Are these new rules fair?

Former senior White House official Tim Morrison has reportedly testified to congressional investigators that he was not concerned any illegal activities occurred during President Donald Trump’s phone call with the leader of Ukraine.

“I want to be clear, I was not concerned that anything illegal was discussed,” Morrison, the former National Security Council’s top adviser for Russian and European affairs, told lawmakers on Thursday, according to CBS News.

NEWS: CBS News has learned NSC’s Senior Director for European Affairs Tim Morrison was on the Trump-Zelensky call and told the investigating committees, “I want to be clear, I was not concerned that anything illegal was discussed.” cc @MajorCBS

— Arden Farhi (@ArdenFarhi) October 31, 2019

This story is developing. Check Breitbart News for updates. 

Has the whistleblower been identified? At least one controversial journalist believes he has the name — and he says that it “has been raised privately in impeachment depositions.”

In a Wednesday report, Paul Sperry of RealClearInvestigations wrote that the whistleblower’s “identity is an open secret inside the Beltway.” Furthermore, Sperry wrote that the whistleblower’s colleagues at the White House said the man “worked with a Democratic National Committee operative who dug up dirt on the Trump campaign during the 2016 election, inviting her into the White House for meetings.”

“More than two months after the official filed his complaint, pretty much all that’s known publicly about [the whistleblower] is that he is a CIA analyst who at one point was detailed to the White House and is now back working at the CIA,” Sperry’s report read.

“But the name of a government official fitting that description — Eric Ciaramella — has been raised privately in impeachment depositions, according to officials with direct knowledge of the proceedings, as well as in at least one open hearing held by a House committee not involved in the impeachment inquiry,” Sperry wrote. “Fearing their anonymous  witness could be exposed, Democrats this week blocked Republicans from asking more questions about him and intend to redact his name from all deposition transcripts.”

First, before we begin with the evidence, let’s here acknowledge that Sperry is a contentious figure in Beltway circles. He’s very clearly a Trump partisan; the Washington Examiner’s report on Sperry’s findings described him as a man “whom critics accuse of trading in disinformation and conspiracy theories.”

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The Examiner also said it had “established … that there was at least one significant factual inaccuracy in the report,” although it didn’t make it explicitly clear what that factual inaccuracy was.

That said, Sperry is a solid, reliable journalist, one who’s previously reported similar information about the whistleblower. Either way, caveat lector.

In his report, Sperry pointed out links between Ciaramella, a former intelligence analyst, and what’s known about the whistleblower thus far. Other details would also explain why the word “bias” is so frequently mentioned when the whistleblower is discussed.

“Federal documents reveal that the 33-year-old Ciaramella, a registered Democrat held over from the Obama White House, previously worked with former Vice President Joe Biden and former CIA Director John Brennan, a vocal critic of Trump who helped initiate the Russia ‘collusion’ investigation of the Trump campaign during the 2016 election,” Sperry wrote.

It was previously reported that the whistleblower had worked closely with Biden, a fact that would explain Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s original report on the complaint stating that the complainant had “some indicia of an arguable political bias … in favor of a rival political candidate.”

Other puzzle pieces seemed to fit, as well.

“A CIA officer specializing in Russia and Ukraine, Ciaramella was detailed over to the National Security Council from the agency in the summer of 2015, working under Susan Rice, President Obama’s national security adviser. He also worked closely with the former vice president,” the report read.

“Federal records show that Biden’s office invited Ciaramella to an October 2016 state luncheon the vice president hosted for Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi. Other invited guests included Brennan, as well as then-FBI Director James Comey and then-National Intelligence Director James Clapper.

“Several U.S. officials told RealClearInvestigations that the invitation that was extended to Ciaramella, a relatively low-level GS-13 federal employee, was unusual and signaled he was politically connected inside the Obama White House.

RELATED: Schiff Impeachment Witness: Trump Call to Ukraine Originated from Nat’l Security Staffers

“Former White House officials said Ciaramella worked on Ukrainian policy issues for Biden in 2015 and 2016, when the vice president was President Obama’s ‘point man’ for Ukraine. A Yale graduate, Ciaramella is said to speak Russian and Ukrainian, as well as Arabic. He had been assigned to the [National Security Council] by Brennan.”

Sperry also reported that “Ciaramella huddled for ‘guidance’ with the staff of House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, including former colleagues also held over from the Obama era whom Schiff’s office had recently recruited from the NSC.”

