Minnesota Democrat Rep. Refuses To Defend Ilhan Omar: ‘She Doesn’t Belong In Our Party’

Minnesota Democrat Rep. Collin Peterson took a swipe at Congresswoman Ilhan Omar saying “she doesn’t belong in our party.”

Peterson was addressing past comments in which Omar dismissed the 9/11 terrorist attacks as “some people did something.”

He had previously come to her defense.

In an April interview, Peterson had explained where Omar might have been coming from.

“I think she was trying to say that some people in her community feel like they’re being targeted,” he said.

When confronted more recently, the Minnesota Democrat walked back his comments.

RELATED: Omar Calls For ‘Dismantling’ Police One Day After Cops Ambushed – Says Biden Will Be ‘Responsive’ To Idea

Ilhan Omar ‘Doesn’t Belong In Our Party’

In a video obtained by the New York Post, Peterson is questioned by a tracker for the National Republican Congressional Committee.

“Do you have any comment as to why you defended Ilhan Omar?” they ask.

Peterson responds by saying the Minnesota Squad member doesn’t belong with her Democrat colleagues.

“I don’t defend her,” he said. “She doesn’t belong in our party.”

Contrary to the above tweet, it is plainly obvious what prompted the broadside.

Did Collin Peterson suddenly develop the moral courage to denounce the radical Omar?

No, of course not.

He’s trying to save his skin. Peterson, a 16-term incumbent, is in a district that President Trump won by over 30 points in 2016.

He’s currently in a dog fight with Republican Michelle Fischbach to retain his seat. Last month, a poll showed Fischbach with a 10-point lead.

RELATED: Ilhan Omar Claims Violent Riots Are Simply An ‘Uprising’ Against American Oppression

Is It Peterson or Omar Who Doesn’t Belong?

The Democrats have gone so far astray, playing footsie with radical socialists, that it’s difficult to say whether it is Omar or Peterson who doesn’t belong in the party.

Peterson, who opposed the impeachment of President Trump and is considered a ‘pro-life Democrat,’ is practically a dinosaur.

Presidential nominee and presumable party standard-bearer Joe Biden aligns himself more with Omar.

Omar believes Biden “is going to be responsive to the policy positions we are advocating for.”

Biden’s running mate, Kamala Harris, is practically a Senate member of the Squad, ranking as the most liberal Senator of 2019.

In reality, it may be Peterson who is on the outside looking in at the most radical, pro-socialist, anti-American version of a party in the history of the United States.

The post Minnesota Democrat Rep. Refuses To Defend Ilhan Omar: ‘She Doesn’t Belong In Our Party’ appeared first on The Political Insider.

Peru to vote on presidential ouster as bid seems to lose strength

Peru to vote on presidential ouster as bid seems to lose strengthPeru's Congress is set to vote on Friday over whether to oust President Martín Vizcarra after impeachment proceedings were launched last week, a bid that has roiled the copper-producing country but has appeared to lose steam in recent days. Vizcarra, or a lawyer on his behalf, will mount a defense to lawmakers after they voted to impeach the centrist leader on grounds of "moral incapacity" over alleged links to an case of irregular government contracts with a little-known singer. The opposition-dominated Congress must gather at least 87 votes out of 130 lawmakers to remove 57-year-old Vizcarra, who does not have his own party representation in the legislature.


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Chris Rock Says Democrats ‘Let The Pandemic Come In’ While They Were Obsessed With Impeachment

Comedian Chris Rock said that Democrats are responsible for the spread of COVID-19 because party leaders “let the pandemic come in” while they were busy pushing to impeach President Donald Trump.

Rock told The New York Times that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in particular was to blame.

RELATED: After Re-Election, Trump Should Clean House, Restore Order, And Then Worry About the Niceties

Rock Said Democrats ‘Let The Pandemic Come In’

“It was totally up to Pelosi and the Democrats,” Rock said “Their thing was, ‘We’re going to get him impeached,’ which was never going to happen.”

