The Alleged Whistleblower Eric Ciaramella

The Radicalizing of Eric Ciaramella  "While the lawyers representing Eric Ciaramella, the alleged “whistleblower” in the Trump impeachment fiasco, describe him as having spent his entire career in “apolitical civil servant positions,” the truth is that Eric Ciaramella has been involved in radical political behavior throughout his life — including his years at Yale.

In fact, long before he was digging up dirt with the DNC’s Alexandra Chalupa about President Trump’s mythical collusion with Russia, Ciaramella was involved in leading a protest over what he believed was the poor treatment of Bassam Frangieh, a radical professor of Arabic Studies at Yale. On April 15, 2005, then first-year Yale student Ciaramella dressed in all white to lead a contingent of ten similarly dressed first-year Yale Arabic students to the offices of the Provost and the President of the university to demand that the university provide an incentive to encourage Frangieh to stay at Yale. . . .

"It is likely that Bassam Frangieh wanted to use literature to be able to shape Yale’s undergraduates’ views on what he called the “heroic Arabic poet-martyrs” battling against the unjust occupation in Palestine. In 2000, Frangieh published a chapter romanticizing terrorism in a book entitled Tradition, Modernity, and Postmodernity in Arabic Literature. Ciaramella’s favorite Yale Arabic professor praised the heroism of Abd al Rahim Mahmud, the “first Arab poet-martyr.” Mahmud, who is often used to inspire terrorism and suicide bombings among Arab youth, was described by Frangieh as “carrying his soul in the palm of his hand,” as he “threw himself into the cavern of death.” Romanticizing his terrorism, Frangieh recalls Mahmud’s “premature death at age 35, fighting a battle in an attempt to keep Palestine free from foreign occupation, [which]brought dignity to the hearts of his people. Through his death he eliminated the gap between words and action… he shall remain a symbol of heroism and pride for his people.” (p. 222) . . .

Judicial Watch: White House Visitor Logs Detail Meetings of Eric Ciaramella

Logs Also Show DNC Contractor Who Allegedly Worked with Ukraine to Investigate Trump/Manafort Visited Obama White House 27 times.

Scrub-a-dub-dub: Did the whistleblower scrub his social media footprint before filing his complaint?  '. . . He did a pre-scrub of his social media footprint, quite possibly anticipating that he might just get famous.

"Sperry points out that it roughly parallels what was seen in the social media presence of anti–Judge Brett Kavanaugh accuser, Christine Blasey Ford.  Chesa Boudin, as I noted here, seems to have done the same thing.

"Lefty ideas stink.  Hence the planning. The coordinating.  The getting ready for the big bomb to go off and protecting oneself from fallout." . . .

The ‘Whistleblower’ and the President’s Right to Present a Defense  . . . "Presenting an affirmative case would not be without risk for the president. If the Democrats’ case for impeachment is weak and has no chance of success, he would probably be better advised to leave well enough alone. Nevertheless, if the president wants to argue that the bureaucracy has had it in for him from the start, and has coordinated with Democrats to undermine him, he has an unusual embarrassment of riches to exploit. " . . .

Saturday Funny: He Who Must Not Be Named

If Ciaramella Is The Whistleblower, Democrats Have Made A Major Blunder And Their Credibility Will Evaporate     . . . " When the American people fully understand that Ciaramella submitted his complaint for the sole purpose of triggering an impeachment inquiry, and learn about his activities and close associations in D.C., the limited credibility the Democratic Party still retains will evaporate. Especially if the Durham investigation turns up criminal or merely unethical behavior on the part of Obama Administration officials.

(Note: This morning, I posted a summary of investigative journalist Paul Sperry’s stunning portrayal of this young man. Sperry’s full report can be viewed here and my summary, here.)

"We have all known people like Eric Ciaramella. They’re young, ambitious, eager to please and the boss loves them.

"For Ciaramella in 2016, that boss was then-CIA Director, John Brennan." . . .     

