‘It was unbelievable what we had—um, Clinton—we had everything…’
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Less than a month since an investigative exposé revealed bias at left-wing network CNN, conservative journalist James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas has a new bombshell implicating ABC News in a cover-up of millionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
Amy Robach, a co-anchor on two of ABC’s major news-oriented programs, “Good Morning America” and “20/20,” acknowledged in a “hot mic” video obtained by the undercover journalism watchdog that the network had sat on the story for three years after quashing her interview with alleged Epstein victim Virginia Guiffre.
“We convinced her to talk with us,” Robach said in the candid moment to an off-camera producer while on set. “It was unbelievable what we had—um, Clinton—we had everything.”
Project Veritas said that the shocking video—perhaps one of its biggest scoops yet—was the first part in a new series of reports set to blow the lid off ABC’s culture of bias.
George Stephanopoulos, who was White House communications director under former President Bill Clinton, has been a fixture at the network since 2002, including a “GMA” co-anchor spot. He has been ABC News’s chief anchor for the past five years.
However, according to Robach, her colleague’s close Clinton ties were not the reason for the story’s spiking. Rather, it was the risk of implicating the British duke of York, Prince Andrew, that did it in.
“The Palace found out that we had her whole allegations about Prince Andrew and threatened us a million different ways,” Robach said.
The scoop by Project Veritas reignited curiosity and skepticism over the Epstein case, leading #EpsteinCoverUp to trend on Twitter.
Although his prison death in August, by apparent hanging, ended many of the official investigations into Epstein, a medical examiner hired by his family recently concluded that Epstein’s injuries were more consistent with homicide strangulation.
The guards assigned to watch Epstein were purportedly sleeping at his time of death, and a camera pointed on the cell was malfunctioning.
Theories of foul play still leave inconclusive the questions surrounding who may have been behind it.
Records indicate that many of Epstein’s powerful friends and clients flew on his private plane, dubbed the “Lolita Express,” and partied with him on his private island, known colloquially as “Pedophile Island.”
However, given the Clintons’ extensive list of associates with potentially compromising information who met with suspicious demises, most speculation has surrounded the Democratic power-couple, keeping #ClintonBodyCount as another trending topic.
Robach said she was certain someone was behind it.
Jeffrey Epstein / PHOTO: New York State Sex Offender Registry
“So do I think he was killed? 100% Yes, I do,” she said in the video.
“…He made his whole living blackmailing people,” she continued. “… Yup, there were a lot of men in those planes. A lot of men who visited that island, a lot of powerful men who came into that apartment.”
ABC issued a response to the video’s release that defended its Epstein coverage since his name became widely known and discussed earlier this year.
“At the time, not all of our reporting met our standards to air, but we have never stopped investigating the story,” it said.
“Ever since, we’ve had a team on this investigation and substantial resources dedicated to it,” the network’s statement continued. “That work has led to a two-hour documentary and six-part podcast that will air in the new year.”
Many left-wing reports continue emphasize Epstein’s connection with current President Donald Trump while ignoring the multitude of Democrats who have been named as Epstein associates.
‘Continued decisions to refuse cooperation with ICE serve as an open invitation to aliens who commit criminal offenses that these counties are a safe haven…’
Jose Barajas-Diaz / Photo courtesy of ICE.gov
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) A North Carolina sheriff who has made headlines for releasing dangerous illegal aliens back into the community did it again, setting free a Mexican national convicted of killing a motorcyclist—in defiance a detainer request by federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
ICE announced that it had re-arrested Jose Barajas–Diaz, who was convicted in October of felony death by motor vehicle and given a five-year, suspended sentence with credit for time served.
Barajas–Dias was drunk when his pickup truck made a U-turn into the path of an oncoming motorcycle, killing the driver, at a busy Charlotte intersection in January, reported Fox 46. He had an open container in the truck and no operator’s license.
Rather than comply with ICE’s request to remand Barajas–Diaz into their custody, Garry McFadden, the sheriff of Mecklenburg County and the greater Charlotte area, released the criminal, forcing ICE to undertake its own arrest a week later.
“This is yet another example of a clear public safety threat being released into North Carolina communities rather than into ICE custody due to local sheriff policies on ICE non-cooperation,” said Acting ICE Director Matt Albence in a statement.
“Continued decisions to refuse cooperation with ICE serve as an open invitation to aliens who commit criminal offenses that these counties are a safe haven for persons seeking to evade federal authorities, and residents of Mecklenburg County are less safe due to these misguided sanctuary policies,” Albence said.
ICE’s announcement on Monday came, ironically, as the North Carolina Supreme Court heard arguments in a case that pits the Mecklenburg County Sheriff’s Office against two illegal immigrants who said McFadden’s predecessor unlawfully detained them while cooperating with ICE, reported Raleigh’s News & Observer.
Even though McFadden defeated former Sheriff Irwin Carmichael last November by campaigning on a platform largely based around his refusal to cooperate with ICE, the issue at stake in the case now before the court is whether the state has any jurisdiction in establishing its own policies for cooperating with federal immigration agencies.
Lawyers for detained illegal immigrants Carlos Chavez and Luis Lopez argued that the sheriff violated their rights by remanding them into ICE custody, but a state appeals court overturned the verdict in their favor.
