Posted on 10/09/2019 10:16:39 AM PDT by ransomnote
Every Democratic traitor in DC knows where Pelosi works.
It’s a big white building on top of a hill.
They know they don’t know anything worth the cost of Metro fare.
And all of that was just the last crimes of an eight year long crime spree /unConstitutional Usurpation by an ineligible British subject/Kenyan national from Indonesia.
It’s more complicated than you think.
POTUS notifying democrats that he won’t be participating in their stupid fake impeachment game doesn’t seem like a crisis of any kind to me.
“Political “spies” in the CIA are not good and the FBI and CIA have lost some serious cred. They have proven that they will do anything to bring down a president whom they disagree with politically. Scary stuff since the FBI and CIA are not elected and have unlimited unchecked power.”
About half their hires were under Democratic minders.
I suspect the CIA hires from mainly leftist colleges.
If you have no real world skills from four years of leftist college education, but speak a foreign language very well, the CIA might be just the place for you.
Hannity, randomly tossing around terms like “civil liberties” and “separation of powers” without any apparent understanding of what they mean.
This is why there is a constitutional criss; Because one side defines anything as it serves them to do.
Abraham Lincoln told of a man who was tarred and feathered and ridden out of town on a rail. The man said that if it weren’t for the honor, he’d rather walk.
How little we know about what really goes on. Foolish us to think that this is a representative government; a Republic with an electoral process. All it takes is one rogue disgruntled government official in the FBI, the CIA, the Justice Dept, etc. to bring down a president and nullify an election. And there are probably hundreds if not thousands of people who disagree with the president. Maybe the founders never considered the possibility of one branch of government, this example is the Executive branch, turning on its own.
This is very bad if the person in the White House is a Republican or a Democrat.
The sad truth is that we all gave the government the authority to do this right after 9/11 and never considered the possibility that the near omnipotent power would be used against Americans. After all, we were promised that there would be checks and balances.
And also prevent fraudulently documented foreigners from voting.
THere is no crisis in the Public arena that I can see. Not even my lib friends are posting anything about all of this.
bump
The House has not voted for an impeachment inquiry nor an impeachment.
Period.
Opinion writer Paul Waldman is a moron.
so kicking back against a corrupted Fed.gov is a “constitutional crisis”? who knew!!
Sounds like the old Soviet state whimpering about dissent
I thought I would attempt to extract this PDF here, for the record.
See the original for all the notes and footnotes.
(Wasn’t easy. It came across with entire sentences and
paragraphs missing spaces between the words.)
Besides leaving out the copious notes, I’m sure I’ve made other errors.
Download/see the original here:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/PAC-Letter-10.08.2019.pdf
The Honorable Nancy Pelosi Speaker
House of Representatives Washington, D.C. 20515
The Honorable Eliot L. Engel Chairman
House Foreign Affairs Committee Washington, D.C. 20515
Dear Madam Speaker and Messrs. Chairmen:
The Honorable Adam B. Schiff Chairman
House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence
Washington, D.C. 20515
The Honorable Elijah E. Cummings Chairman
House Committee on Oversight and Reform Washington, D.C. 20515
THE WHITE HOUSE WASHINGTON
October 8, 2019
I write on behalf of President Donald J. Trump in response
to your numerous, legally unsupported demands made as part
of what you have labeled-contrary to the Constitution of the
United States and all past bipartisan precedent-as an
“impeachment inquiry.” As you know, you have designed and
implemented your inquiry in a manner that violates
fundamental fairness and constitutionally mandated due
process.
For example, you have denied the President the right to
cross-examine witnesses, to call witnesses, to receive
transcripts of testimony, to have access to evidence, to
have counsel present, and many other basic rights guaranteed
to all Americans. You have conducted your proceedings in
secret.
You have violated civil liberties and the separation of
powers by threatening Executive Branch officials, claiming
that you will seek to punish those who exercise fundamental
constitutional rights and prerogatives. All of this violates
the Constitution, the rule of law, and every past precedent.
