Columbia University Professor Andrei Serban, who fled communism in Romania, resigned from the university over concerns that it has become communist. The breaking point for Serban was a push on campus for a transgender student to be cast as Juliet in Romeo & Juliet.
According to a report by The College Fix, Columbia University Professor Andrei Serban announced that he is resigning from his position over concerns that the university is communist. Serban has first-hand experience with communism — the former Columbia theater scholar fled communism in Romania earlier in life.
Serban cited several issues with Columbia’s current state of affairs. He gave several examples of the growing “social justice” dogma at Columbia, including a campaign to have a transgender student cast in one of the lead roles in a campus production of Romeo & Juliet.
Serban claims that he ultimately decided to resign after reflecting on the campus’ response to the controversy surrounding the Romeo & Juliet production, which took place earlier this year.
Serban recalled a hiring meeting during which he was told that he was not permitted to hire a white, male candidate for an open position.
It was at this meeting that the dean of the art school told them that there were “too many white professors, too many heterosexual men,” and that it would be best to hire a minority or a woman, or a gay man.
Serban, who was the director of the hiring committee, says that he was told that it could not be someone like him because he is a man that has been “married, a heterosexual man who has children.”
Stay tuned to Breitbart News for more updates on this story.
Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam (D) plans a war on guns after Democrats assume their newly elected positions and take control of his state’s legislature.
Northam introduced a number of gun controls following the May 31, 2019, Virginia Beach shooting in which 12 people were shot and killed with guns that were legally acquired. The gun control push failed to survive Republican opposition, but Northam sees hope for more Second Amendment restrictions now that Democrats will be in control.
Northam told CNN he will push universal background checks, as well as bans on “high volume magazines,” bump stocks, and more.
Ironically, these gun controls would not have prevented the Virginia Beach shooting. After all, the attacker acquired his guns “legally,” which intimates that he passed a background check, and a “high volume magazine” ban can be defeated by simply carrying more lower capacity magazines. The May 23, 2014, Santa Barbara gunman had 41 ten-round magazines in his car when he carried out his attack.
Moreover, bump stocks had nothing to do with the Virginia Beach attack, and such firearm accessories are already illegal at the federal level.
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. Sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange.
Office workers who use plastic utensils are being shamed by colleagues who use pictures of climate activist Greta Thunberg to push them into changing their “unapproved” behavior.
Pictures of the Swedish 16-year-old activist looking somewhat less than happy have been spotted in workplaces in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, catalogued by Haaretz journalist Allison Kaplan Sommer.
In one case, a black-and-white photo of the Swedish teenager hangs above a supply of plastic spoons – hinting workers should use the metal ones instead.
Another photo shows a much smaller Greta cut-out placed in a box of plastic spoons at the offices of Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
Her face is also seen in front of a stack of plastic cups in another office, emblazoned with the words: ‘Are you sure?’.
A trend in Tel Aviv workplace cafeterias – photos of a judgemental Greta Thunberg next to disposable utensils. Here is #1: pic.twitter.com/8Zk93RfZ5s
Sky News reports Tel Aviv recently said it would phase out single-use plastics in some child daycare facilities.
One of the images of the 16-year-old – placed on top of a mug filled with disposable cutlery – has the caption “How dare you” – a nod to the speech she gave at a U.N. summit in New York in September.
The deification of Greta Thunberg is being manifested in other ways beside workplace shaming.
As Breitbart News reported, Margaret Atwood has declared Thunberg to be the ‘Joan of Arc of the environment.’
The Canadian novelist, best known for her dystopian feminist fable The Handmaid’s Tale, was speaking on the podcast of the environmental extremist action group Extinction Rebellion.
Follow Simon Kent on Twitter:Follow @SunSimonKentor e-mail to: skent@breitbart.com
Did former Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch perjure herself during her appearance before the House impeachment inquiry? It sounds like political mudslinging — and yet, the evidence says that Yovanovitch definitely did something she says she didn’t. According to Fox News, emails obtained by the network show Yovanovitch communicating with a congressional staffer in the…
An election integrity watchdog has found 24,000 instances of irregularities among the voter rolls in Palm Beach County, Fla., according to a new report.
The Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF), a group that litigates to protect election integrity, discovered double voting by the same registrants, double registrants across state lines, deceased voters on rolls, and apparent noncitizens previously registered to vote in Palm Beach County following a three-month investigation involving office visits, records inspections, and voter roll audits.
The findings raise concerns in the swing state one year out from the 2020 elections. It was Florida’s election results that sent the 2000 presidential race between George W. Bush and Al Gore to the Supreme Court. Palm Beach County itself faced massive criticism as recently as the 2018 midterm elections when it could not finish three state-mandated recounts by imposed deadlines. The events led to the county’s supervisor of elections, Susan Bucher, being ousted from her position and the implementation of a $15 million voting overhaul.
"Concerns ranged from apparent clerical errors memorialized in voter records to evidence of dead and double voting," PILF’s report states. "Seemingly unlawful claims of business and government addresses were also found used as residential ones. Some individuals (unwillingly or otherwise) even demonstrated an ability to register multiple times under the same name, address, and date of birth thanks to human or computer system errors between the county elections office and Florida Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles personnel. Perhaps most alarming of all, apparent noncitizens were documented registering to vote in Palm Beach County—sometimes while admitting their immigration status on voter applications."
The group ultimately discovered 225 instances of double voting by the same registrant in 2016 and/or 2018; 20,479 double registrations across state lines; 68 uses of nonresidential addresses as county residences; 2,203 deceased voters on the voter roll; 139 instances of records of deceased voters casting ballots; 413 names appearing more than once on the county’s voter roll; and 68 apparent noncitizens previously registered to vote for a total average length of seven years.
A spokesman for the election integrity group said that the county needs to act on its voter rolls and has plenty of time to do so.
"If state sponsors of cyber attacks are targeting voter rolls like our intelligence services warn, then we need to take the year before 2020 to identify and resolve particular vulnerabilities like documented in Palm Beach County," Logan Churchwell, PILF’s communications director, told the Washington Free Beacon. "Most of these are systemic concerns—but some are human. None are insurmountable with the time we currently have. PILF has found these types of problems across the country—this is not just a Florida problem."
"If you are dedicated to getting in the way of proper voter list maintenance by trying to scare the public about ‘purges,’ then you are part of the problem," Churchwell said.
The findings were submitted to the county’s new supervisor of elections, Wendy S. Link, for a "line-by-line review to discern necessary list maintenance efforts according to federal and Florida statutes."
Palm Beach County’s supervisor of elections did not respond to request for comment on PILF’s findings by press time.
This clash of worldviews helps us to understand that what is going on in our nation is not a legitimate impeachment process but an attempt to wipe out a sitting president for personal and ideological reasons.
Rep. Rashida Tlaib was sworn in as a freshman Democratic congresswoman from Michigan on Jan. 3, 2019.
At a reception following the event, Tlaib, speaking about the president of the United States, said: “We’re gonna impeach the [expletive].”
It had to be unprecedented that a newly elected representative publicly used that kind of language about the nation’s president and expressed an intent to impeach him, with no support from leadership of her own party.
Were there grounds for impeachment? No.
The alleged basis was the Mueller investigation, which subsequently found that allegations that President Donald Trump and his campaign conspired with Russia to interfere with the presidential election were false.
What happened to the sacred principle of innocent until proven guilty?
Tlaib had already convicted Trump. He’s guilty for being Donald Trump and for what he stands for. The law is irrelevant.
Months later, she held a press conference calling Trump a racist and again calling for his impeachment. She noted: “I represent the third-poorest congressional district in this country. … I was elected to fight for them.”
The Bureau of Labor Statistics just issued its October jobs report, which The Wall Street Journal called “impressive.”
“The current job market is attracting middle- and working-class workers who have been on the sidelines for years,” reported the Journal.
And, black unemployment ticked down a notch to 5.4%, another new historic low.
But just as legal facts mean nothing to Tlaib, economic facts mean nothing.
