by Bob Barr | Oct 22, 2019 | Uncategorized |
The Daily Caller Efforts by Democrats in the House of Representatives to wound, if not remove, President Trump from office illustrate what many of us realized long ago — the Democrats are street fighters who battle without regard for rules. Republicans (with few exceptions) prefer to play as gentlemen, according to “Marquess of Queensberry” rules. Thankfully, Trump is a master street fighter himself. I first became aware of this phenomenon in early 1995, the first year of my service in the House, and the first year in which the GOP enjoyed a majority since the 1950s. The occasion was a series of hearings to explore the manner by which the Clinton administration had conducted the raid on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas two years before. The raid was initially planned and carried out by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. However, the raid went horribly awry; a number of ATF agents and Branch Davidian members were shot. A lengthy standoff eventually involved the FBI and U.S. military equipment and advisers, as well as Texas Rangers and other agencies and personnel. It ended weeks later in a fiery conflagration sparked by tanks inserting flammable gas into the compound’s main building, in which some six dozen men, women, children and babies perished. The “Waco hearings” were the first major set of hearings conducted by the new Republican majority, and as a member of the Judiciary Committee subcommittee involved, I was a participant. Just prior to the start of the first day of the hearings, the subcommittee chairman convened a meeting of Republican members who would be participating...
by Bob Barr | Oct 14, 2019 | Uncategorized |
The Daily Caller The indictment and arrest of two U.S. businessmen of East European background is the newest development in the effort to weaken the president by attacking those close to him. In this case, it’s his personal lawyer, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani. While there may be some arguable basis on which to charge the businessmen — Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman — with incompetent business transactions, the timing of the indictment — in the middle of the House Intelligence Committee’s impeachment effort against Trump — makes it seem more than just coincidental. Neither Parnas nor Fruman appears to possess the business acumen such that Trump would bring them into his inner circle of confidence. Their links to the Trump family appear to be nothing more than as political hangers on; and their relationship to Giuliani seem to consist largely of legitimate business dealings. Still, the fact that there are such relationships, no matter how tenuous, has provided ammunition for the media and Democratic Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff to draw direct connections that in less hyper-partisan times would have been considered out of bounds. As with so much of the ongoing impeachment effort being pressed relentlessly by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Schiff, and others of their majority in the House, the Parnas-Fruman “connection” has to with Ukraine. In this case, the connection is not so much directly with the now-infamous July 25 phone call between Presidents Trump and Zelensky, as with the American president’s effort to ensure that his Ambassador to that country is fully supportive of his policies and diplomatic goals. It is hardly a...
by Bob Barr | Oct 9, 2019 | Uncategorized |
Townhall.com Perhaps Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) has been reading too many Ian Fleming and Tom Clancy novels. This would explain why the Senator’s September report titled, “The NRA and Russia: How a Tax-Exempt Organization Became a Foreign Asset,” reads far more like a fantasy spy thriller than a legitimate Senate report. The dramatic cover for Wyden’s docu-novel sets the tone, that when it comes to the National Rifle Association and Russia, danger lurks! Give us a break. This minority committee report reflects the Democrats’ yearning to once again be in the majority, but in fact reminds us how important it is to our country that they are not permitted to regain that position. This latest Democrat effort to demonize the NRA centers around the comically pathetic exploits of Maria Butina, a Russian citizen convicted last year by the federal government for failing to register as an agent of a foreign government. In the post-2016 Russia-crazed paranoia in which the Democratic Party continues to dwell, that paperwork failure by Ms. Butina is tantamount to being a world-class secret agent, a la James Bond or Mata Hari. By any reasonable standard, the young woman’s elementary efforts to curry favor with Moscow by making some friends in the United States were never taken seriously by anyone other than a few federal prosecutors blinded by their desire to nail a Russian “hide” to the wall. Nevertheless, the Butina storyline is just too juicy for the Democrats to let go, especially when they can link it – however remotely — to their favorite bogeyman, the NRA. Attacks by the Left against the NRA have been the norm for decades but...
