Pompeo Blasts Democrats’ Subpoeana: Won’t Be “Bullied Or Intimidated” In Impeachment Probe
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has vowed to stop Democrats from ‘bullying’ State Department officials as they hand out subpoenas in their impeachment probe.
In a letter responding to a House subpoena demanding that he testify for Congress’s impeachment investigation, Pompeo says that the requested time-frame given for employees to provide vast amounts of documents simply “isn’t feasible.” Those who have received subpoenas also need time to find and retain counsel to prepare for depositions, Pompeo said, adding that making depositions in the time frames offered won’t be possible.
“…your letter provides a woefully inadequate opportunity for the Department and the requested witnesses to prepare. These individuals have retained, or may be retaining, private counsel, as is their constitutional right, and in the course of the Department’s discussions with these individuals, several have indicated that they need more time both to retain and to consult with private counsel. In addition, State Department counsel must consult with these officials and their counsel, once retained, regarding the Department’s legitimate interests in safeguarding potentially privileged and classified information.”
Pompeo begins the letter by accusing Rep. Eliot Engel, Chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, of attempting to “bully, and treat improperly the distinguished professionals of the Department of State, including several career Foreign Service Officers, whom the Committee is now targeting.” Pompeo vows to prevent any attempts to “intimidate, bully and treat improperly” any current or former State Department employees who get caught up in the investigation.
Finally, Pompeo said the subpoenas sent to five Department officials (including Pompeo himself) include requests for each individual to reproduce a “vast amount of documents.” However, “these requests appear to duplicate the subpoena that was previously served on the Secretary of State. The requested records constitute the property of the Department of State and are subject to restrictions on the unauthorized disclosure of classified information and various Executive Branch privileges.”
Read the full letter below:
JUST IN: Sec. Pompeo responds to subpoena, saying requested deposition dates “are not feasible;” asserts Democrats’ request “can be understood only as an attempt to intimidate, bully, and treat improperly” State Dept. officials. https://t.co/2OeroCnGYEpic.twitter.com/Z6GYHgif19
According to WSJ, Pompeo composed the letter after meeting with Italian President Sergio Mattarella in Rome on Tuesday. The former CIA chief has just begun a week-long trip to Italy and Greece.
What Legal Experts Think Of Trump’s Demand To “Unmask” The Whistleblower
As House Democrats let the subpoenas fly to support their impeachment investigation, President Trump and his Republican allies in the House and Senate are calling on the DoJ to ‘unmask’ the still-anonymous CIA whistleblower who heard through the grapevine that President Trump might’ve tried to strongarm the newly elected President of Ukraine.
Of course, Democrats are simply horrified by the prospect, arguing that exposing the whistleblower’s identity would deter other whistleblowers from coming forward in the future. The whistleblower’s complaint, which was shared with Congress last week, is crucial to the Democrats’ investigation.
But given the intense level of media scrutiny surrounding the allegations, many believe it will be impossible for the whistleblower to keep his identity a secret for much longer, Bloomberg reports.
President Trump has also made a fairly convincing argument about why the whistleblower’s identity should be revealed: “Like every American, I deserve to meet my accuser, especially when this accuser, the so-called ‘whistleblower’, represented a perfect conversation with a foreign leader in a totally inaccurate and fraudulent way,” Trump tweeted.
Like every American, I deserve to meet my accuser, especially when this accuser, the so-called “Whistleblower,” represented a perfect conversation with a foreign leader in a totally inaccurate and fraudulent way. Then Schiff made up what I actually said by lying to Congress……
Once the whistleblower’s identity is revealed, Trump’s allies will be able to identify others in the White House who may have helped him or given him information about either the telephone conversation or efforts to “lock down” the phone-call records. Trump has referred to the whistleblower as a ‘spy’.
Several of Trump’s closest allies in Congress, including South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, are backing him up: “It’s imperative we find out which officials supplied the whistle-blower with information to file a complaint. Who are they? What was their agenda?” Graham tweeted.
