The Real Purpose Of The Raid At Mar-a-Lago?

If you don’t have your conspiracy hat on, you are probably going to need it for this article.

An animal is most dangerous when it is cornered. On Tuesday, The New York Post posted an article about the illegal spying on President Trump during the presidential campaign of 2016 and afterward. Obviously, that was illegal, but it seems as if Democrats are not required to abide by laws.

The article reports:

The US Intelligence Community asked foreign spy agencies to surveil 26 associates of Donald Trump in the run-up to the 2016 election, which triggered the allegations that the former president’s campaign had been colluding with Russia, according to a report. 

Former CIA Director John Brennan identified and presented the targets to the US’s intelligence-sharing partners in the so-called “Five Eyes” agencies – the intelligence-gathering organizations in the US, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand – according to a report published Monday on Michael Shellenberger’s Public Substack

The report by independent journalists Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi and Alex Gutentag has not been confirmed by The Post.

They cite multiple unnamed sources, including ones close to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, led by Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio). 

The article concludes:

Former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith was sentenced to probation in 2021 after admitting that he falsified an e-mail to renew a wiretap against former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. 

​​Page had been wiretapped after intelligence sources suspected he might have been targeted by Russian spies. The wiretap, which was approved by the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, was renewed several times after it was first granted.

Last March, Special Counsel John Durham concluded that the FBI investigation of Trump’s alleged collusion with Russia was “seriously flawed” and had no basis in evidence, after a four-year review of the probe. 

In response, the FBI said it had “implemented dozens of corrective actions” since the improper Trump probe and that “the missteps identified in the report could have been prevented” had the reforms been in place in 2016. 

In 2022, Taibbi and Shellenberger were involved in the publishing of the Twitter Files expose, which detailed how the social media giant’s previous management team sought to silence controversial voices and suppress news items such as The Post’s reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop.

Do you really believe all necessary corrective actions have been taken? What if there is more to this than meets the eye? What if documents detailing exactly who was involved in this illegal activity exist and the FBI does not know where they are? Would they logically be at Mar-a-Lago or in President Trump’s possession? Is it possible that was what the raid at Mar-a-Lago was really about since other Presidents have never been treated that way?

President Trump is a smart man. I suspect (and I would also suggest that the parties who broke the law spying suspect) that somewhere in a very secret place the documents showing the abuse of our justice system are in President Trump’s possession. I also think that those who engaged in the illegal spying will be brought to justice if President Trump is re-elected. That is why the deep state is working so hard to prevent President Trump from being our next President.

Just Amazing

On Thursday, The Daily Caller reported the following:

Special counsel Robert Hur is unlikely to charge anybody at the conclusion of his investigation into President Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents, according to multiple reports.

Hur is expected to prepare a report with harsh criticism of how Biden and his aides handled classified documents but his investigation is not expected to result in criminal charges, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) first reported citing people familiar with the matter.

Remember, these documents were related to his terms as Vice-President and as Senator. There are some valid questions as to whether or not he was entitled to even possess these documents.

The article notes:

The House Oversight Committee wrote a letter to Hur in October requesting information on whether President Biden possessed classified documents related to his son’s foreign business dealings. The classified documents discovered at the Penn Biden Center and Joe Biden’s Delaware residence date back to his vice presidency and decades-long senate tenure.

Kathy Chung, a Defense Department aide and former Vice President Biden aide recommended by Hunter Biden, was one of the individuals who handled classified documents, according to the Oversight Committee.

Wow. Mar-a-Lago was raided because a President who was entitled to have documents from his presidency might have had classified documents. That trial is still pending.

I guess it pays to have a corrupt justice department that is willing to ignore the law to protect you.

Laughable!

On Friday, The New York Sun posted an article about the $250 million civil fraud case brought by New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, against President Trump.

The article reports:

On Tuesday, a New York Supreme Court judge, Arthur Engoron, used a Palm Beach County assessor’s appraisal of Mar-a-Lago at $18 million as evidence to rule in a pre-trial judgment that Mr. Trump, his sons, and co-defendants in the Trump Organization committed fraud by inflating the values of their real estate holdings to gain more favorable terms on loans and insurance.

