Convinced yet?

[RickD]

ACB wrote:
You have'nt heard of pedophile Jeffrey Epstein?

What I've heard, is you and others calling Epstein a pedophile.

And again, I've seen no evidence that he was a pedophile.

And again, I don't think that you even understand what a pedophile is.

Let me help you, since you're obviously not getting it.

By definition, a pedophile is someone who is sexually attracted to prepubescent children.

Prebubescent is the key word, which means before reaching puberty.

I've seen absolutely no evidence that Epstein had any sexual interest, nor sexual contact, with any prepubescent children.

Do you understand the distinction now?

Evidence showed that he was a man who liked teenage girls. Not prepubescent girls. Being sexually attracted to a 17 year old, is not the same as being sexually attracted to an 8 year old.

And before someone assumes I'm condoning what he did, I'm not.

I'm just trying to be accurate.

https://simple.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedophilia

So, unless there's evidence that Epstein was attracted to prepubescent children, had sex with prepubescent children, or was guilty of sex trafficking prepubescent children, can you stop calling him a pedophile?

Why would you think I don't know what a pedophile is involving children? Well where are you getting your info about Jeffrey Epstein from? Because the people in the alt-right have been trying to expose pedophile sex rings and Jeffrey Epstein and NXIVM and it is even in the MSM now too,except they cover for them by not reporting all of the facts about it just like where ABC spiked the story about Epstein I gave you several links too. We now have evidence the MSM covers for these pedophiles.

I gave you a twitter link to go through and Q reveals how children are involved but even more shocking stuff. There are those who have investigated this thoroughly out there that have been trying to expose this stuff to no avail pretty much,except for those of us who know about it.And yet as they predicted because of Q it is slowly being exposed for all to see.Now perhaps you don't believe Q where children are involved but even the MSM reported back when Epstein was arrested that there were investigations going on on the island and they found the remains of baby parts in the water around the island. I remember I caught some flack from Philip by calling Democrats involved sick and evil and yet he will understand why eventually.

But with the MSM covering for these people it makes it very hard to convince others about this and expose it. For some reason the MSM is seen as the default for truthful news and info to many when it is the total opposite. I think that sometimes I've not done a good enough job explaining why I rely on alt-right news sources for all of my news and do not even watch any of the MSM anymore for news and info. I occasionally will watch Fox News to see if they are reporting stuff I know about yet,but it is difficult because even if I watch Hannity,which I know you think he is up Trump's rear,yet Hannity can be a let down for me because of the news he's not able to report working at Fox News. He does a good job as far as what he can report but he leaves out a lot more than he could report. Fox New is seen as controlled opposition by many in the alt-right because in some instances they are just as bad as the liberal MSM because of not what they report that needs to be reported ,but is'nt. It is not just the fake news that is the problem but the stuff not reported that is a big problem.

Also I've never endorsed all of the alt-right media,but it may seem that I have because of defending them in some cases but even when it comes to the alt-right I have had to find the ones I trust and like the best and have shunned some and there are even fake alt-righters out there that pose as the alt-right but intentionally put out bad info to try to male the alt-right look bad. The ones I rely on are trustworthy.

Show me a single credible news source that has proof that Epstein raped prepubescent girls, and I'll take back what I said.

I've not seen any credible evidence, that Epstein was a pedophile.

He was a sick, twisted man, but stop calling him a pedophile.

[Kurieuo]

Epstein was a paedophile.

[Nessa]

What about his friend, prince Andrew?

There are plenty of testimonies of what Epstein did from his victims.

[RickD]

Epstein was a paedophile.

At least you didn't call him a pedophile.

[edwardmurphy]

As usual, straining a gnat over a technicality - call him a TEENophile, or whatever. What really matters is that the guy basically recruited, bought, controlled, and enslaved teenaged girls with a network of enablers. He was evil, and that's all that matters!

[RickD]

As usual, straining a gnat over a technicality - call him a TEENophile, or whatever. What really matters is that the guy basically recruited, bought, controlled, and enslaved teenaged girls with a network of enablers. He was evil, and that's all that matters!

What matters is accuracy in what we post. ACB has continually gotten away with spouting gibberish.

Epstein ran a sex ring with underage girls. He raped underage girls.

There's no evidence that he was a pedophile.

[Kurieuo]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQOOxOl9l80

[RickD]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQOOxOl9l80

I'm 100% sure that this video will get the ball rolling on a conviction of Prince Andrew.

Nobody can hide behind his power and money.

[abelcainsbrother]

As usual, straining a gnat over a technicality - call him a TEENophile, or whatever. What really matters is that the guy basically recruited, bought, controlled, and enslaved teenaged girls with a network of enablers. He was evil, and that's all that matters!