Facebook threatens to BAN pages mentioning Eric Ciaramella  "We reported last night that LaCorte News and several other Facebook pages owned by Bivona Digital – totaling 3.1 million followers – were locked, not allowing our journalists to post stories or breaking news. Facebook also threatened to completely eliminate the pages unless the unnamed violations were stopped.
"At the time we weren't sure whether the crackdown was due to our reporting the name of alleged whistleblower Eric Ciaramella or not. It was.
"Outlets including Breitbart News, The Gateway Pundit, and others – pages affecting more than 8 million followers in total – all report they got the same warnings they were violating community standards in reporting Ciaramella's name." . . .

GLAAD: We Want ‘20% Of Series Regular Characters’ To Be ‘LGBTQ By 2025’

Daily Wire  "On Thursday, GLAAD published its annual “Where We Are on TV” report, which examines the number of LGBTQ characters on television.
"In the opening paragraphs of the report, GLAAD President Sarah Kate Ellis states that television plays a crucial role in our culture when it comes to “changing hearts and minds.” She adds that according to a study, “less than one-quarter of Americans have a close friend or family member who is transgender,” which means many Americans “learn about trans people from what they see in television, movies, and news.”
"Due to this statistic, Ellis says, the casting of trans actor Brian Michael Smith in Fox’s “9-1-1: Lone Star” is important.
"The report then cites an online survey of 2,037 adults conducted by Harris Poll suggesting that 20% of Americans ages 18-34 identify as LGBTQ, and that approximately 12% of overall respondents identify as LGBTQ." . . .

Nunes Demands Schiff Testify After Lying; Also Wants Whistleblower And Hunter Biden To Appear

Zero Hedge  "Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) made a formal request that House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA) testify in a closed-door session as part of the impeachment inquiry against President Trump.

" 'Prior to the start of your public show trial next week, at least one additional closed-door deposition must take place," reads a Friday letter from Nunes to Schiff.

" 'As the American public is now aware, in August 2019 you and/or your staff met with or talked to the whistleblower who raised an issue with President Trump's phone call with Ukrainian President Zelensky. Although you publicly claim nothing inappropriate was discussed, the three committees deserve to hear directly from you the substance and circumstances surrounding any discussions conducted with the whistleblower, and any instructions you issued regarding those discussions."

" 'Given that you have reneged on your public commitment to let the committees interview the whistleblower directly, you are the only individual who can provide clarity as to these conversations," the letter reads.

"Schiff lied about his office's contacts with the whistleblower - initially claiming "We have not spoken directly with the whistleblower," when in fact the whistleblower, now known as CIA officer Eric Ciaramella, reached out to a committee aide who directed him to Democratic attorney Mark Zaid (who proudly obtained government security clearances for pedophiles and enjoys walking around children's theme parks alone).

"That said, Schiff maintains he hasn't personally spoken with Ciaramella, and that his committee was only given vague information as to the nature of the complaint." . . .

Emphases in the original
Schiff initially wanted the whistleblower to testify to Congress about his complaint, but has backed off of that proposal in the wake of revelations about his office’s contact with the CIA analyst.

Is the "Faithless Elector" Coming to the Supreme Court?

"A recently-filed cert petition gives the Court a good opportunity to rule on the constitutional role of presidential electors"

The Volokh Conspiracy  "A cert petition (available here) has been filed with the Supreme Court in the latest case involving "faithless electors," Chiafalo et al. v. State of Washington. [Historian Michael Rosin and I have submitted an amicus brief, available here, in support of the petition.] I'm betting that the Court will grant the petition and finally give us its views on a fascinating, and very thorny, question of constitutional law: to what extent may States control the behavior of presidential electors in the performance of their electoral duties?
"The Chiafelo case involves three of Washington State's presidential electors in the 2016 election.  Each had been included in a "slate" of potential electors submitted by the WA Democratic Party to the WA Secretary of State. When Hillary Clinton won the Washington popular vote, the WA Secretary of State, in accordance with WA law, appointed the members of the Democratic slate to be the State's presidential electors.
"WA law requires the electors to vote in accordance with their direction from the Party which nominated them, and backs that up with punishment if they act otherwise:

"Any elector who votes for a person or persons not nominated by the party of which he or she is an elector is subject to a civil penalty of up to one thousand dollars."  RCW 29A-56-340.

