House Republicans Boycott Intel Hearing

by Daveda Gruber:

On Wednesday Republicans decided to finally not stand for Democrat biased agendas and they have boycotted a public hearing.

In a powerful move of rebellion Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee accused Chairman Adam Schiff of ignoring Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act abuse.

A Justice Department inspector general report disclosed substantial misconduct of FISA applications brought about the boycotting by the GOP of the House Intelligence Subcommittee on Strategic Technologies and Advance Research or STAR, as it is referred to, to refuse to attend the hearing.

Republicans did not attend and called it a “publicity” event.

It appears that Representatives Devin Nunes, R-Calif., ranking member of the committee and Chris Stewart, R-Utah, the ranking member of the subcommittee joined their Republican colleagues in collectively standing up to Adam Schiff, D-Calif., for not holding hearings on the FISA abuse.

Republicans claim that under Schiff’s chairmanship the House Intelligence Committee has strayed far from its mandate of overseeing the Intelligence Community.

They are saying that there have been months where there has been inadequate oversight and that numerous critical issues pertinent to the Committee’s jurisdiction were ignored.

DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz issued his FISA report on December 9th which identified seventeen serious shortcomings related to the conduct of the surveillance of former Trump campaign foreign policy aide Carter Page.

Republicans have argued that the committee is exclusively in the position to consider the serious legal and policy questions that arose from Horowitz’s report.

There is a letter, written by Nunes and Stewart stating their demands and was signed by Republican Representatives Michael Conaway, Michael Turner, Brad Wenstrup, Rick Crawford, Elise Stefanik, Will Hurd, and John Ratcliffe.

Until the committee gives priority to the important issues in the Horowitz report, Republican Members feel that they cannot support distractions from core responsibilities.

Horowitz had confirmed in his report that the FBI’s FISA applications to monitor Page heavily relied on the unverified Trump dossier and news reports rooted in dossier author Christopher Steele’s unverified research.

Still, under Schiff’s chairmanship these issues and errors have not been investigated although Schiff had acknowledged the misconduct at the time and stressed that bureau leadership was moving to implement the IG’s recommendations.

It has become evident that Democratic lawmakers are more interested in staying on their own agenda of investigating President Trump and his associates rather than dealing with more prevalent issues.

Laws have been broken by people in high positions in the FBI and DOJ and Democrats with Schiff at the helm are simply ignoring it.

I can always be reached on Twitter to discuss political views.

@DavedaGruber

Where’s Docs of 18th House Impeachment Inquiry Witness?

by Daveda Gruber:

It appears that we understand that the House had witnesses during the impeachment hearings. Lead manager Adam Schiff D-Ca., has brought up the seventeen witnesses quite a few times.

As a matter of fact, along with Schiff, other managers have brought up these seventeen witness who were interviewed during the House’s secret depositions.

Why is the eighteenth witness never brought up? Michael Atkinson, who is the intelligence community’s inspector general, has firsthand knowledge of the origins of the whistleblower complaint that led to the impeachment.

The members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence interviewed Atkinson under oath. Unfortunately, they are not allowed to give any information on that deposition.

Republicans wanted that information to be heard in the Senate trail but it was denied to them.

The information in the testimony was heard by Representative John Ratcliffe, R-Tx., and the transcript of the questioning is 179 pages long and Republicans demanded that it be put into evidence.

That did not happen. The idea was rejected by Schiff It is alleged that the briefing with Atkinson was not conducted with the other two committees involved in the impeachment investigation, which are the Foreign Affairs and Oversight and Reform committees, and for that reason it did not qualify as a deposition.

You can see why Schiff got the nickname “Shifty Schiff” as he was the one who did the questioning and deciding which committee heard or did not hear testimony.

Ratcliff calls the “Q and A” period a deposition or a transcribed interview. Whatever it is described as, I’d like to see it and so would the American people.

The information allegedly holds information that could exonerate President Trump of the crimes the House determined would impeach the president.

During one of the breaks in the trial, Senator Joni Ernst, R-Ia., said House Democrats should have submitted the transcript.

Ernst said, “We should be allowed to take a look at that, but again they have stated numerous times in their brief they had overwhelming evidence, it would be so clear to everyone, and I haven’t seen that yet.”

I believe more people should be aware of this witness and the Democrats’ need to hide what he said and that they felt so strongly not to divulge it because it was not going to help their case.

