . ” Gore replied.

At the end of their protest, about a dozen members of the Black Caucus walked out of the House chamber as the roll call of the states continued.

(THE BLAZE)

“Justice Shrugged” | Trump Indictments

Published by Papa Giorgio

I have some time on my hand [literally] to read a lot of articles due to an operation. One of the best I have come across yet is over at REAL CLEAR POLITICS, titled, “Justice Shrugged: The Persecution of Donald Trump” — which came via JJ Sefton’s “Morning Report.”

I will add some media before and link other articles worth your time —  after this…

                                    TURLEY                                                                  DERSHOWITZ

Here is the article:

Here’s what I dream of Donald Trump saying when he stands trial on bogus charges proffered by his political opponents: “I do not recognize this court’s right to try me … I do not recognize my action as a crime.”

Those are the fighting words of industrialist Hank Rearden when he was put on trial for ignoring an unjust law in Ayn Rand’s novel “Atlas Shrugged.” Although the circumstances of the cases differ, Rearden is a perfect avatar of Donald Trump, as both larger-than-life men are persecuted by the justice system for seeking to pursue their own self-interest and for refusing to surrender to government oppression.

Self-interest is central to the Objectivist philosophy of Rand, who grew up in Russia and witnessed first-hand the oppression of free thought and free enterprise following the 1917 Communist revolution. Her masterpiece, “Atlas Shrugged,” is the ultimate roadmap to how American democracy can be subverted by leftist bureaucrats and a corrupt media to destroy some individuals and intimidate the rest.

In the novel, Rearden has created a unique metallic alloy that carries his own name. Rearden Metal is far superior to steel and was in high demand by contractors, but tyrannical government regulations prohibited Rearden from selling to customers of his own choice. He ignored the government’s warnings and sold to one of the few honest businessmen left in the country. That meant he had broken the law, and because of his stature and reputation for excellence, the government prosecuted him as a warning to others that they dare not pursue their own self-interest, too.

Rearden epitomizes the essence of individualism, striving to achieve his goals despite societal pressure. As an industrialist, he prioritizes his innovation and accomplishments, unapologetically pursuing personal success. His trial underscores the struggle between individual rights and the perceived interests of society, reflecting Rand’s championing of individualism.

Similarly, Trump’s refusal to accept the election results turns on his deep sense of individualistic ambition, his willingness to challenge societal norms, and his determination not to surrender his principles, even at the expense of public ridicule, political persecution, and now potentially years in prison. But you can’t view the 2020 election in a vacuum. Trump was no different than Rearden in fighting what he knows is a rigged system. For the preceding five years, Trump had been the victim of a series of vicious attacks by the Deep State and the media who never really accepted him as president. So Trump had no reason to accept the election results parroted by the same actors who had already tried to destroy him multiple times.

And now, two and a half years after the 2020 election, as Trump has a fighting chance of returning to the White House in the greatest political comeback in history, his enemies have come for him again, with three separate indictments and soon to be a fourth.

The four-count indictment most recently brought against Trump by Special Counsel Jack Smith is intended to make a victory in 2024 nearly impossible. The Deep State in this case represents the entrenched bureaucracy of the federal government as well as the individual states’ election officials. This is the same Deep State that gathered up 51 national security officials to sign a statement prior to the 2020 election that falsely claimed that Hunter Biden’s laptop “has all the classic earmarks of Russian disinformation.” It had none of them. No wonder Trump was disinclined to accept their conclusions that the election was secure and fair. Trump sought to prove his concerns about the legitimacy of the 2020 election by pursuing a vigorous legal strategy as was guaranteed to him under the First Amendment’s right “to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

Biden’s weaponized Department of Justice is determined to deny that right to Donald Trump, and by extension to the rest of us. You either agree with the government’s interpretation of election results or else you risk going to jail. The indictment brought against Trump acknowledges that everyone has a First Amendment right to speak their minds and even to “formally challenge the results of the election through lawful and appropriate means,” but it then avers that Trump’s right to believe he won the election is abrogated by a string of court losses and equally pessimistic assessments from so-called experts.

Here’s where it gets interesting, and where the Department of Justice has overstepped. The four counts in the indictment are based on what prosecutor Jack Smith calls three conspiracies: “A conspiracy to defraud the United States” by seeking to stop the counting of electoral votes on Jan. 6, 2021; “a conspiracy to corruptly obstruct and impede the Jan. 6 congressional proceeding at which the collected results of the presidential election are counted and certified; and “a conspiracy against the right to vote and to have one’s vote counted.”

INTERLUDE

RPT NOTE: Much like the Stalinist Court Trials, evidence typically allowed for a defendant to use was in fact not allowed: “The trials successfully eliminated the major real and potential political rivals and critics of Joseph Stalin.” In similar fashion, the J6 Committee “hearings” refused anyone  who would bring countering testimony or challenge their charges. And now any evidence that would have been available to Trump from those hearings was reportedly destroyed – that should have been kept per the law!

CONTINUING

All of these alleged conspiracies and the resulting four charges are directly related to the joint congressional session on Jan. 6, when the Electoral College votes were opened and debated to determine whether they should be counted. Moreover, when Jack Smith announced the indictment, he suggested that Trump was responsible for the riot that occurred at the U.S. Capitol on that day, yet none of the charges hold Trump responsible for the violence. Every charge in this dubious indictment could have been brought even if the protesters had marched “peacefully and patriotically” to the Capitol as Trump had requested. The charges in the indictment have nothing to do with the violence; they only relate to Trump’s insistence that he won the election, and that he would do whatever it takes to prove it.

In other words, these are not real crimes like insurrection or sedition; they are thought crimes. Smith’s “conspiracy” charges simply reflect that Trump consulted his lawyers to develop a legal strategy on how to right the wrong that he perceived. In its substance, from paragraphs 8 to 123, the indictment merely alleges over and over again that Trump refused to accept the conclusions of others that the election of Biden was legitimate, and that he had help from like-minded attorneys. How infuriating that must be to prosecutor Smith, who believes with all his heart that no one could doubt the veracity of what government officials (like him!) tell us.

But millions of us did doubt the official story of a Biden victory. In the weeks after the Nov. 3, 2020 election, I wrote about problems with the election on Nov. 6, Nov. 13, Nov. 23, Nov. 30, and Dec. 7. If I had been able to ensure that Trump had read those columns at RealClearPolitics, I might be under indictment for conspiracy now, too. Then on Jan. 2, 2021, I wrote a column called “Our Electoral Crisis: The Call of Conscience on Jan. 6.”

In that preview of the challenge of electoral votes from disputed states, I wrote, “There is no reason to expect that the Jan. 6 session of Congress will result in certification of President Trump as the victor of the 2020 election. Despite the extensive evidence of fraud that has been amassed, this vote will be an exercise in raw political power, not an expression of blind justice. Probably the best that Trump supporters can hope for is a fair hearing before the American people regarding the reason why doubts exist as to the legitimacy of Biden’s apparent victory.”

Because of the riot at the Capitol, even that small hope was dashed, as most of the congressional debate about fraudulent activity in swing states was canceled when the joint session resumed late in the evening. It is important to note that Trump was the political victim of Jan. 6, not its beneficiary. Because of the violence, he lost his last opportunity to have a public debate on the voting irregularities that made millions of us believe the election returns were compromised. Yet Jack Smith would have you believe that it was Trump’s plan all along to shut down the electoral count that day as part of a plan to overturn the results. It’s just a fairy tale told to Trump-hating liberals to make them feel better.

MSNBC commentator Mike Barnicle summed up Smith’s theory of the case in a segment on “Morning Joe” the day after the indictment was unsealed. “It’s one thing to have beliefs. We all have beliefs,” Barnicle said. “Donald Trump had the belief that he won, and he can articulate it as long as he wants, but he does not have the right to transform that belief into illegal conduct.”

What that means is that we all have First Amendment rights to be wrong, but we do not have a right to persuade others that we are right. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the first step toward totalitarianism. What we are seeing in Jack Smith’s indictment is the attempt to criminalize what I would call “other thought,” the insistence that you will make up your own mind and pursue your own truth regardless of what the government tells you. This is an attempt to codify the suppression of ideas that we saw the Deep State impose on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms in 2020. You have the right to think whatever you want, but as soon as you share thoughts that dispute the official narrative, you can be silenced, and in Trump’s case locked up in a federal penitentiary.

Well, he wouldn’t be the first person to be jailed for “other thought,” and you don’t have to turn to Russia or China for examples. How about Henry David Thoreau, who spent a brief time in jail in 1846 for protesting the Mexican-American War and wrote about his beliefs in “Civil Disobedience”?

“Any man more right than his neighbors, constitutes a majority of one already,” Thoreau told us. “Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.”

That certainly will be true should the unthinkable happen and Jack Smith achieve his goal of imprisoning Trump. In a very real sense, the indictment is less an accusation against one man than a ham-handed attempt to enforce group-think on any Americans who resist the imperial decrees from Washington, D.C. Consider this passage from “Atlas Shrugged” in light of the hundreds of Jan. 6 convictions that turned ordinary Americans into felons:

“Did you really think we want those laws observed?” said Dr. Ferris. “We want them to be broken. You’d better get it straight that it’s not a bunch of boy scouts you’re up against … We’re after power and we mean it … There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What’s there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced or objectively interpreted – and you create a nation of law-breakers – and then you cash in on guilt. Now that’s the system, Mr. Rearden, that’s the game, and once you understand it, you’ll be much easier to deal with.”