If Judge Engoron’s ruling stands, Mr. Trump could lose control of his New York properties. The stakes are high. The rest of the counts against Mr. Trump in the civil fraud case will be tried starting Monday, after an appeals court denied Mr. Trump’s bid to delay it this week.

Mar-a-Lago, a members’ only club where Mr. Trump also lives, is likely out of reach of New York regulators, but the accusation that Trump overstated its value is central to Judge Engoron’s fraud ruling. So is Mar-a-Lago worth only $18 million? That valuation is certainly raising eyebrows in real estate circles and on social media for being “insanely low.”

Palm Beach is one of the wealthiest towns in the world and the value of a historic, waterfront property there such as Mar-a-Lago can be astronomical. “I spoke with my appraisers,” a Palm Beach real estate broker, Lee Allen Schultz, tells the Sun, “they thought the $18 million was ridiculous.”

The article also notes:

Mr. Trump bought Mar-a-Lago in 1985 for $10 million, but Palm Beach property prices have gone up substantially in recent years. Forbes magazine appraised Mar-a-Lago at $160 million in 2018. The  property boasts 128 rooms, a 20,000-square-foot ballroom, tennis courts, and a waterfront pool.

Mar-a-Lago is deed restricted and cannot be converted to a residential property, which may lower its value. The brokers who spoke with the Sun, though, say the appraised value between $18 and $27.6 million is laughable. They also note that Mar-a-Lago’s property tax assessed value is $33 million, which is also “very low,” though property owners generally like this to be low to save money on taxes.

The article concludes:

The $18 million assessment may be laughable, but the ramifications are serious. Judge Engoron wrote in his decision that Mr. Trump’s $426 to $612 million valuation of Mar-a-Lago to secure loans was “an overvaluation of at least 2,300 percent.”

“A discrepancy of this order of magnitude, by a real estate developer sizing up his own living space of decades, can only be considered fraud,” Judge Engoron wrote. “The documents here clearly contain fraudulent valuations that defendants used in business, satisfying OAG’s burden to establish liability as a matter of law against defendants.”

It should be noted that all loans were paid back, everyone was happy and no one was defrauded. So who is unhappy and why was this lawsuit brought at all? Those are the questions we should be looking at.

Who Is Leaking Lies?

Recently the press reported that President Trump had ordered the deletion of security tapes at Mar-a-Lago. Evidently this report was based on a reported charge by the Special Counsel’s Office. Understand that there is nothing neutral about this Special Counsel. He is the man who oversaw the corruption case against Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell. He got a conviction in that case, but the verdict was later overturned by the Supreme Court in a 9 to 0 ruling. He was appointed by the Biden administration to prevent President Trump from running for President and possibly winning the election.

On Sunday, The Epoch Times reported:

Former President Donald Trump categorically denied that he ordered the deletion of security footage at his Mar-a-Lago resort, coming after special counsel Jack Smith made that allegation as he added three new charges against the former commander-in-chief.

Last week, the special counsel charged Mr. Trump with willful retention of national defense information and two charges in connection to the claims that he allegedly told a Mar-a-Lago worker to delete security tapes to prevent a grand jury from seeing them. In that filing, the Department of Justice (DOJ) named Mar-a-Lago staffer Carlos De Oliveira as a third defendant in the complaint.

But on July 30, the former president denied those new charges. What the DOJ is doing now, he claimed, is tantamount to election interference ahead of the 2024 contest.

“Mar-a-Lago security tapes were not deleted,” Mr. Trump wrote on Truth Social. “They were voluntarily handed over to the thugs, headed up by deranged Jack Smith. We did not even go to court to stop them from getting these tapes. I never told anybody to delete them. Prosecutorial fiction & misconduct! Election interference!”

I wonder what threats the DOJ has made against the employee involved.

The article notes:

His attorney and spokeswoman, Alina Habba, told Fox News in a July 30 interview that Mr. Trump never directed an employee to delete tapes.

“When he has his turn in court, and when we get to file our papers, you will see that every single video, every single surveillance tape that was requested was turned over,” Ms. Habba said. “If President Trump didn’t want something turned over, I assure you, that is something that could have been done. But he never would act like that. He is the most ethical American I know.

