GRAHAM: FBI Spied on Trump Campaign Based on Drunken Bar Talk That was Later Disavowed

Ben Sellers
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‘Trump’s time will come and go, but I hope we understand that what happened here can never happen again…’

(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) The legally authorized spying by the nation’s premier law-enforcement operation, the FBI, on American citizens and a major political campaign—which ultimately cascaded into a two-year effort to impeach the president of the United States—was predicated entirely on a drunken conversation that a hotel employee overheard in a bar, which the source later disavowed as a joke.

That was the message that Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-SC, and Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz sought to drive home during a hearing Wednesday before the committee on the FBI’s surveillance of the Trump campaign and subsequent investigation of the president.

“Trump’s time will come and go, but I hope we understand that what happened here can never happen again,” Graham said in his opening statement. “Because what happened here is not a few irregularities. What happened is the system failed.”

Graham sought to counter a misleading effort in the media to spin the report’s conclusion as “everything OK, low-level people kind of got off track” in what partisans on the Left have repeatedly insisted was an otherwise lawful and unbiased procedure.

“If that’s what you get out of this report, you clearly didn’t read it,” Graham said. “If that’s your takeaway, that this thing was lawfully predicated, and that’s the main point, you missed the entire report.”

The FBI ‘Resistance’

Graham laid out what is now, to some, a familiar tale of corruption involving several high-ranking FBI officials who had an undeniable personal grudge against President Donald Trump and a determination to “right” what their warped perspectives saw as the FBI’s culpability in electing him.

Revisiting the shocking text exchanges of biased FBI agent Peter Strzok—hand-picked by then Deputy Director Andrew McCabe to be the “front line” of the investigation—and McCabe’s attorney, Lisa Page—who also happened to be Strzok’s mistress—Graham said he hoped they were not indicative of the entire intelligence community.

DOJ Agreed w/ Clinton Lawyers to Block FBI Access to Clinton Foundation Emails
Peter Strzok/IMAGE: YouTube

“Is this the best of the best?” he asked. “Are these people normal representatives of the Department of Justice and the FBI? I hope you will say no, because I believe it to be no—and if I believed otherwise, I would be depressed.”

He outlined the many ways in which those with tremendous investigative authority during the Obama administration knowingly omitted or altered crucial information in their applications to obtain warrants through the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Graham also introduced a relatively unknown character, FBI line attorney Kevin Clinesmith, who despite his low FBI ranking, had a central part in the process.

Clinesmith, who had publicly tweeted “Viva le Resistance” after Trump’s election, later altered an email from CIA officials to indicate that Trump campaign adviser Carter Page was not a CIA informant even though he was.

“What are the odds that this guy might do something wrong?” Graham asked.

In a nod to Democrats’ efforts to downplay the Horowitz hearing and Republican concerns as conspiracies, Graham added, “Would you have to be part of a right-wing conspiracy to predict in the future maybe this guy would get off-script?”

The Dubious Dossier

Clintonistas Fed Info to Trump Dossier Author Steele
Christopher Steele/IMAGE: YouTube

Ultimately, Clinesmith’s deception and a litany of other serious abuses—most notably their reliance on the debunked Steele dossier—helped to bolster the FBI’s efforts, which otherwise would have failed to obtain and renew the FISA wiretapping warrants.

“Without this dossier they go nowhere,” Graham said. “With it, they’re off to the races.”

Graham also said the FBI had omitted the fact that in their interview with the primary source of the dossier’s most shocking claims—a Moscow hotel employee who had provided innuendo to dossier author Christopher Steele about an alleged Trump sex act—the source had repudiated Steele’s report as false.

“They were word of mouth and hearsay, conversations had with friends over beers,” Graham said, referring back to Horowitz’s findings.

He condemned the FBI’s reliance on Steele, who had demonstrated a clear anti-Trump bias, been fired as an FBI source for attempting to shop his dossier to media outlets and ultimately landed at an opposition-research firm being commissioned by the Clinton campaign.

Because of the shocking and sensitive nature of the probe, Graham said, the FBI and the FISA court should have conducted more due-diligence instead of less to vet Steele, which would easily have determined the dossier’s allegations that Trump had been compromised by Russia were unreliable.

“If you read this document, the first thing you would think of is they got something on Donald Trump,” he said. “It is stunning, it is damning and it is salacious—and it’s a bunch of crap.”

Revisiting FISA

GRAHAM: FBI's Trump Spying Predicated Only on Hotel Worker's Disavowed Bar Talk
Sen. Lindsey Graham notes the low evidentiary threshold for the FBI to launch a counterintelligence investigation. / IMAGE: CBS News via Youtube

Graham and Horowitz both said that substantive changes to the secretive FISA process for counterintelligence probes were necessary in the wake of the findings.

“I know a lot about what’s going on out there to hurt us, and there are real threats,” Graham said.

“…I’d hate to lose the ability of the FISA court to operate at a time probably when we need it the most,” he continued, “but after your report, I have serious concerns about whether the FISA court can continue unless there’s fundamental reform.”

