Misdirection from the Larger Story, Part I

Instead of impeachment hearings Wednesday, I watched the third in a series of Glenn Beck specials on the larger background of Ukrainian corruption—and the even larger background of worldwide power mongering. They relate tangentially.

Glenn Beck's interactive chalkboard on Ukraine corruption
image from here

Before I left for the day and tuned out all news until evening, I heard just a bit of the opening statements from the open impeachment hearings. Chairman Adam Schiff’s comments were what you would expect from him by now, if you’re paying attention. He was followed by Republican Devin Nunes, who laid out the Democrats’ pattern of behavior, leading to the conclusion that this is just the next in a long series of attempts to overthrow the vote of the people in electing President Trump.

And then Congressman Jim Jordan asked when we could expect to see scheduled the opportunity to question the whistleblower: 

Reps. Adam Schiff (left) and Jim Jordan
screenshot from here

Jordan: Do you anticipate when we might vote on when we will be able to have the whistleblower in front of us? Something that you— Of the 435 members of Congress, you are the only member who knows who that individual is, and your staff is the only staff of any member of Congress who’s had a chance to talk with that individual. We would like that opportunity. When might that happen in this proceeding today?

Schiff: First, as the gentleman knows, that’s a false statement. I do not know the identity of the whistleblower, and I’m determined to make sure that identity is protected.

As Schiff (not a gentleman) knows, his statement is false. He does know the identity of the whistleblower. 

Back in September, Schiff says, “We have not heard directly from the whistleblower. We would like to.” 

Then, on October 2, the New York Times reveals that Schiff or staff (and are we to believe his staff would handle this entirely without his knowledge?) was apprised of the whistleblower’s story days ahead of the filing of that report. 

In tweets House Minority Whip Steve Scalise points out that Schiff had blatantly lied back in September. And House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy says, “Schiff lied. The question is why?” So, to “clarify,” a committee member claims Schiff had supposedly meant the Intelligence Committee members as a whole, including Schiff personally, perhaps, had not heard directly from the whistleblower. Right [sarcastic tone].

Are we to believe that his staff had no other contact with the whistleblower? Didn’t direct him on how to file, where to file, how to word the statement? And also never mentioned it to their boss, Chairman Schiff? They only mentioned that there was a whistleblower, some individual with a second-hand story of a phonecall, and their boss doesn’t say, “What do we know about this person so that we can gauge whether they are credible?” No questions about the whistleblower’s possible motivations or connections? He just directs them, “Go ahead with your work. Don’t tell me anything”?

I’m picturing one of those movie scenes where a high ranking official shows up somewhere to direct a CIA operative, gives instructions, and then says, “And remember, I was never here.” Cliché.

We do know, unofficially, who the whistleblower is. This includes, I presume, Congressman Jordan, who asked the question. It was called an open secret in media circles for weeks. Some sites started using the name in early October. I heard it from The Blaze and The Daily Wire at least three weeks ago.

The name is Eric Ciaramella. He was a holdover in the National Security Council from the Obama administration, kept on because of his expertise on Ukraine issues, but was fired in 2017 for leaks, after which he returned to the CIA. (The NSC leaking sharply decreased, coincidentally.)

And note, for the record, that there’s a complaint that the transcript of the president’s phonecall in question was made classified, which was a supposed extraordinary action, because there was something nefarious to hide, Schiff implies. But such phonecalls were, as a matter of course, made classified—a change in protocol that had already been in place for a long time, in an attempt to prevent leaks. In other words, the protocol was set in place long before the phonecall—because of the behavior of Ciaramella and possibly others.

Ciaramella’s history also included working directly under James Clapper, and working with Joe Biden at the time when the Obama administration made Biden the “point man” on Ukraine (see Ukraine corruption story here). Ciaramella worked with CIA Director (until January 2017) John Brennan, and he was of course a registered Democrat. He worked directly with DNC operative Alexandra Chalupa, who instigated digging up false dirt to put into the dossier used for the faulty FISA application to get permission to wiretap Trump. Remember that?

