News Summary From the Week That Was (27 October – 2 November)

This is my weekly summary of news that the legacy media and Democrats have obfuscated for partisan political reasons. This week’s list is longer since I’m back in CONUS.

Advertisement

1. Here’s a good one to get started. It’s something that needs to happen waaaay more than it does (confronting lying journalists in public settings!):

In what can only be described as an epic moment at Politicon, a political convention with panelists from the left and the right, Brandon Straka of the WalkAway campaign confronted CNN’s April Ryan, who was speaking on a panel called “Being Black Under Trump,” and called her out for misleading people about the president with fake news.

Straka is the founder of the WalkAway movement for former Democrats who are walking away from the party that has done nothing for them. Straka has been sponsoring town halls across the country featuring LGBT, Hispanic, and black minorities who feel abandoned by Democrats and embraced by Trump. Former Democrat voters have uploaded their WalkAway videos to Straka’s YouTube page by the thousands.

Read the rest here. April Ryan is an “untouchable” in the minds’ eyes of leftists: she is a black leftwing journalist who is by definition on the correct side of all issues. Except Straka called her out for exactly what she has always been – an unmitigated liar!

2. Yet another vaunted witness touted by the Democrats in their “get Trump” mania is exposed as a Deep Stater with deep Democrat and Soros ties.

Acting U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Bill Taylor, who provided key testimony to the Democrats’ controversial impeachment inquiry last week, led an election observation delegation in Ukraine earlier this year for a George Soros-funded organization that at the time boasted Hunter Biden on its small chairman’s council.

Two months before he came out of retirement to serve as the highest-ranking U.S. official in Ukraine, Taylor led an election observer delegation to Ukraine’s April 21, 2019 second round presidential election for the National Democratic Institute (NDI) organization. Hunter Biden at the time served on NDI’s ten-person Chairman’s Council, which describes itself as bringing together “leaders from corporate, philanthropic, and academia sectors to provide expertise, counsel and resources to help the Institute meet these evolving challenges.” Biden was engaged in Ukraine in his role as a board member for Burisma, the Ukranian natural gas company at the center of allegations regarding Joe Biden’s involvement in Ukraine policy during the Obama administration while his son was being paid by Burisma.

In addition to a direct relationship with the Atlantic Council, Taylor for the last nine years also served as a senior adviser to the U.S.-Ukraine Business Council (USUBC), which has co-hosted events with the Atlantic Council and has participated in events co-hosted jointly by the Atlantic Council and Burisma.  USUBC events have been financially sponsored by Burisma.

Another senior adviser to the USUBC is David J. Kramer, a long-time adviser to late Senator John McCain. Kramer played a central role in disseminating the anti-Trump dossier to the news media and Obama administration. Taylor participated in events and initiatives organized by Kramer.

The links may be particularly instructive after Breitbart News reported that itinerary for a trip to Ukraine in August organized by the Burisma-funded Atlantic Council for ten Congressional aides reveals that a staffer on Rep. Adam Schiff’s House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence held a meeting during the trip with Taylor. The pre-planned trip took place after the so-called whistleblower officially filed his August 12 complaint and reportedly after a Schiff aide was contacted by the so-called whistleblower.

Advertisement

Read the rest here. Good grief! Taylor has/had direct Soros, Schiff, and Uniparty McCain connections. The notion that Taylor is “objective” and credible is absurd.

3. Truer words were never spoken: The Republic is at stake in 2020. This commentary is simply great:

There’s a shameless effrontery that summarizes the Democratic position on the attempted impeachment of President Trump. The Hillary Clinton campaign paid for the Steele dossier, assembled out of bits handed to ex-MI6 spook Christopher Steele from his Russian intelligence sources, and the FBI used this concoction to obtain FISA warrants to bug the Trump presidential campaign. Now, THAT’S foreign interference. And those facts aren’t in dispute. When the Trump administration tries to get the truth out of foreign governments about their involvement in nefarious activities in the U.S., the Democrats scream, “Impeachment!”

Nothing less than the American republic is at stake here. It’s time for every American patriot to rally around the president. Some of my neo-conservative ex-friends are cheering for the wrong side. Shame on them.