"But when the State's electors convened in Olympia in December, 2016, the three petitioners in this case, instead of voting for Hillary Clinton, cast their ballots for Colin Powell. They were subsequently fined $1000 each for having [done] so." . . .

Warren Plays To Nearly Empty Hall As Enthusiasm Wanes For Democratic Candidates

Joseph Curl

"To say there’s a lack of enthusiasm for the 2020 Democratic presidential candidates would be a grand understatement.
"And in South Carolina, apparently, Sen. Elizabeth Warren is not so popular.
"The Massachusetts Democrat hawking the $52 trillion Medicare-for-all program spoke Friday evening at an “Environmental Justice” forum in the state. 
"From photos of the event, it looks like dozens came, maybe 100 tops. Shots from the back of the auditorium show a sea of empty seats."
. . . 
"Questions emerged immediately on how to pay for the program. Said Warren: “The $11 trillion in household insurance and out-of-pocket expenses projected under our current system goes right back into the pockets of America’s working people,” Warren writes. “And we make up the difference with targeted spending cuts, new taxes on giant corporations and the richest 1% of Americans, and by cracking down on tax evasion and fraud. Not one penny in middle-class tax increases.' ” . . .

Who actually pays these taxes Warren wants to charge?

That leaves two remaining groups that may bear the burden of the corporate tax: workers and shareholders.

Schiff Goes Full Stalin

Now it seems you don’t even need real crimes defined by statute. You can invent them, as Dershowitz charged Democrats with doing in an appearance with former U.S. Atty Guy Lewis on the November 7 edition of “The Ingraham Angle” on Fox News.

Daniel John Sobieski  "As Rep. Adam Schiff’s “sentence first, trial later” show trial of President Donald J. Trump reaches a so-called public hearing phase, we find the weaver of fables dictating what witnesses the GOP will be permitted to call based on a set of three qualifying question they must answer in advance. These questions ask, essentially, if the witnesses believe President Trump is guilty of pressuring Ukraine to dig up dirt on the Bidens in exchange for military aid. The GOP, it seems, will not be allowed to call witnesses who have testimony or evidence to the contrary, that there was no pressure and no quid pro quo. Nor will the GOP be allowed to present witnesses or evidence that confirms that the “dirt” is accurate, that the crime of threatening to withhold aid for a personal and political favor, a crime Biden has already confessed to, was committed by Biden, not Trump, on behalf of Biden’s son Hunter. Nor will the GOP be allowed to make the case that any Trump inquiry of the Ukrainians was mandated by a treaty signed by President Bill Clinton. This is, dare I use the term Democrats used during the impeachment of Bill Clinton for a real crime, a phrase used by Joe Biden himself,  a political lynching. As reported by the New York Post:

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff on Thursday released a tightened set of guidelines over what potential witnesses can be called in the impeachment hearings, saying Republicans must justify their relevance according to a three-point criteria…

Full article here.

Is Pelosi finally sick of the terrible damage Schiff is doing to her party?
"This week, Rep. Jim Jordan was officially moved to the House Intelligence Committee, from Oversight, in order to be part of the coming public interrogations of witnesses summoned by committee Chairman Adam Schiff.
"Jordan is a pit bull, exactly what the committee needs among its Republicans.  It was in Pelosi's purview to refuse Jordan's appointment, and she did not.
"Hmmm.  Is it possible that even she is sick and tired of Schiff's mendacity, his secrecy, his shutout of Republican questions, his witness tampering?  He even advised "witnesses" not to answer questions from Republicans. 
"Most of these people being called to testify are not witnesses to anything relevant; they are just vague anti-Trumpers willing to prostitute themselves in one way or another before Schiff's cloak-and-dagger, repressive little show trial that, as many have commented, is reminiscent of the tactics of the former Soviet Union." . . .

