Right Wing Granny

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Right Wing Granny

Tag Archives: Mark Meadows

A Temporary Victory For Free Speech

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On Saturday, The Daily Wire reported that the gag order placed on President Trump regarding the federal 2020 election case has been paused.

The article reports:

A gag order against former President Donald Trump related to his federal 2020 election case has been paused by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals after Trump filed an emergency request on Thursday saying the order violated his First Amendment rights. 

The court issued an administrative stay, saying that the decision was made to give the judges more time to hear Trump’s arguments. The court said that the ruling “should not be construed in any way as a ruling on the merits.”

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, had imposed the gag order on Trump Sunday night after Trump criticized former chief of staff Mark Meadows. Chutkan is overseeing special counsel Jack Smith’s federal election case against Trump, who has denied any allegations of wrongdoing.

Imposing a gag order on a leading candidate for public office sets a scary precedent, and I hope it gets entirely removed. There really should be no question as to whether this gag order is unconstitutional, but our legal system has been turned on its head in order to ‘get Trump.’

A Gag Order That Allows The Other Side To Lie

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President Trump has been placed under a gag order to limit his comments about one of the lawfare cases against him. However, the Special Counsel continues to leak lies to the media. There is a glaring recent example of that dynamic reported by various news sources.

On Tuesday, The Conservative Treehouse reported:

Remember, on August 21st, in another ridiculous Lawfare operation, Special Counsel Jack Smith told ABC that Mark Meadows testified that President Trump never attempted to declassify any information {Go Deep}.   That report was transparently false, yet the media ran with it and multiple alternative media promoted it.  Pure nonsense.

In this latest Lawfare effort, again from Special Counsel Jack Smith, again to ABC news, again about former Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, the claim is the Special Counsel granted Meadows immunity (that’s the hook), and that Meadows told President Trump the 2020 election was not rigged or stolen.

Now remember, Mark Meadows wrote about the rigged and stolen 2020 election in his book, so why would he undermine his own story by saying something completely the opposite to Jack Smith that is only coming out now?   The Occam’s razor answer is, he didn’t.  This lawfare story is all made up, fictitious, anonymous sources, manufactured to create a public impression.

Bolstering the likelihood that Meadows gave no such testimony, Meadows lawyers, when contacted by media, said the story is fake news.   Yet again, everyone falls for it.  This is how Lawfare succeeds, and this is how Trayvon Martin’s fake and fabricated ear-witness girlfriend becomes the key witness and embarrasses the prosecution on the stand.

The article includes the following Tweet:

The mainstream media isn’t even trying to hide its lies anymore. Thank goodness for journalists like Catherine Herridge who are willing to tell the truth.

 

Things That Make You Go Hmmm

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This might be a red herring or it might explain a lot. I suspect we will find out in the next few weeks.

On August 8th, The Daily Caller reported the following:

‘Smoking Gun’: Biden Admin Sued For Not Releasing Docs Declassified By Trump On Russia Collusion Investigation

Might it be that those are the documents the FBI hoped to find?

The article reports:

A watchdog is suing President Joe Biden’s Justice Department (DOJ) for not releasing records related to the FBI’s defunct probe into ties between Donald Trump’s campaign and the Russian government — even though the former president declassified the records.

Judicial Watch is suing the DOJ to obtain the records, as well as communications between DOJ officials and government employees on the declassification of the records. The lawsuit, which was filed on Aug. 1, comes after the conservative watchdog submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request in February.

“The Obama-Biden Administration and Deep State spying on Trump and his associates is the worst government corruption scandal in American history,” Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, said in a statement Monday. “And to make matters worse, the Biden DOJ simply refuses to release smoking gun documents about this corruption that the American people have an absolute right to see!”

Trump issued a memo on Jan. 19, 2021 declassifying materials in a binder that the DOJ gave to the White House in December 2020 on the “Crossfire Hurricane” probe. However, the binder’s materials never saw the light of day after the DOJ sought to issue redactions over privacy concerns, as detailed in a memo on Jan. 21, 2021 authored by then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, who told the DOJ he would return the records.

