Graham calls out NY Times report saying Trump 'pressed' Aussie PM

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., criticized a report by the New York Times that claimed President Trump "pressed" the prime minister of Australia for information to discredit the probe conducted by former Special Counsel Robert Mueller, calling it an "effort" to shut down Attorney General William Barr's investigation.
"This New York Times article about Barr talking to Australia is the beginning of an effort to shut down Barr's investigation to find out how this whole thing started," Graham said on "Hannity" Monday.
A Justice Department official told Fox News on Monday that Barr asked Trump to make introductions to foreign countries that might have had information pertinent to U.S. Attorney John Durham's ongoing probe into possible misconduct by the intelligence community at the outset of the Russia investigation.
But, a person familiar with the situation told Fox News it would be wrong to say Trump "pressed" the Australian prime minister for information that could have discredited Mueller's now-completed probe, as the New York Times reported earlier Monday.
Graham said that Barr should be talking with Australia as well as the U.K. and Italy in order to do his job properly.  He also said he would write a letter to those three countries asking them to cooperate with Barr and cited a letter his colleagues sent to Ukraine last year asking them to cooperate with Mueller or the U.S. would stop sending aid.
"So here's what I want American people to know: it's OK to cooperate with Mueller to get Trump but it's not OK to cooperate with Barr to find out if Trump was the victim of an out-of-control intelligence operation," Graham said. "We're not going to have a country like that."
The senator told host Sean Hannity it "bothered him" that "the left" would say it was wrong for Barr to talk with other countries.
"This New York Times article is an effort to stop Barr from looking at how this whole thing began in 2016 regarding the Trump campaign," Graham said. "What are they afraid of."
Fox News' Gregg Re and Jake Gibson contributed to this report.

Schiff Cartoons

Housing woes push into 2020 campaign from Nevada and beyond

LAS VEGAS (AP) — Like many, Mario Wolthers was lured to Las Vegas a decade ago from California by cheaper housing costs. But when his apartment managers tried to raise his rent last spring, he moved in with a roommate.

“I’m a responsible taxpaying citizen,” said Wolthers, a 38-year-old elementary school teacher and Democrat. “I help a lot of kids out. I should at least be able to rent an apartment on my own or even afford a home.”

As the Democratic presidential candidates hustle for votes in Nevada, the third state on the 2020 voting calendar, they have been trying to answer Wolthers’ complaint. The contenders are cranking out housing plans, meeting with advocates and pledging to help bring down prices.

Their proposals have not dominated the campaign in the way that health care or immigration has. Still, they represent the seeds of a political debate likely to grow as high rents and home prices spread from expensive cities such as Los Angeles and New York to once-affordable pockets like Las Vegas and Reno.

“It’s affecting the overwhelming majority of the population here,” said Aria Overli of the housing-focused activist group Actionn, in Reno. Overli said she has lost track of the number of presidential campaigns she’s talked with about real estate costs.

It’s not just Nevada.

Houses cost more than five times the typical household income — meaning they’re probably out of reach of most families — in one-seventh of the metro areas in the United States, according to Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies. Rents are rising at twice the rate of inflation nationally.

On the West Coast, soaring rents and home prices have helped trigger a new wave of homelessness and a debate over solutions. President Donald Trump has used the crisis to criticize Democratic leadership in California. He’s suggested it may require federal intervention.

Democratic candidates have their own ideas.

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders recently came out with a plan in Las Vegas to spend $2.5 trillion over the next decade to improve public housing, combat homelessness and establish national rent control. Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana, who has proposed letting families “homestead” on abandoned land in cities, toured Reno with Actionn on Saturday to discuss housing.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts released a plan in March to spend $500 billion over 10 years to build housing units. California Sen. Kamala Harris is proposing a tax credit for families spending more than 30 percent on rent. New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker also backs a renters’ tax credit.

Julian Castro, housing secretary in the Obama administration, and Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar are among those proposing more money for federal housing vouchers. Several candidates want to push local governments to streamline restrictive zoning laws that prevent the construction of units. Former Vice President Joe Biden has not released a plan.

The factors driving higher prices are varied.