“You let the pandemic come in,” he added. “Yes, we can blame Trump, but he’s really the 5-year-old.”

Democrat leaders did not show much interest in taking the coronavirus pandemic seriously during the pandemic’s early months. When concerns were being raised about COVID-19 in January, congressional Democrats were busy with staged photo-ops with the articles of impeachment.

In early February, as pandemic concerns were taking shape, Speaker Pelosi infamously tore up a copy of President Trump’s State of the Union address on live television.

Rock Compares Trump To Child Ruler In The Movie ‘The Last Emperor’

In that address, Trump promised that the White House “will take all necessary steps to safeguard our citizens from this threat.”

In his Times interview, Chris Rock, showing little respect for the President, compared him to a child ruler.

“Did you ever see that movie The Last Emperor, where like a 5-year-old is the emperor of China?” Rock said. “There’s a kid and he’s the king.”

“So I’m like, it’s all the Democrats’ fault,” Rock continued. “Because you knew that the emperor was 5 years old. And when the emperor’s 5 years old, they only lead in theory. There’s usually an adult who’s like, ‘OK, this is what we’re really going to do.’”

RELATED: Michael Moore Says Trump Is Like Osama bin Laden – ‘He Is A Mass Killer’

Rock also revealed that he didn’t believe Barack Obama’s presidency did much good for black Americans.

“Obama becoming the president, it’s progress for white people,” Rock said.

“It’s not progress for Black people,” he added.

The post Chris Rock Says Democrats ‘Let The Pandemic Come In’ While They Were Obsessed With Impeachment appeared first on The Political Insider.

