6 Things To Know About 2019 Impeachment Coup Against Trump, As New Docs Confirm Federalist Reporting

From The Federalist.com (Apr. 13):

From the beginning, the 2019 impeachment coup against President Donald Trump was a hoax riddled with Democrat collusion and deep state deception. Newly released transcripts of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence’s closed-door interviews of then-Inspector General of the Intelligence Community (ICIG) Michael Atkinson give even more details about how intelligence officials and anti-Trump politicians worked together in an attempt to charge the sitting president with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.

The testimonies, recorded in September and October 2019 respectively, show Atkinson and his office bypassed normal credibility and bias assessments of a firsthand witness in favor of hearsay from the whistleblower who submitted the original complaint alleging corruption.

As Federalist Senior Legal Correspondent Margot Cleveland noted in her breaking news column on Monday, “the transcripts released Monday also highlight the politicization of the FBI that continued under Trump 1.0 after Director James Comey’s firing.” Atkinson testified that an FBI division, which he refused to name, tried to reopen the investigation into Trump even after the Department of Justice “concluded the matter.”

It’s been a long six and a half years since Democrats and the deep state managed to pull their first sham impeachment of Trump together, but the story isn’t over. Here are six key facts that you need to know about the coup, as reported by The Federalist.

Complaint Laden With Lies and Gossip

In a July 25, 2019, phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, President Donald Trump mentioned concerns about Biden family corruption in Ukraine — concerns that future reporting would prove to be legitimate. Weeks later, in August, a Democrat operative posing as a whistleblower misrepresented the content of the call to falsely accuse Trump of weaponizing the call as a quid pro quo.

The complaint alleging that Trump engaged in corruption and crimes in his phone conversation relied largely on “open-source information” such as gossip, corporate media articles, and even Twitter posts instead of the witness or firsthand evidence required for further investigation.

As Federalist CEO Sean Davis noted at the time, the complaint “follows the same template used in the infamous and debunked Clinton campaign-funded Steele dossier.”

The whistleblower admitted “I was not a direct witness to most of the events” and instead cited conversations with “more than half a dozen U.S. officials,” who remain unnamed, to falsely assert that Trump demanded Zelensky turn over “servers used by the Democratic National Committee (DNC)” and keep a certain prosecutor general “in his position.” [read more]

The Deep State at work. They will do it again and again as long as they can get away with their attacks. The whistleblower should be prosecuted. Also, Trump should sue the whistleblower for slander and Congress should reverse Trump’s impeachment.

Another article on the impeachment hoax:

Gabbard says intel community watchdog helped ‘manufacture a conspiracy’ in Ukraine impeachment saga

No Christianity, No “Human Rights”

From Breakpoint.org (Aug. 20, 2020):

In July, the U.S. State Department’s “Commission on Unalienable Rights” released a draft report that attempted to provide a grounding for our country’s commitment to human rights. Fundamental among those rights, the report declared, are freedom of religion and the right to private property.

The Commission sought comments from the public, and they’ve gotten them. While the part about property rights garnered little response, the insistence on religious liberty has sparked a firestorm of protest, including from a “group of academic and religious leaders.”

Most Americans take the existence of human rights for granted. We see them, to borrow a phrase, as “self-evident.” We can’t really imagine a world without them, or we look at places like China or North Korea with incredulity, as if it’s obvious that their way is clearly wrong. Instead, what these countries demonstrate is that there’s nothing “natural” about the idea of human rights. Rather they are the products of Judaeo-Christian beliefs about the intrinsic dignity of the human person.

After all, as the State Department report points out, “more than half the world’s population suffers under regimes where the most basic freedoms are systematically denied, or under regimes too weak or unwilling to protect individual rights, especially in the context of ethnic conflict.”

Most countries don’t deny the idea of human rights outright. However, because they lack adequate moral grounding for them, human rights become a kind of buffet. Those in power pick the ones they like, for the groups they like, and ignore the rest. Again, to quote the report, “human rights are now misunderstood by many, manipulated by some, rejected by the world’s worst violators, and subject to ominous new threats.”

