“In disquisitions of every kind there are certain primary truths, or first principles, upon which all subsequent reasoning must depend.” —Alexander Hamilton (1788)

Senate Democrats are posturing to force a vote adding witnesses for their installment of the impeachment inquisition. Apparently the “overwhelming evidence” the House claimed was the basis for its articles of impeachment, is not so overwhelming — but these chess moves are all calculated in advance.

It’s not that they actually want witnesses; what they do want is swing-state Republican senators up for reelection this year (Arizona’s Martha McSally, Colorado’s Cory Gardner, Iowa’s Joni Ernst, Maine’s Susan Collins, and North Carolina’s Thom Tillis) on the record voting against witnesses. Of course, there are some Democrat Senators who would prefer not to be on the record voting for witnesses, including Doug Jones and Joe Manchin, who are from states Donald Trump carried by very wide margins.

Democrats know that when they propose their list of witnesses, Republicans will counter with their own list, which may result in deadlock. And they believe that if the Trump defense team ties up some witnesses in an executive privilege legal challenge that could drag on for weeks, and if the court decides in the administration’s favor, that will still be a win for Democrats, who will claim Trump used the courts to hide his guilt.

The Demo ruse has two goals.

First, it places the aforementioned handful of Republican senators at greater risk, which increases the Democrats’ chances of retaking the Senate and blocking all future judicial nominees of President Donald Trump — provided Trump is reelected in November. This election is of paramount importance to both parties, since the next presidential term will likely yield multiple Supreme Court appointments. (The two oldest justices — Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 86, and Stephen Breyer, 81 — are both leftists.)

Second, if no witnesses are called, that extends, in perpetuity, the fake narrative that Trump is guilty of “high crimes and misdemeanors” and Senate Republicans covered it up by not allowing witnesses during the trial. This is precisely why, even though Democrats had authority to call any and all witnesses during their House inquiry, they did not do so.

And what about the “bombshell” New York Times allegation (on the eve of Trump’s defense team’s Senate rebuttal) that former National Security Advisor John Bolton allegedly heard President Trump affirm a connection between aid withheld to the Ukraine government and an investigation of former VP Joe Biden and his scandal-plagued son Hunter? The NSC had demanded Bolton scrub classified content from his manuscript before the NYT report, so it is not clear if the information disseminated was classified. But the Times’ “revelation” ramps up pressure on Republicans to vote for witnesses.

So, what if Senate Republicans do agree to call additional witnesses? As the administration’s team was concluding their defense of Trump, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said he doesn’t yet have the votes to deny witnesses — a vote that could come Friday.

If there are to be witnesses, which could be a perilous gambit for Trump, at the top of my list would be lead House impeachment manager Adam Schiff. Of course, recall that House Democrats called 17 witnesses to support their case and allowed no Republican witnesses – perhaps Senate Republicans should vote for witnesses and then allow only their list of 17 to even the score!

If Demos want John Bolton and White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, among others, I want Schiff and his so-called “whistleblower” both called as fact witnesses. let’s find out what Schiff knew and when he knew it. And naturally, Republicans would also have to call Joe and Hunter Biden, to discover what corruption Trump wanted investigated. It will likely be downhill for the Democrat Party from there.

Why is Schiff at the top of my list?

As predicted for two years, the Demos’ Russia-collusion investigation was a dead-end fabrication.

That fact was further sealed by the recent determination that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant applications used by the deep-state cabal in its attempted coup were both erroneous and likely felonious. That finding was based on the “17 significant errors or omissions” discovered by Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz. Further, FBI Director Chris Wray has now declared that the warrants were illegal.

According to a DoJ investigation, the FISA warrants were “not valid” due to “material misstatements and omission.” The FISA Court determined that a handful of FBI agents had “insufficient predication to establish probable cause to believe that [former Trump campaign adviser Carter] Page was acting as an agent of a foreign power.” In other words, Obama administration officials were lying, and when U.S. Attorney John Durham concludes his criminal investigation, we’ll likely learn exactly who was involved in this conspiracy.

