Victor Hanson’s Statement On Special Counsel Hur’s Report

Victor Davis Hanson’s Twitter statement on Special Counsel Hur’s report:
Biden is Too Demented to Be Found Guilty of Crimes,  But Not Too Demented to Be President? Special Counsel Robert Hur just found Joe Biden was guilty of violating national security laws in removing classified documents— after examining then Senator and Vice President Biden’s some 15-year habit of removing classified files to his offices and residences, where they were stored in unsecured fashion.
Period. End of story.
Hur then as a disinterested Special Counsel, not a local county prosecutor on a limited budget, logically would have indicted and prosecuted Biden.
It really is a jury’s decision to determine whether Biden was guilty or innocent, or whether he is pardoned/exempted by reason of dementia.
It is not the role of Hur, as a prosecutor and advocate for the state, to imagine how difficult his case might be to prove someone so incapacitated like Biden was guilty, as Hur’s own research and investigations had otherwise indicated that he was.) Is mindset, intention, or mental status a normal consideration of violations of national security laws, or is it the act itself?
So we are back to the James Comey defense: Hillary was guilty but in Lord and Savior Comey’s judgement no jury would likely convict a presidential candidate of such stature of violating national security laws. (NB:  After her reprieve, Hillary immediately claimed such extenuating circumstances were proof of her innocence! And Biden in a nanosecond likewise claimed he is now exonerated too, as was the administration’s plan all along).
Finally note the following:
1) The Left, Hur, and others believe that someone who has lost his faculties and who would not be allowed to drive a semi-truck, teach a class, diagnose a patient, argue a case, wire a house, or cook a hamburger is nevertheless fit enough to run the United States of America.
2) Note this same old/same old shocking but predictable asymmetry. Trump is a mere four years younger than Biden. The left fixated on the fact that he recently confused Nikki Hayley with Nancy Pelosi. Are we then to expect Jack Smith to follow the precedent of his fellow special counsel Hur, who was likewise appointed by Biden administration AG Merrick Garland and thus to conclude that although Trump violated the law by removing files, he seemed too confused to indict, given the likelihood of a sympathetic jury?
3) Hur himself tried to preemptively defend himself from the obvious conclusion that he extended special considerations not to indict Biden in a manner Jack Smith did not to Trump. Yet he omits that there were key differences in the two cases:
Biden had no putative right, as did Trump as President, to declassify files he took home.
Trump’s Mar-a-Lago walled and surveilled estate was far more secure than Biden’s rickety garage.
Biden had stored files for over a decade not less than two years.
Biden’s attorneys came forward just days before Smith was appointed on November 18, 2022. So it was not altruism that prompted their confession after Biden’s years of secretly hiding such illegality, but rather fear that Trump would soon be hounded for a ”crime” of which Biden was found out to be long guilty. So they went public to preempt that charge and falsely claim civic virtue.
This is just more of a long, disgusting pattern of biased applications of the law: Jan 6 vs 2020 May to October deadlier and more violent riots; election denialism of Trump versus Stacey Abrams’s nonstop claims of being the real governor of Georgia; “insurrection” called for in Trump’s speech vs Kamala Harris’s threats that the 2020 riots (“protests”) would and should keep going; the Trump 2020 election gambit versus the 2016 Leftwing coordinated effort to leverage electors into renouncing their states’ popular vote mandates. And so on.
No Department of Justice in our history has ever done more to undermine Americans’ confidence in the fair and equitable application of justice.
This is not the America we grew up in.
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A Different Perspective From What Is Generally Being Said

Robert DuChemin is a friend who writes at Substack. He recently posted an article about the young man in Massachusetts who leaked classified documents. I am probably not the only person who feels that there may be more to this story than meets the eye.

These are some off Robert’s observations:

The most revealing thing about the leak is that it proves the Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, lied to congress when he testified to the exact opposite of all three of those facts. He knew the truth yet chose to lie to Congress. He would be arrested if he had any connection to Donald J Trump, but since he plays for the evil team, he is allowed to walk free.

This is something that could have been prevented if we just followed common sense . . . and the law. In the USA, the Secretary of Defense must be a civilian.

10 US Code, Section 113, also states, in pertinent part:

“(a) . . .

(2) A person may not be appointed as Secretary of Defense—

(A) within seven years after relief from active duty as a commissioned officer of a regular component of an armed force in a grade below O–7; or

(B) within 10 years after relief from active duty as a commissioned officer of a regular component of an armed force in the grade of O–7 or above.”

Lloyd Austin, therefore, should not have been appointed Secretary of Defense. He left the military to take the job.

How did this happen?

Through corruption. When China Joe became president, his political party controlled both houses of Congress. They passed a resolution (which has the effect of a law) to waive that requirement specifically for Lloyd Austin. The vote was solidly along party lines. In other words, the communist party that controlled our government decided they did not want to abide by this law so they simply changed it, not permanently but on a one-time basis to suit their desire.

The article also notes:

The focus in the news on Teixeira is misplaced. It should be on the fact that our government is so corrupt that agency employees lie to their bosses, our elected representatives, and nothing happens to them. At the same time, people who believe in the freedom of information, telling the truth, and an open government are persecuted and destroyed.

The former head of the FBI, James Comey, admitted leaking confidential information. His crime was a far worse crime against our society because he held a position of trust. He is walking free while a kid whose testicles dropped about a week ago is going to have his life destroyed.

Somebody should be asking how we can claim to live in a country governed by the Rule of Law when we allow this to happen. They also may want to ask how in the world we entrusted a child with such sensitive information.

I have been asking that question ever since the Pentagon entrusted a guy who did not even know what sex he was, Bradley Manning, with confidential information that he leaked to the public after he decided to become Chelsea. His sexual confusion alone should have demonstrated such mental instability that he/she did not deserve a top-secret clearance.

The Obama pardoned Bradley/Chelsea because he/she released information that hurt the good guys. Jack, however, will never get pardoned as long as the same people whose lies he exposed remain in control of our government.

Please follow Robert on Substack. His articles are always informative and insightful. He is a lawyer by trade, and I wouldn’t want to be up against him in a courtroom.

Knowing Who The Players Are


On Tuesday, The U.K. Daily Mail posted an article about Elon Musk’s firing of Twitter’s general counsel James A. Baker.

The article reports:

Chief Twit Elon Musk has fired Twitter’s general counsel James A. Baker, citing his alleged involvement in suppressing the release of internal documents regarding Twitter’s censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop scandal.

‘In light of concerns about Baker’s possible role in suppression of information important to the public dialogue, he was exited from Twitter today,’ Musk wrote in a tweet on Tuesday.

Musk added that Baker’s explanation of the events surrounding the laptop saga was ‘unconvincing.’ 

Journalist Matt Taibbi, who released the first batch of internal files about the Hunter saga on Friday, claimed that Baker had been fired in part for ‘vetting the first batch of ‘Twitter Files” – without knowledge of new management.’ 

The article notes some of the previous work of James Baker:

Before joining Twitter, Baker was former FBI general counsel under Director James Comey, and played a key role in the saga surrounding the Bureau’s controversial probe into possible collusion between Russia and Donald Trump‘s 2016 campaign. 

The article also notes:

James Baker has long been in the crosshairs of Elon Musk, who on October 27 became his boss.

Baker played a key role in a series of events that led to Democrat lawyer Michael Sussmann going on trial in May, accused of lying to the FBI.

He was not accused of giving the FBI false information, but rather lying about who he worked for.

The saga began when Sussmann was given information from a group of data scientists who analyzed odd internet data they thought might suggest clandestine communications between a server for the Trump Organization and a server for Alfa Bank, a Kremlin-linked Russian financial institution.

Sussmann then texted Baker, at the time the bureau’s general counsel, to say he had information the FBI should be aware of.

‘I’m coming on my own — not on behalf of a client or company — want to help the bureau,’ Sussmann wrote in his text to Baker.

Baker testified that he was certain Sussmann was acting as an individual, and would likely not have met him were he working for the Clinton campaign.

Sussmann, a cybersecurity specialist, had worked for the Democratic Party in the context of Russia’s hacking of its servers, and Russia publishing emails from the servers.

Sussmann was also connected to the Democrats via one of his partners at the law firm Perkins Coie, Marc Elias, who was representing the Clinton campaign and hired Fusion GPS.