“If allowed to stand, this would be a disturbing precedent,” claimed the American Civil Liberties Union, arguing on behalf of the plaintiffs, “potentially preventing state courts in North Carolina from overseeing the behavior of North Carolina police, even when they engage in clear misconduct or accommodate plainly unlawful detainer requests.”
However, the reverse may also be true as state legislators recently passed a bill that would give judges the authority to hold accountable and possibly remove sheriffs who refuse to comply with ICE.
Although the bill was vetoed by Democrat Gov. Roy Cooper, McFadden and a coalition of six other left-wing sheriffs in the North Carolina’s largest urban areas likely fear the precedent that the case could set if state courts were given authority and jurisdiction to regulate their immigration policies.
The bill was a direct response to earlier episodes in which McFadden had flouted ICE detainers, including that of a Honduran domestic-abuser who engaged in a nine-hour hostage standoff with SWAT team members before he was taken in by local authorities—only to be released again shortly thereafter, forcing ICE to re-arrest him for a third time.
Charlotte Sheriff Gary McFadden/IMAGE: Garry Mcfadden 4Sherrif via Youtube
McFadden has repeatedly pointed the finger at everyone but himself for the problem of violent criminals being released back into communities—often making law-abiding immigrants in those communities the most vulnerable victims.
In response to ICE’s criticism over past incidents, he has claimed the burden was on the agency to obtain a warrant through a federal court, which would have forced him to cooperate with the detainer request.
ICE has said the extra step would be counter-productive to its efforts when an outstanding warrant for the arrest already exists.
“ICE is willing to work with local partners on ways to fulfill our shared goal of ensuring community safety,” said ICE Atlanta Interim Field Office Director John Tsoukaris.
“Unfortunately, elected law enforcement officials who chose not to collaborate with ICE and try to justify their actions by stating they are protecting their community are placing politics above public safety and are actually failing in their most basic duty of protecting their communities,” Tsoukaris continued.
He said it defied logic why McFadden would willfully endanger the community he’s sworn to protect, while also increasing the federal agency’s presence rather than reducing it.
“Uncooperative jurisdictions such as Mecklenburg County should be on notice that as long as criminal offenders are being released, they should get used to seeing a lot more ICE at-large enforcement activity in their communities,” Tsoukaris said.
‘Such acts are not only unfair; they are potentially illegal…’
Brett Kavanaugh/IMAGE: screenshot via Fox News
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Some on the Left, such as comedian Stephen Colbert, have suggested that the Democrats’ impending impeachment vote could create a Senate trial that closely resembles the confirmation hearings of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
The likely insinuation is that radical activists will wage an organized pressure campaign consisting of intimidation tactics, threats, doxing and misinformation in a last-ditch effort to sway the outcome.
But just over a year since the Kavanaugh proceedings, their bad-faith attempts to block the confirmations are coming increasingly under scrutiny and revealing their own self-righteous actions to be far worse than those whom they accused of perverting democracy.
On Saturday, USA Today reported on one of several Kavanaugh accusers who had submitted false allegations to the Senate Judiciary Committee only to recant her claims as the Justice Department sought to follow up on the potentially criminal conduct.
Although the newspaper said it was unable to independently verify the woman’s admission, it reported on a recent letter from former Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley, R-Neb., who confirmed that Kentucky native Judy Munro–Leighton was a left-wing activist who had made false statements to Congress during the course of the hearings.
Munro–Leighton submitted an anonymous, handwritten letter to the office of Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif. on Sept. 25 last year, during the heat of the contentious confirmation.
It said Kavanaugh and a friend had raped her “several times each” in the back seat of a car.
Kavanaugh was interrogated about the claim and replied unequivocally, “[T]he whole thing is just a crock, farce, wrong, didn’t happen, not anything close.” Nonetheless, the transcript of his interview—including the full “Jane Doe” letter” was publicly released.
About a week later, Munro–Leighton emailed and took credit for having sent the letter, while doubling down on the claims.
The investigation quickly established that she had a history of left-wing activism, was much older than Kavanaugh, and did not live anywhere near where she alleged the rape to have occurred.
But a month afterward, she said she had not written the letter and only took credit to grab the attention of investigators.
“I was angry, and I sent it out,” she said.
Grassley’s letter sought to follow up with the FBI and Justice Department on what had been done to hold accountable those who made false accusations, undermining the confirmation process while diverting resources at a crucial moment.
[W]hen individuals intentionally mislead the Committee, they divert Committee resources during time-sensitive investigations and materially impede our work,” Grassley said.
“Such acts are not only unfair; they are potentially illegal,” he continued. “It is illegal to make materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statements to Congressional investigators. It is illegal to obstruct Committee investigations.”
‘With one of the broadest jurisdictions of any congressional committee, COR has a critical role to play in our caucus’s agenda…’
Carolyn Maloney / IMAGE: Nancy Pelosi via Youtube
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) As part of her desperate bid to retain the chairmanship of the House Oversight Committee, acting chair Carolyn Maloney, D-NY, boasted that she supported impeaching President Donald Trump for an alleged quid pro quo scandal even a month before the controversial conversation between Trump and his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, had occurred.
