HPSCI Ranking Member Devin Nunes discusses his review of phone records, and how the mysteriously collected phone data that Chariman Schiff put into his impeachment report doesn’t match with his own review.

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President Trump responds to today’s deadline set by House Democrats for the White House to say whether it would participate in the impeachment proceedings:

In summary:

“Nuts!”

HPSCI Ranking Member Devin Nunes responds to the possibilities of how HPSCI Chairman Adam Schiff gained private phone records for use in his impeachment effort.

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One of the possibilities is that Lev Parnas is a foreign national. SDNY gets a subpoena from the FISA court.  Rudy Giuliani is in contact with Parnas (1-hop). They then unmask and pull Giuliani’s records and get Nunes and Solomon (2-hops).
The question would then be how did the unmasked information in an active investigation that started in the FISC end up being sent to the House Intel Committee to be disclosed to the public?
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As the House impeachment of President Donald Trump becomes more of a forgone political conclusion it’s worth considering what terms and conditions Senate Leader Mitch McConnell will extract in order to preserve a Trump Presidency.
Most political pundits will not correctly outline the status of the possibilities, because most political pundits are willfully blind to the structure of the McConnell Senate.
First, McConnell doesn’t care about holding a majority position in the Senate.  Whether he is a majority leader or a minority leader doesn’t matter to McConnell. In fact McConnell’s political skill-set does better in the minority than the majority.
The preferred political position for Mitch McConnell is where he has between 45 and 49 republican Senators, and the Democrats hold the Majority with around 55.  Of course with Reid’s retirement, this would now be with Majority leader Chuck Schumer holding office.
Why does McConnell prefer the minority position?
The answer is where you have had to actually follow Mitch McConnell closely to see how he works.   When the Majority has around 52 to 55 seats, they need McConnell to give them 8 to 9 votes to overcome the three-fifths (60 vote) threshold for their legislative needs.  It is in the process of trade and payment for those 8 to 9 votes where McConnell makes more money, and holds more power, than as a sitting Majority Leader.
The 60 vote threshold, and McConnell’s incredible skillset in the minority, is where he shines.  Each of the needed votes to achieve sixty is worth buckets of indulgence to the minority leader.  This is why McConnell never changed the Senate rules for legislative passage.
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Hunter Biden, Chris Heinz and Devon Archer created an international private equity firm. It was anchored by the Heinz family alternative investment fund, Rosemont Capital.
The Rosemont group described themselves as “a $2.4 billion private equity firm co-owned by Hunter Biden and Chris Heinz,” with Devon Archer as “Managing Partner.”
As Vice-President Joe Biden (Hunter’s dad) and Secretary of State John Kerry (Chris’s dad) negotiated sensitive and high-stakes deals with foreign governments, Rosemont secured a series of exclusive financial deals with those same foreign governments. Hunter Biden and Chris Heinz made millions.  Today John Kerry endorses Joe Biden:

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The CIA primarily leaks PR spin to the Washington Post.  The FBI primarily leaks PR spin to the New York Times; and the State Dept. primarily leaks PR spin to CNN.  This narrative distribution model is the one constant in an ever changing universe.
Cue the audio visual…  Obviously the prior Washington Post effort to conflate the Durham investigation with the Horowitz investigation didn’t get the desired result.  As a consequence it only took a few days before the Washington Post was back at it (Matt Zapotosky and Devlin Barrett again) to try obfuscation 2.0; this time with Joseph Mifsud.

For three years the New York Times, Washington Post and CNN have sold the FBI claim that Professor Joseph Mifsud was a Russian operative passing information about Clinton’s emails to George Papadopoulos.
That essential point underpins their defense of the predicate for the CIA and FBI to open the July 31st investigation of the Trump campaign.   Again, for three years Joseph Mifsud was sold as a Russian operative; working on behalf of Russian interests.
That “Mifsud is a Russian asset” claim is the fulcrum of Crossfire Hurricane.   Mifsud has to be a Russian asset, or else…  George Papadopoulos talking to Australian Diplomat Alexander Downer about Mifsud is simply political gossip without merit, value or bearing.
The key point is Mifsud has to be a Russian operative in order for all of the downstream FBI activity to be justified.   If Mifsud ain’t Russian, the CIA and FBI have a problem.
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Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University law professor and not a supporter of President Trump, warned House lawmakers today against impeaching a President without merit. Mr. Turley said that to impeach Trump based on the current evidence “would be to expose every future president to the same type of inchoate impeachment.”
[Opening Remarks Below]

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[Transcript] Chairman Nadler, ranking member Collins, members of the Judiciary Committee, my name is Jonathan Turley, and I am a law professor at George Washington University where I hold the J.B. and Maurice C. Shapiro Chair of Public Interest Law.
It is an honor to appear before you today to discuss one of the most solemn and important constitutional functions bestowed on this House by the Framers of our Constitution: the impeachment of the President of the United States.
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At 10:00am ET the House Judiciary Committee will hold an “impeachment groundwork” hearing with a panel of left-wing resistance academics scheduled to help democrats justify their urgent partisan efforts to remove President Trump from office.
HJC Chairman Jerry Nadler will be aided by contracted Lawfare attorney Norm Eisen for the effort.  Chairman Nadler promised his peers he will be very aggressive toward any opposition questioning that seeks to undermine the predetermined enterprise. The academic panel is scheduled to begin testifying to Mr. Eisen at 10:00am ET
C-SPAN Livestream Link – Fox News Livestream Link – Fox Business Livestream Link

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The republican leadership from the U.S. House of Representatives held a press conference today as a rebuttal to the democrat impeachment inquiry report.  House Judiciary Committee ranking member Doug Collins joined GOP leadership to discuss the significant issues with the impeachment process.  WATCH:

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Everything We The People ever needed to know about media bias is completely visible at the end of the press conference.  Few DC media attended.  Apparently the republican rebuttal message is antithetical to the DC media objective.
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In the second bilateral NATO meeting of the day, U.S. President Donald Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau hold a joint press availability.
Unfortunately for U.S-Canada relations, at the conclusion of their bilat Trudeau went to a NATO reception at No. 10 Downing Street and was caught on mic disparaging President Trump with French President Emmanuel Macron. [Video and Transcript Below]

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[Transcript] – PRESIDENT TRUMP: Well, thank you very much, everybody. A question was asked just a little while ago about supporting the people protesting in Iran and are going through a very tough period. And we do support them totally and have supported them from the beginning.
The question was asked: “Do we support them” — I thought — “financially?” And we haven’t supported them. I don’t know that we’ve ever been actually asked to support them, financially. And I — you know, if somebody asked, maybe we would. But we support them very, very seriously. The people that are protesting in Iran, they’re looking for their freedom, and we are fully in support of them.
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