For the record, I don’t care whether there was quid pro quo with Ukraine or not. If President Trump used military aid as a bargaining chip to persuade the government of Ukraine to investigate foreign subversion of our political system, he was doing his job as commander-in-chief to protect this country from its external enemies. The parade of striped-pants cookie-pushers from the State Department feeding information to closed-door Democratic Party kangaroo courts in the House of Representatives is irrelevant. Trump is fighting a mutiny by the U.S. intelligence community. If the mutineers succeed, it will be the end of the republic. If a cabal of bureaucrats nestling in the bowls of our $80 billion a year intelligence bureaucracy can bring down an elected president of the United States, the republic is finished.

The impeachment issue is a load of baloney, period.

Read the rest here. Baloney indeed! The Democrats need to pay a heavy political price for their shenanigans in 2020, folks.

4. And the Democrats’ impeachment star chamber beat goes on!

The New York Times has obtained the opening statement of Lieutenant Colonel Alexander S. Vindman, the top White House expert on Ukraine, who [testified] to the House Intelligence Committee on Tuesday about his concerns about President Donald Trump’s telephone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in July. The statement, leaked to the Times — though committee chair Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) has likened impeachment to a “grand jury” proceeding, which is typically conducted in secrecy —is described by the Times as the first account of someone who actually listened in on the telephone call, as opposed to hearing about it second- or third-hand.

Vindman says that he became concerned in the spring of 2019 about “outside influencers promoting a false narrative of Ukraine inconsistent with the consensus views of the interagency.” At no point does Vindman accuse the president of breaking the law, but of doing what he thought “inappropriate.”

Read the rest here. This guy has it entirely backwards: he serves at the pleasure of the President and is charged with supporting the President’s policies, not the other way around. His “difference of opinion” – which is all this is – is a complete nothing-burger on the impeachment front.

Advertisement

5. Here is another one that will be swept under the rug because it confirms what they all really know to be the truth – and from one of their own!

Longtime NBC anchor Tom Brokaw said there are big differences between Watergate and President Trump’s impeachment. Brokaw, who covered the Watergate scandal as a White House correspondent in 1973, said Tuesday that Democrats don’t have “the goods” on Trump “with the same kind of clarity” the party did when Richard Nixon was president. “The big difference is … they still don’t have what you call ‘the goods’ on this president in terms of breaking the law and being an impeachable target for them,” Brokaw said during an appearance on MSNBC.

“They’re going to start the process but they don’t have the same kind of clarity that the people who were opposed to Richard Nixon had because it was so clear that these were criminal acts that he was involved in,” he said.

Read the rest here. Even a legacy media icon knows that the Democrats’ star chamber is bogus.

6. Did it really take a licensed coroner to figure this out? I don’t think so.

Fox News contributor Dr. Michael Baden, a former New York City medical examiner, on Wednesday’s “Fox & Friends” suggested deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s autopsy points more to homicidal strangulation than suicide. Epstein, who was found hanging in his prison cell at the high-security Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan, had been on suicide watch and was found after a “total breakdown” in security surveillance, Baden noted.

“I think that the evidence points toward homicide rather than suicide,” Baden, who was asked by Epstein’s family to investigate the death, declared. He reasoned, “Because there are multiple — three fractures in the hyoid bone, in the thyroid cartilage that are very unusual for suicide and more indicative of strangulation, homicidal strangulation.

Read the rest here. Did anyone seriously think that Epstein’s death was a suicide? Only the gullible.

7. Well, of COURSE, the Democrats are attempting to spin US Attorney John Durham’s investigation. Why? Because they’re culpable on many fronts.

Durham is asking why the Obama administration ordered secret surveillance and investigations of figures associated with the presidential campaign of the opposing political party. So much like Hamlet, this investigation within an investigation is strikingly similar to the allegations against the Trump campaign but involves Democratic figures. There are questions over the solicitation of foreign intelligence in the 2016 election, allegations of undue influence, and the use of later discredited allegations of conspiracy. According to news reports, Durham has now asked for his investigation to be elevated to a criminal investigation.

Both House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler and House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff have described the actions of Durham, a previously lionized prosecutor, as an abuse. Indeed, they declared that allowing Durham to look into potentially criminal conduct would cause “new and irreparable damage” to the rule of law. While he acknowledged that Durham is an honest and respected prosecutor, Schiff called the probe illegitimate and indicated that he would likely reject its findings.