Much of the emphasis of the ongoing Justice Department probes into the FBI misconduct has focused on accountability of the bad actors involved, such as Strzok, Page, McCabe and then-FBI Director James Comey.

Only Clinesmith was deemed to have acted criminally in Horowitz’s investigation and referred for prosecution.

However, both Graham and Horowitz noted that the investigation’s narrow focus on the FISA process belied the seriousness of the FBI misconduct.

Horowitz’s widely reported conclusion that then-Assistant Counterintelligence Director Bill Priestap—who approved the “Crossfire Hurricane” investigation into Trump—acted appropriately in doing so ignored the fact that the threshold for launching such an investigation was surprisingly low, with very little oversight from the Justice Department.

Graham noted the distinction that a counterintelligence investigation is unique in that regard as opposed to criminal investigations, which require substantially more scrutiny.

That is because the mission of a counterintelligence investigation is to protect Americans from foreign influence, he said.

However, the FBI’s top decision-makers, in this case, “were on a mission, not to protect Trump but to … protect all of us ‘smelly’ people from Trump,” he added, making reference to one of Strzok’s offensive anti-Trump text messages to Page.

Graham underscored the need to put aside the politicization surrounding the investigation since the flaws identified in the FISA process and the FBI’s lack of oversight could easily swing both ways.

“We can’t write this off as being just about one man or one event,” he said. “We’ve gotta understand how off the rails the system got. … I think Democrats and Republicans are willing to make sure this never happens again.”

Pelosi’s Timing on Trade Deal Raises Questions about Impeachment Anxiety

Ben Sellers
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‘This is a day we’ve all been working to and working for on the path to “yes”…’

(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) After achieving Democrats’ signature agenda item on Tuesday—announcing two articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump—House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., immediately shifted focus by supporting a pending deal on one of Trump’s top priorities.

Pelosi followed the House Judiciary announcement in short succession with a press conference on the USMCA trade deal that Trump negotiated with neighboring Mexico and Canada to replace the Bill Clinton-era NAFTA pact.

“This is a day we’ve all been working to and working for on the path to ‘yes,’” she said at the press conference, ostensibly in reference to the trade agreement.

“We were in range for a while, uh, but until we could cross a certain threshold of enforcement for our workers rights, for environment and for the prescription drug issue—as you know they were three of the areas that we had put out there,” Pelosi continued.

With many on both sides of the issue seeing Democrats’ impeachment effort as the pinnacle of political dysfunction in Washington, the rare show of bipartisanship sought—at the very least—to blunt the outrage.

Prior to Thanksgiving, Pelosi met with a group of vulnerable freshman Democrats, some of whom had conveyed anxiety about the House leadership’s prioritization of the politically risky impeachment over the trade agreement.

During Tuesday’s press conference, Pelosi praised the eight Democratic members of the negotiating task force—as well as Richard Trumka, president of the AFL–CIO labor union—for their persistence.

“There is no question, of course, that this trade agreement is much better than NAFTA,” she said.

“But in terms of our work here, it is infinitely better than what was initially oppo—uh—proposed by the administration,” she added. “… It’s a victory for America’s workers. It’s one that we take great pride—uh—great pride in advancing.”

Pelosi spoke for about three minutes before handing the podium to Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass., chair of the House Ways and Means Committee and leader of the task force that worked to negotiate the Trump agreement. “He was, indeed, a maestro,” Pelosi said.

Both Democrats and Republicans applauded the breakthrough—which Trump, himself, had touted a day earlier.

Rep. Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga., sought to put it into perspective by saying House Democrats had come to the table out of political necessity.

“Speaker Pelosi’s ‘dam of obstruction’ has formed a small crack in which President Trump’s USMCA trade agreement has leaked through,” he said in a statement.

“… Overwhelming public support for USMCA and a growing frustration of obstruction is what has brought USMCA to a vote, but the Democrats will certainly try to take full credit,” Loudermilk continued. “Once in place, USMCA will bring another $68 billion to our historically strong economy, creating more jobs, more pay increases, and more stability for American workers, as well as our trade partners in Canada and Mexico.”

Still, the timing of it raised even more questions about the other story that was sure to eclipse it in the news cycle.

Pelosi’s decision to pair the announcement with the earlier filing of impeachment articles may simply be a bid to appease her divided base and make Democrats seem more reasonable than their singular-minded obsession with attacking Trump would suggest.

However, there are other indications that Pelosi may genuinely be feeling the strain of the Left’s impeachment gambit and actively seeking to downplay the move after becoming mired in skepticism and criticism.

The raw nerves appeared to show in a flash of rage last week after Fox News correspondent Ed Henry asked her if she hated Trump.

During a CNN town hall Thursday, intending to advance her case for articles impeachment, Pelosi instead became frazzled by audience questions and instructed them to stop asking about it, reported Yahoo News.

“Can we not have any more questions about impeachment?” Pelosi said, to laughter from the audience. “I don’t mind questions, but to ask me questions through the prism of the White House is like, what?”