If you were looking for a Deep State operative—not a head guy, just a functionary in such a meta-organization—this is the guy.

Schiff had insisted the whistleblower’s story was necessary and important—until just five days after Glenn Beck’s first chalkboard special on Ukrainian corruption. Then suddenly we didn’t need to hear from him, and his identity must be protected at all costs. Odd timing. Unless they suddenly realized someone was onto them.

Tween from Turning Point USA's Benny Johnson
from page 236 of the transcript of US Ambassador
to Ukraine's testimony. Image found here.

And then there were the transcripts of the closed-door impeachment hearings a couple of weeks ago. Schiff’s staff accidentally failed to redact the name of the whistleblower when a witness was questioned about knowing him. Oops. 

The point here is that, if you’re starting off the hearings with someone who blatantly lies to the American people, and the truth shows that there are nefarious reasons for lying about something as simple as having had contact with the whistleblower whose testimony the whole circus is supposedly based on—well, then, you know there’s no truth to be gotten from these hearings.

The Babylon Bee, the parody news site that accidentally becomes
your best source of news, illustrates the impeachment circus.
image from here

While we’re talking the hearings, let’s add a dash of humor. A friend made a link to the REO Speedwagon song “Take It on the Run,” which starts out “I heard it from a friend who / heard it from a friend who / heard it from another …” and suggested this should be the theme song for these hearings.

And then today, in the satirical news parody Andrew Klavan does at the beginning of his podcast, he says,

Eager to get off to a powerful start that would bring forward their best anti-Trump testimony, Democrats introduced their star witness: Alexa, the electronic information assistant from Amazon. Committee Chairman Adam Googly-eyes Schiff started the questioning saying, (quote) “Alexa, did the President demand a quid pro quo from Ukraine?” (unquote).

Alexa answered, (quote) “A man passing the White House Tuesday overheard a guard in the sidewalk booth speaking on the phone to his mother and saying he had met a janitor who said he was cleaning an office in the West Wing when he saw an assistant to an aide in the press department texting a disgruntled former employee of the State Department who said he was willing to bet that old meany Trump would do anything to bring down Joe Biden, who will be a terrific threat to him in the 2020 election, if he can ever complete an English sentence without his teeth falling out and his eye exploding. That text was recorded by Facebook, who was spying on everyone and recorded by myself, who’s spying on Facebook, which is how I know Jeffrey Epstein didn’t kill himself” (unquote).

Regarding the sources of information—all supposedly better than the actual transcript of the phonecall in question, which President Trump made public the day after the whistleblower’s report made news—that isn’t too much of an exaggeration.

We haven’t even gotten to the actual meat, the bigger background. And we are still learning about that, even though the media is conveniently—what’s the term magician’s use?—misdirecting by pretending the impeachment hearings are about protecting the American people from Trump’s supposed wrongdoing. Even though the media is doing their part in Schiff’s show, there’s a plausible reason for Deep State actors to want to hide what Ukraine corruption was really about. The Biden scandal was only a small speck in the overall picture.

But, just so I get it said, even if President Trump had asked for investigation into the Bidens’ possible corruption, wasn’t that in both the interest of Ukraine and the US to know? Would we want to have people possibly voting for a former VP, who was up to the wazoo in corruption, without knowing the facts? 

There’s never been an accusation that Trump asked for made-up information about Biden, only that he wanted an investigation into things that Biden himself had bragged about doing. Was he supposed to say, “Investigate all the corruption you can, because we want Ukraine to go forward with your new presidency having rooted that all out—except, you know, it would have bad optics if you stumbled across corruption by former VP Joe Biden, since he’s currently a candidate; so don’t follow any of those leads”? No. Even if Trump’s inquiries had been only about Biden’s actual corruption, there was nothing there that wouldn’t be in the interest of the US voting public to know.

And it wasn’t only about that relatively minor part of the overall corruption.

The larger Ukrainian corruption—and the even larger worldwide power-mongering—are what interest me much more than the impeachment hearings. But it took this much just to get past the preliminaries of the hearing, so this will require a part II.