Never before in our history has the House of Representatives
- under the control of either political party-taken the
American people down the dangerous path you seem determined
to pursue.
Put simply, you seek to overturn the results of the 2016
election and deprive the American people of the President
they have freely chosen. Many Democrats now apparently view
impeachment not only as a means to undo the democratic
results of the last election, but as a strategy to influence
the next election, which is barely more than a year away. As
one member of Congress explained, he is “concerned that if
we don’t impeach the President, he will get reelected.”
Your highly partisan and unconstitutional effort threatens
grave and lasting damage to our democratic institutions, to
our system of free elections, and to the American people.
Speaker Pelosi, and Chairmen Engel, Schiff, and Cummings
Page 2
For his part, President Trump took the unprecedented step of
providing the public transparency by declassifying and
releasing the record of his call with President Zelenskyy of
Ukraine.
The record clearly established that the call was completely
appropriate and that there is no basis for your inquiry. The
fact that there was nothing wrong with the call was also
powerfully confirmed by Chairman Schiffs decision to create
a false version of the call and read it to the American
people at a congressional hearing, without disclosing that
he was simply making it all up.
In addition, information has recently come to light that the
whistleblower had contact with Chairman Schiffs office
before filing the complaint. His initial denial of such
contact caused The Washington Post to conclude that Chairman
Schiff ‘clearly made a statement that was false.”
In any event, the American people understand that Chairman
Schiff cannot covertly assist with the submission of a
complaint, mislead the public about his involvement, read a
counterfeit version of the call to the American people, and
then pretend to sit in judgment as a neutral “investigator.”
For these reasons, President Trump and his Administration
reject your baseless, unconstitutional efforts to overturn
the democratic process. Your unprecedented actions have left
the President with no choice. In order to fulfill his duties
to the American people, the Constitution, the Executive
Branch, and all future occupants of the Office of the
Presidency, President Trump and his Administration cannot
participate in your partisan and unconstitutional inquiry
under these circumstances.
I. Your “Inquiry” Is Constitutionally Invalid and Violates
Basic Due Process Rights and the Separation of Powers.
Your inquiry is constitutionally invalid and a violation of
due process. In the history of our Nation, the House of
Representatives has never attempted to launch an impeachment
inquiry against the President without a majority of the
House taking political accountability for that decision by
voting to authorize such a dramatic constitutional step.
Here, House leadership claims to have initiated the gravest
inter-branch conflict contemplated under our Constitution by
means of nothing more than a press conference at which the
Speaker of the House simply announced an “official
impeachment inquiry.” Your contrived process is
unprecedented in the
Speaker Pelosi, and Chairmen Engel, Schiff, and Cummings
Page 3
history of the Nation, and lacks the necessary authorization
for a valid impeachment proceeding.
The Committees’ inquiry also suffers from a separate, fatal
defect. Despite Speaker Pelosi’s commitment to “treat the
President with fairness,” the Committees have not
established any procedures affording the President even the
most basic protections demanded by due process under the
Constitution and by fundamental fairness.
Chairman Nadler of the House Judiciary Committee has
expressly acknowledged, at least when the President was a
member of his own party, that “[t]he power of impeachment
... demands a rigorous level of due process,” and that in
this context “due process mean[s] ... the right to be
informed of the law, of the charges against you, the right
to confront the witnesses against you, to call your own
witnesses, and to have the assistance of counsel.”
All of these procedures have been abandoned here.
These due process rights are not a matter of discretion for
the Committees to dispense with at will. To the contrary,
they are constitutional requirements. The Supreme Court has
recognized that due process protections apply to all
congressional investigations. Indeed, it has been recognized
that the Due Process Clause applies to impeachment
proceedings. And precedent for the rights to cross-examine
witnesses, call witnesses, and present evidence dates back
nearly 150 years.
