While Nancy Pelosi threatens to withhold articles of impeachment passed Wednesday night by the House, Harvard Law Professor Noah Feldman says that President Trump isn't technically impeached until the House actually transmits the articles to the Senate.

Feldman, who testified in front of the House Judiciary Committee's impeachment proceedings earlier this month, argues in a Bloomberg Op-Ed that the framers' definition of impeachment "assumed that impeachment was a process, not just a House vote," and that "Strictly speaking, "impeachment" occurred - and occurs -- when the articles of impeachment are presented to the Senate for trial. And at that point, the Senate is obliged by the Constitution to hold a trial."

If the House does not communicate its impeachment to the Senate, it hasn't actually impeached the president. If the articles are not transmitted, Trump could legitimately say that he wasn't truly impeached at all.

That's because "impeachment" under the Constitution means the House sending its approved articles of to the Senate, with House managers standing up in the Senate and saying the president is impeached.

As for the headlines we saw after the House vote saying, "TRUMP IMPEACHED," those are a media shorthand, not a technically correct legal statement. So far, the House has voted to impeach (future tense) Trump. He isn't impeached (past tense) until the articles go to the Senate and the House members deliver the message. -Noah Feldman

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday he expects President Donald Trump to survive impeachment proceedings and that the legal move against him was a Democratic Party trying to get results "using other methods and means."

Late Wednesday, Trump became only the third president in history to be impeached by the House of Representatives. In a largely party-line vote, the House impeached Trump for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress over his attempt to pressure Ukraine's president into opening up investigations into his political rivals, including former Vice President Joe Biden, a leading contender to face Trump in the November election.

This sets up a trial in the Senate that will decide whether Trump remains in office.

At his annual year-end press conference in Moscow, Putin said he didn't expect to see Trump's reign to end via impeachment as his Republican Party would save him.

News Analysis

On March 9, 2016, Department of Justice (DOJ) oversight personnel learned that the FBI had been employing outside contractors who had access to raw Section 702 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) data, and retained that access after their work for the FBI was completed.

This information was disclosed in a 99-page FISA court ruling on April 26, 2017, that was declassified by Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats.

That wasn't an isolated incident and the improper access granted to outside contractors "seems to have been the result of deliberate decisionmaking" (footnote - page 87).

The FISA court noted the "FBI's apparent disregard of minimization rules" and questioned "whether the FBI may be engaging in similar disclosures of raw Section 702 information that have not been reported."

Three months before he boarded a plane in Cairo and six months before he made a refugee claim in Toronto, Canadian security officials deemed retired Brig.-Gen. Khaled Saber Abdelhamed Zahw "inadmissible" to Canada because of national security concerns.

Zahw was a "high-ranking" member of Egypt's military when it orchestrated a coup of President Mohamed Morsi's government in 2013, according to the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA).

An inadmissibility finding would keep most people out of Canada, but it didn't stop Zahw and his wife from obtaining valid visitor visas from the Canadian embassy in Egypt in April 2015.

This is because, according to internal government documents obtained by Global News, Canada has a secret program that allows certain "high-profile" foreign nationals who would otherwise be barred from entering the country due to national security concerns, war crimes, human rights violations and organized crime to be granted special "public policy" entry visas so long as it is in Canada's "national interest."

But exactly what "national interest" means in relation to this policy and how the government decides who gets this kind of visa is unclear.

That's because there's almost no information available about the program, and the government refuses to answer questions.

A court in Spain ruled Thursday that Catalonia's president Quim Torra was unfit to hold public office for 18 months because he failed to remove separatist symbols from public buildings during an election campaign.

The ruling will only come into effect if it is confirmed by Spain's Supreme Court, which could take months, and it could trigger an early election in the wealthy northeastern region.

Torra will make an address at 1:30 pm (1230 GMT) in response to the ruling, his office said in a statement.

In March, Spanish electoral authorities ordered Torra to remove separatist symbols to respect institutional neutrality ahead of parliamentary elections in April.

The secret federal court that approved the warrants to conduct covert surveillance of former Trump campaign advisor Carter Page has ordered that it be provided a report detailing how the Federal Bureau of Intelligence (FBI) plans to ensure that the missteps detailed in Justice Department Inspector General (IG) Michael Horowitz's review are never repeated.