Throughout the process, Pelosi’s inconsistent statements—from her previous insistence upon bipartisan support to her shifting timeline for voting on the articles—has undercut the claims that Democrats are taking it seriously.

Whether the newfound focus on compromise with the trade deal is a savvy and shrewdly calculated plan to navigate the choppy waters ahead or, rather, a reactive and desperate bid to deflect attention from the already cascading chain of regrets, it remains to be seen.

NC ‘Sanctuary’ Charlotte Surpasses 100 Homicides for First Time in 26 Years

Ben Sellers
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‘For far too long, those closest to the pain have not been closest to the power, resulting in a racist … criminal legal system…’

(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) The shooting death of a longtime businessman in Charlotte, North Carolina‘s trendy arts district on Monday did more than provoke an outpouring of community grief.

Scott Brooks, who co-owned Brooks’ Sandwich House with his brother, David, became the city’s 103rd homicide victim of the year when he was murdered while opening the restaurant around 5 a.m., reported Charlotte Magazine.

The burger joint in the up-and-coming NoDa (North Davidson) neighborhood has been in business since 1973, when the Brooks’ father opened it. The sons took over the operation in 1991.

Two years later, at the peak of a crack epidemic, Charlotte logged 129 murders. But since 1993, the Queen City has never surpassed the 100 mark—until now.

The recent spike has “confounded” local law-enforcement officials, reported the magazine.

Some have claimed—without citing evidence—that it is due to an increased availability of guns.

Police Chief Kerr Putney blamed the uptick on judges for allowing electronic monitoring instead of pre-trial detention.

However, the dubious milestone also marks the close of the first year in office for far-left “sanctuary” Sheriff Garry McFadden, who has generated a storm of controversy over his refusal to cooperate with federal immigration authorities.

McFadden ran last year on the platform of defying Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and he has remained defiant amid a wave of backlash.

Several times, ICE has been forced to re-arrest dangerous offenders who were released by the sheriff’s office despite existing detainer requests.

On one such occasion, a Guatemalan national with a history of domestic assault engaged police and SWAT officers in a standoff lasting several hours—only to be released again, forcing ICE to re-arrest him a third time for deportation proceedings.

Urban Areas Nix ICE Partnerships for Criminal Aliens, As Rural Areas Join Up
Charlotte Sheriff Gary McFadden/IMAGE: Garry Mcfadden 4Sherrif via Youtube

The negative headlines resulted in criticism from Vice President Mike Pence and a state legislative effort to hold McFadden and other rogue sheriffs more accountable (vetoed by Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper).

In addition to his immigration policy, McFadden—a former homicide detective and reality TV star—has opposed the rigid enforcement of a number of “minor” laws related to things from petty theft and vandalism to misdemeanor drug possession.

As the city itself has grown rapidly, that has meant more criminals continue to run rampant.

But like many on the Left, McFadden adheres to the notion that less enforcement will result in a safer community by building a rapport of trust with law officers.

Charlotte’s troubles come as Democrats on the national stage awkwardly attempt to push a radical social-justice agenda by attacking “overpolicing” as an inherently racist system of oppression.

Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg, a former New York City mayor, recently came under attack for supporting “stop and frisk” policies that helped his predecessor, Rudy Giuliani, drastically decrease the Big Apple’s crime epidemic.

A recent New York Times article, moreover, claimed NYPD was overtly instructed to racially profile black and Hispanic minorities while ignoring whites and Asians for similar incursions.

However, the deployment of the race-card is but one component in the Left’s broader push to undermine law-enforcement and delegitimize police authority.

AOC, Omar, Tlaib Won't Be 'Baited' by Trump...as They Take His Bait
Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley & Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez/IMAGE: Fox News via YouTube

Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., a member of the socialism-touting “Squad” in the U.S. House, hinted at much bigger ambitions last month when she unveiled a radical plan known as “The People’s Justice Guarantee.”

Among her proposals: granting incarcerated prisoners the right to vote, paying them the federal minimum wage and legalizing illegal immigration.

“For far too long, those closest to the pain have not been closest to the power, resulting in a racist, xenophobic, rogue, and fundamentally flawed criminal legal system,” Pressley said in a press release.

Her answer is to upend the entire system and reverse the balance of power in favor of those Democrats deem to be oppressed by the system—who would, of course, empower their liberators with permanent majorities—at the expense of law and order and public safety.

Naturally, the ambitious plan would also touch on other signature Democratic prizes: offering free abortions to prisoners and allowing transgender convicts to select which prison they wish to be incarcerated in.

“Our resolution calls for a bold transformation of the status quo—devoted to dismantling injustices so that the system is smaller, safer, less punitive, and more humane,” she said.

CLYBURN: House Dems ‘Expect to Lose’ More Votes on Impeachment

Ben Sellers
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‘This is too much about preserving this great republic, and I think we ought to leave it up to each member to decide how he or she would like to vote…’

(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Once again, Democrats have moved the goal posts in order to temper public expectations about impeachment—this time saying to anticipate even more defectors from their own party.