One of the most striking parallels between the Trump and Rearden cases is the complicity of the mass media in promoting hatred for the defendants. The legacy press has been trying to destroy Trump for seven years now, starting with the Russia hoax, the Ukrainian impeachment hoax, the Trump taxes hoax, and the classified documents hoax. It didn’t matter what topic came up; the media turned it into another reason to hate Trump. Most recently, they have drummed up the “fake electors” narrative as proof that Trump intentionally tried to steal the election.

That is essentially the linchpin of Smith’s case. When Trump’s team put forward alternate electors on Dec. 14, 2020, they were following the entirely legal precedent that Democrat John F. Kennedy used successfully in the 1960 election, when Hawaii’s result was in doubt until after Dec. 14. The reason that date is so important is because the U.S. Constitution mandates that all electors must give their votes on the same day. If Trump’s lawyers were able to prove fraud after Dec. 14, but his electors had not voted on that day, then their votes would be lost forever.

Trump is an obstacle to the Deep State that seeks power over people, just as Hank Rearden was an obstacle to the economic tyranny of “Atlas Shrugged.” Rearden was not a person of quite the stature of Trump, but more of an Elon Musk – a self-made man of unthinkable wealth who didn’t follow anyone’s rules but his own. But that last quality is shared by all three men, and perhaps that more than anything is what has made them all targets.

Here’s how Rand described the media’s assault against Rearden as his trial began, and how their campaign to marginalize him had failed because the regular people oddly identified with the millionaire industrialist just as Trump gains popular strength with each new indictment thrown his way:

The crowd knew from the newspapers that he represented the evil of ruthless wealth; and … so they came to see him; evil, at least, did not have the stale hopelessness of a bromide which none believed and none dared to challenge. They looked at him without admiration – admiration was a feeling they had lost the capacity to experience, long ago; they looked with curiosity and with a dim sense of defiance against those who had told them that it was their duty to hate him.

That’s how the trial started, but by the time Rearden spoke in his own defense – or rather spoke to demolish the prosecution’s false claims – the crowd was in full support of Rearden in his battle against the nameless, faceless bureaucrats who had regulated the country into despair. When he turned to the crowd in the courtroom:

He saw faces that laughed in violent excitement, and faces that pleaded for help; he saw their silent despair breaking out into the open; he saw the same anger and indignation as his own, finding release in the wild defiance of their cheering; he saw the looks of admiration and the looks of hope.

As the crowd surged around him, he smiled in answer to their smiles, to the frantic tragic eagerness of their faces; there was a touch of sadness in his smile. “God bless you, Mr. Rearden!” said an old woman with a ragged shawl over her head. “Can’t you save us, Mr. Rearden? They’re eating us alive, and it’s no use fooling anybody about how it’s the rich that they’re after…”

It is just that same magical connection which happens between Trump and his supporters at a MAGA rally, and that is why Jack Smith, Attorney General Merrick Garland, and President Joe Biden want to put Trump behind bars. He gives people hope, and hope is dangerous when you have a plan to subjugate them. To succeed, tyranny needs willing victims, and Trump – like any Ayn Rand hero or heroine – fights back. That’s the true reason his enemies hate him.

“We fight like hell,” Trump said on Jan. 6, not in regard to violence but in regard to protecting our country from the thugs who would transform it into a dictatorship. “And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”

That’s the fighting spirit which makes me know my dream of Trump rejecting the court’s authority, like Hank Rearden did, will never come to fruition. While it would have a hint of poetic justice, that’s not what Trump is after. He wants real justice, political justice, freedom for all, and that means he has to stand up, stand tall, stand firm. When he says that the government is coming through him to get to you, he’s not joking……

MORE READING

  • FBI Agent Lied Under Oath About Knowledge Of Hunter Biden Laptop, Talks With Facebook, Document Reveals (NEW YORK POST)
  • David Weiss: A Not So Special Counsel: The man behind the failed plea deal to protect Hunter Biden should not be leading the investigation into his misdeeds (AMERICAN SPECTATOR)
  • Donald Trump and 18 Co-Defendants Indicted on 41 Charges (BREITBART)
  • Georgia Indictment Charges Trump, Lawyers, Aides for Speech Violations, Nationwide ‘Conspiracy’ (BREITBART)
  • Trump J6 Judge Worked at Fusion GPS, Burisma Law Firm (NATIONAL POST)
  • Who will go to prison, Biden or Trump? It’s Hard To See A Graceful Exit From The Current Mess (WASHINGTON TIMES)
  • Biden Censors Battered — Expect An Epic Supreme Court Showdown (NEW YORK POST)
  • Why Wouldn’t Americans See Politics in Trump Indictments? It’s Transparently Clear They Will Influence The 2024 Election (FRONT PAGE MAGAZINE)
  • The Illusion of Scandal: How Washington is Attempting to Dismiss $20 Million as an Illusion (JONATHAN TURLEY)

 

FBI Shows “Utter Contempt For The American People” | Turley

Published by Papa Giorgio

Jonathan Turley says the FBI response to the latest Twitter Files revelations shows ‘utter contempt for the American people’

  • FBI’s Response to the Twitter Files Does Not Dispute Any Factual Allegation, But Slanders Any American Discussing These Facts and Faulting Their Eager Involvement in Censorship As “Conspiracy Theorists” — ACE

Jonathan Turley: Michael Sussman Jury Is A “Nightmare”

Published by Papa Giorgio

During a Fox News interview, Professor Jonathan Turley repeated some of the damning evidence against Clinton’s campaign attorney Michael Sussman revealed during his trial today. Turley mentioned the jury is a “nightmare” for the prosecutors. He explained that there are three Clinton donors and one juror’s daughter is on a team with Sussman’s daughter. The professor noted that the only thing missing on the jury is Chelsea Clinton. (THE SENTINAL hat-tip)

Joe Biden Agrees: “Let’s Go Brandon”

Published by Papa Giorgio

(Jump To Conversation About Video) CNN’s Jeremy Diamond reported to Twitter on Friday that during a call between President Joe Biden, First Lady Jill and children who were calling into NORAD to track Santa, a dad spoke up at the end of the all and said “Let’s go Brandon,” to which the President said “Let’s go Brandon, I agree.” Video actually exists of this incredible moment when the President echoes the sentiment “Let’s go Brandon” and the First Lady laughs. (POST MILLENNIAL)

I just (12-25-2021) combined the two calls:

  • RUMBLE — Here is the Father’s call and the Presidential side combined for a real time experience. The original video of the father is HERE | And the video used of the President is HERE

JONATHAN TURLEY has written well on the phrase…. here is a partial excerpt:

Below is my column in The Hill on the growing “Let’s Go, Brandon” movement, which is a unique response to what many people view as a bias media. It is the modern equivalent of the adoption of “Yankee Doodle Dandy” by colonists in using what was a contemptuous expression as a rallying cry of defiance.

Here is the column:

Roughly 250 years ago, a political insult by British troops during the American Revolution was converted into a rallying cry by the colonials. “Yankee Doodle Dandy” was intended to mock the Continental Army as unsophisticated dandies, but the maligned militiamen turned it around to mock the British after defeats like Yorktown. The song is a lasting example of how symbols of contempt can become symbols of defiance.

In a curious way, “Let’s Go Brandon!” has become a similarly unintended political battle cry. It derives from an Oct. 2 interview with race-car driver Brandon Brown after he won his first NASCAR Xfinity Series race. During the interview, NBC reporter Kelli Stavast’s questions were drowned out by loud-and-clear chants of “F*** Joe Biden.” Stavast quickly and inexplicably declared, “You can hear the chants from the crowd, ‘Let’s go, Brandon!’”

Stavast’s denial or misinterpretation of the obvious instantly became a symbol of what many Americans perceive as media bias in favor of the Biden administration. Indeed, some in the media immediately praised Stavast for her “smooth save” and being a “quick-thinking reporter.” But the episode was reminiscent of a reporter standing in front of burning buildings during last year’s riots and calling them peaceful protests. Indeed, even the original profane chant seemed directed as much at the media as Biden — creating an undeniable backdrop to news coverage.

The three-word slogan is now emblazoned across tee-shirts, coffee mugs and even billboards. An anti-Biden “Let’s go, Brandon!” hip-hop song hit the top of the charts on iTunes; soon, there were four such songs with the same refrain. The top song was banned on sites like YouTube and Instagram as spreading “harmful false information.” Yet the effort to bar people from listening to the song only fueled the interest and the movement.

The media’s reaction has fulfilled the underlying narrative, too, with commentators growing increasing shrill in denouncing its use. NPR denounced the chant as “vulgar,” while writers at the Washington Post and other newspapers condemned it as offensive; CNN’s John Avalon called it “not patriotic,” while CNN political analyst Joe Lockhart compared it to coded rhetoric from Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan and ISIS.

The more the media has cried foul, however, the more people have picked up the chant………

FB CONVO

JIM G. started out the conversation thus:

I put a laugh emoji on his reply because JIM G. was the #1 #NeverTrumper in my feed. He was a HUGE fan (still is probably) of the Lincoln Project (Red State, TownHall, American Thinker, American Thinker, Twitchy, PowerLine, Powerline, RPT, New York Times, etc.) and spread every article from WaPo and NYT and other MSMs regarding Russian Collusion and the Steele Dossier he could (Real Clear Investigations, Yahoo News, New York Post, The Federalist, New York Post, The Federalist, Breitbart, Law Enforcement Today, Washington Examiner, Fox News, The Federalist, The Federalist, iHeart, Etc).

So, to speak to me about Roman’s 13, which he rips from it’s context to suit his immediate purpose (probably with David French in mind: Red State, Washington Times, Big League Politics, American Mind, American Spectator, Capstone Report, Got Questions, etc.) is laughable to say the least.