The article concludes:

“Well, you know, the swamp is pretty deep,” said Meadows in a July interview on the records. “But when we look at this, this particular president was all about draining the swamp. When he was running, that was more of a campaign slogan. When he got there, he realized that not only was the swamp very deep, but they would fight back.”

Judicial Watch is asking the DOJ to pay its attorneys’ fees and other litigation records while also producing the records in relation to its FOIA request.

The DOJ did not immediately respond to a request for comment, nor did the FBI. A spokesman for Trump did not immediately respond.

The swamp is deep and wide, and there are still some real questions about who actually is a member of the swamp although pretending not to be.

When The Republican Swamp Gets A Newspaper

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It is no secret that the Washington Swamp has members of both parties. Both parties have their goals, although sometimes for different reasons. For example, both sides want illegal immigration–the Democrats see future voters and the Swamp Republicans see cheap labor. Swamp creatures in both parties hated President Trump because he was a threat to their happy existence as part of the swamp. However, most of the time the Republican Swamp Creatures were more subtle in undermining President Trump.
An editorial in The Washington Examiner may illustrate the fact that the days of subtlety are over. The editorial, basing its statements on the recent testimony regarding January 6th by Cassidy Hutchinson, a top aide to White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, states that the testimony is proof that President Trump is unfit to be President because of his temperament. Well, there are a few problems with this. Ms. Hutchinson was not actually a witness to the events she described. She heard it through the grape vine? Also Secret Service Agents working for President Trump at the time are willing to swear under oath that her testimony is false. You would think that would give the editorial staff at The Washington Examiner pause, but evidently it did not. Where are the editorials that President Biden is unfit for office because he has no idea what office he holds?

There is also another problem with Ms. Hutchinson’s testimony according to The Gateway Pundit:

Please don’t worry–Ms. Hutchinson won’t get in trouble for lying to Congress–they liked what she said, so it’s okay.

Meanwhile, Breitbart reported the following on Tuesday:

The January 6 Committee’s credibility suffered a serious blow on Tuesday when reports surfaced that the lead Secret Service agent in charge of former President Trump’s security detail that day would contradict testimony delivered from star witness Cassidy Hutchinson.

On Tuesday, former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson testified that former President Trump literally tried to commandeer the presidential suburban during the January 6 riot and became borderline violent when Bobby Engel tried to stop him. Hutchinson said she learned of the story from Tony Ornato, the then-White House deputy chief of staff. Hours later, Peter Alexander of NBC News said that a source close to the Secret Service indicated that agent Bobby Engel will testify “under oath that neither man was assaulted and that Mr. Trump never lunged for the steering wheel.”

The article at Breitbart included the following meme:

Someone is lying, and I don’t think it is the Secret Service.

 

An Ordinary Citizen Would Be Arrested For This

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Falsifying evidence is a criminal offense. We are about to find out whether the laws actually do apply to the people in Congress.

On Wednesday, The Western Journal reported the following:

It’s amazing to me that California Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff is not in jail. This lawmaker has played it fast and loose, first during the Trump/Russia collusion investigation, which put him on the map, and next in the House impeachment inquiry of former President Donald Trump. There is no line this unethical, truth-challenged, repellent snake won’t cross in the name of politics.

The Federalist’s Sean Davis reported on Wednesday that Schiff was up to his old tricks at Monday night’s hearing of the Jan. 6 Committee. According to Davis, Schiff “claimed to have proof” that Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, a Republican, texted then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows “to instruct former Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the 2020 presidential election results.”

Davis claims that Schiff misrepresented “the substance of the text message and its source.” Schiff “even doctored original text messages, which were obtained and reviewed by The Federalist in their entirety.”