It’s imperative we find out which officials supplied the whistle blower with information to file a complaint.
Even independent experts say they can’t recall an example where allegations ‘of this magnitude’ were raised where the accusers’ identity didn’t become public.
“I’m not aware of a circumstance in which” a whistle-blower from the intelligence community “has made allegations of this magnitude and managed to remain anonymous,” said Patrick Eddington, a former CIA employee who revealed U.S. soldiers’ exposure to toxins during the 1991 Gulf war. He is now a research fellow at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think-tank.
But as one of the whistleblower’s lawyers told Congress, a $50,000 ‘bounty’ for any information about the whistleblower’s identity has been offered, something that the lawyer said dramatically compromises the safety of his client.
One of the whistle-blower’s lawyers, Andrew Bakaj, alerted lawmakers that a $50,000 “bounty” has been offered for information about his client’s identity and warned that could make it more dangerous for others to come forward.
“The Intel Community Whistle-blower is entitled to anonymity,” Bakaj tweeted. “Law and policy support this and the individual is not to be retaliated against. Doing so is a violation of federal law.”
To be sure, we already know the whistleblower is a CIA analyst thanks to the New York Times. The whistleblower must have known the risks when he filed his complaint. If Democrats are going to base their impeachment theater on this whistleblower’s complaint, then President Trump has a point: He should be able to know the identity of his accuser.
Since the whistleblower’s complaint “appeared credible”, according to the intelligence community’s inspector general…
The intelligence community’s inspector general on Monday reiterated that the whistle-blower complaint “appeared credible.” He also rebutted allegations in conservative media outlets – and echoed by Trump and some Republicans – that the process had been recently changed to allow complaints based on second-hand information. Inspector General Michael Atkinson said in a statement that the whistle-blower followed correct procedures in submitting forms to lodge his or her complaint.
“The Disclosure of Urgent Concern form the complainant submitted on Aug. 12, 2019, is the same form the ICIG has had in place since May 24, 2018,” Atkinson said in the statement. References to first-hand knowledge on previous versions of the whistle-blower forms were removed because they “could be read – incorrectly – as suggesting that whistle-blowers must possess first-hand information in order to file an urgent concern complaint with the congressional intelligence committees.”
…allowing these aspersions to be cast on the president anonymously is an obvious re-tread of the Russia playbook by the Democrats and their allies in the media, and the intelligence community.
An anonymous federal employee is alleging that President Donald Trump has abused his executive authority in order to hide possible misconduct. Congress is now investigating.
Yes, it sounds like a story you’ve heard before—pretty much non-stop for the past week or so, actually—but this is a different whistleblower complaint alleging completely different presidential misconduct and being investigated by a different congressional committee. This one hasn’t gotten as much attention as the allegations involving Trump asking Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to investigate Joe Biden’s son because it lacks the foreign intrigue, Mafioso-style “favors,” and doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the 2020 presidential election.
And this whistleblower’s allegations may suggest a more straightforward example of the president attempting to circumvent federal law.
On July 29, members of the House Ways and Means Committee “received an unsolicited communication from a Federal employee setting forth credible allegations of ‘evidence of possible misconduct,'” wrote Rep. Richard Neal (D–Mass.), the committee chairman, in a letter to Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin on August 8. The letter’s existence was reported by The Washington Poston Tuesday. In the letter, Neal wrote that the committee was informed of “inappropriate efforts to influence” a mandatory Internal Revenue Service (IRS) audit of the president and Vice President Mike Pence.
“This is a grave charge that appreciably heightens the Committee’s concerns about the absence of appropriate safeguards as part of the mandatory audit program and whether statutory codification of such program or other remedial, legislative measures are wan-anted,” Neal wrote.
The important background here provided another in a growing number of parallels between the Trump administration and the Watergate era. Following Nixon’s resignation, the IRS added a rule requiring that presidents and vice presidents have their tax returns audited every year. Having automatic audits of the commander in chief is mostly for the IRS’s benefit so the agency doesn’t appear to play political favorites by choosing which years to audit and which to ignore.
