Category: Congress

The ‘Historic’ Impeachment

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FROM AN UNDISCLOSED LOCATION

Readers will excuse the lack of blogging the past couple of days, but I got trapped in a research vortex that chewed up countless hours but has yet to yield an actual story. Also, Alabama lost to LSU, and recovering from that trauma involved a 7 Stages of Grief cycle, but I digress . . .

The morning Drudge headline stack:

SCHIFF: Impeachable Offenses Include 'Bribery'...
Dems' lead lawyer known for prosecuting mobsters, swindlers ...
Republican senator: All comes down to motive...
Trump Considered Firing Intel Inspector General...
In private speech, Bolton says some of President's policy decisions guided by personal interest...
Napolitano emerges as top critic...
FACEBOOK Sued for Censoring Posts Naming Whistleblower...
Death Threats Increase...
Aides counseling Trump not to fire Mulvaney...
Senate trial to last 6 WEEKS?

What to make of all this? It’s all a giant pile of bat guano craziness. Our Constitution grants the President nearly unlimited authority to conduct diplomacy, which was what President Trump was doing on that call to the newly-elected president of Ukraine. Somehow — and I swear, I can’t fathom it — Democrats have convinced themselves that urging President Zelensky to take a look into Hunter Biden’s Burisma hustle, etc., amounted to “high crimes and misdemeanors.” Because no further psychiatric damage was possible after the Tide lost Saturday, I decided to switch the TV in my bunker office over to CNN. Yes, lets attempt that Gonzo voodoo channeling of the Ghost of Impeachments Past to try to understand exactly how in the Hell they’re rationalizing this delusion.

“McCain’s lost it,” the readers will mutter in the comments. “He finally pushed it too close to The Edge and freaked out.”

No, ma’am. Your concern is appreciated, but despite three-days of binge-watch CNN’s round-the-clock Impeachment Wank-a-Thon, I’m still clinging to reality. Certainly, suspicions of that bipolar hypomanic “high” are justified, but I’m OK. Honest. No need for Thorazine yet.

Students of psychology are aware, of course, that one of the symptoms of a full-blown manic episode is a certain . . . impulsive approach to financial matters. If the tip jar hitters wanted to provide some therapy — rattle, rattle, rattle — I might drive down to D.C. and if my coverage of The Historic Impeachment involved an all-night binge at the $2 poker table, that might be for the best. Much better than watching the CNN personalities express their orgasmic pleasure in The Great Trump-Hunt. If hating Don Lemon is wrong, I don’t want to be right.

As I type this, Wolf Blitzer is anchoring the morning coverage with the sort of urgency and gravitas you’d expect if viewers were watching a live telecast of the first manned mission to Mars. I’ve had too much coffee already today, and might not be able to sleep until Thursday. But did I mention that Christmas shopping season at Amazon means that readers can buy all the decorations and gifts they want and, because we are an Amazon Associates program, I get a small commission, at no extra cost to you. Guess what gift I’ll be giving my kids for Christmas? Ho! Ho! Ho!


 

The Katie Hill Blame Game

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Let me explain something that might not be as obvious to everyone else as it is to me: The Katie Hill sex scandal is not about sex. It’s not even really about Katie Hill, a dime-a-dozen liberal who just happened to get herself elected to Congress. No, what this story is actually about is the blatant partisanship of the media, who consider it their job — their professional duty — to help Democrats win elections. This is why the media have now gone all-in to demonize Red State’s Jennifer Van Laar for breaking the Katie Hill story, so that the blame is not on the congresswoman who slept with her staffers, but rather on the conservative who published evidence of this unethical behavior.

Emotional Katie Hill condemns ‘horrible
smear campaign’ by rightwing foes
— The Guardian

Chris Hayes on Katie Hill Resignation:
‘It Really Seems Like the Bad Guys Won’
— Washington Free Beacon

‘This is incredible’: Politico senior
media reporter runs interference
for Katie Hill by trying to manufacture
dirt on RedState’s Jen Van Laar
— Twitchy

In a remarkable panel discussion Monday on CNN (and by “remarkable,” of course I mean ludicrously biased) feminist Jill Filipovic asserted that Red State’s reporting on sexual misconduct by a member of Congress — a violation of House ethics rules — “probably should be illegal.”