“The new superseding indictment that came out, which they tried to get another headline for President Trump, was facts that said that President Trump did what? What was the obstruction of justice because no tapes were deleted. He turned them over; he cooperated as he always does. But they would like the American public to believe in these bogus indictments that there are some facts that say that President Trump was obstructing justice.”

Meanwhile, secret servers, bleachbit, destroyed cell phones, illegal wire taps, influence peddling and various other nefarious deeds by Democrat politicians have been swept under the rug and gone unpunished.

Freedom Is Under Attack

The following is a Judicial Watch Press Release from January 29th:

Reminiscent of the Obama Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) witch hunt of conservative groups, a U.S. Senator who sits on the committee that oversees the tax agency is pushing it to revoke a student charity’s nonprofit status. The veteran lawmaker, Rhode Island Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse, says the conservative student organization, Turning Point USA, should lose its nonprofit rating because it held large events that could help spread COVID-19. In a letter to IRS Commissioner Charles P. Rettig the senator describes the gatherings as “superspreader” events. He specifically mentions a Palm Beach, Florida winter gala at the Mar-a-Lago Club famously owned by former President Donald Trump.

“According to press reports and social media posts, many participants gathered and mingled indoors without wearing masks, in violation of Palm Beach County’s COVID-19 regulations,” Whitehouse, a member of the Senate Finance Committee, writes to the IRS chief. The powerful chamber has oversight over the IRS, among many other government agencies. “In holding these ‘superspreader’ events, Turning Point USA knowingly exposed hundreds of young people and staff working at the events to serious risk of infection,” the letter continues. The legislator asks the IRS to review whether the group, which has more than 250,000 student members, should continue to enjoy its tax-exempt nonprofit status. “Established law has long held that an organization is not eligible for tax exemption under section 501(c)(3) if a purpose of the organization is contrary to public policy or is illegal,” the letter states, reminding the IRS commissioner of a three-part test established to determine whether an organization’s activities are consistent with tax exemption under the code.

The analysis includes determining whether the purpose of the organization is charitable, if activities are not illegal and whether the activities are in furtherance to the group’s exempt purpose and are reasonably related to that purpose. “Turning Point USA’s reckless decision to host potential ‘superspreader’ events, in open violation of local COVID-19 regulations, put children and others at risk, and was clearly contrary to the public good,” the senator tells the IRS commissioner. “Tax-exempt status provides a substantial benefit to charitable organizations and reflects the federal government’s endorsement of an organization’s activities. Organizations that knowingly put in danger minors entrusted to their care should not enjoy the benefits of tax-exempt status. Accordingly, I urge the IRS to review whether it should revoke Turning Point USA’s tax-exempt status.”

Founded in 2012, Turning Point USA describes itself as a national student movement dedicated to identifying, organizing, and empowering young people to promote the principles of free markets and limited government. The group’s founder, 27-year-old Charlie Kirk, was the chairman of Students for Trump, which aimed to activate a million new college voters before the 2020 presidential election. In a press release announcing the letter to the IRS, Whitehouse refers to the group as a “right-wing nonprofit” that “promotes far-right ideas to young people around the country.” The document, posted on the senator’s official website, further states that Turning Point USA “has cultivated close ties to President Trump and the Trump family.”

The senator’s push to repeal the conservative charity’s nonprofit status brings back memories of the Obama IRS singling out groups with conservative-sounding terms such as “patriot” and “Tea Party” in their titles when applying for tax-exempt benefits. Judicial Watch launched an investigation and sued for records after an explosive Treasury Inspector General report revealed that in 2010 the IRS began using inappropriate criteria, such as lists of past and future donors, to identify organizations applying for tax-exempt status. The illegal IRS reviews continued for more than 18 months, according to the report, and “delayed processing of targeted groups’ applications” preparing for the 2012 presidential election. The IRS director at the center of the scheme, Lois Lerner, not only broke agency rules—as well as the law—to target conservative organizations she also lied to Congress to cover up the wrongdoing.

Please understand that under the Biden administration there is a real possibility that the government will be used to limit the rights of conservatives. This was done under the Obama administration, and many of the people in that administration are pulling the strings in the Biden administration. We are truly in danger of losing our freedoms.