Yet multiple people – including Elias – testified that Sussmann was indeed acting on his own accord, and argued that actually going to the FBI was not in the interests of the Clinton campaign, which would have preferred a New York Times story drawing attention to the assertions.

The FBI later decided the allegations of links between the Trump campaign and the Russian bank were unfounded.

Musk tweeted during the trial that he thought Sussmann had ‘created an elaborate hoax’ about Russia, in a bid to help Clinton.

I wonder if Elon Musk understood how much housecleaning needed to be done when he bought Twitter.

It’s Not Easy Being Red…

On Thursday, Real Clear Politics posted an article illustrating the difference in American justice as it applies to those who support Democrat causes and those who support Republican causes. For those of us who remember some of the events of 2015 and 2016, the difference is alread obvious.

The article reports:

You get favorable treatment by the U.S. Department of Justice — especially when it comes to the handling, or mishandling, of classified information. You get to evade prosecution and early morning raids by dozens of armed FBI agents at your home, like what happened to former President Donald Trump last month. And then, years later if you’re Hillary Clinton, you get to rewrite history, spread misinformation to your millions of Twitter followers and not get censored or banned by Big Tech, which holds conservatives to a totally different standard than the left on its biased platforms.

On Tuesday, former Secretary of State and 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton unleashed a tweet storm about her infamous emails that were under FBI investigation while she ran for president against Trump. “I can’t believe we’re still talking about this, but my emails … As Trump’s problems continue to mount, the right is trying to make this about me again. There’s even a ‘Clinton Standard.’ The fact is that I had zero emails that were classified. Comey admitted he was wrong after he claimed I had classified emails. Trump’s own State Department, under two different Secretaries, found I had no classified emails. That’s right: ZERO. By contrast, Trump has hundreds of documents clearly marked classified, and the investigation just started. I’m more tired of talking about this than anyone, but here we are. If you’re interested in the facts, you can read more here.” She tweeted a link to an opinion piece by a liberal columnist parroting her fact-free claims.

The article concludes:

He (former FBI Director James B. Comey) added, “None of these e-mails should have been on any kind of unclassified system, but their presence is especially concerning because all of these e-mails were housed on unclassified personal servers not even supported by full-time security staff, like those found at Departments and Agencies of the U.S. Government — or even with a commercial service like Gmail.” 

So Clinton not only housed secret unauthorized email servers in her home — jeopardizing U.S. national security, as foreign enemies likely hacked her rogue servers according to the FBI — Team Hillary also deleted at least 30,000 emails under federal subpoena and destroyed devices with hammers without penalty. Yet on Wednesday this week while appearing on the TV show “The View,” Clinton haughtily told the hosts “no one is above the law” while discussing the documents seized from Trump’s Florida estate.  

Again, it’s good to be a Democrat. You get to trash political opponents in the public square and support prosecution of your enemies for similar acts you got away with. 

Talk about a corrupt “justice” system!

I don’t know if we will ever get back to blind justice. A lot depends on how Americans vote in November and how honest the mid-term election is.

In Case You Hadn’t Noticed The Double Standard

On Tuesday, The Daily Caller posted an article about the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago (yes, it was a raid). The article points out the contrast in the justification for the raid and historical precedent.

The article notes:

Unless scores of witnesses saw Donald Trump stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot someone, the FBI’s raid of his Mar-a-Lago home represents an unforgivable politicization of our justice system. The proof rests in the peaceful, undisturbed abodes of Hillary Clinton, Hunter Biden, Jim Biden, James Comey, Stefan Halper, Rodney Joffe and every other partisan the FBI investigated without violating the sanctuary of their homes.

…The FBI that raided the former president’s personal residence never sought a warrant to search Clinton’s homes after The New York Times reported on March 3, 2016, that, while secretary of State, she had used a private server. Weeks later Clinton, while plotting her upcoming run for president, wiped her entire server clean using “a sophisticated software program, BleachBit, which eventually made it extraordinarily difficult for the FBI to recover her emails, several thousand of which were successfully destroyed.”

Among the emails deleted were some 30 connected to the Benghazi murders that Clinton never supplied to the State Department upon leaving office — a fairly analogous, albeit more appalling scenario to the theory floated that agents raided Trump’s house on Monday to seize supposedly classified documents.

Agents also didn’t raid Clinton’s homes to recover the 13 mobile devices that the FBI believed the former secretary of State may have used to email her staff. Instead, the DOJ asked Clinton’s attorneys to provide agents the Blackberries and other devices. Less than two weeks later, her lawyers claimed “they were unable to locate any of these devices,” leaving the FBI “unable to acquire or forensically examine any of these 13 mobile devices.”

The article concludes:

Former Department of Justice attorney, Jeff Clark, another Trump loyalist, also saw his home raided by the FBI.

Against this two-pronged approach to justice, Americans need not lean conservative or support Trump to spot the scandal. And Americans need not care about politics to oppose the politicization of the DOJ and FBI: They just need to care about the future of the country — one that cannot survive long if such corruption and cronyism continues.

We need to remember that the President is the person who determines the classification of documents. He has that authority. There is speculation (which I believe will prove true) that the documents the FBI was after were the declassified documents relating to the FBI’s role in the Russiagate scandal. There are a number of powerful people who want those documents destroyed. Although they are declassified, they have not been released. Judicial Watch is suing the Justice Department to obtain them. Stay tuned.

The Company Town

On Saturday, American Greatness posted an article about how Washington, D.C., currently functions (or does not function). The article is titled, “Dismantle the D.C. Company Town.” What a great idea.

The article reports:

Gertrude Stein famously warned that it was important to know how far to go when going too far. 

It pains me to admit that Democrats seem to have a far better sense of all that than do Republicans. Perhaps it’s because Democrats have a visceral appreciation of William Hazlitt’s observation that “those who lack delicacy hold us in their power.” The Democrats, that is to say, long ago became expert at the game of holding their opponents to standards that they themselves violate not just with impunity but with ostentatious glee. 

The news last week that Michael Sussmann was found not guilty by a D.C. jury of his ideological peers was another thumb in the eye of the American so-called system of justice. Scary-looking super-cop John Durham had indicted Sussmann for the same thing that brought down Trump’s flash-in-the-pan National Security Advisor Mike Flynn—lying to the FBI—but no one who has been paying attention thought the two men would be treated the same way. Flynn was close to Donald Trump, therefore he must be considered a sacrificial beast, someone to be made an example of, a pariah. And so he was. 

Sussmann, by contrast, was a covert employee of the Hillary Clinton campaign. He helped get the Russian Collusion Delusion going and lied to the FBI in the process. But he was on the side of the regime party, so, as Jonathan Turley observed as the Sussmann case unfolded, he was afforded every consideration while Flynn found himself ruined. In this tale of two trials, we got a textbook illustration of how you can deploy a two-tier system of justice in which, as George Orwell put it in Animal Farm: All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others. 

The article also notes the recent arrest of Peter Navarro:

Sussmann joins a long list of Hillary cronies and Department of Justice lackeys (but I repeat myself). In any just world Andrew McCabe, Lisa Page, Peter Strzok, James Comey, Kevin Clinesmith, Loretta Lynch, and indeed Hillary herself would be behind bars. But this is our world, not any just world. 

And here’s some salt to rub in the wound. Peter Navarro, a former Trump economic advisor, was held in contempt of Congress because he refused to hand over documents to the Kangaroo Court, er . . . the Democrat-controlled January 6 inquisition. Eric Holder, Barack Obama’s self-declared “wingman” and Attorney General was also held in contempt of Congress for refusing to hand over documents. But not to worry. As CNN reported soon after the affront, “The White House and the Justice Department made clear Friday what had been expected all along: Attorney General Eric Holder will not face criminal prosecution under the contempt of Congress citation passed by the U.S. House.”

The article concludes:

In his Philosophical Investigations, Ludwig Wittgenstein says “all philosophical problems have the form ‘I have lost my way.’” The first response to being lost should be to retrace one’s steps in order to escape the maze. It’s time that Americans faced up to the reality that their governing apparat is a corrupt, self-engorging Leviathan. This is not, or not only, a partisan issue. Sure, Washington, D.C. is a fully paid-up concession of the Democratic Party, regularly voting some 93 to 95 percent Democratic. Sussmann was never going to be convicted there.

