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Dorothea Lange Rear window tenement dwelling, 133 Avenue D, NYC June 1936
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The US is becoming so divided it’s time to ‘heal’ before it’s too late. This whole impeachment thing should have been bipartisan from the start, but it hasn’t at all. The Dems have tried from the get-go to block the GOP from getting involved. And even now, as they claim hearings will become public, they put restraints on Republican House members. That will not end well.
Point in case: the first two articles below, one from Zero Hedge, the other from CNN, draw 180º different conclusions from the exact same material. And then that is supposed to move smoothly into the 2020 election process?
The testimonies from Taylor and Sondland appear tainted. The whistleblower who isn’t one refuses to talk, but is ‘willing’ to answer written questions (or rather his lawyers are). The Dems try to keep him anonymous while his identity has been out there for everyone to see. And looking at his background it’s not hard to see why they don’t want him to testify. But the entire process has become so distorted that no-one should want to be part of it.
Open it up!
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“.. you’re telling us that Tim Morrison told you that Ambassador Sondland told him that the president told Ambassador Sondland that Zelensky would have to open an investigation into Biden?” “That’s correct,” Taylor admitted.”
• Dems’ ‘Star Witness’ Wasn’t On Trump-Ukraine Call, Sole Source Was NYT (ZH)
“And this isn’t firsthand. It’s not secondhand. It’s not thirdhand,” Rep. Lee Zeldin, R-N.Y., said to Taylor. “But if I understand this correctly, you’re telling us that Tim Morrison told you that Ambassador Sondland told him that the president told Ambassador Sondland that Zelensky would have to open an investigation into Biden?” “That’s correct,” Taylor admitted. “So do you have any other source that the president’s goal in making this request was anything other than The New York Times?” Zeldin asked. “I have not talked to the president,” Taylor said. “I have no other information from what the president was thinking.”
Additionally, as The Federalist notes, under questioning from Rep. John Ratcliffe, R-Texas, Taylor also testified that the Ukrainian government wasn’t aware U.S. military funding had been temporarily suspended until late August, and then only after the information was leaked to the news media, meaning an alleged quid pro quo would have been impossible. “So, if nobody in the Ukrainian government is aware of a military hold at the time of the Trump-Zelensky call, then, as a matter of law and as a matter of fact, there can be no quid pro quo, based on military aid,” Ratcliffe, a former federal prosecutor, said. “I just want to be real clear that, again, as of July 25th, you have no knowledge of a quid pro quo involving military aid.”
“July 25th is a week after the hold was put on the security assistance,” Taylor testified. “And July 25th, they had a conversation between the two presidents, where it was not discussed.” “And to your knowledge, nobody in the Ukrainian government was aware of the hold?” Ratcliffe asked. “That is correct,” Taylor responded. The Democrats may need a better witness.
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Ye olde defense: “There is no evidence of wrongdoing in Ukraine by either Joe or Hunter Biden”. And there won’t be if you succeed in frustrating any investigation.
• Top US Diplomat’s Damning Account Of Quid Pro Quo With Ukraine (CNN)
In his opening statement, which was published when he testified on October 22, Taylor explained that Sondland told him “everything” Ukraine wanted was conditioned on the investigation. There is no evidence of wrongdoing in Ukraine by either Joe or Hunter Biden. House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff announced Wednesday that Taylor would testify next week on Wednesday, the first day that Democrats will hold public impeachment hearings. Taylor’s testimony provided a damning account of how Trump told his appointees to establish a quid pro quo with Ukraine, trading much-needed US military assistance for political favors from Zelensky.
Taylor, a career official who remains in his post in Kiev, testified that he was prepared to resign amid the holdup of aid, and he explained in more detail what he meant in text messages describing a “nightmare” for Ukraine that would have prompted his departure. “‘The nightmare’ is the scenario where President (Volodymyr) Zelensky goes out in public, makes an announcement that he’s going to investigate Burisma and the election in 2016, interference in 2016 election, maybe among other things,” Taylor told the House committees. “The nightmare was he would mention those two, take all the heat from that, get himself in big trouble in this country and probably in his country as well, and the security assistance would not be released. That was the nightmare.”