Yet the Committees have decided to deny the President these
elementary rights and protections that form the basis of the
American justice system and are protected by the
Constitution.
No citizen-including the President-should be treated this
unfairly.
Since the Founding of the Republic, under unbroken practice,
the House has never undertaken the solemn responsibility of
an impeachment inquiry directed at the President without
first adopting a resolution authorizing a committee to begin
the inquiry. The inquiries into the impeachments of
Presidents Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton proceeded in
multiple phases, each authorized by a separate House
resolution.
The House then satisfied that requirement by adopting H.R.
Res. 803, 93rd Cong. (1974), Chairman Nadler has recognized
the importance of taking a vote in the House before
beginning a presidential impeachment inquiry. At the outset
of the Clinton impeachment inquiry-where a floor vote was
held-he argued that even limiting the time for debate before
that vote was improper and that “an hour debate on this
momentous decision is an insult to the American people and
another sign that this is not going to be fair.”
Speaker Pelosi, and Chairmen Engel, Schiff, and Cummings
Page4
To comply with the Constitution’s demands, appropriate
procedures would include-at a minimum-the right to see all
evidence, to present evidence, to call witnesses, to have
counsel present at all hearings, to cross-examine all
witnesses, to make objections relating to the examination of
witnesses or the admissibility of testimony and evidence,
and to respond to evidence and testimony.
Likewise, the Committees must provide for the disclosure of
all evidence favorable to the President and all evidence
bearing on the credibility of witnesses called to testify in
the inquiry. The Committees’ current procedures provide none
of these basic constitutional rights.
In addition, the House has not provided the Committees’
Ranking Members with the authority to issue subpoenas. The
right of the minority to issue subpoenas-subject to the same
rules as the majority-has been the standard, bipartisan
practice in all recent resolutions authorizing presidential
impeachment inquiries.
The House’s failure to provide co-equal subpoena power in
this case ensures that any inquiry will be nothing more than
a one-sided effort by House Democrats to gather information
favorable to their views and to selectively release it as
only they determine. The House’s utter disregard for the
established procedural safeguards followed in past
impeachment inquiries shows that the current proceedings are
nothing more than an unconstitutional exercise in political
theater.
As if denying the President basic procedural protections
were not enough, the Committees have also resorted to
threats and intimidation against potential Executive Branch
witnesses. Threats by the Committees against Executive
Branch witnesses who assert common and longstanding rights
destroy the integrity of the process and brazenly violate
fundamental due process.
In letters to State Department employees, the Committees
have ominously threatened without any legal basis and before
the Committees even issued a subpoena-that “[a]ny failure to
appear” in response to a mere letter request for a
deposition “shall constitute evidence of obstruction.”
Worse, the Committees have broadly threatened that if State
Department officials attempt to insist upon the right for
the Department to have an agency lawyer present at
depositions to protect legitimate Executive Branch
confidentiality interests-or apparently if they make any
effort to protect those confidentiality interests at all-
these officials will have their salaries withheld.
The suggestion that it would somehow be problematic for
anyone to raise long established Executive Branch
confidentiality interests and privileges in response to a
request for a deposition is legally unfounded. Not
surprisingly, the Office of Legal Counsel at the Department
of Justice has made clear on multiple occasions that
employees of the Executive Branch who have been instructed
not to appear or not to provide particular testimony before
Congress based on privileges or immunities of the Executive
Branch cannot be punished for
Speaker Pelosi, and Chairmen Engel, Schiff, and Cummings
Page 5
following such instructions.
Current and former State Department officials are duty bound
to protect the confidentiality interests of the Executive
Branch, and the Office of Legal Counsel has also recognized
that it is unconstitutional to exclude agency counsel from
participating in congressional depositions.
In addition, any attempt to withhold an official’s salary
for the assertion of such interests would be unprecedented
and unconstitutional.