Of course, the audits haven’t really mattered before—because, unlike Trump, every other post-Nixon president has released his tax returns publicly. If there was any misconduct to be found in the tax return, it would not escape notice. Trump has kept all his tax returns private, however, which means the mandatory IRS audits may be the only means of exposing key details like how much Trump is personally benefiting from the office he holds.
In the letter, Neal acknowledges that Charles Rettig, the IRS commissioner, has dismissed the allegations of “undue influence” being applied to Trump’s audit as being “unfounded.” But Neal says the allegations made to the committee by the IRS whistleblower “cast doubt” on that claim.
To be fair, IRS employees have engaged in nakedly partisan activities before, and any federal employee could have all manner of incentives to make allegations against Trump. From the scant details provided in Neal’s letter, it’s impossible to tell the extent of the whistleblower’s complaint or the alleged misconduct.
However, because the whistleblower is concerned about the status of the IRS audit of the president, it seems likely that these “credible allegations” are directed towards Trump’s tax returns since taking office. In other words, the issue doesn’t seem to be some long-buried secret in Trump’s old returns—which Congress is still trying to obtain—but rather an attempt to circumvent the mandatory IRS audit of Trump while he is a sitting president.
Regardless, Trump could put an end to the question of whether this is a legitimate allegation of wrongdoing or another “deep state” plot against his presidency by simply following the example of his predecessors and releasing his tax returns.
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The term pedophrasty is a relatively new word – not currently accepted by an official dictionary – but that has a powerful meaning in today’s political and media environment. Pedophrasty is an “argument involving children to prop up a rationalization and make the opponent look like an asshole, as people are defenseless and suspend all skepticism in front of suffering children: nobody has the heart to question the authenticity or source of the reporting. Often done with the aid of pictures.” We have seen this tactic employed by both the left and the right sides of the political spectrum and it is, unfortunately, highly effective.
If you turned on your television last week, you likely saw 16-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg. No one here at the Free Thought Project are climate scientists, so we will abstain from commenting on her agenda. However, neither is she. But I digress. The political and mainstream media machine’s exploitation of Thunberg is a perfect example of pedophrasty.
If Thunberg’s activism actually wakes people up to pollution and incites a peaceful and a voluntarily implemented environmental benefit — without ushering in a tyrannical climate change police state — we fully support her endeavors. Wanting to save the world is a noble cause and if children want to try to do that, by all means, have at it—just don’t take away anyone’s life or liberty in the process.
The subsequent sh*t storm that was sparked online by Thunberg’s coverage — entailing both support and hatred — however, is a different story.
It served as a perfect distraction to things that actually matter in our lives. As videos of Thunberg meeting with Barack Obama went viral (I’ll get to that irony in just a second), extremely important events unfolded around us, which were entirely ignored by the mainstream media.
Before I list these major stories passed over by the media, I would be remiss if I failed to point out the irony of the Obama/Thunberg meeting. Sorry.
Barack Obama advocated for, approved, and oversaw eight wars in various different countries which brought death and destruction to millions of innocent people. Under his watch, tens of thousands of warheads fell all over the Middle East ensuring a lifetime of pollution and suffering for the people who managed not to be blown up by them. What’s more, under his (and yes, Trump’s too) presidency, the US military contributed more pollution to the planet than 140 countries, combined. This has made the United States military the largest polluter on the planet. But, by all means, he fist-bumped Greta, so, all good man.
Back to the point.
As the media circus distracted and divided the masses, major stories unfolded and we felt it necessary to cover them. Below is that list.
1. CNBC Anchor Admits Building 7 Brought Down in ‘Controlled Implosion’
As Americans fought over who hated or who liked Thunberg more, a bombshell revelation on 9/11 was made.
On the 18th anniversary of 9/11 earlier this month, CNBC senior analyst and former anchor Ron Insana went on Bernie and Sid In the Morning on New York’s 77 WABC Radio to share his experience of being at Ground Zero on that horrifying day in American history.