So a preliminary antiseptic, as I have argued elsewhere, would be to downgrade Washington in the political metabolism of the country. Indeed, I think the capital, if not the Capitol, ought to be dispersed. Washington, D.C., could continue to function as what it has already in part become: a sort of stage set where functionaries preen and simper before the cameras of a preposterous media and press corps. 

Donald Trump made a few half-hearted stabs at dismantling the lumbering machine that is the Washington establishment, but that seems like a long time ago and, besides, the swamp closed almost instantly to reassert its prerogatives. In his next term, however, he should make the destruction of the Washington machine one of his highest priorities. It won’t be easy. To be frank, I am not sure, absent some world-shaking calamity, it is even possible. But it is nevertheless necessary if anything resembling the republic as envisioned by the founders is to be salvaged.

We have wandered far from the republic the Founding Fathers created. I pray it is not too late to get it back.

Please follow the link above to read the entire article.

There Will Be No Consequences, But The Truth Does Matter

Slowly but surely, documents from the Russian Hoax are being declassified. These documents tell a story that is very different from the one told to Congress by the people involved. Unfortunately, most of the bureaucrats who lied under oath to Congress will probably never be held accountable for their lies.

Yesterday Just the News posted an article about a recent document that was declassified.

The article reports:

The very day in January 2017 that then-FBI Director James Comey signed a FISA surveillance warrant application declaring content from Christopher Steele’s dossier had been “verified,” he wrote President Obama’s outgoing intelligence community chief with a very different assessment of the British spy’s intelligence on Russia collusion, a newly released memo shows.

“We are not able to sufficiently corroborate the reporting,” Comey wrote in a Jan. 12, 2017 email to then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper that was declassified and made public through an open records lawsuit by the Southeastern Legal Foundation.

The memo recounts an internal debate inside the U.S. intelligence community during one of the most delicate moments in the FBI’s then six-month old Crossfire Hurricane probe.

CIA officials had already informed Comey’s FBI that the target of the FISA warrant, Carter Page, wasn’t a Russian spy but rather an asset helping U.S. intelligence. The bureau had received warnings about Steele and the reliability of his source network, including that it might have been compromised by Russian disinformation. Agents had also just recommended on Jan. 4, 2017 shutting down the probe’s inquiry into incoming National Security Adviser Michael Flynn for lack of evidence.

The FBI had been warned the previous summer that Hillary Clinton’s campaign may have planted the false Russia collusion story as a way to “vilify” Trump and distract from her email scandal, and agents were about to interview Steele’s primary sub-source, who would discount much of the information in the dossier attributed to him as bar talk and unconfirmed rumor not worthy of official intelligence.

The article concludes:

The FBI also failed to disclose to the FISA judge that the source known as Person 1 was under a separate counterintelligence investigation by the FBI, the IG report footnotes show.

In fact on Jan. 12, 2017, the very day Comey signed the FISA and engaged with Clapper, the FBI had received clear warnings in a report that some of Steele’s dossier information about Trump lawyer Michael Cohen was “part of a Russian disinformation campaign to denigrate U.S. foreign relations,” according to another declassified footnote from the IG report.

In other words, Comey’s representations to Clapper and sworn avowals of verification to the FISA court had already been directly undercut by his bureau’s own evidence.

Unfortunately I have no doubt that the illegal surveillance of American citizens is continuing under the Biden administration. Because there were no consequences under the Obama administration for these actions, there really is no incentive to end the illegal behavior.

 

People In The Obama Administration Seem To Have Very Faulty Memories

The Epoch Times reported yesterday that James Comey has no memory of receiving a recently declassified CIA memo about Hillary Clinton’s plan to smear President Trump with a charge of colluding with Russia.

The article reports:

The three-page referral, released by Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe to members of Congress in partly redacted form, apprised Comey and FBI Deputy Assistant Director Peter Strzok that intelligence suggested that Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton had approved a plan concerning the Trump campaign and Russia’s alleged hack of the Democratic National Committee.

In testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee last week, Comey claimed not to remember ever receiving the referral.

Ratcliffe sent copies of the partly redacted, three-page referral (pdf) to the chairmen and ranking members of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, alongside written notes (pdf) taken by CIA Director John Brennan.

Last week, Ratcliffe released a summary (pdf) of the contents of the documents, in which he alleged that Clinton approved the plan on July 26, 2016, and that Brennan’s handwritten notes concern a briefing he provided to President Barack Obama in late July. The information about the plan came from a Russian intelligence analysis obtained by U.S. authorities, according to Ratcliffe.

Please follow the link to the article to see the timeline.

The article concludes:

While a full accounting of the events is yet to be made public, the timing of the events suggests that the FBI may have pivoted its investigation of the DNC email hack into an investigation of the Trump campaign and Russia around the time Clinton allegedly approved the plan to stir up scandal around Trump and Russia.

Special counsel Robert Mueller, who took over the Crossfire Hurricane investigation in May 2017, eventually indicted Russian intelligence officers for allegedly hacking the DNC. The indictment suggests that the DNC email hack was part of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.

Last night President Trump authorized the total declassification of all documents related to Hillary Clinton’s email scandal and Obamagate without redactions. This could be very interesting. Hopefully people who used their government positions for political purposes will be held accountable.

This Is Frightening

Yesterday The Federalist posted an article about some information declassified and released by Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe yesterday.

The article reports:

Not only were Russian officials aware of Hillary Clinton’s campaign plan to accuse Donald Trump of being a Russian asset, top U.S. intelligence authorities knew of Russia’s knowledge of Clinton’s plans, Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe disclosed to congressional officials on Tuesday. Before they launched an investigation into whether Trump’s campaign was colluding with Russia, intelligence agencies learned that Russia knew of Clinton’s plans to tarnish Trump with the collusion smear.

At one point, former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director John Brennan personally briefed then-President Barack Obama and other top U.S. national security officials that Russia assessed Hillary Clinton had approved a plan on July 26, 2016, “to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by Russian security services,” according to Brennan’s handwritten notes.

Fired former FBI Director James Comey and fired former FBI counterintelligence official Peter Strzok were even sent an investigative referral on September 7, 2016, regarding Russia’s alleged knowledge of Clinton’s plans to smear Trump as a treasonous Russian agent, Ratcliffe wrote. Rather than investigate at the time whether Russian intelligence had infiltrated the Clinton operation’s anti-Trump campaign and sowed Russian disinformation within it, the FBI instead used unverified gossip from a suspected Russian agent to obtain federal warrants to spy on the Trump campaign.

There is no evidence the FBI ever investigated the Clinton campaign’s documented use of Russian agents and intelligence assets to interfere in the 2016 U.S. election, raising questions of whether the top federal law enforcement agency may have itself interfered in the election by using its powers to arbitrarily target the campaign of the outgoing administration’s political enemy.

The article concludes:

Clinton personally pushed the Russia collusion claims on multiple occasions. Following her surprising defeat, she immediately pivoted to a campaign of blaming Russia for election meddling with Trump’s assistance. Within the last few weeks, Clinton has repeated her claim that Trump stole the election from her with Russia’s help.

While Comey, Strzok, and other Obama-era FBI officials have claimed that the investigation of Trump was legally predicated, U.S. Attorney John Durham, who is investigating the propriety of the entire Crossfire Hurricane operation, has publicly stated, based on evidence he has obtained, that he does not necessarily believe that to be the case.

Please follow the link above to read the entire article. This abuse of federal power is something that needs to be dealt with. It is a safe bet that if Joe Biden wins the election, all of this corruption will be buried and the same techniques used against any opponent of the Democrats. At that point we will no longer have a recognizable America. The voters need to know what happened before the election. Unfortunately the deep state will prevent that from happening in order to continue its war against the American people.

This Could Get Very Interesting

Yesterday Julie Kelly at  American Greatness reported that Lin Wood, the attorney who represented Nick Sandmann and the other Covington High School students in their defamation lawsuits against various media outlets, has been hired by Carter Page.

The article reports:

On Sunday, Wood confirmed he will represent another innocent person maligned and defamed by the American news media: Carter Page, the Trump campaign associate who James Comey’s FBI accused of acting as an agent of Russia. 

