Rand Paul Reads Disallowed Impeachment Question On Senate Floor

Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul today read his disallowed question from the Senate Impeachment Trial of Donald J. Trump, President of the United States.

His pertinent comments while on the Senate floor are excerpted, in part, below.

The essence of what he is saying, is alleging by questioning (asserting, would be more like it), is that, there was an impeachment conspiracy being cooked up by governmental officials against the President, long before the President’s now-infamous July 25th phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

He points to several faults with the FISA Court system, and what was very likely FBI abuse of that court system to “spy,” as he puts it, upon American citizens, and extrapolates from there.

To further bolster his case, Senator Paul points to open testimony given to the Senate by then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper on March 12, 2013 in response to a question by Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat.

Senator Wyden asked, “Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?”

Mr. Clapper replied, “No sir … not wittingly.”

We knew that Mr. Clapper lied because he later obliquely stated that he did in an interview with NBC’s Andrea Mitchell who asked him why he answered the way he did.

Clapper answered saying, “I thought, though in retrospect, I was asked ‘when are you going to … stop beating your wife’ kind of question, which is … not answerable necessarily by a simple yes or no. So I responded in what I thought was the most truthful, or least untruthful, manner by saying, ‘No.’”

Senator Wyden had also earlier given Mr. Clapper advance notice that he would ask that question, so in a sense, he was “putting him in a box,” and expecting him to either deny it, or admit it in his testimony. Senator Wyden is a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, so he was regularly briefed on Top Secret programs, and knew the answer would be ‘YES’ before he asked it. He was simply giving Director Clapper an opportunity to be forthright about the matter. Director Clapper could have answered more circumspectly, or even use more finesse in his response, though he did neither.

But more to the point, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul does raise some interesting questions, although, on the whole, it certainly seems as if he’s “shooting in the dark” by asking such questions. Nevertheless, as he stated, the Constitution does allow for debate, and such debate is healthy for our, or any democracy. However, like then-Director Clapper, he failed to use finesse in his answer.

The Senator made another good point, which is that, though Mr. Clapper very obviously lied to Congress, he was not prosecuted (impeached) for it. In legal parlance, that’s called “Prosecutorial Discretion.”

So, on the whole, and for those reasons, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul’s remarks are verging on the meritless.

Granted, there are necessary revisions to the system as it now exists, which have been revealed by the broader impeachment investigation of the President.

Overall, while onerous, the entire process may yet have a Phoenix arise from it. So, it’s entirely possible that, in a curiously roundabout way, Trump truly could have been good for America.

My exact question. We’ll put it up here.

‘Are you aware that the House Intelligence Committee staffer, Sean Misko, had a close relationship with Eric Ciarmella while at the National Security Council together?’ –and– ‘Are you aware, and how would you respond to the reports that Ciaramella and Misko may have worked together to plot impeaching the president?’

Why did I ask?

There are two people, one who worked with Adam Schiff and one who worked with the person at the National Security Council that they knew each other and had been overheard talking about impeaching the president in the first month in office.

In January 2017, they were already plotting the impeachment.

…

But if six people who all worked together at the National Security Council knew each other and gamed the system knowing they would get these protections, they gamed the system in order to try to bring down the President, we should know about that. If they had extreme bias going into the impeachment, we should know about that.

…

We were plotting to bring down — were people plotting to bring down the President? Were they plotting during the election, were they plotting to bring down the President?

You’ve got two Vindman brothers who know Eric Ciaramela who also know Sean Misko who also knew two other people working on Adam Schiff’s staff, and Adam Schiff throws his hands up and says, ‘I don’t know who the whistle-blower is. I never met him. I have no idea who he is.’ So if he doesn’t know who he is, the President’s Counsel doesn’t know who he is, how does the Chief Justice of the United States know who the whistle-blower is?

I have no independent confirmation from anyone in government as to who the whistle-blower is. So how am I prevented from asking a question when nobody seems to admit they even know who this person is?

My point is by having such protection, such overzealous protection, we don’t get to the root of the matter of how it started.