Mornings on the Mall

Friday, November 22, 2019

Hosts: Mary Walter and Vince Coglianese

Executive Producer: Heather Hunter

Doug Wead, Larry Michael and Matt Schlapp joined WMAL on Friday!

5am – A/B/C              HOROWITZ/FBI:

• FBI employee altered key document related to surveillance of Trump adviser, DOJ inspector general says: reports. (Fox News) – An FBI lawyer manipulated a key investigative document related to the FBI’s secret surveillance of a former Trump campaign adviser — enough to change the substantive meaning of the document, Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz has determined, according to multiple reports. The development comes as Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., told Fox News that Horowitz’s comprehensive report on allegations of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant abuse against former Trump campaign aide Carter Page will be released on Dec. 9. The new evidence concerning the altered document, which was related to the FBI’s FISA court warrant application to surveil Page, is expected to be outlined in Horowitz’s upcoming report
• FBI Official Is Under Investigation For Allegedly Altering Russia Probe Documents: Report.     The Justice Department is investigating an FBI official for allegedly altering a document as part of the Trump-Russia probe, according to an explosive report.  CNN reported that the altered document was recovered as part of the Justice Department inspector general’s investigation into the FBI’s surveillance activities against Carter Page, a former Trump campaign adviser. The outlet cited several people briefed on the matter. Michael Horowitz, the inspector general, has turned the evidence over to John Durham, the U.S. attorney who was tapped earlier in 2019 to investigate the origins of the Russia investigation. Horowitz told Congress on Thursday that he plans to release a report of his investigation Dec. 9.   CNN did not identify the FBI official, or describe the document that was allegedly altered.

5am – D         Google’s new political ad rules unite Democratic and Republican campaigns in opposition. (Washington Post) — Google’s plan to restrict political advertisers from targeting their messages to narrow audiences left Democratic and Republican strategists in rare alignment, fearing that they had lost a key tool for identifying new supporters and gathering donations less than a year before the 2020 election.  The strong, bipartisan objections to Google’s plans, announced Wednesday, underscore how the tech giant and its Silicon Valley peers have remade U.S. politics — and how disruptive changes could be. These companies have offered presidential candidates and other campaigners once-unfathomable abilities to reach millions of Americans with targeted messages. But many strategists aren’t keen on giving up those valuable technologies even as the firms that offer them come under scrutiny for undermining democracy.  Under Google’s new policies, political advertisers will be able to target people based only on age, gender or zip code. That means candidates can no longer upload to Google lists of potential or likely voters and target their ads to potential matches, for example, a tactic that allowed them to focus on web users with specific political leanings. Nor can campaigns track and advertise to people after they visit a campaign’s website. […]    The tech industry’s efforts repeatedly have drawn sharp rebukes from Trump’s campaign, which trained its rhetorical fire on Google after it announced its changes Wednesday. “Political elites and Big Tech want to rig elections — the Democrat primary and 2020 general election included,” Brad Parscale, the president’s 2020 campaign manager, said in a statement.

5am – E         Chris Cuomo mocked after failing on-air to disprove Trump phone-call claim. (NY Post) — CNN host Chris Cuomo was mocked on Twitter Thursday for a failed attempt to disprove President Trump’s claim that he’s never been able to overhear other people’s nearby phone calls. The president earlier Thursday sent out a tweet trying to debunk impeachment testimony by witness David Holmes, who said he overheard a damning July 26 phone call between Ambassador Sondland and Trump. Donald J. Trump ‏ @realDonaldTrump I have been watching people making phone calls my entire life. My hearing is, and has been, great. Never have I been watching a person making a call, which was not on speakerphone, and been able to hear or understand a conversation. I’ve even tried, but to no avail. Try it live! 6:27 AM – 21 Nov 2019  / Cuomo, in a bid to prove Trump wrong, called his mom on air, first without the speakerphone on, in an attempt to show viewers and his co-hosts that they’d be able to hear. “Let’s just play with that for a second. Mom, can you hear me?” asks Cuomo while holding his phone out in front of him. Following a moment of awkward silence, he moved the phone toward CNN journalist Dana Bush. “Can you just say hello?” Cuomo asks, as the two sit idly for several seconds without a response. Cuomo then flips on the speakerphone, at which point his mom’s voice is audible. Following the failed stunt, another co-host notes, “I can’t hear your mother, Chris. You’re over there … I’m sitting across the table.”