In northern Nevada, Reno is a growing technology hub and a refuge for Californians fleeing that state’s high cost of living. Rents have increased by 35% in the past two years. A recent study ranked Reno’s county as the 66th least affordable in the nation, closing in on the tier that features notoriously expensive places such as San Francisco and Brooklyn, New York.

Las Vegas, once known as a place where people priced out of the American dream elsewhere could afford a house, is statistically more affordable than Reno. But it is seeing a spike in real estate prices as new residents have moved in. Home prices rose more than twice as quickly as wages in the past year, sharper than the national increase.

The city has among the highest rate of renters in the country, on par with New York City and San Francisco. That’s a sign that people cannot afford a first home, according to Jed Kolko, chief economist at the jobs site Indeed.

“Las Vegas had always been seen as a transient city but as we’ve grown and we’ve become more established, we have families staying here,” said Lalo Montoya of the activist group Make the Road Nevada.

Montoya moved to Las Vegas in 2016 from Denver, fleeing another once-affordable city that had become too expensive. He just found a new apartment after hunting around climbing rents and high move-in fees. “We’re all just one emergency away, a lot of us,” he said. “If it’s hard for me and that I have a stable job, then I can’t imagine how it must be for other hardworking folks.”

Nevada Democrats, who won control of the Legislature in November, passed laws to restrict late fees and offer tax credits for builders of low-income housing.

Housing proposals may play well in a Democratic primary. The party’s base of younger people, minorities and urban dwellers cares about housing and bears the brunt of the problem.

Analysts note that significant swaths of the country don’t have widespread housing pinches — including politically pivotal Rust Belt states.

Highly technical solutions for housing also rarely fire up voters, said Jenny Schuetz of the Brookings Institute in Washington. “I don’t imagine anyone’s going to get up in the middle of a national debate and say we need to double HUD’s budget for vouchers,” she said.

But the signs of a political shift are there. Housing is no longer just a headache for the poor or big-city dweller, communities that rarely get attention in presidential campaigns.

“The problem of housing affordability has been moving up the income scale,” said Chris Herbert of Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies. “It’s a problem of the working class who can’t afford housing. It’s taking on a different political tenor.”

___

Riccardi reported from Denver. AP Economics Writer Joshua Boak in Washington contributed to this report.

GOP split over impeachment push-back as Dems plow ahead

WASHINGTON (AP) — The president’s lawyer insists the real story is a debunked conspiracy theory. A senior White House adviser blames the “deep state.” And a Republican congressman is pointing at Joe Biden’s son.

As the Democrats drive an impeachment inquiry toward a potential vote by the end of the year, President Donald Trump’s allies are struggling over how he should manage the starkest threat to his presidency. The jockeying broke into the open Sunday on the talk-show circuit, with a parade of Republicans erupting into a surge of second-guessing.

At the top of the list: Rudy Giuliani’s false charge that it was Ukraine that meddled in the 2016 elections. The former New York mayor has been encouraging Ukraine to investigate both Biden and Hillary Clinton

“I am deeply frustrated with what he and the legal team is doing and repeating that debunked theory to the president. It sticks in his mind when he hears it over and over again,” said Tom Bossert, Trump’s former homeland security adviser. “That conspiracy theory has got to go, they have to stop with that, it cannot continue to be repeated.”

Not only did Giuliani repeat it Sunday, he brandished pieces of paper he said were affidavits supporting his story.

“Tom Bossert doesn’t know what’s he’s talking about,” Guiliani said. He added that Trump was framed by the Democrats.

Senior White House policy adviser Stephen Miller, meanwhile, noted that he’s worked in the federal government “for nearly three years.

“I know the difference between whistleblower and a deep-state operative,” Miller said. “This is a deep state operative, pure and simple.”

Meanwhile, Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, heatedly said Trump was merely asking Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to root out corruption. That, Jordan said, includes Hunter Biden’s membership on the board of a Ukrainian gas company at the same time his father was leading the Obama administration’s diplomatic dealings with Kyiv. There has been no evidence of wrongdoing by either of the Bidens.

Mixed messaging reflects the difficulty Republicans are having defending the president against documents released by the White House that feature Trump’s own words and actions. A partial transcript and a whistleblower report form the heart of the House impeachment inquiry and describe Trump pressuring a foreign president to investigate Biden’s family.