by Bob Barr | Oct 8, 2019 | Uncategorized |
The Daily Caller Speaking as a former federal prosecutor and impeachment manager in the Senate trial of former President Clinton, and after having reviewed carefully the content and context of the Ukraine call and what we have learned about it subsequently, it is clear that no federal laws were broken and nothing close to an impeachable offense took place. In fact, in that call the president of the United States was doing precisely what a president should have been doing. In the July 25 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Trump emphasized that his administration was serious about getting to the bottom of corruption in Ukraine that had affected and had been affected by the United States. Our president made clear he was referring to evidence that Ukrainian interests had been involved corruptly in our 2016 election, and that a high government official in our country — former Vice President Joe Biden — had improperly interfered with that country’s effort to discover and prosecute corrupt acts. In considering whether the president’s conduct rises to the level of an impeachable or criminal offense, it’s easy to dismiss the rantings of Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters. The fiery congresswoman has been calling for Trump’s impeachment since he became president, and she is itching for a piece of the impeachment action for the Financial Services Committee she chairs. In Waters’ opinion, Trump has engaged in actions that not only are impeachable in nature, but so highly and criminally offensive as to warrant a sentence in “solitary confinement.” It is not, however, quite so easy to dismiss the analyses of such credible observers as...
by Bob Barr | Oct 3, 2019 | Uncategorized |
Morning Consult by BOB BARR & JASON PYE Well, after months of back-and-forth, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has finally caved to the radical base of the Democrat Party and authorized a formal Inquiry of Impeachment. Or, maybe not. It was less than one month ago that the House Judiciary Committee actually did approve a resolution, strictly along party lines, that began what some Democrats claim is an “impeachment investigation” and others call an “impeachment inquiry.” Pelosi recently seemed to agree with both assessments in launching what might best be viewed as a “faux impeachment” process – verbally labeling it an “inquiry” but without a House resolution formally doing so on the record. During an interview last month, Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) said that the investigation his committee is conducting “is not necessarily called an impeachment inquiry. That’s a made-up term without legal significance. It is, however, what we are doing.” Clear as mud. Although there is nothing in the rules of the House that requires a formal vote by that chamber in order to authorize the initiation of a presidential impeachment inquiry, in modern practice the House of Representatives votes as a body to instruct the Judiciary Committee to begin such an important process. This also establishes the parameters for such an investigation. The committee then would review information relevant to the inquiry and, if necessary, produce articles of impeachment, which then would be considered by the House as a whole. That was precisely what occurred in the most recent impeachment – that of President Bill Clinton in 1998. That procedure that yielded four very focused and well-documented articles of impeachment (two of which passed the...
by Bob Barr | Oct 2, 2019 | Uncategorized |
CBNNEWS.COM Gary Lane Before President Trump started taking on the “Deep State” and members of the US intelligence community, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) warned him that intelligence officials have “six ways from Sunday at getting back at you.” Now, the former congressman who managed the US House of Representatives impeachment hearings on President Bill Clinton admits US intelligence operatives are playing a serious game of “gotcha” with a “whistleblower” complaint regarding a presidential phone call. The complaint is the foundation of a House of Representatives impeachment inquiry against the president. Former Rep. Bob Barr, a Republican from Georgia, says there has been tension between President Trump and the intelligence community – particularly career intelligence operatives within the intelligence community – since even before Trump was sworn into office in January 2017. Related “So, it’s not surprising in a sense that it would be intelligence operatives that are behind this sabotage of the Trump administration.” And Barr told CBN News the person Democrats and the mainstream media characterize as a “whistleblower” who exposed President Trump’s phone call to the Ukrainian president is not a whistleblower at all. Barr said House Democrats depict the complainant as a true patriot – someone who is protecting America and the Constitution from abuse, but he or she is actually a saboteur. “This is not a patriot, this is not somebody that has pure motives such as was characterized by the Director of National Intelligence (Joseph Maguire) last week,” Barr insisted. “The whole notion of a whistleblower – particularly in the intelligence business – is someone who uncovers something that is an urgent matter...