Page was the target of four Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants. The most powerful, invasive government tools—usually reserved for suspected foreign terrorists—were unleashed against Page as a way to infiltrate and spy on Team Trump.

But the FISAs were only part of Page’s personal hell. Tipped off by Democratic operatives as a way to seed the concocted Trump-Russia collusion hoax before the presidential election, journalists started harassing Page in the summer of 2016. 

His first call, Page told me in 2018, was from a Wall Street Journal reporter hounding Page about an alleged meeting with a “senior Kremlin official” and the existence of compromising material that Russia allegedly had on Trump and Hillary Clinton. (Fusion GPS chief Glenn Simpson was a Journal reporter for years.)

In an interview with Page in 2018, he told me that his real nightmare began in September 2016 after Michael Isikoff, a veteran political journalist and writer for Yahoo News, reported that Page was under federal investigation for his ties to the Kremlin. 

“U.S. intelligence officials are seeking to determine whether an American businessman identified by Donald Trump as one of his foreign policy advisers has opened up private communications with senior Russian officials—including talks about the possible lifting of economic sanctions if the Republican nominee becomes president,” Isikoff disclosed on September 23, 2016. “The activities of Trump adviser Carter Page, who has extensive business interests in Russia, have been discussed with senior members of Congress during recent briefings about suspected efforts by Moscow to influence the presidential election.”

The article includes a tweet from Lin Wood which lists the targets of the lawsuits he is planning. Please follow the link to the article to see a list of targets the author of the article thinks should be added to the current list.

The Networks Have Totally Lost Their Credibility

Newsbusters posted an article today about an interview to be aired on ABC during prime time on Sunday.

The article reports:

On June 15, former National Security Adviser John Bolton sat down for an interview with ABC’s Martha Raddatz to promote his new “tell all” book, expected to rip the bark off the Trump White House. ABC is airing it Sunday during prime time….just like they aired a prime time interview in 2018 with former FBI director James Comey to promote his anti-Trump “tell all” book.

In 2007, Bolton wrote a book about his experience in government. No major network came calling for a prime time special. He wasn’t useful to them back then.

Now try to remember ABC offering a prime time special to an Obama insider who wrote a rip-roaring “tell-all” book. You’ll have a tough time. Because most publishers are liberals, and aren’t going to roll out the red carpet for that kind of book….even if the author is a liberal. So there was no insider “tell-all” for ABC to promote.

The article notes that there were never any prime time interviews for authors of tell-all books about the Obama administration.

The article continues:

To be fair, there were former Obama officials who came out with memoirs that may have said something negative about Obama…and they were attacked for it.

In 2014, Robert Gates, Obama’s first Secretary of Defense, was selling a book. As he sat in NBC’s studio wearing a neck brace, Today co-host Matt Lauer accused him of endangering the troops for having the audacity to criticize the sitting commander-in-chief: “[A]t a time when some 40,000 U.S. troops are in harm’s way, do you think that by calling him into question at this stage it is either dangerous or dishonorable?”

Now look back and imagine being called “dishonorable” by Matt Lauer.  

In 2013, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, fired by President Obama over critical comments from his staff in a Rolling Stone article, issued his memoirs, and did a round of TV interviews. The first one, with CBS Pentagon correspondent David Martin, mostly skipped Obama, except for McChrystal to express pain over his apparent “disloyalty” with Rolling Stone. There wasn’t any attack on Obama. The general did promote his book on a special edition of Hannity in prime time, and the Fox host talked through what happened with Obama, but there was no trashing of the president.

This same pattern emerged last September with Gen. James Mattis. CBS promoted his book in two interviews, but completely ignored his strong criticisms of Obama. He even called some of his choices “catastrophic.”

Instead, CBS This Morning co-host Anthony Mason asked about Trump: “What do you think the President got wrong about Syria?” Guest host Maria Elena Salinas pushed about his resignation: “Was it your decision to leave, or were you fired, or were you pushed into resigning or pressured into resigning?”

The article concludes:

There’s no need to pre-judge what John Bolton will say to ABC. But we can judge a long history of “tell all” imbalance, from the publishing houses to the TV studios. Republicans are mercilessly dissected. Democrats are carefully protected.

ABC is not noted for presenting both sides of the story. How much of the Comey interview was proven to be lies after documents were declassified? Those who claim to want to bring the country together (and accuse President Trump of dividing it) would do well to begin by reporting both sides of every story and letting the American people discern the truth.

When Lady Justice Removes Her Blindfold Things Go Downhill Quickly

This article is about the Michael Flynn case. I wanted to bring everyone up to date on some recent information about Judge Emmett Sullivan, but I also wanted to inform readers about some of the reasons the deep state does not like General Flynn.

First, the current news. The Gateway Pundit posted an article today which stated that in the past Judge Emmett Sullivan arranged a speaking gig for James Comey at Howard University for $100,000. That does not sound like a person who would be likely to be an impartial judge in the Flynn case. There are some other problems with Judge Emmett Sullivan as an impartial judge listed in the article. Please follow the link above to read the details.

Now, let’s review some past history. The information I am about to share came from the blogosphere. I am sure there are other sources, but these were the most available to me.

On December 4, 2017, Pacific Pundit reported:

Corrupt Andrew McCabe has long been overlooked in this whole “Russia-Collusion” BS that lead to the fake news of Mike Flynn claiming Trump as a POTUS candidate told him to contact the Russians. There McCabe is a Clinton hack who’s wife donated to Hillary’s BFF, Democrat Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe in the amount of $500,000. But there’s more to this whole Flynn story than what’s been reported by the fake news media. While working for Obama, Flynn intervened after a female employee named Robyn Gritz accused Andrew McCabe of sexual harassment. This enraged McCabe and it lead to the retaliation of investigating Flynn by McCabe and other hacks at the FBI. Funny how the media doesn’t report this story.

…Flynn’s intervention on behalf of Supervisory Special Agent Robyn Gritz was highly unusual, and included a letter in 2014 on his official Pentagon stationary, a public interview in 2015 supporting Gritz’s case and an offer to testify on her behalf. His offer put him as a hostile witness in a case against McCabe, who was soaring through the bureau’s leadership ranks.

The FBI sought to block Flynn’s support for the agent, asking a federal administrative law judge in May 2014 to keep Flynn and others from becoming a witness in her Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) case, memos obtained by Circa show. Two years later, the FBI opened its inquiry of Flynn.

The EEOC case, which is still pending, was serious enough to require McCabe to submit to a sworn statement to investigators, the documents show.

There’s more. On February 4, 2017, The Washington Free Beacon reported:

The abrupt resignation Monday evening of White House national security adviser Michael Flynn is the culmination of a secret, months-long campaign by former Obama administration confidantes to handicap President Donald Trump’s national security apparatus and preserve the nuclear deal with Iran, according to multiple sources in and out of the White House who described to the Washington Free Beacon a behind-the-scenes effort by these officials to plant a series of damaging stories about Flynn in the national media.

The effort, said to include former Obama administration adviser Ben Rhodes—the architect of a separate White House effort to create what he described as a pro-Iran echo chamber—included a small task force of Obama loyalists who deluged media outlets with stories aimed at eroding Flynn’s credibility, multiple sources revealed.

The operation primarily focused on discrediting Flynn, an opponent of the Iran nuclear deal, in order to handicap the Trump administration’s efforts to disclose secret details of the nuclear deal with Iran that had been long hidden by the Obama administration.

Insiders familiar with the anti-Flynn campaign told the Free Beacon that these Obama loyalists plotted in the months before Trump’s inauguration to establish a set of roadblocks before Trump’s national security team, which includes several prominent opponents of diplomacy with Iran. The Free Beacon first reported on this effort in January.

I am posting this to illustrate the undermining of President Trump that has been going on since before he took office. This is not acceptable behavior in a representative republic. If this is not dealt with and consequences felt, we will lose our republic.

As More Information Comes To Light, There Are More Questions

Everything surrounding the case against General Flynn has been looked at, analyzed, and dissected, but it seems that the more we learn, the more questions arise. The Federalist posted an article today about the weaponization of the intelligence community by the Obama administration. I suspect that what we are learning is only a taste of what is to come. The article at The Federalist is complex, and I suggest that you follow the link to read the entire article. I will attempt to summarize the high points.