Let’s now turn to another American woman of color: Nikki Haley, former South Carolina governor and former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
Haley recently spoke at a dinner at Washington’s American Enterprise Institute.
Haley, who as Republican governor of South Carolina had the Confederate flag removed from the grounds of the state Capitol, said at AEI: “When we retreat into identity and grievance politics, we make the choice for victimhood over citizenship. By constantly blaming others, we reject personal responsibility for ourselves, our families, and our communities.”
Are you listening, Congresswoman Tlaib?
Haley spoke about her parents, who immigrated to the U.S. from India: “We were different. We stood out. And my family felt the pain of being judged by our difference. … But my parents refused to let it define them. They chose citizenship over victimhood.”
Haley quoted Lincoln, who in 1862, when the country was torn apart by civil war, called America “the last best hope of Earth.”
She added:
President Trump is a disruptor. That makes … some people very mad. But if we are a country that lives by the rule of law, we must all accept that we have one president at a time and that president attained his office by the choice of the American people.
Haley hailed the American freedom and exceptionalism enshrined in our Declaration of Independence and Constitution, and noted how, at the U.N., representatives from despotic countries would approach her in private and express admiration for our country.
Tlaib is a poster child for her party. Despite the Russia conspiracy charges discredited by the Mueller report, Democrats have not given up looking for an excuse to impeach a president they hate.
Now we have the ridiculous claims from a tainted whistleblower about a conversation Trump had with the president of Ukraine.
It’s not about Russia or Ukraine. It’s about Haley or Tlaib; loving our free country or hating it; citizenship or victimhood; rule of law or guilty until proven innocent.
I meet so many wonderful Americans in my travels around the country.
In a major defeat for illegal alien advocates, voters in Tucson, Arizona, overwhelmingly rejected a proposal to designate it as the state’s one and only “sanctuary city.”
Tucson voters on Tuesday resoundingly opposed an initiative, known as Proposition 205, that would have given sweeping protections to illegal aliens and prohibited local law enforcement from working with Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. At the close of the polls, over 71% of voters rejected the measure.
Notably, the measure was opposed by every member of the Tucson City Council—all of whom are Democrats. The council members were concerned that its passage would lead to the loss of millions of dollars in federal and state funding. Leaders were very aware of the Trump administration’s fight against other local jurisdictions that have passed sanctuary policies, threatening to withhold federal grants as punishment.
Council members were also concerned that the measure would prohibit the city from working with federal law enforcement on issues that have no relation to immigration enforcement.
“It’s refreshing to see Tucson voters and council members work collectively to reject policies that undermine federal law and harbor criminal illegal aliens,” Matthew Tragesser, spokesperson at the Federation for American Immigration Reform, said in a Wednesday statement to The Daily Caller News Foundation.
“While there are more than 560 sanctuary jurisdictions throughout the country, citizens nationwide are voicing their concerns and stymieing dangerous sanctuary laws. At the state level, Florida recently adopted anti-sanctuary laws. At the local level, Montgomery County, Maryland, has experienced a spate of violent crimes at the hands of illegal aliens, and also just incorporated anti-sanctuary policies,” Tragesser continued.
The proposal’s defeat was more remarkable given the political and racial makeup of Tucson. The southern Arizona city is heavily populated by Hispanic individuals, and has long been a Democratic bastion in an otherwise red state. Every member of the city council, the mayor’s office, and all three congressional districts that cover the city are controlled by the Democratic Party.
Despite this, only 28.6% of voters supported the sanctuary measure Tuesday.
Proposition 205 would have largely restricted city police from inquiring about an individual’s immigration status. It would have also prevented police from cooperating with federal immigration authorities in regard to immigration raids and other activities by the agency.
The measure—also referred to as “Keeping Tucson Families Free and Together”—was introduced as a rebuke to a 2010 law passed by state legislators that bans sanctuary cities in Arizona. The People’s Defense Initiative, a pro-immigrant group, campaigned for its passage.
“We are incredibly proud of the hard work and inspiring commitment of our team and the hundreds of Tucsonans who made this campaign their very own,” read a statement from the People’s Defense Initiative following the vote, despite losing by huge margins. “Through this effort, we were able to uplift an important city-wide conversation that changed Tucson for the better.”