When The Public Just Doesn’t Believe Your Lies

President Trump has been frequently portrayed as a racist. This really defies logic since he received awards for his efforts toward racial harmony before he became a Republican and ran for President. He also literally fought city hall to make Mar-a-Lago open to Jews and black people when other exclusive clubs in the area were closed to those groups. Evidently some people have actually figured out that the charges of racism against the President are false.

Yesterday The Gateway Pundit reported the following:

29% of Black Women Have Favorable or Neutral Opinion of President Trump after 2 Years in Office

That is not good news for the Democrats.

The article continues with a quote from Medium:

Interestingly, 29% of respondents had a favorable or neutral opinion of Donald Trump. Of those polled 16% responded that they “really like him” or “he’s okay”, with an additional almost 13% unsure or undecided, a much different picture than the one portrayed in most media.

“Trump’s numbers with black Democratic women show that his populist message still resonates with many. Given that Sanders also has a heavily populist message, and is currently enjoying strong support in this community, Trump’s numbers shouldn’t be that surprising.

“It’s also important to remember that Hillary Clinton badly underperformed with this group in 2016. Turnout among black Democratic women dropped from around 68% in 2008 and 70% in 2012, to about 64% in 2016.

“I think the take away here is that, to avoid a repeat of 2016, an emotionally resonant populist appeal, delivered in a way voters deem authentic, will be key to turning out this crucial Democratic constituency.“ said Walter Kawecki, the firm’s founder and CEO.

President Trump has done amazing things economically. You have to really have your head in the sand to not be impressed with the current state of the American economy. Minority groups–youth, blacks, women, etc. have all benefited from low unemployment. If the economy continues to roar along, that will make at least a small difference in the 2020 election.

 

Does Anyone Actually Believe This?

Sometimes I wonder if our Congressmen (and Congresswomen) actually listen to their own words. Some of the logic coming from the people who are supposed to represent us is just amazing.

The Washington Free Beacon posted an article today about some recent comments by Representative Al Green, a Democrat from Texas.

The article reports:

Green said the refusal of Virginia’s governor and attorney general to resign after admitting to wearing blackface “is but a symptom of a greater syndrome that currently plagues our country as a result of not acting on President Trump’s bigotry,” the Hill reports.

Green added that Gov. Ralph Northam and Attorney General Mark Herring have been emboldened “to a great extent because the Trump presidency has sent a message that you can be immune to the consequences of bigotry, by daring those with the authority and power to constitutionally remove you from office.”

“Further, an argument that Governor Ralph Northam and Attorney General Mark Herring should resign will subject us to accusations of political hypocrisy if we refuse to take on a bigoted president,” Green continued in a statement.

The Democratic congressman introduced articles impeachment against the president in the last Congress, accusing Trump of fostering racial divisions in the United States.

Was President Trump a bigot when he fought city hall to open Mar-a-Lago to Jews and blacks? Was he a racist when he sheltered Jennifer Hudson and some of her relatives at the Trump International Hotel & Tower free of charge after her mother, brother and nephew were murdered in Chicago on Oct. 24 (article here)? There are countless other examples that show that the media’s attempt to portray President Trump as a racist are simply fake news.

The article concludes with a quick summary of the situation in Virginia:

Most Virginia Democrats, however, privately want Northam to stay in office until more information comes out about Herring and Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax, according to the Washington Post. Fairfax faces an allegation he sexually assaulted a woman in 2004. Should all three Democrats resign, the governorship would go to the state House Speaker, who is a Republican.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) suggested last month that Democrats would not try to impeach Trump without Republican support and noted that special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election has not reached its conclusion. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D., Md.) said an impeachment process was not inevitable and not what Democrats were focused on pursuing.

The remarks from Pelosi and Hoyer came days after freshman Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.) promised Democrats would “impeach the mother****er.”

This is another attempt to deflect attention from Govern Northam’s statement about abortion.

A Summation Of What Robert Mueller Is Actually Doing

On December 1, Andrew McCarthy posted an article at National Review summarizing what he believes is the goal of the Mueller investigation. His summary makes a lot of sense.