6am – A         Coldplay say they will not tour to promote their new album because it would be harmful to the environment. (Daily Mail) — Coldplay will not tour for their newest album because it would be harmful to the environment, frontman Chris Martin has said. The band are currently in Jordan to perform two shows, from the album Everyday Life, which will be streamed live on YouTube on Friday. Martin, 42, told BBC News: ‘We’re taking time to see how our tour can be actively beneficial.’ He said Coldplay would be ‘disappointed’ if any future tours were not ‘carbon neutral’ and revealed the band want to make a ‘positive impact’. The frontman added: ‘Our dream is to have a show with no single use plastic, to have it be largely solar powered. ‘We’ve done a lot of big tours at this point. How do we turn it around so it’s not so much taking as giving?’ The band’s last world-wide tour was for A Head Full Of Dreams, in 2016 and 2017, where they performed 122 shows across four continents. Their new record will be released on Friday, with songs inspired by news reports about an Afghan gardener and a Nigerian hymn composer. To launch the album, Coldplay are performing two shows in Jordan – one at sunrise and  one at sunset – on Friday, which mirror the two halves of their record.  During an interview with the BBC ahead of the release, Martin admitted that the most difficult thing to consider environmentally is having to rely on flying. He also discussed new track Orphans, revealing that it was inspired by refugees who are ‘really just young people wanting to get on with their lives’.

6am – B/C     FIONA HILL NEWS:

• SEAN DAVIS: I’m not sure Fiona Hill understands how much she damaged the credibility of her testimony today when she falsely claimed that HPSCI Republicans denied Russian interference in the 2016 election. In reality, the HPSCI GOP wrote the definitive report on Russian interference.
• Fiona Hill: Russians Could Have ‘Played’ Christopher Steele.  Former National Security Council official Fiona Hill told Congress on Thursday that Russians likely “played” Christopher Steele, the former British spy whose anti-Trump dossier the FBI used to conduct surveillance against the Trump campaign. Appearing during the Trump impeachment hearings, Hill reportedly testified that she believed Steele’s investigation of President Donald Trump “was a rabbit hole.” Hill’s testimony about Steele was just a small sample of what she said about the former British spy during a closed-door deposition Nov. 14.
• Fiona Hill Says Longtime Clinton Crony Showed Her Steele Dossier Before It Was Published (VIDEO) Hill testified that Strobe Talbott, the former president of the Brookings Institution, shared the salacious document with her on Jan. 9, 2017. At the time, Hill was a director at Brookings, a left-of-center foreign policy think tank. She joined the Trump White House in early 2017 as senior director for European and Russian affairs on the National Security Council. A day after Hill’s exchange with Talbott, BuzzFeed published the dossier, which was authored by former British spy Christopher Steele and funded by the Clinton campaign and DNC.  Hill’s testimony establishes yet another link between Steele’s dossier work and Clinton world. Talbott is a longtime Clinton associate who served in the Bill Clinton administration in the 1990s. His brother-in-law is Cody Shearer, a Clinton-linked operative who is the author of a Trump dossier of his own that closely mirrors allegations made by Steele.

6am – D/E/F  IMPEACHMENT VOTE TIMELINE:

• Democrats and Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee have made their closing arguments as they ended impeachment hearings on Thursday. It was perhaps the last public hearing before they hand the probe, into President Trump’s dealings with Ukraine, over to the House Judiciary Committee. The Committee’s Democratic chairman, Adam Schiff, said the hearings show the president believes “he is above the law.” The top Republican, Rep. Devin Nunes, called it nothing but a “show trial.”
• Democrats are actively preparing for the next step in their eight-week-old investigation and the likely impeachment of President Donald Trump. (CNN) House Democrats say they are undeterred by the White House preventing first-hand witnesses from testifying before the House Intelligence Committee — and now are actively preparing for the next step in their eight-week-old investigation and the likely impeachment of President Donald Trump. Privately, Democrats are anticipating a busy December that will be filed with proceedings before the House Judiciary Committee, including public hearings and a markup, and a likely vote to impeach Trump on the House floor by Christmas Day, according to multiple Democratic sources, which would make him just the third President in history to be impeached. The House Intelligence Committee, along with two other panels, are writing a report detailing their findings, which is expected to serve as the basis for articles of impeachment that the House Judiciary Committee will consider.Democrats say they are still debating the size and scope of the articles, which are likely to focus on abuse of power, obstruction of justice, obstruction of Congress and bribery. But despite speaking with 17 witnesses behind closed doors, including 12 witnesses in just a week of public testimony, Democrats have not obtained crucial documents or spoken with several key officials because the White House and State Department have refused to comply with subpoenas.
• WAPO: White House and Republicans discuss limiting impeachment trial to two weeks.   A group of Republican senators and senior White House officials met privately Thursday to map out a strategy for a potential impeachment trial of President Trump, including rapid proceedings in the Senate that could be limited to about two weeks, according to multiple officials familiar with the talks. The prospect of an abbreviated trial is viewed by several Senate Republicans as a favorable middle ground — substantial enough to give the proceedings credence without risking greater damage to Trump by dragging on too long. […]   In addition to Graham, the meeting Thursday included Republican Sens. Mike Lee (Utah), Ron Johnson (Wis.), John Neely Kennedy (La.), Ted Cruz (Tex.) and Tom Cotton (Ark.), along with Cipollone; acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney; senior adviser and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner; and counselor Kellyanne Conway, according to the officials familiar with the discussions.

7am – A/B/C INTERVIEW – DOUG WEAD – author of new book “Inside Trump’s White House: The Real Story of His Presidency.”

• ABOUT DOUG WEAD: Doug Wead had served as special assistant to U.S. president George H. W. Bush, and has been credited with coining the phrase “compassionate conservative”.  Wead was a senior adviser to the Ron Paul 2012 Campaign, and the Rand Paul 2016 campaign
• ABOUT BOOK: On Tuesday, November 26th, New York Times bestselling author Doug Wead will release his new book, “Inside Trump’s White House: The Real Story of His Presidency.”  Wead offers a history of the Trump White House with the President, his family, and his staff talking openly and on the record. While other books rely on anonymous sources, Wead’s book features exclusive interviews with Pres. Trump and White House insiders, including chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, the Trump family: Jared and Ivanka Kushner, Donald Trump Jr, Eric and Lara Trump, and Tiffany Trump; along with never-before-reported stories and scoops. Wead takes the reader on an intimate view of life inside the Trump family bubble, how the various family members text each other daily, and how they help each other survive the never-ending criticism. Their goal is the President’s goal: to bring America back to greatness and to help all Americans, even those who attack them. Read endearing accounts of how Pres. Trump and the First Lady rely on each other to endure the false stories that bombard the White House daily. While other books are built on second and third hand information, “Inside Trump’s White House” taps into first person, primary sources, making it a valuable work of history as well as an entertaining read. Doug Wead is a New York Times bestselling author who has written more than thirty books. He has served as an adviser to two American presidents, co-authored a book with one of them and served on senior staff at the White House.

7am – D         INTERVIEW – LARRY MICHAEL – Voice of The Redskins – previewed Detroit Lions vs Washington Redskins – Sun 11/24 at 1 pm.

7am – E         Biden Seethes over Reporter Asking About Hunter’s Love Child. Joe Biden mocked a reporter on Thursday for asking about revelations that his youngest son, Hunter, fathered a child out of wedlock with an Arkansas woman.

8am – A         INTERVIEW – MATT SCHLAPP – chairman of the American Conservative Union – shared his thoughts on the impeachment hearings this week and what’s next.

 8am – B/C     FBI employee altered key document related to surveillance of Trump adviser, DOJ inspector general says: reports.  An FBI lawyer manipulated a key investigative document related to the FBI’s secret surveillance of a former Trump campaign adviser — enough to change the substantive meaning of the document, Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz has determined, according to multiple reports. The development comes as Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., told Fox News that Horowitz’s comprehensive report on allegations of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant abuse against former Trump campaign aide Carter Page will be released on Dec. 9. The new evidence concerning the altered document, which was related to the FBI’s FISA court warrant application to surveil Page, is expected to be outlined in Horowitz’s upcoming report

8am – D         Highlights of President Trump’s Fox & Friends interview