CLARICE FELDMAN: Producers of the Flailing Impeachment Inquiry.
Believing Adam Schiff’s lies and calling for an “impeachment inquiry” has to be one of the worst blunders of Speaker Pelosi’s career. The whistleblower tale has crumbled and the backup witnesses the Democrats are relying on only confirm the Deep State bureaucrats and Democrats believe that they, not the elected president, have a lock on executive powers. In fact, the ploy boomeranged and the spotlight is now on the Democrats’ White Hope, Joe Biden. Despite the media downplaying Biden’s actions, there is more to come of his and his party’s corruption.
The leaker, incorrectly tagged a “whistleblower,” now doesn’t want to testify. Instead he wants to give his testimony “by letter,” presumably from an undisclosed location where no one can test his “testimony.” Ostensibly this is because he fears for his safety. He is anonymous, so any claim of “death threats” seems unlikely, although as we show below, we do have a rather good idea of his identity.
In any event the very notion is preposterous.
LET THE SUNSHINE IN: Democrats ratchet up impeachment secrecy.
Friday’s interview of Marie Yovanovitch, the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, marked a new point — a low point, as Republicans see it — in Democratic efforts to keep impeachment information out of public view.
In this way: The two previous impeachment interviews, with former special envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker and Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson, were conducted in the format of what is known as a transcribed interview. Rep. Adam Schiff, who is running the Democratic impeachment effort, decreed that transcripts not be released to the public. At the same time, there were no heavily restrictive rules on what would happen should any member of Congress, acting from memory, reveal things that were said in the interview.
The Yovanovitch session was different. Democrats conducted the interview in the format of a deposition, which is different from a transcribed interview. One key difference is that there are serious penalties for lawmakers who reveal the contents of a deposition. Doing so would almost surely subject the offending member to a House ethics investigation.
Read the whole thing.
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: The Strategies of Targeting Trump: We are headed for a train wreck. No one knows for certain which outcome is most likely. “After failing with the voting machine gambit, the Logan Act, the 25th Amendment, the emoluments clause, the McCabe-Rosenstein faux-coup, the Comey memos farce, the “resistance” efforts outlined by the New York Times anonymous op-ed writer, the campaign finance violations accusations, Stormy, tax returns, whistleblowers, leakers, the Mueller 22 months charade, and now impeachment 2.0, what exactly is the point of impeaching Trump just 13 months before the election?”
Distracting from the revelations to come, I think.
Plus:
Sane observers see impeachment as a travesty without either moral or legal grounds to justify removing an elected president 13 months before the 2020 election. But sanity means nothing these days, given the hatred of Trump, the volatility of the electorate, and the furious bias of the media.
After all, we are planning to impeach a president on the basis of a “whistleblower” who will not come forward, who is a Democratic partisan, who worked for a current Democratic presidential candidate, who contrary to the whistleblower statutes went first to the Democratic Chairman of what is now the impeachment inquiry committee, Adam Schiff, also chair of the Intelligence Committee, and whose formal complaint was prepped by Democrat-affiliated lawyers. The whistleblower claims second-hand knowledge from leaking White House Staffers who heard a confidential Trump conversation—a conversation whose transcript was immediately released and was at odds in key places with the whistleblower’s second- and third-hand versions.
We are headed for a train wreck.
That they don’t care is itself a high crime and misdemeanor.
SAY IT AIN’T SO: Fox News pollster Braun Research misrepresented impeachment poll: analysis.
The poll released last week by Fox News that claimed most Americans favor the impeachment of President Trump underrepresented Republican and independent voters, The Post has found.
The poll said 51% of voters were in favor of Trump’s impeachment and removal from office, while 40% did not want him impeached.
Princeton, New Jersey, pollster Braun Research, which conducted the survey, noted 48% of its respondents were Democrats. But the actual breakdown of party-affiliation is 31% Democrat, 29% Republican and 38% independent, according to Gallup.
A poll weighted for party affiliation would have concluded that 44.9% favored impeachment and 44.4% opposed it, a Post analysis has concluded.
The poll prompted Trump to tweet: “Whoever [Fox News’] Pollster is, they suck.”
Harsh, but fair.
Schifty Schiff now says ‘Whistleblower’ does not really need to testify anymore
Rep. Adam Schiff said Sunday that the House Intelligence Committee might not need to interview the CIA analyst who filed a whistleblower complaint against President Donald Trump, a reversal for the Democrat, who has come under fire for failing to disclose the whistleblower’s contacts with his office.
Schiff acknowledged he initially supported the whistleblower testifying about the Aug. 12 complaint, which centered on a July 25 phone call Trump had with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
“Given that we already have the call record, we don’t need the whistleblower who wasn’t on the call to tell us what took place during the call, we have the best evidence of that,” Schiff said on “Face the Nation.” “It may not be necessary to take steps that might reveal the whistleblower’s identity to do that, and we’re going to make sure we protect that whistleblower.”
The Democrat has slowly pulled back his preference for the whistleblower to testify after it was revealed Oct. 2 that the CIA analyst had contact with a Schiff aide prior to filing the complaint Aug. 12.
h/t GR