First of all Andrew McCarthy reminds us that this investigation is leading to a report–not a trial. Therefore, the fact that the only charges so far involve lying (which obviously discredits a witness in a trial) is irrelevant. He then notes that the investigation is a counterintelligence investigation, not a criminal investigation.

The article notes:

This is why, from the beginning of the Trump-Russia investigation, and certainly since Mueller’s appointment on May 17, 2017, we have stressed that the probe is a counterintelligence investigation, not a criminal investigation. The idea was not to dizzy you with Justice Department esoterica. The point is that we don’t want prosecutors involved until it has been established that a crime was probably committed, warranting use of their awesome, intimidating investigative powers. Our main interest is in the crime we authorize prosecutors to investigate; we are not looking to have prosecutors manufacture crimes through the process of investigating — even if we agree that people should not be permitted to lie to investigators with impunity.

With respect to the president and “collusion,” Mueller does not have a crime he is investigating. He is investigating in hopes of finding a crime, which is a day-and-night different thing.

The article further explains the methods of investigation being used:

Mueller is turning such lies into guilty pleas, for three reasons.

First, he is not going to indict the president, which would precipitate a trial at some point. The convicted liars are not going to be jury-trial witnesses, so Mueller is not concerned about their lack of credibility. The report will detail disturbing — and thus politically damaging — connections between Trump associates and Kremlin cronies. But there will be no collusion crime, and thus no charges and no need for witnesses.

Second, with the media as his biggest cheerleader (other than Jeff Flake), the false-statements pleas create the illusion of a collusion crime, and thus appear to vindicate Mueller’s sprawling investigation. As I’ve previously explained, the game works this way: The media reports that Mueller is investigating Trump–Russia collusion and that dozens of people have been charged or convicted; but the media omits that no one has been charged, much less convicted, of any crime involving collusion between Trump and Russia. The great mass of people who do not follow the news closely come away thinking a Trump–Russia collusion crime is an established fact; by now, Mueller must be tightening the noose around Trump because he’s already rolled up a bunch of the apparent accomplices.

Third, defendants convicted of making false statements are very useful because Mueller is writing a report, not preparing for a jury trial. Convicted liars never get cross-examined in a report. Nor do they give the bumpy, inconsistent testimony you hear in a courtroom. Instead, their version of events is outlined by a skilled prosecutor, who writes well and knows how to make their stories sing in perfect harmony. They will sound far better in the report than they would on the witness stand. We’ve already gotten a taste of this in the offense narratives Mueller has incorporated in each guilty plea. Read the criminal information in Cohen’s case and ask yourself whether Mr. Fixer could have recited matters with such clarity.

Aside from the fact that this investigation has been a colossal waste of money, it is sad that the press so readily signed on to the idea of bringing down a President they did not like. It’s odd that when Donald Trump was a Democrat he got awards for his work in racial harmony, was hailed for putting the first woman in charge of constructing a New York skyscraper, and fought city hall to make sure Mar-a-Lago did not discriminate against either Jewish people or black people. The press loved him then. They laughed at his unfiltered remarks and gladly put him in their social pages. It is amazing how much that changed when he ran for President as a Republican.

Lying When Convenient

Politicians are not known for telling the truth, but sometimes the lies are simply outrageous. It seems that lying to attack political opponents has become a way of life for some of our politicians.

The Washington Examiner posted an article today about a recent whopper told by Senator Chuck Schumer. The lie by Senator Schumer was told during a hearing for Thomas Farr, a North Carolina lawyer who is President Trump’s pick to be a district court judge in New York.

The article reports:

Schumer said on the Senate floor that Farr “stands for the disenfranchisement of voters,” then raised the 2013 Supreme Court case Shelby County v Holder. That case ended in a Roberts opinion that said a key part of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 is outdated and needs to be modernized.

Schumer said that opinion showed that Roberts believes voting discrimination no longer exists.

“Justice Roberts will go down in history as one of those who worked to take away voting rights when he authored the Shelby decision and stated that he didn’t believe that … more or less, he stated that he didn’t believe that discrimination existed any longer, so we wouldn’t need Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act,” Schumer said.