The article explains the changes Representative Schiff made to the text messages:

Davis (The Federalist’s Sean Davis) explains that in addition to lying about “substance” and the “source” of the text, Schiff “even doctored the message and graphic that he displayed on screen during his statement. The full text message, which was forwarded to Meadows from Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, on the evening of Monday, Jan. 5, was significantly longer than what Schiff read and put on screen, but Schiff erased significant portions of the text and added punctuation where there was none to give the impression that Jordan himself was tersely directing Meadows to give orders to Pence on how to handle the electoral vote certification.”

Davis continues: “The original text was written by Washington attorney and former Department of Defense Inspector General Joseph Schmitz and included an attachment of a four-page draft Word document drafted by Schmitz that detailed Schmitz’s legal reasoning for suggesting that Pence had the constitutional authority to object to the certification of electoral votes submitted by a handful of states. The piece that Schmitz had sent to Jordan was published at the website everylegal.vote the next day and even included the same ‘DISCUSSION DRAFT’ heading and timestamp on the document that Schmitz sent to Jordan.”

He explains that Schmitz sent this text to Jordan “on the evening of Jan. 5, including the Word document as an attachment. Schmitz then texted to Jordan a three-paragraph summary of his Word document, which Schiff sliced and diced and then attributed to Jordan.”

Would anyone like to wager on how much of the above chicanery will be reported by the mainstream media?

Something To Follow Closely

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On Thursday, Breitbart reported that former President Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows has filed a lawsuit challenging the U.S. House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack.

The article reports:

Mark Meadows turned the tables on the U.S. House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack on Wednesday, filling a lawsuit in federal district court in D.C. that argues the committee is unconstitutional and in violation of House rules.

CNN and other establishment media outlets played the lawsuit as a last-ditch effort by a man desperate to avoid a subpoena — or desperate to appease his former boss, Donald Trump.

Yet the lawsuit is a serious threat to the existence of the committee.

The lawsuit makes some familiar arguments, such as that the committee is violating the Constitution’s separation of powers by encroaching on executive privilege. Former Trump aide Stephen K. Bannon, who is being prosecuted by the supposedly apolitical Department of Justice for contempt of Congress, is making the same case against his subpoena in federal court.

But Meadows goes further, pointing out that the January 6 committee violates the terms of its own enabling resolution.

The resolution, H. Res. 503, provides that the committee “shall” consist of 13 members, five of which “shall be appointed after consultation with the minority leader.”

But the committee only has nine members, seven of whom are Democrats, and only two of whom are hand-picked anti-Trump Republicans. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) rejected the five members chosen by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (D-CA), an unprecedented step to ensure a one-sided inquiry.

The article continues:

Furthermore, Meadows’s lawsuit points out that while the chair of the committee can order subpoenas, that authority is not absolute. H. Res. 503 requires the chair of the committee to consult with the ranking member before issuing a subpoena for a deposition. But the committee has no ranking Republican member, which could make the committee’s subpoenas invalid.

If Meadows’s lawsuit is successful, he could not only block his own subpoena, but could see the entire committee declared invalid. Pelosi and the Democrats would have to start over — this time, obeying the rules, with five Republican members.

The Democrats obviously overreached in the way the committee was set up and the way the members were chosen. It seems only fair that this should backfire on them. I am hoping it does.

The Witch Hunt Continues

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On Tuesday, Breitbart reported that former Presidential Chief-of-Staff Mark Meadows is cooperating with the House Select Committee on January 6 after being threatened with jail time if he refused to cooperate.

The article reports:

However, Meadows said that cooperation had been long in the works, even despite threatening comments from Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) touting a forthcoming January 6 committee decision on possible contempt charges for Meadows.

During an interview with Mobile, AL radio’s FM Talk 106.5, Meadows said Schiff’s remarks did not change anything and that he believed the Democrat-led January 6 Committee would be disappointed when they find former President Donald Trump and the West Wing did not have “advance knowledge” on the January 6 U.S. Capitol riot.