Though Democrats would like to keep the collusion lie on life support, Adam Schiff, with the help of other deep-state actors, came up with plan 2.0 — impeachment — to stop the Trump administration’s successful efforts to Make America Great Again.

Schiff has coordinated the entire impeachment narrative and is its principal author and director. Thus, subjecting Schiff to Republican cross-examination would reveal his collusion with the “whistleblower” — which would unravel the entire case against Trump.

Recall the questions about the altered whistleblower reporting form and the fact that Schiff has continued to lie about knowing the whistleblower’s identity — though he used intermediaries to collude with him before the Trump/Ukraine complaint was filed.

That is precisely why Schiff vigorously resisted any effort to identify his whistling leftist co-conspirator, Eric Ciaramella, during the House inquisition. That is also why Schiff reversed his promise to allow calling him as a House witness. (For the record, this whistleblower’s identity is the worst-kept secret in Washington.)

Ciaramella’s leftist political views are well documented, and it’s no coincidence that he was Joe Biden’s Ukrainian adviser during the years Hunter was profiteering from his patently corrupt position on the board of directors of Burisma, a Ukrainian oil and gas company that paid him more than $83,000 in monthly graft to buy access to his then-VP father, and by extension the entire Obama administration.

Recall that in 2018, Joe Biden bragged on the record about how, in 2015 as VP, he coerced Ukrainian officials to fire the prosecutor who was hot on the trail of Burisma and Hunter Biden — a firing that even The New York Times acknowledged benefited Hunter Biden. As Biden recounted, if Ukrainian officials didn’t “take action against the state prosecutor” [read: fire him], “I said … ‘We’re not going to give you the billion dollars. … I’m telling you, you’re not getting the billion dollars.’ … Well, son of a bitch. He got fired.”

That happened while Schiff’s co-conspirator, Ciaramella, was the Ukraine adviser to Biden. And now, Schiff is using Ciaramella in a schema to, in effect, impeach Trump for what Biden actually did…only in the Demos’ state of alternate reality.

Democrats are even more concerned about exposing Ciaramella’s motives now that investigative journalist Paul Sperry has revealed this inconvenient tidbit: “Barely two weeks after Donald Trump took office, Eric Ciaramella … was overheard in the White House discussing with another staffer how to remove the newly elected president from office, according to former colleagues.”

And Fox News’s Laura Ingraham reported that the whistleblower also has some extremely inconvenient connections to both the Bidens and Burisma.

Let’s see if Senate Democrats will agree to Schiff and Ciaramella being called as witnesses — along with the Bidens, although Bernie Sanders’s rising political fortunes would certainly benefit from the Trump legal team’s grilling of Joe and Hunter.

And adding to the deep-state story is another chapter that no reputable fiction writer would plot, because nobody would believe it. There’s a name that did not appear in the New York Times “blockbuster” allegation about Bolton’s allegation: Yevgeny “Eugene” Vindman.

For context, Democrats would have no contrived case against Trump (nor its hoped-for benefit to Biden’s 2020 candidacy) if not for a Soviet Union-born immigrant, U.S. Army officer Alexander Semyonovich Vindman. In his House testimony about Trump’s call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Vindman testified he told his twin brother Yevgeny about the call, and also told “someone” in the intelligence community.

It is likely that Alexander provided the transcript of Trump’s call to Schiff’s Demo deep-state CIA operative, Eric Ciaramella.

But what was Yevgeny’s roll?

A day after The New York Times’ Bolton article hit, The Washington Times reported that Yevgeny, also an Army officer, is the JAG officer believed to have oversight responsibility for National Security Council reviews of publications by current and former NSC officials — including John Bolton’s pre-publication manuscript.

Bolton submitted the transcript of his book for NSC review in December, and the NSC is now running silent on inquiries regarding Yevgeny’s access to that review copy, or the implication that he could be in the pipeline of leakers who provided The New York Times the “timely” information about the Bolton allegations.

It is possible that Yevgeny Vindman did not know about Bolton’s manuscript. But is it likely? Did Schiff and his dullard Demos enlist both Vindmans in their scheme?