“I have supported an impeachment inquiry since June when President Trump admitted on national TV that he would accept foreign assistance in our elections,” Maloney wrote last week in a “dear colleague” letter.
“At the time, I thought he was posing a hypothetical situation,” she said. “Little did we know that it was an on-air confession.”
Maloney, the 73-year-old widow of a millionaire Manhattan investor who died in a 2009 climbing accident, assumed the acting chairmanship last month after the passing of Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md.
While she is the most senior Democrat on the committee, at least three other committee Democrats are jockeying for the position.
Presiding over outsize personalities like Alexandria Ocasio–Cortez, Rashida Tlaib and Debbie Wasserman Schultz—not to mention on the Oversight Committee’s prominent GOP minority members—the role will entail something of a delicate balancing act between competing demands.
Maloney’s biggest competition comes from Reps. Jackie Speier of California, Stephen Lynch of Massachusetts and Gerald Connolly of Virginia, the New York Post reported.
Maloney, who was passed over for the selection last January in favor of Cummings, is taking nothing for granted this time.
In touting her credentials, Maloney went beyond emphasizing her experience serving on the committee for 26 years and chairing several subcommittees. She also played up her many left-wing bona fides, including “first woman to hold the gavel” as the acting chair of the committee.
Most importantly, she went on the attack against President Donald Trump, whose ongoing impeachment probe would figure to be a major responsibility for however long the House sought to pursue it.
“With one of the broadest jurisdictions of any congressional committee, [Oversight] has a critical role to play in our caucus’s agenda,” Maloney said.
Along with House Intelligence Chair Adam Schiff of California and Foreign Affairs Chair Elliot Engel of New York, Maloney’s committee would lead the investigation process. Several other committees, including the powerful Finance and Judiciary panels, have taken more periphery roles also, the Post reported.
Maloney pledged to continue the oversight work not only into Trump’s Ukraine affairs, but also into countless other probes initiated by Cummings as part of a longstanding fishing expedition to undo the 2016 election results.
“The situation being investigated as part of the impeachment proceedings is of the utmost importance,” she said, “but we will not lose sight of the other ongoing investigations the Committee is conducting into the policies of the Trump Administration, including the family separation policy, government response to hurricanes, and ethical violations by senior officials.”
With last week’s announcement that President Donald Trump planned to change his permanent residence from New York to Florida, the Sunshine State continues to flex its popularity as a refuge from the northeastern extremes of climate and taxation.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and others have embraced the exodus with open arms— for instance, actively encouraging prominent players in the finance and tech industries to relocate.
But dual residencies have become a concern in the state, a perennial battleground with razor-thin margins, which has drawn negative headlines as the result of several corrupt or incompetent local elections supervisors during the 2018 race.
One of the most closely watched areas during the election season is Palm Beach, known for its beauty and its popularity with southbound retirees as well as for being an election disaster.
PILF’s report identified several “flaws and procedural errors” that it hoped could prevent a repeat of the familiar scenario—or worse.
“We are one year out from the 2020 General and this report is a stark reminder that you can’t have election ‘security’ without integrity first,” said J. Christian Adams, PILF president and general counsel, in a statement.
“Palm Beach County serves as an example of the types of vulnerabilities found within Florida’s voting system that could be leveraged by an outside saboteur,” he continued. “Our research suggests these problems are fixable well before the presidential election.”
Fortunately, not all of the 20,479 residents who were double-registered in another state voted in both, but PILF’s examination showed that there were 225 instances of Palm Beach residents double-voting in 2016 and 2018.
Even more shockingly, of the 2,203 deceased registrants who turned up on Palm Beach voting rolls, 139 had voted.
Despite the work of watchdog groups like PILF casting light on such voter abuse, Democrats have repeatedly sought to downplay evidence of fraud, suggesting that the impact on elections is negligible.
While the numbers may not seem like that jarring in a county with a population of just around 1.4 million, in state with more than 8 million active voters, when considering the narrow margins of recent races, the state’s voting discrepancies are downright alarming.
Unsurprisingly, much of it benefits the Democrats who prefer to turn a blind eye.
GOP Sen. Rick Scott defeated incumbent Democrat Bill Nelson last year by barely more than 10,000 votes statewide. And DeSantis eked by in his win over Andrew Gillum with just over 30,000.
But both Democrats in Palm Beach trounced their respective Republican opponents by a margin of 17 percentage points more.
The congressional district that encompasses much of Palm Beach also went solid blue with roughly 70,000 more votes for Rep. Ted Deutch than his GOP challenger out of almost 300,000 votes cast.
With 2020 likely to be even more contentious amid a heated presidential election contest, PILF has issued an entire series titled “Calm Before the Storm” that addresses several key areas where preventable voter fraud vulnerabilities might sway the outcome of the election in a worst-case scenario.
Adams said that PILF has alerted the appropriate officials with each of its reports, although some are more responsive than others.
It applauded Wendy S. Link, the current Palm Beach County supervisor of elections, for her commitment to reviewing the findings and taking the necessary corrective action.
Link’s predecessor, Susan Bucher, was suspended from her position after several major issues in the Palm Beach and Broward county elections led to widespread criticism of the office and fears that she had violated election laws.