“It doesn’t change anything,” he said. “We’ve been working on an accommodation, Jeff, for a long time. What I told them is if I can share with the committee non-privileged information that doesn’t waive the executive privilege that Donald Trump has put forth — it is not my privilege to waive, and I’m not going to be the first chief of staff to do that. At the same time, if I can come in and share non-privileged information that I have, I’ll be glad to do that. [I’m] not going to be compelled to do it. I will be glad to do that voluntarily but if we’re going to do that, if I’m going to do that — what I think they will find is Donald Trump or no one else in the West Wing had any advance knowledge of the security breach that was going to happen at the Capitol on January 6.”

So what is this really about? If you are an American who only listens to the mainstream media, you will be convinced by the time the mid-term elections are held that January 6th was an attempted coup organized by President Trump and his gang of hooligans. That is the goal. That is also the only way the Democrats have a chance of holding on to power in Washington. If you believe January 6th was a coup or an insurrection, why wasn’t anyone armed? Also, there is a person clearly seen in the videos urging people to go into the Capitol who has been identified but not arrested. Hmmm.

I firmly believe that the events at the Capitol on January 6th were a false flag operation. The swamp knew that Trump supporters would be in Washington in numbers. All a few instigators needed to do was to get some of those supporters to break into the Capitol. When you watch the video, you see the Capitol police using flash grenades on a peaceful crowd. You also see Capital police opening the doors to let people into the Capitol. It is interesting that after four years of peaceful Trump rallies, this attack on the Capital occurred. It did not fit the pattern and needs to be looked at in that light.

Follow The Money

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We are currently looking at Congress attempting to pass what they are calling an infrastructure bill that will very likely bankrupt America. So exactly what does this bill pay for?

Yesterday Trending Politics posted an article that answers some of that question.

The article reports:

Former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows said on Saturday that a Democratic infrastructure bill contains language and provisions that will direct the lion’s share of taxpayer funds toward blue cities and states regardless of need elsewhere.

“When we start to look at it, no one’s against roads and bridges working for them, but what they are against is the Washington, D.C., establishment actually spending their dollars on their behalf, but not necessarily their priorities,” Meadows told Newsmax TV.

“The problem is about those priorities: Most of the money that they’re talking about, actually will go to major metropolitan areas,” Meadows added.

It is quite possible that blue states and blue cities need more infrastructure money. These states have been mismanaged by the Democrats for years. However, it is the responsibility of the residents of those states and cities to elect responsible leaders–not the responsibility of the rest of the country to bail them out when their bad policies catch up to them.

The article continues:

“Some of these senators are just saying, ‘Well, we want to do it; it sounds good, but it’s really not going to hit the target,’” Meadows, who was a GOP lawmaker from North Carolina before joining the Trump White House, continued.

“So for me, it’s about making sure that we have a different priority and that we don’t spend money on the Green New Deal or some kind of human infrastructure,” he said.

“We’ve got a new definition for infrastructure that, when I was a member of Congress, we never heard.”

In addition to major cities, all Democrat-run, being infrastructure priorities for the massive spending, middle-Americans are going to be hit with even more inflation that will act as a tax, he warned.

“It is the failed policy of the Biden administration that’s actually making us pay more at the grocery store, at the gas pump, on really anything that we’re looking at,” Meadows said.

“You look at those inflation indicators, it’s all because they’re printing money. And what are the Democrats want to do? They want to print more of it,” he told Newsmax TV.

“Eventually you run out of other people’s money. We’re at that point, and it’s time to say enough is enough.”

There are a lot of reasons Republicans should do everything they can to prevent this bill from becoming law.

 

The Way Forward On De-classification

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Yesterday The Conservative Treehouse posted an article detailing the way forward on declassification of all documents related to the Russia hoax. It is amazing that we have not yet seen these documents.

The author of the article is somewhat cynical as to why the documents remain classified:

CTH has a rather unique perspective on the declassification angle. This conversation has traveled with me for over two years as I have talked to people inside the machinery. Ultimately the discussion ends around something like this:

Is the DC political surveillance state, and all of the ramifications within that reality, so fundamentally corrupt and against our nation’s interests, that no entity dare expose the scope and depth of it?  And ultimately… is it the preservation of institutions that is causing so many disconnected outcomes from evidence intentionally downplayed?