So now that you know a bit of the years long MSM peddling, Let’s continue…. referencing his history I ask (I correct some of our misspelling):

  • RPT: JIM G. what is wrong is spreading lies about a duly elected President and a cockamamie Russian scheme that turned out to be a lie…. as you were told for years. Your continued spreading about, say, the Trump Tower meeting, and I even think you were on board about the Trump contacts with a Russian bank. Those are lies that were a large web of you maligning a sitting President even though many (myself) showing connections to Glenn Simpson and others. Just that example is a far greater faux pas that saying, “let’s go Brandon.” All sin is not equal JIM. And your sins according to Romans 13 are the egregious ones to note.

And for spreading what was known early on to be lies spread by the media, I noted a Scripture that should concern JIM G.

  • RPT: Proverbs 25:1: “Telling lies about others is as harmful as hitting them with an ax, wounding them with a sword, or shooting them with a sharp arrow.”
  • JIM G: there was a Trump Tower meeting with Russians during the election. What the motives an intent of those representing Trump were are not clear and remain disputed. As for Trump contacts with a Russian bank, I’m not sure what it is that I said that you perceive was a lie. I never once knowingly said something about Trump that I believed was untrue. If you think you know of a specific time in which I did, I would appreciate you pointing it out so that I can apologize. I mean that sincerely Sean G.

[More on Trump Tower below, but in many conversations on my wall and his I noted much of it over the years]

  • JIM G. responds: there was clear evidence that Trump welcomed Russia’s efforts to help him get elected and I saw loads of Russian propaganda on social media aimed at helping Trump. Those are not lies.
  • I respond, RPT: you said: ” there was clear evidence that Trump welcomed Russia’s efforts to help him get elected and I saw loads of Russian propaganda on social media aimed at helping Trump. Those are not lies.”
    _______________________
    President Donald Trump rejects the narrative that Russia wanted him to win. USA Today examined each of the 3,517 Facebook ads bought by the Russian-based Internet Research Agency, the company that employed 12 of the 13 Russians indicted by special counsel Robert Mueller for interfering with the 2016 election. It turns out only about 100 of its ads explicitly endorsed Trump or opposed Hillary Clinton. [About 50 endorsed Hillary and opposed Trump.] Most of the fake ads focused on racial division, with many of the ads attempting to exploit what Russia perceives, or wants America to perceive, as severe racial tension between blacks and whites.
    __________________________
    This is not what the investigation (a) showed, that Trump was knowingly welcoming any illegal actions. (b) Nothing about what you just said matches any of your despicable rhetoric for years on Facebook. And (c) not a single vote was shown to have been changed. Even Obama’s own guy noted that, Jeh Johnson.

This is no small belief based on what was then known to be lies and now supported with arrests, FOIA requests, and the like. But to be clear,

  • Nothing comes close in size, scope or harm to the republic than the years-long effort to cripple Donald Trump’s presidency by claiming he conspired with an enemy state to steal the 2016 election and then do its bidding as commander-in-chief. (REAL CLEAR POLITICS)

A BREAK HERE FOR MY AUDIENCE.

Let us deal with the Trump Tower meeting. I had commented on JIM G’s Facebook wall some portions of the below as most of the information known about the meeting were public even then. JIM G. merely referenced WaPo and the NYT and CNN and other sources he posted were wrong). Here are some examples for the reader:

TRUMP TOWER

The infamous meeting at Trump Tower did not focus on Clinton dirt but on Magnitsky Act, newly released FBI memos show.

(April, 2020, JUST THE NEWS | PJ-MEDIA) …The most scintillating information Mueller’s team ascribed to [Russian translator Anatoli] Samochornov in the report was a tidbit suggesting a hint of impropriety: The translator admitted he was offered $90,000 by the Russians to pay his legal bills, if he supported the story of Moscow attorney Natalia Veselnitskya. He declined.

But recently released FBI memos show that Samochornov, a translator trusted by the State Department and other federal agencies, provided agents far more information than was quoted by Mueller, nearly all of it exculpatory to the president’s campaign and his eldest son.

Despite learning the translator’s information on July 12, 2017, just a few days after the media reported on the Trump Tower meeting, the FBI would eventually suggest Donald Trump Jr. was lying and that the event could be seminal to Russian election collusion.

Samochornov’s eyewitness account entirely debunks the media’s narrative, the FBI memos show.

“Samochornov was not particularly fond of Donald Trump Jr., but stated Donald Trump Jr.’s account with Veselnitskya as portrayed in recent media report, was accurate,” according to the FBI 302 report on its interview of the translator. “Samachornov concurred with Donald Trump Jr.’s accounts of the meeting. He added ‘they’ were telling the truth.”

[….]

Solomon notes that “the belated release of the FBI interview report under a Freedom of Information Act request is likely to raise serious questions among congressional oversight committees about why the information was suppressed in the Mueller report, why the FBI kept it quiet for two years while Trump Jr. was being politically pilloried, and why the news media has failed to correct its own record of misleading reporting.”

Similar reporting at Real Clear Investigations notes well:

(March of 2020, REAL CLEAR INVESTIGATIONS) …..Whatever the suspicions raised by the Trump son’s emailed response, “If it’s what you say I love it,” the meeting didn’t live up to the billing, judging from what the translator told the FBI. Bureau notes show he told agents, “There was no discussion of the 2016 United States presidential election or Collusion between the Russian government and the Trump campaign.” The agent notes also state, “There was no smoking gun according to Samochornov. There was not a discussion about ‘dirt’ on Hillary Clinton. Samochornov did not think Hillary Clinton was mentioned by name.” 

Samochornov told the FBI that the meeting was 20 minutes long and focused on the Magnitsky Act, which imposes financial sanctions on wealthy Russians, and related matters. He recounted that Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort was apparently so uninterested in the topic that he used his cellphone under the table throughout, and “five to seven minutes after it began” Trump adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner left. FBI notes also record that “Samochornov was not particularly fond of Donald Trump Jr., but stated that Donald Trump Jr.’s account of the meeting with Veselnitskaya, as portrayed in recent media reports, was accurate.”

Fourteen of the 448 pages of the Mueller Report are devoted to laying out in great detail the chronology and circumstances of the Trump Tower meeting. There are no mentions of Samochornov’s flat denial of collusion or his corroboration of Trump Jr.’s description of the meeting as benign, even though report footnotes list the translator’s FBI interview nine times with little elaboration.

The contents of Samochornov’s “302” – the form used by the FBI to report and summarize agent interviews  – were first flagged this month by “Undercover Huber,” a pseudonymous Twitter account dedicated to following Trump-Russia news (not to be confused with Justice Department official John Huber, who was tasked with investigating potential FBI misconduct during the 2016 election). The document, with agents’ names redacted, was posted by the FBI under a federal judge’s order to release on a monthly basis 302s underpinning the Mueller Report, following a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by CNN and BuzzFeed.

Samochornov told the FBI that Veselnitskaya had dangled one piece of potentially partisan political information before the Trump officials – the claim that business associates of William Browder, the American businessman behind the passage of the Magnitsky Act, had made illicit donations to Democratic campaigns. Interview notes state that “Samochornov did not know if the donation(s) were made directly to the Clinton campaign, the Democratic National Committee, or a political action committee.”

This allegation, which was trumpeted by Russian President Vladimir Putin, was false. In November of 2017, Reuters reported that Fusion GPS – the Washington, D.C., opposition research firm paid by the Clinton campaign to compile the debunked Steele “dossier” used by the FBI to obtain warrants to spy on the Trump campaign – had provided Veselnitskaya with the bogus Browder-connected dirt before the Trump Tower meeting

Speculation about Russia collusion involving the Trump Tower meeting abounded in media accounts throughout the 2018 midterm elections, raising questions about whether the Mueller team should have disclosed the translator’s information. Mueller did speak out to correct faulty reporting on another matter that appeared damaging to the president, shutting down a BuzzFeed report  alleging Trump had directed his lawyer Michael Cohen to lie to Congress.

The Justice Department declined to comment on the assertions in Samochornov’s 302.

The Mueller Report contains information that supports Samochornov’s credibility. It reports that the translator was involved in civil litigation with Veselnitskaya on an unrelated matter. At one point, Samochornov said, the organization that hired him to work with Veselnitskaya on repealing the Magnitsky Act offered to pay $90,000 worth of his related legal fees – if he would corroborate certain statements made by Veselnitskaya.

 “Samochornov declined,” the Mueller Report states, “telling the Office that he did not want to perjure himself.”

The FBI’s 302 also records that he explicitly informed the FBI of his legal entanglement during his interview, and Samochornov has a long track record of working as a translator for the State Department and other government agencies on a contract basis. He has been married to Tatiana Rodzianko, a State Department employee, since 2006.

“Samochornov told the interviewing agents that he would have contacted the FBI if he thought the meeting was nefarious,” according to the 302. 

REAL CLEAR INVESTIGATIONS laid out the connections between Glenn Simpson (GPS Fusion) and the people involved in the Trump Tower meeting.

(August 2018, POLITICAL INSIDER) ….In an explosive piece at Real Clear Politics, writer Lee Smith breaks down how the meeting was a setup from the get-go – from the very campaign Veselnitskaya pretended she wanted to help take down. As Lee Writes, ” the first line of evidence includes emails, texts, and memos recently turned over to Congress by the Department of Justice. They show how closely senior Justice Department officials and the Federal Bureau of Investigation worked with employees of Fusion GPS, a Washington-based research firm reportedly paid $1 million by Clinton operatives to dig up dirt on the Trump campaign.”

While Fusion GPS was employing Christopher Steele to compile his anti-Trump dossier, they were also working with Veselnitskaya. In fact, Veselnitskaya met with Fusion GPS’ co-founder Glenn Simpson the day of her meeting with Trump Jr., and the night of the day before. What could they have possibly talked about, if not the meeting?

