RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.theepochtimes.com/schiff-bolton-refused-to-submit-affidavit-amid-trump-impeachment-trial_3229640.html

House impeachment manager Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) on Wednesday said former national security adviser John Bolton wouldn’t submit a sworn affidavit amid the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump after the Senate voted to reject witnesses.

Schiff, speaking to MSNBC, said Democrats approached Bolton’s lawyers to see whether he’d be willing to provide a written statement in the trial that would describe “what he observed in terms of the president’s Ukraine misconduct, but he refused.”

During the trial last month, The New York Times published a report that contained allegations from a manuscript of Bolton’s upcoming book. In it, the former ambassador reportedly claims that Trump told him he was linking military aid to Ukraine and politically advantageous investigations, which Trump and other senior White House officials have repeatedly denied. The alleged conduct was at the center of the first article of impeachment against Trump, abuse of power.

As a result, House impeachment managers made references to the NY Times report and attempted to pressure the Senate into calling witnesses, but last Friday, that push ultimately failed when the Senate voted down a resolution—setting up the president’s acquittal on Wednesday. House managers complained the trial was unfair and rigged in favor of Trump after their witness push was rejected.

In early January, Bolton said in a statement on his website he would be willing to testify during the Senate’s impeachment trial if he was handed a subpoena. It came after House Democrats attempted to call him to testify in the impeachment inquiry before withdrawing their subpoena, saying that it would lead to a lengthy court battle that would slow down their impeachment process.

https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/481787-impeachment-is-over-or-is-it

If you think the Senate’s vote on Wednesday to acquit President Trump ends the impeachment saga, you haven’t been paying attention.

Congressional Democrats never believed they could actually remove Trump from power over anything as specious as the Ukraine kerfuffle. No more than they expected that the collusion caper — which was already known to be an investigative dry hole by the time of Bob Mueller’s May 2017 special counsel appointment — was a viable vehicle for ousting the president.

Impeachment has always been a partisan pretext. A third-order pretext, as I explained in “Ball of Collusion”: (1) The counterintelligence investigation launched by the Obama administration was a pretext to monitor Trump’s campaign while conducting a criminal investigation without the necessary criminal predicate; (2) the criminal investigation, formally launched on the ludicrous fiction that Trump’s constitutionally appropriate firing of FBI director James Comey could be an obstruction crime, was a pretext for packaging an impeachment inquiry for House Democrats (since the bureau didn’t have a crime but knew that impeachment does not require a crime); and (3) the impeachment drama has been a pretext for what all along has been the goal — to tumble out enough unsavory information over a long enough time that Trump is rendered unelectable by the time we get to the stretch-run of the 2020 campaign.

This is not to say, of course, that congressional Democrats would not remove the president if they could. The fact that House Democrats hauled out and formally voted two articles of impeachment, rather than contenting themselves with a long-running impeachment inquiry spiced up by the occasional, damning public hearing, shows that if they thought there was any shot at defenestrating Trump, even a remote one, they would take it.

https://hotair.com/archives/allahpundit/2020/02/05/meanwhile-americans-optimism-personal-finances-surges-time-high-new-gallup-poll/

A friendly reminder amid all the impeachment hubbub today that Trump’s probably getting reelected and the political shiny object du jour will have little or nothing to do with his odds.

Neither the Reagan era nor the Clinton era, both famous boom times for America, produced quite as much financial optimism as the Trump era has. Remember that other poll that Gallup released yesterday showing Trump’s job approval at a personal best 49 percent? Now we know what’s driving that number. With economic enthusiasm like this, if Trump were a little less … Trump-y his job approval might be north of 55 percent. He’d be a near-lock for a second term.

But there’s more. Gallup also asked a question with lots of resonance for the 2020 election: Are you better off financially then you were a year ago?

Nearly six in 10 Americans (59%) now say they are better off financially than they were a year ago, up from 50% last year…

The current 59% of Americans who say they are better off financially than they were a year ago is essentially tied for the all-time high of 58% in January 1999. That was recorded during the dot-com boom, with conditions similar to the current state of the economy — a stock market rocketing to then-record highs and unemployment at multidecade lows — though GDP growth was higher at that time.

https://amgreatness.com/2020/02/05/a-week-of-political-karma-for-the-democrats/

President Trump now stands acquitted. The Democrats must confront the debacle that is their presidential primary field and run on a nonexistent record of achievement as the 2020 campaign season kicks off. Karma, indeed, is a bitch.

Donald Trump couldn’t have scripted it better himself: The Democratic Party’s karma knocked them right on the head this week as their countrymen watched in disgust—some, admittedly, in delight.

After three years of deception, gaslighting, and public temper tantrums, these power-hungry partisans finally got their comeuppance. An assembly of agents provocateurs, motivated by an insatiable amount of contempt not just for the president but for Americans in general, who gambled on a farcical impeachment crusade rather than build a persuasive policy case to win over voters this year, are ranting and pouting and tearing up stuff because . . . well, because they are losing. If Nancy Pelosi could have thrown a pacifier from her Capitol high chair Tuesday night, she would have.

The past several days have been filled with delightful metaphors: The president gave a lengthy interview before kickoff on Super Bowl Sunday, touting his achievements and mocking his political foes. A team from a pro-Trump red state faced a team from a Trump-hating blue state, which was favored to win. The San Francisco 49ers, based in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s hometown, had a 10-point lead going into the fourth quarter.