If we assume the scale of unconstitutional conduct has become systemic, that likely answers the questions.  Personally, I believe this is the most likely scenario.

That is a scary thought.

The article suggests a plan to make all the related documents public:

President Trump informs the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, John Ratcliffe, that he wishes to have a full intelligence briefing on the following documents (more may be added), all documents are to be presented without a single redaction:

  • All versions of the Carter Page FISA applications (DOJ) (FBI) (ODNI).
  • All of the Bruce Ohr 302’s filled out by the FBI. (FBI) (ODNI)
  • All of Bruce Ohr’s emails (FBI) (DOJ) (CIA) (ODNI)
  • All relevant documents pertaining to the supportive material within the FISA application. (FBI) (DOJ-NSD ) (DoS) (CIA) (DNI) (NSA) (ODNI);
  • All supportive documents and material provided by Bruce Ohr to the FBI. (FBI)
  • All intelligence documents that were presented to the Gang of Eight in 2016 that pertain to the FISA application used against U.S. person Carter Page; including all intelligence documents that may not have been presented to the FISA Court. (CIA) (FBI) (DOJ) (ODNI) (DoS) (NSA)
  • All unredacted text messages and email content between Lisa Page and Peter Strzok on all devices. (FBI) (DOJ) (DOJ-NSD) (ODNI)
  • The originating CIA “EC” or two-page electronic communication from former FBI Agent Peter Strzok: and all communication between former CIA Director John Brennan and FBI Director James Comey that started Operation Crossfire Hurricane in July 2016. (CIA) (FBI) (ODNI)
  • The full and unredacted April 2017 FISA court 99-page opinion written by Presiding Judge Rosemary Collyer outlining the compliance audit conducted by the NSA in 2016. (NSA) (ODNI) (DOJ) (FBI) (DOJ-NSD)
  • ADD TO THIS – Everything and Anything related to contracts, vendors, services and the intelligence apparatus connected to the 2020 United States election.

The President selects a date for this briefing and through direct orders to his chief of staff, Mark Meadows, informs the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, John Ratcliffe, to advise and coordinate with all executive branch lead intelligence officials, who were/are stakeholders in the compartmented intelligence products as described above, of their request be present for the briefing.

The White House counsel’s office is not to be informed of the intent or purpose of the meeting; however the Presidents’ White House counsel is requested to attend. Further, all of the compartmented intelligence is to be collectively assembled by the ODNI (Ratcliffe) into one volume of a singular Presidential Daily Briefing (PDB). There are to be eighteen printed copies of the PDB assembled and secured for the briefing, post haste.

Additionally, the office of the president personally informs the ODNI (Ratcliffe) of the executives’ request to invite for the briefing each member of the legislative branch Intelligence Community oversight known as the Gang-of-Eight.

Immediately after the briefing by the executive level (cabinet) department officials, while remaining in a closed and classified session, the full and comprehensive content of this collective intelligence product will be discussed with the full assembly of the U.S. Legislative Branch Intelligence Oversight known as the Gang of Eight.

Therefore, National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien is instructed to coordinate with the ODNI (Ratcliffe) for the attendance of the Gang of Eight: Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Minority leader Kevin McCarthy, HPSCI Chairman Adam Schiff, HPSCI Ranking Member Devin Nunes, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, SSCI Chairman Richard Burr and SSCI Vice-Chair Mark Warner. [Topic “TBD”]

In order to facilitate the briefing. Each member of the participating group will be provided with one full printed copy of the material assembled by the ODNI during the briefing.

[Each of the participants carries the prerequisite clearances, legal and constitutional authority to engage with the classified document according to their position and status. Only the executive can assemble the product for Go8 review and feedback]

At the conclusion of the briefing; and after hearing from, and engagement with, each of the participating members of the executive intelligence offices and duly authorized legislative oversight representatives; and after listening to their opinion as to the subject material discussed; the president announces to the fully assembled leadership of both the Executive branch (cabinet) and Legislative branch (Go8), it is his opinion the National Interests of the United States can best be served with the American people having a full, transparent and honest review of the material assembled and discussed.