As A&E for 9/11 Truth reports, approximately eight minutes into the interview, Insana made a statement regarding the 47-story World Trade Center Building 7 — which collapsed late in the afternoon of 9/11 — that is truly stunning, especially considering his access to the scene and his job as a prominent news anchor:
Well, remember 7 World Trade had not yet come down. And so when I went down to the [New York Stock] Exchange that Wednesday morning [September 12], I was standing with some military and police officers, and we were looking over in that direction. And if it had come down in the way in which it was tilting, it would have wiped out everything from where it stood to Trinity Church to the Exchange to, effectively, you know, the mouth of the Hudson. And so there were still fears that if that building had fallen sideways, you were going to wipe out a good part of Lower Manhattan. So they did manage for one to take that down in a controlled implosion later on. And the Exchange was up and running the following Monday. [Emphasis added.]
2. Senator Behind Child Abuse Reform Arrested for Possessing, Distributing Child Porn
As Thunberg calls on politicians to implement climate change reform to save the planet for the future children, we’d be willing to bet she has no idea how many of these politicians couldn’t care less about the well-being of children. In case after horrifying case, the people responsible for implementing legislation that may or may not benefit the environment, are caught preying on children.
Proving this notion, this month, Senator Mike Folmer, from Pennsylvania, who was an advocate for child abuse reform—was busted distributing and possessing horrific child porn. Authorities launched their investigation into Folmer after they received a tip that he was uploading child porn to the popular website Tumblr.
The senator now faces a multitude of charges including sexual abuse of children, possession of child pornography and criminal use of a communication facility.
3. Instead of Arresting a Homeless Population, City Paying Them to Pickup Trash
As politicians argue over how to clean up their cities and help the homeless populations, one town stopped arguing and started doing. In a win win situation, homeless folks in Arkansas can get paid to clean up the city. Imagine that.
The Bridge to Work program started in April in Little Rock, Arkansas and pays homeless individuals $9.25 an hour to tidy up the metropolis and capitol city of the state.
Canvas Community Church runs the program which was only slated to last 6 months but it was extended due to its overwhelming benefit to both the homeless population and the environment. See what happens when you stop begging the government to make laws and start taking action yourself? It is pretty damn powerful.
4. Report Reveals DMVs Across the US are Selling Your Personal Info and Making Millions
The same government that people are calling on to “fix the planet” is the same government that wages endless wars and illegally spies on their citizens. Oh, and that largest polluter in the world thing mentioned above too. Somehow people keep forgetting these facts when asking the State to fix something.
A perfect example of this corruption surfaced this month as a new report showed that the power-tripping bureaucrats at DMVs across the country are selling your data to private entities.
This extremely personal information is easily obtained by private investigators, credit agencies, and data leeching companies like LexisNexis. According to its website, LexisNexis sells dozens of various reports to anyone who wants it, all of which contain information on you.
But we can totally trust these same people to help stop pollution, right?
5. A US Drone Massacred Dozens of Afghan Farmers as They Slept
Back to the war machine. You know, the largest polluter on the planet which the environmentalists are begging to fix the climate? Yeah, that one.
Earlier this month, after hundreds of pine nut farmers laid down to rest for the night, drone missiles rained down on them. The attack slaughtered 30 innocent civilian farmers as they rested from a long day’s work and mangled dozens of others. This attack ensured the future creation of terrorists, therefore ensuring years of war to come, all in a days work, I mean murder, yeah, murder.
Perhaps if we simply drone bomb the folks who want to drive gas cars, maybe then we can solve the problem of climate change. Who knows, it may be worth a shot. Fist bump, Obama?
An anonymous federal employee is alleging that President Donald Trump has abused his executive authority in order to hide possible misconduct. Congress is now investigating.