House Majority Whip James Clyburn said Friday on CNN’s “New Day” that despite House Speaker Nancy Pelosi‘s announcement that Democrats would forge ahead on the charges, they were unlikely to have unanimous consensus to make it even a party-line vote.

“We do expect to lose some, and that’s why I say it is a conscience vote,” Clyburn said, according to the Washington Free Beacon.


Counting formerly Republican, pro-impeachment defector Justin Amash, I-Mich., Democrats hold a 37-seat advantage.

However, two Democrats—Reps. Collin Peterson of Minnesota and Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey—already opposed impeachment in the formal House vote to initiate the process.

Van Drew issued a warning recently, indicating that the hearings in the House Intelligence Committee had failed to sway him in favor.

But as popular support for President Donald Trump saw an uptick in the immediate aftermath of the hearings, all signals suggest that more Democrats may follow suit.

A margin of just 17 more defectors on the Left would result in a catastrophic failure of the impeachment articles to pass at all in the House.

Much focus now is shifting to the 31 Democrats who won seats last year in districts that supported Trump in 2016. But several others have put up warning signals, including Rep. Brenda Lawrence, D-Mich., a formerly pro-impeachment Detroit congresswoman who last week suggested a censure would be the best solution before backpedaling.

Rep. Joe Cunningham, D-SC, similarly hedged by issuing a statement recently that condemned Trump while insisting that he was “withholding judgment on whether our President should be impeached until hearing all the evidence and ideally, hearing directly from the whistleblowers,” reported WCSC.

There is little likelihood that the so-called whistleblower, presumed to be CIA agent Eric Ciaramella, will testify before the House prior to an impeachment vote.

Even the most ardent impeachment advocates, like Rep. Al Green, D-Texas, while expressing unequivocal support, have indicated recently that it isn’t actually necessary to prove Trump broke the law.

As a result of the uncertainty, Clyburn claimed he wasn’t actively keeping score or pressuring his party-members to follow suit.

“I think it would be a bit unseemly for us to go out, whipping up a vote on something like this,” he said. “This is too serious. This is too much about preserving this great republic, and I think we ought to leave it up to each member to decide how he or she would like to vote.”

But that is a far cry from Pelosi’s earlier insistence that the House would only move forward with bipartisan support.

Although she has since justified the party-line-only support by attacking the GOP, any amount of Democratic opposition could, at the very least, undermine her claim that opponents were being driven by corruption and blind loyalty to Trump.

Pelosi, herself, has also sought to move the bar after originally suggesting a Thanksgiving impeachment vote and later floating a time-frame that would put it around Christmas. On Thursday, she said that the measure was too “complex” to happen by then with less than a month to go.

However, the farther the House pushes back its vote, the greater the risk becomes that a Senate trial would encroach upon the Democratic primary season, which begins in February.

The stakes of Democrats’ gambit are particularly high—not only because the 2020 election is on the line, but also because in their efforts to impeach the president, Democrats themselves have engaged in the same type of misconduct, coercion and political retaliation that they have accused Trump of committing.

TAKES ONE TO KNOW ONE: Biden Embraces Endorsements from Corruption-Ridden Puerto Rico

Ben Sellers
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‘Puerto Rico will play a defining role in the 2020 nominating contest…’

Biden Perpetuates Charlottesville Lie on 'Colbert' Show
Joe Biden / IMAGE: The Late Show with Stephen Colbert via Youtube

(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Former Vice President Joe Biden may have failed to secure the endorsement of his former boss, Barack Obama, but he has gained in quantity what he lacks in quality—including the recent support of 25 officials from notoriously corrupt Puerto Rico, the Sun Sentinel reported.

The island territory saw its then-governor, Ricardo Rossello resign in disgrace last July after dual scandals revealed him to have presided over the misuse and embezzlement of funds, and a series of leaked text messages revealed him to have made derogatory comments about homosexuals.

Rossello faced impeachment for the former, while angry citizens took to the streets and swarmed the governor’s mansion to protest the latter.

Prior to Rossello’s departure, at least a dozen officials already had resigned as a result of the investigation into the embezzlement of funds that it received from the U.S. federal government to support Hurricane Maria disaster relief.

The probe continued to ensnare the country’s corrupt leaders as recently as November, when the FBI arrested Sen. Abel Nazario and seven others, including municipal employees, in connection with the scandal.

Nazario was accused of using the federal funds to support his election campaign.

Biden’s campaign called the recent endorsements, which included that of former Gov. Alejandro García Padilla, “the largest bipartisan slate of Puerto Rican endorsements in a primary election.”

Although its residents are not able to vote in the U.S. elections, the territory is able to sway politics in other ways, such as lobbying, and threw considerable patronage to Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election.

In addition, many Puerto Ricans have fled the country for places like Florida due to the unlivable conditions—and some have now become full-fledged American citizens.