Nothing — not even a blatant violation of House ethics rules — can deter the “Democratic Party operatives with bylines” from their mission of pursuing their partisan objective which, in this case, requires them to pretend that the perpetrator is actually the victim, and to assert that the truth-tellers are guilty of criminal malfeasance.

America’s political class is decadent and depraved, but our media class is arguably worse. The #MeToo exposure of big-name sexual predators like former NBC Today show host Matt Lauer confirmed what conservative critics had long asserted: that the liberal media’s pretensions of moral superiority were a sham. And the role played by the journalistic establishment in disgraced Democrat Rep. Katie Hill’s scandal adds further evidence that much of the press corps has become exactly what President Trump says: “Fake news … the enemy of the people.”
If political journalists had been doing their job, Ms. Hill might never have been elected to Congress in the first place. But the media’s enthusiasm to help Democrats win a House majority in last year’s midterm election was such that reporters didn’t produce journalism about Ms. Hill; instead they produced publicity. Coverage of Ms. Hill’s 2018 congressional campaign in various national media amounted to a massive contribution-in-kind of free advertising. . . .

Read the rest of my column at The American Spectator.


 

Naked Bisexual Democrat Katie Hill Announces Resignation from Congress

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Bad news for me — I was getting awesome traffic out of this story:

Freshman Rep. Katie Hill is resigning from Congress after facing allegations of inappropriate sexual relationships with staffers in her office and on her congressional campaign, according to two Democratic sources.
“It is with a broken heart that today I announce my resignation from Congress. This is the hardest thing I have ever had to do, but I believe it is the best thing for my constituents, my community and our country,” Hill wrote in a letter announcing the news after it was first reported by POLITICO.
“This is what needs to happen so that the good people who supported me will no longer be subjected to the pain inflicted by my abusive husband and the brutality of hateful political operatives who seem to happily provide a platform to a monster who is driving a smear campaign built around cyber exploitation,” she added.
Hill did not specify a resignation date in her letter but multiple people with knowledge of her plans said she could step aside as soon as Nov. 1.

Got that? She’s the victim of a “smear campaign” by an “abusive husband” and “hateful political operatives,” and never mind her drunkenness, her mental illness or her sexual affairs with staffers both male and female. Her constitutional rights as a crazy alcoholic bisexual are being infringed! Now she has to quit her $174,000-a-year job as a member of Congress and go back to California to smoke her bong naked.

See you around, cupcake. Have a nice life.

(Hat-tip: Donald Douglas on Twitter.)


 

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UPDATE: Naked Bisexual Democrat’s Scandal Just Got Worse, Believe It or Not

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The drip, drip, drip of revelations in Rep. Katie Hill’s scandal continues, and I’m not going to show you all the photos of the bisexual California Democrat who was in a three-way “throuple” relationship with her ex-husband and a young female campaign aide. But if you don’t want to click through to the Daily Mail story, I’ll summarize by saying she’s got an Iron Cross tattoo in her groin area, and photos showing her naked butt were posted to a “wife-sharing” site. There are also more screen-caps of text messages, including one in which the campaign aide, Morgan Desjardins, declares she is still “in love” with the congresswoman. Also, Desjardins wasn’t Hill and her husband’s first three-way:

A former tenant of the estranged couple said Hill and Heslep, had a ‘sexual relationship’ with a 21-year-old woman in 2010, the same year they were married.
Michael Pace, a Los Angeles-based technology analyst, said he rented a room in the couple’s Santa Clarita ranch and ‘walked in on the three of them’ multiple times.
‘I can absolutely confirm stuff like this went on even back then,’ Pace told DailyMail.com.
‘I left the house after six months because of all the weird sexual stuff going on in the open.
‘I walked in on the three of them in some very weird situations a few times so I know there was a sexual relationship going on.’

How many times do I have to say it? Never trust a bisexual.

Oh, and now that Katie Hill is claiming to be a victim — her privacy has been violated by “Republican operatives,” etc. — Twitchy reminds us of how mercilessly Hill attacked Brett Kavanaugh last year.

Kind of hurts when that boomerang hits you in the face.


