Free Republic

Speaker Nancy Pelosi has directed committees investigating President Trump to “proceed under that umbrella of impeachment inquiry,” but the House has never authorized such an inquiry. Democrats have been seeking to impeach Mr. Trump since the party took control of the House, though it isn’t clear for what offense. Lawmakers and commentators have suggested various possibilities, but none amount to an impeachable offense. The effort is akin to a constitutionally proscribed bill of attainder—a legislative effort to punish a disfavored person. The Senate should treat it accordingly. The impeachment power is quasi-judicial and differs fundamentally from Congress’s legislative authority. The...

Rep. Elise Stefanik was informed this week by Republican House Intelligence Committee staffers of a new diktat from Chairman Adam Schiff. It made the New York Republican’s jaw drop. Democrats had informed Republicans that, from here on out, the committee would produce a single, printed transcript of every interview it conducted as part of its impeachment inquiry. Only members of the three committees involved in the purported inquiry would be allowed to view that printout, and only in the presence of a Democratic staffer. Ms. Stefanik—an elected member of Congress who sits on the Intelligence Committee—will be babysat while reading...

Bombshell. The walls are closing in. Donald Trump’s defense has collapsed. The quid pro quo has been proven, the case for impeachment is obvious, and the only question remaining is whether the lickspittle Republicans will finally do their duty and vote to oust this disgraceful President. That’s more or less been the unanimous chorus in the impeachment press since Tuesday, when State Department envoy to Ukraine William Taylor testified to the House Intelligence Committee. The problem with this narrative is that all we have to rely on is Mr. Taylor’s opening statement and leaks from Democrats. What we don’t know...

President Trump should want a rapid impeachment process. The Ukraine story hasn’t been good for him, and there is only one way out — to get impeached, and the sooner, the better. Impeachment is baked in the cake. There is no way that Democrats, having opened an impeachment inquiry, although without a vote, can pull up short now. How could they, after touting revelation after revelation, including a supposed “confession” by Trump’s chief of staff? If there are Democrats in swing districts holding back the House from impeachment, Speaker Nancy Pelosi will have no option but to twist their arms...

... Mrs. Pelosi took the impeachment reins away from Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler and handed them to Mr. Schiff, who has been running secret hearings as Chairman of the Intelligence Committee. Witnesses testify behind closed doors, and Democrats selectively leak the testimony or evidence to the pro-impeachment press in ways that are often distorted or incomplete. Republicans then offer a competing narrative, and the public is left to wonder what’s true. All of this is supposedly in service to the serious purpose of removing a President elected by 63 million Americans. Mr. Schiff was challenged on his secrecy on Sunday...

Democrats are moving fast toward what looks like an inevitable vote to impeach President Trump, so why aren’t they doing more to persuade Americans who don’t already agree with them? They won’t convince anyone else with their current method of irregular order, secret hearings and selective leaks to the pro-impeachment press. Start with the news that Democrats may attempt to keep secret the identity of the intelligence whistleblower whose complaint started the impeachment drive. The Washington Post reports that Chairman Adam Schiff’s House Intelligence Committee may have the official testify away from Capitol Hill, or allow only staff to attend,...

RUSH: I think our last caller had a point about the Democrats. I think they are eager, and that’s why I want to reiterate: They want to get this going by Thanksgiving. They want to get something going that can say, “Trump is being impeached,” and they want to beat whatever Barr and Durham are working on. Whenever that report of the investigation of the investigators hits, they want to be able to - the Drive-Bys especially want to be able to - tell the low-information audience that those are just a bunch of Trump-sponsored reports to distract from impeachment....

RUSH: And greetings to you, music lovers, thrill-seekers, conversationalists all across the fruited plain. I know what’s going on now. I have figured it out, and it’s a crying shame that so many people on our side are playing along with this, because this is just a rehash. It has a specific objective, but it’s a rehash of the Kavanaugh attempt. It’s a continuation of Trump-Russia collusion, and it ought to be so transparent by now. Adam Schiff ought to be so disreputable. He ought to have been so discredited there would not be a single Republican that would even...

With Congress on a two-week break, Intelligence Chair Adam Schiff kept his members in town last week, to take testimony, collect evidence, and keep the cable-news chyrons spinning in his favor. It all served as a reminder of how fast Democratic leaders want this impeachment probe to go. "We're not fooling around here," Schiff told reporters. "We don't want this to drag on for months and months, which appears to be the administration's strategy." The goal, Democrats say, is to vote by the Iowa caucuses, if not before Thanksgiving. But the short timeline is yet another example of the party’s...