The article reports:

The drip-drip-drip of newly declassified documents related to the Trump-Russia investigation, together with recent reports that a classified leak against former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn might not have come from an unmasking request, leaves little doubt that the Obama administration weaponized federal surveillance laws to target Trump associates and undermine the incoming administration.

The story thus far is complex, but it reveals a disturbing abuse of power by the Obama administration that suggests congressional reform of federal surveillance laws is needed to ensure this never happens again.

Just as a side note, I can assure you that if those who misused the intelligence community are not punished, we will see this again.

The article continues:

According to Rice’s bizarre email, which she wrote to herself as President Trump was being inaugurated on Jan. 20, 2017, Comey told Obama and Biden he had “some concerns that incoming NSA Flynn is speaking frequently with Russian Ambassador Kislyak,” and that “the level of communication is unusual.” How did Comey know this? Because the FBI had been spying on Flynn as part of a counterintelligence investigation it launched in August 2016.

Flynn’s conversations with the Russian ambassador became national news after someone in the Obama administration illegally leaked to Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, who revealed in a Jan. 12, 2017, column that Flynn had spoken to Kislyak several times on Dec. 29, 2017.

That touched off an effort by Republicans to find out who leaked to the Post. Last week, responding to a request from Sens. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell released a list of former senior Obama administration officials who requested the unmasking of Flynn between Nov. 30, 2016, and Jan. 12, 2017.

This is the important (often overlooked) fact:

But the dates of the unmasking requests don’t match up with Flynn’s Dec. 29 conversations with the Russian ambassador, which suggests Flynn was identified in an intelligence report that didn’t require the concealment of his identity. On Wednesday, the Washington Post reported that, according to an anonymous former senior U.S. official, “When the FBI circulated [the report], they included Flynn’s name from the beginning,” and that, “There were therefore no requests for the unmasking of that information.”

This report matches with a theory floated over the weekend by National Review Online’s Andrew McCarthy, that Flynn’s call with Kislyak might have been “intercepted under an intelligence program not subject to the masking rules, probably by the CIA or a friendly foreign spy service acting in a nod-and-wink arrangement with our intelligence community.”

Please follow the link to read the rest of the story–it is amazing.

Why Was This Redacted In The First Place?

The redacted part of the Susan Rice memo-to-self was declassified on Tuesday. The Gateway Pundit posted an article yesterday that includes a picture of the entire memo including the redacted version.

The article reports:

Acting DNI Richard Grenell on Tuesday declassified the remaining portion of Susan Rice’s email.

CBS reporter Catherine Herridge obtained the declassified email and released it to the public

It was previously known the junk Russia dossier and General Flynn’s calls to Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak were discussed in the secret meeting.

The newly declassified portion of the email once again implicates Barack Obama and Comey!

Barack Obama and Comey discussed Flynn’s communications with Kislyak.

Comey suggested to Obama in the meeting that the National Security Council [NSC] might not want to pass “sensitive information related to Russia” to then-incoming National Security Adviser General Mike Flynn.

“President Obama asked if Comey was saying that the NSC should not pass sensitive information related to Russia to Flynn. Comey replied “potentially” and noted “the level of communication (w/Russian Ambassador) is unusual.”

Andrew McCarthy posted an article about the memo at The National Review today.

Andrew McCarthy notes:

Try not to get dizzy. Rice has gone from claiming to have had no knowledge of Obama administration monitoring of Flynn and other Trump associates, to claiming no knowledge of any unmaskings of Trump associates, to admitting she was complicit in the unmaskings, to — now — a call for the recorded conversation between retired general Michael Flynn and Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak to be released because it would purportedly show that the Obama administration had good reason to be concerned about Flynn (y’know, the guy she said she had no idea they were investigating).

Naturally, we have now learned that Rice was deeply involved in the Obama administration’s Trump–Russia investigation, including its sub-investigation of Flynn, a top Trump campaign surrogate who was slated to replace Rice as national-security advisor when President Trump took office. Last night, I did a column for Fox News, analyzing the newly unredacted paragraph from Rice’s previously reported email memorializing a White House meeting on these subjects.

The meeting took place on January 5, 2017, and involved Rice, Obama, and Vice President Biden, the administration’s top political hierarchy on national-security matters, along with Obama’s top law-enforcement and counterintelligence officials, deputy attorney general Sally Yates (soon formally to take the acting AG role she was already performing), and FBI director James Comey. Prior redactions had already demonstrated that the meeting’s central purpose was to discuss the rationale for withholding intelligence about Russia from the incoming Trump national-security team.

The article at The National Review concludes:

It is vital that the documentary record, which should have been uncovered years ago, continue being brought to light. It is good that Trump’s National Intelligence director Ric Grenell is forcing the issue. But let’s not forget: When it turns out that Obama officials have intentionally inserted after-the-fact CYA memos into “the File,” we have to ask why they have done so . . . and to read what they’ve written with that in mind.

I strongly suggest that you follow the links to both of the above articles to read the details of the redacted part of this memo. It is becoming very obvious that the Obama administration was not interested in participating in a peaceful transfer of power.

 

Sunlight Is The Best Disinfactant

Townhall is reporting today that Acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell has declassified documents showing the Obama administration officials allegedly involved in the “unmasking” of Michael Flynn in transcripts of calls he had with Russia’s former ambassador, Sergey Kislyak.

The article reports:

Information on the Flynn-Kislyak phone call was leaked to The Washington Post in 2017, leading many to wonder whether an Obama administration official had illegally disclosed classified information.

In 2017, Rep. Devin Nunes, who was then the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said he had evidence “current and former government officials had easy access to U.S. person information and that it is possible that they used this information to achieve partisan political purposes, including the selective, anonymous leaking of such information.”

He continued, “The committee has learned that one official, whose position had no apparent intelligence-related function, made hundreds of unmasking requests during the final year of the Obama administration.”

The article notes:

Both former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper were pressed by GOP senators in 2017 about their role in alleged unmasking abuses, and denied any wrongdoing. There were reports that United Nations Ambassador Samantha Power unmasked hundreds of U.S. persons, but she has said this is “absolutely false.”

Former FBI Director James Comey told the House Intelligence Committee in 2017 that the National Security Agency, the CIA, the FBI, and the Justice Department all had the ability to unmask individuals.

U.S. Attorney John Durham is reportedly investigating the leaks of potentially classified information related to Flynn to the media in early 2017. (Washington Examiner)

There were many things that went on during the Obama administration regarding classified information that need to be examined. Things that should have remained classified were leaked for political purposes, and things that were classified solely for the purpose of hiding illegal surveillance activities by the administration were kept secret. It’s time to examine that and correct the misdeeds.

Bucket Five Is Released

Those of us who have followed the investigation into Crossfire Hurricane closely have been waiting for the information in Bucket Five to be released. That is the information that investigative reporters have cited from the beginning as having the real story behind the surveillance on the Trump campaign and the early days of the Trump presidency. The Conservative Treehouse posted an article today about the documents the Senate Judiciary Committee has released today. The article includes links and screenshots of information and is very detailed. I recommend that you follow the link and read the entire article, but I will includes some of the highlights here.

The article reports:

The documents include more Papadopoulos transcripts from wired conversations with FBI confidential human source Stefan Halper; and also for the first time less redacted version of all three Carter Page FISA applications.  It’s going to take some time to go through this.

The declassification and release includes some seriously interesting documents the DOJ submitted to the FISA court, as far back as July 2018, which completely destroy the prior claims made by Lisa Page, Peter Strzok, James Baker, James Comey, Andrew McCabe and their very vocal media and Lawfare defenders.   Here’s one example:

Lisa Page testified to congress, and claimed in media, that the FBI never had any contact with the Steele dossier material until September 2016.  However, the DOJ directly tells the FISA court that Chris Steele was funneling his information to the FBI in June 2016.

Obviously those involved in the surveillance never expected the truth to come out. They assumed that Hillary Clinton would be elected and their illegal activities would be buried in a sea of classified information. All Americans need to understand that if the Democrat party gains power in Washington, no one involved in this illegal surveillance will ever be held accountable and similar activities will continue in the future. Until the people involved in these activities are held accountable, there will be no guarantee that the civil rights of Americans will not be violated by our government in the future.