As Tucson residents soundly rejected the sanctuary proposal, they also elected Regina Romero as their next mayor—the first Latina to hold the position.
“Tucson’s rejected sanctuary proposition should serve as a model for other jurisdictions wishing to fight back against policies that minimize public safety and encourage more illegal immigration into communities,” Tragesser said.
Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, email licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.
To understand communism, it’s important to look at the man who was the first to institute a government dedicated to Karl Marx’s ideals: Vladimir Lenin.
When I was in college, I recall a conversation with several classmates who joked about throwing a get-together and naming it “The Communist Party.” They mocked the idea that anyone would fear this supposedly well-meaning ideology.
I wonder if they would
have been laughing if they were in the presence of gulag survivors.
This Nov. 7 marks the
102nd anniversary of Lenin’s rise to power in Russia, and Nov. 9 will mark the
30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the symbol of tyranny built by
the regime he forged.
Victor Sebestyen’s 2017
biography on Lenin—the first major biography of the Soviet leader to hit
Western bookshelves in two decades—documents his many crimes against humanity.
Lenin’s streak of cruelty began long before he came to power. By his early 20s, his zealous dedication to Marxism led him to believe that anything justified revolution.
Cruelty Without a Conscience
When a famine broke out
in the Volga region in 1891—one that would kill 400,000 people—Lenin welcomed
the event, hoping that it would topple the Czarist regime. His sisters,
dedicated revolutionaries themselves, assisted with relief efforts for the
starving and were shocked by his callous refusal to help.
Later, in 1905, when Czarist forces killed hundreds of striking workers and 86 children in Moscow, Lenin refused to mourn for the dead and, instead, hoped the event would further enflame class antagonisms. In his eyes, human lives were expendable in the pursuit of the workers’ paradise.
Lenin would spend a
career castigating and eliminating competitors who he believed had deviated
from what he considered “true” Marxism. As Sebestyen notes, though, “The first
major ‘deviationist’ was Lenin, who frequently turned Marxism on its head when
it didn’t suit his tactical purposes.”
In other words, Lenin was a hypocrite who would purge others for revising Marx, but reserved that right for himself.
Marx had asserted that broad,
impersonal (not individual), and material forces controlled the course of
history. He also didn’t envision the revolution of the urban proletariat
happening in the largely agrarian Russian Empire.
No matter—it could
happen in Russia, because Lenin said so and would make it happen (which he did).
So much for broad, impersonal forces.
Thus, Lenin ushered in
the longtime communist practice of manipulating ideology to obtain whatever was
desired.
Stoking the Flames of Revolution
Before taking power, Lenin spent much of his life under house arrest in Siberia or in exile abroad, living in the United Kingdom, France, and Switzerland—countries that one day would face an existential threat from the regime he would create.
He established himself
as a major leader in the underground communist movement. Reading Sebestyen’s
account makes it seem that Lenin was the head of some sort of secretive startup
enterprise.
Lenin was constantly raising funds and generating support. He wrote and printed subversive literature, distributing it through underground networks.
Vladimir Lenin in his office Oct. 16, 1918. (Photo: Laski Diffusion/Getty Images)
At times, it looked as though Lenin’s venture was on the brink of collapse, and no one else seemed to believe he would amount to anything—except, it seemed, Lenin himself.
He survived, in part, by living off his mother’s funds. History seems to indicate that dependency combined with radicalism is rarely a good thing. Osama bin Laden, too, was an extremist who lived off his family’s wealth while financing his Islamist activities.
A series of tragic incidents led this foundering communist to eventually take control over the world’s largest country by landmass. Germany invaded Russia, the Czar showed disastrous leadership, and Berlin ultimately sent the exiled Lenin back to Russia to destabilize it and remove it from the war.
It also helped Lenin’s cause that he had the perfect slogan for a suffering populace: “peace, land, and bread.”
While in exile, Lenin
railed against the imperial government for its oppressive ways—for instance,
its censorship of the opposition and dismissal of parliament. Of course, once
in power, Lenin repeated these policies and usually exceeded their cruelty, imprisoning
and confiscating the property of his opponents.