Impeachment Drama Is Fraught with Traps for Sane Observers

Conrad Black  "It is painful to take issue with my blessed friend Peggy Noonan, and also painful to read both that she has effectively joined the disreputable impeachers of Donald Trump and has invoked a disingenuous argument in support of that position.

Noonan

"Writing in the Wall Street Journal on November 2, she asserted that it is clear President Trump used his office to ask the president of Ukraine to destroy Joe Biden politically and that he used U.S. financial assistance to Ukraine as an incentive, and the withholding of it as a threat to incite such activity. And she wrote that the only remaining argument is whether that constitutes an article of impeachment that warrants removal from office.
"In fact, there is no evidence that there was a direct connection between Ukraine investigating Biden and the assistance involved. There is no evidence that Trump was asking for more than the facts of Biden and his son’s exposure in Ukraine—if the Bidens’ conduct was unexceptionable that finding would have fully satisfied Trump’s request to know what happened. The entire United States should want to know if Biden’s son was influence-peddling in Ukraine, China, and Romania—as has been alleged—and it should equally wish to know if the charges are unfounded.
"Peggy Noonan posed the question in her Wall Street Journal column, “Can we prove through elicited testimony, that the president made clear to the leader of (Ukraine) . . . that the U.S. would release congressionally authorized foreign aid only if the foreign leader publicly committed to launch an investigation that would benefit the president in his 2020 reelection effort?” Her answer: “We all know that.”

Tony Branco, Townhall

"We don’t know anything of the kind. The absence of evidence that information on Biden and aid were connected and that the president was directing President Zelensky to produce a condemnation of Biden and his son is precisely why this spurious Star Chamber conducted by the most chronically dishonest person in American public life (Adam Schiff, though only by a nose over House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler, both Democratic congressmen), should not even get to the Senate.
"If there were convincing evidence on these points, that Trump was saying to Zelensky: “If you want any assistance from this country, give me an investigation of the Bidens’ activity in your country that demonstrates their corruption,” then there would be an issue that justified being enacted as an article of impeachment. The question Peggy Noonan posed of whether this justified the president’s removal from office would then be the subject of a Senate trial." . . .

Right to Confrontation: The Latest Bogus Legal Argument over the ‘Whistleblower’

Andrew C. McCarthy

Impeachment is neither a criminal trial nor a legal process, so the president does not have the constitutional right to confront his accuser.

"As a constitutional lawyer, Rand Paul makes a good medical doctor.
"I used to have occasion to say that in the Patriot Act debates, when the senator was wowing us with his Fourth Amendment theories. With impeachment upon us, he’s now onto the Sixth Amendment — specifically, the confrontation clause. It guarantees the right of cross-examination: In all criminal trials, the accused must be given the right to confront the accusers. Senator Paul has deduced that this must mean that the identity of the so-called whistleblower has to be revealed, lest President Trump be denied his constitutional rights.
"Sigh.
"Mind you, Senator Paul has been making this argument while he himself shrinks from outing the man at issue — whom we are reliably told is a 33-year-old CIA official, formerly tasked to the White House National Security Council as a Ukraine expert. There is but a small circle of people who fit that description, so Paul, like many in Washington, has known the name, to near certainty, for some time.
"The senator makes the fair point that there is no legal barrier to the media’s naming the man. We can be confident that if a Democratic president had been accused of impeachable offenses, that would already have happened weeks ago (and, indeed, some right-leaning media sites have published the name)." . . .