Lee notes that while Simpson has denied under Senate testimony that he and Veselnitskaya spoke about the Trump Tower meeting, “she has publicly stated that she used talking points [in the Trump Tower meeting] developed by Simpson for the Russian government in that discussion. Kremlin officials also posted the allegations on the Prosecutor General’s website, and shared them with visiting U.S. congressional delegations.” Veselnitskaya mainly talked to Trump Jr. about removing sanctions on Russia during that Trump Tower meeting, hence the talking points mentioned.

So, Fusion was working with Veselnitskaya to help her advance Russian interests – while employing Christopher Steele to claim that it was Trump conspiring with the Russians. “Simpson approached the Clinton campaign through its law firm and said he could dig up dirt on Trump and Russia,” said one congressional investigator. “The difference between the Trump and Clinton campaigns’ willingness to take dirt on its opponent is that the Clintons went through with it and paid for it. While their source, Glenn Simpson, was working for a Russian oligarch.” The oligarch referenced is Denis Katsyv, who attended the Trump Tower meeting with Veselnitskaya. 

FORBES has a good article on this as well. Again, old news refreshed:

FUSION AND VESELNITSKAYA

Veselnitskaya, a former prosecutor with ties to the Kremlin, hired BakerHostetler to help Cyprus-based, Russian-steered Prevezon Holdings in court, and the law firm hired Fusion in 2014. Businessman Bill Browder had alleged Fusion acted as an agent for Russian interests when it helped go after him as Putin tried to combat the Magnitsky Act.

Browder, head of Hermitage Capital, championed the Magnitsky Act, named for his tax lawyer and corruption whistleblower Sergei Magnitsky, who died in a Russian prison in 2009 after his investigation allegedly uncovered hundreds of millions of dollars of tax fraud implicating Russian officials.

The Justice Department alleged Prevezon laundered fraudulent money, and the company later settled for $5.9 million in what the department called “a $230 million Russian tax refund fraud scheme involving corrupt Russian officials.” Prevezon was owned by Denis Katsyv, whose father, Pyotr Katsyv, is a Putin ally.

The Justice Department unsealed an indictment against Veselnitskaya, now out of reach in Russia, alleging she’d obstructed justice over her “secret cooperation with a senior Russian prosecutor.”

The Senate Intelligence Committee report said the information Veselnitskaya offered during the Trump Tower meeting “was focused on U.S. sanctions against Russia under the Magnitsky Act” and “was part of a broader influence operation targeting the United States that was coordinated, at least in part, with elements of the Russian government.”

The Senate report assessed Veselnitskaya and Rinat Akhmetshin, who accompanied her, both “have significant connections to the Russian government, including the Russian intelligence services,” and Veselnitskaya’s connections “were far more extensive and concerning than what had been publicly known.”

The report noted they “found no evidence that Veselnitskaya used her ties with Fusion GPS to influence the contents of the dossier,” but the senators nevertheless “sought to understand the significance of Veselnitskaya’s relationship” with Fusion co-founder Glenn Simpson “because of the timing of their interactions.”

Simpson denied any foreknowledge of the Trump Tower meeting despite seeing Veselnitskaya the day before, the day of, and the day after.

(WASHINGTON EXAMINER)

So nothing the media told us about the Trump Tower meeting ended up being legitimate. And the ties to The Clinton Foundation thickens with more evidence and indictments.

KEY POINT: I do not know of a “Russian” that was touted by the MSM at Trump Tower that wasn’t connected to Fusion GPS or the Clinton’s.

And I have pointed this out since 2017.

TO RECAP THE TOWER

  1. The meeting was arranged by a publicist (Goldstone with past ties to the Trumps) who puffed up claims of Clinton wrongdoing with the Russians in order to help the wealthy father of a Russian pop singer.. Goldstone was 100% non-political.
  2. Goldstone made up an email that stated: “The Russian attorney, he wrote, had offered to provide the Trump campaign with “official documents and information” that would incriminate Clinton [in her dealings with Russia from p. 113 of Mueller report which has full email]. “This is obviously very high level and sensitive information,” he added, and was “part of Russia and its Government’s support for Mr. Trump.” So point of meeting was not to concoct a plan to collude with Russia but to find out past Russian dirty dealings with Clinton. [if they existed]
  3. The real reason the wealthy Russian lawyer wanted a meeting was to find a way to repeal the Magnitsty Act which sought to punish Russian human rights offenders. The Russian lawyer who showed up knew zero about any Hillary corrupt activities with Russia and the meeting was simply a ruse to raise Magnitsky act claims.
  4. There was no evidence that Trump knew of the meeting or was informed of it before hand. Also, of course, there was ZERO EVIDENCE of Trump and Russian govt working together. Trump sons were told of potential wrongdoing by Clinton and wanted to know what it was. Entirely legitimate whether obtained from Russian citizens or other sources. 

EMAILS SHOW MEDIA COLLUDED:

MEDIA SHOW CLEAR SIGNS OF PRESS FAILUIRES

How high does the Russia-collusion hoax rate on the scale of U.S. political scandals? Veteran journalist and author, Lee Smith, would say it tops them all. With the Watergate scandal, the American press uncovered corruption and crimes at the highest levels of government, leading to President Richard M Nixon’s resignation. Fifty years on, we find the press fulfilling a much-altered purpose. Lee, author of ‘The Permanent Coup’ and ‘The Plot Against the President,’ joins me to explain why this event represents the darkest chapter in American politics, and the media’s complicity in this.

Russia Gate: Glenn Greenwald’s “Media MOAB” and More

Published by Papa Giorgio

Shepard Smith at one point reported [and believed] the Steele Dossier as fact, or at least not disproven. Which at that time it was — both in conservative news sources, Congressmen (like Devin Nunes), and the like — shown to be a fabrication. We even knew quite some time ago that the FBI knew it was a complete fabrication. EVEN personalities on FOX NEWS were saying it was bunk! And these three indictments by Prosecutor Durham, the most recent of Igor Danchenko, prove this contention.

I will combine snaps of the Tweets with other media in them by Glenn Greenwald as well as text provided by THREAD READER:

GLENN’S THREAD

The employees of these media corporations know, deep down, what they did. They did the worst thing you can possibly do while calling yourself a “journalist”: they drowned US politics for years in a fake conspiracy theory funded and concocted by criminals for partisan gain.

But we have heard so little about these indictments from these media figures. Why? Because they know that as long as they stay united in silence, the only people who will point out what they did are those they have frozen out of their circle and trained their audience not to hear

The NYT, the WPost, CNN, NBC and the digital liberal outlets are all vastly more guilty of what they have spent years claiming Trump and the GOP are: they basically ran a dangerous disinformation campaign, full of lies, in conjunction with CIA/FBI, and now won’t own up to it.

From the start, Russiagate — which drowned US politics and dangerously ratcheted up tensions with a major nuclear-armed power — was concocted from whole cloth by serial liars paid for by the Clinton campaign and spread by their media servants: David Corn, Isikoff, Frank Foer.

They all made gigantic profit from this set of lies: all of them. Their ratings skyrocketed by scaring liberals about Kremlin control of the US. They wrote best-selling books and gave themselves Pulitzers based on this massive fraud. FBI lied to the FISA court. CIA fueled it all.

The indictments “cast new uncertainty on some past reporting on the dossier by news organizations, including The Washington Post?” LOL The dossier wasn’t just paid for by the Clinton campaign – which they lied about for a year – but the info in it came from a Clinton operative.

What Rachel Maddow in particular did makes her one of the most disgraceful and unhinged media figures ever to work for a major media corporation. Her derangement and lies were off the charts. Yet the liberal networks are bidding for her: because DNC disinformation is their model!

Anyway, for all of those who lied to the public for years — the NYT and WPost reporters, the rich and insulated CNN and NBC hosts, the countless charlatans and politicians like Adam Schiff & John Brennan who wrote bestselling books — none of this will matter. Lies are rewarded.

Polarization of media means virtually every major media corporation — CNN, NBC, NYT, WPost, NPR -have an exclusively Dem audience. These Dems don’t want to hear that they were lied to and, even if they knew, they’d be fine with it: for the right cause. So zero consequences.

But if you are someone who hates these media outlets and the liars who work for them to your core, know that your hatred is valid, justified and righteous. They are a toxic force in US political life. They don’t lie, smear and propagandize on occasion: it’s their core function.

MEDIA….

Jesse Watters

Jesse Watters discusses how the media latched on to the Russia collusion narrative on ‘Tucker Carlson Tonight.’

(Key in the below is that he worked for a Russian energy company. Why would Russians want Trump out? See my past “Bullet Points” on the issue.)

Dan Hoffman

Former CIA station chief Dan Hoffman reacts to federal agents arresting the primary sub-source who contributed to the Trump-Russia dossier

Jonathan Turley

Brett Tolman

Former federal prosecutor Brett Tolman reacts to the principle source of the Steele Dossier being charged with five counts of lying to the FBI.

MOLLIE HEMINGWAY

TWITCHY hat-tip:

Some Quick Thoughts Of Where We Stand (Part 2)

Published by Papa Giorgio

KEY: If any votes are thrown out through either fraud, breaking the law (the court ruling), or mishandling the count (not allowing poll watchers), then this is only the fault of one Party. DEMOCRATS!

