"A string of newly resurfaced video clips of former national security adviser John Bolton spurred President Trump and his supporters Wednesday to highlight what they described as serious credibility questions -- raised by both Democrats and Republicans -- amid the Senate impeachment trial, as the president tweeted, 'GAME OVER!'

"In his tweet, Trump linked to an interview of Bolton in August 2019 where he discusses Ukraine policy. In the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty interview clip, Bolton made no mention of any illicit quid pro quo, and acknowledged, as Republicans have claimed, that combating 'corruption' in Ukraine was a 'high priority' for the Trump administration.

"Bolton also called Trump's communications with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky 'warm and cordial,' without mentioning any misconduct. It seemingly contradicted reported assertions in Bolton's forthcoming book that Trump explicitly told him he wanted to tie military aid to Ukraine to an investigation into Joe and Hunter Biden. (Zelensky has said his communications with Trump involved no pressure for any investigation.)"

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"Do Schumer and Pelosi want to sacrifice Biden in a bid to damage Trump?

"That's the choice they face. Either the nation moves on to other business and the election, or the parties engage in mutual destruction over Bolton and the Bidens.

"Acquittal and moving on is my hope. Mutual destruction is my fear."

"Harvard Law School Professor Alan Dershowitz, delivering a spirited constitutional defense of President Trump at his Senate impeachment trial Monday night, flatly turned toward House impeachment managers and declared they had picked 'dangerous' and 'wrong' charges against the president -- noting that neither 'abuse of power' nor 'obstruction of Congress' was remotely close to an impeachable offense as the framers had intended.

"In a dramatic primetime moment, the liberal constitutional law scholar reiterated that although he voted for Hillary Clinton, he could not find constitutional justification for the impeachment of a president for non-criminal conduct, or conduct that was not at least 'akin' to defined criminal conduct.

"'I'm sorry, House managers, you just picked the wrong criteria. You picked the most dangerous possible criteria to serve as a precedent for how we supervise and oversee future presidents,' Dershowitz told the House Democrats, including head House impeachment manager Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif.

"He said that 'all future presidents who serve with opposing legislative majorities' now face the 'realistic threat' of enduring 'vague charges of abuse or obstruction,' and added that a 'long list' of presidents have previously been accused of 'abuse of power' in various contexts without being formally impeached. ...

"'Abuse of power,' he argued, has been a 'promiscuously deployed' and 'vague' term throughout history. It should remain a merely 'political weapon' fit for 'campaign rhetoric,' Dershowitz said, as it has no standard definition nor meaningful constitutional relevance."

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"During his Friday presentation, Schiff tried to shame Republicans by playing a clip of the late Sen. John McCain talking about the threat that a democratic Ukraine posed to Putin's vision for the region. Yet he neglected to show the speech in which McCain described the Russian takeover of Crimea as 'the ultimate result' of Obama's 'feckless foreign policy where nobody believes in America's strength anymore.'

"When Russia first invaded Ukraine in March 2014, Schiff tried to deflect blame away from the Obama administration and onto the intelligence community. That same month, the California congressman cautioned against a tough response to Russia's aggression, warning that 'the challenge is, we do need to have some kind of working relationship with Russia. And while we can impose these costs and take these steps, we've got to be mindful of the fact that they can impose their own costs on us.'

"The impeachment case does not hinge on substantive arguments about U.S. policy toward Ukraine. The question is whether Trump abused power by delaying aid to Ukraine appropriated by Congress in an effort to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky into announcing an investigation into Trump's domestic political rival.

"But Democrats pushing the idea that Trump's delay in sending aid endangered U.S. national security doesn't pass the laugh test. Given the Obama legacy, Democrats presenting themselves as enduring agents of support for Ukraine and defenders of global security is plainly ridiculous."

"At least two of the FBI's surveillance applications to secretly monitor former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page lacked probable cause, according to a newly declassified summary of a Justice Department assessment released Thursday by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC).

"The DOJ's admission essentially means that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant authorizations to surveil Page, when stripped of the FBI's misinformation, did not meet the necessary legal threshold and should never have been issued. Democrats, including California Rep. Adam Schiff, had previously insisted the Page FISA warrants met 'rigorous' standards for probable cause, and mocked Republicans for suggesting otherwise.

"The June 2017 Page FISA warrant renewal, which was among the two deemed invalid by the DOJ, was approved by then-Acting FBI Director (and now CNN contributor) Andrew McCabe, as well as former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. The April 2017 warrant renewal was approved by then-FBI Director James Comey."