Yes, it sounds like a story you’ve heard before—pretty much non-stop for the past week or so, actually—but this is a different whistleblower complaint alleging completely different presidential misconduct and being investigated by a different congressional committee. This one hasn’t gotten as much attention as the allegations involving Trump asking Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to investigate Joe Biden’s son because it lacks the foreign intrigue, Mafioso-style “favors,” and doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the 2020 presidential election.
And this whistleblower’s allegations may suggest a more straightforward example of the president attempting to circumvent federal law.
On July 29, members of the House Ways and Means Committee “received an unsolicited communication from a Federal employee setting forth credible allegations of ‘evidence of possible misconduct,'” wrote Rep. Richard Neal (D–Mass.), the committee chairman, in a letter to Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin on August 8. The letter’s existence was reported by The Washington Poston Tuesday. In the letter, Neal wrote that the committee was informed of “inappropriate efforts to influence” a mandatory Internal Revenue Service (IRS) audit of the president and Vice President Mike Pence.
“This is a grave charge that appreciably heightens the Committee’s concerns about the absence of appropriate safeguards as part of the mandatory audit program and whether statutory codification of such program or other remedial, legislative measures are wan-anted,” Neal wrote.
The important background here provided another in a growing number of parallels between the Trump administration and the Watergate era. Following Nixon’s resignation, the IRS added a rule requiring that presidents and vice presidents have their tax returns audited every year. Having automatic audits of the commander in chief is mostly for the IRS’s benefit so the agency doesn’t appear to play political favorites by choosing which years to audit and which to ignore.
Of course, the audits haven’t really mattered before—because, unlike Trump, every other post-Nixon president has released his tax returns publicly. If there was any misconduct to be found in the tax return, it would not escape notice. Trump has kept all his tax returns private, however, which means the mandatory IRS audits may be the only means of exposing key details like how much Trump is personally benefiting from the office he holds.
In the letter, Neal acknowledges that Charles Rettig, the IRS commissioner, has dismissed the allegations of “undue influence” being applied to Trump’s audit as being “unfounded.” But Neal says the allegations made to the committee by the IRS whistleblower “cast doubt” on that claim.
To be fair, IRS employees have engaged in nakedly partisan activities before, and any federal employee could have all manner of incentives to make allegations against Trump. From the scant details provided in Neal’s letter, it’s impossible to tell the extent of the whistleblower’s complaint or the alleged misconduct.
However, because the whistleblower is concerned about the status of the IRS audit of the president, it seems likely that these “credible allegations” are directed towards Trump’s tax returns since taking office. In other words, the issue doesn’t seem to be some long-buried secret in Trump’s old returns—which Congress is still trying to obtain—but rather an attempt to circumvent the mandatory IRS audit of Trump while he is a sitting president.
Regardless, Trump could put an end to the question of whether this is a legitimate allegation of wrongdoing or another “deep state” plot against his presidency by simply following the example of his predecessors and releasing his tax returns.
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E*trade, TD Ameritrade Implode After Schwab Eliminates Online Trade Commissions
Just how pathetic is retail participation in this so-called “bull” market? So pathetic, that in a desperate scramble to capture market share from its discount brokerage rivals, the venerable Charles Schwab announced that it would eliminate online trade commissions for U.S. stocks, ETFs and options as part of an unprecedented price war within the brokerage sector.
According to the Tuesday statement, Schwab’s online clients will qualify for the zero commission, down from $4.95, which begins Oct. 7; clients trading options will continue to pay 65 cents per contract.
The move to make no money on most retail trades is merely the latest escalation in a brutal price war which has seen investors flock to the cheapest products. Last week, Bloomberg notes that Interactive Brokers Group announced it would offer free trades. That follows Fidelity Investments’s announcement in June that it was expanding its lineup of commission-free ETFs. Last year, Vanguard Group set off the competition when it said it would offer almost 1,800 ETFs commission-free on its platform.
Schwab previously doubled its suite of no-commission ETFs in March, bringing its total to more than 500 at the time. BlackRock iShares products were added to its platform, Schwab ETF OneSource, with 90 funds. Several fund issuers including State Street Global Advisors, Invesco Ltd., WisdomTree Investments Inc., J.P. Morgan Asset Management and Pacific Investment Management Co. also planned to add to their commission-free offerings already on the platform.