FIRST! the latest

Yesterday I was letting people know (family and friends) the following: “165,000 in Philly, and 330,000 in Pitts were processed against state law.  If shown true in court, 80%  of Bidens and 20% of Trumps ballots would be nixed. Trump would win PA. Ohio’s AG asked SCOTUS to rule against the lower court usurping PA’s voting law. Missouri AG asked as well, saying the court ruling shouldn’t be able to change state election laws.” It was based on this as I was doing deliveries (I added the Pam Bondi video from a couple days earlier to give context to Giuliani):

Via “Our plan for the President. Rudy Giuliani with Sebastian Gorka on AMERICA First“.
I added the Pam Bondi video which I have a fuller version on in this audio: “Hans von Spakovsky On Election Integrity“

THE QUESTION

The question was basically, Justice Alito asked for PA to separate the late votes where signatures and postmarks may have not been up to Pennsylvania election law — if these ballots are simply mixed in the rest [to hide the irregularities], what is the possible action. Remember, a court added to election law, whereas the state legislature is the only entity that can change election law/rules/procedures… not mayors, city councils, or governors or the courts. IN FACT, the Attorney Generals of Louisiana, Missouri, and Oklahoma are urging SCOTUS to overturn the lower courts ruling. Why? Because the chaos Democrats created in PA would spread to other states where Democrat Judges would wantonly rule on issues of election laws. Here is more from THE DAILY SIGNAL:

…Three of the state attorneys general—Jeff Landry of Louisiana, Eric Schmitt of Missouri, and Mike Hunter of Oklahoma—held a virtual press conference Monday to announce the filing of an amicus brief in the Pennsylvania mail-in ballot challenge brought by the Pennsylvania Republican Party, which is before the Supreme Court.

“We are weighing in on a case, on a writ, that has been brought to the U.S. Supreme Court in order to bring additional arguments before the court as to why we believe the court should take up this matter,” said Landry, chairman of the Republican Attorneys General Association.

In unofficial results contested by President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign, Democratic challenger Joe Biden got 49.8% of the vote in Pennsylvania to Trump’s 49.1%. The president has not conceded the election, which major media outlets called Saturday for Biden after some put Pennsylvania in the former vice president’s column….

FACEBOOK CONVO, NOVEMBER 6th/7th

In a previous conversation on Facebook with an ex-co-worker, this is what I noted:

Granted, my original statement was a misrepresentation of what I heard in a short clip on the radio while driving. Getting in and out of the vehicle I drive, turning the sound down while on a studio lot (windows open no sound [not even the AC on] when reversing on a lot, etc). I will emphasize though what my correction said to explain better the following:

ORIGINAL POST and CLARIFICATION

[Original Statement] Biden does worse than Hillary and Obama in every state except WI, GA, MI, and PA. Lol

[Talk to text additional context] I misspoke Chris Lazar, the stat I heard was from a story LIKE THIS (Biden Is Underperforming Hillary in Battleground States) I believe Biden outperformed Hillary in those counties [cities] that many of the questionable practices [late ballots and blocking watchers, large percentages found for a single candidate, etc] happened.

[While in stopped traffic that old article I read was all I could find, not the article mentioned by the radio personality] This is what I should have been clearer on in messaging (RUSH LIMBAUGH):

Joe Biden underperformed Hillary Clinton in every major metro area around the country,” except… Are you ready? “Milwaukee, Detroit, Atlanta and Philadelphia.”

Let me go through this again. “Joe Biden underperformed Hillary Clinton in every major metro area” except for four. Milwaukee (i.e., Wisconsin), Detroit (i.e., Michigan), Atlanta (i.e., Georgia), Philadelphia (i.e., Pennsylvania.) It just so happened to be the four states that are gonna put Biden over the top in their scenarios here.

Here are two recent articles for clarity discussing this in-depth [and the portion not excerpted is a portion that supports some of Chris’s points from a previous discussion, FYI]. And this one example of Milwaukee is a reply in a sense to Chris’s nide LOL/TEAR emojis and missfounded response when I said this clearly:

  • (ME) the stat I heard was from a story LIKE THIS
  • (Chris) 😂😂😂😂 that’s an article from AUGUST 28TH!!!!!
  • (ME) I am driving now, but there is a fresher comparison
  • (Chris) stop digging to try & fit the fraud hoax

The following is a combination of JONATHAN TURLEY’S article as well as THE FEDERALIST’S article:

…..In Michigan, ballot counters take unreadable ballots, and transcribe them to blank ballots, while a poll challenger from the Democrat, and the Republican parties, observe. They sign off each ballot transcribed. Instead, in violation of state law, GOP poll challengers were made to leave the room, and the windows blocked with cardboard. Ballot counters cheered, on camera, each time a GOP poll challenger was made to leave. One Republican poll challenger, Connarn, said that a counter told her that they were changing the dates on ballots received too late in order to count them. The counter allegedly handed her a note confirming it. As soon as that happened, the Republican was told to leave….

…In 2008, Barack Obama received 316,916 votes in Milwaukee County. In 2016, Hilary Clinton won only 288,822 votes there. But in 2020 Biden outperformed them both, receiving 317,251 votes countywide and besting Obama’s share of the vote by nearly two points.

What makes this suspicious is that the county is shrinking. The Census Bureau population estimates show that in the last 10 years, thousands of metro Milwaukee residents have left the area for other parts of the state and country. As the Milwaukee Sentinel put it, “We’re lagging in a key metric that often reflects the vitality and desirability of a metro area: population growth.” The City of Milwaukee, which makes up about 60 percent of the county’s population, saw the number of registered voter decline by more than 26,700 from 2008 to 2020.

While it’s true that Obama in 2008 won about 18,000 more votes than Biden in the City of Milwaukee itself, one would also expect the countywide vote total for Biden to be less than Obama. Obama was a historic figure that motivated record numbers of blacks to vote in 2008. In addition, he had one of the most robust and successful campaigns in American history. His ground game and get-out-the-vote efforts were unprecedented, utilizing door knocking, canvassing, and phone banking. Not surprisingly, in no small part because of the black vote in Milwaukee County, he won the state of Wisconsin handily by a 6.9-percent margin.

[….]

The numbers in Milwaukee County suggest something fishy is happening in Wisconsin, and the Trump campaign is right to call for a recount.

So the above was for clarity.

CHARLIE KIRK ADDS TO THE ABOVE

Now, because of all of the above, REAL CLEAR POLITICS (hat-tip, 100% FED-UP):

BOOM!

Remember what I told my family and friends two days ago (Link Below) — and we are in the midst of either scenario:

Never before has an election been overturned by the amount of spread between the two candidates.

But, Trump has accomplished many hurdles. So there are many tracks I see happening.

One is [best case scenario] that SCOTUS is going to reject ballots after the 3rd (8pm) of November. The ballots not allowed to be jointly viewed by GOP/DEM “minders” need to be reviewed again, the ballots “cured” while not under view within 6-feet of GOP persons will be fully rejected because of that and that the equal “curing” didn’t happen in other districts for heavy Trump areas. [“Curing” happened in multiple districts in multiple states]. The machines (software) that “glitched” in the district in MI is in 30 states. ALL those ballots need to be hand counted and viewed properly. If this happens, Trump may win….BEST CASE.

WORSE CASE? Trump is a lame duck but uses his last couple months to install an independent council to look into Bidens’s’ dealings.  Using his position to show everyone how corrupt the Democrat machine is and the depths of cheating elections, thus, taking away the peoples real power. As he heads into the sunset helping set up a revived GOP machine to help fight the retarded philosophy of the Left’s corruption and depths of depravity in socialism.

Some Quick Thoughts Of Where We Stand (+ Article Dump)

 

Trump Acted Quickley On Coronavirus (TIMELINES PART DEUX)

Published by Papa Giorgio

A friend – in response to a challenge, posted multiple stories about Trump’s response to the Coronavirus to my single post detailing the timeline of the Trump admins response here: “Trump Acted Quickley On Coronavirus (TIMELINES)“

This was his firing away as if to make a point:

JIM

  • 10 times Trump and his administration were warned about coronavirus (AXIOS)
  • Trump’s daily briefings warned about COVID-19 at least a dozen times before the US outbreak, but he ‘failed to register’ the threat (BUSINESS INSIDER)
  • Trump was warned in January of Covid-19’s devastating impact, memos reveal (THE GUARDIAN)
  • Trump Was Warned About Virus Threat In More Than A Dozen Intelligence Reports In January, February (KAIESER HEALTH NEWS)
  • Trump Received Intelligence Briefings On Coronavirus Twice In January (NPR)
  • Trump Aide Warned Early on of Deadly US Coronavirus Outbreak (VOA NEWS)

(The italicized articles are completely debunked by information below – the others are highly questionable, the ones that have unnamed sources that is, and other portions of them are called into question by the timeline below.)

Besides the obvious question of, “which Western leader do you look to as a shining example of reacting in January to the crisis?” I could have easily responded to these papers who spread stories from a single anonymous source as if they are all different stories based on different [again, unnamed] sources, which, their practice of has undone almost all their stories [one example, another, and another] on the Russian Collusion Hoax, like this,

  • Memory Hole: What the Media Wants You to Forget About Their Biased Coronavirus Coverage (PJ-MEDIA)
  • The Media’s Top Lies and Spins About COVID-19 (REAL CLEAR POLITICS)
  • The Top 10 Lies About President Trump’s Response to the Coronavirus (PJ-MEDIA)
  • The China Virus Pandemic: COVID-19 Response and Recovery (PATRIOT POST)
  • Pollak: Democrats Pushed Impeachment While Coronavirus Spread (BREITBART)
  • China hid extent of coronavirus outbreak, US intelligence reportedly says (CNBC)
  • China deliberately hid coronavirus, admonished whistleblowers (WASHINTON TIMES)
  • Fauci points to China for late realization coronavirus was his ‘worst nightmare’ (WASHINGTON EXAMINER)
  • China admits to destroying coronavirus samples, insists it was for safety (NY POST)
  • China confirms US accusations that it destroyed early samples of the novel coronavirus, but says it was done for ‘biosafety reasons’ (BUSINESS INSIDER)
  • China pressured WHO to delay global coronavirus warning: report (NY POST)
  • China’s president Xi Jinping ‘personally asked WHO to hold back information about human-to-human transmission and delayed the global response by four to six WEEKS’ at the start of the COVID-19 outbreak, bombshell report claims (THE DAILY MAIL)

MY OWN SITE:

However, this does nothing to prove or disprove a point. So, I merely went to the first point made in his first linked article at AXIOS, quoting the NYTs:

AXIOS:

On Jan. 18, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar first briefed Trump on the threat of the virus in a phone call, the New York Times reports. Trump made his first public comments about the virus on Jan. 22, saying he was not concerned about a pandemic and that “we have it totally under control.”