 

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UPDATE: Naked Bisexual Democrat Is Also a Mentally Ill Drunk (Allegedly)

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Besides her admitted three-way “throuple” relationship with a female campaign staffer and her ex-husband, and the alleged affair with one of her male congressional staffers, now there are text messages indicating that Rep. Katie Hill (D-Calif.) may be suffering from bipolar disorder and exhibits symptoms of a chronic drinking problem:

In the four-part Vice documentary, “She’s Running,” which chronicled Rep. Katie Hill’s 2018 campaign, Hill and her staffers are often shown grabbing a drink, and the campaign headquarters featured an impressive “liquor” closet.
When Hill arrived in Washington, D.C., celebratory beverages continued to be a part of her life.
In text messages provided to RedState of conversations between Hill, her estranged husband, and their former throuple partner, by June 2019 all three were expressing concern about Hill’s drinking and its impact on her mental health and work performance.
During the last week of May, Hill was at home in the 25th District for Memorial Day events and visiting constituents before heading up to San Francisco to attend the California Democratic Party convention. Over the course of that week, Hill told Heslep and her female staffer that she wanted to end the throuple relationship to focus on “this important work” of impeaching President Trump.
At the convention, Hill was one of the main speakers and also had a big reason to celebrate – her friend Rusty Hicks was elected as party chair (after Eric Baumann was forced out amid sexual assault charges).
Kenny Heslep, Hill’s husband, didn’t accompany her to the convention, but the two were texting throughout the weekend. . . .
The next screenshot reveals that Hill didn’t return to her room until after 3:30 a.m., and she admitted to Heslep that she’s drunk. . . .
The Lydia to which Hill is referring is her psychiatrist. Heslep asks if Hill was talking to Lydia about the split-up. . . .
Hill tells Heslep that she doesn’t know where she’d been precisely, but in general to bars and a Mexican late night restaurant. She reiterates that she had been talking to Lydia “about drinking a lot.” . . .
On June 3rd, the female staffer confronted Rep. Hill about her drinking and reveals that Hill missed her flight and hid that fact from Kenny. . . .
Just a few days later – the day after her wedding anniversary – Hill missed another flight between Washington, D.C., and California, as a staffer named Cat told Hill’s throuple partner. Heslep asks, “Does anyone find it odd how many she’s been missing lately?” . . .
In addition to the text messages reviewed by RedState about Hill’s alcohol use, an elected official from a jurisdiction in Hill’s district told RedState on condition of anonymity that Hill was observed at a local event in mid-July visibly intoxicated, and that one of Hill’s staffers pulled Hill aside, saying, “We need to leave. You shouldn’t be here right now.” Hill then left the event without incident.
Like millions of Americans, Rep. Hill has been open about the fact that she lives with depression, as she tweeted on October 10th. . . .
In addition to regular appointments with her psychologist, Hill sometimes takes the prescription medication trazodone to manage manic episodes, according to the text messages.

Read the whole thing, which is full of screen-caps of text messages verifying all of this. We are not supposed to “stigmatize” mental illness, but I think electing crazy people to Congress is not a good idea, especially when the kooks are bisexual alcoholics. But in a representative form of government, maybe lunatics in her California district decided they wanted one of their own to represent them Washington?


 

Naked Bisexual Democrat Update

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Monday we brought you the story of Rep. Katie Hill (D-Calif.) whose nude photograph, depicting her brushing the hair of a 22-year-old female campaign staffer, is apparently evidence in her husband’s divorce case against her. Hill’s husband also alleges that she engaged in an affair with a male congressional staffer, Graham Kelly. So it would appear that Rep. Hill is further confirmation of my advice: Never trust a bisexual.

At any rate, Ace calls attention to the latest update:

Democratic California Rep. Katie Hill on Tuesday denied having an extramarital affair with a male congressional staffer, but did not deny having such an affair with a female campaign staffer.
Hill blamed her ongoing “divorce from an abusive husband” for allegations that she had affairs with the two staffers in a statement released to Politico….
Hill called allegations that she was having an affair with legislative director Graham Kelly “absolutely false,” but didn’t deny having an affair with the female campaign staffer. The first-term congresswoman blamed a “coordinated effort to try to destroy me and people close to me” for the affair allegations.
“Intimate photos of me and another individual were published by Republican operatives on the internet without my consent,” she said, adding that she “notified Capitol Hill police who are investigating the situation and potential legal violations of those who posted and distributed the photos, and therefore will have no further comment on the digital materials.”