“Puerto Rico will play a defining role in the 2020 nominating contest,” said the Biden campaign, noting that many of the endorsements came from left-wing parties that affiliated with Democrats in the mainland U.S.

It is unclear whether any of those throwing their support to the Democratic front-runner may be implicated in the funding scandal or other violations, but Puerto Rico’s coziness with the Left has, uncoincidentally, been as well established as its ethically challenged stewardship.

Puerto Rico's Governor Says He'll Take the Fight for Funding to the White House: 'If the Bully Gets Close, I'll Punch the Bully in the Mouth'
Ricardo Rosselló / IMAGE: CNN via Youtube

Both Rossello (prior to his disgrace) and San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz were trotted out in the media as vocal critics of President Donald Trump in the immediate aftermath of the devastating 2017 hurricane.

When Trump refused to provide further aid, insisting that millions of dollars he released had gone unaccounted for, Rossello publicly threatened to punch the president.

And the Congressional Hispanic Caucus was sharply criticized in January after sponsoring a junket for Democrats like Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey to the resort city of San Juan during the federal government shutdown in January.

Biden’s embrace of the spoils system has come to light during the latest impeachment attack on Trump.

At the heart of the matter is Trump’s call for Ukraine to investigate Biden’s corrupt dealings as vice president, which included pressuring Ukraine to drop a corruption investigation into the company that was paying his son a lucrative consulting fee.

Biden later bragged about having threatened to withhold a billion-dollar loan if the investigating prosecutor wasn’t fired.

The Bidens also blurred the lines between their personal and private interests in China, when Hunter Biden flew aboard the vice president’s official plane and met with influential Chinese leaders just before inking a joint investment venture for an estimated $1.5 billion.

Schiff’s Report Contains New Lies to Bolster Bogus Impeachment Claims

Ben Sellers
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‘If the Democrats are going to attack their political opponents … by publishing their phone records, you’d really think they’d at least get the phone numbers right…’

NUNES: Schiff Producing Russia Hoax's 'Low-Rent, Ukrainian Sequel' 1
Adam Schiff / IMAGE: CSPAN via Youtube

(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Once again, Democrats’ own brazen and egregious abuse of power has far eclipsed that of President Donald Trump as they seek to impeach Trump for allegedly abusing his power while calling for Ukraine to investigate abuses of power by former Vice President Joe Biden.

Evidence presented by Democrats this week in a House Intelligence report failed to show that Trump broke any laws.

“At the end of a one-sided sham process, Chairman Schiff and the Democrats utterly failed to produce any evidence of wrongdoing by President Trump,” White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham said in a statement, according to Fox News.

“This report reflects nothing more than their frustrations,” Grisham continued. “Chairman Schiff’s report reads like the ramblings of a basement blogger straining to prove something when there is evidence of nothing.”

The lack of substance has led some radical Democrats, like Rep. Al Green, D-Texas, to insist that no unlawfulness is needed to impeach.

Meanwhile, Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., sought to bolster his case by himself toeing the line of legality—and clearly abusing ethical norms—in releasing the private phone records of several of his political adversaries, including his own committee’s ranking minority member, Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif.

Schiff—who has been caught lying about his role in colluding with the so-called whistleblower whose complaint launched the latest impeachment effort—faced immediate backlash for his devious release of the subpoenaed phone records.

Breitbart, for one, pointed out the sad irony that his attempt to interfere in the 2020 election by coercing compliance from telecom companies like AT&T to investigate his rivals was a far greater abuse than pressing a foreign ally like Ukraine to cooperate in a valid investigation of past corruption involving the Obama administration.

“But Schiff didn’t simply ask AT&T for dirt on his opponents. He forced it to hand over the records,” wrote the conservative website. “And he did so without giving Nunes any warning, or any opportunity to respond to the claims he would later sneak into his 300-page impeachment report.”

Schiff acted, characteristically, through underhanded deception by subpoenaing people who may have called Nunes rather than the congressman himself.

Additionally, he released the phone records of a journalist, John Solomon, whose reporting on the Biden Ukraine scandal has undermined considerably the Democrats’ false narrative. And he also released the records of Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani.

Both open the door to problematic issues of breaching confidentiality and violating First Amendment rights, creating a chilling effect on the levers and mechanisms of American democracy and jurisprudence—which was, of course, precisely what Schiff intended.

Sadly for Schiff, at least one of those records resulted in him being called out for another lie.

He falsely claimed that Giuliani had been in communication with the White House’s Office of Management and Budget—overseen by acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney—with the insinuation being that Giuliani may have directed the withholding of Ukraine funds.

However, the Wall Street Journal reported that the number that Democrats claimed to be an OMB line was, in fact, a general White House switchboard.

“If the Democrats are going to attack their political opponents, staff members, and even journalists by publishing their phone records, you’d really think they’d at least get the phone numbers right,” said Nunes’s communications director, Jack Langer, mocking the botched effort, according to Fox News.

Schiff’s report states that it was a number commonly “associated” with the OMB, but later goes on to refer to it, misleadingly, as the “OMB number.”