U.S. Intel Repeatedly Warned About Rudy’s ‘Russian Agent’ Pal

U.S. Intel Repeatedly Warned About Rudy’s ‘Russian Agent’ PalAt the end of an elegant dinner in May 2019 in downtown Kyiv, Ukrainian parliamentarian Andriy Derkach handed a thick packet of papers to a former senior U.S. official he’d known for years. The packet was unremarkable in its presentation, the papers clipped on the top and crunched in the corners. The packet bore no insignia, title, or index page, and did little in the way of intriguing the former U.S. official. It wasn’t until months later that the official read through the pages. What was more remarkable was that U.S. intelligence had, for over a month, warned that Derkach was a stalking horse for the Russian security services and their attempts to interfere in American politics. It was the first in a series of reports, beginning in the spring of 2019, naming Derkach as part of a broader push to upend the U.S. election once again. Despite the odd nature of the handoff, the dinner was one of the earliest known attempts by Derkach, current and former officials say, to pass materials to Americans in an attempt to push the debunked conspiracy theories that the former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter  were complicit in the siphoning of millions of dollars from the Ukrainian people and that Ukraine, rather than Russia, interfered in the 2016 election. (The latter is “a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services,” according to President Donald Trump’s former point person for the region, Fiona Hill.)   Derkach’s dossier was not flagged for officials inside the State Department until months later, when Derkach began holding press conferences and Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, reiterated the same talking points as Derkach on a range of issues. But officials inside the U.S. intelligence and national security apparatus, with the help of officials on the ground in Kyiv, had drafted reports warning that Russian proxies, including Derkach, were attempting to undermine the 2020 election process in America.Seven current and former U.S. officials spoke with The Daily Beast about Derkach, his relationship to Trump loyalists, and the escalating warnings about Derkach’s activities. Those warnings extended to leaders on Capitol Hill who learned that Ukrainians with ties to Russia were inserting themselves in the U.S. election. Last week, the Treasury Department blacklisted Derkach as an “active Russian agent.” The blacklisting has caused problems for one legislator in particular: Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), who is nearing the end of a probe into Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s activities in Ukraine—specifically, the discredited notion that the then-vice president halted a corruption probe that might have interfered with his son Hunter’s business interests there. It’s a would-be controversy that’s been fueled by a nexus of Trump allies and pro-Russian Ukrainians. During Trump’s impeachment, the story was publicly discredited, but Johnson has said the imminent result of his probe will be damning for Biden. “What our investigations are uncovering, I think, will reveal this is not somebody we should be electing president of the United States,” Johnson told a local Wisconsin TV station on Tuesday.Those kinds of comments have prompted sharp rebukes, even from Republicans, about the use of a Senate committee as a vehicle for an explicitly political venture—and for Russia’s election-meddling hopes. In December 2019, as Politico first reported, then-Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-NC) warned Johnson about his investigation into the Bidens and Ukraine. Burr told Johnson that the probe may only further Russia’s ambitions to undermine the 2020 election, according to two individuals familiar with the matter. It is unclear whether Johnson received any intelligence briefing or other warning that specifically mentioned Derkach. According to a source familiar with the GOP probe, Derkach did not arrive on the Democratic side’s radar until late 2019. Asked by The Daily Beast if Johnson had been warned, or specifically briefed, about the threat posed by pro-Russian Ukrainian figures, a spokesperson for Johnson did not provide comment as of press time.But by the early months of 2020, those observing the course of the Johnson investigation up close clearly saw Derkach’s links to a Ukrainian self-described source of the investigation, the Giuliani associate and former Ukrainian diplomat Andrii Telizhenko. At that point, said the source, it should have been clear to all involved that Russian disinformation underpinned the Johnson inquiry. Derkach told Politico in July that he’d sent materials related to Biden to members of Congress, including to Johnson and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), his partner in the probe. But despite this information, and despite Burr’s overture, Johnson pushed forward. “Johnson is just a contrarian in nature. If you come to him and say that the Ukraine stuff seems fishy, he will very likely just tell you it’s his investigation and to get lost,” said a Republican close to the administration. That raised concerns among intelligence officials and fellow lawmakers that the Wisconsin Republican was promoting claims that U.S. intelligence has already debunked—and that the boosting of such material would sow further distrust in the election. On Wednesday, with the conclusion of Johnson’s probe nearing, those tensions spilled onto the floor of the Senate. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), the Senate Democratic leader, introduced a resolution “calling for an end to the use of congressional resources to launder Russian disinformation through Congress.” Schumer said the allegations that Johnson has aired are the same ones pushed by Derkach and argued that Johnson has “wittingly or unwittingly” promoted Russian disinformation. “Members of the Senate,” followed Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, “have been presented with specific warnings about these Kremlin-backed conspiracies and lies, again and again, including in classified settings.”Johnson indignantly responded that it was Democrats who had enabled Russian meddling attempts. He strenuously denied dealing with Derkach at all—and even professed not to know the Ukrainian. “We did not accept any information from Mr. Derkach whatsoever,” said Johnson. “I don’t know who Derkach is… Yet Democrats persist in pushing this false allegation. As a matter of fact, I’m not sure our committee has alleged anything yet.”* * *NAMING NAMES* * *Suspicions about Derkach reached senior levels of the Trump administration by the early spring of 2019, after pro-Russian Ukrainians, aligned with Trump aides like Giuliani, ramped up a smear campaign against the then-U.S. ambassador in Kyiv, Marie Yovanovitch. One former senior administration official recalled contacting a colleague in the intelligence community to find out where the false narrative was coming from. That was when the official remembered first learning about Andriy Derkach.“I was aware by the end of that conversation that he was more than a Ukrainian parliamentarian,” the senior official told The Daily Beast. The U.S. intelligence official left no doubt that Derkach was a Russian intelligence asset. One other individual who spoke to The Daily Beast said it was “somewhat unclear” in the spring of 2019 how close Derkach’s ties to Russia ran—if he was being paid, for example—and if the Ukrainian politician was merely passing on Russian disinformation or if he had been directed to promote it.By early April 2019, at least two intelligence reports circulated to the administration about individuals suspected of involvement in foreign initiatives to interfere in the upcoming election. Each report contained about five names, the ex-senior official said. Derkach’s name was among them. It is unclear, however, if those spring 2019 reports specified that Derkach was an “active Russian agent,” as the Treasury Department put it.The Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined comment for this report. Despite U.S. intelligence warnings that Derkach was involved in foreign subversion of the 2020 election and the Yovanovitch smear, the State Department famously took no action to protect her. Foggy Bottom recalled Yovanovitch in May 2019, about a month after those warnings. By July, President Trump asked his Ukrainian counterpart for “a favor, though”: a public announcement of a corruption investigation into Joe Biden.In May, Derkach ramped up his attempts to pass on his disinformation about the Bidens and Ukraine’s alleged election interference. He contacted Americans he’d formerly worked with or knew from their time working in the country for the U.S. government. Giuliani flew to Kyiv that month to meet with Ukrainian politicos and businessmen in an effort to pressure the government to open an investigation into whether Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election and into the Bidens’ dealings in Ukraine.On Wednesday afternoon, Giuliani told The Daily Beast he handed over documents to the State Department that he’d gathered from individuals in Kyiv willing to aid his work. Giuliani planned to meet Telizhenko, a former Ukrainian diplomat, on his initial trip to Ukraine in May 2019 before he canceled. The Washington Post and BuzzFeed reported that Telizhenko met Giuliani in New York that same month. The former New York City mayor declined to answer whether he ever briefed Trump on Derkach’s findings, saying, “I can’t tell you what I discussed with my client.”* * *‘SOMETIMES RUMORS ARE TRUE’ * * *But even if Giuliani was explicitly warned about Derkach, such warnings might have backfired. “The nature of the Trump inner circle—whether that’s the president himself, people in or out of the administration, on Capitol Hill, or Rudy Giuliani—is that because of their views towards the intelligence community, if you come to them and say this guy might be an asset of so and so, it just makes it more likely that they double down on the relationship. That’s how toxic things are now,” said the Republican close to the administration. By the time Giuliani traveled to Ukraine in May, he was in contact with Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, two operators born in the former Soviet Union who helped set up meetings for the former mayor in Ukraine. Parnas and Fruman became major characters in the impeachment trial of Trump as several witnesses described their backdoor attempts to work with Giuliani to pressure Ukraine to open investigations into the 2016 election and the Bidens. Both men were indicted last fall for allegedly violating  campaign finance laws, activities first exposed by The Daily Beast. As Derkach circulated disinformation packets and Fruman, Parnas, and Telizhenko coalesced around the Giuliani endeavor, former U.S. officials say other Ukrainian politicos attempted to get in on the action. One former senior U.S. official said a current adviser to President Volodymyr Zelensky, before joining his team, reached out to Telizhenko and Giuliani in an effort to draw closer to the Trump administration. Source for ‘Ukraine Collusion’ Allegations Met Devin NunesRudy Giuliani and His Ukraine Ally Sprint Away from Their ‘Russian Agent’ PalIn the summer of 2019, as the Trump administration took steps to withhold military aid to Ukraine to force the Zelensky administration to announce a Biden investigation, additional, updated reports were drafted and circulated inside intelligence circles outlining the ways in which Russia was relying on proxies, including Ukrainian individuals, to spread disinformation relevant to the 2020 presidential election. Derkach was listed in at least one of those reports as a part of the Russian campaign, two former senior U.S. officials said. Derkach kicked his messaging campaign into high gear that fall. He held several press conferences, sometimes with other parliamentarians with close ties to Russia. And in December, during the height of the impeachment process, Giuliani appeared again in Kyiv, this time to meet with Derkach. Derkach posted a photo of the two holding documents and smiling. (Despite meeting Derkach in person in December, Giuliani said he’d first connected with him in November.)By then, Derkach and Giuliani were using strikingly similar language. Derkach blasted the so-called black ledger that purported to show millions in illicit payments to former Trump campaign boss Paul Manafort; Giuliani called the ledger a “stinko document.” Derkach claimed in a dossier he attempted to circulate around Washington that “officials of the embassy of Ukraine in the United