Waiting For The Other Shoe To Drop

The Gateway Pundit reported yesterday that according to a Sean Hannity podcast, John Solomon has stated that he knows of few witnesses who have appeared before a DC grand jury.

The article reports:

John Solomon told Hannity he believes that Durham’s charges will start with Kevin Clinesmith, the lawyer who fraudulently changed a document to deceive the FISA court.

“What about all the people that signed the FISA applications knowing…none of it was verified?” Hannity asked Solomon.

John Solomon said he doesn’t believe Comey, McCabe, Rosenstein, Yates and others will be prosecuted for signing the FISA applications, however they still may not be in the clear.

John Solomon did say that John Durham is focusing on false testimonies based on the grand jury subpoenas.

“It’s possible that some people who gave false representations to Congress could get prosecuted for those false representations,” he added.

The article goes on to list examples of people who perjured themselves before Congress–James Comey, Andrew McCabe and John Brennan. Please follow the link to the article to see the details of that perjury. At this point there is no indication these people will ever be held accountable for their crimes. In order to get a conviction, you would have to have a Washington, D.C., jury that was willing to convict them. I find that highly unlikely.

Two-Track Justice

Yesterday The National Review posted an article with the title, “With Liberty and Two-Track Justice for All.” Unless things change quickly, we will officially become a banana republic.

The article notes the contrasts in the way similar charges against Americans were handled:

• President Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, is doing seven and a half years at the Federal Correctional Institution in Loretto, Pa., for his pre-Trump tax and bank fraud. Manafort has endured solitary confinement.

• Former campaign aide George Papadopoulos served twelve days in the slammer for false statements to FBI officers. His steep legal bills and spooked clients drove him back into his parents’ house.

• Former national security adviser Michael Flynn awaits sentencing, and wants his charges dropped, after pleading guilty to false statements. Flynn reportedly took a plea after selling his house to pay his lawyers. DOJ prosecuted Flynn, although no less than Andrew McCabe acknowledged that “the two people who interviewed [Flynn] didn’t think he was lying.” Indeed, the G-men who spoke with Flynn later reported: “Throughout the interview, Flynn had a very ‘sure’ demeanor and did not give any indicators of deception. He did not parse his words or hesitate in any of his answers.” Never mind those details; Flynn still could wind up in an orange jump suit.

The article compares the above scenarios with the fate of James Comey:

As the OIG concluded:

Comey violated applicable policies and his Employment Agreement by failing to either surrender his copies of Memos 2, 4, 6, and 7 to the FBI or seek authorization to retain them; by releasing official FBI information and records to third parties without authorization; and by failing to immediately alert the FBI about his disclosures to his personal attorneys once he became aware in June 2017 that Memo 2 contained six words (four of which were names of foreign countries mentioned by the President) that the FBI had determined were classified at the “CONFIDENTIAL” level.

So, Comey did spill state secrets.

“By not safeguarding sensitive information obtained during the course of his FBI employment, and by using it to create public pressure for official action,” the OIG concluded in August, “Comey set a dangerous example for the over 35,000 current FBI employees — and the many thousands more former FBI employees — who similarly have access to or knowledge of non-public information.”

So, is Comey breaking rocks? Awaiting his prison sentence? Preparing for trial?

The article notes the activities of Hillary Clinton:

Despite 588 security violations that the State Department attributed to Hillary Clinton and her associates in the Emailgate scandal, as well as her role in purchasing the “dirty dossier” that triggered the Russia hoax, the former first lady has suffered zero consequences for an entire career of professional misconduct. Anyone who survived her husband’s presidency recalls Hillary as a latter-day Ma Barker, or Bonnie to Bill’s Clyde. Regardless, Hillary always walks away, Scot-free. And she always gets paid.

Her 2014 book Hard Choices scored her some $14 million. The next year, Business Insider reports, she made $12 million in speaking fees to well-connected organizations and huge corporations. A sample of these for 2015 included:

California Medical Association: $100,000 (via satellite!)

Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce: $150,000

Institute of Scrap Metal Recycling Industries: $225,000

National Automobile Dealers Association: $225,500

United Fresh Produce Association: $225,000

eBay Inc.: $315,000 (for a 20-minute speech)

Cisco: $325,000 (She reportedly sat onstage with the CEO)

Biotechnology Industry Organization: $335,000

Qualcomm Incorporated: $335,000

GTCR Private Equity: $780,000

Atop this steady cash, Hillary never stops playing presidential-campaign hokey-pokey: She puts her left foot in, she takes her left foot out, she puts her left foot in, and she shakes it all about. Rumors that Michael Bloomberg is considering her as a potential running mate gives this entitled woman yet another opportunity to show some West Wing ankle.

Lois Lerner also made the list of insiders with minimal consequences for breaking the law:

Lois Lerner ran the IRS unit that perpetrated the systematic political profiling of conservative groups that sought tax-exempt designation. IRS’s wingtip-dragging, relentless demands for paperwork, and Orwellian questions (“please provide the percentage of time your organization spends on prayer groups”) all subjected to extra scrutiny 94 percent of center-right and Tea Party groups that sought 501(c)(3) and (c)(4)status, versus 6 percent of analogous liberal outfits, the House Ways and Means Committee found in August 2013. Consequently, rather than educate citizens on limited-government principles before the 2012 election, scores of these organizations either failed to launch or did so, only to run out of fuel and tumble back to earth.

Lerner supervised this virtual gag-the-Right scheme. When GOP congressional overseers sought Lerner’s laptop hard drive, they learned that it was shipped to a Federal Bureau of Prisons recycling facility in Florida. As the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration testified in 2015, “this shipment of hard drives was destroyed using an AMERI-SHRED AMS-750HD shredder.” The industrial-strength machine chopped the drives into quarter-sized pieces. The Feds then sold this material as scrap.

Was Lerner punished? Reprimanded? Ordered to stand in the corner for 20 minutes?

Lerner was placed on administrative leave. This is Potomac for “paid vacation.” She received her $177,000 annual salary while she stayed home and relaxed. (If she were U.S. senator Lois Lerner, she would have earned $3,000 less.) According to the Washington Post, “Lerner has received a $100,000 annual pension since retiring from the IRS in September 2013, and she and her husband, an attorney with a national law firm, live in a $2.5 million home in Bethesda,” Maryland, where she walks her dogs and gardens outside her 6,500-square-foot house.

The article concludes:

America needs equal justice, but neither undue leniency nor undeserved cruelty toward Stone.

Given Stone’s sentence, McCabe, Comey, Clinton, and Lerner should be locked up.

But since those four got zero prison time, plus book deals, TV contracts, and a hefty pension, then Roger Stone deserves to walk into a green room at Fox News Channel. I would expect to congratulate him there on his new contributor agreement and hear all about his upcoming memoir.

Fair is fair.

I agree.

The Networks Are Slowly Becoming Obvious

Yesterday One America News reported the following:

New documents have exposed a former Department of Justice official’s alleged involvement in the firing of former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.

According to newly released notes from a 2017 interview, former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein sought out James Comey’s advice about appointing a special counsel. These notes, in addition to 300 pages of witness interviews, suggest McCabe told investigators Rosenstein asked him to get Comey’s opinion on whether a special counsel should be appointed.

Comey was stripped of his role as leader of the Russia investigation after the president determined he was unfit to to lead the bureau. Rosenstein then appointed Robert Mueller to take on the Russia probe, who’s investigation did not establish a criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin.

The article includes a quote from Tom Fitton, President of Judicial Watch:

“You notice this with the Ukraine argument, they don’t want the President to investigate what went on. Its now expanded from Ukraine to the President wasn’t allowed to make entrees to his attorney general, who is investigating this spying operation on candidate Trump…it’s incredible. They want to criminalize investigations of this activity.”

— Tom Fitton, President – Judicial Watch

It is becoming more obvious every day that the ‘insurance policy’ was set up before President Trump was sworn in and planned carefully with the goal of taking him out of office. The people responsible need to face justice.