NEW YORK TIMES:

…Even after Mr. Azar first briefed him about the potential seriousness of the virus during a phone call on Jan. 18 while the president was at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, Mr. Trump projected confidence that it would be a passing problem.

“We have it totally under control,” he told an interviewer a few days later while attending the World Economic Forum in Switzerland. “It’s going to be just fine.”…

(NEW YORK TIMES)

Now, much like the Left’s favorite thing to do, they take Trump out of context and use this false context to create a straw man and then bludgeon it. Why did Trump say it was going to be fine? Because, according to the WALL STREET JOURNAL, Alex Azar “oversold his agency’s progress in the early days and didn’t coordinate effectively across the health-care divisions under his purview.” Trump could only report what Alex told him on the 18th.

But this January 18th discussion is not proven to have even taken place, all we have again are unnamed sources: Azar told several associates that Trump thought his warnings were ‘alarmist’, according to The Washington Post” (DAILY MAIL). And again, NEWSMAX discusses that WALL STREET JOURNAL article, saying:

Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar waited weeks to brief President Donald Trump on the coronavirus threat and oversold the progress of developing an effective test for the virus, The Wall Street Journal is reporting.

The newspaper said that as of Jan. 29, Azar had assured Trump the coronavirus outbreak was under control. And during the meeting with Trump, Azar said the government had never mounted a better interagency response to a crisis.

But that isn’t the only story to the story. I do not think this even reported by anonymous sources actually happened. The same people that wrongly reported using anonymous sources are now the same people using anonymous sources.

News media figures advancing “Trump-Russia collusion” narratives are now spreading misinformation about President Donald Trump and the coronavirus outbreak as part of a “permanent coup,” […..]

The Washington Post, citing anonymous sources, recently alleged that Trump was issued repeated warnings about the coronavirus through a dozen classified daily briefings between January and February.

“An article in the Washington Post … said that in [his] presidential daily briefings, Trump repeatedly ignored warnings of the coronavirus,” Smith recalled. Acting DNI Richard Grenell tweeted at the authors of this piece. [He] said. ‘That’s not true. We told you this is not true, and yet you only included our denial in the ninth paragraph.’”

Smith continued, “So these two Washington Post journalists were a core Russiagate conspiracy team. Again, unfortunately, we’re seeing the same thing unfold again and again, and that’s why the title of the book is The Permanent Coup.”…

(BREITBART)

And the LEGAL INSURRECTION does a bang-up job on the same subject:

According to the Washington Post, the president’s classified daily briefings included “warnings about the novel coronavirus in more than a dozen classified briefings prepared for President Trump in January and February, months during which he continued to play down the threat.”

The unnamed sources were foregrounded, while an actual named source refuting the claim was not mentioned until paragraph eight:

A White House spokesman disputed the characterization that Trump was slow to respond to the virus threat. “President Trump rose to fight this crisis head-on by taking early, aggressive historic action to protect the health, wealth and well-being of the American people,” said spokesman Hogan Gidley. “We will get through this difficult time and defeat this virus because of his decisive leadership.”

As if that’s not bad enough, it’s only in the ninth paragraph that WaPo gets around to noting that the suggestion the president ignored his presidential daily briefing (PDB) has been denied by the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), the office responsible for the PDB.

  • The Office of the Director of National Intelligence is responsible for the PDB. In response to questions about the repeated mentions of coronavirus, a DNI official said, “The detail of this is not true.” The official declined to explain or elaborate.

So WaPo contacted the DNI about claims the president ignored Wuhan coronavirus warnings in Jan/Feb PDB’s, and the DNI responded that the “detail of this is not true.” What do they need to explain here?  Maybe WaPo needs to provide its list of questions so that we can make that determination ourselves?  I’m pretty sure the context would greatly improve our understanding of the DNI response… and undermine the WaPo smear, thus the absence of said context.

It’s not actually clear what the point of the WaPo article is except to smear the president with the false implication that his administration ignored the Wuhan coronavirus until March.  This smear is completely and demonstrably false.

Of course, the mindless, anti-Trump stenographers who make up the legacy and leftstream media “covered” the questionable story, all linking to this flimsy WaPo hit piece that provides no evidence to support—and that actually refutes—its own claim.

  • Business Insider: “Trump’s daily briefings warned about COVID-19 at least a dozen times before the US outbreak, but he ‘failed to register’ the threat”
  • CNN: “The intelligence community did its job, but Trump didn’t do his”
  • MSN: “Trump reportedly ignored intel briefings on coronavirus threat”
  • NYMag: “Trump Informed of Coronavirus Threat in January in Briefings He’s Known Not to Read: Report”
  • CNN (again): “Washington Post: US intelligence warned Trump in January and February as he dismissed coronavirus threat”

Setting aside for the moment the fact that a global pandemic of this sort is new to everyone in the world and that no one, including top virologists, has answers, keep in mind that the first U.S. death from Wuhan coronavirus was reported on February 29th in Seattle.

What was Trump doing about the Wuhan coronavirus in January and February when he was supposedly ignoring the potential crisis?

Oh, right, setting up a coronavirus task force and issuing travel restrictions on China, well before the first U.S. death occurred.  How did he know to take these actions if he was ignoring his daily briefings?  Weird, right?…

(READ THE REST – EXCELLENT POST – it includes a timeline as well)

Mollie Hemingway says it best:

Hemingway began by noting that the “Russia narrative” predates the Mueller probe, having begun circulating during the 2016 election after the creation of the infamous Clinton campaign-funded Steele dossier, which pushed the theory that then-Republican candidate Donald Trump was a “Russian agent.”

“We have, for the last three years … frequently [witnessed] hysteria about treasonous collusion with Russia to steal the 2016 election,” Hemingway told the panel. “The fact [is] that there are no more indictments coming and the fact [is] that all of the indictments that we’ve seen thus far have been for process crimes or things unrelated to what we were told by so many people in the media was ‘treasonous collusion’ to steal the 2016 election.”

“If there is nothing there that matches what we’ve heard from the media for many years, there needs to be a reckoning and the people who spread this theory both inside and outside the government who were not critical and who did not behave appropriately need to be held accountable,” she added.

THE FEDERALIST has a printing of the HHS timeline for January that shows that the propositions made by these Leftist newspapers are not revealing the whole timeline to their readers:

…The Wall Street Journal should do a lot better; they asked Azar for the truth. He gave it to them. They chose not to report it. For those who want to know, here is HHS’s offical timeline of what happened in January:

December 31: CDC, including Director Robert Redfield, learns of a “cluster of 27 cases of pneumonia of unknown etiology” reported in Wuhan, China.
January 1: CDC begins developing situation reports, which are shared with HHS.
January 3: Director Redfield emails and speaks on the phone with Dr. George Gao, Director of the China Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
January 3: Director Redfield speaks with Secretary Azar, and HHS notifies the National Security Council (NSC).
January 4: Director Redfield emails Dr. Gao again and offers CDC assistance, stating, “I would like to offer CDC technical experts in laboratory and epidemiology of respiratory infectious diseases to assist you and China CDC in identification of this unknown and possibly novel pathogen.”
January 6: At the request of Secretary Azar, Director Redfield sends formal letter to China CDC offering full CDC assistance.
January 6: CDC issues a Level 1 Travel Watch for China.
January 6: National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Director Anthony Fauci begins doing interviews on the outbreak.
January 7: CDC establishes a 2019 nCoV Incident Management Structure to prepare for potential U.S. cases and to support the investigation in China or other countries, if requested.
January 8: CDC distributes an advisory via the Health Alert Network, which communicates to state and local public health partners, alerting healthcare workers and public health partners of the outbreak.
January 9: CDC and FDA begin collaborating on a diagnostic test for the novel coronavirus.
January 10: China shares viral sequence, allowing NIH scientists to begin work on a vaccine that evening.

JANUARY 11: FIRST DEATH REPORTED IN CHINA
JANUARY 13: 41 CASES IN CHINA, FIRST CASE REPORTED OUTSIDE CHINA

January 13: NIH shares their vaccine sequence with a pharmaceutical manufacturer.
January 14: The National Security Council begins daily Novel Coronavirus Policy Coordination Council meetings.
January 14: WHO tweets: “Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel #coronavirus (2019-nCoV) identified in #Wuhan, #China.”
January 17: CDC and Customs and Border Protection began enhanced screening of travelers from Wuhan at three airports that receive significant numbers of travelers from that city, expanded in the following week to five airports, covering 75–80 percent of Wuhan travel.
January 17: CDC hosts its first tele-briefing on the virus, with Dr. Nancy Messonnier, Director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, who emphasizes “this is a serious situation” and “we know [from the experience of SARS and MERS that] it’s crucial to be proactive and prepared.”
January 17: CDC posts interim guidance, updated regularly in the coming weeks and months, for collecting, handling, and testing clinical specimens for the novel coronavirus, includingbiosafety guidelines for laboratories.
January 18: CDC publishes interim guidance on how to care for novel coronavirus patients at home who do not require hospitalization.
January 20: The Chinese government confirms human-to-human transmission of the virus.