States” “distor[ed] the public image of the US presidential candidate D. Trump by disseminating inaccurate information.” Giuliani accused “Hillary Clinton, the Democratic National Committee, members of it, the [Ukrainian] ambassador, the embassy in collecting specifically dirt, described as dirt” on Trump. That claim was first championed by Telizhenko, who worked in the Ukrainian embassy in Washington and became a partner of Giuliani over time. (Derkach, Telizhenko, and Giuliani all appeared in an anti-Biden television series produced by the Trumpist network OAN, and Giuliani has interviewed both Derkach and Telizhenko on his YouTube video series Common Sense about the Bidens.) But Telizhenko said he soured on Derkach over time. He told The Daily Beast that he warned Giuliani about working with the Ukrainian parliamentarian. “There were a lot of rumors going on about his background—that he might be working for the Russian government or the Kremlin. I didn’t know a lot about his background, but I had heard these things,” Telizhenko said in an interview Wednesday. “The rumors were also about… that he was working for someone—Russian or American, I don’t know. Sometimes rumors are true. Sometimes they are not. I knew he was doing something but I didn’t pay attention.”Two sources, a current senior administration official and an ex-official, said that in the closing months of last year, word had whipped around the upper echelons of the Trump White House about a roster—a “no-fly list,” as the current official described—of names of individuals suspected of involvement in U.S. election interference, a key topic of scandal during the Trump-Ukraine saga and the resulting impeachment drive on Capitol Hill. Derkach’s name was on it.“There were several people for, if you were smart, you would avoid them and the information they were peddling, and just say, ‘Well, Rudy’s just doing his own thing, I guess,’” said the former senior official, who said high-level aides, including former National Security Adviser John Bolton, were aware of the list. (Bolton did not respond to requests for comment for this story.)This official also said they weren’t aware of any serious effort to persuade Trump to rein in Giuliani, nor were they aware of anyone reaching out to Giuliani to tell him to stop. Neither source knew of any time when Trump was verbally briefed on the list.“What good would that have done?” the current official remarked.* * *PARALLEL TRACKS * * *Johnson launched in earnest the probe into Burisma, the energy company that Hunter Biden consulted for, immediately after Joe Biden had won the South Carolina primary and cemented his status as the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination. But the narrative of Ukraine and supposed Democratic corruption has drawn in the Wisconsin senator for years, and during Trump’s impeachment, Johnson often teased a fuller investigation into Biden’s ties to Ukraine, which by then had become central to the GOP’s impeachment counter-programming.Johnson, who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s panel for Europe and has frequently traveled to the region, was among the first prominent U.S. politicians to amplify claims and theories known to have been fueled by pro-Russia actors like Derkach. Johnson has endorsed the narrative that the government of Ukraine tried to undermine Trump during the last election—a story that Derkach has also been pushing since 2017. In an Aug. 10 letter describing his current investigation, Johnson explained that its origins date to 2017, when his committee focused on Ukraine as the alleged source of the real foreign collusion in the prior year’s presidential race. He lamented that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) tasked the Intelligence Committee with the interference probe, “sidelining” his own investigation. Though Derkach has claimed to have sent material to GOP committees on Capitol Hill, Johnson strenuously denied speaking with him, dealing with him, or even knowing who he is. Johnson claims Democrats are the ones relying on Derkach’s supposed disinformation. “Our investigation relies on U.S. documents from U.S. agencies and U.S. persons—there is no Russian disinformation in our record,” said Johnson during a meeting of his committee on Wednesday morning. But to Democrats who have been skeptical of Johnson’s probe, the question of whether he has taken information directly from Derkach is beside the point—thanks to the frequency with which Derkach and Johnson have made similar claims. In press conferences and conversations with Giuliani on his video show Common Sense, Derkach has alleged that Hunter Biden “stole” more than $16 million from the Ukrainian people when he accepted a payment from the energy firm Burisma. “The funds were obtained by criminal means,” Derkach claimed in a November 2019 press conference. In his Aug. 10 letter, Johnson said he had not targeted the Bidens for investigation but, rather, “their previous actions” had put them in the crosshairs—and said he could “not disagree more” with the idea that there was no evidence of wrongdoing or criminal activity by the Bidens in Ukraine. Derkach has also claimed that Joe Biden blocked Ukraine from investigating corruption allegations regarding Burisma. Johnson has made similar assertions, claiming that Biden had conditioned a $1 billion loan to Ukraine on the firing of a prosecutor who was probing Burisma. (This narrative is complicated by the fact that many in the U.S. and the international community had called for the firing of that prosecutor, Viktor Shokin; Johnson himself signed a 2016 letter recommending “urgent reforms” at the office.)To Democrats, the parallel arguments made the connection clear. “The Russian government is again interfering in our election,” Wyden said from the Senate floor on Wednesday. “This has been confirmed by our intelligence community. Its interference campaign includes disinformation about Vice President Biden and the work he was doing to fight corruption in Ukraine. To spread this information, Russia enlists the help of characters like Andriy Derkach and Andrii Telizhenko.” Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet our top stories in your inbox every day. 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Senate Republicans authorize subpoenas in bogus probe angling for October surprise to boost Trump