“Essentially all findings worthy of official action were created during now-removed Supervisor Susan Bucher’s term of office, or a predecessor,” PILF said.
‘I am really concerned about our country if this does not stop…’
Adam Schiff and Nancy Pelosi / IMAGE: Fox News via Youtube
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) A vote in the House on Thursday to formalize impeachment—though long called upon by Republicans—proved to be even more divisive as Democrats offered few cross-the-aisle concessions, likely setting back hopes of a swift and decisive conclusion on both sides of the polarized process.
GOP supporters of President Donald Trump widely criticized the resolution for providing none of the transparency and due process demanded in the secretive probe into the president’s Ukraine dealings.
The investigation stems from a whistleblower complaint that seems to have been largely engineered by House Intelligence Chair Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and deep-state partisan activists.
Schiff, who is now overseeing the probe, has justified its secrecy by claiming the informant’s anonymity was paramount for protection.
Conservative media outlets, however, have begun to name the likely source as left-wing activist Eric Ciaramella.
While, predictably, no Republicans supported Thursday’s vote to formalize the impeachment inquisition, two Democrats—freshman Rep. Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey and 15-term veteran Rep. Collin Peterson of Minnesota—voted against the resolution, citing its overly partisan nature.
Fatigue Sets In?
Adam Schiff / IMAGE: CSPAN via Youtube
This coincided with an apparent shift in tone for the Democrats, who have sought to control the public narrative with unsubstantiated claims that support is steadily gaining momentum.
Instead, there are signals that impeachment fatigue may already be setting in—with the greater risk for Democrats that failing to make their case with the public may carry severe political repercussions in next year’s election.
“I am really concerned about our country if this does not stop,” Sandra Shrewsbury, a 70-year-old Indiana resident, told the Associated Press.
Shrewsbury said she wholeheartedly supported Democrats’ impeachment crusade but had grown worried by the sluggish information drip from the closed-door sessions, which has seen no headline-grabbing, major breakthroughs emerge since the process began in September.
“I was getting very frustrated with Congress and those investigating because I felt like they were just dragging their heels,” she said. “I wish they’d stop worrying about getting reelected themselves and get down to the business they’re supposed to be doing.”
According to a new Associated Press poll, only about a third of respondents consider impeachment to be a top priority, as Democrats have made it.
“More people say House members are motivated mainly by politics rather than by duty as they investigate the Republican president’s dealings with Ukraine,” the left-leaning news syndicate sheepishly admitted.
The AP insisted that “many” supported the inquiry—citing a plurality of 47 percent—but recognized also that the number fell short of the groundswell impeachment advocates had hoped for—and needed—to make it a successful endeavor.
Removal from office would require the defection of 20 Senate Republicans, assuming all of the Democrats and two left-wing independents were on board.
Only three GOP senators, thus far, have given any indication that they considered the investigation to be legitimate, without indicating how they might ultimately vote.
Trump’s support has, at best, held steady—but in what could be a nightmarish scenario for the leftist ‘resistance,’ the support that the media had declared weeks ago to have surpassed the 50 percent threshold now appears to be receding.
Seriousness vs. Determination
Adam Schiff, Nancy Pelosi, Jerry Nadler and the late Elijah Cummings / IMAGE: ABC News via Youtube
Schiff and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, despite a sometimes tone-deaf approach, have claimed they are “deadly serious” about the process.
Following the largely party-line vote on Thursday, Schiff said, “We take no joy in having to move down this road … but neither do we shrink from it.”
However, some left-wing media outlets, in the wake of the rebuke by members of the Democrats’ own party, instead characterized it as a game—and warned that Republicans were winning.
“[T]he lack of any Republican defections showed the degree to which the GOP has closed ranks around the president,” bemoaned Yahoo News, “despite increasing evidence emerging from impeachment witness depositions that he sought to pressure Ukrainian authorities to investigate a political rival.”
Thus far, little evidence has been presented outside leaks from Democrats within the committee hearings and publicly released opening statements that the media have used to craft their story lines.
Most of the witnesses called by the House have been career civil-servants with partisan allegiances and an axe to grind against Trump for disrupting the old bureaucratic order. Republicans have complained previously that Schiff was preventing them from a complete cross-examination.
Conservative Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan said the Democrats seemed to be approaching the process now with more civility, trying with little success to court pro-Trump defectors.
Nonetheless, accepting the high-stakes gamble, they remained unwavering in their purpose.
“They feel the great question is clear,” Noonan wrote in a column Thursday. “That question is: Can we prove, through elicited testimony, that the president made clear to the leader of another nation, an ally in uncertain circumstances, that the U.S. would release congressionally authorized foreign aid only if the foreign leader publicly committed to launch an internal investigation that would benefit the president in his 2020 re-election effort?”
But the crux is in the framing of the question itself and the suggestion that it is a serious offense.
Trump’s supporters maintain that even though the president has, from the outset, openly acknowledged some of the accusations Democrats have claimed to be at the heart of the inquiry, they did not constitute a crime—much less an impeachable offense.
Skeptics point to a multitude of examples in which hypocritical Democrats have boasted about their own efforts to leverage and threaten financial support in Ukraine and other countries for political objectives or personal advantage.
