Report: Co-Workers of Alleged Whistleblower Say They Heard Him Plotting Trump’s Removal in 2017; Ted Cruz Says Adam Schiff Made Hunter Biden’s Testimony ‘Directly Relevant’

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By The Blaze. Former colleagues of alleged impeachment whistleblower Eric Ciaramella say they heard him discussing ways to get President Donald Trump out of office within days of his inauguration in January 2017, according to RealClearInvestigations.

The sources, who spoke to RCI under the condition of anonymity, said Ciaramella talked about ousting Trump with Sean Misko. Ciaramella and Misko were holdovers from the Obama Administration’s national security team.

According to the sources, Ciaramella and Misko, who are reportedly friends, were upset about Trump’s policy changes from the Obama administration.

“They were popping off about how they were going to remove Trump from office. No joke,” one ex-colleague told RCI. (Read more from “Report: Co-Workers of Alleged Whistleblower Say They Heard Him Plotting Trump’s Removal in 2017” HERE)

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Trump Disrupts Republican Trial Strategy

By Politico. Just five hours after Senate Republicans carefully assembled and passed an impeachment trial framework that could clear Donald Trump by next week, the president himself delivered an unwanted surprise to the GOP: The prospect of a longer trial with lots of witnesses.

Senate Republicans have been publicly and privately maneuvering to give Trump as quick an acquittal as possible while still keeping 51 GOP senators on board. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has largely thrown cold water on the idea of hearing from new witnesses and many of his members are eager to end the trial, not extend it.

In interviews Wednesday morning ahead of House managers’ opening arguments, Republicans empathized with the president’s call for new testimony. But they also said that they will tune out any outside noise if they can — including the running commentary from a president who demands party loyalty — and potentially wrap up the trial far more quickly than Trump desires.

“Certainly, the president has those in the Senate who are very interested in his views,” said Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.), but added, “Those are decisions to more likely be made by senators themselves, and individually and collectively, than outside influences.” (Read more from “Trump Disrupts Republican Trial Strategy” HERE)

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Ted Cruz Says Adam Schiff Made Hunter Biden’s Testimony ‘Directly Relevant’

By Daily Caller. Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz told reporters on Wednesday that Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff’s day two impeachment arguments before the Senate made testimony by Hunter Biden “directly relevant” and “critical.”

“I think the House managers made a very serious strategic error today,” Cruz said, according to ABC News. “Adam Schiff’s arguments to open the day today directly drew into question Hunter Biden and made not only his testimony relevant which it already was but it is now critical.”

The Texas senator, who last week said he is “open to the possibility” of the Senate calling witnesses, including the whistleblower, contended that if the “House managers’ case is based on the allegations of corruption concerning Hunter Biden and Joe Biden being a scam,” then the Senate being able to hear from Biden is “directly relevant.”

“And I gotta say, the need for the Senate to hear the testimony of Hunter Biden and the need for the senate to grant the White House lawyers the ability to take that testimony has become all the more relevant,” he said per ABC. (Read more from “Ted Cruz Says Adam Schiff Made Hunter Biden’s Testimony ‘Directly Relevant’” HERE)

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Elite Religious Order Repeatedly Raped Girls as Young as Eight Years Old

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By Associated Press. The administrator of the elite Catholic school in Cancun, Mexico, used to take the girls out of class and send them to the chapel, where the priest from the Legion of Christ religious order would sexually abuse them.

“As some were reading the Bible, he would rape the others in front of them, little girls aged 6 to 8 or 9,” said one of his victims, Ana Lucia Salazar, now a 36-year-old Mexican television host and mother of three. . .

Salazar’s horrific story, which has been corroborated by other victims and the Legion itself, has sparked a new credibility crisis for the once-influential order, 10 years after the Holy See took it over after determining that its founder was a pedophile. (Read more from “Elite Religious Order Raped Girls Repeatedly as Young as Eight Years Old” HERE)

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Sex Scandal Shocks Mexico: The Vatican Must Probe Cover-Up of Child Sexual Abuse

By WION. Ten years after the Vatican took it over, the Legion of Christ religious order is in crisis again. This religious order in Mexico founded in 1941 was once powerful influential. But it now faces an existential crisis.

Its founder, a Paedophile, is said to have sexually abused more than 60 boys. And this latest scandal will raise questions that the Vatican will have to answer. . .

Legion of Christ was once an influential religious order which was founded by Marcial Maciel in 1941. He passed away in 2008. The Legion of Christ was taken over by the Vatican in 2010. . .

Salazar’s horrific story has been corroborated by other victims and the legion itself. The revelations have sparked a new credibility crisis for the once-influential order.