 

Slowly Getting To The Truth

Fox News posted an article today about a recent comment by James Comey. In an interview with Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace, James Comey stated that the recently released Justice Department Inspector General’s report on the launch of the FBI’s Russia investigation and their use of the surveillance process showed that he was “overconfident” when he defended his former agency’s use of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). I don’t mean to be difficult, but I think you could fertilize your garden with that statement. Remember, it was James Comey who leaked information to his friend to leak to The New York Times in order to promote the idea that a Special Prosecutor was needed. It was James Comey who listed all the crimes committed by Hillary Clinton and then said they weren’t really crimes because she didn’t mean to commit them. It was James Comey who briefed the President on the Steele Dossier so that it could be leaked to the press. It was James Comey who paved the way for the entire phony Russia investigation that cost taxpayers millions and prevented Congress from actually accomplishing anything for the good of the country. Keep that in mind as he proclaims he had no idea what was going on.

The article notes:

“He’s right, I was wrong,” Comey said about how the FBI used the FISA process, adding, “I was overconfident as director in our procedures,” and that what happened “was not acceptable.”

Horowitz did make it clear that he believes the FBI’s investigation of Russian election interference and possible connections with the Trump campaign was properly initiated, but he did note that this is based on a “low threshold.” He also concluded that there was no testimonial or documentary evidence to show that the investigation started due to any political bias, but said the issue of bias “gets murkier” when it comes to the various issues with the FISA process.

That process included the reliance on information gathered by former British spy Christopher Steele as part of opposition research conducted by Fusion GPS for the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign. Horowitz’s report stated that government attorneys were hesitant to approve a FISA warrant application until they relied on unverified information from Steele. That information also was used in subsequent renewals for the FISA warrant.

Comey downplayed the role of Steele’s information in obtaining the FISA warrant against Page, claiming Sunday that it was “not a huge part of the presentation to the court,” just part of the information included in the warrant application.

It will be interesting to see if James Comey is included when indictments are handed out. My bet is that he will be. He should at least be held accountable for leaking information.

I Don’t Think This Is The Right Answer

Breitbart reported yesterday that Senator Lindsey Graham has stated that he would work to end a Senate impeachment trial of President Donald Trump as soon as possible. That is not the right way to handle this. The American people have been bombarded with ‘impeach President Trump’ for almost three years. They have heard lie after lie and accusation after accusation about what the President is or has done. An impeachment trial in the Senate is probably the only chance the President will get to present the evidence which disputes those lies. We need a Senate trial that calls as witnesses the Ukrainian prosecutor that was fired, Hunter Biden, former Vice-President Joe Biden, Adam Schiff, Andrew Weissmann, Lisa Page, Peter Strzok, Andrew McCabe, James Comey, etc. These people need to be forced to testify under oath about their actions from 2016 forward. FISA Warrants need to be looked at.

The article reports:

Graham said, “Here’s what I’m going to do with the trial: I’m going to try to get it over as quickly as possible, listen to the House case — let them present their case. If there’s nothing new and dramatic, I would be ready to vote, and we can do all this other stuff in congressional oversight.”

He added, “I am saying that I’m going to end this as quickly as I can for the good of the country. When 51 of us say we’ve heard enough, the trial is going to end. The president’s going to be acquitted. He may want to call Schiff. He may want to call Hunter Biden. He may want to call Joe Biden. But here’s my advice to the president: if the Senate is ready to vote and acquit you, you should celebrate that. We can look at this other stuff outside of impeachment. Impeachment is tearing the country apart. I don’t want to give it any more credibility than it deserves.”

I totally disagree. It is time for the whole truth to come out. If those responsible for the attempted coup are not held responsible, their actions will be a template for the future removal of duly-elected presidents.

An Interesting Perspective From Someone Who Would Know

James A. Gagliano (@JamesAGagliano) worked in the FBI for 25 years. He is a law enforcement analyst for CNN and an adjunct assistant professor in homeland security and criminal justice at St. John’s University. Yesterday he posted an article at The Washington Examiner about the charges against General Michael Flynn.

Mr. Gagliano begins the article by explaining the he was skeptical about an intelligence community effort to remove President Trump:

As a self-proclaimed adherent to Hanlon’s Razor, I once cynically viewed the frenzied focus on FBI actions during the 2016 Russian election-meddling investigation as partisan and overwrought. Hanlon’s Razor suggests that we never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity or incompetence. Having proudly served in the FBI for 25 years, I bristled at insulting accusations of an onerous deep state conspiracy. Some obvious mistakes made during the investigation of the Trump campaign were quite possibly the result of two ham-handedly overzealous FBI headquarters denizens, Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, clumsily seeking to impress each other with ever-increasing levels of loathing for then-candidate Donald Trump.

FBI employees are entitled to their own political views. But senior-level decision-makers who express them on government devices, while overseeing a supremely consequential investigation into a political campaign, simply do not possess the requisite judgment and temperament for the job.

The article explains what changed his mind:

It is unheard of for someone not actually on the interview itself to materially alter an FD-302. As an FBI agent, no one in my chain of command ever directed me to alter consequential wording. And as a longtime FBI supervisor, I never ever directed an agent to recollect something different from what they discerned during an interview. Returning a 302 for errors in grammar, punctuation, or syntax is appropriate. This occurs before the document is ultimately uploaded to a particular file, conjoined with the original interview notes which are safely secured inside a 1-A envelope, and secured as part of evidence at trial.

With this in mind, this related text message exchange from Strzok to Page dated Feb. 10, 2017, nauseated me:

“I made your edits and sent them to Joe. I also emailed you an updated 302. I’m not asking you to edit it this weekend, I just wanted to send it to you.”

Powell charges that Page directed Strzok to alter his Flynn interview 302. As in most instances in life, words matter. The change in wording was instrumental in moving Flynn from a target to a subject. One recalls how critical wording was in the FBI’s decision not to argue that DOJ charge Hillary Clinton with a crime in the private email server investigation. Comey elected not to use “gross negligence” to characterize Clinton’s actions — which would have been the required language in the mishandling of classified information statute — and instead settled upon the more benign and non-indictable “extreme carelessness.”

Later, it was determined that none other than Strzok was the impetus behind the recrafting of Comey’s words.

The article concludes:

Here’s me, acknowledging my mistake. I was dead wrong. It now seems there was a concerted effort, though isolated, within the upper-echelons of the FBI to influence the outcome of the Flynn investigation. By “dirtying up” Flynn, Comey’s FBI headquarters team of callow sycophants shortcut the investigative process. Arm-twisting Flynn through the “tweaked” version of his interview afforded him criminal exposure. The cocksure Comey team felt supremely confident that would inspire him “flipping” and give them the desperately sought-after evidence of Trump-Russia collusion that the wholly unverified Steele dossier was never remotely capable of providing.

I am physically nauseous as I type these words. I have long maintained that innocent mistakes were made and that the investigators at the center of this maelstrom were entitled to the benefit of the doubt.

No more.

They have tarnished the badge and forever stained an agency that deserved so much better from them. I am ashamed. The irreparable damage Comey’s team has done to the FBI will take a generation to reverse.

I ashamedly join Hanlon’s Razor in getting this one wrong.

All Americans need to pay attention to what this man is saying.

Slowly The Truth Comes To Light

On Tuesday, Sara Carter posted an article about a recent court hearing for General Flynn. It seems that in an effort to destroy General Flynn because of his association with President Trump, the Justice Department broke many of the laws put in place to protect American citizens from overzealous prosecutors.

The article reports:

A bombshell revelation was barely noticed at National Security Advisor Michael Flynn’s hearing Tuesday, when his counsel revealed in court the existence of a Justice Department memo from Jan. 30, 2017 exonerating Flynn of any collusion with Russia. The memo, which has still not been made available to Flynn’s attorney Sidney Powell, is part of a litany of Brady material she is demanding from prosecutors. The memo is currently under protective order and Powell is working with prosecutors to get it disclosed, SaraACarter.com has learned.

U.S. District Court Judge Emmet G. Sullivan presided over the hearing Tuesday  and set a tentative Dec. 18 sentencing date. He told the prosecution and defense that the sentencing date could be moved depending on the outcome of requests for Brady material requested by Powell and how the case will unfold in the upcoming months. Sullivan also noted during the hearing that the Brady order takes precedence over the plea agreement.

The article continues:

Powell noted the extraordinary misconduct of the government during the hearing. She also said that Flynn would have never pleaded guilty if the government had disclosed the Brady materials before the original trial that she is now demanding. There would not have been a plea if the prosecutors had met their Brady obligations, Powell argued before the court.