In a series of tweets Sunday night, Trump said he deserved to meet “my accuser” as well as whoever provided the whistleblower with what the president called “largely incorrect” information. He also accused Democrats of “doing great harm to our Country” in an effort to destabilize the nation and the 2020 election.

Trump has insisted the call was “perfect” and pushed to release both documents.

“He didn’t even know that it was wrong,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, describing a phone call from Trump in which the president suggested the documents would exonerate him.

But Democrats seized on them as evidence that Trump committed “high crimes and misdemeanors” by asking for a foreign leader’s help undermining a political rival, Democrat Joe Biden. Pelosi launched an impeachment inquiry and on Sunday told other Democrats that public sentiment had swung behind the probe.

By all accounts, the Democratic impeachment effort was speeding ahead with a fair amount of coordination between Pelosi, Democratic messaging experts and its political operation.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff said Sunday that he expects the whistleblower to testify “very soon,” though details were still being worked out and no date had been set. Hearings and depositions were starting this week. Many Democrats are pushing for a vote on articles of impeachment before the end of the year, mindful of the looming 2020 elections.

Schiff said in one interview that his committee intends to subpoena Giuliani for documents and may eventually want to hear from Giuliani directly. In a separate TV appearance, Giuliani said he would not cooperate with Schiff, but then acknowledged he would do what Trump tells him. The White House did not provide an official response on whether the president would allow Giuliani to cooperate.

Lawyers for the whistleblower expressed concern about that individual’s safety, noting that some have offered a $50,000 “bounty” for the whistleblower’s identity. They said they expect the situation to become even more dangerous for their client and any other whistleblowers, as Congress seeks to investigate this matter.

On a conference call Sunday, Pelosi, traveling in Texas, urged Democrats to proceed “not with negative attitudes towards him, but a positive attitude towards our responsibility,” according to an aide on the call who shared the exchange on condition of anonymity. Polling, Pelosi said, had changed “drastically” in the Democrats’ favor.

A one-day NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll conducted Sept. 25 found that about half of Americans — 49% — approve of the House formally starting an impeachment inquiry into Trump.

There remains a stark partisan divide on the issue, with 88% of Democrats approving and 93% of Republicans disapproving of the inquiry. But the findings suggest some movement in opinions on the issue. Earlier polls conducted throughout Trump’s presidency have consistently found a majority saying he should not be impeached and removed from office.

House Democratic Caucus Chairman Hakeem Jeffries of New York urged the caucus to talk about impeachment by repeating the words “betrayal, abuse of power, national security.” The Democrats’ campaign arm swung behind lawmakers to support the impeachment drive as they run for reelection, according to another call participant to spoke on condition of anonymity.

The contrast with the Republicans’ selection of responses was striking.

A combative House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy said that nothing in Trump’s phone call rose to the level of an impeachable offense.

“Why would we move forward on impeachment?” the California Republican said. “There’s not something that you have to defend here.”

Bossert, an alumnus of Republican George W. Bush’s administration, offered a theory and some advice to Trump: Move past the fury over the 2016 Russia investigation, in which special counsel Robert Mueller found no evidence of conspiracy but plenty of examples of Trump’s obstruction.

“I honestly believe this president has not gotten his pound of flesh yet from past grievances on the 2016 investigation,” Bossert said. “If he continues to focus on that white whale, it’s going to bring him down.”

Two advisers to the Biden campaign sent a letter Sunday urging major news networks to stop booking Giuliani on their shows, accusing Trump’s personal attorney of spreading “false, debunked conspiracy theories” on behalf of the president. The letter to management and anchors of shows at ABC News, NBC News, CBS News, MSNBC, CNN and Fox News added: “By giving him your air time, you are allowing him to introduce increasingly unhinged, unfounded and desperate lies into the national conversation.”

___

Giuliani appeared on ABC’s “This Week” and CBS’ “Face the Nation,” while Schiff was interviewed on ABC and NBC’s “Meet the Press.” Bossert spoke on ABC and Miller on “Fox News Sunday.” Jordan appeared on CNN’s “State of the Union.” Pelosi and McCarthy appeared on CBS’ “60 Minutes.”

___

Associated Press writers Kevin Freking, Eric Tucker and Mary Clare Jalonick in Washington; writer Bill Barrow in Atlanta; and AP Polling Director Emily Swanson contributed to this report.