The whistleblower met with Schiff’s staff prior to filing his complaint.

One complication in naming Ciaramella as the whistleblower is that he hasn’t been in the White House since 2017, leaving slightly after the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller. He’s currently a CIA analyst.

“My recollection of Eric is that he was very smart and very passionate, particularly about Ukraine and Russia. That was his thing – Ukraine,” a former White House official told Sperry. “He didn’t exactly hide his passion with respect to what he thought was the right thing to do with Ukraine and Russia, and his views were at odds with the president’s policies.

“So I wouldn’t be surprised if he was the whistleblower.”

Furthermore, Ciaramella left the White House after concerns that he was leaking to the press, Sperry reported. One NSC official, according to Sperry, said that Ciaramella had been “accused of working against Trump and leaking against Trump.”

Sperry wrote that a 40-page dossier that’s been assembled by former colleagues of Ciaramella claimed that he was responsible for the “Putin fired Comey” story after an email he wrote to another agency — which went “outside his chain of command”  — stated that the president met with Russian diplomats at the White House one day after he fired the FBI director. That email would end up in the media.

The 40-page document has apparently convinced many Republicans that Ciaramella is the whistleblower. His name, according to Sperry, has been mentioned during the closed-door impeachment inquiry hearings on Capitol Hill, something that’s infuriated Democrats. Mentions of Ciaramella’s name have also allegedly caused Schiff, who’s heading the impeachment inquiry, to limit the questions being asked by Republicans.

Sperry wrote that Ciaramella had been mentioned during NSC official Fiona Hill’s testimony — Hill worked with Ciaramella in the West Wing and was another holdover from the Obama years — and that it had led to an exchange of invective during a hearing involving the Democrats’ latest star witness.

“During Tuesday’s deposition of NSC official Alexander Vindman, Democrats shut down a line of inquiry by Republicans because they said it risked revealing the identity of the whistleblower,” Sperry reported.

“Republicans wanted to know with whom Vindman spoke within the administration about his concerns regarding Trump’s call to Ukraine. But Schiff instructed the witness not to answer the questions, which reportedly sparked a shouting match between Democrats and Republicans.”

“Their reaction tells you something,” one official involved with the impeachment inquiry told Sperry.

Why is Ciaramella’s identity important? In addition to the leaks and his disagreement with the Trump administration’s Ukraine policy, there are his connections to the DNC operative.

“The operative, Alexandra Chalupa, a Ukrainian-American who supported Hillary Clinton, led an effort to link the Republican campaign to the Russian government,” Sperry wrote.

“Documents confirm the DNC opposition researcher attended at least one White House meeting with Ciaramella in November 2015.  She visited the White House with a number of Ukrainian officials lobbying the Obama administration for aid for Ukraine.”

“He knows her. He had her in the White House,” one of Ciaramella’s colleagues told Sperry.

According to the Washington Examiner, the whistleblower’s lawyers refused to confirm or deny the article’s veracity and reacted angrily to Sperry’s report — and to any outlet that would report on it.

“Our client is legally entitled to anonymity. Disclosure of the name of any person who may be suspected to be the whistleblower places that individual and their family in great physical danger,” lawyers Mark Zaid and Andrew Bakaj said in a statement to the Examiner.

“Any physical harm the individual and/or their family suffers as a result of disclosure means that the individuals and publications reporting such names will be personally liable for that harm. Such behavior is at the pinnacle of irresponsibility and is intentionally reckless.”

While we don’t necessarily agree — hence our report — it’s again worth noting that you should proceed with caution here.

Sperry is very often right and the report appears to be solidly well-sourced one. Ciaramella’s name has also appeared not infrequently in whistleblower speculation on social media and blogs.

That being said, RealClearInvestigations has changed the headline of the article not once but twice. The original, “‘Whistleblower’ Exposed,” was apparently too strong for the gatekeepers there. It got changed to “How ‘Whistleblower’ May Be Outed,” according to the Examiner, within two hours after publication. As of Thursday morning, the headline was “The Beltway’s ‘Whistleblower’ Furor Obsesses Over One Name.”

The report also includes almost no one on record. Given the sensitive nature of what Sperry is reporting, this isn’t too surprising. That being said, reports with anonymous sources are, by their very nature, more likely to be wrong. We can also guess that, given Sperry’s leanings, the people who are talking to him are likely pro-Trump in their political outlook; let’s not pretend that doesn’t make any difference.