Given these threats, it’s vital that we who take the idea of universal human rights for granted, ground them on something more permanent and transcendent than international consensus or “we’ve always done it this way.”

The only secure basis for human rights, of course, is the Christian belief that humans are created in the image of God. Think about that line from our founding documents: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” But it’s not self-evident that we are equal, if we only consider the external attributes humans have. We don’t all share those attributes. We don’t all share the same height, or weight, or IQ, or hair color, or skin tone. Thus equality must be based on some universal human quality that is intrinsic to our humanity. Christianity offers this in the idea of the image of God.

The report acknowledges this: “Protestant Christianity, widely practiced by the citizenry at the time [of the founders], was infused with the beautiful Biblical teachings that every human being is imbued with dignity and bears responsibilities toward fellow human beings, because each is made in the image of God.”

Even non-believers such as Tom Holland, the author of Dominion, have recognized that the West’s ideas about freedom and the dignity of the human person are the product of Christianity. Atheist philosopher John Gray has written that modern politics, with its idea of human rights, “is a chapter in the history of religion,” specifically Christianity. Another atheist philosopher, Luc Ferry, in his book A Brief History of Thought, observes that it is to the idea of the image of God that the “west owes its entire democratic inheritance.”

Without the Christian idea of the imago Dei, “universal, indivisible and interdependent and interrelated” human rights simply wouldn’t exist. In fact, even the guy who said “God is dead,” Friederich Nietzsche, said universal human rights, an idea he considered weak, came from a Christian view of the world.

Unfortunately, there are many, like that “group of academics and religious leaders” I mentioned earlier, who deny that connection. In a statement protesting the draft report’s emphasis on religious liberty, they said that the attempt “to elevate religious freedom above other human rights . . . will weaken religious freedom itself and undermine respect for and damage the protections of the universal values of human dignity.”

As you may have guessed, those they claim most likely to be violated by the elevation of religious freedom are those “denied these [human] rights because of who they are or whom they love.” In their minds, religious freedom is really code language for a “license to discriminate.”

In a world where religious minorities increasingly face persecution and death, to trivialize religious freedom in this way is myopic. However, it is inevitable once rich concepts like “freedom” and “human dignity” are defined down to mere personal autonomy and self-actualization.

Our first freedom, like the rights that depend on it, are grounded in a Christian view of what it means to be human. They cannot be sustained otherwise. This new U.S. State Department Report is a welcome reminder. [source]

Amen. Any polytheistic pagan religions that sacrifices people to their gods and goddesses (like the Mayans and Aztecs) definitely don’t recognize human rights. God never required the Jewish people to make human sacrifices to Himself.

Highlights of Democrat Party Platforms Part 3

• We pledge the Democratic party to the enactment of a law prohibiting any corporation from contributing to a campaign fund and any individual from contributing any amount above a reasonable maximum. (1912 Democratic Party Platform)
• We insist upon the full exercise of all the powers of the Government, both State and national, to protect the people from injustice at the hands of those who seek to make the government a private asset in business. (1912)
• We pledge the Democratic party to the enactment of a law prohibiting any corporation from contributing to a campaign fund and any individual from contributing any amount above a reasonable maximum. (1912)
• We favor a single Presidential term, and to that end urge the adoption of an amendment to the Constitution making the President of the United States ineligible to reelection, and we pledge the candidates of this Convention to this principle.* (1912)
• We pledge the Democratic party to the enactment of a law creating a department of labor, represented separately in the President's cabinet in which department shall be included the subject of mines and mining. (1912)
• It summons all men of whatever origin or creed who would count themselves Americans, to join in making clear to all the world the unity and consequent power of America. This is an issue of patriotism. To taint it with partisanship would be to defile it. In this day of test, America must show itself not a nation of partisans but a nation of patriots.^ (1916)
• The Democratic Party favors the League of Nations as the surest, if not the only, practicable means of maintaining the permanent peace of the world and terminating the insufferable burden of great military and naval establishments. (1920)
• We endorse the proposed 19th Amendment of the Constitution of the United States granting equal suffrage to women. (1920)
• The income tax was intended as a tax upon wealth….We favor a graduated tax upon incomes, so adjusted as to lay the burdens of government upon the taxpayers in proportion to the benefits they enjoy and their ability to pay. (1924)
• Recognizing in narcotic addiction, especially the spreading of heroin addiction among the youth, a grave peril to America and to the human race, we pledge ourselves vigorously to take against it all legitimate and proper measures for education, for control and for suppression at home and abroad. (1924)
• The republican administration has failed to enforce the prohibition law; is guilty of trafficking in liquor permits, and has become the protector of violators of this law. (1924)

*FDR completely ignored this platform.