The Committees’ assertions on these points amount to nothing
more than strong-arm tactics designed to rush proceedings
without any regard for due process and the rights of
individuals and of the Executive Branch. Threats aimed at
intimidating individuals who assert these basic rights are
attacks on civil liberties that should profoundly concern
all Americans.
II. The Invalid “Impeachment Inquiry” Plainly Seeks To
Reverse the Election of 2016 and To Influence the Election
of 2020.
The effort to impeach President Trump —— without regard to
any evidence of his actions in office is a naked political
strategy that began the day he was inaugurated, and perhaps
even before.
In fact, your transparent rush to judgment, lack of
democratically accountable authorization, and violation of
basic rights in the current proceedings make clear the
illegitimate, partisan purpose of this purported
“impeachment inquiry.”
The Founders, however, did not create the extraordinary
mechanism of impeachment so it could be used by a political
party that feared for its prospects against the sitting
President in the next election. The decision as to who will
be elected President in 2020 should rest with the people of
the United States, exactly where the Constitution places it.
Democrats themselves used to recognize the dire implications
of impeachment for the Nation. For example, in the past,
Chairman Nadler has explained:
The effect of impeachment is to overturn the popular will of
the voters. We must not overturn an election and remove a
President from office except to defend our system of
government or our constitutional liberties against a dire
threat, and we must not do so without an overwhelming
consensus of the American people. There must never be a
narrowly voted impeachment or an impeachment supported by
one of our major political parties and opposed by another.
Such an impeachment will produce divisiveness and bitterness
in our
Speaker Pelosi, and Chairmen Engel, Schiff, and Cummings
Page 6
politics for years to come, and will call into question the
very legitimacy of our political institutions.
Unfortunately, the President’s political opponents now seem
eager to transform impeachment from an extraordinary remedy
that should rarely be contemplated into a conventional
political weapon to be deployed for partisan gain. These
actions are a far cry from what our Founders envisioned when
they vested Congress with the “important trust” of
considering impeachment.
Precisely because it nullifies the outcome of the democratic
process, impeachment of the President is fraught with the
risk of deepening divisions in the country and creating
long-lasting rifts in the body politic.
Unfortunately, you are now playing out exactly the partisan
rush to judgment that the Founders so strongly warned
against. The American people deserve much better than this.
III. There Is No Legitimate Basis for Your “Impeachment
Inquiry”; Instead, the Committees’ Actions Raise Serious
Questions.
It is transparent that you have resorted to such
unprecedented and unconstitutional procedures because you
know that a fair process would expose the lack of any basis
for your inquiry. Your current effort is founded on a
completely appropriate call on July 25, 2019, between
President Trump and President Zelenskyy of Ukraine.
Without waiting to see what was actually said on the call, a
press conference was held announcing an “impeachment
inquiry” based on falsehoods and misinformation about the
call.
To rebut those falsehoods, and to provide transparency to
the American people, President Trump secured agreement from
the Government of Ukraine and took the extraordinary step of
declassifying and publicly releasing the record of the call.
That record clearly established that the call was completely
appropriate, that the President did nothing wrong, and that
there is no basis for an impeachment inquiry.
At a joint press conference shortly after the call’s public
release, President Zelenskyy agreed that the call was
appropriate. In addition, the Department of Justice
announced that officials there had reviewed the call after a
referral for an alleged campaign finance law violation and
found no such violation.
Perhaps the best evidence that there was no wrongdoing on
the call is the fact that, after the actual record of the
call was released, Chairman Schiff chose to concoct a false
version of the call and to read his made-up transcript to
the American people at a public hearing.
Speaker Pelosi, and Chairmen Engel, Schiff, and Cummings
Page 7
powerfully confirms there is no issue with the actual call.
Otherwise, why would Chairman Schiff feel the need to make
up his own version? The Chairman’s action only further
undermines the public’s confidence in the fairness of any
inquiry before his Committee.
