Free Republic

Things are more fluid than they seem. That’s my impression of Washington right now. There’s something quiet going on, a mood shift. Impeachment of course will happen. The House will support whatever charges are ultimately introduced because most Democrats think the president is not fully sane and at least somewhat criminal. Also they’re Democrats and he’s a Republican. The charges will involve some level of foreign-policy malfeasance. The ultimate outcome depends on the Senate. It takes 67 votes to convict. Republicans control the Senate 53-47, and it is unlikely 20 of them will agree to remove a president of their...

House Republicans are calling for the committee chairpersons overseeing the impeachment inquiry to release the guidelines and regulations under which depositions and transcriptions of testimony are being conducted. “We write to demand the release of the rules that are governing the depositions and transcribed interviews being conducted by the joint action of your three committees,” nearly 80 GOP lawmakers said in their Friday letter to House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) and Oversight and Reform Committee acting Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) "The secrecy in which these depositions and interviews are being conducted,...

President Trump won’t budge: He refuses to comply with demands for information because the House has not formally voted to conduct an impeachment inquiry. House Democrats won’t budge: Speaker Nancy Pelosi says nothing requires the House to vote for an impeachment inquiry before conducting one. So who is right? They both are. We are an over-lawyered society that likes to see itself as governed by the rule of law. In truth, our fundamental law, the Constitution, is about the division of political authority — particularly between the Congress and the executive, the federal government’s political branches. The ultimate check on...

Everyone who already thought the case for President Trump’s impeachment was a slam-dunk went berserk Thursday, claiming that acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney had just admitted to a quid pro quo with Ukraine. Except that what Mulvaney “admitted” is that the administration was doing what it should — pushing a foreign government to cooperate in getting to the bottom of foreign interference in the 2016 campaign. Virtually every media outlet in America — certainly all those that jumped on Mulvaney’s remarks — has spent most of the last three years painting such foreign interference as the blackest...

Adam Schiff is at it again, tampering with witnesses. Yesterday, he got caught trying to shove words into a witness's mouth, to make him say things he didn't want to say. I wrote about that here.Today, he's doing something just as bad, getting together with other witnesses and working out a pre-coordinated story for the coming show trial. According to Breitbart News: Itinerary for a trip to Ukraine in August organized by the Atlantic Council think tank reveals that a staffer on Rep. Adam Schiff’s House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence held a meeting during the trip with acting U.S....

Schiff says committees will make impeachment inquiry transcripts public when it would not 'jeopardize investigative equities' House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said in a letter Wednesday that interview transcripts from closed-door impeachment inquiry depositions will be made public when they do not "jeopardize investigative equities." The Dear Colleague letter is designed to counter arguments from Republicans in both the White House and Congress that Democrats are conducting an invalid investigation, since their witness interviews are being held behind closed doors, outside the eyes of the public and lawmakers who don't sit on the three committees leading the investigations....

On Thursday at her weekly press briefing, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said the American people were “not going to decide” if President Donald Trump should be impeached. When asked about the impeachment timeline, Pelosi said, “I keep saying to people, impeachment is about the truth and the Constitution of the United States. Any other issues that you have, disapproving of the way the president has dealt with Syria, whatever the subject is, reluctance, the cowardice to do something about gun violence, the cruelty of not wanting to help our Dreamers and transgender people, the denial about the climate crisis...

I am lately struck by the similarities between the machinations that removed Nixon and what is going on now. We are all so indoctrinated about "Watergate" that we rarely remark on the oddity of a man who won 60% of the popular vote and >500 electoral votes being successfully subverted and eventually forced out by an alliance of the Deep State (CIA, FBI), the media, and especially the Congress. But it IS very odd that it happened, whatever we all may think now, we may all be missing the main story, and since the very same players (CIA, FBI), media,...

For those of you that missed Monday’s fireworks, Project Veritas actually got CNN President Jeff Zucker on audio. Here is a rundown from our friends at Right Wing Tribune: Newly leaked video from inside CNN shows that the network’s top leadership is telling staff to push President Trump’s impeachment. “BREAKING: New leaked video from inside CNN: President Jeff Zucker tells employees to push “impeachment” and that all of CNN’s stories should be about “moves towards impeachment” One of CNN’s employees says Zucker has a “personal vendetta against Trump” Reaction has been swift: “Obama’s CNN is being unmasked. Everything has to...

The White House is launching a new effort to slow the speeding Democratic impeachment push, but its noncooperation strategy is being constantly thwarted by a daily stream of explosive secrets being spilled behind closed doors on Capitol Hill. Current and former officials are painting an ever more damning picture of a wider than originally perceived scheme by President Donald Trump and his crew to pressure Ukraine that they warned could amount to a trampling of US law. Vice President Mike Pence launched a new effort Tuesday to bolster White House hopes of stalling the House inquiry long enough for Trump...