Trump’s allies also note that the Democrats’ impeachment push has little to do with the Ukraine matter, and that the president’s opponents have made clear their intentions to undermine and remove the president since he was first elected—including a catastrophic attempt to link him with Russian collusion.
Thus, Democrats have not only to prove that there was misconduct that rose to such a serious level, the greater political challenge is convincing the public of their sincerity and that the so-called cure for this political malady isn’t, in fact, far worse than the symptoms.
‘Good riddance. It’s not like Mr. Trump paid taxes here anyway. He’s all yours, Florida…’
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headline) The business-hostile taxes and radical social agenda that have overtaken New York have driven many of its wealthy citizens take flight. On Thursday, the Big Apple reportedly lost one more: President Donald Trump.
Following a New York Times report that he had quietly filed the change-of-residence paperwork, Trump—a life-long New Yorker—confirmed via Twitter on Friday that he was planning to change his primary residence from Fifth Avenue to Florida, where he regularly retreats to his longtime residence at Palm Beach’s Mar-A-Lago.
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, the White House, is the place I have come to love and will stay for, hopefully, another 5 years as we MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, but my family and I will be making Palm Beach, Florida, our Permanent Residence. I cherish New York, and the people of…..
“[D]espite the fact that I pay millions of dollars in city, state and local taxes each year, I have been treated very badly by the political leaders of both the city and state,” Trump continued.
Even so, he added, he still holds deep his affection for it. “As President, I will always be there to help New York and the great people of New York,” he said. “It will always have a special place in my heart!”
Trump’s former home state—led by Gov. Andrew Cuomo and a far-left legislature—has pushed the limits on sanctuary laws for illegal immigrants, extreme abortion practices and attempts to deny gun-owners of their Second Amendment rights.
It also has become a financial money pit due to its profligate spending. Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, by capping the deduction limit on state and local taxes, barred one-percenters from taking advantage of loopholes that exploited the high-tax systems while punishing the average taxpayer.
Cuomo and other Democrats have blamed Trump’s closing of the loopholes as the source of their current woes, including a multi-billion-dollar budget shortfall.
Cuomo has fancied himself something of a foil to the world’s most powerful New Yorker, often denouncing and undermining federal policies.
Meanwhile, his attorney general, Letitia James, has spearheaded spurious efforts not only to challenge Trump policies, such as immigration, but to target him personally with lawsuits seeking access to his financial records.
Cuomo weighed in on the new development with yet another shot at the one-time Manhattan developer, whose investments undeniably helped revitalize it following a period of disrepute.
Mar-a-Lago / IMAGE: CBS News
“Good riddance. It’s not like Mr. Trump paid taxes here anyway,” said Cuomo. “He’s all yours, Florida.”
Some, like the Wall StreetJournal suggested that the move would be advantageous not only personally, but also politically for Trump as his 2020 re-election campaign picks up.
Florida, which Trump won in 2016, has long been one of a handful of narrowly split battleground states that can decide an election. It did just that in the 2000 competition between George W. Bush and Al Gore.
Although it currently is led by pro-Trump Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis and two Republican senators, Marco Rubio and Rick Scott, Democrats have continued to target it.
Both DeSantis and Scott underwent recounts and other legal challenges following last year’s election, as high-powered lawyers from the national Democratic Party flooded into Tallahassee.
A ballot initiative that was heavily funded by far-left billionaire George Soros also succeeded in restoring voting rights to thousands of Florida felons—comprising, in theory, roughly 10 percent of the voting-age population.
However, DeSantis later ordered that in order for felons to be eligible they must have settled all their debts with the state, including any criminal fines. Left-wing activists are continuing to challenge the policy in court.
‘The ABA has lost its credibility as a neutral arbiter. It should be treated no differently than any other special interest group…’
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) The American Bar Association has long been reputed for its leftward lean; few embrace the promise of an expansive and overly regulatory central-government so much as the lawyers who stand to profit most from it.
But what was once present in its back-room cronyism has come out full-force during the Trump administration, with the legal industry’s premier trade organization shamelessly joining the ranks of ‘Resistance’ social justice warriors.
With echoes of last year’s Democratic smear campaign against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, another Trump judicial nominee, Lawrence VanDyke, was left in tears following a slanderous attack from the ABA during his confirmation hearing for the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
“It is difficult to envision a more principled, highly-qualified nominee for the Ninth Circuit seat than Lawrence VanDyke,” said a statement from Carrie Severino, chief counsel and policy director for conservative legal watchdog the Judicial Crisis Network.
“In his hearing today, he passionately and persuasively demonstrated his remarkable competence and character,” Severino said.
American Greatness reported that VanDyke, who previously served as solicitor general in both Montana and Nevada, was a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School and has been an editor of the Harvard Law Review.
Despite VanDyke’s sterling credentials, the ABA Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary rated him as “not qualified” in an overtly partisan letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee.
“Mr. VanDyke’s accomplishments are offset by the assessments of interviewees that Mr. VanDyke is arrogant, lazy, an ideologue, and lacking in knowledge of the day-to-day practice including procedural rules,” said the letter.
“There was a theme that the nominee lacks humility, has an ‘entitlement’ temperament, does not have an open mind, and does not always have a commitment to being candid and truthful,” it continued.