JANUARY 21: FIRST U.S. CASE CONFIRMED (FROM TRAVEL)[1]

January 21: CDC activates its Emergency Operations Center.
January 21: The Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA, part of the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response, or ASPR) begins holding market research calls with industry leading diagnostics companies to gauge their interest in developing diagnostics for the novel coronavirus and to encourage initiating development activities.
January 21: CDC holds its second tele-briefing on the virus, with officials from Washington State, to discuss the first U.S. case, and Dr. Messonnier, who notes “CDC has been proactively preparing for an introduction of the virus here” and that a CDC team was deployed to Washington.
January 21: CDC posts interim guidance, updated regularly in the coming months, on how to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus in homes and other settings.
January 21: Secretary Azar discusses coronavirus with Lou Dobbs on Fox Business Network, noting “we have been heavily engaged at the outset” of the outbreak, with the CDC and the rest of HHS working under the President’s direction to develop testing and alert healthcare providers.
January 22: Secretary Azar signs a memorandum from CDC Director Redfield determining that the novel coronavirus could imminently become an infectious disease emergency, which allows HHS to send a request to the Office of Management and Budget to access $105 million from the Infectious Disease Rapid Response Reserve Fund.
January 22: FDA, working with test developers, shares an authorization application template with a diagnostic test developer for the first time.
January 22: ASPR stands up an interagency diagnostics working group with BARDA, CDC, FDA, NIH, and the Department of Defense (DOD).
January 22: HHS’s Office of Refugee Resettlement began flagging any children referred from China for risk assessments and, if indicated by their travel and exposure history, for quarantine for up to 14 days before being placed in the general community of the shelter. Screenings expanded to children referred from Iran, Italy, Japan and South Korea on March 2.

JANUARY 22: ALL OUTBOUND TRAINS AND FLIGHTS FROM WUHAN CANCELED

January 23: ASPR convenes a Disaster Leadership Group (DLG), to align government-wide partners regarding the outbreak situation, communications strategies, and the potential medical countermeasure pipeline. The same week, conversations begin with manufacturers of N95 masks, enabling mask production on U.S. soil to rise from about 250 million a year in January to about 640 million a year in March.
January 24: ASPR forms three government-wide task forces—on healthcare system capacity and resilience, development of medical countermeasures (diagnostics, therapeutics, and vaccines), and supply chains—as part of work under Emergency Support Function 8 of the National Response Framework.
January 24: CDC hosts its third tele-briefing on the virus, with Dr. Nancy Messonnier and officials from Illinois, where CDC has deployed a team to respond to the second U.S. case, from travel. Dr. Messonnier notes, “We are expecting more cases in the U.S., and we are likely going to see some cases among close contacts of travelers and human to human transmission.”
January 24: CDC publicly posts its assay for the novel coronavirus, allowing the global community to develop their own assays using the CDC design.
January 25: Five days before WHO’s declaration of a public health emergency of international concern, Secretary Azar preemptively notifies Congress of his intent to use $105 million from the Infectious Disease Rapid Response Reserve Fund.

JANUARY 26: FIVE U.S. CASES CONFIRMED, ALL TRAVEL-RELATED

January 26: ASPR holds first meetings of healthcare resilience, medical countermeasure development, and supply chain task forces, which continue several times a week or daily in the coming weeks.
January 27: In a Washington, D.C., speech, Secretary Azar shares that HHS is “proactively preparing for the arrival of the novel coronavirus on our shores,” noting that “the novel coronavirus is a rapidly changing situation, and we are still learning about the virus.” “While the virus poses a serious public health threat, the immediate risk to Americans is low at this time,” Azar says, noting that he spoke on the morning of January 27 with China’s Minister of Health and WHO Director-General Tedros speak to discuss the novel coronavirus.
January 27: CDC hosts a tele-briefing with Dr. Nancy Messonnier, who notes that new travel recommendations are coming and that “there may be some disruptions” to Americans’ lives as a result of the public health response, but that “this virus is not spreading in the community” in the U.S.
January 27: CDC and State Department issue Level 3 “postpone or reconsider travel” warnings for all of China.
January 27: FDA begins providing updates about processes for approval and authorization to developers of vaccines, therapeutics, diagnostics, and other countermeasures for the novel coronavirus.
January 27: CDC’s Deputy Director for Infectious Diseases, Jay Butler, holds a call with the nation’s governors on the novel coronavirus.
January 28: HHS hosts press briefing by Secretary Azar, Dr. Fauci, Director Redfield, and Dr. Messonnier. Azar says, “Americans should know that this is a potentially very serious public health threat, but, at this point, Americans should not worry for their own safety.” He underscores, “This is a very fast moving, constantly changing situation…. Part of the risk we face right now is that we don’t yet know everything we need to know about this virus. But, I want to emphasize, that does not prevent us from preparing and responding.”
January 28: CDC posts interim guidance, updated regularly in the coming months, for airline crews regarding the novel coronavirus.
January 29: The White House announces the establishment of the Coronavirus Task Force, which begins daily meetings.
January 29: CDC hosts a tele-briefing with Dr. Messonnier, who notes that “despite an aggressive public health investigation to find new cases [in the U.S.], we have not.”
January 29: CDC posts infection prevention and control recommendations for novel coronavirus patients in healthcare settings, updated regularly in the coming months.
January 29: The Chinese government sends email to HHS acknowledging offer of U.S. expert assistance; HHS begins soliciting nominees for mission from across the department.
January 29: ASPR, CDC, FDA, NIAID, and DOD host a listening session with industry—1,468 participants—on medical countermeasure development, health system preparedness, supply resilience, and medical surge needs.
January 29: The first repatriation flight from Wuhan, China arrives at March Air Reserve Base in California, beginning the safe repatriation of Americans and marking the first use of federal quarantine power in more than 50 years. The operation eventually totals more than 3,000 repatriations, with citizens from Wuhan and passengers from cruise ships. Repatriated Americans praise the work of the quarantine teams—including a couple who spent an extended honeymoon at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas.

JANUARY 30: SIXTH AND SEVENTH CASES CONFIRMED IN THE U.S., CLOSE CONTACTS OF TRAVEL-RELATED CASE

January 30: CDC hosts a tele-briefing with Director Redfield, Dr. Messonnier, and officials from Illinois, where a sixth case is identified, in a spouse of a confirmed case who had traveled to China. Director Redfield notes that most cases around the world outside of China are close contacts of travelers, and “the full picture of how easy and how sustainable this virus can spread is unclear.” (A seventh case is identified later that evening.)
January 30: Department of State issues Level 4 warning, “do not travel,” for all of mainland China.
January 30: The Trump Administration hosts a call with Secretary Azar, Director Redfield, Dr. Fauci, and others with the nation’s governors to present the Administration’s action plan on responding to the outbreak.
January 30: In an appearance on Fox News, Secretary Azar notes that, whether the WHO declares a public health emergency of international concern (declared January 31), “That doesn’t change anything about what we are doing here in the United States. … The President is ensuring that we are proactively preparing and also taking the necessary steps to prevent or mitigate any potential further spread here in the United States.”
January 30: Trump Administration budget officials begin discussions about funding needed for development of vaccines and therapeutics, purchases of Personal Protective Equipment for the Strategic National Stockpile, surveillance and testing, and state and local support.
January 30: ASPR launches a coronavirus portal to receive market research packages and meeting requests from industry stakeholders interested in developing or manufacturing medical countermeasures.
January 31: At the recommendation of his public health officials, President Trump issues historic restrictions on travel from Hubei and mainland China, effective February 2.
January 31: Secretary Azar signs a declaration of a nationwide Public Health Emergency, which allowed HHS to begin using a range of emergency authorities and flexibilities, and, together with other subsequent declarations, would allow emergency flexibilities for healthcare providers. At a White House briefing, he notes, “The risk of infection for Americans remains low, and with these and our previous actions, we are working to keep the risk low. It is likely that we will continue to see more cases in the United States in the coming days and weeks, including some limited person-to-person transmission.”
January 31: CDC hosts a tele-briefing with Dr. Messonnier, who notes possible reports of asymptomatic transmission and says, “We are preparing as if this were the next pandemic, but we are hopeful still that this is not and will not be the case.”
January 31: FDA holds a virtual meeting with American Clinical Laboratory Association about the emergency use authorization application process.

Yes, Trump acted as soon as the news of the virus was available. And as we know from the results, stringency of lockdowns did not translate into how many deadly infections there were:

(Click Graphic To Enlarge)


While not a gauge of whether the decisions taken were the right ones, nor of how strictly they were followed, the analysis gives a clear sense of each government’s strategy for containing the virus. Some — above all Italy and Spain — enforced prolonged and strict lockdowns after infections took off. Others — especially Sweden — preferred a much more relaxed approach. Portugal and Greece chose to close down while cases were relatively low. France and the U.K. took longer before deciding to impose the most restrictive measures.

But, as our next chart shows, there’s little correlation between the severity of a nation’s restrictions and whether it managed to curb excess fatalities — a measure that looks at the overall number of deaths compared with normal trends.

(BLOOMBERG)

Pelosi’s Legacy | UPDATED

Published by Papa Giorgio

UPDATED BELOW…

(More at NOQ REPORT)

UPDATE

As an UPDATE… she was planning this all along… it wasn’t like “my emotions got the best of me.” No, she premeditated the act.:

(More at the NEW YORK POST)

JONATHAN TURLEY writes on his website about the tradition Nancy trampled on:

…Forty-four years ago, I walked on to the floor of the House of Representatives as a new Democratic 15-year-old page from Chicago.  I stood and marveled at the beehive of activity on the floor in the People’s House. I can still remember that moment because it forged a bond and reverence that has never weakened for me.  As a Democratic leadership page during the speakership of Tip O’Neill, I watched some of the most passionate and important debates of the generation from the Neutron Bomb to civil rights legislation to sweeping national park bills.  The country was deeply divided, but both parties maintained the tradition of civility and decorum.  I was struck how members, even in the heat of furious debates, would not attack each other by name and followed rigid principles of decorum. They understood that they were the custodians of this institution and bore a duty to strengthen and pass along those traditions to the next generation.