Full title: Gregg Jarrett: Latest Pelosi-Schiff impeachment ‘witch hunt’ is venomous affront to constitutional principlesThe quixotic quest to impeach President Trump is not only anathema to the fundamental principles of due process, but constitutes a full-frontal assault on the procedural protections inherent in the “due process” clause of the Constitution. Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her chosen marionette, Rep. Adam Schiff, are operating in the shadows of secrecy. Their authority does not derive from the House of Representatives itself upon a full majority vote. Instead, they have commandeered impeachment power by anointing themselves as the sole determinants. They alone have chosen...

A week ago, House Republicans complained that Democrats imposed excessive secrecy on interviews conducted as part of the drive to impeach President Trump. Now, the situation appears to have gotten worse. Friday's interview of Marie Yovanovitch, the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, marked a new point — a low point, as Republicans see it — in Democratic efforts to keep impeachment information out of public view. In this way: The two previous impeachment interviews, with former special envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker and Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson, were conducted in the format of what is known as a...

Donald Trump, an ongoing eruption of self-refuting statements (“I’m a very stable genius” with “a very good brain”), is adding self-impeachment to his repertoire. Spiraling downward in a tightening gyre, his increasingly unhinged public performances (Google the one with Finland’s dumbfounded president looking on) are as alarming as they are embarrassing. His decision regarding Syria and the Kurds was made so flippantly that it has stirred faint flickers of thinking among Congress’ vegetative Republicans.

After years of unsuccessfully torturing republican witnesses for non-existent evidence that President Donald Trump colluded with Russia, the Democrats have tossed the entire investigation out the window. Instead they are focusing like a laser on the phone call President Trump had with the newly elected leader of the Ukraine. They want you to think that the big deal is the part that concerns Joe Biden. They tap-dance around the rest, hoping — since Democrats don’t pray — that nobody will notice the part about “Crowdstrike.” When you take a hard look at the history of the underlying controversy, it’s easy...

<p>There is no logical Democratic explanation for impeaching Donald Trump. The various factions within the Democratic Party calling for impeachment are united only by their loathing of Donald Trump, the person, and his systematic repeal of the Obama progressive project.</p>

Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-N.Y.) slammed Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) for his handling of the impeachment inquiry, saying the process is filled with "cherry-picked leaks, withholding of key facts and ... lying." Zeldin told John Castimatidis on his Sunday radio show that the impeachment process "kind of a flying by the seat of your pants type process" for Schiff, who is leading the impeachment process. "Something that I find outrageous is the cherry-picked leaks, the withholding of key facts and the lying about other claims that's misleading the American public," Zeldin said. Zeldin said he has sat in on a total...

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff claimed that a quid pro quo agreement between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is not necessary for Trump's request that the foreign government investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden to be an impeachable offense. Schiff, 59, has been one of the driving forces behind the impeachment inquiry that began last month after an unnamed CIA official filed a whistleblower complaint alleging wrongdoing by the president during his phone call with Zelensky. However, Schiff's ties to the whisteblower have given political opponents, including Trump, ammunition to question his...

Byron York wrote in the Washington Examiner on Saturday that Democrats are using a secret impeachment process to create a narrative that leaves out contradictory facts and prevents Republicans from presenting any real defense. York noted that Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee, chaired by Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), are using the same tacit they used in 2017 to silence then-chair Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) with a phony ethics investigation. They are having witnesses testify in deposition, rather than in public or by transcription, which invokes ethics rules that prevent members from sharing any details publicly. Democrats then leak selective...

Rep. Adam Schiff said Sunday that the House Intelligence Committee might not need to interview the CIA analyst who filed a whistleblower complaint against President Donald Trump, a reversal for the Democrat, who has come under fire for failing to disclose the whistleblower’s contacts with his office. Schiff acknowledged he initially supported the whistleblower testifying about the Aug. 12 complaint, which centered on a July 25 phone call Trump had with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. “Given that we already have the call record, we don’t need the whistleblower who wasn’t on the call to tell us what took place during...

Well, this was entirely predictable.  First the impeachment strategy needed the anonymous CIA gossiper to testify.  Then it leaked about how HPSCI Chairman Adam Shiff and his Lawfare staff actually created the “gossiper’s” silly third-hand complaint to an inspector general; who then changed ‘gossip’ rules to allow second and third-hand hearsay.It was all becoming more brutally sketchy, and the impeachment jenga blocks were tenuous at best.  As a result, republicans were going to inquire about how the CIA gossiper constructed his complaint; and then the complaint attorney’s started saying the gossiper would not appear in person, but rather write more complaint letters instead of...