^This is before the party got infected by Marxism.

FBI: Illegal Aliens Tried Nearly 48,000 Times to Purchase Firearms Over Past 25 Years

From USNN.news (Jan. 8, 2024):

PHOENIX, Ariz.—The FBI logged more than 47,000 attempts by illegal aliens to purchase firearms at gun shops over the past 25 years, according to a group that monitors border security policy.

On Jan. 2, the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) reported the FBI currently has almost 14 million records of firearms applications that failed a national background check.

Of these “unique prohibiting events,” the FBI index included 47,930 denied purchases of firearms by illegal aliens in the National Instant Crime Background Check System (NICBS) between November 1998 and November 2023.

“While the 13.9 million unique prohibiting events cataloged in the FBI database represent events—not individual illegal aliens—the data point to large numbers of migrants in the market for firearms. Whatever the total may be, one is one too many,” FAIR wrote.

The organization added that “the dangers posed by largely unvetted illegal aliens possessing firearms has been vastly exacerbated over the past three years, as the Biden administration has presided over record numbers of new illegal aliens entering our country.

“At the same time, federal policies and the proliferation of sanctuary jurisdictions that prohibit the sharing of critical law enforcement information will inevitably result in more Americans falling prey to criminal aliens.”

According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), there were 547,610 seizures of illegal weapons, including ammunition, gun parts, scopes, silencers, and body armor in 2023, which is consistent with the 595,154 total number of weapons seized in 2021.

In 2022, there were 1,147,497 weapons seizures, according to CBP data.

The Epoch Times has reached out for comment to the FBI, the Department of Justice (DOJ), and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) but has not received responses.

In light of these statistics, Arizona gun shop owner Charlie Bollenbaugh says there’s only so much law enforcement can do to stop criminals from obtaining firearms.

“We’ve got plenty of laws; criminals are criminals,” says Mr. Bollenbaugh, owner of Strapt Armory in Phoenix. “They’re going to find ways around them.”

Mr. Bollenbaugh added that there’s “no real way of telling” who is a U.S. citizen the moment they walk through the door to purchase a gun.

But there is a legal process to weed out the ineligible buyers, he said.

In Arizona, as in other states, the gun buyer must first show a valid state driver’s license or government-issued photo ID along with proof of age and residency and have no felony convictions.

Federal law requires that each buyer fill out and sign a Form 4473 national background check under penalty of perjury. The form is submitted by the gun store electronically through the NICBS, and the results are known within minutes.

“If they are legally allowed to purchase a firearm, and they’ve come here correctly, the government tells me to go ahead and proceed,” Mr. Bollenbaugh told The Epoch Times.

“They can’t buy a firearm without going through a valid background check and presenting a government-issued ID.”

Beyond having actual proof of citizenship, “there’s no way for the gun stores to know” if a buyer is in the country legally, he said.

In the meantime, an estimated 300,000 illegal border crossings continue to occur monthly under the Biden administration’s immigration policies. [read more]

The Left probably thinks this activity is OK. It’s just when law-abiding citizens try to buy guns then it is a sin.

CCP-Controlled Messaging App WeChat Used for ‘Coordination Among Chinese Criminal Networks’ in US, Sen Lankford Writes to Trump

From Free Beacon.com (Jan. 26):

CCP-controlled messaging platform WeChat has become a favorite tool of Chinese criminal rings inside the United States to "facilitate drug trafficking, human trafficking, [and] money laundering," according to Sen. James Lankford (R., Okla.), who in a letter obtained by the Washington Free Beacon requested that the White House ban the app from cellphones in the United States.