With all of those asterisks, if this report is correct, the impeachment inquiry just got a lot more complicated for Democrats, particularly since they’ve been backing away from having the whistleblower testify. And, both Sperry and his sources seem pretty assured they’re on the right track.

“Everyone knows who he is. CNN knows. The Washington Post knows. The New York Times knows. Congress knows. The White House knows. Even the president knows who he is,” Fred Flietz, a former National Security Council chief of staff, told Sperry.

If he’s right, America is about to know, too.

We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.

The celebrated Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg has threatened to quit Facebook if the social media platform refuses to silence her critics.

“I am, like many others, questioning whether I should keep using Facebook or not,” Thunberg wrote in a Facebook post last week. “Allowing hate speech, the lack of fact-checking and, of course, the issues of interfering with democracy… are among many, many other things that are very upsetting.”

“The constant lies and conspiracy theories about me and countless others, of course, result in hate, death threats and ultimately violence. This could easily be stopped if Facebook wanted to. I find the lack of taking responsibility very disturbing,” she added.

The “Youth Climate Strike” founder has enjoyed unprecedented stardom for her climate activism, winning encomium from such leftist heavyweights as Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Elon Musk.

Musk said last month that Thunberg has “better reasoning & more heart than the vast majority of political leaders,” whereas Hillary called her a “gutsy woman” and former president Obama praised the 16-year-old as “one of our planet’s greatest advocates.”

Yet Ms. Thunberg is finding criticism enervating, suggesting that those who oppose her crusade are “interfering with democracy” and should be censored by Facebook.

The climate icon urged her fans to “challenge” Facebook to silence her antagonists, insisting that “if enough of us demand change — then change will come.”

Thunberg’s social media issues do not end with Facebook, however, and she has similarly complained that Twitter has not done a good job protecting her, either.

“It has come to my attention that a few people have been trying to impersonate me or falsely claim that they ‘represent’ me in order to communicate with political leaders, famous actors, singers and musicians,’” she said in an October 25 tweet.

“I apologize to anyone who’s been contacted — and maybe even misled by this kind of behavior. I hope that those who want to sincerely reach out to me will do so using the recognized channels,” she added.

The Swedish teen activist berated the United Nations General Assembly last month, scolding world leaders for having “stolen my dreams and my childhood.”

“This is all wrong,” Thunberg declared to the members. “I shouldn’t be up here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean, yet you all come to us young people for hope. How dare you?”

“People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing,” she said. “We are in the beginning of a mass extinction and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you?”

Follow @tdwilliamsrome

President Donald Trump on Wednesday cheered Covington Catholic High School student Nick Sandmann and his libel lawsuit against the Washington Post.

“A Federal Judge is allowing the Nick Sandman [sic] libel suit to move forward against the thoroughly disgusting Washington Post (which is no longer available at the White House!),” Trump wrote on Twitter. “He could now have a good chance of winning. Go Nick!”

Sandmann is suing media outlets for allegedly smearing him with false accusations that he intimidated Native American activist Nathan Phillips while wearing a red MAGA hat.

Judge William O. Bertelsman of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky partially reversed his ruling to dismiss the lawsuit on Monday, allowing Sandmann’s case to proceed.

“This is a huge win,” wrote Sandmann’s lawyer on Twitter. “Now Nick Sandmann will be able to start discovery and find out exactly what the reporters were thinking when they attacked Nicholas and the Covington Catholic kids.”

The defamation lawsuit requests $250 million in damages from the Washington Post for “a series of false and defamatory print and online articles” about Sandmann:

A Federal Judge is allowing the Nick Sandman libel suit to move forward against the thoroughly disgusting Washington Post (which is no longer available at the White House!). He could now have a good chance of winning. Go Nick!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 30, 2019

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration has unveiled a website aimed at helping millions of Americans with substance abuse issues learn about and locate treatment options.

FindTreatment.gov is the latest development in the administration’s effort to address the nation’s opioid crisis. The White House said it believes the site, which went up Wednesday, will enable the tens of millions of Americans with a variety of substance abuse and mental health issues to better access the care they need.

Kellyanne Conway, the counselor to President Donald Trump who is leading the White House response to the drug crisis, said the site is designed to provide “connectivity” between treatment providers and those who need help.