When it came to
hypocrisy, the sky was the limit for Lenin. Sebestyen recounts one instance in
which Lenin was indignant after his bicycle was stolen. The irony was surely
lost on him.
A Regime of Torture and Murder
Lenin appointed the
homicidal Felix Dzerzhinsky to head up the Cheka (the secret police) with
orders “to fight a merciless war against all enemies of the revolution. … We
are not in need of justice. It is war now.”
In less than a year,
hundreds, if not thousands, were executed—including Nicholas II and his family.
He would be the last emperor of Russia.
In a move that prefigured Mao Zedong’s later Cultural Revolution in China, Lenin incited class warfare across the Soviet Union.
He marked wealthy
peasants, or kulaks, as enemies of the revolution and encouraged violence
against them. He imposed fixed grain prices at low rates, straining peasants
who already were living on the margins, seized their grain, and left them to
starve.
When the peasants began resisting, Lenin ordered government officials to torture them or apply poison gas. He specifically ordered his henchman, Josef Stalin, to be ruthless in taking grain from Tsaritsyn.
Vladimir Lenin and Josef Stalin together in 1919. (Photo: Universal History Archive/Getty Images)
When those tactics contributed to yet another famine in the Volga area, he refused to provide relief and did so only after being forced by his advisers. American official Herbert Hoover, who was running humanitarian efforts in Europe during World War I, offered his services to the Soviet government.
For those who scoff at
the idea that communism was an inherently expansionist regime, Lenin created
Communist International, or “Comintern,” to spread the revolution around the
world. At times, more funds were spent to spread propaganda abroad (including
in the United States) than on famine relief.
The End of One Man, the Beginning of a Disaster
An assassination attempt
and a series of strokes weakened Lenin and, by 1923, he was dying. By then, he
came to believe Stalin was too heavy-handed to be his successor (he would know),
even saying as much in his famed Last Testament (which was later suppressed).
Lenin died in January 1924,
having failed to dislodge Stalin from power. As bad as Lenin was, somehow, even
greater suffering awaited the Russian people.
After a lifetime of serving the Soviet government at the highest levels, Vyacheslav Molotov reflected on the two men, saying that both were “hard men … harsh and stern.” He added, “Without a doubt, Lenin was harsher.”
The regime that Lenin
founded would eventually impose totalitarian dictatorships over its Eastern
European neighbors and threaten the existence of the West, but ultimately would
collapse in 1991 under the weight of its own contradictions.
A worker removes the head of a statue representing Vladimir Lenin in Berlin on Nov. 13, 1991. (Photo: Andreas Altwein/DPA/AFP via Getty Images)
The Soviet Union may no
longer exist today, but the Communist Party in China remains firmly entrenched.
Few regimes can match the levels of totalitarianism practiced under Lenin,
Stalin, and Mao, yet Beijing continues to disregard human life in its pursuit
of the promised Marxist utopia.
The United States has
never been a perfect country, but we can be thankful that it avoided the autocratic
and ideological extremes of the 20th century.
The far left is always looking to publicize injustices here at home. By that standard, the story of Lenin ought to receive more attention than any other.
Multiple forms of socialism, from hard Stalinism to European
redistribution, continue to fail.
Russia and China are still struggling with the legacy of
genocidal communism. Eastern Europe still suffers after decades of
Soviet-imposed socialist chaos.
Cuba, Nicaragua, North Korea, and Venezuela are unfree, poor, and failed states. Baathism—a synonym for pan-Arabic socialism—ruined the postwar Middle East.
The soft-socialist European Union countries are stagnant and
mostly dependent on the U.S. military for their protection.
In contrast, current American deregulation, tax cuts, and incentives, and record energy production have given the United States the strongest economy in the world.
So why, then, are two of the top three Democratic presidential contenders—Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren—either overtly or implicitly running on socialist agendas? Why are the heartthrobs of American progressives—Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.; Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich.; and Ilhan Omar, D-Minn.—calling for socialist redistributionist schemes?