Powell’s discovery of the memo shatters not only the narrative that was pushed by former Obama Administration officials regarding Flynn but also the ongoing narrative that President Donald Trump’s concern over Flynn’s prosecution amounted to alleged obstruction.

The January, 2017 timeline of the DOJ memo is extremely significant. Former FBI Director James Comey said in previous interviews that he leaked his memos through a friend to be published in the New York Times with the hope of getting a special counsel appointed to investigate Trump for obstruction. In late August, Inspector General Michael Horowitz released his much anticipated report on Comey. It was scathing and revealed that he violated FBI policy when he leaked his memos that described his private conversations with  Trump. However, the DOJ declined to prosecute Comey on Horowitz’s referral.

The article concludes:

According to Comey’s memo Trump said: “I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.”

Comey suggested that Trump’s request was inappropriate, accusing him of obstructing justice by asking him to drop Flynn’s case. He used this as a pretense to leak his memos and put the nation through more than two years of Robert Mueller’s Special Counsel, which in the end found no evidence of a conspiracy with Russia. As for obstruction, Attorney General William Barr and then Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein concluded that there was no obstruction based on the evidence gathered by Mueller’s team.

However, if Comey would have advised Trump of the Jan. 30 memo it would have cleared up any unfounded lies that Flynn had in any way colluded or conspired with Russia.

Even if the charges against Flynn are dropped, is the government going to buy him a house to replace the one he had to sell to pay the lawyers to defend him? The bill for a new house should be presented to James Comey, Robert Mueller, Andrew Weissmann, and Rod Rosenstein, and it should be a mansion.

When The Timeline Doesn’t Work

One of the things generally cited by the media as justification for charging President Trump with obstruction of justice has been the memo written by James Comey claiming that the President asked him to go easy on General Flynn. Aside from the fact that most Americans would have agreed with the President’s request to handle a matter involving an American war veteran gently, the Inspector General’s Report brings the memo about that entire conversation into question.

Yesterday American Greatness posted an article that explains the problem with the memo.

The article explains:

According to Comey, during a private meeting in the Oval Office on February 14, 2017, President Trump asked the former FBI director to drop an inquiry into Flynn about his discussions with the Russian ambassador shortly after the election. (Flynn had resigned amid media reports he possibly violated an arcane federal law.)

“He misled the Vice President but he didn’t do anything wrong in the call,” Comey claimed Trump said to him. “[Trump] said, ‘I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go.”

According to Russian collusion truthers, those alleged comments form the most convincing evidence that Team Trump not only conspired with the Russians and tried to cover it up, but that the president broke the law by asking his FBI director to halt an investigation into one of his top advisors.

The memo is cited numerous times in the second volume of the Mueller report to implicate the president for obstructing justice by interfering in the Russian investigation, although Comey’s memo is the only evidence of such an act. (Trump has disputed Comey’s description of the conversation.)

Note that James Comey’s memo is the only description of the conversation. There is no second source.

The article continues:

But that portrayal of events was never the truth. The conversation in February 2017 had nothing to do with the Russia investigation, as I’ve written before: Neither Trump nor Congress nor the general public knew at that time that James Comey’s FBI had been investigating Trump’s campaign, including Flynn, since July 2016.

And the new report by the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) confirms as much.

The article also notes:

Further, in late January 2017, Justice Department officials refused to confirm to the White House that Flynn was under “any type of investigation.”

In fact, Comey himself admitted that the discussion about Flynn wasn’t related to the FBI’s Russia investigation.

“I had understood the President to be requesting that we drop any investigation of Flynn in connection with false statements about his conversations with the Russian ambassador in December,” Comey said in his June 2017 statement to the Senate Intelligence Committee. “I did not understand the President to be talking about the broader investigation into Russia or possible links to his campaign.”

The article concludes:

Further, in late January 2017, Justice Department officials refused to confirm to the White House that Flynn was under “any type of investigation.”

In fact, Comey himself admitted that the discussion about Flynn wasn’t related to the FBI’s Russia investigation.

“I had understood the President to be requesting that we drop any investigation of Flynn in connection with false statements about his conversations with the Russian ambassador in December,” Comey said in his June 2017 statement to the Senate Intelligence Committee. “I did not understand the President to be talking about the broader investigation into Russia or possible links to his campaign.”

It really is time to put as many of the deep state as possible in jail.

How Does A Republic Survive When There Are Two Standards Of Justice?

The Inspector General has released his report regarding James Comey. The report is damning in terms of citing examples of misconduct by James Comey, yet Comey will not be charged. Seems a bit odd.

The Gateway Pundit reports today:

Report of Investigation of Former Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey’s Disclosure of Sensitive Investigative Information and Handling of Certain Memoranda

The Department of Justice Inspector General concluded that:
Comey Violated Department and FBI Policies Pertaining to the Retention, Handling, and Dissemination of FBI Records and Information

The IG found that former FBI Director and Trump-hater James Comey released classified and sensitive material to the press.
Comey wanted to ruin Trump so he ran a coup with the CIA and State Department to set up, harass and eventually remove President Donald Trump from office.

The DOJ IG today announced that these clearly illegal activities set a poor example to the 35,000 FBI officials…
But the “Department declined prosecution.”

As long as you are a Democrat you are permitted to break the law.

This is the new “Comey Rule.”

Katie Pavlich posted an article at Townhall detailing some of the Inspector General’s Report:

However, after his removal as FBI Director two months later, Comey provided a copy of Memo 4, which Comey had kept without authorization, to Richman with instructions to share the contents with a reporter for The New York Times. Memo 4 included information that was related to both the FBI’s ongoing investigation of Flynn and, by Comey’s own account, information that he believed and alleged constituted evidence of an attempt to obstruct the ongoing Flynn investigation; later that same day, The New York Times published an article about Memo 4 entitled, “Comey Memo Says Trump Asked Him to End Flynn Investigation.”

The responsibility to protect sensitive law enforcement information falls in large part to the employees of the FBI who have access to it through their daily duties. On occasion, some of these employees may disagree with decisions by prosecutors, judges, or higher ranking FBI and Department officials about the actions to take or not take in criminal and counterintelligence matters. They may even, in some situations, distrust the legitimacy of those supervisory, prosecutorial, or judicial decisions. But even when these employees believe that their most strongly-held personal convictions might be served by an unauthorized disclosure, the FBI depends on them not to disclose sensitive information.

Former Director Comey failed to live up to this responsibility. By not safeguarding sensitive information obtained during the course of his FBI employment, and by using it to create public pressure for official action, Comey set a dangerous example for the over 35,000 current FBI employees—and the many thousands more former FBI employees—who similarly have access to or knowledge of non-public information. Comey said he was compelled to take these actions “if I love this country…and I love the Department of Justice, and I love the FBI.” However, were current or former FBI employees to follow the former Director’s example and disclose sensitive information in service of their own strongly held personal convictions, the FBI would be unable to dispatch its law enforcement duties properly, as Comey himself noted in his March 20, 2017 congressional testimony. Comey expressed a similar concern to President Trump, according to Memo 4, in discussing leaks of FBI information, telling Trump that the FBI’s ability to conduct its work is compromised “if people run around telling the press what we do.” This is no doubt part of the reason why Comey’s closest advisors used the words “surprised,” “stunned,” “shocked,” and “disappointment” to describe their reactions to learning what Comey had done.

In a country built on the rule of law, it is of utmost importance that all FBI employees adhere to Department and FBI policies, particularly when confronted by what appear to be extraordinary circumstances or compelling personal convictions. Comey had several other lawful options available to him to advocate for the appointment of a Special Counsel, which he told us was his goal in making the disclosure. What was not permitted was the unauthorized disclosure of sensitive investigative information, obtained during the course of FBI employment, in order to achieve a personally desired outcome.

So far, there does not seem to be a rule of law. It’s evidently okay to use agencies of the federal government to attempt to undo the results of a legal election. Unless there are actual prosecutions related to the attempted coup of the past two years, our justice system is toast. If people are not prosecuted for their misbehavior in the Russian Hoax, where is the hope that these tactics will not be used again. Katy, bar the door in the 2020 election. Dirty tricks and illegal activity will reach a new high.