The President, no-one else, only the President, then collects the printed portfolios as they were distributed to the participants, exits the briefing, and walks directly into the James Brady press briefing room within the White House; handing each of the awaiting twelve members of the national media a copy of the briefing material to be published on behalf of the American people.

At exactly the same time as President Trump enters the briefing room, one copy of the assembled portfolio is hand delivered, by President Trump only, to White House communications director Alyssa Farah with instructions to scan and release the content to the public through the White House website.

Done.

The American people are aware…

The system will now turn immediately to destroy Donald J Trump….

…..while we show up en-masse to support him.

Works for me.

There’s Always More To The Story

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Yesterday President Trump fired Intelligence Community Inspector General (ICIG) Michael Atkinson. As expected, the mainstream media was very upset. ICIG Atkinson served at the will of the President, so why do you think the media was so upset?

The Conservative Treehouse posted an article yesterday that provides some clues.

The article notes:

The necessary, albeit politically controversial, move comes about two months after President Trump assigned Ric Grenell to lead the Office of the Director of National Intelligence; Grenell is ultimately the acting boss of the overall intelligence community. It is likely DNI Grenell provided some key insight into the sketchy background activity in/around Atkinson’s office, and the overall intelligence apparatus writ large.

Additionally, former congressman Mark Meadows is now President Trump’s Chief-of-Staff; and Meadows has been a critic of those within the intelligence apparatus who attempted a soft-coup twice: Once by special counsel (Russia investigation) Robert Mueller; and once by impeachment (Ukraine investigation) using CIA operative Eric Ciaramella and NSC operative Alexander Vindman.

Also, in the recent FISA review by the OIG the DOJ inspector general specifically identified issues with the “accuracy reviews” conducted by DOJ-NSD chief legal counsel.  Who was that former DOJ-NSD chief legal counsel?  That would be current ICIG Michael Atkinson…

The plot thickens:

Additionally, since our original research into ICIG Atkinson revealed he was part of a corrupt deep state effort to cover his own involvement during the FBI operation against candidate Trump, there have been some rather interesting additional discoveries.

The key to understanding the corrupt endeavor behind the fraudulent “whistle-blower” complaint, doesn’t actually originate with ICIG Atkinson. The key person is the former head of the DOJ National Security Division, Mary McCord.

…McCord was the senior intelligence officer who accompanied Sally Yates to the White House in 2017 to confront then White House Counsel Don McGahn about the issues with National Security Advisor Michael Flynn and the drummed up controversy over the Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak phone call.

Additionally, Mary McCord, Sally Yates and Michael Atkinson worked together to promote the narrative around the incoming Trump administration “Logan Act” violations. This silly claim (undermining Obama policy during the transition) was the heavily promoted, albeit manufactured, reason why Yates and McCord were presumably concerned about Flynn’s contact with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. It was nonsense.

However, McCord didn’t just disappear in 2017 when she retired from the DOJ-NSD. She resurfaced as part of the Lawfare group assembly after the mid-term election in 2018.

The article goes on to mention that Mary McCord eventually went to work for Adam Schiff to help with the impeachment efforts.

Please follow the link to The Conservative Treehouse to read the entire article. The firing of Michael Atkinson is a serious blow to the deep state, so expect the media to be totally rabid about it for at least the next week.

Some People In Our Government Should Have Had The Grace To Resign When President Trump Was Elected

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The Gateway Pundit posted an article today about some comments made by our supposedly neutral federal employees.

The article reports:

The WaPo reported this weekend and it was quickly uncovered that former Mueller gang members Kevin Clinesmith was involved in altering documents used to obtain a FISA warrant to legitimize spying on candidate and President Trump.  The WaPo claims that this will be coming out in the upcoming IG report in December.