Why do polls show that a majority of American millennials
have a favorable view of socialism?
There are lots of catalysts for the new socialism.
Massive immigration is changing the demography of the United States. The number of foreign-born U.S. residents and their children has been estimated at almost 60 million, or about 1 in 5 U.S. residents. Some 27% of California residents were born outside of America.
Many of these immigrants flee from poor areas of Latin America, Mexico, Africa, and Asia that were wrecked by statism and socialism. Often, they arrive in the U.S. unaware of economic and political alternatives to state socialism.
When they reach the U.S.—often without marketable skills and unable to speak English—many assume that America will simply offer a far better version of the statism from which they fled. Consequently, many take for granted that government will provide them an array of social services, and they become supportive of progressive socialism.
Another culprit for the new socialist craze is the strange
leftward drift of the very wealthy in Silicon Valley, in corporate America and
on Wall Street.
Some of the new progressive rich feel guilty about their
unprecedented wealth. So they champion redistribution as the sort of medieval
penance that alleviates guilt.
Yet the influential and monied classes usually are so well
off that higher taxes hardly affect them. Instead, redistributionist taxation
hurts the struggling middle classes.
In California, it became hip for wealthy leftists to promote socialism from their Malibu, Menlo Park, or Mill Valley enclaves—while still living as privileged capitalists. Meanwhile, it proved nearly impossible for the middle classes of Stockton and Bakersfield to cope with the reality of crushing taxes and terrible social services.
From 2008 to 2017, the now-multimillionaire Barack Obama,
first as candidate and then as president, used all sorts of cool socialist
slogans, from “spread the wealth around” and “now is not the time
to profit” to “you didn’t build that” and “at a certain
point you’ve made enough money.”
Universities bear much of the blame. Their manipulation of
the federal government to guarantee student loans empowered them to jack up
college costs without any accountability. Liberal college administrators and
faculty did not care much when graduates left campus poorly educated and unable
to market their expensive degrees.
More than 45 million borrowers now struggle with nearly $1.6 trillion in collective student debt, with climbing interest. That indebtedness has delayed—or ended—the traditional forces that encourage conservatism and traditionalism, such as getting married, having children, and buying a home.
Instead, a generation of single, childless, and mostly urban youth feels cheated that their high-priced degrees did not earn them competitive salaries. Millions of embittered college graduates will never be able to pay off what they owe—and want some entity to pay off their debts.
In paradoxical fashion, teenagers were considered savvy adults who were mature enough to take on gargantuan loans. But they were also treated like fragile preteens who were warned that the world outside their campus sanctuaries was downright mean, sexist, racist, homophobic, and unfair.
Finally, doctrinaire Republicans for decades mouthed orthodoxies of free rather than fair trade. They embraced the idea of creative destruction of industries, but without worrying about the real-life consequences for the unemployed in the hollowed-out, red-state interior.
Add up a lost generation of woke and broke college graduates, waves of impoverished immigrants without much knowledge of American economic traditions, wealthy advocates of boutique socialism, and asleep-at-the-wheel Republicans, and it becomes clear why historically destructive socialism is suddenly seen as cool.
Regrettably, sometimes the naive and disaffected must
relearn that their pie-in-the sky socialist medicine is far worse than the
perceived malady of inequality.
And unfortunately, when socialists gain power, they don’t destroy just themselves. They usually take everyone else down with them as well.
Oops! Adam Schiff’s star witness may have lied under oath — not a good look for public testimony slated next week in the “impeachment inquiry.” Last night, Tucker Carlson revealed that his show had received exclusive access to an email from the personal account of former Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch that contradicts testimony she offered under oath. The fired former ambassador who disagrees with Trump administration policy is a key witness for Adam Schiff’s impeachment efforts. The segment is embedded below [update: Fox News appears to hav eblocked the video for more than one second], and was explained online by Greg Re of Fox News:
Former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, a key witness in House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry, communicated via her personal email account with a Democratic congressional staffer concerning a “quite delicate” and “time-sensitive” matter — just two days after the whistleblower complaint that kickstarted the inquiry was filed, and a month before the complaint became public, emails obtained Thursday by Fox News showed.