The deception echoes Schiff’s opening of the impeachment hearings, when he used a blatantly misleading paraphrase of the July 25 phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, which he later claimed he had intended to be “satire.”

Rep. Al Green Bashes Impeachment Panel’s Lack of Black Radicals

Ben Sellers
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‘To see the committee hearing experts on the topic of impeachment with not one of color is both regrettable and disrespectful…’

Al Green / IMAGE: ABC13 Houston via Youtube

(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Unhinged, race-baiting Rep. Al Green, D-Texas, shared the same reaction as many conservatives upon seeing the four panelists in Wednesday’s House Judiciary Committee hearing on impeachment: He was shocked by the lack of diversity.

While many marveled at the lack of intellectual diversity from the chorus of so-called scholars selected by House Democrats under Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-NY, Green was outraged that none were black radicals like himself.

“Today, as Congress examines the constitutionality of impeaching President Donald John Trump, I have noticed a grave oversight,” he said in a statement.

“While erudite and experienced, none of the witnesses are persons of color,” he complained. “To see the committee hearing experts on the topic of impeachment with not one of color is both regrettable and disrespectful.”

Green accused Nadler and the Judiciary Committee of conveying dog-whistle racism through the omission of a black legal expert.

“What subliminal message are we sending to the world about the intellect of people of color?” he asked. “Are we indicating that there are no experts of color on one of the seminal issues of this Congress?”

The Democrats’ primary criterion for the selection of the panelists appeared to be their ability to spin the flimsy evidence presented by the House Intelligence Committee into an academic justification for the predetermined outcome.

Only one of the four professors from elite law schools conveyed any reservations about impeachment. George Washington University’s Jonathan Turley likened Trump to the devil in his opening remarks but concluded, nonetheless, that a baseless indictment without clear evidence or consensus would set a dangerous precedent that the Left may, one day, regret.

Turley said the current impeachment effort most closely paralleled the 1868 impeachment of President Andrew Johnson, three years after the end of the Civil War and the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

“It is not a model or an association that this committee should relish,” Turley said. “In that case, a group of opponents of the president called the Radical Republicans created a trap-door crime in order to impeach the president.”

But Green issued a second statement Wednesday to offer his alternative historical perspective.

In a rambling, 1,121-word missive that celebrated Johnson’s impeachment (the 17th president ultimately was acquitted by the Senate, as Trump is expected to be), Green bitterly bemoaned that more Democrats needed to embrace the Radical Republicans’ Reconstruction-era mindset.

“If the congressional Republicans of 1868 impeached President Johnson for his abusive, incitive, racist comments causing harm, why can’t the Congress of 2019 impeach President Trump for his abusive, incitive, racist, anti-Semitic, Islamophobic, transphobic comments causing harm to society?” Green wondered.  “Why should we pass a resolution condemning the President’s racist comments and then get back to racism as usual, where racism is more of a talking point than an action item?”

Congressional Black Caucus Might Join Efforts to Kick Trump Out
Members of the Congressional Black Caucus / PHOTO: MDGovpics (CC)

The resolution that Green was likely referring to was one originally drafted to condemn the anti-Semitic comments of Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn. However, after members of the Congressional Black Caucus, such as Green, threatened a revolt, the resolution was rewritten in broader language that instead took aim at Trump.

Green insisted that not only was Trump’s perceived racist sentiment—a charge the president and his supporters have robustly dismissed as radical leftist rhetoric—sufficient grounds to constitute the high crimes and misdemeanors needed for impeachment, but it eclipsed any questions over the commission of an actual crime.

““Our country’s original sin of irreparably harmful slavery continues to haunt us as slavery’s odious incendiary scion—racism,” Green said.

“It’s the constant kitchen-table issue for Black people,” he continued. “Regrettably, the President weaponizes racism to the shame of country and detriment of people of color.”

Green seemed to show little self-awareness as to his own weaponization of racism, but his stance is nothing new. Already, as of July 2019, Green had attempted at least three times in six months to introduce articles of impeachment in the House.

Last month, he told Yahoo News that it was his God-given “mission” to impeach Trump.

“Only God knows what he [Trump] will do when he believes that he has no one to answer to,” Green ranted. “Right now, he knows that we are there, but if we don’t do our duty, the president will do unthinkable things.”

While Green has doubled-down on the need to impeach, other Democrats have begun to second-guess the wisdom of the partisan measure, fearing that their failure to persuade the public not only will embolden and inure the president further, but also may take a heavy toll on their own political capital leading into next year’s election.

With polls showing support for the president had risen following the Intelligence Committee’s hearings, some on the Left cautiously floated the suggestion of censuring Trump instead.

However, Green criticized his colleagues for their double-standard in putting the interests of a foreign country ahead of the demands of their own constituents.

“To those who say that the House resolution condemning the President is enough, I say if impeachment is the remedy for invidious abuse of power related to Ukraine, it should be the remedy for invidious abuse of power related to racism in the United States,” he declared. “If impeachment was just for President Andrew Johnson’s racist actions, it’s just for President Donald Trump’s racist actions.”