That is why I was (and remain) so offended by this display. I believe that President Trump himself is worthy of criticism for not shaking the hand of Pelosi. I also did not approve of aspects of his speech, including bestowing the Medal of Freedom on Rush Limbaugh in the gallery like a reality show surprise scene. There was much to object to in the address, but presidents often make comments that enrage or irritate speakers.

However, none of that excuses Pelosi. At that moment, she represents the House as an institution — both Republicans and Democrats. Instead, she decided to become little more than a partisan troll from an elevated position. The protests of the Democratic members also reached a new low for the House. Pelosi did not gavel out the protest. She seemed to join it.

It was the tradition of the House that a speaker must remain in stone-faced neutrality no matter what comes off that podium. The tradition ended last night with one of the more shameful and inglorious moments of the House in its history. Rather than wait until she left the floor, she decided to demonstrate against the President as part of the State of the Union and from the Speaker’s chair. That made it a statement not of Pelosi but of the House.

For those of us who truly love the House as an institution, it was one of the lowest moments to unfold on the floor….

And from THE HILL, Turley notes,

…The House has its share of infamies, great and small, real and symbolic, and has been the scene of personal infamies from brawls to canings. But the conduct of Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) at the State of the Union address this week will go down as a day of infamy for the chamber as an institution. It has long been a tradition for House Speakers to remain stoic and neutral in listening to the address. However, Pelosi seemed to be intent on mocking President Trump from behind his back with sophomoric facial grimaces and head shaking, culminating in her ripping up a copy of his address.

Her drop the mic moment will have a lasting impact on the House. While many will celebrate her trolling of the president, she tore up something far more important than a speech. Pelosi has shredded decades of tradition, decorum and civility that the nation could use now more than ever. The House Speaker is more than a political partisan, particularly when carrying out functions such as the State of the Union address. A president appears in the House as a guest of both chambers of Congress. The House Speaker represents not her party or herself but the entirety of the chamber. At that moment, she must transcend her own political ambitions and loyalties.

Tensions for this address were high. The House impeachment managers sat as a group in front of the president as a reminder of the ongoing trial. That can be excused as a silent but pointed message from the Democrats. Trump hardly covered himself with glory by not shaking hands with Pelosi. I also strongly disliked elements of his address which bordered on “check under your seat” moments, and the awarding of conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh with the Presidential Medal of Freedom inside the House gallery like a Mardi Gras bead toss. However, if Trump made the State of the Union look like Oprah, then Pelosi made it look like Jerry Springer.

What followed was an utter disgrace. First, Pelosi dropped the traditional greeting before the start of the address, “Members of Congress, I have the high privilege and distinct honor of presenting to you the president of the United States.” Instead, she simply announced, “Members of Congress, the president of the United States.” It was extremely petty and profoundly inappropriate. Putting aside the fact that this is not her tradition, but that of the House, it is no excuse to note that the president was impeached.

Such an indignity was not imposed on President Clinton during his own impeachment proceeding, and anyone respecting due process would note that Trump has been accused, not convicted, at this point in the constitutional process. Pelosi proceeded to repeatedly shake her head, mouth words to others, and visibly disagree with the address. It was like some distempered distracting performance art behind the president.

My revulsion over this has nothing to do with impeachment. Ten years ago, I wrote a column denouncing Supreme Court Associate Justice Samuel Alito for mouthing the words “not true” when President Obama used his address to criticize the court for its decision in the Citizens United case. I considered his response to be a disgrace and wrote a column criticizing Chief Justice John Roberts for not publicly chastising Alito for breach of tradition. Instead, Roberts seemed to defend Alito in criticizing Obama for his “very troubling” language and saying that it was unfair to criticize the court when the justices, “according to the requirements of protocol,” have “to sit there expressionless.” That was not unfair. That was being judicious.

[….]

Pelosi has demolished decades of tradition with this poorly considered moment. Of course, many will celebrate her conduct and be thrilled by the insult to Trump. However, even those of us who disagree with his policies should consider what Pelosi destroyed in her moment of rage. She shredded the pretense of governing with civility and dignity in the House. Notably, she did not wait to rip up her copy of the speech until after she left the House floor. Pelosi wanted to do it at the end of the speech, in front of the camera, with the president still in the chamber.

That act was more important to Pelosi than preserving the tradition of her office. In doing so, she forfeited the right to occupy that office. If Pelosi cannot maintain the dignity and neutrality of her office at the State of the Union, she should resign as the Speaker of the House of Representatives.

 

Some More Impeachment Embarrassment for Democrats

Published by Papa Giorgio

MOST IMPORTANT to keep in mind as the viewer is immersed in this implosion of Democratic narratives:

…The far-left Washington Post hid a bombshell under the anodyne headline “Americans are split on impeachment, just like they were before the public hearings”–  except, yeah, in the only states that matter, they are actually not split…

Buried under six paragraphs, we learn that, in almost all of the 2020 swing states, a majority oppose this hoax impeachment by a clear margin of 51 to 44 percent: [emphasis added throughout]

Battleground state polls show a more negative reaction to the impeachment inquiry, signaling more risk to Democrats and potential benefit for Trump. An average of 44 percent supported impeachment, with 51 percent opposed, averaging across a dozen October and November polls in Arizona, Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina and Wisconsin. That’s a flip from an average of national polls that finds support for impeachment narrowly edging opposition, 47 percent to 43 percent.

And this is not the first poll that shows impeachment backfiring in the only places that will matter next year.

The depressed support for impeachment in key states was first signaled by a series of New York Times-Siena College polls conducted in mid-October, which found between 51 and 53 percent opposing impeachment in Arizona, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Let’s not forget that Wisconsin poll that shows 53 percent oppose impeachment, while only 40 percent disagree.

Even the best news for Democrats is bad news. These so-called impeachment hearings, even as rigged as they were by Democrats, even as hyped and supported as they were by the fake news media, did nothing to move the needle. Oh…

(CLARION NEWS)

First up to bat here… Doug Collins’ opening Statement (his closing statement is good as well):

Matt Gaetz, whom PJ-MEDIA says “brought a blow torch to the impeachment hearings and set a glorious bonfire“:

WEASEL ZIPPERS notes the “objectivity” (videos) — and PJ-MEDIA laid down the law with this chicks Congressional statements:

…She even peddled the nonsense in a published law review article. Karlan falsely wrote, “For five of the eight years of the Bush Administration, [they] brought no Voting Rights Act cases of its own except for one case protecting white voters.”

Karlan’s sleight of hand might be interesting… if it were true. Sadly, for her credibility, it is demonstrably false, and she has never once corrected her false scholarship. Her fellow travelers never mention her falsehood and instead praise and elevate her, still.

This is demonstrably false; any visit to the DOJ website demonstrates this. Karlan says the Voting Section brought no cases to protect minorities under the Voting Rights Act in five of eight years — let’s look at the record:

2001 (1 of 1)

2002 (2 of 2)

2003 (3 of 3)

2004 (3 of 4)

  • No Section 2 case.

2005 (4 of 5)

2006 (5 of 6)

2007 (6 of 7)

2008 (7 of 8)

Even if Karlan were to claim she meant only “vote dilution cases” (commonly thought of as “redistricting” cases), she is still lying. Dilution cases were brought in four of the eight years, not three of the eight, as she falsely claims. In any event, it’s impossible to claim she only meant dilution cases: she made the bold, broad statement that the Bush DOJ “brought no Voting Rights Act cases of its own” in five of eight years. Taken literally, Karlan’s claim is especially false, as cases under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act were brought — as we see above — in every year except 2004.

Perhaps in 2004 the DOJ lawyers were too busy suing Ventura County (Calif.), Yakima County (Wash.), Suffolk County (N.Y.), San Diego County (Calif.) and San Benito County (Calif.) under Section 203 of the same Voting Rights Act that Karlan claims the Bush administration didn’t enforce in five of eight years….

Wow… she is a nutter and wrong on facts. Damn — good job Dems. But the other people the Democrats chose are not as bad… right? Wrong. GATEWAY PUNDIT notes the RADICAL nature of Noah Feldman:

…Noah Feldman, the first impeachment ‘witness’ the Dems rolled out on Wednesday not only called for Trump’s impeachment shortly after Trump was sworn in, he actually argued in a NY Times op-ed titled, “Why Shariah?” that Islamic Sharia law is more humane than US law.

Noah Feldman, a Harvard Law professor, bashed legal systems created by Western countries including the United States and argued Sharia law is more ‘just’ and ‘fair’ than the US Supreme Court.

Mr. Feldman actually believes that a medieval system of laws that chops off the hands of thieves, stones ‘adulterous women,’ blames the woman when she is raped by a man, publicly hangs and tosses homosexuals off of buildings, is more “progressive” and “humane” than Western laws.

“In fact, for most of its history, Islamic law offered the most liberal and humane legal principles available anywhere in the world. Today, when we invoke the harsh punishments prescribed by Shariah for a handful of offenses, we rarely acknowledge the high standards of proof necessary for their implementation,” Feldman argued.

Feldman also claimed that the West “needs Shariah and Islam.”…

JIHAD WATCH has some older article on this cat, here, and here for example. Another noteworthy questioning was by Ratliff:

Here is the FULL Republican counsel’s questioning of Turley: