Category: Testimony

New letter exposes Republicans’ latest absurdity in their impeachment stunt

Posted on by Walter Einenkel

The Republican-led House Homeland Security Committee kicked off the new year by wasting everybody’s time with new impeachment hearings against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. And on Wednesday, Chair Mark Green sent a letter to Mayorkas asking that the secretary provide written testimony since he “declined to appear” before the committee.

But that’s not exactly true. Also on Wednesday, NBC News obtained a letter from DHS contradicting Green’s assertion that Mayorkas “declined” anything. According to NBC, after the Republican-led committee originally requested that Mayorkas testify in person on Jan. 18, DHS replied that the secretary could not testify on that date due to scheduling conflicts. Specifically, Mayorkas would be hosting a delegation from Mexico to discuss immigration issues. In other words, the exact issue Republicans are pretending to be interested in working on as lawmakers.

In the letter, DHS explained that Mayorkas remained willing to testify in front of the committee at another date, but as DHS spokesperson Mia Ehrenberg described it in a statement following Green’s letter, Republicans’ “rush to impeach” Mayorkas seems to be taking precedence over having a reason to impeach him.

This is just the latest example of Committee Republicans’ sham process. It’s abundantly clear that they are not interested in hearing from Secretary Mayorkas since it doesn’t fit into their bad-faith, predetermined and unconstitutional rush to impeach him. Last week, the Secretary offered to testify publicly before the Committee; in the time since, the Committee failed to respond to DHS to find a mutually agreeable date.

Instead, they provided this offer of written testimony to the media before any outreach to the Department. [Homeland Security Committee] Republicans have yet again demonstrated their preference for playing politics rather than work together to address the serious issues at the border.

Mayorkas has long been a target for the do-nothing Republicans in Congress because immigration has been an amorphous boogeyman they use to (successfully) frighten their base. Sometimes, though, Republican lawmakers can’t keep their conspiracy theories straight, such as when Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene mistakenly claimed during another hearing that the FBI was part of the Department of Homeland Security.

As a DHS official told NBC, Mayorkas has testified 27 times in 35 months—more than any other Biden Cabinet official—and has answered hundreds of questions concerning immigration and the southern border. The first two-hour hearing that Green chaired last week was unable to bring up a single piece of evidence that might rise to the level of impeachment.

Green’s choice to try and paint Mayorkas as dodging these circus-like impeachment proceedings is possibly twofold: It allows Republicans a chance to throw suspicion on Mayorkas’ as guilty of something while also ensuring that the secretary won’t publicly embarrass them the way he recently humiliated Sen. John Hawley.

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Chief Justice John Roberts Tells Democrats to Get Lost After They Request He Testify on Supreme Court Ethics

Posted on by Rusty Weiss

Chief Justice John Roberts rejected an invitation from Senator Dick Durbin to testify before Congress on ethics rules for the Supreme Court.

Roberts sent a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman implying that such testimony would threaten the basic government concept of separation of powers.

“I must respectfully decline your invitation,” he wrote.

“Testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee by the Chief Justice of the United States is exceedingly rare, as one might expect in light of separation of powers concerns and the importance of preserving judicial independence,” Roberts explained.

Accompanying his letter declining Durbin’s invite was a copy of the court’s Statement of Ethics Principles and Practices.

Roberts stated “all of the current Members of the Supreme Court subscribe” to that ethics statement.

RELATED: Clarence Thomas, Consistent Target Of The Left, Explains ‘Right Is Still Right Even If You Stand By Yourself’

Supreme Court Justice John Roberts Declines to Participate in Dick Durbin’s Sideshow

Dick Durbin’s invitation to Chief Justice John Roberts was little more than a thinly-veiled effort to address allegations against Justice Clarence Thomas.

Another one of those ‘high-tech lynchings’ the left likes to engage in every now and again regarding the longest-tenured black justice serving on the court.

A report this month by the left-leaning outlet Pro Publica alleged billionaire Harlan Crow, a GOP donor,  provided trips and gifts to Thomas that were not disclosed.

Following that report, other liberal media outlets have tried to make specious links between Thomas and other gifts from friends that they suddenly find scandalous.

Thomas, following allegations of impropriety, explained slowly and carefully to those wondering, that the gifts in question were from close personal friends and, as they “did not have business before the Court” it “was not reportable.”

He said he would amend his financial disclosure forms to comply with changes made to disclosure rules that were announced last month.

RELATED: Liberal Group Publishes Home Addresses Of Supreme Court Justices, Calls For Protests

Roberts Often Sides With the Left

It’s good to see Roberts stand up to Durbin, a rare morphing from a spineless jellyfish patsy for the Democrats to somebody finally showing a modicum of intestinal fortitude.

Think about it – Roberts has spent the vast majority of his time as Chief Justice abandoning his principles and voting intentionally with the liberal wing of the Court as a means to convey an image of fairness.

His lone goal is to create a legacy of a court not swayed by politics, but rather, guided by the law. And he’s been more than eager to side with the left to create that faux ethical image.

And Durbin has the gall to question the ethics of his court?

In June of 2020, Roberts cast the deciding vote, joining the court’s liberal justices in a 5-4 decision that ruled against the Trump administration’s bid to end the DACA program, despite it having been implemented illegally.

That same year he sided with the liberal court justices, ruling in favor of coronavirus restrictions on religious services in the state of California.

He ruled alongside liberals yet again in a ruling that struck down a Louisiana abortion safety law.

There are so many other cases in which Roberts abandoned the rule of law to cast his lot with the left just to seem impartial.

How bad must Durbin’s circus request be that even he would stand up and say, ‘No, this is a bit too much.’

Roberts though, does have a bit of a history of being irked by Democrats for daring to question the legitimacy of his Supreme Court.

He became visibly agitated after having to read a question from Senator Elizabeth Warren which suggested the legitimacy of the Court, the Constitution, and his own career would be tainted following the impeachment trial of then-President Donald Trump.

Fox News reported at the time that upon finishing the question, Roberts became “visibly irritated” and “pursed his lips and shot a chagrined look.”

We imagine he had the same look while writing the letter to Durbin.

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The post Chief Justice John Roberts Tells Democrats to Get Lost After They Request He Testify on Supreme Court Ethics appeared first on The Political Insider.

Trump’s coronavirus cover-up continues, blocking two more key task force officials from testifying

Posted on by Kerry Eleveld

Donald Trump is denying House Democrats access to two more of his administration's top pandemic task force members. The White House is now prohibiting the head of the Department of Health and Human Services, Alex Azar, and the director of the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Seem Verma, from testifying before the House Energy and Commerce Committee, according to the Daily Beast.

Last week, the White House also prohibited one of its top coronavirus medical experts from testifying before the House—Dr. Anthony Fauci. But for the moment, Fauci is still scheduled to testify before a GOP-led panel in the Senate.

Laughably, Trump officials have justified the gag orders by saying testifying before Congress was too time-consuming for key pandemic response officials, as if Trump hasn't spent the past month squandering the time of those very same people as he prattled on day after day, peddling misinformation. Fauci even called the briefings "really draining" several weeks ago.

But when Trump was asked Tuesday about the task force gag order, he made clear the move was explicitly political, calling House Democrats "Trump haters."

Just like with impeachment, the default position for the White House now is that everyone on the coronavirus task force must seek permission from White House chief of staff Mark Meadows to testify. In other words, every request by House Democrats is a complete nonstarter.

But the difference now is that Trump is blocking the public from getting information that's literally a matter of life and death. House Democrats have said the hearings are effort to gather information that can help them craft legislation in response to the ongoing public health crisis.

“The fact is that we need to allocate resources for this,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. “In order to do that, any appropriations bill must begin in the House. And we have to have the information to act upon.”

Secretary Azar has not provided public testimony on the pandemic for nearly two months. Verma, who runs the government's two most expansive healthcare programs, hasn't given public testimony since the crisis began. 

George Conway Calls For Trump To Be Impeached…Again

Posted on by LifeZette

By PoliZette Staff | February 11, 2020

George Conway, the Republican lawyer who is married to White House Senior Advisor Kellyanne Conway, penned a new oped for the The Washington Post this week in which he called for Donald Trump to be impeached again.

Conway wrote that it almost seemed as if Trump was “competing” for the “ignominious fate” of being impeached for a second time. He argued that Trump’s latest impeachable offense stems from removing Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman and Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland from office. Both of them had testified against Trump in the House’s impeachment inquiry.

As Trump removed Vindman from the National Security Council (NSC), he tweeted that he was “insubordinate” and “reported contents of my “perfect” calls incorrectly.”

Conway sited this tweet as proof that Trump removed Vindman from the NSC as revenge for his testimony. He wrote that if Trump was impeached in the House for obstruction, “there should be no doubt that punishing witnesses for complying with subpoenas and giving truthful testimony about presidential misconduct should make for a high crime or misdemeanor as well.”

Conway then shifted to showing how much he personally hates Trump by claiming that the president will always put himself ahead of the American people, adding that his “narcissism won’t allow him to put anyone else’s interests above his own, including the nation’s.”

“And he will do it again,” he wrote. “He did do it again by firing the Vindmans and Sondland. He’s telling us he will do it again. And no one can seriously doubt it, even those who voted to acquit.”

Conway’s wife Kellyanne was the first woman in American history to lead a presidential candidate to victory when Trump won in 2016. It’s sad that in the years since then, her husband has appeared to revel in humiliating her every chance he gets by publicly attacking her boss in the worst ways possible.

If a male conservative was doing this to his female liberal wife, the media would be up in arms over it. Since Conway is just embarrassing his Trump-supporting wife, however, the leftist media has no sympathy for Kellyanne.

The hypocrisy of liberals never ceases to amaze.

This piece originally appeared in LifeZette and is used by permission.

Read more at LifeZette:
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Jon Voight says Pelosi’s soul has ‘evil intent’ – calls her a threat to America
Pope Francis sides with the hard left, again.

The post George Conway Calls For Trump To Be Impeached…Again appeared first on The Political Insider.

Rep. Adam Schiff makes the irrefutable case for Bolton’s testimony

Posted on by Walter Einenkel

Donald Trump impeachment trial manager Rep. Adam Schiff has been so very stolid in his handling of the Republican-sham impeachment circus being orchestrated by the White House and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. As another day of appearances by Trump’s impeachment defense team began, House impeachment managers spoke to reporters in front of the Senate. The last question reporters asked was whether Schiff trusted former national security adviser John Bolton. Schiff used his response to point out the important issue: that the testimony of a witness such as Bolton is vital to a fair trial in the Senate.

REP. ADAM SCHIFF: It's not a question of whether I trust John Bolton or the Republican senators [trust] John Bolton, or the Democratic senators. He should be placed under oath. And this is why we think the testimony should be public. It should be live. Let the American people, along with the senators, evaluate John Bolton’s credibility when he testifies, and make their own judgment. But to say that we’re going to blind ourselves from a witness who has so clearly relevant testimony to one of the central most serious allegations against the president, I don't see how you could have a fair trial without testimony like that.

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