"Barely two weeks after Donald Trump took office, Eric Ciaramella -- the CIA analyst whose name was recently linked in a tweet by the president and mentioned by lawmakers as the anonymous 'whistleblower' who touched off Trump's impeachment -- was overheard in the White House discussing with another staffer how to remove the newly elected president from office, according to former colleagues.

"Sources told RealClearInvestigations the staffer with whom Ciaramella was speaking was Sean Misko. Both were Obama administration holdovers working in the Trump White House on foreign policy and national security issues. And both expressed anger over Trump's new 'America First' foreign policy, a sea change from President Obama's approach to international affairs.

"'Just days after he was sworn in they were already talking about trying to get rid of him,' said a White House colleague who overheard their conversation.

"'They weren't just bent on subverting his agenda,' the former official added. 'They were plotting to actually have him removed from office.'

"Misko left the White House last summer to join House impeachment manager Adam Schiff's committee, where sources say he offered 'guidance' to the whistleblower, who has been officially identified only as an intelligence officer in a complaint against Trump filed under whistleblower laws. Misko then helped run the impeachment inquiry based on that complaint as a top investigator for congressional Democrats."

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"Near the end of his inflammatory opening remarks Tuesday, Sen. Chuck Schumer tried his best to scale the rhetorical heights. He declared the moment 'deep and solemn' and said, 'The eyes of the Founding Fathers are upon us.'

"If they're watching, they're probably rolling over in their graves. Day One of the Trump impeachment trial couldn't possibly be what they had in mind.

"Yes, it was that bad, as history gave way to histrionics.

"It is said that Schumer has brought the raw partisan sensibility of the House to the Senate, and that's not a compliment. His gratuitously nasty speech illustrated the point and set the tone for the dispiriting day."

"Perhaps if Democrats had not spent the last three years calling Trump a Russian stooge and traitor then they would have some credibility today. However, the special counsel investigation and the unceasing march to impeach Trump for whatever they find now makes them impossible to take seriously. Despite their best efforts there was no public outcry for impeachment and no break in the ranks by Republicans. Yet Democrats marched on to hand us a partisan impeachment simply doomed to fail.

"The true threat to our democracy is not Trump. It is leaders who are using the system to accomplish what they cannot at the ballot box. For better or worse, Trump is our president. We had the right to elect him the first time, and we have the right to decide if he keeps his job for another term. This impeachment is about taking away that right. Let us have the trial, ensure it is fair, hear from witnesses, and allow the chips to fall where they may. But let us not pretend it is principled. It is a divisive and harmful scorched earth campaign designed to prevent Americans from repeating what the ruling class believes never should have been allowed in the first place."

"If there were such egregious misconduct that the public was convinced of the need to remove Trump, such that two-thirds of the Senate would ignore partisan ties and do just that, there would be no partisan stunts. Democratic leaders would have worked cooperatively with their GOP counterparts, as was done in prior impeachments. They would have told the president: 'Sure, you can have your lawyers here, and call whatever witnesses you want.' There would be a bipartisan sense that the president had done profound wrong. There would be a sense of history, not contest. Congressional leaders would want to be remembered as statesmen, not apparatchiks.

"If there were a real impeachable offense, there would be no fretting about witnesses at the trial. Senate leaders would be contemplating that, after hearing the case extensively presented by both sides, there might well be enough votes to convict without witnesses. But if there were an appetite for witnesses, witnesses would be called . . . as they were in Watergate. And just as in Watergate, if the president withheld vital evidence of appalling lawlessness, the public would not be broadly indifferent to administration stonewalling.

"If there were an obviously impeachable offense, the garrisons of Fort Knox could not have stopped Nancy Pelosi from personally marching impeachment articles into the Senate the second the House had adopted them -- in what would have been an overwhelming bipartisan vote (of the kind that Pelosi, not long ago, said would be imperative for a legitimate impeachment effort)."

"Federal prosecutors are scrutinizing whether former FBI Director James Comey leaked classified information about a possible Russian disinformation campaign to journalists, according to a bombshell New York Times report.

"The inquiry, which kicked off in recent months, appears to focus on information from documents that Dutch intelligence obtained from Russian computers and provided to the U.S. government, The NYT reported, citing people familiar with the matter. ...

"Dutch intelligence turned over a Russian analysis of a purported email exchange from 2016 between Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who was chair of the DNC, and Leonard Benardo, an official with the Open Society Foundations, a left-wing activist group, according to The NYT.

"The email showed Wasserman Schultz suggested to Benardo that then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch would ensure Hillary Clinton would not face prosecution over her private email server.

"Comey has publicly cited information about Lynch as one of the reasons he circumvented the Justice Department to announce that he was not recommending prosecution of Clinton in the email case."

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