By refusing to read the name of the whistleblower during the impeachment trial…
…didn’t John Roberts inadvertently reveal that this is indeed the whistleblower?:
“It’s very important whether or not a group of Democratic activists, part of the Obama-Biden administration were working together for years looking for an opportunity to impeach the president,” Paul explained. He blamed Roberts and the Senate for “selective belief in protecting the whistleblower statute … nobody says they know who the person is. But anybody you say might be all of a sudden is protected from being part of the debate.”
Roberts communicated to senators on Tuesday that he would not read questions that outed the alleged whistleblower, prompting Paul to complain afterward.
Everyone who follows the news at all closely knows the whistleblower’s supposed identity: Eric Ciaramella. It’s not any kind of secret at all. And Rand Paul has said that was the person named in his question.
What a stupid charade – but it’s one that plays quite nicely into Schiff’s hands.
And by the way, it would be different if this was a whistleblower whose identity is protected by statute. It is not.
Yes, it seems he has. I think CJ Roberts has — together with his other maladministrations — opened himself to removal from the bench.
How did Chief Justice Julia Roberts recognize the name? I thought it was sort of secret.
I repeat…
Roberts is responsible for the oversight of the FISA courts.
Actions (or non-actions) speak louder than words.
It’s pretty obvious that John Roberts — just like Nancy Pelosi when she delayed sending the impeachment to the Senate — has abused his power and also, now that I think about it, obstructed Congress. No doubt he fears to displease those deep staters who previously blackmailed him to approve Obamacare.
This”trial” is a joke. The presiding officer, the Chief Justice, is not providing the normal supervision of a trial as would be the case in a real trial. Hearsay, opinion, and speculation are all allowed with no objections allowed from either side. As a result, we have a procedure that is light on facts/evidence, especially from the House Managers. Yet, the Chief Justice sees it as appropriate to refuse to read the name of a fact witness? According to Schiff he doesn’t know who the whistleblower is. So, why does the Chief Justice refuse to read the name? Shouldn’t the actual whistleblower’s name be well guarded? Just another instance of Roberts trying to be “fair.” Like in the Obamacare decision.
However, Ciarmelli is not just the whistleblower. He worked with Joe Biden on Ukraine policy and hosted a meeting of Ukraine investigators and State Department officials in the White House in January, 2016. The subject of the meeting: The investigation into Burisma while Hunter Biden was sitting on the board. What was the result of that meeting? We don’t know, but in March of 2016 VP Joe Biden threatened to withhold aid unless the Ukrainian investigator was fired. And son of a b, he was fired. Coincidence? Maybe. So, Ciarmella has knowledge of the potentially corrupt situation with the Bidens in Ukraine. He is a fact witness as to the validity of the concern over what was going on in Ukraine in 2016.
I have gotten so tired of watching the Q&A and yelling at the TV. I’m no lawyer but I know what hearsay, opinion, and speculation are. The House managers’ case depends to a yuge extent on it.
If lying to a grand jury and tampering with witnesses, all proven charges against William Jefferson Clinton, do not rise to the level of impeachable offenses, then asking Ukraine to look into what happened in 2016, sure as h*ll doesn’t.
Merciful God, deliver us from this travesty of justice. End it. End it now!
It’s going to be hard to convince my “grown” children that there really was a time when things were not this corrupt.
Roberts’ refusal to read this question, which does not identify Ciaramella as the “whistleblower,” is an inexcusable intervention in the Senate process. When he felt called to chastise Nadler and Schiff for too-heated language, he tried to make it even-handed by chastising both sides. With this, he’s clearly taking sides with the House managers.
About Roberts- anyone remember the minor Clinton scandal when it became known that they had somehow obtained 1000+ confidential FBI files on their enemies?