More specifically, it claimed he would be unfair to LGBT litigants—an increasingly important area of case law that intersects, oftentimes, with the First Amendment rights of religious freedom.
A recent 9th Circuit panel, for instance, overturned earlier efforts to impose an injunction of President Donald Trump’s transgender military ban while activists waged an appeal of the ruling.
Josh Hawley/IMAGE: Fox Business via YouTube
After Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., questioned VanDyke about the ABA accusations that he was an anti-LGBT bigot, the judge reportedly lost his composure.
“No, I did not say that,” VanDyke responded to the claim that he would be unfair to LGBT people. “I do not believe that. It is a fundamental belief of mine that all people are created in the image of God. They should all be treated with dignity and respect, senator.”
VanDyke said that while responding during the ABA interview, he had been cut off and told they were running out of time.
“It’s not only disappointing that the ABA has given John O’Connor a poor review, but it is unfair that John was not allowed to respond to their criticism,” said Lankford. “For a legal institution like the ABA to deny due process is hypocritical.”
But Severino said the viciousness with which the organization went after VanDyke marked a new low.
“Even for the ABA, this is beyond the pale,” she said.
While Trump’s decision as a candidate to release the names of prospective judges he would consider for federal appointments may have won him points from conservatives during his campaign, some now question whether the strategy may have backfired by giving left-wing radicals more opportunity to gather ammunition for its partisan snipes.
Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, said the latest smear showed that it was the ABA that needed to be held more accountable, and, along with Hawley, questioned the practice of giving the partisan group unique access to judicial nominees for vetting.
“The ABA has lost its credibility as a neutral arbiter,” Lee said. “It should be treated no differently than any other special interest group.”
Others were even harsher in their ABA criticism, such as Mike Davis, who called it “a liberal dark-money group, fronting for trial lawyers who donate millions of dollars to Democratic politicians” and denounced its “fatally flawed” screenings as “intentionally structured to couple liberal activists with a subjective, black-box.”
Left wing judges have also joined the anti-Trump resistance, with many refusing to retire while claiming that the Republican president’s nominees were under-qualified. Ironically, some have accused Trump of “blatantly politicizing” the court.
Meanwhile, some far-left activist groups have said they plan to craft a list of “acceptable” nominees that Democratic politicians may draw from when they regain power and will wage a pressure campaign for senators who reach across the aisle to confirm judges that are insufficiently activist.
‘It’s hard to overstate just how much is riding on Virginia’s elections…’
Ralph Northam / IMAGE: Face the Nation via Youtube
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Although several states will head to the polls next week to pick their local legislators, few races will be as closely watched as Virginia’s.
“It’s hard to overstate just how much is riding on Virginia’s elections and how they could influence the ultimate fortunes of Trump and Republicans,” wrote far-left actor Alec Baldwin in an op-ed Wednesday for USA Today.
Sharing the spotlight with the ‘bellwether’ state—yet another gauge of suburban, purplish, swing-state sentiment in the lead-up to next year’s contentious presidential election—will be its controversial governor, Ralph Northam.
After a racist photo in his medical school yearbook threatened to derail not only his own political career, but possibly all of the Democrats’ hard-fought gains in the once solid-red state, Northam went underground, obstinately refusing to step aside.
Since then, he has tentatively re-entered the political sphere. With Democrats hoping to reclaim the state capitol in Richmond for the first time two decades, in a race flush with outside money and interest, the minstrel-in-chief is now sure-footedly hitting the campaign trail.
But in addition to bringing a renewed focus on his own racist baggage, Northam’s administration has also become a test-case for radical policies including abortion, gun-control and slavery reparations, posing something of an existential threat to the fearful Republicans who remain in many rural parts of the Old Dominion.
A recent investigation by open-government advocates Judicial Watch revealed that Northam—who controversially appeared to endorse infanticide in a political scandal that preceded his blackface episode—had been fed abortion talking points directly from Planned Parenthood.
Judicial Watch also submitted a records request under the Freedom of Information Act for all of the correspondence from the governor’s office that related to his racist yearbook photo.
A Political Rogue
Terry McAuliffe/Photo by sharedferret (CC)
The state—which many denizens of the Washington, DC, swamp call home—is important not only because of its proximity to the nation’s capital, but also its consistently rogue, predictably unpredictable politics.
For many years, the political party of the sitting president would prove to be the exact opposite of the one Virginia voters sent to the governor’s mansion in Richmond.
In 2013, Terry McAuliffe—a longtime Clinton bundler and stooge for the Democratic National Committee—bucked the trend by defeating then-Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli during the Obama presidency in an election that raised the bar on outside campaign spending in the commonwealth.
Although McAuliffe’s own ethical record was spotty at best from his days securing Chinese donors for the Clintons, outgoing Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell became the unlucky subject to a bribery scandal (from which he was later exonerated) that hurt his prospective Republican successor.
But since that election, Virginia’s political landscape has continued to change, growing even bluer in the urban centers of Northern Virginia, Norfolk, Richmond and Charlottesville.
McAuliffe helped the process along by restoring voting rights to tens of thousands of felons, even though the state courts had ruled against him on the matter.