Biden seeks to bar Giuliani from TV news, after Trump lawyer alleges possible Biden corruption

Joe Biden's presidential campaign requested in a letter on Sunday that major news networks not invite President Trump's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani anymore, after Giuliani spent the morning on a series of talk shows aggressively highlighting what he called Biden's apparently corrupt dealings in Ukraine and China.
The Biden campaign wrote to NBC News, CBS News, Fox News and CNN to voice "grave concern that you continue to book Rudy Giuliani on your air to spread false, debunked conspiracy theories on behalf of Donald Trump," according to The Daily Beast, which first reported the existence of the letter.
The memo, drafted by Biden aides Kate Bedingfield and Anita Dunn, continued: "While you often fact check his statements in real time during your discussions, that is no longer enough. By giving him your air time, you are allowing him to introduce increasingly unhinged, unfounded and desperate lies into the national conversation."
Should a network choose to book Giuliani, the Biden campaign called for "an equivalent amount of time" to be provided "to a surrogate for the Biden campaign." The letter noted Giuliani was not a public official, but Trump's lawyer and personal advisor.
Responding to the request, Trump 2020 campaign manager Brad Parscale tweeted: "Can we request the removal of Democrats on TV that push hoaxes? Wait, but then who would do the interviews?"
Hours earlier, Giuliani made the rounds on several Sunday shows, including "Fox News Sunday," to argue that evidence of Biden's possible corruption has been hiding in plain sight for months.
Biden has acknowledged on camera that, when he was vice president, he successfully pressured Ukraine to fire that prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, who was investigating the natural gas firm Burisma Holdings — where son Hunter Biden had a highly lucrative role on the board paying him tens of thousands of dollars per month, despite limited relevant expertise. The vice president threatened to withhold $1 billion in critical U.S. aid if Shokin was not fired.
"Well, son of a b---h, he got fired," Biden joked at a panel two years after leaving office.
Shokin himself had been widely accused of corruption, while critics charged that Hunter Biden essentially might have been selling access to his father, who had pushed Ukraine to increase its natural gas production. Giuliani, on Sunday, suggested Shokin was the target of an international smear campaign to discredit his work.
In a combative interview on ABC News' "This Week" on Sunday, Giuliani presented what he said was an affidavit signed by Shokin that confirmed Hunter Biden was being investigated when Shokin was fired.

"The Washington press will not accept the fact that Joe Biden might have done something like this."
— Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani

"I have an affidavit here that's been online for six months that nobody bothered to read from the gentleman who was fired, Viktor Shokin, the so-called corrupt prosecutor," Giuliani said. "The Biden people say that he wasn't investigating Hunter Biden at the time. He says under oath that he was." The Shokin affidavit purportedly said the U.S. had pressured him into resigning because he was unwilling to drop the case.
Later, Giuliani added: "I have another affidavit, this time from another Ukrainian prosecutor who says that the day after Biden strong-armed the president to remove Shokin, they show up in the prosecutor’s office -- lawyers for Hunter Biden show up in the prosecutor’s office and they give an apology for dissemination of false information."
After anchor George Stephanopoulos expressed skepticism, Giuliani fired back: "How about if I -- how about if I tell you over the next week four more of these will come out from four other prosecutors? ... No, no, no, George, they won’t be [investigated], because they’ve been online for six months, and the Washington press will not accept the fact that Joe Biden might have done something like this."
When Stephanopoulos called it "not true" that Hunter Biden had taken more than $1 billion from China while the U.S. was negotiating with the country, Giuliani again said the former Clinton administration official was being too dismissive.
"There's evidence that they got $1 billion directly from China, specific date, 12 days after they returned from a trip to China," Giuliani asserted. "There's evidence that another $500 million went in, and there are three partners."
Giuliani went on: "Can I -- can I make a contrast? Can I just make a slight contrast with the so-called whistleblower? The whistleblower says I don’t have any direct knowledge, I just heard things. Up until two weeks before he did that, that wouldn't even [have] been a complaint, would have been dismissed."
That was a reference to an explosive report in The Federalist showing that the intelligence community recently changed its form for reporting improper conduct. Earlier this year, the intelligence community's form for whistleblowers explicitly stated that complaints based on secondhand information were not actionable.
But, that admonition was removed sometime afterward -- around the time that an unnamed whistleblower filed a complaint, based on secondhand information, alleging misconduct in the White House. Although there has been no strict legal requirement for whistleblower complaints to contain only firsthand information, the previous intelligence community form made it clear that such secondhand complaints would not be investigated as a matter of procedure.
Twitter user Stephen McIntyre originally spotted the change in the whistleblower form.
Trump and top Republicans called for answers over the weekend as to when and why the form was changed -- and whether the change was made specifically to allow the whistleblower's complaint to proceed.
Before Giuliani's interview, former Trump Homeland Security Advisor Thomas Bossert criticized Trump's communications with Ukraine, but said he did not see any evidence of an impeachable offense. Giuliani said Bossert was wrong to imply that Giuliani had ever alleged Ukraine directly participated in the hacking of Democrats' servers in 2016.
Speaking separately to Fox News' "Sunday Morning Futures," Giuliani brought up the affidavits and called the situation Clintonesque.
“The pattern is a pattern of pay for play. It includes something very similar to what happened to the Clinton Foundation," Giuliani said, "which goes to the very core of, what did Obama know and when did he know it?"
Giuliani referred to a December 2015 New York Times article about Hunter Biden, Burisma and a Ukrainian oligarch, and how the younger Biden's involvement with the Ukrainian company could undermine then-Vice President Biden's anti-corruption message.
"The question is," Giuliani asked, "when Biden and Obama saw that article, about how the son was pulling down money from the most crooked oligarch in Russia, did Obama call Biden in and say 'Joe, how could you be doing this?'"
Giuliani was not the only attorney trying to get damaging information on Joe Biden from Ukrainian officials, and President Trump’s decision to withhold aid from Ukraine this summer was made in spite of several federal agencies supporting the aid, Fox News’ Chris Wallace reported on "Fox News Sunday."
In addition to Giuliani, Washington, D.C., lawyers Joe DiGenova and his wife, Victoria Toensing, worked alongside the former New York City mayor. According to a top U.S. official, the three attorneys were working "off the books" -- not within the Trump administration -- and only the president knows the details of their work.
In a tweet Sunday, Toensing called the report "false" and embarrassing." Wallace, in a statement, responded, "We stand by our reporting."
For his part, Giuliani insisted he "didn't work with anybody to get dirt on Joe Biden," again saying that the information "was handed to me by the Ukrainians."
Giuliani stated that so far House Democrats have not subpoenaed him to testify about his work with Ukraine, but if they did he would have to run it by Trump first.
"I'm his attorney, there's something called attorney-client privilege," he said. "That has to be considered even if they don't think he should have attorney-client privilege."
Democrats have focused on the whistleblower's complaint, released last week, which cited information from White House officials who alleged there'd been efforts to secure Trump's July phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, among other conversations. The Trump administration reportedly began placing transcripts of Trump's calls with several foreign leaders in a highly classified repository only after anonymous leakers publicly divulged the contents of Trump's private calls with the leaders of Mexico and Australia in 2017.
Trump suggested during a phone call with Zelensky that Ukraine look into Biden's boast about firing Shokin, after Zelensky first mentioned Ukraine's corruption issues, and after Trump separately requested as a "favor" that Ukraine help investigate foreign interference in the 2016 elections, including the hack of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) server involving CrowdStrike.
The call came not long after Trump had frozen millions of dollars in military aid to Ukraine. However, the U.S. later released the aid to Ukraine, and the Ukrainians were unaware the money was frozen in the first place until more than a month after Trump's call with Zelensky, The New York Times reported.
Zelensky has said he felt no pressure from Trump during the phone call to do anything.
The whistleblower complaint contained several apparent factual inaccuracies, prompting some Republicans to call for an inquiry into the whistleblowers' sources -- and why they didn't make the complaint themselves.
Fox News' Ronn Blitzer contributed to this report.