A recent investigation has revealed that sexual abuse of minors was rife, especially among superiors of the legionaries of the ultraconservative religious order. 175 minors were victims of abuse by 33 priests and 71 seminarians. Most victims were boys between 11 and 16. (Read more from “Sex Scandal Shocks Mexico: The Vatican Must Probe Cover-Up of Child Sexual Abuse” HERE)

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Adam Schiff May Have Mischaracterized Evidence, Documents Show; Schiff Fumes at Trump Lawyers’ Allegations

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By Politico. House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff appears to have mischaracterized a text message exchange between two players in the Ukraine saga, according to documents obtained by POLITICO — a possible error the GOP will likely criticize as another example of the Democrats’ rushed effort to impeach President Donald Trump.

The issue arose when Schiff (D-Calif.) sent a letter to House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) last week summarizing a trove of evidence from Lev Parnas, an indicted former associate of Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani. In one section of the letter, Schiff claims that Parnas “continued to try to arrange a meeting with President Zelensky,” citing a specific text message exchange where Parnas tells Giuliani: “trying to get us mr Z.” The remainder of the exchange — which was attached to Schiff’s letter — was redacted.

But an unredacted version of the exchange shows that several days later, Parnas sent Giuliani a word document that appears to show notes from an interview with Mykola Zlochevsky, the founder of Burisma, followed by a text message to Giuliani that states: “mr Z answers my brother.” That suggests Parnas was referring to Zlochevsky not Zelensky.

The word document contains a series of questions and answers, but doesn’t identify who is doing the asking or answering. Yet the questions center on the hiring practices at Burisma, while the responses include statements such as “we wanted to build Burisma as [an] international company” and “we also thought it would help in Ukraine to have strong international board figures,” which seems to point to Zlochevsky — not the Ukrainian president — as the respondent. (Read more from “Schiff May Have Mischaracterized Evidence, Documents Show” HERE)

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Schiff, on Floor at Senate Impeachment Trial, Quietly Fumes at Trump Lawyers’ Allegations

By Fox News. Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff stared down President Trump’s lawyers on the Senate floor Tuesday as they accused him of lying to the American people and denying Trump due process during the impeachment investigation.

Trump lawyers Pat Cipollone and Jay Sekulow repeatedly ripped into Democrats, especially Schiff, on the first day of arguments in the Senate impeachment trial, as the House Intelligence Committee chairman — who is serving as the top Democratic impeachment manager — sat up straight in his chair and didn’t take his eyes off his accusers.

The lawyers invoked Schiff’s name over and over again, accusing him of hiding documents, conducting an unfair impeachment inquiry and fabricating the text of the July 25 phone call between Trump and the president of Ukraine.

Just as Schiff sat down from making a lengthy opening case for new witnesses and documents, Sekulow took over and with a booming voice accused Schiff of telling falsehoods and “put[ting] words into transcripts that did not exist.”

Schiff kept his eyes wide open and glued on Sekulow, possibly aghast that Trump’s lawyers were putting him on trial. (Read more from “Schiff, on Floor at Senate Impeachment Trial, Quietly Fumes at Trump Lawyers’ Allegations” HERE)

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Construction Worker Stabs and Kills Pro-Trump Boss, Drapes American Flag on His Body (VIDEO)

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Police say that a man with anti-government views killed his boss on a construction site, and draped his body with an American flag, and some believe it was politically motivated.

[Mason] Toney was a longtime friend of [William] Knight, and he had just been hired on for a construction job widening a freeway exit in Florida. . .

Witnesses told police that Toney and Knight got into a heated debate on Monday, possibly over their political differences, and that Toney stabbed Knight to death with a construction trowel.

Afterwards, he’s said to have draped Knight’s body with a brand new American flag.

Witnesses said they attempted to stop Toney but that he jumped into a company truck and fled the scene while calling them “terrorists.” He was later apprehended by police.

(Read more from “Construction Worker Stabs and Kills Pro-Trump Boss, Drapes American Flag on His Body (VIDEO)” HERE)

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One of the Most Common Ingredients in the Western Diet Has Been Found to Alter Genes in the Brain

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The use of soybean oil has increased dramatically over the last few decades, to the extent that is has become the most widely consumed edible oil in the US and other Western nations. However, its rise has coincided with an alarming escalation in metabolic conditions like diabetes, insulin resistance, and obesity, and a new study indicates that this may be down to the way that soybean oil causes genetic changes in the brain.

Previous research has shown that mice fed a diet that is high in soybean oil are much more likely to develop these conditions than rodents fed on other fats like coconut oil. Further studies hinted that the culprit may be linoleic acid, as mice that consumed soybean oil that had been modified to lack this key ingredient were spared many of these harmful effects.