During the 2016 Democratic National Convention, the then-governor also helped mastermind the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, which launched a successful “sue till blue” redistricting campaign.
Led by former Attorney General Eric Holder, the NDRC succeeded in flipping several red congressional districts in Virginia during the 2018 election, as well as targeting roughly a dozen other states.
And in the last statewide election, in 2015, the once-solid red General Assembly narrowly maintained its majority after an even-split district resulted in the invocation of an obscure law, deciding the election by a name being drawn from a bowl.
That—and lots of outside political spending from left-wing megadonors—gave state Democrats the confidence they needed that they might finally reclaim the state capitol in 2019 for the first time since 1999.
However, the massive scandal early this year enveloping the top-three Democratic officials seemed poised to derail those hopes.
An Inconvenient Racist
Ralph Northam’s 1984 medical school yearbook
In contrast to the carpetbagger McAuliffe, Northam ran as a folksy, homespun native with a bent toward the classical liberalism that long defined state politics in the 20th century.
But it seems the only common link between Northam and the Virginia Democrats of yore was their shared penchant for racism.
Northam’s yearbook photo—depicting a man in blackface and another in KKK regalia—ran in the 1980s when he was already well into his 30s.
It seemed clear that he would be destined for the dustbin of the state’s illustrious history, but a series of rape allegations against Lieutenant Gov. Justin Fairfax and a blackface admission by state Attorney General Mark Herring led left-wingers to rethink their priorities.
Many party-members and media allies immediately set about to downplay and diminish the embarrassing crisis.
That continues to this day, reported the Associated Press, which said Northam has found his voice again and reburied his sense of shame.
“I’m so grateful that Northam didn’t resign,” said Pat Gadzinski, who hosted a political event for Northam on Saturday’s at her Virginia Beach home. “I feel those were stupid mistakes he made as a kid. I think he’s done great things.”
The Associated Press said even the state’s Democratic black voters were putting party politics over principle when it came to forgiving the racist executive.
Asked about the damning yearbook photo and whether there were any lingering concerns about the governor, Virginia Beach resident Mark Wade told the AP, “Everybody’s got issues, everybody’s got devils or demons,” he said. “Especially Trump.”
Others, like Richmond Democratic candidate Larry Barnett said the scandal, which peaked in February, was “old news,” reported the AP.
“It’s good that he didn’t, that he weathered that difficult, humiliating storm,” Barnett said. “He’s actually a very effective governor and is doing a lot to use his own painful experience to bring about good things for Virginians.”
A Pawn of the Party
Tom Steyer/Photo by marcn (CC)
Media like the Associated Press, now rallying around Northam and sweeping his racist past under the rug, claim that even though his political career may end in two more years, helping Democrats to retake the state’s General Assembly will bring his legacy full-circle, back into resolutely positive territory.
Once again, it seems, the national party has stepped in, as it did with McAuliffe, to emphasize a bigger prize at stake than what happens in the commonwealth.
The AP reported that volunteers from as far afield as San Francisco had come to support Northam’s last-gasp canvassing efforts.
Democratic hedge-fund manager and current presidential candidate Tom Steyer pledged to put millions into the state races.
George Soros is also known to have invested in some of the local elections, where he sought to pit primary challengers against more centrist candidates in places like Fairfax County.
But the down-home country doctor, it seems, has been a political pawn far longer than many realized.
Judicial Watch revealed in its recent tranche of emails that Alexsis Rodgers, a policy director within the lieutenant governor’s office, used a Planned Parenthood email address while offering Northam and others political talking points to help weather a separate scandal on his controversial abortion remarks.
Northam, a former pediatrician, had said, after Democrat legislators proposed a partial-birth abortion bill, that it was possible a botched abortion might lead to a live birth, which the doctors, in consultation with the parents, would proceed to terminate.
Pro-life advocates were incensed by his cavalier attitude toward infanticide.
Rodgers offered Northam the following lines:
“There is no such thing as an abortion up until birth.”
“Making a decision about whether to continue a pregnancy is a complex and personal decision. Politicians have no place in this process.”
“As a physician, I know how important it is to trust my patients and for my patients to trust me.”
“These are complicated medical decisions that families deserve to make in private without political interference.”
Northam has since veered to the left on other issues, like gun control, seeking a special legislative session at which he proposed sweeping bans. Ultimately, he was thwarted by the narrow GOP majority.
Likewise, Northam’s racist scandal has compromised him considerably with black radicals in the state, some of whom offered their conditional support to him during his fall from grace only if he agreed to a laundry list of activist agenda items.
Northam also has continued to follow in McAuliffe’s footsteps by offering voting rights to more and more felons.
A controversy emerged during the 2018 midterm races when a convicted pedophile, newly pardoned by the governor, also became eligible to seek elected office, attempting to run in a tightly contested congressional district.
Alec Baldwin (screen shot: Saturday Night Live/Youtube)
But for the Left Coast liberals flooding into the state, such things are mere collateral damage in the bid to undermine President Donald Trump’s re-election efforts.
“[W]ith impeachment under way, the stakes are phenomenally higher,” Baldwin wrote in his op-ed.