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PHOTO: @MerriamWebster via Twitter

As for whether evidence of criminal conduct was needed, Green pointed to his trusty, well-worn copy of Webster’s dictionary, which was first published 40 years after the adoption of the U.S. Constitution.

“To those who say impeachment requires the commission of some statutory crime, I say please stop it. Do some research,” he chided.

“… You will find that among other definitions, the definition of a crime is ‘something reprehensible, foolish, or disgraceful,’” he said. “You will also find that among other definitions, the definition of a misdemeanor is a ‘misdeed.’”

In both cases, he claimed, the question was moot as to whether Trump’s actions were actually unlawful.

“We must not allow ourselves to be convinced that we cannot do that which has already been constitutionally done,” Green said.

Evidence Mounts Against Stacey Abrams for Violating Election Laws

Ben Sellers
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‘If they are required to open their books to the commission …. that would chill political speech…’

Stacey Abrams Defends Joe Biden: 'We Cannot Have Perfection as a Litmus Test'
Stacey Abrams / IMAGE: MSNBC via Youtube

(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Georgia‘s ethics commissioner on Wednesday presented his case to a panel adjudicating whether former Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams‘s campaign violated election laws.

David Emadi, executive director of the state ethics commission, accused Abrams of coordinating activities with the New Georgia Project Action Fund and other tax-sheltered entities, reported the Atlanta Journal–Constitution.

The organization, part of a nonprofit that was founded by Abrams, was registered as a political action committee. By law, such groups do not face the same fundraising restrictions as campaigns but are banned from engaging directly with a specific campaign or candidate.

Emadi said that the supposed voter-registration group had instead conducted illegal canvassing operations for Abrams’ campaign.

In addition, he said four activist groups exceeded the maximum campaign contributions permitted under state law—including $700,000 from San Francisco-based PowerPac for “get out the vote canvassing” and “voter contact.”

PowerPac, linked to billionaire bank heiress Susan Sandler, spent millions supporting Abrams’ candidacy, helping to make it the most expensive race in Georgia’s history.

Largely due to the outside money flooding into the state from leftist mega-donors like George Soros and Tom Steyer, the total cost of the 2018 race exceeded $100 million.

Abrams’ opponent, then-Secretary of State Brian Kemp, narrowly won the race with enough votes to avert a runoff.

But Abrams, who has been floated as a likely 2020 running mate by Democratic front-runner Joe Biden and others, bitterly refused to concede the race and has maintained that Kemp stole the election from her.

Aria Branch, an attorney representing the Abrams-linked organizations, denied any misconduct and sought to deflect the criticism back onto Emadi and the ethics commission, pointing to past Republican ties.

“This appears to be a fishing expedition,” Branch claimed. “That is not allowed under the commission’s rules.”

Nonetheless, she has fought tooth-and-nail to prevent Emadi from accessing—and possibly releasing to the public—any of the Abrams campaign’s donor records.

Lawyers for the organizations and the Abrams campaign have sought to quash recent subpoenas requiring the groups to turn over insurance policies, bank statements and campaign materials. However, the ethics commission denied the request.

And Branch claimed that letting the public have access to the fundraising records could deter future donors and violate their First Amendment rights.

“If they are required to open their books to the commission …. that would chill political speech,” she said.

Hillary Acknowledges, Denies Lesbian Rumors During Howard Stern Appearance

Ben Sellers
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‘Well, contrary to what you might hear, I actually like men…’

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Hillary Clinton/IMAGE: PBS NewsHour via Youtube

(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Although former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton‘s new book pays homage to “Gutsy Women,” the 2016 Democratic presidential candidate told radio shock-jock Howard Stern that her interest in fellow females stopped there.

Clinton—long the subject of salacious rumors that have been used to explain the philandering ways of her husband, former President Bill Clinton—denied ever having had lesbian urges during the Wednesday broadcast of Stern’s Sirius XM radio program, Breitbart reported.

“Well, contrary to what you might hear, I actually like men,” she told Stern after an anecdote about the college boyfriend she ditched in favor of her current hubby.

The notoriously direct Stern continued to press the issue. “Raise your right hand, you’ve never had a lesbian affair,” he said.

“Never, never, never!” Clinton replied. “Never even been tempted.”

The vaguely homophobic came a few weeks after Clinton was criticized by transgender activists for admitting that she understood the “concerns” some women might have with accepting biological males into their sisterhood.

Some linked Clinton’s rhetoric to a branch of virulently anti-trans feminists known as “trans-exclusionary radical feminists,” or TERFs.

Clinton, considered on the Left to be a progressive icon and feminist trailblazer while regarded as anathema by the Right, has caught flak in the past for making several racially insensitive comments also.

In October 2018, she drew controversy after attempting—presumably—to make an ironic joke about being unable to distinguish Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., from former Attorney General Eric Holder in an interview with Recode.

After the interviewer confused the two African–American men, Clinton quipped, “I know, they all look alike.”