In the wake of his testimony, Trump accused Taylor of being a “Never Trumper.” Trump made this claim even though there is zero public evidence to support his assertion, and available information paints Taylor as a respected and apolitical career diplomat.
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The first public hearing will be that of Bill Taylor, whose testimony they already took -and leaked from- two weeks ago, and which they released on Wednesday? Now they want a do-over? What’s the story, morning glory?
• Adam Schiff Announces First Public Impeachment Hearings (ZH)
After weeks of secretive impeachment proceedings from which House Democrats have largely excluded Republican lawmakers, House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA) announced on Twitter Wednesday that his committee will hold its first public impeachment hearings next week. Unsurprisingly, those with the most damaging testimony will be peddled out, while witnesses who gave exonerating testimony such as special envoy Kurt Volker and Ambassador Gordon Sondland are notably absent from the roster. First up? On Wednesday, November 13 the panel will hear from Bill Taylor – the top US diplomat in Ukraine who told house investigators last month that he believes there was a quid pro quo between the Trump administration and Ukraine.
Taylor notably expressed his concerns in a Sept. 9 text message to US ambassador to the EU, Gordon Sondland, saying: “I think it’s crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign.” To which Sondland, dictating from Trump, replies “Bill, I believe you are incorrect about President Trump’s intentions. The President has been crystal clear no quid pro quo’s of any kind,” adding “I suggest we stop the back and forth by text.” Sondland, meanwhile, ‘updated’ his earlier testimony to clarify that he told a top Ukrainian official that the country would need to commit to investigating former VP Joe Biden and other Democrats in exchange for the release of nearly $400 million in US military aid.
“I said that resumption of the U.S. aid would likely not occur until Ukraine provided the public anticorruption statement that we had been discussing for many weeks,” said Sondland. That said, Sondland also testified that his quid pro quo comments were his opinion, and that President Trump specifically said he did not want one.
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No he didn’t really, the name was known to half the country.
• Trump Jr. Outs CIA Whistleblower Over Twitter (ZH)
Drama ensued on Wednesday after Donald Trump Jr. tweeted a Breitbart News article which contained the name of the alleged Trump-Ukraine whistleblower, Eric Ciaramella. The article, written by Breitbart senior investigative reporter New York Times bestselling author and Aaron Klein, details how Ciaramella was central to the Obama administration’s Ukraine policy – including the eventual signing of a $1 billion US loan guarantee after former VP Joe Biden pressured them into firing the guy investigating an energy company paying his son to sit on their board, Burisma Holdings.
In response to Trump Jr. tweeting Ciaramella’s name, journalist Yashar Ali (who worked for Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign) contacted Don Jr., who told him “The outrage on this is BS. And those pretending that I would coordinate with The White House to send out a Breitbart link haven’t been watching my feed for a long time.” Don Jr. then tweeted “The entire media is #Triggered that I (a private citizen) tweeted out a story naming the alleged whistleblower. Are they going to pretend that his name hasn’t been in the public domain for weeks now? Numerous people & news outlets including Real Clear Politics already ID’d him.”
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CD Media continues its Ukraine series.
• Hunter Biden Took ‘Off The Books’ Payments From Burisma, Aided By FBI (CDM)
Oleksandr Onyshchenko was elected to the Ukrainian Parliament in 2012. He served From November 2014 until 2016 as the deputy chairman of the Parliament Committee on Fuel and Energy Complex, Nuclear Policy and Nuclear Safety. He states on his website: “However, his political career would be cut short in the summer of 2016 after he was revealed to be an opposition supporter who was secretly helping opposition leader and Former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko and her “Fatherland” party. A politically-motivated charge of embezzlement was placed against him by then-President Poroshenko and Mr Onyshchenko had to flee the country. On February 6 2017, The German Higher Regional Court of Koblenz issued a decision which ruled out any criminality in the actions of Mr Onyshchenko. Most notably, the State of Ukraine did not give any evidence of Mr Onyshchenko’s involvement in criminal activity, and no definitive circumstances were shown.”