As Republican Sen. Mitt Romney acquiesced to voting to approve some three dozen subpoenas for one of two bogus partisan probes being conducted by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, he worried that at least one of the investigations "had the earmarks of a political exercise."

That's the understatement of the century. In fact, the committee chair, Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, just came out last month and confirmed in an interview that one of his two ongoing  investigations "would certainly help" Trump.

Johnson, who is desperately trying to deliver an October surprise to boost Trump's reelection bid, currently has two probes going in his committee. He's hell-bent on delivering the Biden probe that Trump had tried to force on Ukraine before he hit that impeachment wall. But just in case that entirely baseless probe fails to curry favor with the public, Johnson's got a second investigation in the works focusing on the work of Obama administration officials during the transition period following the 2016 election.

That's the investigation for which Republican senators, on a party-line vote, approved a raft of subpoenas targeting people like former FBI director James Comey and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, according to Politico. Both men participated in the transition period and ultimately briefed Trump on the intelligence community's conclusions that Russia attacked the 2016 election to help boost his presidential bid. Another GOP target is former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe, who temporarily took over for Comey after Trump ousted him. Romney's opposition to the Biden-Ukraine probe, however, forced Sen. Johnson to scrap a subpoena vote related to that pet investigation. In fact, that investigation is such a heap of trash, the U.S. Treasury Department recently declared one of the pro-Russian Ukrainians who helped fuel the probe an "active Russian agent for over a decade."

But the GOP's approval of dozens of new subpoenas prompted Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, a Homeland Security committee member, to introduce a resolution Wednesday afternoon "opposing efforts to launder Russian disinformation through Congress." 

From the Senate floor, Schumer charged that "While the rest of the country has been focused on fighting a global pandemic, for the last few months the chairman and Republicans of the committee have wasted taxpayer resources to run a hit job on President Trump’s political rival." Schumer said he would have more to say on the matter later, but added, "for one of our most important committees to be echoing a Kremlin-backed conspiracy theory is beyond the pale."

Johnson reportedly plans to release an interim report within the coming days on his Kremlin-driven probe into Biden's diplomatic efforts in Ukraine when he was serving as vice president. In the other investigation, Johnson will maintain the power to deliver headlining-grabbing subpoenas into October, even after Congress has recessed in the run-up to Election Day. How convenient. 

Alan Dershowitz sues CNN for $300 million

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Attorney Alan Dershowitz is suing CNN for $300 million, alleging it slandered and libeled him through its editing of a comment he made to the Senate while defending President Donald Trump during his impeachment trial, saying the revision made it falsely appear he "had lost his ...

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Attorney Alan Dershowitz sues CNN over impeachment quote

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) - Attorney Alan Dershowitz is suing CNN for $300 million, alleging it slandered and libeled him through its editing of a comment he made to the Senate while defending President Donald Trump during his impeachment trial, saying the revision made it falsely appear he “had lost ...

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