The Patriot Post® · 'Schiff Show' Roundup: Public Hearings, Giuliani, Whistleblower Trouble

There are several noteworthy happenings on the impeachment front. Here’s the roundup:

The Democrats’ impeachment charade enters a new phase today: Public hearings. The Associated Press reports, “All on TV, committee leaders will set the stage, then comes the main feature: Two seasoned diplomats, William Taylor, the graying former infantry officer now charge d'affaires in Ukraine, and George Kent, the deputy assistant secretary in Washington.”

The Daily Signal notes four things to expect.

As has been the case from day one, the question isn’t really whether there was a quid pro quo but if President Donald Trump’s request violated the law or was impeachable. “Quid pro quo” is, roughly translated, Latin for “foreign policy.” (We kid — it’s literally “this for that.”) But Democrats and their Leftmedia allies want you to think it means Trump broke the law by temporarily delaying military aid to Ukraine for requested cooperation and favors. So it’s little wonder that a developing feature of the Democrats’ effort is the shift in terminology away from quid pro quo and toward “extortion” and “bribery.”

This is all done to obfuscate what is, at heart, a policy disagreement. Andrew McCarthy, who wrote a book on impeaching Barack Obama, says of the testimonies of several key people in the policy community: “It is the president, not the bureaucracy, who was elected by the American people.” He adds, “Bureaucrats are not free to substitute their judgments for the president’s.”

Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, is at the center of this fiasco. He published a Wall Street Journal op-ed rebutting the “false narrative built on selectively leaked testimony from Rep. Adam Schiff’s closed-door Intelligence Committee hearings.” Giuliani argues that Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky discussed only matters “of serious mutual concern.” One was Ukraine’s interference in the 2016 election by releasing documents related to Paul Manafort, whose short stint as Trump’s campaign manager was ended by that disclosure. The other was the possible corrupt dealings of Joe and Hunter Biden, which Giuliani says include “documents showing that [Ukrainian energy company] Burisma transferred $900,000 to Rosemont Seneca Partners, a lobbying firm owned by Hunter Biden, and that the money was for lobbying Joe Biden.” The elder Biden, of course, already admitted his own quid pro quo regarding Ukrainian corruption investigations.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff’s collusion conspirator, the whistleblower — widely identified as Eric Ciaramella — may be in legal trouble for soliciting a quarter-million dollars in illicit donations via GoFundMe. Remember, the whistleblower’s attorney, Mark Zaid, declared in 2017 that the “coup has started.”

Finally, The Washington Post has “five questions we still need answered.” It more or less outlines Democrat strategy going forward. Victor Davis Hanson, on the other hand, lists Ten Reasons Why Impeachment Is Illegitimate. The overarching reason? Because the Democrats’ strategy is transparently vindictive.