What matters is accuracy in what we post. ACB has continually gotten away with spouting gibberish.

Epstein ran a sex ring with underage girls. He raped underage girls.

There's no evidence that he was a pedophile.

Gibberish? I'm just stating what I know. I used to take the time to give evidence but it did'nt do any good.I mean I still give evidence and it is rejected,so why keep giving it? Even when I do give evidence it is not a credible source,etc to certian people,until I'm eventually shown to be correct and yet it still does'nt seem to count. I mean I've brought this Jeffrey Epstein Pedophile stuff up before and I said it was going to be coming out and it is,just as I said.Now not as fast as I'd like it to because the MSM covers for these people and spins the stories and does not report all of the facts about this,but nonetheless it is still coming out like I said it would.I would think accuracy matters,but it does'nt to some. Just wait until it is revealed that Obama was not born in the US but Kenya and that he was groomed by the CIA. Did you know that Obama can still be impeached?

[Philip]

Facts vs. a lot of secondhand hearsay: https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/gregg-j ... -democrats

[edwardmurphy]

Facts vs. a lot of secondhand hearsay: https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/gregg-j ... -democrats

Gregg Jarrett kinda seems a bit biased. You might recall that he's a hardcore Trump supporter who described the Mueller Investigation as an "illegitimate and corrupt" attempt by "the Deep State" to undermine the President. This despite the fact that it was an investigation into Russian interference in our elections, which happened, can be reasonably described as an act of war, and is a really big deal. But hey, if it hurts Liddle' Donny's feelings to have people saying he got Russian help then I guess we should all just pretend that he didn't. That seems reasonable.

Anyway, sure, if a Fox News pundit says that the impeachment investigation is a joke then I guess it must be.

[Philip]

Ed, he's also a legal analyst. Address what he actually says about hearsay and second-hand info that he says wouldn't hold up in court / a judge wouldn't allow - don't just paint him as a Trumpet.

[edwardmurphy]

Show me a single credible news source that has proof that Epstein raped prepubescent girls, and I'll take back what I said.

I've not seen any credible evidence, that Epstein was a pedophile.

He was a sick, twisted man, but stop calling him a pedophile.

While I 100% agree that Abe spouts a lot of nonsense, this one doesn't bother me. I have a tough time differentiating between an old guy who's sexually attracted to my 6 year old and an old guy who's sexually attracted to my 13 year old. I think Abe's word choice is close enough.

That said, I looked it up and the term for adult sexual attraction to pubescent kids is hebephilia. So it seems that Epstein was a hebephile. That, in my opinion, doesn't change much. I'm still glad the piece of [poop] is dead.

[DBowling]

Ed, he's also a legal analyst. Address what he actually says about hearsay and second-hand info that he says wouldn't hold up in court / a judge wouldn't allow - don't just paint him as a Trumpet.

Has Jarrett ever criticised any of Trump's illegal or corrupt behavior?
If not, then I would question his credibility as a legal analyst.

I may not agree with everything that Fox's Judge Andrew Napolitano says, but if he believes Trump has done something illegal or corrupt, he will come out and say it.

So as Fox legal analysts go, I think former Superior Court Judge Andrew Napolitano is a much more credible source of legal information than Gregg Jarrett.

My .02

[edwardmurphy]

Ed, he's also a legal analyst. Address what he actually says about hearsay and second-hand info that he says wouldn't hold up in court / a judge wouldn't allow - don't just paint him as a Trumpet.

Phil, he is a Trumpet. I read the article. It's a mix of facts, lies, and misrepresentations, weighted heavily toward the latter two.

Here's something from a Stanford Law Professor that covers the whistleblower and the claims about hearsay, which aren't even true.

These are disorienting days for everyone, but the past week has been particularly odd for those of us who teach and write about evidence law. We’re not used to seeing rules of evidence take center stage in national political discussions. But over the last week President Trump and two his allies have invoked evidence law in three different ways to attack the impeachment inquiry now underway in the House of Representatives. All three arguments were made on Twitter, where so much political discourse tends to take place these days. In each case, evidence law got mangled, and not in small ways.

The three rules of evidence at issue are the hearsay rule, the right to confrontation, and the attorney-client privilege.

Hearsay. Senator Lindsey Graham objected on Twitter to opening an impeachment inquiry based on “hearsay accusations.” “In America,” Graham claimed, “you can’t even get a parking ticket based on hearsay testimony.”