I would like to think the best of these two U.S. Army officers. The Vindman brothers both have distinguished military and academic records, but given the fact they are first-generation immigrants who are isolated in a highly compartmentalized sub-culture in the bowels of the world’s largest bureaucracy, and surrounded by powerful politicians, it is understandable how they could be manipulated by their political handlers and convinced they are doing the right thing. It is yet to be determined if their motivations are simpatico with Schiff, et al.

But caveat emptor: Military uniforms are not a guarantee the wearer is a “Patriot,” as Alexander himself asserted in his House testimony.

That testimony prompted a stinging condemnation from Benghazi attack Marine Mark Geist, who declared, “Vindman is a disgrace to all who have served. [In the] transcript of his previous closed-door testimony he clearly admits to undermining the POTUS foreign policy and now he has chairman Schiff advising him on how to answer questions.” Navy Seal Robert O'Neill, who killed Osama bin Laden, seconded Geist’s criticism, asserting: “I agree. I wish the left wouldn’t use his uniform to make him a saint. He’s an operative with an agenda.”

For the record, Army traitor Bradley Manning was also in uniform when he committed the most damaging act of treason in recent history.

To wrap up, I have two questions regarding the impeachment.

First, is Bolton smart enough to set up the Democrats calling him as a witness by becoming a better witness for Trump? I guess it’s possible that, for a $2 million book advance, too much Potomac Kool-Aid and a clash of titan egos with Trump, Bolton could abandon the honor and integrity that I’ve found most admirable in him for many years. But would he really? (A question some Senate Democrats must be asking is this: “Are we being played by Bolton?”)

And second, a question about the abject hypocrisy of the impeachment theater.

Anyone with an IQ above 80 can already see that Democrats have built their entire impeachment platform on accusing Trump of something Biden already admitted to doing, and the latter with a much greater material and personal benefit.

But in a further example of unmitigated hypocrisy, given that four Demo presidential candidates in the Senate (Bennet, Klobuchar, Sanders, and Warren) are inevitably going to vote to impeach Donald Trump, aren’t they actually using their office to undermine a political opponent and interfere with an upcoming presidential election? Given that this is the exact “high crime and misdemeanor” they’re accusing Donald Trump of, the hypocrisy is rich.

Footnote: Even though the withheld Ukrainian aid was released without the quid pro quo investigation, our in-house armchair view is that the Trump legal team should have acknowledged the strategy. There is nothing illegal or impeachable about a president using his office, and the promise of U.S. aid, to insist a third-world nation clear up longstanding questions of internal corruption — particularly questions about a former vice president’s connection to the grossly excessive “compensation” for his son — and protecting him from that country’s prosecutor. For the record, we now know that five months before the Trump/Zelensky call, Ukrainian prosecutors were already investigating Hunter Biden’s Burisma outfit.

Update: As anticipated, President Trump was acquitted on both articles of impeachment on 5 February. The Senate voted 52-48 to acquit the president of the abuse of power charge and 53-47 to acquit the president of the obstruction of Congress charge. Mitt Romney, of course, voted with the Democrats on the abuse of power charge. Remarkably, Doug Jones (D-AL) and Joe Manchin (D-WV) did not break ranks with Democrats, and will likely pay a political price in their respective states, which Trump carried by wide margins in 2016.

Update: In February of 2022, new evidence emerged about Ukraine’s then-Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, that was essential to Trump’s defense, but withheld. Recall as noted previously that when Barack Obama had tapped his then-VP Biden as our chief negotiator with Ukraine, at the same time Hunter Biden was on Burisma’s board making $83,000 for political access to his father, Biden threatened to withhold $1 billion in aid to Ukraine unless Shokin was fired. Shokin was investigating Burisma, so Joe Biden insisted he was corrupt and had to go. Biden insisted of his actions (to protect his son): “It was a fully transparent policy carried out in front of the whole world and fully, fully embraced by the international community of democracies.” But the new documents suggest U.S. State Department officials were “impressed” with Shokin’s anti-corruption plan and supportive of his investigative actions.

Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis
Pro Deo et Libertate — 1776

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