Somewhere in the basement of Congress allegedly lies possible exoneration documentation of a duly elected president but Schiff and his cohorts have them well hidden.

Every American should be disgusted over this cherry picking of witness and documents that get brought into evidence. I don’t feel badly at all that more witnesses were denied by a Senate vote.

Karma can be a bitch!

I can always be reached on Twitter. Please reach out to discuss your views with me but never tell me how or what to write. Thank you.

@DavedaGruber

Why Hillary Clinton Was Not Locked Up

by Daveda Gruber:

Whatever happened to locking up Hillary Clinton? We were waiting  patiently to see justice served and that day has not come. The FBI never gave Conservatives reason to feel that the guilty, no matter how far up the political chain, would be punished for the crimes they allegedly committed.

It appears that someone thought there was wrong doing. The FBI’s top lawyer in 2016 under ex-Director James Comey the FBI’s top lawyer thought that Hillary Clinton and her team should have immediately realized that they were mishandling “highly classified” information based on the obviously sensitive nature of the emails’ contents sent through Hillary’s private server.

According to a transcript of his closed-door testimony before congressional committees last October, former FBI general counsel James Baker believed she should have been prosecuted until “pretty late” in the investigation.

Baker said high-level officials at the bureau were “arguing about” whether to bring charges against Clinton. He originally thought that Clinton’s behavior was “alarming” and “appalling.”

Baker said, “So, I had that belief initially after reviewing, you know, a large binder of her emails that had classified information in them. And I discussed it internally with a number of different folks, and eventually became persuaded that charging her was not appropriate because we could not establish beyond a reasonable doubt that…we, the government, could not establish beyond a reasonable doubt that… she had the intent necessary to violate (the law).”

Baker told lawmakers that it was “the nature and scope of the classified information that, to me, initially, when I looked at it, I thought these folks should know that this stuff is classified, that it was alarming what they were talking about, especially some of the most highly classified stuff.”

Democrats clearly recall then candidate Donald Trump, while on the campaign trail, vowing to prosecute Mrs. Clinton if he won the election.

Brian Fallon, who was Mrs. Clinton’s campaign spokesman, said, “It was alarming enough to chant ‘lock her up’ at a campaign rally. It is another thing entirely to try to weaponize the Justice Department in order to actually carry it out.”

On the other hand, Conservatives said Mrs. Clinton should not be immune from scrutiny as a special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, investigates Russia’s interference in last year’s election and any connections to Mr. Trump’s campaign. They argued, for instance, that Mrs. Clinton was the one doing Russia’s bidding in the form of a uranium deal approved when she was Secretary of State.

A December letter by former House Oversight Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy and former House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte said the decision not to prosecute Clinton was not unanimous.

Under questioning by Rep. John Ratcliffe, R-Texas, Baker spoke extensively about the back and forth arguments.

Here’s part of that discussion:

Ratcliffe: All right. Are you a reasonable prosecutor?

Baker: Not anymore. I’m not a prosecutor anymore. 

Then there is a quick exchange of questions and answers. Ratcliff pivots back to Baker’s decision to change his mind regarding Clinton.

Ratcliffe: You were persuaded, and stated as a basis, that ultimately you were persuaded there was a lack of evidence establishing knowledge or criminal intent, correct?

Baker: Yes.

Ratcliffe: When were you persuaded?

Baker: Sorry. Pretty late in the process, because we were arguing about it, I think, up until the end.

Ratcliffe: Yeah, So Jim Comey had reached the opposite conclusion as early as – or I guess as late as May the 2nd of 2017, as reflected in the memo that he created, correct?

Baker: I know there’s been a lot of public discussion about that – this way I experienced that interaction and other interactions with Jim Comey is he would throw things out like that to get people to start talking and thinking about it and test his conclusions against others and get them to push back. And so, it was – I believe it was in that process that I read these emails and we had these discussions and arguments.

Baker’s testimony was considered credible by those in the room.

In a televised interview on July 3, 2016, Clinton claimed that she had “never received nor sent any material that was marked classified” using her personal email system.

Later on she said she regretted using the setup after it emerged that her private servers contained classified materials from Special Access Programs, or SAP, which are considered some of the most closely held U.S. government secrets.

So, there you have it. Hillary was very close to being held accountable for her alleged negligent behavior. It appears that Comey’s influence stopped the investigation in its tracks.