Graham graduated law school, so I suspect he knows better. Yes, the hearsay rule excludes much secondhand testimony from trials in the United States, but it is riddled with exceptions, and it does not apply at all outside of the courtroom. Not only can you get a parking ticket based on hearsay testimony, you can get charged with a felony based on hearsay testimony—and many defendants are. The hearsay rule doesn’t apply to police investigations or grand jury proceedings, and it most definitely does not apply to whistleblower complaints.

The whistleblower complaint regarding Trump’s pressure on Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Biden and his son relied in part on matters the whistleblower reported observing directly, and in part on matters he or she had heard from others. So it’s misleading to describe it as consisting entirely of “hearsay accusations.” But it is even more misleading to suggest that there is something wrong or even unusual about relying on secondhand information in the early stages of any kind of investigation. That happens all the time, including in the most serious of cases.

Confrontation. “Like every American,” President Trump tweeted last weekend, “I deserve to meet my accuser.” It’s nice to see the president underscoring the importance of procedural protections; he is right that the Constitution guarantees a right to confront adverse witnesses. But only in a criminal trial. There is no right to confrontation in a civil case, no matter how high the stakes. There is no right to confrontation in a criminal investigation, no matter how serious the charges. And there definitely, and by design, is no right to confrontation during the investigation of a whistleblower complaint. The whole point of whistleblower procedures is to allow individuals to report misconduct without fear of reprisal. The point is precisely to protect whistleblowers from the kind of threats and intimidation that have been filling the president’s Twitter stream over the last week.

Attorney-Client Privilege. Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, who appears to have been President Trump’s point man in pressuring the Ukraine government to investigate the Bidens, signaled over the weekend that he may not comply with congressional subpoenas regarding his role, because of “significant issues concerning legitimacy and constitutional and legal issues including, inter alia, attorney client and other privileges.” I have no idea what other “constitutional legal and issues” or other “privileges” he is talking about, and it’s not clear that Giuliani does, either. But the claim of attorney-client privilege is probably baseless.

The attorney-client privilege attaches to confidential communications between an attorney and a client in the course of legal representation. So it wouldn’t apply at all unless Giuliani was acting as a lawyer, and not as a freelance lobbyist of a foreign government on Trump’s behalf, which is what he appears to have been doing, judging by his own descriptions. (“I’m not acting as a lawyer,” Giuliani told a reporter from the Atlantic. “I’m acting as someone who has devoted most of his life to straightening out government.) And even if Giuliani was acting as a lawyer, the privilege would only cover his confidential conversations with his client—Donald Trump. It wouldn’t reach, for example, anything he said to the Ukrainians.

Finally, even communications between a lawyer and a client lose their privilege when they are made in an effort to carry out a crime or fraud. (Like Senator Graham, Giuliani went to law school, so he probably knows how the attorney-client privilege actually works. And as U.S. Attorney, Giuliani oversaw the prosecution of mob bosses, so he likely remembers the crime-fraud exception.) It’s not clear that the scheme to get the Ukrainians to investigate the Bidens would count as a crime or a fraud, but it might. And even if it doesn’t, the attorney-client privilege applies only to confidential communications between Giuliani and his client, and it doesn’t apply at all if—as appears to have been the case—Giuliani wasn’t acting as a lawyer in the first place.

Few people’s views about the impeachment inquiry are likely to depend on the niceties of evidence law. They don’t govern the initial stages of an impeachment inquiry, or of any other investigation. But if they are going to be invoked, it is important to get them right.

Regarding witnesses, there's Sondland, who was directly involved and who changed his testimony after it became clear that he was going to catch a perjury charge if he didn't.

“I said that resumption of the U.S. aid would likely not occur until Ukraine provided the public anticorruption statement that we had been discussing for many weeks”

That ain't hearsay.

And I'll close with an overview of the whole thing from NPR. It's chock full of links to supporting evidence if you want to know more.

The Ukraine Impeachment Inquiry Begins A New Phase This Week: What You Need To Know

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her lieutenants are turning a new page in their impeachment inquiry this week based on a principle familiar to classics scholars: repetitio mater studiorum.

"Repetition is the mother of all learning."

For news audiences, key details about the Ukraine affair have been told, so far, twice: First, in leaked and preliminary accounts of what witnesses told investigators behind closed doors, and then in the full transcripts released last week of their depositions.

This week, some witnesses will tell their stories for a third time, in open hearings scheduled before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

On Wednesday, lawmakers are scheduled to hear testimony from two diplomats, William Taylor, the acting U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, and George Kent, the deputy assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs.

On Friday, the committee is scheduled to hear from the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, who was recalled from her mission to Kyiv this spring in an important early stage of the Ukraine affair.

Pelosi, Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and others believe they've now established the broad facts of the case, having confirmed and reconfirmed them from a number of witnesses.