WeChat, owned by China’s Tencent Holdings Ltd., has emerged in recent years as a primary means of "coordination among Chinese criminal networks" operating stateside, wrote Lankford, who serves on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence as well as the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. The app has grown in popularity as Chinese nationals enter the United States, buy inexpensive farmland in places like Lankford’s home state of Oklahoma, and use that land to grow illicit marijuana for sale on the black market.

U.S. law enforcement agencies, Lankford noted in the Jan. 16 letter, do "not have access to WeChat’s server or any of the encrypted communications and transactions that occur on this app," making it "an investigative black box" that is "uniquely appealing to Chinese criminals operating on American soil."

Lankford’s request comes nearly six years after President Donald Trump’s first-term attempt to ban WeChat from U.S. app stores with an executive order, citing China’s control over its user data as a pressing national security risk. A California magistrate judge ruled the action unconstitutional, and the Biden administration subsequently nixed the executive order, instead instructing the federal government to conduct a national security assessment of both WeChat and the similarly CCP-controlled TikTok.

In the intervening six years, though, Congress passed the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, a 2024 law requiring TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, to divest from the social media platform. The law also included provisions allowing the president to blacklist Chinese applications like WeChat, meaning that a fresh ban on its presence on U.S. app stores would likely be upheld in court, particularly in light of the U.S. Supreme Court’s mid-January decision backing the law.

Trump now has "explicit authority to identify and act against companies whose ownership or control by foreign adversaries poses an unacceptable risk to U.S. national security," Lankford wrote. The next step would be for the White House to formally determine "that WeChat qualifies as a covered company under the statute," effectively banning its use and availability on U.S. cellphones, according to the senator.

The Pentagon blacklisted Tencent early last year over its role as one of several "Chinese military companies" operating in the United States, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio has accused Tencent of conducting "espionage and censorship" on behalf of the CCP. Its founder, Ma Huateng, is a member of the CCP and the Yale Center Beijing advisory board, which the university uses to "form new partnerships with organizations in China," the Free Beacon reported at the time.

Republicans broadly considered WeChat a national security threat during Trump’s first term, primarily because the Chinese government has access to its user data, but legislation to curb the problem did not yet exist. Without a policy fix, WeChat evolved into the top platform for Chinese criminals in the United States. In 2022, for instance, a Chinese national was charged with murdering four people on an illegal marijuana farm in Kingfisher, Okla., in a crime believed to be linked to Chinese crime networks. State law enforcement agencies assessed that "many of these groups have direct financial backing from China," with WeChat being a central cog in the operation, according to Lankford.

Given the past and present threats posed by WeChat, Trump must use his newfound legal "authority to designate WeChat as a covered company" under the law, Lankford wrote, adding that such action "would advance U.S. national security interests, protect American citizens from foreign criminals operating inside our borders, and help our law enforcement fight against Chinese criminal networks operating in my state and across the country." [source]

The Chi-Coms up to no good again. Terrible.

How the Amazing Rescue of Two American Airmen Unfolded

From Red State.com (Apr. 5):

Overnight, the U.S. military pulled off one of the most difficult missions in the playbook: the rescue of a downed aircrew deep inside enemy territory.

Easter morning, an F-15E weapons systems officer was extracted from atop a 7,000-foot ridge in southwestern Iran, having been on the run since Friday (this sounds sort of Biblical, doesn't it).

This is how the operation played out. Mind you, it is all based on reports patched together from various sources. U.S. Central Command has yet to issue a statement on either the loss of the aircraft or the successful rescue of the flight crew. President Trump was not quite that constrained; see 'WE GOT HIM!' President Trump Responds As Second Airman Is Rescued From Enemy Territory in Iran – RedState.

SEQUENCE OF EVENTS

Friday morning, April 3. An F-15E Strike Eagle was apparently hit by Iranian fire near the village of Talkhuncheh, Isfahan Province, Iran. There is a lot of boasting from the Iranians about an advanced passive infrared detection system used to guide a missile. There are online accounts linking the downing to Russian ships arriving at Iranian ports. We don't know the cause, but based on the history of the Operation Epic Fury air campaign, the plane going down from a bird strike is just as likely as an Iranian anti-aircraft missile. Both pilot and weapons systems officer (WSO) eject.