Advertisement

The response by the Democrats is particularly glaring because, over the last three years, they have insisted on total transparency and a complete investigation of whether Trump campaign officials conspired with Russia in the 2016 election. Any statements or actions by Trump opposing that investigation have been declared both criminal and impeachable by the Democrats. However, the party that has demanded full disclosure and unhampered inquiry of the Trump administration is now apoplectic about an investigation touching on actions by the Obama administration.

Read the rest here. Indeed. The Democrats are nothing if not hypocrites. Disgraceful.

8. Squad member Ilhan Omar keeps digging holes. When will she be held accountable?

The co-chairman of a Turkish-American advocacy group with close ties to Ankara contributed $1,500 last month to the campaign for Rep. Ilhan Omar, who is under fire this week over votes she cast supporting Turkish government positions, campaign finance records show. Omar and the activist, Halil Mutlu, were also photographed together at an event for the Turkish American Steering Committee (TASC), a U.S.-based nonprofit that has for years waged public relations campaigns  in support of Turkish government policies and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Omar was the only Democrat to vote against imposing sanctions against Turkey over air strikes against the Syrian Kurds, who have worked with U.S. forces in the fight against ISIS. The House voted 403-16 in favor of the measure.

Read the rest here. How is it that Omar hasn’t been forced to resign yet, as this is just the tip of the iceberg?

9. The Ukraine “whistleblower” is revealed to be a partisan Democrat hack. What a surprise (not!).

[T]he name of a government official fitting that description — Eric Ciaramella — has been raised privately in impeachment depositions, according to officials with direct knowledge of the proceedings, as well as in at least one open hearing held by a House committee not involved in the impeachment inquiry. Fearing their anonymous witness could be exposed, Democrats this week blocked Republicans from asking more questions about him and intend to redact his name from all deposition transcripts.

RealClearInvestigations is disclosing the name because of the public’s interest in learning details of an effort to remove a sitting president from office. Further, the official’s status as a “whistleblower” is complicated by his being a hearsay reporter of accusations against the president, one who has “some indicia of an arguable political bias … in favor of a rival political candidate” — as the Intelligence Community Inspector General phrased it circumspectly in originally fielding his complaint.

Federal documents reveal that the 33-year-old Ciaramella, a registered Democrat held over from the Obama White House, previously worked with former Vice President Joe Biden and former CIA Director John Brennan, a vocal critic of Trump who helped initiate the Russia “collusion” investigation of the Trump campaign during the 2016 election.

Further, Ciaramella (pronounced char-a-MEL-ah) left his National Security Council posting in the White House’s West Wing in mid-2017 amid concerns about negative leaks to the media. He has since returned to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. “He was accused of working against Trump and leaking against Trump,” said a former NSC official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters.

Advertisement

Read the rest here. This guy has been working to undermine the President since Inauguration Day. He needs to be cross-examined under oath by House Republicans – for starters.

10. Here’s a great John Solomon piece that debunked some Ukraine scandal myths.

The early pattern of misinformation about Ukraine, Joe Biden and election interference mirrors closely the tactics used in late 2016 and early 2017 to build the false and now-debunked narrative that Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin colluded to hijack the 2016 election.

Myth: There is no evidence the Democratic National Committee sought Ukraine’s assistance during the 2016 election.

The Facts: The Ukrainian embassy in Washington confirmed to me this past April that a Democratic National Committee contractor named Alexandra Chalupa did, in fact, solicit dirt on Donald Trump and Paul Manafort during the spring of 2016 in hopes of spurring a pre-election congressional hearing into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia.

Myth: There is no evidence that Ukrainian government officials tried to influence the American presidential election in 2016.

The Facts: There are two documented episodes involving Ukrainian government officials’ efforts to influence the 2016 American presidential election. The first occurred in Ukraine, where a court last December ruled that a Parliamentary member and a senior Ukrainian law enforcement official improperly tried to influence the U.S. election by releasing financial records in spring and summer 2016 from an investigation into Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort’s lobbying activities. The second episode occurred on U.S. soil back in August 2016 when Ukraine’s then-ambassador to Washington, Valeriy Chaly, took the extraordinary step of writing an OpEd in The Hill criticizing GOP nominee Trump and his views on Russia just 3 months before Election Day.