Onyshchenko currently lives in Western Europe but intends to return to Ukraine to fight the corrupt schemes put in place by former President Poroshenko and to aid the Zelensky administration in such efforts. In Onyshchenko’s former oversight role over Ukrainian energy security, he was in a unique position to acquire information on Burisma and their dealings with the Biden family. In our extensive discussions with Onyshchenko, CD Media can report that he confirmed Hunter Biden took ‘off the books’ payments totally millions from Burisma. “There were ‘official’ and ‘unofficial’ payments to the Biden family,” Onyshchenko stated.
Onyshchenko also confirmed that former FBI agent Karen Greenway, who oversaw the Obama administration’s anti-corruption efforts in Eastern Europe, directed the coverup of the Biden scandal at the time, in concert with the U.S. embassy in Kyiv, and other Deep State American government assets ‘in-country’.
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Let’s hope Zelensky orders an in-depth probe of Burisma.
• Ukrainians Pimped Hunter Biden’s Seat For Leverage With Obama State Dept (ZH)
Ukrainian gas giant Burisma leveraged their relationship with Hunter Biden in order to curry favor with the Obama State Department in 2016, according to the Wall Street Journal, citing documents released in response to a Freedom of Information Act request submitted by journalist John Solomon. Burisma, represented by American lobbying firm Blue Star Strategies (founded by former Clinton administration officials Sally Painter and Karen Tramontano), mentioned Hunter Biden’s name in email exchanges with State Department staff while seeking a meeting – ” then mentioned him again during the meeting as part of an effort to improve Burisma’s image in Washington,” according to the report.
The email exchanges between State Department staffers show that Karen Tramontano, chief executive of Blue Star, cited Mr. Biden’s position in trying to secure a meeting with a senior official at the State Department. “She noted that two high profile U.S. citizens are affiliated with the company (including Hunter Biden as a board member),” the special assistant at the Office of the Undersecretary for Economic Growth, Energy and the Environment wrote in the Feb. 24, 2016, email. “Ms. Tramontano met with the undersecretary, Catherine Novelli, on March 1, 2016, the documents show. During the meeting, Ms. Tramontano mentioned Mr. Biden served on the company’s board, according to a former State Department official familiar with the discussion.” -Wall Street Journal
The 2016 lobbying effort was an attempt to change Burisma’s reputation in Washington. Hunter Biden was appointed to the board of Burisma in 2014 while his father was Vice President, and Obama’s ‘point man’ on Ukraine policy. The elder Biden notoriously pressured Ukraine’s president to fire the country’s lead prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, who was leading a wide-ranging investigation into Burisma at the time. While MSM outlets have reported that the probe had been long-closed by the time, however Shokin said in a sworn affidavit “I was forced out because I was leading a wide-range corruption probe into Burisma Holdings, a natural gas firm active in Ukraine, and Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, was a member of the board of directors.”
Blue Star’s efforts for Burisma came as the company and its Ukrainian tycoon founder, Mykola Zlochevsky, faced investigations in Ukraine focused on allegations of tax irregularities, money laundering and illegal enrichment Mr. Zlochevsky was never charged, and a lawyer for Burisma said at the time that the investigations were closed because of a lack of evidence. The dropping of the investigations in 2016 came after Ukraine’s prosecutor general was dismissed. Vice President Biden and European Union officials had brought pressure on the prosecutor, seeing him as a hindrance to anticorruption efforts. His dismissal has been seized upon by Mr. Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani as evidence that Vice President Biden exerted undue pressure on Kyiv to help his son. -Wall Street Journal
Amazing, nobody cites Shokin’s affidavit claiming he was fired for investigating Burisma. House Democrats, meanwhile, have been conducting an impeachment inquiry against President Trump, whose attorney Rudy Giuliani has been conducting an investigation “concerning 2016 Ukrainian collusion and corruption,” which Giuliani says “was done solely as a defense attorney to defend my client against false charges.”