And since the already razor thin margins of the sector will get even thinner, if not negative, the stock of both Schwab and its closest competitors imploded: SCHW fell as much as 10%, its largest single-day drop in over three years; TD Ameritrade fell as much as 23%, the most since 2006; E*Trade Financial dropped 20%, the most since 2009, and Interactive Brokers slid 8.3%, the most since 2015.
Competitors “will have to follow suit,” said Kyle Sanders, analyst at Edward Jones. “It’s a commoditized business. When there’s an announcement by one firm, others play catch-up or take a more aggressive strategy.” And since the bulk of revenues already came in the form of commissions, today’s self-cannibalizing decision confirms that retail investors are no longer a material presence in the market.
Sanders said he sees Schwab’s decision as the second wave of a price war that’s already hammered fees for product issuers. Now competition on price is deepening among the brokers selling those products, he said.
That said, it’s not quite game over for the online brokers: all they need to do is find a way to boost the commissions on the only trades left that matter – stock buybacks. Good luck with that.
As Dollar Reaches Record High, Trump Slams “Clueless, Pathetic” Fed
On the heels of dismal manufacturing data, and soaring dollar strength vs global fiat currencies, President Trump has lashed out at who he feels is responsible…
“As I predicted, Jay Powell and the Federal Reserve have allowed the Dollar to get so strong, especially relative to ALL other currencies, that our manufacturers are being negatively affected. Fed Rate too high. They are their own worst enemies, they don’t have a clue. Pathetic!“
Indeed, with the broad dollar index at an all-time record high…
Source: Bloomberg
While correlation is not causation, Trump may have a point…
Former South Carolina Rep. Mark Sanford, who announced his Republican presidential campaign at the beginning of September, is cutting through the heated political climate to remind his party of an old but looming issue.
During a Monday night appearance on The Daily Show, Sanford said, “Whether I’m successful or not, I think we need to have a conversation about where we’re going as Republicans and where we’re going as a country.” When asked by host Trevor Noah the areas in which Republicans have lost their way, Sanford spoke of the issues that were once “hallmarks” in his party’s national conversation.
Sanford began with spending and the national debt, saying that both have “spun indeed out of control” under President Donald Trump. Sanford also added that regardless of personal feelings over the methods Republicans used to address both issues in the past, there was a time when “Republicans were recognized for trying on that front.”
Sanford also compared Trump’s praise of the economy under his presidency to a family carrying out a facade of prosperity while secretly dealing with insurmountable credit card debt.
Will Republican voters be swayed by Sanford’s fiscal message or has Trumpian nationalism fully taken hold in the party?
“It’s either all the conversations I’ve had over the past 25 years of politics in the [House of Representatives] and two terms as governor, either they didn’t matter and they weren’t real or they were,” he replied.
Sanford’s in a tough spot. Despite years of calling for a more fiscally responsible government, he became one of the first casualties of the Trumpism that has overtaken the Republican Party. Though he advocated for more limited government, Sanford was an early critic of Trump’s demeanor. Not only did he lose his reelection bid in 2018, but his loss appeared to be indicative of the power of the new Republican Party.
As Reasonreported last year, the Associated Press also found that rather than campaign on successful tax cut legislation, ads for Republican midterm challengers focused heavily on support for Trump and the border wall, even in states that do not touch the southern border.
“We wish [economic policy] got the pitchforks out,” GOP ad maker Will Ritter told the AP. “It doesn’t.”
Sanford acknowledged this reality in his Monday interview.He mentioned that he believed his campaign would uncover whether or not fiscal values remain important to Republican voters.
Even if Sanford attracts supporters, he’ll still need to overcome party politics. A handful of state Republican officials have canceled their primaries in support of Trump.
The full interview can be watched here (interview starts at 18:56).
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