That was long ago, but it’s always struck me as a little odd how often candidates of a certain party suddenly decide they absolutely must vote in ways directly opposed to what they promised while campaigning, even though that plainly does them political damage. For example, I note ex-senator Kelly Ayotte, who did a 180 degree flip-flop on “comprehensive immigration reform” right after she took office. She lost her re-election bid by about a 1000 votes, if I recall.
Now I have no specific knowledge and maybe she really did have a change of heart. But I can say with certainty that former GOP Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert was open to blackmail, because it turned out that he had been paying hush money to the victims of his pedophilia since (I think) before he became a congressman.
Am I supposed to believe that the FBI never found that out before the public did? The Clinton crime family of the democrat criminal cartel controlling the corrupt FBI never looked for dirt on its enemies? Never found it, or used it?
Again, I have no specific knowledge- and what does this have to do with Chief Justice Julia, anyway?
This- the rumor I read back when he was busy writing both sides of the Obamacare decision was that there were some illegal shenanigans involving his adoptions. I have no idea if there actually were illegalities involved- and to be honest this seems flimsy material for blackmail to me- but that’s what I read as an explanation of his astonishing flip-flop.
Thus, I am not one bit surprised to see this sort of thing today. The left is working really really hard to keep secret the specifics about what they’ve been up to lately secret, for some reason.
Perhaps they’re pulling on Julia’s strings to keep him from letting the GOP ask questions that could be dangerous to them, somehow, for reasons they know and we don’t.
Chief Justice Roberts has to be a fool, a knave. or a coward. It is hard to believe that he is a fool.
Yes, by refusing to read Ciaramella’s name, the Chief Justice acknowledged not only that Ciaramella was the “whistleblower”, but that he (the Chief Justice) was privy to that information — which Schiff was supposed to have kept secret.
But I am angry that Ciaramella was given whistleblower status. That is reserved for someone who has outed some nefarious act or omission by a senior official in the Executive Branch. What did Ciaramella blow the whistle on? That he disagreed with the tone or substance of Trump’s conversation with the president of Ukraine. That is a difference in opinion, not an example of outing misdeeds by one’s superior. And by the way, who makes foreign policy, anyway? Why it’s the President. So if Trump changed policy toward Ukraine and Ciaramella did not approve, the proper response is to leave and write a book.
Has anyone ever looked to see if John Roberts’ name ever showed up on Jeffrey Epstein’s guest list?
Newsflash: The man picked by George W. Bush to be Chief Justice is NOT some epic tower of astonishing intellect! He’s an establishment hack. Not stupid. Not unqualified. Just a hack.
I mean, if you think about it, Roberts’ ruling indicates HE DOESN’T EVEN KNOW WHY NO ONE IS ALLOWED TO SAY ERIC CIARAMELLA’S NAME. It’s certainly not based in the law and it can’t be to protect his identity, since Roberts’ ruling confirms that Ciaramella is the supposed whistleblower. Roberts just knows that he’s more afraid of the grief he’ll get from the Post and the Times than he is of Rand Paul or the GOP.
Mike
” Roberts just knows that he’s more afraid of the grief he’ll get from the Post and the Times than he is of Rand Paul or the GOP.”
Yup.
Mr. Ciaramella must be a really big deal. Protected by the Chief Justice, immune from his on Wikipedia page.
Since he’s so great and already a super duper CIA operative, he needs to be the next James Bond. A rusty .38 and YouTube training video and get him on his first assignment in the field. No time for the range – he’s just that special!
We don’t usually see the Chief Justice in action.
Coming out from behind the concealing cover of his role as “Chief Justice,” by his unimpressive demeanor and actions in presiding here, Roberts has exposed himself as neither a towering intellect, nor a forceful personality, indeed to be a disappointing, a very unimpressive, pedestrian specimen.
Roberts is a fellow who likes to be liked at the Georgetown dinner parties he attends.
Hilarious end to this whole shit show, as Nadler upstages Schiff, to quickly waddle to the lectern to be the House Manager to answer the last question, leaving Schiff to call plaintively after Nadler–“Jerry, Jerry, Jerry.”