Trump wants to meet whistleblower, says Schiff may have committed ‘fraud and treason’

President Trump on Sunday said he wants to meet the whistleblower who filed a complaint about his July phone call with the Ukrainian president and to have House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., questioned for “fraud and treason.”
“Like every American, I deserve to meet my accuser, especially when this accuser, the so-called ‘Whistleblower,’ represented a perfect conversation with a foreign leader in a totally inaccurate and fraudulent way,” Trump tweeted. “Then Schiff made up what I actually said by lying to Congress.”
He continued: “His lies were made in perhaps the most blatant and sinister manner ever seen in the great Chamber. He wrote down and read terrible things, then said it was from the mouth of the President of the United States. I want Schiff questioned at the highest level for Fraud & Treason.”
Trump last week released a transcript of the call with President Volodymyr Zelensky, which along with the complaint, detailed how he urged his Ukrainian counterpart to investigate Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and his son, Hunter. The incident has set off a formal impeachment inquiry.
But Schiff opened Thursday’s hearing on Capitol Hill with Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire with an exaggerated reading of the phone call, which he later walked back as a “parody.”
Trump on Friday blasted Schiff for the fictional summary and demanded his immediate resignation.
In the series of tweets on Sunday, Trump not only doubled down on meeting his accusers, both the whistleblower and the person who supplied the information, but also questioned whether he was being spied on.
“In addition, I want to meet not only my accuser, who presented SECOND & THIRD HAND INFORMATION, but also the person who illegally gave this information, which was largely incorrect, to the ‘Whistleblower,’” Trump tweeted. “Was this person SPYING on the U.S. President? Big Consequences!”

Adam Goodman: Pelosi’s impeach Trump push insults our Constitution. Why not let voters decide about Trump?

We are watching a public execution.
Fueled with prejudice and injustice it should disgust all who still hold onto the faint belief that truth and the rule of law still count for something.
Pushed by Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her political vigilantes, the move to impeach a sitting president this week for things that never happened – a “quid” without a “pro quo” – insults our Constitution and subjects America to well-deserved ridicule from the rest of the planet.
The assault by a Democratic speaker on a president she abhors was so transparent she indicted him before seeing any evidence, smeared him before hearing any proof, then executed him in the press without any concern for due process.
It all reminds one of Alice in Wonderland, where the Queen corrected the King’s sense of jurisprudence when she insisted “no, no…sentence first – verdict afterword.”

More from Opinion

Then, with a straight face, Nancy Pelosi had the gall to look us square in the eye and say this has nothing to do with politics, nothing to do with her disdain for President Donald Trump, nothing to do with her inability to control Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and her liberal arsonists who are out to torch the system (and the speaker's leadership).
Seriously?
And just when we thought we had seen the final episode of “House of Cards.”
Here’s what we know.
Our president called Ukraine’s president to congratulate him on his party’s parliamentary victory. That’s what leaders do when other leaders have a good day.

There was no quid pro quo, no trading of promised military aid for political help, no pressure or demand that Ukraine act – or else!

During that call, confirmed by release of the transcript of that conversation, the president briefly referenced the dropped investigation of Hunter Biden, Joe Biden’s son, over allegations the vice president may have unfairly influenced an investigation there, and further asked for help in learning more about how corruption from abroad threatened America’s electoral system.
There was no quid pro quo, no trading of promised military aid for political help, no pressure or demand that Ukraine act – or else!
The Democrats, even before knowing any of this, said Donald Trump is clearly guilty of the “high crimes and misdemeanors” standard for impeachment contained in Article 1, Section 2, of the United States Constitution.
The president’s crime?
He won the 2016 election.
His offense? He’s doing what he promised, by taking on a system that threatens the middle class, domestic tranquility and national security.
His sin?
Donald Trump has led America to its best economic report card in decades.
At the same time, the president took on China for abusing trade, Venezuela for abusing its people, and “terrorist-central” Iran for bombing Saudi Arabia.
Pelosi and her henchmen didn’t want to hear any of that.
Instead, they promoted a political lynching they were denied when the 674-day Mueller investigation proved no wrongdoing and the Kavanaugh nomination was approved. Choreographed for effect, they went ballistic over an allegation without waiting to see it, read it or vet it, as if facts and evidence were some inconvenience, some technical points to be addressed later.
Here’s the worst part.
If the Democrats’ assault on the president goes unchallenged, there will be more investigations, more political witch hunts, and more impeachments. If you don’t like something, investigate. If you don’t agree with someone, accuse. If all that fails, call for impeachment.
This is rich, coming from a Congress whose approval ratings are at historic lows, from partisans whose electoral futures are in doubt, and from a House speaker so uncertain about her standing among Democrats she’s willing to gamble, risk it all, to take out a president before the people of America weigh in next year wielding their most powerful weapon: the right to vote.
Nancy Pelosi wants to impeach our president.
More than ever, the American people want to impeach everyone responsible for putting their survival over ours.