Some audience members awkwardly chuckled, but interviewer Kara Swisher was not amused.

“No they don’t,” she replied indignantly.

During her 2016 campaign, Clinton caused a scandal while running late for an appearance with New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, musing that she was on “CP time.”

The phrase is widely understood to mean “colored people’s time,” although Clinton claimed she meant “cautious politician’s time.”

Law Prof. Offers Surprise Take Against Impeachment at Judiciary Hearing

Ben Sellers
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‘My Republican friends are mad. My Democratic friends are mad. My wife is mad. My kids are mad. Even my dog seems mad…’

(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) In what appeared to be an unexpected twist, one of the four legal scholars invited by House Democrats to testify at the Judiciary Committee‘s impeachment hearing Wednesday issued a stunning rebuke.

The opening statement from Jonathan Turley, a law professor at Washington, DC’s George Washington University, followed predictable testimony from colleagues at Harvard, Stanford and the University of North Carolina that delved into the nuanced intentions of the Constitution’s framers.

But Turley—who also testified 21 years ago, during the Bill Clinton impeachment, before a panel that included current Judiciary Chair Jerrold Nadler, D-NY—broke rank with his fellow academics by opposing the partisan proceedings against President Donald Trump and the dangerous precedent they might set.

Turley began by acknowledging that he, personally, disagreed with Trump’s politics.

“I’m not a supporter of President Trump—I voted against him,” Turley said. “My personal views of President Trump are as irrelevant to my impeachment testimony as they should be to your impeachment vote.”

However, he said his principled stand against the Democrats’ effort was based largely on the impact it would have in shaping future political battles.

“I’m concerned about lowering impeachment standards to fit a paucity of evidence and an abundance of anger,” Turley said. “I believe this impeachment not only fails to satisfy the standard of past impeachments, but would create a dangerous precedent for future impeachments.”

Turley noted that the politics of rage presently consuming the country had been anticipated by many of the Founding Fathers.

He observed that the Constitution’s framers had deliberately narrowed the scope of impeachable offenses for that reason. They ruled out things like maladministration, perfidy (lying) and peculation (self-dealing) as being too vague and easily swayed by factional rancor.

“We are living in the very period described by Alexander Hamilton—a period of agitated passions,” Turley said.

“I get it. You’re mad. The president’s mad,” he continued. “My Republican friends are mad. My Democratic friends are mad. My wife is mad. My kids are mad. Even my dog seems mad.”

Turley said the “facially incomplete and inadequate record” from Democrats’ hasty, politically motivated process “would rival the [Andrew] Johnson impeachment as the shortest in history, depending on how one counts the relevant days.”

Of the three past historical impeachments, he added, Johnson’s 1868 trial, in the aftermath of the Civil War and the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, bore the closest parallels due to the speed and the “unconventional style” of the presidents involved.

“It is not a model or an association that this committee should relish,” Turley said. “In that case, a group of opponents of the president called the Radical Republicans created a trap-door crime in order to impeach the president.”

Trump’s supporters have accused House Intelligence Chair Adam Schiff of doing the same thing by colluding with deep-state, partisan bureaucrats to concoct a scandal following the failures of the Mueller Report and other attempts to establish an impeachable offense.

The president’s July 25 phone call with his Ukrainian counterpart—which prompted the ‘whistleblower‘ complaint at the heart of the probe—came a day after Mueller’s testimony destroyed Democrats hopes of establishing Russia collusion.

On July 26, Nadler declared that impeachment proceedings in the House were already underway.

Echoing earlier comments by the committee’s ranking GOP minority member, Rep. Doug Collins of Georgia, Turley said the current effort might also blaze new territory as the first impeachment to proceed with no clear sign of illegal activity and no bipartisan consensus on claims of misconduct.

“This would be the first impeachment in history where there would be considerable debate and, in my view, not compelling evidence of the commission of a crime,” he said.

He cautioned that going forward with the “slipshod” case for impeachment not only would fail to placate the Left’s outrage—it would, in fact, exacerbate the political rift even more.

“We have a record of conflicts, defenses that have not been fully considered, unsubpoenaed witnesses with material evidence,” Turley said. “To impeach a president on this record would expose every future president to the same type of inchoate impeachment.”

Invoking a scene from the play “A Man for All Seasons” about the martyrdom of Sir Thomas More at the hands of England’s Henry VIII, Turley cautioned Democrats against revising legal standards and procedures, “the very thing that divide rage from reason” to serve what they may consider to be a greater moral purpose.

“Both sides of this controversy have demonized the other to justify any measure in their defense,” he said. “Perhaps that’s the saddest part of all of this—we’ve forgotten the common article of faith that binds each of us to each other and our constitution,” he continued.

Turley closed with a warning that the political pendulum may swing the other way, and warping the impeachment process to fit the Left’s current agenda would likely backfire.

“Before we cut down the tree so carefully planted by the framers, I hope you will consider what you will do when the wind blows again—perhaps for a Democratic president,” he said. “Where will you stand then?”

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