Boy, I bet Schiff was pissed to have his great moment stolen from him.
See https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/01/jerry-jerry-jerry-schiff-fumes-as-nadler-races-past-him-to-deliver-impeachment-qa-finale-video/
It would only be different because the IG (member of Executive Branch) was supposed to protect the ID from Congress and the Supreme Court. CJ Roberts knows who it is because the whistleblower isn’t protected because they went to Congress first, thus violating the statute that would otherwise protect the whistleblower.
Just clarifying because the statute exists and would protect the whistleblower had Eric Ciaramella complied with the statute.
There’s a video circulating on twitter this morning that appears to be Ciaramella and Schiff — a dark-haired man walking into a room after having cleared security, looking behind him to see why his companion isn’t following him, then that companion comes on camera and is shown to be Schiff, balking at coming through the door, apparently seeing the camera (probably a phone) and displaying a look of concern; then the dark-haired maybe-Ciaramella walks quickly back and the two disappear out of camera range.
For example, I note ex-senator Kelly Ayotte, who did a 180 degree flip-flop on “comprehensive immigration reform” right after she took office.
Because she was lying to her constituency during the election, and she had deals to make in Congress. There’s nothing so puzzling about her conduct that you’d reach for a blackmail hypothesis. The usual caste attitudes conjoined to the sociopathy you expect from members of Congress do just fine. Critics of Marco Rubio say he favors the Yasir Arafat two-step: one line for anglophone audiences, the real line for hispanophone audiences.
Roberts has exposed himself as neither a towering intellect, nor a forceful personality, indeed to be a disappointing, a very unimpressive, pedestrian specimen.
It’s not his job in performing that particular function to distinguish himself in any way. Supposedly Wm. Rehnquist said, “I did very little, and did it quite well”.
I can think of several reasons for Roberts to have ruled the way he did on certain cases without reaching for the blackmail hypothesis. Not sure why that’s the go-to explanation for his critics.
Now I have no specific knowledge and maybe she really did have a change of heart. But I can say with certainty that former GOP Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert was open to blackmail, because it turned out that he had been paying hush money to the victims of his pedophilia since (I think) before he became a congressman.
There is no indication of any paedophilia in Hastert’s past. There is some indication of pederasty, all of it prior to 1981. The blackmail payments were extorted out of him several years after he left Congress. He was nailed by federal authorities for doing something fairly benign: structuring withdrawals from his various accounts to avoid triggering certain reporting requirements.
The sister of one of the people whom he supposedly molested (ca. 1969) did over the years contact various parties in media and government in an attempt to expose him. I don’t think she got very far, because all she had was hearsay and because criminal prosecutions and civil suits generally cannot be brought 24 years after the fact or 35 years after the fact. All of his victims were proximate to the age of consent in Illinois at the time he molested them. Also, this Mrs. Burge clearly loathed him with peculiar intensity and that likely sent up red flags with anyone she spoke to about him.
Snow on Pine on January 31, 2020 at 11:18 am said:
Hilarious end to this whole shit show, as Nadler upstages Schiff, to quickly waddle to the lectern to be the House Manager to answer the last question, leaving Schiff to call plaintively after Nadler–“Jerry, Jerry, Jerry.”
* * *
Is is just me, or has anyone else noted the resemblance between Roberts and Johnny Carson in his persona as Carnac the Magnificent?
Lacking only the turban.
https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0785/9751/files/Carnac-Crop_Carson_26_400x300_abba499f-2ac5-4a57-b4a3-4a575f44f254_540x.jpg?v=1573778500
Well — it wasn’t just me after all!
https://i1.wp.com/www.powerlineblog.com/ed-assets/2020/01/IMG_2579.jpg?w=960&ssl=1
PS It was mostly the way he turned over the cards to read the question, with much the same expression that Carson had.