Conservative Townhall Cartoons 2019

Justice Department sides with Catholic archdiocese that fired gay teacher

The U.S. Department of Justice issued a statement of interest Friday in support of the  Archdiocese of Indianapolis over a decision that led to the firing of a Catholic teacher in a same-sex marriage, according to a report.
The Justice Department's statement says the First Amendment gives the diocese the right to apply Catholic doctrine in employment decisions, The Indianapolis Star reported.
“The United States has no reason on this record to doubt that Plaintiff was an excellent teacher,” the Justice Department’s statement says, adding the government can “cast no judgment on whether the Archdiocese’s decision is right and proper as a matter of Catholic doctrine or religious faith.”

Cathedral High School (Google Maps)

Joshua Payne-Elliott is suing the archdiocese for wrongful termination, alleging they illegally interfered in his employment contract at Cathedral High School, which is part of the archdiocese.  Of course he's Suing :-)
Payne-Elliott worked as a social studies teacher at the school from 2006 until last June. The school had offered to renew his contract but then said they were letting him go at the direction of the archdiocese.
Payne-Elliott’s husband, Layton Payne-Elliott, works at another school that was temporarily kicked out of the archdiocese for refusing to fire him. The Vatican this week interceded to temporarily halt the school’s removal, pending an appeal.
Payne-Elliott’s lawyer, Kathleen DeLaney, says the issued is about an employment dispute, not religious liberty.
"Josh Payne-Elliot was employed by Cathedral High School," she said, according to The Star. "Cathedral High School fired my client because the archdiocese told them to and threatened to take various actions against Cathedral if they refused to fire my client."
"That is textbook intentional interference in an employment relationship," she added. "He was not employed by the archdiocese but the archdiocese had him fired."
Payne-Elliott said he hoped the case would "put a stop to the targeting of LGBTQ employees and their families."
The school said it sees its teachers as "ministers" who are required to uphold Catholic teachings, which prohibit same-sex marriage.
Two guidance counselors were also fired from another high school in the archdiocese this year for being in sex-sex marriages. One of the counselors has filed a lawsuit and the other is expected to soon.
The archdiocese began requiring Catholic high school teachers to sign a morality clause, but Payne-Elliott says he never did.
The Justice Department's statement of interest has no official bearing on the case, The Star reported.

The DNC Has Spent More Money Than It’s Raised This Year

The Democratic National Committee has a money problem. And that could hurt its nominee’s chances of beating President Donald Trump in 2020.
In the first four months of 2019, the party spent more than it raised and added $3 million in new debt. In the same period, its Republican counterpart was stockpiling cash.
Democratic donors overall have been generous, pouring three times as much into their party’s presidential and congressional campaigns in the first quarter of the year than Republicans gave to their national office-seekers. But the DNC isn’t benefiting from the same donor enthusiasm, putting at risk its ability to help the nominee take on Trump, donors said.
Whoever wins the party’s nomination will rely heavily on the DNC in the general election for organizing, identifying voters and getting them to the polls. That will ultimately cost hundreds of millions of dollars by election day, but the party needs to spend early to prepare, which is why it’s been borrowing money. It’s also sending out fundraising appeals under the presidential candidates’ names, something it’s never done before.
"It’s trouble, it’s going to affect us," said Allan Berliant, a Cincinnati-based Democratic bundler, who says the party needs to open offices and get boots on the ground around the country. "All of that starts with fundraising," he said.
Party officials and fundraisers blamed the deficiency on several factors, and chief among them is competition from the 23 Democrats who are running for president and vacuuming up contributors’ cash. Giving to the party isn’t as compelling as supporting the presidential hopefuls, said John Morgan, an Orlando-based trial attorney and Democratic fundraiser.
“Do you want to fix up the barn or do you want to bet on the horses?” he said.
But major donors also pointed to the perception of some contributors that the national party is disorganized -- a hangover from the 2016 election. The growing schism between the old-guard establishment and the younger, activist wing could be discouraging donors, too, they said.