But Roberts never wrote that voting discrimination no longer exists and, in fact, said explicitly that it does still exist.

“At the same time, voting discrimination still exists; no one doubts that,” Roberts wrote at the time.

Either Senator Schumer is misinformed or he decided that the best was to prevent the appointment of Thomas Farr was to play the race card. That card is getting very old, and the number of Americans falling for it is rapidly dwindling. The card is played frequently against President Trump despite the awards he won before running for President for promoting racial harmony and for his removal of race and religion restrictions when he opened Mar-a-Lago.

No Wonder We Are A Divided Nation

Yesterday Newsbusters posted a clip of a discussion on CNN about women who voted for President Trump. Below is the video:

The important quote from the video is:

At 11:27 p.m. Eastern, after Lemon began by asking Powers her view, she recalled: “People will say that they support him for reasons other than his racist language.”

She soon added: “And they’ll say, ‘Well, I’m not racist. I just voted for him because I didn’t like Hillary Clinton.'”

The CNN contributor insinuated that everyone who voted for Trump is racist as she continued: “And I just want to say that’s not — that doesn’t make you not racist. It actually makes you racist. If you support somebody who does racist things, that makes you racist. So I just want to establish that.”

She then asserted that white women are “oppressed” and lamented that they would not therefore support other “oppressed people.” Powers:

I think we have to recognize that white men are doing it as well, but sometimes I think that we would hope that we would get better behavior from white women because white women are themselves are oppressed and that they would be able to align themselves with other oppressed people.

I think we have to remember that the white patriarchal system actually benefits white women in a lot of ways, and they are attached to white men who are benefiting from the system that was created by them, for them. And their fathers and their husbands and their brothers are benefiting from the system, and so they are also benefiting.

Let’s do a little history here. When Donald Trump opened Mar-a-Lago, he filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Palm Beach, alleging that the town was discriminating against Mar-a-Lago, in part because it is open to Jews and African-Americans. The suit sought $100 million in damages. Donald Trump was also the first person to put a women in charge of building a major skyscraper in New York City. Before running for President, Donald Trump received multiple awards from minority communities for his efforts to end discrimination. Donald Trump was never called a racist until he became a Republican and ran for President. The panel above is hoping that the CNN audience is too ill-informed to know any of that.

 

The Spin Numbers Just Don’t Add Up

Yesterday The Chicago Tribune posted an article that seems to correct some of the charges made against President Trump about the cost of his travels to Florida. President Trump has visited Mar-a-Lago six times since he took office. I would like to note that he is not paying rent while he is there–he owns the place. As for arguments that the Secret Service is paying rent, I don’t know, but I do know the Secret Service paid rent to Joe Biden when they stayed on his property, so that is not anything new.

At any rate, the article reports:

With President Donald Trump making his seventh presidential trip this weekend to his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, government watchdogs and Democrats are once again seeing dollar signs: namely, $3 million.

There are a few problems with the way this figure was reached. It was based on a trip President Obama made in 2013 to Palm Beach:

…Another problem with extrapolating from the October 2016 GAO report is that it included a leg from Washington to Chicago, where Obama gave an economic speech before heading to Palm Beach for a long weekend of golf.

Obama was only in Chicago for a few hours, but costs pile up because each destination triggers the need for the Secret Service to prepare and protect the site and the Defense Department to move the equipment involved.

Another significant cost-driver, GAO noted, is the per-hour cost of military aircraft, such as the president’s plane, Air Force One. So it’s not just a matter of slicing off a few hundred thousand dollars to come up with the $3 million estimate.

“If you take out Chicago, that just means the equipment is going to have to come from other bases,” Lepore said. Sometimes that means more money, sometimes less.

Judicial Watch arrives at its $1 million figure by estimating flight time and typical Secret Service costs, leaving out airlifting equipment such as the presidential limousines. Those costs also aren’t fully included in Judicial Watch’s $96 million total for Obama.

I would like to note that President Trump has been doing business while in Mar-a-Lago. Certainly it is an impressive place to meet with foreign leaders. I also wonder if it has less of a change of electronic surveillance than meetings in the White House. Considering all that we have learned about the surveillance of the Trump team, that might be a valid consideration.