FindTreatment.gov modernizes an obscure directory of 13,000 licensed treatment providers maintained by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, adding user-friendly search criteria and tools. For instance, it will now allow users to search based on the type of treatment sought — such as inpatient, detox or telemedicine — by payment option and whether the treatment is medication-assisted.

Users also will be able to select between options that focus on youth, veterans and LGBT Americans.

The website also is meant to be an educational resource for those needing care and their loved ones with information on how to pay for treatment.

“We know that the drug crisis is indiscriminate, so we want the response to be indiscriminate,” Conway said.

The website was built in-house by government coders and is managed by the White House. The administration is calling FindTreatment.gov an example of “American-First design” that offers easy access to information without breaking the federal budget.

“We designed it with human-centered principles in mind,” Conway said. “We used real words for real people.”

The effort included employing a language expert for help with providing “destigmatizing” explanations for treatment options to make them more acceptable to those in need.

The site’s design was informed by more than 300 user feedback responses and 60 detailed interviews with those who have sought treatment, their family members and providers, the White House said.

The website builds on other efforts by the White House to address the drug crisis, including law enforcement efforts, securing billions of dollars from Congress for treatment and working with the private sector on promoting drug “take back” days.

More than 70,000 Americans died in 2017 from drug overdoses, the bulk of them involving opioids.

Future developments include plans to more closely integrate the site with the Department of Veterans Affairs to provide more targeted resources to the community of former service members.

Fox News contributor Dr. Michael Baden, a former New York City medical examiner, on Wednesday’s “Fox & Friends” suggested deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s autopsy points more to homicidal strangulation than suicide.

Epstein, who was found hanging in his prison cell at the high-security Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan, had been on suicide watch and was found after a “total breakdown” in security surveillance, Baden noted.

“I think that the evidence points toward homicide rather than suicide,” Baden, who was asked by Epstein’s family to investigate the death, declared.

He reasoned, “Because there are multiple — three fractures in the hyoid bone, in the thyroid cartilage that are very unusual for suicide and more indicative of strangulation, homicidal strangulation.

Baden explained that the ligature, the item used to tie something tightly, allegedly on Epstein’s neck was made from a sheet and could have DNA on it to provide more context into the death. He then questioned why the results of the DNA test have not been released yet.

He said, “There’s evidence here of homicide that should be investigated, to see if it is or isn’t homicide.

“It’s 80 days and the brother feels he’s getting the run-around,” added Baden.

Follow Trent Baker on Twitter @MagnifiTrent

Dallas Cowboys head coach Jason Garrett seems to expect that the team’s newly acquired defensive end Michael Bennett will stop his practice of remaining in the locker room for the national anthem, and instead join the team on the sidelines.

For the past two seasons, Bennett has stayed in the locker room during the anthem. Bennett was also one of the chief protesters starting in the 2016 season. But now that the Cowboys traded for Bennett just ahead of the NFL trade deadline, the question is: Did the team trade for Bennett’s protests, too?

The Cowboys coach was recently asked about Bennett and his past three seasons of protesting during the anthem. And it seems that Garrett thinks Bennett will end his anthem protest. During a presser, Garrett was asked about Bennett and said, “We don’t anticipate that being an issue. We’re excited to have him here. … We anticipate him doing what all of players do.”

New Cowboys DE Michael Bennett stayed in locker room during pregame national anthem this season with Patriots. Jason Garrett: “We don’t anticipate that being an issue. We’re excited to have him here. … We anticipate him doing what all of players do.” pic.twitter.com/5vx1L8Yycy

— Michael Gehlken (@GehlkenNFL) October 29, 2019

Jason Garrett said they anticipate Michael Bennett “doing what all of our players do” during the anthem. Bennett has stayed in the locker room the past two years in Philadelphia and New England

— Clarence Hill Jr (@clarencehilljr) October 29, 2019

It remains to be seen if Garrett is just setting himself up for a conflict with Bennett, or if there has been an arrangement ahead of the player’s trade.

Cowboys Owner Jerry Jones, has already made his proclamation about protesting during the anthem. Jones expects his players to respect the anthem. “Our policy is that you stand at the anthem, toe on the line,” Jones said in July of 2018.

We’ll soon find out. After all, the season is well under way.

Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter facebook.com/Warner.Todd.Huston.