In other words, Hill is playing the victim. It’s a “coordinated effort” by her “abusive husband” and “Republican operatives.” And while Hill admits she had a three-way with her husband and the female campaign staffer, she denies sleeping with her male congressional staffer. Ace says:

I think she’s denying the heterosexual affair, but not the gay one, not just because there’s dramatic visual proof of the latter, but also because being gay is now just generally a defense against anything, as is being an illegal alien.
She’ll run on “persecution.” And whenever you ask her about it, she’ll respond, “I can’t answer, it’s persecution,” and the media will let her get away with that, the same as they’ve allowed Ilhan “Omar” Nur Said get away with her brother-marrying and Kuffir-banging for years.

Actually, there’s another reason why Hill might deny the affair with her male congressional aide: House Rule XXIII, clause 18(a).

Ted Deutch (D-FL), Chairman and Ranking Member of the Committee on Ethics, released the following statement late on Wednesday:

The Committee is aware of public allegations that Representative Katie Hill may have engaged in a sexual relationship with an individual on her congressional staff, in violation of House Rule XXIII, clause 18(a). The Committee, pursuant to Committee Rule 18(a), has begun an investigation and will gather additional information regarding the allegations.
The Committee notes that the mere fact that it is investigating these allegations, and publicly disclosing its review, does not itself indicate that any violation has occurred, or reflect any judgment on behalf of the Committee. No other public comment will be made on this matter except in accordance with Committee rules. . . .

“If Congresswoman Hill is engaged in a romantic relationship with one of her paid staffers, that is a clear-cut ethics violation,” a senior congressional staffer told Breitbart News this week. “These rules are in place to ensure Congress is a workplace free from abuse and sexual misconduct. The reports paint a troubling pattern that deserve a full investigation.”

It’s an ethics violation for a member of Congress to have sex with a congressional aide, whereas no such rule applies to campaign staffers.

Nevertheless, whatever the House Ethics Committee does, the important takeaway from this story is: Never trust a bisexual.

(Hat-tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)

UPDATE: How did I miss this? In 2018, when Hill ran for Congress against a conservative Republican, she did so as an avowed bisexual:

As a bisexual woman married to a man, she has faced some pressure to be closeted, along with biphobia. Being out “was a huge decision early on,” she says, as many people urged her to hide her bi identity. But, she says, “I’ve been out as being bi since I was a teenager, right after high school.” She decided that remaining out was part of being “an honest, transparent politician.”
During the primary, she notes, she was accused of pretending to be bi in order to get endorsements from LGBTQ organizations (she has the backing of several, such as Victory Fund and the Human Rights Campaign). In the general election campaign, she’s heard some biphobic comments, with people saying she’s making her sexuality an issue. “I’m not making it an issue,” she says. “It’s just who I am.”

Yes, ma’am. Indeed, we see that now: “It’s just who I am.”

UPDATE II: It appears that this female campaign aide had serious feelings for the bisexual Democrat, saying she “hurt too much” and needed “a little more time to ‘move on'” after their affair ended.

 

But wait — there’s more! Hill and her husband, Kenny Heslep have been together since 2004, when she was 18 and he was 22, and married in 2010. She publicly called him “the love of my life,” claiming during her congressional campaign he was the “backbone” of her life.

Of course, you can’t believe a word she says. She’s a bisexual.

UPDATE III: The reporter who originally broke this story, Jennifer Van Laar of Red State, says she and her family are being threatened.


 

‘Naked Democratic Congresswoman’

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Well, there’s three words you don’t often see in a headline:

An explicit photograph sheds light on California Democratic Rep. Katie Hill’s three-way relationship with her husband and a staffer, which lasted over a year before she broke off the arrangement early this year.
Unknown to the staffer or Hill’s husband, the congresswoman had allegedly been having an affair with another staffer, her legislative director Graham Kelly, for about a year when she broke off the throuple, according to texts and photos received by RedState.
The staffer involved in the three-way relationship is a young woman who joined Hill’s campaign for Congress in 2017 right after graduating college. The romance began shortly after the staffer, then 22 years old, joined the campaign. Hill’s side-affair with Kelly began sometime in 2018 when Kelly was her finance director. Hill’s husband filed for divorce after discovering the California representative’s relationship with Kelly.
Pictures and texts provided to RedState confirm Hill’s relationship with her female staffer, which was previously unknown before the outlet broke the news on Friday.
During the throuple’s relationship, the staffer began joining the married couple on vacations, including one to Alaska. Several photos of Hill and the staffer taken during that vacation have leaked, with the staffer’s face blurred.