The letter issued Tuesday by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), signed by Presiding Judge Rosemary M. Collyer, opens by citing the Office of Inspector General (OIG) report's findings that the FBI both "provided false information" and "withheld material information" in its efforts to secure warrants to surveil Page:

"IN RE ACCURACY CONCERNS REGARDING FBI MATTERS SUBMITTED TO THE FISC

"This order responds to reports that personnel of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) provided false information to the National Security Division (NSD) of the Department of Justice, and withheld material information from NSD which was detrimental to the FBI's case, in connection with four applications to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) for authority to conduct electronic surveillance of a U.S. citizen named Carter W. Page. When FBI personnel mislead NSD in the ways described above, they equally mislead the FISC."
...
"On December 9, 2019, the government filed with the FISC public and classified versions of the OIG Report. The OIG Report describes in detail the preparation of the four applications for electronic surveillance of Mr. Page. It documents troubling instances in which FBI personnel provided information to NSD which was unsupported or contradicted by information in their possession. It also describes several instances in which FBI personnel withheld from NSD information in their possession which was detrimental to their case for believing that Mr. Page was acting as an agent of a foreign power.

"In addition, while the fourth electronic surveillance application for Mr. Page was being prepared, an attorney in the FBI's Office of General Counsel (OGC) engaged in conduct that apparently was intended to mislead the FBI agent who ultimately swore to the facts in that application about whether Mr. Page had been a source of another government agency."

Trump's anti-Semitism envoy inaccurately equates anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism, and considers Israel "a central tenet" of Judaism - despite vocal opposition from within the global Jewish community... Carr demands: "Every law enforcement office and every prosecutorial agency must force everybody who has even a hint of antisemitism to undergo a tolerance program."

In his first month on the job, February 2019, the new Special Envoy for Monitoring and Combating anti-Semitism quickly defined his top priority: policing the world based on a far-right, Israel-centric definition of anti-Semitism. And in the months since, he has escalated his extremist actions.

Elan Carr redefined Judaism by including Zionism as "a central tenet" of the culture and religion - a position incompatible with many progressive Jewish groups.

Carr's State Department bio indicates that he served on the National Council of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), was a voting member of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, and was the international president of the Jewish fraternity Alpha Epsilon Pi; all are committed to Israel.

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii), a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, voted "present" on the two articles of impeachment against President Trump on Wednesday. This made her virtually the only the Democrat to effectively vote against sending the president's removal to the Senate. Rep. Jeff Van Drew (D-NJ) voted no on impeachment, but is expected to switch parties.

Gabbard is the first-ever representative to vote "present" during an impeachment inquiry, according to The Daily Beast.

In a statement, Gabbard said that Trump is guilty of wrongdoing, but that she could not endorse a "purely partisan process."

"When I cast my vote in support of the impeachment inquiry nearly three months ago, I said that in order to maintain the integrity of this solemn undertaking, it must not become a partisan endeavor," said Gabbard. "Tragically, that's what it has been."

Gabbard characterized her actions as a "stand for the center" — a center that neither excuses Trump's wrongdoing, nor supports his ousting mere months before a presidential election.

The UK national healthcare service has been infested by insatiable corporatism to the detriment of its patients, award-winning journalist John Pilger told RT. He warns that the situation is now set to get even worse.

The National Health Service (NHS) is on the edge the abyss and simple funding increase would hardly resolve this issue, the BAFTA award-winning documentary filmmaker told RT's Going Underground. The problem? UK healthcare has been plagued with a systemic flaw and its name is "corporate managerial culture that is rife throughout the NHS."

'Destructive corporatism'

Pilger believes that any additional funding would eventually go to management consultancy that he says only makes the situation in the NHS worse. In 2014 alone, between $350 million and $600 million worth of taxpayer money were spent on management consultancy, according to the University of Bristol.

The latest US sanctions are not just targeting Russia's Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline but the whole energy alliance between Russia and Europe, according to Alexander Rahr, research director at the German-Russian Forum.

RT talked to Rahr, following the approval of a bill by the US Senate, which would sanction companies involved in the construction of the Russian gas pipeline to Europe. The bill is expected to be signed by US President Donald Trump later this week.

European companies working on Nord Stream 2 will have enough time to complete the project before US sanctions are implemented, according to Rahr. Under the new bill they will have 30 days to stop their operations.

"European companies participating in Nord Stream 2 will have enough time and the US president knows that and he needs a bogeyman story for the Europeans. He understands that he can't stop Nord Stream 2, but the new bill will give him power in the future to pressure Europe."

There is certainly a risk that some companies cooperating in the energy sector with Russia will wind down operations and "run to the United States to save their business which is more profitable for them," Rahr explained. However, there are others that will stay and continue their business in Russia, he added.