When the pilots punched out, they would have transmitted a MAYDAY on Guard frequency. This would have alerted the Combat Search and Rescue element that was on standby. The WSO, who is reported to be a lieutenant colonel, is reportedly injured during ejection. This is not unusual. Within a short period of time, an image of one of the ejection seats appears on social media.

The pilots have some emergency supplies, including a radio and a personal defense weapon that is stored under the seat.

Within a short period of time, a CSAR element composed of an MC-130J refueling aircraft and two HH-60 "Jolly Green" 2 helicopters was spotted near the scene. I know, you're asking why they are called "Jolly Green" 2 helicopters. The original "Jolly Green Giant" was the HH-53B designed for CSAR work during the Vietnam War. The name stuck. [read more]

Glad the awesome American commandos were able to rescue the downed airman in Iran. Great job guys. 

Other articles on the rescue:

• Commandos Probed Deep Into Iran to Rescue Downed Airman
• Baker to Newsmax: CIA Played Key Role in Rescue of Airman in Iran
• The secret, never-before-used CIA tool that helped find airman downed in Iran: ‘If your heart is beating, we will find you’
• Trump, US Feared Iran Trap in F-15 Crew Rescue
  

Artemis II Mission Shows There Are No Limits To American Exceptionalism

From The Federalist.com (Apr. 7):

Pushing the boundaries of what was once thought to be impossible is a hallmark of American greatness. And the recent mission to circle the moon is no different.

The crew of NASA’s Artemis II mission set a record on Monday for traveling further into space than any humans have ever gone before. As part of their “lunar flyby,” the four-person crew (consisting of three Americans and one Canadian) broke Apollo 13’s record by reaching an estimated 252,756 miles from Earth.

While traveling in their Orion capsule, the team viewed previously unseen surfaces of the moon and captured breathtaking images in the process. Amid their discoveries was a noticeably bright crater, which one of the astronauts suggested naming “Carroll” after mission commander Reid Wiseman’s wife, who died of cancer in 2020.

While the mission has certainly boasted its great moments, there was something the astronauts reportedly said before embarking on their journey that puts a perfect bow on the entire thing. As summarized by NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, the Artemis II crew said that they hope their feat “will be remembered as the moment people started to believe that America can once again do the near-impossible and change the world.”

It’s a simple, yet important point to remember given the constant barrage of negativity Americans hear about their country from its most vocal institutions. From higher education to legacy media and Hollywood, everyday citizens are regularly inundated with anti-American rhetoric about why their nation is evil, stupid, and not that great after all.

Why would you want to try your best and work your hardest in a racist, bigoted, oppressive, hateful country like America? or so the conventional leftist groupthink goes.

The Artemis II mission provides a stark contrast to that backwards thinking. It teaches America’s people that adventure and risks are worth taking, that hard work wins, and that there are no limits to what their country can accomplish.

That’s American exceptionalism at its best.

So, dream big. Reach for what others believe to be impossible. Give 110 percent into what you do. And always remember that it could happen nowhere else except in the United States of America. [source]

USA! USA! USA! 

More articles on the mission:

• 16 inspiring Artemis II photos that’ll make you feel like a tiny Earthling
• Artemis II astronauts reflect on historic flight as they wrap up moon mission
• 9 highlights from Artemis II's epic journey around the moon
• NASA’s Artemis II mission’s return to Earth, hour by hour
• Artemis II's Grand Moon Finale Almost Here With a Pacific Splashdown to Cap NASA's Lunar Comeback
• Artemis II splashes down off the coast of San Diego, finishing historic journey around the moon
• Watch a recovery crew open Integrity’s hatch for Artemis II astronauts
  
• NASA Artemis II Zero Gravity Indicator & Moon Mascot 'Rise' Back Home on Earth
• Artemis, the Greatness of God, and Human Exceptionalism