But who are we to judge? Let he who has never been in a three-way with a House Democrat staffer throw the first stone!

 


 

Democrats ‘Careening from Impeachment Theory to Impeachment Theory’

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House Republican Conference chairwoman Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming:

“We have watched now, ever since President Trump was elected, the House Democrats have been careening from impeachment theory to impeachment theory. They’ve careened from target to target for a while,” Cheney said. “Ten days or so ago they were focused on impeaching [Supreme Court Justice Brett] Kavanaugh. Now they’re back to focusing on President Trump.”
“What we see repeatedly is a complete lack of focus on [and] concern about evidence and facts,” she continued. “What Speaker Pelosi did yesterday really was the worst we’ve seen yet, where she announced an impeachment inquiry without any evidence, without seeing the transcript of the phone call at issue, without seeing any details from the supposed whistleblower.”
“When you think about what that does, both from the perspective of our constitutional obligation and from the perspective of our national security, it ought to give every American grave concerns that they are dealing with this in a way that is absolutely such a flagrant disregard of their constitutional responsibility,” Cheney added.

 

A key point in the transcript of the call was that President Trump was urging the Ukrainian president to investigate the role played by the firm Crowdstrike in the 2016 election campaign:

After the Department of Justice released the call transcript between President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky Wednesday morning, officials also reconfirmed U.S. Attorney John Durham is looking into Ukraine’s role and potential interference in the 2016 presidential election.
“A Department of Justice team led by U.S. Attorney John Durham is separately exploring the extent to which a number of countries, including Ukraine, played a role in the counterintelligence investigation directed at the Trump campaign during the 2016 election. While the Attorney General has yet to contact Ukraine in connection with this investigation, certain Ukrainians who are not members of the government have volunteered information to Mr. Durham, which he is evaluating,” DOJ Spokesperson Kerri Kopek released in a statement.
According to the transcript, President Trump was concerned about Ukraine’s role and asked Zelensky to get to the bottom of what happened.
“I would like you to do us a favor though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it. I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say Crowdstrike…I guess you have one of your wealthy people…The server, they say Ukraine has it. There are a lot of things that went on, the whole situation,” Trump said on the call. “I would like to have the Attorney General call you or your people and I would like you to get to the bottom of it. As you saw yesterday, that whole nonsense ended with a very poor performance by a man named Robert Mueller, an incompetent performance, but they say a lot of it started with Ukraine. Whatever you can do, it’s very important that you do it if that’s possible.”

Crowdstrike is the company Democrats brought in to investigate the hacking of their servers, and the company has a Ukrainian connection. John Solomon reported in The Hill four months ago:

In its most detailed account yet, the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington says a Democratic National Committee (DNC) insider during the 2016 election solicited dirt on Donald Trump’s campaign chairman and even tried to enlist the country’s president to help.
In written answers to questions, Ambassador Valeriy Chaly’s office says DNC contractor Alexandra Chalupa sought information from the Ukrainian government on Paul Manafort’s dealings inside the country in hopes of forcing the issue before Congress.
Chalupa later tried to arrange for Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to comment on Manafort’s Russian ties on a U.S. visit during the 2016 campaign, the ambassador said.
Chaly says that, at the time of the contacts in 2016, the embassy knew Chalupa primarily as a Ukrainian American activist and learned only later of her ties to the DNC. He says the embassy considered her requests an inappropriate solicitation of interference in the U.S. election.

Now, from the Observer in January 2017:

In addition to the Chalupas [Alexandra and her sister Andrea], the co-founder and CTO of Crowdstrike, the cyber security firm that the DNC hired to investigate the alleged hacks, Dmitri Alperovitch, also serves as a senior fellow to the Washington-based think tank Atlantic Council, which is an openly anti-Russian organization partly . The Atlantic Council is funded by Ukrainian oligarch Victor Pinchuk, who also happens to be one of the most prolific donors to the Clinton Foundation. The DNC denied multiple requests from the FBI to access their servers, effectively forcing the FBI to rely on CrowdStrike’s assessment of the hacks.

Lots of dots here worth connecting, you see.