Myth: The allegation that Joe Biden tried to fire the Ukrainian prosecutor investigating his son Hunter Biden’s Ukrainian gas firm employer has been debunked, and there is no evidence the ex-vice president did anything improper.

The Facts: Joe Biden is captured on videotape bragging about his effort to strong-arm Ukraine’s president into firing Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin. Biden told a foreign policy group in early 2018 that he used the threat of withholding $1 billion in U.S. aid to Kiev to successfully force Shokin’s firing.

Myth: Ukraine’s investigation into Burisma Holdings was no longer active when Joe Biden forced Shokin’s firing in March 2016.

The Facts: This is one of the most egregiously false statements spread by the media. Ukraine’s official case file for Burisma Holdings, provided to me by prosecutors, shows there were two active investigations into the gas firm and its founder Mykola Zlochevsky in early 2016, one involving corruption allegations and the other involving unpaid taxes.

Read the rest here. There is a lot more in that article and a lot more to be disclosed about Ukraine corruption. When all of the facts about Ukraine are made known, the Democrat Party (and a few complicit RINOs) will be destroyed.

11. Finally, former NSC Senior Director for European Affairs Tim Morrison, LTC Vintman’s boss, blew up Bill Taylor’s quid pro quo myth during his testimony on Thursday before Shifty Schiff’s star chamber.

Advertisement

A top National Security Council (NSC) official who listened to President Donald Trump’s July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelensky testified to Congress that he did not believe Trump had discussed anything illegal during the conversation. “I want to be clear, I was not concerned that anything illegal was discussed,” former NSC Senior Director for European Affairs Tim Morrison testified today, according to a record of his remarks obtained by The Federalist.

Morrison testified that Ukrainian officials were not even aware that certain military funding had been delayed by the Trump administration until late August 2019, more than a month after the Trump-Zelensky call, casting doubt on allegations that Trump somehow conveyed an illegal quid pro quo demand during the July 25 call.

Morrison also pointed out key factual inaccuracies in testimony provided by William Taylor, a State Department official who works in the U.S. embassy in Kiev, Ukraine. Morrison said that, contrary to Taylor’s claims, Morrison never met with the Ukrainian National Security advisor in his private hotel room. Morrison also said Taylor falsely claimed that Ambassador Gordon Sondland demanded a public statement from the Ukrainian president committing to investigate Burisma, a controversial Ukrainain energy company that paid Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s son Hunter millions of dollars to sit on its board.

Read the rest here. And yet the legacy media are insisting that Morrison “corroborated the testimonies of Taylor and Vindman.” They all need to be burned down!

Here are the “honorable mentions” for this week:

Here is the short summary of this week’s articles:

  • Brandon Straka, leader of the #WalkAway movement, calls out CNN “reporter” April Ryan as a liar at Politicon.
  • Acting U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Bill Taylor (one of the Ukraine rats) was outed as a Deep Stater with Soros ties.
  • The impeachment scam is exposed, and Democrats need to pay heavily in 2020.
  • LTC Vindman expresses his unwanted opinion before Adam Schiff’s star chamber and reveals himself to be a disgrace.
  • Longtime NBC anchor Tom Brokaw stated the obvious in an interview: there are big differences between Watergate and President Trump’s impeachment. Yes, indeed, and the latter is a Soviet-style lynching.
  • Months later, a licensed coroner questions Jeffrey Epstein’s supposed suicide. Duh!
  • Democrats are trying to spin US Attorney Durham’s investigation while exposing themselves as the hypocrites they are.
  • Ilhan Omar is corrupt – among other things. Her days in Congress are numbered.
  • Eric Ciaramella, the Ukraine “whistleblower” (actually, a leaker) is revealed to be a Deep State hack.
  • John Solomon did a masterful job debunking Ukraine scandal myths being propagated by Democrats and their lickspittle media allies.
  • Finally, former NSC Senior Director for European Affairs Tim Morrison, LTC Vintman’s boss, blew up Bill Taylor’s quid pro quo myth during his testimony on Thursday.
Advertisement

It sure seems like the news gets better with each passing week. In future weeks, the Ukraine scandal is going to unravel, the Horowitz FISA abuse report will be released, and the Durham criminal investigation will doubtless return indictments. What a time to be alive! Stay tuned, as who knows what surprises next week will bring?

The end.

Recommended

Join the conversation as a VIP Member

Trending on RedState Videos