“There’s just no way a big win for Democrats in Virginia won’t be read as a referendum on impeachment, and no way the opposite outcome won’t be read the opposite way,” he said. “These things have a way of shaping the long-term electoral narrative.”
As an afterthought, the “30 Rock” and “Saturday Night Live star seemed to promise better returns for those who fell in line:
“And it might do more than that. It could make a substantive difference in the 2020 political landscape, not to mention in the lives of Virginians.”
‘It’s an attempt to shovel fodder to the media, knowing they will now proclaim all Republican concerns moot…’
Adam Schiff and Nancy Pelosi / IMAGE: Fox News via Youtube
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Clinging to the hope of bipartisan cooperation in Congress, some GOP naïfs were ready to cast aside House Democrats’ true impeachment motives when Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., announced this week a floor vote on a resolution to formalize the current Ukraine probe into President Donald Trump.
Moderate aisle-straddlers like Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, expressed optimism that Pelosi’s promises—of more due process, transparency and active agency in the proceedings for Trump’s allies on the Right—were made in good faith.
But an examination of House Resolution 660, which was introduced on Tuesday night, confirms that the only thing transparent in the partisan inquisition is the Left’s brazen, unabashed aim to use impeachment for political leverage and score-settling.
“This resolution is window dressing,” wrote RedState. “It’s an attempt to shovel fodder to the media, knowing they will now proclaim all Republican concerns moot. The fact that some conservatives are going along with the gambit is disappointing.”
‘Due Process’ Down the Rabbit Hole
The naked ambition of Trump’s foes to reverse the 2016 election and fix the 2020 election leaves no room for consensus-building, much less the constraints of following procedures prescribed through the Constitution, established House rules or past historical precedent.
“Speaker Pelosi’s resolution confirms that it is an impeachment inquiry, yet every other impeachment inquiry we’ve had in the history of our country—all three—have allowed both sides to call witnesses, have allowed the White house to participate,” said House Minority Whip Steve Scalise, R-La, on Thursday, according to American Greatness.
“That’s not happening,” Scalise continued. “That might be what they did in the Soviet Union—not the United States of America.”
Meanwhile, the parade of theatrics that began well before House Intelligence Chair Adam Schiff, D-Calif., opened the probe by offering a false, interpretive performance of Trump’s July phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, continued to course through Democrats’ latest evasive maneuvers.
One of those was the rabbit-hole of self-referential skulduggery the resolution used by referring to an existing “investigation” that was never authorized, while continuing to duck the authorization of a specific investigation that could limit the scope of what partisan Democrats were permitted to do under House rules.
Pelosi’s resolution references “the existing House of Representatives inquiry,” but no such House of Representatives investigation exists, because the House of Representatives never authorized one. And this resolution doesn’t either. pic.twitter.com/blss6WWPBh
Federalist writer Sean Davis observed that by launching their informal investigation prior to the vote, House Democrats had painted themselves into a corner and were attempting to use a “sleight of hand” through imprecise wording to preserve the weeks of collected testimony as legally binding.
Democrats can’t up and authorize a real investigation now, because that would be an admission that previous demands were unauthorized, nuking their current case. So they’re left to play cutesy games where they reference a non-existent investigation and hope nobody will notice.
As others noted, even if the resolution were valid, Democrats offered very little in the way of concessions to the objections and demands their GOP counterparts have raised.
“You only need to see a few parts of it to realize that nothing has really changed and that all the same complaints being made by Republicans still exist,” wrote RedState.
For example, said Washington Examiner columnist Byron York, it does little to move the chains on the public release of transcripts from secretive hearings that the House has been using to gather testimony over the past month.
Much of the media reporting on these hearings with career bureaucrats and civil servants in the State Department thus far has relied on publicly available opening statements— as well as media leaks, of which Schiff, himself, is almost certainly a leading source.
However, the resolution leaves it at the sole discretion of Schiff whether to allow the secure, classified transcripts of the hearings to be released in full or redacted form.
Although left-leaning outlets have sought to characterize witness testimony as reinforcing the Democrats’ accusations against Trump—thereby swaying public support—Republicans with knowledge of the meetings have said this does not offer the full picture.
On Thursday, Scalise charged that Schiff had begun cutting off Republican interrogators during questioning.
“He’s directing witnesses not to answer questions that he doesn’t want the witness to answer if they’re asked by Republicans,” Scalise said.
Scalise said if it were a court of law, a mistrial would need to be declared.
“What happened today confirms even worse just how poorly Adam Schiff is handling this process in denying the ability for Republicans to even ask basic questions that are critical to the heart of whether or not a president of the United States is impeached,” he said.
Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, the ranking minority member of the House Oversight Committee, also accused Schiff of blocking crucial lines of inquiry using the pretense of preserving whistleblower anonymity.
“The Democrats run out here and say, ‘ooh, the Republicans are trying to figure out who the whistleblower is,’” Jordan said. “We’re trying to figure out who our witness list is!”
Schiff is suspected to have worked closely with the anonymous whistleblower who filed the initial complaint against Trump. He was previously caught lying about his preliminary communication with the deep-state CIA operative.
Republicans have indicated that they plan to call Schiff to the stand as a witness given his role in orchestrating the events surrounding the whistleblower’s complaint.