The emails appear to contradict Yovanovitch’s deposition on Capitol Hill last month, in which she told U.S. Rep. Lee Zeldin, R-N.Y., about an email she received Aug. 14 from the staffer, Laura Carey — but indicated under oath that she never responded to it.
The communication came “from the Foreign Affairs Committee,” and “they wanted me to come in and talk about, I guess, the circumstances of my departure,” Yovanovitch testified, describing Carey’s initial email. “I alerted the State Department, because I’m still an employee, and so, matters are generally handled through the State Department.”
Yovanovitch continued: “So, she emailed me. I alerted the State Department and, you know, asked them to handle the correspondence. And, she emailed me again and said, you know, ‘Who should I be in touch with?'”
Fox News is told it is a breach of normal procedure for congressional staff to reach out to a current State Department employee at their personal email address for official business.
Asked directly whether she responded to Carey’s overtures, Yovanovitch testified only that someone in the “Legislative Affairs Office” at the State Department had responded to Carey, to the best of her knowledge.
Yovanovitch did not indicate that she had responded to Carey’s first email in any way, and testified explicitly that she did not reply to Carey’s follow-up email concerning whom she should contact at the State Department.
However, emails obtained by Fox News’ “Tucker Carlson Tonight” showed that in fact, Yovanovitch had responded to Carey’s initial Aug. 14 email, writing that she “would love to reconnect and look forward to chatting with you.”
Yovanovitch is currently scheduled to testify next Friday in the public hearings that Democrats plan. If she has previously lied under oath, she could turn into a huge embarrassment for Chairman Schiff and his colleagues.
Oops! Adam Schiff’s star witness may have lied under oath — not a good look for public testimony slated next week in the “impeachment inquiry.” Last night, Tucker Carlson revealed that his show had received exclusive access to an email from the personal account of former Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch that contradicts testimony she offered under oath. The fired former ambassador who disagrees with Trump administration policy is a key witness for Adam Schiff’s impeachment efforts. The segment is embedded below [update: Fox News appears to hav eblocked the video for more than one second], and was explained online by Greg Re of Fox News:
Former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, a key witness in House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry, communicated via her personal email account with a Democratic congressional staffer concerning a “quite delicate” and “time-sensitive” matter — just two days after the whistleblower complaint that kickstarted the inquiry was filed, and a month before the complaint became public, emails obtained Thursday by Fox News showed.
The emails appear to contradict Yovanovitch’s deposition on Capitol Hill last month, in which she told U.S. Rep. Lee Zeldin, R-N.Y., about an email she received Aug. 14 from the staffer, Laura Carey — but indicated under oath that she never responded to it.
The communication came “from the Foreign Affairs Committee,” and “they wanted me to come in and talk about, I guess, the circumstances of my departure,” Yovanovitch testified, describing Carey’s initial email. “I alerted the State Department, because I’m still an employee, and so, matters are generally handled through the State Department.”
Yovanovitch continued: “So, she emailed me. I alerted the State Department and, you know, asked them to handle the correspondence. And, she emailed me again and said, you know, ‘Who should I be in touch with?'”
Fox News is told it is a breach of normal procedure for congressional staff to reach out to a current State Department employee at their personal email address for official business.
Asked directly whether she responded to Carey’s overtures, Yovanovitch testified only that someone in the “Legislative Affairs Office” at the State Department had responded to Carey, to the best of her knowledge.
Yovanovitch did not indicate that she had responded to Carey’s first email in any way, and testified explicitly that she did not reply to Carey’s follow-up email concerning whom she should contact at the State Department.
However, emails obtained by Fox News’ “Tucker Carlson Tonight” showed that in fact, Yovanovitch had responded to Carey’s initial Aug. 14 email, writing that she “would love to reconnect and look forward to chatting with you.”
Yovanovitch is currently scheduled to testify next Friday in the public hearings that Democrats plan. If she has previously lied under oath, she could turn into a huge embarrassment for Chairman Schiff and his colleagues.
