The Patriot Post Digest 11-22-2019

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The Patriot Post Digest 11-22-2019
From The Federalist Patriot
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The Patriot Post® · Mid-Day Digest

Nov. 22, 2019

https://patriotpost.us/digests/66955-mid-day-digest-2019-11-22

THE FOUNDATION

“Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism.” —George Washington (1796)

https://patriotpost.us/fqd/66954-founders-quote-daily-2019-11-22

IN TODAY’S EDITION

Hill contradicts herself in impeachment testimony.1
Horowitz uncovers FBI misbehavior toward Trump.2
Daily Features: More Analysis3, Columnists4, Headlines5, Opinion in Brief6, Short Cuts7, Memes8, and Cartoons9.

IN BRIEF

‘Schiff Show’ Roundup: Hill Falsely Smears Republicans10

If you want to present yourself as a credible, objectively minded, nonpartisan witness, you shouldn’t start by falsely disparaging an entire side of the political aisle. But that’s exactly what former National Security Council official Fiona Hill did in her opening statement on the last day of the House Intelligence Committee’s impeachment hearings. She accused Republicans of not believing that Russia had interfered in the 2016 election and instead propagating a “fictional narrative” that it was Ukraine. So much for her claim of nonpartisanship.

Republicans were quick to take apart Hill’s false accusation, pointedly noting that every single Republican had signed off on the Justice Department’s conclusion that Russia had acted to interfere in the 2016 election. (Not to mention actual Ukrainian interference11 doesn’t preclude Russian interference.) Upon further questioning, Hill admitted that the accounts of Ukrainian officials working against then-candidate Donald Trump were accurate. “They bet on Hillary Clinton winning the election,” she said. “So, you know, they were trying to curry favor with the Clinton campaign.”

Furthermore, Hill tacitly gave a plausible reason for Trump’s negative view of Ukraine, stating, “Many [Ukrainian officials] said some pretty disparaging and hateful things about President Trump, and I can’t blame him for feeling aggrieved about that. … I would also take offense to some of the things that were said if I was the president.”

Hill also testified that former National Security Advisor John Bolton expressed to her his negative views of Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, calling him a “hand grenade” — a statement he did not elaborate on any further. This reinforced a recurring theme: Many people were frustrated by Giuliani and viewed him as meddlesome.

An important point was also established that the stopping and starting of foreign aid is not an uncommon event. Republican counsel Steve Castor asked Hill, “Is it fair to say … stops and starts in aid like this sometimes do happen?” Hill responded, “That’s correct.” Castor then asked, “I believe you testified there was a freeze put on all kinds of aid and assistance because it was placed in a process of significant reviews of foreign assistance going on?” Hill answered, “That’s correct. … As I understand, there had been a directive for a wholesale review of our … foreign-policy assistance, and the ties … between our foreign-policy objectives and the assistance.”

Democrats also had David Holmes, a political counselor to the U.S. embassy in Ukraine, testify. He dubiously claimed to have overheard a conversation between Gordon Sondland and Trump that so alarmed him that … he elected to continue with his vacation plans before deciding to reporting it. According to Holmes, he heard Trump ask Sondland how the investigation was going, which Holmes interpreted as the investigation into Barisma and the Bidens. Needless to say, Holmes offered only hearsay as evidence.

Finally, a statement from soon-to-be-retiring Republican Rep. Will Hurd, a Texas moderate who is no fan of Trump, serves to demonstrate just how badly this impeachment gambit has gone for the Democrats. Hurd said, “I have not heard evidence proving the president committed bribery or extortion.” As Nancy Pelosi writes up articles of impeachment, she faces the very real probability that not one Republican will vote in favor of impeachment while she may even lose two or three Democrats, giving Republicans the bipartisan talking point to level against this obviously partisan sham.

https://patriotpost.us/articles/66953-schiff-show-roundup-hill-falsely-smears-republicans

Upcoming Horowitz Report Shows FBI/FISA Shenanigans12

“It doesn’t take 500 pages to tell the inspector general that everything was done properly,” said Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-TX). “The IG report is going to find that there were problems.”

The IG report Ratcliffe is referencing is that of Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz, planned for release on Dec. 9. “For more than a year and a half,” reports13 Fox News, “Inspector General Michael Horowitz has been investigating alleged misconduct related to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, warrants delivered by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC). The Justice Department and FBI obtained warrants in 2016 to surveil Trump adviser Carter Page. It is unclear, at this point, if Page was the only Trump official that the DOJ obtained a FISA warrant against.”

The House and Senate have already determined14 that the FBI relied far too heavily on the phony Hillary Clinton-funded dossier to obtain the FISA warrant.

In advance of the Horowitz report’s release, CNN, of all places, dropped a bit of a bombshell yesterday, reporting15, “A former FBI lawyer is under criminal investigation after allegedly altering a document related to 2016 surveillance of a Trump campaign adviser.” Furthermore, “Horowitz turned over evidence on the allegedly altered document to John Durham16, the federal prosecutor appointed early this year by Attorney General William Barr to conduct a broad investigation of intelligence gathered for the Russia probe by the CIA and other agencies, including the FBI. The altered document is also at least one focus of Durham’s criminal probe.” That’s because “the alterations were significant enough to have shifted the document’s meaning.”

The Washington Post insists17 the alterations “did not affect the overall validity of the surveillance application,” but allow us to remind folks that the phony dossier was at the beginning of the Democrats’ efforts to sink Donald Trump with allegations of Russian collusion. When that didn’t pan out, they opted for impeachment over Trump’s Ukraine call. And it was this same Washington Post that reported at noon on Inauguration Day that “the campaign to impeach President Trump has begun18.”

Trump has been the target of an attempted Democrat/Leftmedia/Deep State coup since literally Day One — and that resistance began in earnest from the moment he won the nomination. That attempted coup evidently includes altering forms to bolster FBI investigations. We expect that’s the tip of the iceberg in Horowitz’s full report.

https://patriotpost.us/articles/66951-upcoming-horowitz-report-shows-fbi-slash-fisa-shenanigans