The real problem, as we are now learning, is that Chairman
Schiffs office, and perhaps others-despite initial denials-
were involved in advising the whistleblower before the
complaint was filed.
Initially, when asked on national television about
interactions with the whistleblower, Chairman Schiff
unequivocally stated that “[w]e have not spoken directly
with the whistleblower. We would like to.”
Now, however, it has been reported that the whistleblower
approached the House Intelligence Committee with
information-and received guidance from the Committee-before
filing a complaint with the Inspector General.
As a result,The Washington Post concluded that Chairman
Schiff “clearly made a statement that was false.” Anyone
who was involved in the preparation or submission of the
whistleblower’s complaint cannot possibly act as a fair and
impartial judge in the same matter-particularly after
misleading the American people about his involvement.
All of this raises serious questions that must be
investigated. However, the Committees are preventing anyone,
including the minority, from looking into these critically
important matters. At the very least, Chairman Schiff must
immediately make available all documents relating to these
issues. After all, the American people have a right to know
about the Committees’ own actions with respect to these
matters.
***
Given that your inquiry lacks any legitimate constitutional
foundation, any pretense of fairness, or even the most
elementary due process protections, the Executive Branch
cannot be expected to participate in it. Because
participating in this inquiry under the current
unconstitutional posture would inflict lasting institutional
harm on the Executive Branch and lasting damage to the
separation of powers, you have left the President no choice.
Consistent with the duties of the President of the United
States, and in particular his obligation to preserve the
rights of future occupants of his office, President Trump
cannot permit his Administration to participate in this
partisan inquiry under these circumstances.
Your recent letter to the Acting White House Chief of Staff
argues that “[e]ven if an impeachment inquiry were not
underway,” the Oversight Committee may seek this information
Speaker Pelosi, and Chairmen Engel, Schiff, and Cummings
Page 8
as a matter of the established oversight process.
Respectfully, the Committees cannot have it both ways.
The letter comes from the Chairmen of three different
Committees, it transmits a subpoena “[p]ursuant to the House
of Representatives’ impeachment inquiry,” it recites that
the documents will “be collected as part of the House’s
impeachment inquiry,” and it asserts that the documents will
be “shared among the Committees, as well as with the
Committee on the Judiciary as appropriate.”
The letter is in no way directed at collecting information
in aid of legislation, and you simply cannot expect to rely
on oversight authority to gather information for an
unauthorized impeachment inquiry that conflicts with all
historical precedent and rides roughshod over due process
and the separation of powers.
If the Committees wish to return to the regular order of
oversight requests, we stand ready to engage in that process
as we have in the past, in a manner consistent with well-
established bipartisan constitutional protections and a
respect for the separation of powers enshrined in our
Constitution.
For the foregoing reasons, the President cannot allow your
constitutionally illegitimate proceedings to distract him
and those in the Executive Branch from their work on behalf
of the American people.
The President has a country to lead. The American people
elected him to do this job, and he remains focused on
fulfilling his promises to the American people. He has
important work that he must continue on their behalf, both
at home and around the world, including continuing strong
economic growth, extending historically low levels of
unemployment, negotiating trade deals, fixing our broken
immigration system, lowering prescription drug prices, and
addressing mass shooting violence.
We hope that, in light of the many deficiencies we have
identified in your proceedings, you will abandon the current
invalid efforts to pursue an impeachment inquiry and join
the President in focusing on the many important goals that
matter to the American people.
Sincerely,
Pat A. Cipollone
Counsel to the President
cc:
Hon. Kevin McCarthy, Minority Leader, House of Representatives
Hon. Michael McCaul, Ranking Member, House Committee on Foreign Affairs
Hon. Devin Nunes, Ranking Member, House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence
Hon. Jim Jordan, Ranking Member, House Committee on Oversight and Reform
https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/PAC-Letter-10.08.2019.pdf
Great letter! No wonder the presstitutes are keeping it from the People.
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