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“We should take [Zaid] at his word that this is a coordinated, premeditated plot to overturn the election.”
• ‘Coup Has Started,’ Whistleblower’s Attorney Said In 2017 (Fox)
Mark Zaid, one of the attorneys representing the intelligence community whistleblower at the center of the Democrats’ ongoing impeachment inquiry, tweeted conspicuously in January 2017 that a “coup has started” and that “impeachment will follow ultimately.” Then, in July 2017, Zaid remarked, “I predict @CNN will play a key role in @realDonaldTrump not finishing out his full term as president.” Also that month, Zaid tweeted, “We will get rid of him, and this country is strong enough to survive even him and his supporters.” Amid a slew of impeachment-related posts, Zaid assured his Twitter followers that “as one falls, two more will take their place,” apparently referring to Trump administration employees who defy the White House. Zaid promised that the “coup” would occur in “many steps.”
The tweets, which came shortly after President Trump fired then-acting Attorney General Sally Yates for failing to defend federal laws in court, are likely to fuel Republican concerns that the anonymous whistleblower’s complaint is tainted with partisanship. Trump’s call with Ukraine’s leader, which is the subject of the complaint, occurred in July 2019. “The whistleblower’s lawyer gave away the game,” the Trump campaign’s communications director, Tim Murtaugh, told Fox News. “It was always the Democrats’ plan to stage a coup and impeach President Trump and all they ever needed was the right scheme. They whiffed on Mueller so now they’ve settled on the perfectly fine Ukraine phone call. This proves this was orchestrated from the beginning.” Added House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy: “We should take [Zaid] at his word that this is a coordinated, premeditated plot to overturn the election.”
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Here’s hoping we’re far away from having heard the last about this.
• Jeffrey Epstein’s Brother Talks ‘Unexplained’ Injuries on Shoulder, Wrist (ET)
The brother of dead disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein said he had unusual injuries on his wrists and shoulders. Mark Epstein, 65, said there were two contusions on both of Jeffrey’s wrists, an injury to his left forearm, and muscle hemorrhaging of his left shoulder or deltoid. “Those are unexplained. Was he handcuffed and struggled? Was someone holding his wrists? The marks on his wrist are unexplained,” he told Fox News. His comments about his brother’s death in August—which the New York City Medical Examiner’s Office said was due to suicide by hanging—come after famed pathologist Dr. Michael Baden said there were questions about Epstein’s neck injury.
“Did the injuries happen a week before or at the time of the incident? We have to look at the microscopic slides to see when the injuries occurred,” Dr. Baden said of the injuries noted by his brother, according to Fox. “The brother requested this information three months ago and he still has not gotten it.” Mark Epstein also said that he attempted to obtain his brother’s file from the New York City Medical Examiner’s Office in mid-August, but he was told that it has to be processed by the U.S. Department of Justice first. “They’re playing games,” Mark told Fox on Wednesday. He explained: “I’ve done the appropriate requests with Justice twice, and have heard nothing. I was told someone is looking into it.”
Baden said, however, that the unexplained injuries on Epstein’s body that were mentioned by his brother might have been caused by the July 23 incident, where he was discovered in the fetal position with marks around his neck at the Manhattan Correctional Center. He was put on suicide watch for a short period of time before being taken off of it weeks before his death. Mark said that he’s unsure what happened to his brother, who was arrested and jailed without bail on sex trafficking charges in July. “I have no standing to sue … people should know the truth about what can happen in a federal facility,” Mark said. “My brother might have been murdered. This is not about me.” [..] Weeks after Epstein’s death, a judge announced that the criminal case against him was closed. “Because Jeffrey Epstein, the defendant, died while this case was pending, and therefore before a final judgment was issued, the Indictment must be dismissed under rule of abatement,” Judge Richard Berman wrote in late August.
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Dracula simia, also called “monkey orchid”
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