Republicans Move Jim Jordan to Intel Committee ahead of Public Impeachment Hearings

National Review

"Republican leadership have assigned Rep. Jim Jordan to serve on the House Intelligence Committee during the open impeachment hearings against President Trump next week.
"The Ohio congressman is currently the ranking Republican on the House Oversight Committee and has attended most of the closed-door impeachment hearings so far, but as a member of the Intelligence Committee he will be able to question witnesses.
"Jordan will temporarily replace Rep. Rick Crawford, (R., Ark) on the intelligence panel. Crawford will return to the committee after the impeachment probe is concluded.
“ 'Jim Jordan has been on the front lines in the fight for fairness and truth. His addition will ensure more accountability and transparency in this sham process,” read a Friday statement from House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy.
“ 'In Speaker Pelosi’s House, those responsibilities have fallen victim to partisan witch hunts,” the California Republican added. “The typically venerable Intelligence Committee has now become the partisan Impeachment Committee.”
"Jordan has fiercely defended Trump from his critics, especially the Democrats in charge of the impeachment probe, which he has called a “ridiculous charade.' ” . . .

Why America loves Donald Trump and why he should win in 2020

Bookworm Room

The AC/DC soundtrack only makes more powerful this great video contrasting the media’s blind Trump-hatred versus Trump’s virtues and pro-Americanism.

"Trump Thunderstruck from Mr Smith on Vimeo.(Hat tip: Ace of Spades — and you should go to this Ace of Spades link because today’s content is that good, including creative solutions for overhauling a broken legal system.)"

Vindman, Zaid, Schiff: Foul birds of an ugly feather

Rabbi Aryeh Spero  "Lieutenant colonel Alexander Vindman was reportedly reprimanded by a superior when it became known that he repeatedly made fun of Americans; American culture; and, as he said, "Americans not being educated or worldly."  He did this in front of foreign diplomats, constantly.  No wonder he remained an Obama loyalist and has tried to undercut President Trump.  After all, Obama considered himself first and foremost "a citizen of the world" and did not find anything exceptional in America in and of itself.  President Trump loves America and is representative of a patriotic heartland mindset.  After all, Trump believes in America first. 

"Vindman is a trans-nationalist, a globalist, someone who feels superior to most Americans.  I've run into many people who think like Vindman.  Perhaps Vindman is an acquaintance of Mark Zaid, the Long Island lawyer who boasted to friends about how he would help create a coup to bring down President Trump.  Zaid, like Vindman, has no respect for the American people.  He would negate the will of the American people, the majority of electoral votes that were cast for Donald J. Trump, and, through a coup, remove the president elected by the people. 

"Perhaps Zaid knows Adam Schiff, who is trying to do the same thing.  Adam Schiff made impeachment rules that would deny the American people, as represented by their Republican congressmen, equal participation in these hearings.  Schiff wants to overturn the American people's election of Donald Trump.  All three men are working with Congressman Jerrold Nadler.

"Schiff, Zaid, and Vindman are three principals in the illegal coup unfolding in front of our very eyes.  Schiff, Zaid, and Vindman all have a condescending view of the American people, our laws, and our culture.  They are not heroes.  Woe to a country where men such as these attain power and influence." . . .

Baseball etiquette, and what we need to see more of in society

Richard Jack Rail  "George Will interestingly contends that the most valuable rules in baseball are unwritten and relate to manners.  Will's leading example is Alex Bregman carrying his bat down to first base on his home run trot during the World Series, Juan Soto copying that on his subsequent homer, and both managers apologizing after the game for the breaches of etiquette.  It's often called showboating or showing up the other team's pitcher." . . .

. . . "The best way to combat unintentional showboating is the way Bregman did it — honestly and straight on. It isn't so much that there's bad in the best of us and good in the worst of us, as that Manichean, black-and-white thinking has made it too easy to accuse and not easy enough to take responsibility and accept blame without career death.  Baseball has provided an outstanding example of the way out of this imbroglio.  It involves more straightforward honesty and manliness than we're accustomed to seeing in public figures — men being men, owning their mistakes forthrightly with sincere expressions of regret.  Because those traits shine through in the way Bregman handled it at the postgame interview, the incident can be put behind us, and we feel good where we might have felt disgruntled.

"Nicely done, Bregman and Hinch and Martínez."