Now they want some of the key actors to tell their stories once more in open testimony to try to shape public opinion.

Many of the underlying facts aren't in dispute, including, in some instances, by the White House itself.

President Trump authorized his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani to pursue a parallel foreign policy in Ukraine separate from that being run by the professional national security and diplomatic experts within the government.

The White House sought to involve a few administration officials whom it considered reliable in that parallel policy, while excluding others it apparently didn't — including Yovanovitch and Kent.

The object of these arrangements, according to what witnesses have said, was a strategy to extract concessions from Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

Trump would agree to a White House meeting and to the continued flow of military assistance if Zelenskiy committed in public to investigating a conspiracy theory about the 2016 election interference and the family of former Vice President Joe Biden.

What Trump wanted was "nothing less than President Zelenskiy to go to microphone and say 'investigations, Biden, and Clinton,' " Kent told House investigators.

Another diplomat, Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, told Congress in an addendum to his original testimony that he made clear to a top Zelenskiy aide that engagement and military assistance depended on the public commitments that Trump wanted.

Fiona Hill, the former top Russia specialist on the National Security Council, described a key July 10 meeting at the White House in her deposition with House investigators.

Ukrainian officials at that conference pressed for a Zelenskiy meeting with Trump. Then-national security adviser John Bolton wouldn't commit, per Hill. But Sondland said he already had arranged a meeting with acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney — if the Ukrainians agreed to investigations.

Bolton ended the meeting, Hill said, and she also described him declaring he wanted no part of any "drug deal" involving political investigations.

The White House froze about $391 million worth of Ukraine military assistance in the summer even after it had been approved by the Defense Department and other agencies. The money was then released in September.

Trump has described his July 25 call with Zelenskiy as "perfect" and says there was nothing wrong with him seeking to quash what he called "corruption" in Ukraine. His supporters, meanwhile, have offered parallel defenses.

House Republicans, led by key Trump allies including Rep. Mark Meadows of North Carolina and Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, argue that this is a hearsay case.

None of the diplomats who've described the Ukraine affair heard directly from Trump or another principal, such as Mulvaney, about why and how they were acting, the Republicans say.

And when Sondland did phone Trump directly to ask him about the object of the policy he and others were carrying out, Sondland told members of Congress that the president said he wanted "nothing" from Ukraine — "no quid pro quo."

That defense was complicated by Sondland's revised account of his original testimony — and by Mulvaney's statement that all foreign policy is political and that the people in the administration work for the president.

It's their job to carry out his instructions, Mulvaney said, and everyone needs to "get over it."

The ineptitude and broad powers defenses

A few of Trump's supporters in the Senate have offered different defenses for the Ukraine affair.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., observed that Zelenskiy never made the public statement that Trump wanted and accordingly there was no exchange of favors. Moreover, the White House released the frozen military assistance.

Graham argued that the Trump administration was too incompetent to actually bring about a quid pro quo, and no president should be impeached for ineptitude.

Other defenders have taken a bigger-picture view: Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, said that he believes it's improper for an American president to invite foreign assistance into a U.S. political campaign — but not impeachable.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., meanwhile, has called all of Trump's conduct in the Ukraine case "legitimate" and within his authority.

These and other arguments likely would be aired if the impeachment case reaches a trial in the Senate.

Twenty Republicans would have to break ranks and vote with all Democrats to reach the constitutionally required two-thirds majority, or 67 votes, to convict and remove the president from office.

As things stand, Trump's red wall in the Senate appears likely to protect him.

Impeachment is the equivalent of a grand jury indictment, in which House lawmakers state whether they believe there is sufficient evidence of "high crimes and misdemeanors" to prompt a trial in the upper chamber.

Pelosi and her other deputies, including House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., have said that impeachment isn't a foregone conclusion and they must, as Nadler put it, "keep an open mind — and the appearance of an open mind."

Even so, only two House Democrats opposed the legislation formally initiating the impeachment inquiry. Some members have been talking about impeachment since not long after Trump was inaugurated.

Congress cannot stand by and abide what Trump has done, Pelosi argues, because if it does not respond to his actions in the Ukraine affair, its status as a check on the executive branch would become meaningless.

What isn't precisely clear yet is how much longer it may take for the House to complete its work and set up the next phase in the Senate. Pelosi and Nadler have been unwilling to state explicitly that they believe the House could vote on articles of impeachment by Christmas.

The process must take as long as it takes, Nadler said.

What is certain is that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., a key ally of the president, has begun to make plans for the Senate to spend several weeks on a trial. If House Democrats send over articles of impeachment, he said, Senate Republicans will take them up.

"We intend to do our constitutional responsibility," McConnell said.

The impeachment inquiry is not a joke.