To better understand how soybean oil produces these negative consequences, scientists decided to investigate its impact on the expression of genes in the hypothalamus, a brain region that regulates metabolism and a range of other essential processes. . .

Writing in the journal Endocrinology, the study authors explain that soybean oil was found to modify the expression of around 100 different genes in the hypothalamus, affecting processes such as metabolism, neurological disease, and inflammation.

Among the altered genes were some that are associated with schizophrenia, depression, and Alzheimer’s disease, although by far the most affected was a gene that codes for the production of a hormone called oxytocin. (Read more from “One of the Most Common Ingredients in the Western Diet Has Been Found to Alter Genes in the Brain” HERE)

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Google Whistleblower Who Exposed Millions of Votes That Were Stolen for Hillary in 2016, Suggests His Wife May Have Been Murdered in Retaliation

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By Daily Mail. The wife of a Google whistleblower, who exposed meddling in the 2016 election, died Friday night just days after she was seriously injured in a car crash.

Psychology professor, Robert Epstein, 66, shared in a heartbreaking tweet announcing that his wife, Misti Dawn Vaughn, died after her vehicle spun out of control along a slippery road in California and into the path of a tractor-trailer.

‘My beautiful wife Misti, a published poet, succumbed last night to injuries sustained in a car accident,’ her grieving husband wrote. . .

According to the San Diego Union-Tribune, she was driving along rain-slick Interstate 15 in Escondido when the accident occurred.

When her truck spun out of control it crossed into the path of an oncoming big rig that was hauling two dump trailers. (Read more from “Google Whistleblower Who Exposed Millions of Votes That Were Stolen for Hillary in 2016, Hints His Young Wife Was Murdered in Retaliation” HERE)

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Goldman Sachs Investors Are Nearly Unanimous About Trump’s Re-Election Chances; Betting Markets View This Democrat as Having the Best Chance of Defeating Trump

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By Daily Wire. With the 2020 presidential election now less than 10 months away, President Donald Trump’s re-election is all but guaranteed, top clients of Wall Street powerhouse Goldman Sachs said last week.

During its Global Strategy Conference in London last week, Goldman Sachs surveyed more than 150 of its clients and found that a whopping 87 percent believe Trump will win re-election in November, according to Business Insider. That, of course, comes despite the president’s formal impeachment last month and upcoming trial this month.

The economy is the leading reason that investors believe Trump will win. Under Trump’s tenure, the stock market has soared to break multiple records, unemployment has fallen to record lows, and wage growth is up. . .

At the time, Goldman’s chief economist Jan Hatzius told CNBC that between Trump’s position as the incumbent — who traditionally has a slight election advantage — and the very strong and surging economy, it is more likely than not that Trump will be a two-term president. (Read more from “Goldman Sachs Investors Are Nearly Unanimous About Trump’s Re-Election Chances” HERE)

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Betting Markets View This Democrat as Having the Best Chance of Defeating Trump: Study

By Fox Business. With the U.S. 2020 election months away, betting markets view President Trump’s reelection as the most likely outcome, however, some Democratic candidates have a better chance of unseating him, a new study shows.

According to research from U.K.-based Standard Chartered, which analyzed online betting market data, it is latecomer businessman Michael Bloomberg that has the best chance of defeating President Trump should he secure the Democratic Party’s nomination.

However, his probability of securing the nomination is slightly more than 10 percent. Bloomberg is trailed by former Vice President Joe Biden.

And Bloomberg isn’t a top contender according to most polls. For example, a December Fox News poll found that Biden led the race with 30 percent, followed by Sanders with 20 percent. Bloomberg only had 5 percent. (Read more from “Betting Markets View This Democrat as Having the Best Chance of Defeating Trump: Study” HERE)

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America Is About to Get a Powerful Tool in the War Against Cancer

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America’s war on cancer is about to get another tool in its arsenal. The country’s first carbon ion therapy center to treat cancer is being built in collaboration with Hitachi on the campus of the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida. The cancer therapy treatment will be part of Mayo’s $233 million oncology facility, announced in June.

An alternative to surgery, this new treatment is viewed as the next horizon of cancer care. It has the capability of killing cancer cells that are resistant to traditional radiation therapy. Yet the U.S. has been slow to adopt the treatment even though the technology was developed in California in 1975.

According to experts, carbon ion therapy damages the DNA of fast-growing cancer cells, ultimately destroying them. But unlike older forms of radiation, this technique causes minimal harm to normal tissue. Studies also suggest it triggers an immune response against cancer.