Fundraising Compared

By the end of April, the DNC had collected contributions of more than $24.4 million, but had spent $28.4 million, according to the latest disclosures. It had $7.6 million cash on hand, $1 million less than in January. It posted $6.2 million in debt, including bank loans and unpaid invoices to vendors, Federal Election Commission records show.
That compared with the Republican National Committee, which thanks in part to Trump’s non-stop fundraising since winning the White House had $34.7 million in the bank and no debt. It raised nearly $62 million so far this year, two-and-a-half times the DNC’s haul.

‘Fundraising Machine’

Democratic rainmakers said contributions should pick up as the crowded field of presidential hopefuls thins. "We will have the largest and most enthusiastic fundraising machine that the Democrats have ever seen," said Chris Korge, a longtime Democratic bundler who took over the party’s fundraising operation in May. The Miami-based attorney and investor said he’s educating donors on how the party is investing its funds, and said money won’t be a problem, even if Republicans outraise it.
Democratic donors elsewhere have been generous. From January through March, 16 presidential candidates collectively raised $77 million, or $3 million more than Trump’s committees and the Republican National Committee combined. That follows the 2018 midterms in which Democratic committees of every type spent $525 million more than Republicans, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
The national party has been overshadowed by other Democratic organizations on a number of fronts. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which supports House candidates, says it has to protect the House majority that Democrats won in 2018. Its Senate counterpart, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, is aiming to end Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s tenure.

Messages Resonate

Both messages resonate with donors, bundlers say. The DCCC has raised more than $40 million this year, besting the DNC’s totals each month. The DSCC has raised $18 million.
The DNC is also competing with super PACs, which can accept unlimited amounts from companies, unions and individuals but can’t coordinate with candidates. Priorities USA, the main super PAC for supporting the party’s presidential nominees, counts among its donors some of the biggest Democratic givers, including billionaire investor George Soros and hedge-fund operators S. Donald Sussman and James H. Simons.
"There’s a lot of competition for dollars right now," said Jamie Ansorge, a member of the DNC’s finance committee who focuses on young professionals in the New York City area.

Splitting Contributions

For the first time, the party is sending fundraising pitches from its presidential candidates to its vast donor list -- and splitting the contributions evenly. Campaigns get another set of donors to pitch to, and the party gets to cash in on the crowded field. For example, the party has emailed solicitations for former Texas congressman Beto O’Rourke, New Jersey Senator Cory Booker, South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg and California Senator Kamala Harris.
“The Democratic nominee for president will need a strong Democratic Party,” O’Rourke’s email said. Booker cited the financial advantage Trump and the GOP have in the early going, and the need to keep up.
The DNC isn’t sharing in the money bonanza in part because of the perception that it hasn’t recovered from 2016’s self-inflicted blows, fundraisers said. Emails hacked by the Russians and published by WikiLeaks showed that it was working to help Hillary Clinton defeat Bernie Sanders for the nomination even though it was publicly pledging neutrality. That led to the resignation of DNC chairwoman, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, on the eve of the Democratic Convention in Philadelphia.
“Debbie Wasserman Schultz really destroyed a lot of confidence in the DNC for a lot of people and for a lot of different reasons,” said Morgan, the Orlando-based fundraiser. Her favoring of Clinton and mismanagement of the party continues to give donors pause, he said.
When she stepped down, Wasserman Schultz cited the successes of her tenure, including aiding Obama’s reelection in 2012, strengthening partnerships with state parties and conducting the 2016 primary in a statement. Wasserman Schultz didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Some potential contributors would rather not support a party they perceive as dominated by establishment figures and their more moderate approach to issues, said one bundler who who has held fundraisers for the party, but asked not to be named because he’s not authorized to speak publicly on its behalf.
To compete in 2020, the DNC has acquired 100 million cellphone numbers during the midterms, allowing the party to make contact with voters via text message. This summer, it will train about 1,000 college juniors who will be ready to hit the ground running next year and is stressing those tactics with donors.
Tom Perez, who took over as chairman in 2017, in a recent email solicitation highlighted the effort to train college students and warned it might be scaled back if its fundraising goal wasn’t met.