Link to Video claiming that the Trump administration handed over Ukraine documents implicating Clinton colluding with Ukraine in the 1996 election and implicating Biden in payback scheme.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., called for House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., to be removed from his role on the panel after it was revealed Schiff's office had contact with the Trump-Ukraine whistleblower. "It goes to the fact that his own staff ... and Schiff himself are fact witnesses," McCarthy said on "Hannity." "Nowhere in the American judicial system does it ever allow a fact witness to ever be the prosecutor." McCarthy added, "He should be removed from the committee. His staff should be removed but now they're trying to control it." Schiff's office acknowledged Wednesday that...

Investigative reporter Paul Sperry reported on Thursday night that the whistleblower whose complaint triggered the House of Representatives to open an impeachment inquiry against President Trump, was “himself helping dig up dirt in Ukraine against Trump (and Manafort) while working in the Obama White House during 2016 campaign.” In an earlier tweet, Sperry wrote, “BREAKING: The whistleblower is a registered Democrat & CIA analyst who was detailed before the 2016 election to the Obama White House, where he worked on the NSC’s Ukraine desk & met w anti-Trump Ukrainian officials before being sent packing by the Trump NSC & becoming...

It has been only 10 days since Speaker Nancy Pelosi declared that the House was “moving forward with an official impeachment inquiry” of President Trump, and Democrats are already blowing it. They are moving much too quickly. Democrats toss around the word “urgent” as if speed is the prime imperative—more important than finding the truth or following procedure. After explaining that events “accelerated the pace” for beginning impeachment, Mrs. Pelosi told reporters, “We have to strike while the iron is hot,” repeating the phrase for emphasis. That means House Democrats will likely hold hearings for a few weeks once they...

The impeachment process is barely underway and already some constitutional norms are being trampled without a note of media notice or political concern. To wit, can a whistleblower inside the intelligence bureaucracy override a President’s right to executive privilege merely with an accusation? That seems to be the default view among Democrats and the press as they luxuriate in news about Donald Trump’s conversations with foreign leaders. First it was the call with Ukraine’s President. Then on Monday the leak was what Mr. Trump told Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison. Now Democrats want to see the transcripts of other phone...

MOSCOW — The Kremlin said Monday that transcripts of calls between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin can only be published by mutual agreement. The White House has severely restricted the distribution of memos detailing Trump's calls with foreign leaders, including Putin. Asked about Congress' push for the publication of Putin-Trump calls, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov responded that "the publication is possible only on mutual accord." "If we receive some signals from the U.S., we will consider it," he said in a conference call with reporters. Peskov noted that the "diplomatic practice doesn't envisage such publications," adding...

“Impeachment will uncover the truth,” House Financial Services Committee Chairwoman Maxine Waters, a California Democrat, tweeted Tuesday. But a decision by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to hand off the impeachment inquiry to the Intelligence Committee means key parts of the inquiry will be kept secret. The House Intelligence Committee, led by Chairman Adam Schiff, is scheduled on Friday to interview Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael K. Atkinson. Atkinson is one of the most important witnesses in the impeachment inquiry. He conducted the initial review into a whistleblower allegation that President Trump asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate corruption allegations...

... The press is portraying Monday’s news as a plot to “discredit” former special counsel Robert Mueller. But the Mueller probe is over. The former special counsel chose not to investigate the Russian origin story and he never publicly explained his reasons. Yet there are many unanswered questions that deserve investigation because laws may have been broken. It is routine for U.S. prosecutors to seek help from foreign counterparts in such cases. Note the double standard at work here. Democrats and most of the press corps want to impeach Mr. Trump for inviting foreign help to investigate Joe Biden and...

“Impeach!” screech is a major diversion for Hillary’s Clinton’s third run A gut-wrenching reality for which everyone should be braced: Hillary Clinton could be in the running for the 2020 presidency. Hillary Clinton ‘is running again and ‘trying to decide how to fit her way in’. (Steve Bannon, Fox Business News, Sept. 30, 2019) Is being behind the Joe Biden & Son Ukraine scandal, using chairman of the United States House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (aka Deep State) stand-in Adam Schiff, fitting her way in?

An old video resurfaced Wednesday showing then-Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., admonishing Republicans considering impeaching then-President Bill Clinton in 1998, arguing that Congress should only pursue proceedings based on principle rather than "politics." "The American people don’t think that they have made a mistake by electing Bill Clinton," Biden said in a recently-surfaced video, "and we in Congress had better be very careful before we upset their decision, and make darn sure that we are able to convince them if we decide to upset their decision that our decision to impeach him was based upon principle and not politics." The video...

I had a great discussion on The Editors Thursday about my view that President Trump did nothing wrong in his July 25 phone call with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky. My view seems to be the minority position, so it makes sense to lay it out as clearly as possible. Much of the confusion around this case stems from the entanglement of two groups specializing in bamboozlement: lawyers and spies. Espionage and the law have specialized argots that hide fabrication and skulduggery. Nonetheless, critical analysis reveals that the call was in bounds and that objections to it reduce to absurdity. My...