Dr. Steven Buskirk, chair of the department of radiation oncology at Mayo Clinic in Florida, says, “the availability of carbon ion technology will allow Mayo Clinic researchers to evaluate the efficacy of carbon ion therapy for the treatment of various cancer types, including exploration into new and expanded therapies, including multi-modality treatment options.” . . .

The plan is to put together a national Scientific Advisory Board composed of doctors and scientists from the U.S. and abroad to study the efficacy and safety of the treatment and secure FDA approval so the treatment can be offered in 2025, says Dr. Kent Thielen, CEO of the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville. He notes that his institution is a leading National Cancer Institute-designated comprehensive cancer center, and Mayo Clinic radiation oncologists and physicists have been studying carbon ion treatment in Asia and Europe for nearly a decade. Mayo already has developed a high level of expertise in treatment planning and delivery. (Read more from “America Is About to Get a Powerful Tool in the War Against Cancer” HERE)

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Trump Impeachment Defense Team Expected to Include Epstein Lawyers; Nadler Says the Impeachment Is No Longer Just About the President; Dershowitz Draws Line on His Role in Trump Impeachment Defense (VIDEO)

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By NBC News. President Donald Trump’s defense team for his Senate impeachment trial will include former independent counsel Ken Starr, who investigated President Bill Clinton, and famed defense attorney Alan Dershowitz, sources familiar with the president’s legal strategy told NBC News Friday.

Also joining the team is Robert Ray, who succeeded Starr as Clinton special counsel, and Pam Bondi, the former Florida attorney general who joined the White House in November to help manage the messaging around impeachment, the sources said.

The addition of the high-profile names, who have regularly appeared on Fox News defending the president, will add some star power to the team that will publicly argue Trump’s case in the well of the Senate in a historic moment that will play out on live television.

Leading the legal team will be White House counsel Pat Cipollone, a Trump ally who has been steeped in the details of the case since the inquiry began but lacks experience as a public trial lawyer or television personality. Trump’s personal lawyer Jay Sekulow, who has argued a dozen cases before the Supreme Court and guided the president through Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, will also play a leading role. (Read more from “Trump Impeachment Defense Team Expected to Include Epstein Lawyers” HERE)

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WATCH: Jerry Nadler Says the Impeachment Is No Longer Just About the President

By Daily Caller. Democratic New York Rep. Jerry Nadler claimed that the Senate would be on trial along with President Donald Trump.

Nadler made the comment during House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s Wednesday morning press conference, where he was named as one of seven impeachment managers. . .

“The Senate is on trial as well as the president,” he insisted. “Does the Senate conduct a trial according to the Constitution, to vindicate the republic? Or does the Senate participate in the president’s crimes by covering them up?” (Read more from “WATCH: Jerry Nadler Says the Impeachment Is No Longer Just About the President” HERE)

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Lawyer Alan Dershowitz Draws Line on His Role in Trump Impeachment Defense

By NPR. When President Trump’s defense team delivers its opening statement in the Senate impeachment trial next week, famed defense attorney Alan Dershowitz will have a starring role.

But in an interview with NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly on Friday, he sought to make clear that his involvement is limited to arguing that the two articles of impeachment do not satisfy the constitutional criteria for removing the president from office.

“I will not be involved in arguing the facts, nor will I be part of the defense team in the sense of strategy on the facts. My role is limited. I am doing precisely the same thing I would be doing had Hillary Clinton — who I voted for — been elected president and had the Republicans try to impeach her,” Dershowitz told All Things Considered. . .

Dershowitz, who consulted with former President Bill Clinton’s defense during his impeachment trial, said he would not weigh in on the issue of whether witnesses should be allowed in the Senate trial — an issue being pushed by Democrats and so far resisted by Republicans. (Read more from “Lawyer Alan Dershowitz Draws Line on His Role in Trump Impeachment Defense” HERE)

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Romney Loses GOP Support After Challenging Trump on Impeachment

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Utah Republican Sen. Mitt Romney lost support from Republicans and independents in his home state during the weeks after he called for witnesses in President Trump’s Senate impeachment trial, a new poll shows.

The Morning Consult survey found support for Romney, 72, going down after he called for former national security adviser John Bolton to testify at Trump’s impeachment trial, which began on Thursday.

The poll shows the senator’s approval rating falling among Utah Republicans from September through December 2019, and independents also shifted to disapproving of Romney over the quarter.

In the prior quarter, 65% of Utah Republicans supported Romney, and while a majority still do presently, that number sank to 57%.

The numbers are particularly striking for Utah, one of the most Republican states in the country. Romney romped to victory in his 2018 Senate bid and has been considered a local hero of sorts among his fellow Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints constituents and others. (Read more from “Romney Loses GOP Support After Challenging Trump on Impeachment” HERE)

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