We know Clinesmith was mentioned in the IG’s Clinton email report.  Attorney 2 from that report was identified by House member Mark Meadows as Kevin Clinesmith.  Meadows revealed his identity over the objection of the FBI during a hearing on the IG’s findings.  The FBI wanted to keep Clinesmith’s name anonymous claiming he was a counterintelligence specialist –

Horowitz testified that the FBI was withholding the names of the other rogue agents from Congress and the public because “they work on counterintelligence” and can’t be exposed.

But Meadows argued that other agents for the FBI’s office of legal counsel, and are no longer in “counterintelligence,” as the FBI claimed.

“They don’t work in counterintelligence,” Meadows said in an exchange with Horowitz. “If that’s the reason the FBI is giving, they’re giving you false information, because they work for the general counsel.”

Clinesmith was caught texting anti-Trump emails while working on the Hillary and Trump investigations –

Clinesmith sent a number of pro-Clinton, anti-Trump political messages over the FBI’s computer system, which the report said “raised concerns about potential bias” that may have impacted the investigation.

On page 445 of the DOJ’s IG report on Hillary Clinton’s emails, there is a discussion of what Attorney 2 (Clinesmith) from the FBI texted on October 28, 2016  –

Among the general discussion of political issues by FBI Attorney 2, we identified three instant message exchanges that raised concerns of potential bias.  The first of these exchanges was on October 28, 2016, shortly after Comey’s October 28 letter to Congress that effectively announced the reopening of the Midyear investigation.  FBI Attorney 2 sent similar messages to four different FBI employees. The timestamps of these messages are included below. The messages stated:

13:44:42, to FBI Employee 1: “I mean, I never really liked the Republic anyway.”
13:44:52, to FBI Employee 2: “I mean, I never really liked the Republic anyway.”
14:01:52, to FBI Employee 3: “As I have initiated the destruction of the republic…. Would you be so kind as to have a coffee with me this afternoon?”
15:28:50, to FBI Employee 4: “I’m clinging to small pockets of happiness in the dark time of the Republic’s destruction”

Notice that the IG’s report notes that this is the same time Comey initiated the second review of Hillary’s emails after finding them on pervert Anthony Weiner’s laptop.  But what the IG does not say (perhaps because they did not know it at the time) is that this was right after the initial FISA application to spy on Carter Page and then candidate Trump was initiated! 

I suspect we will see more of this when the IG report is released in the next few weeks. It is sad that a government employee thinks he is doing the right thing by bringing down the republic.

We Have Our “Perry Mason Moment”

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If you were watching closely yesterday, you saw a total disconnect between what the press was told (and reported) and the actual testimony given. The Gateway Pundit posted the story yesterday.

The article reports:

Ambassador Gordon Sondland was the guest of honor before the Schiff Show Trial on Wednesday morning.

During his opening statement Ambassador Sondland switched his testimony and implicated President Trump, Vice President Pence, Secretary of State Pompeo, Mick Mulvaney under the bus.

During a break House Intel Chairman and impeachment ringleader Adam Schiff ran to reporters and declared President Trump guilty of quid-pro-quo, bribery and withholding documents from House investigators.

CNN blasted headlines trashing Trump as guilty of an impeachable offense based on Sondland’s testimony.

Sondland later clarified that he “presumed” there was quid pro quo, then crumbled under questioning from Congressman Mike Turner (R-OH).

“Mr. Sondland, let’s be clear: no one on this planet—not Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, Mick Mulvaney, Mike Pompeo—no one told you aid was tied to political investigations, is that correct?” Rep. Turner asked Sondland.

Gordon Sondland: “That’s correct.”

“Ballgame. This, here, is the real bombshell,” Congressman Mark Meadows said.

The article also includes video of Ambassador Sondland’s testimony.

Maybe I am missing something, but it seems to me that the Ambassador would be the definitive source on whether or not there was quid pro quo. He stated that there was not. He explained that his other testimony was based on assumptions and presumptions. That testimony would not hold up in court (most of the testimony we have heard would not hold up in court because it is second or third hand or hearsay). You cannot impeach a President on assumptions and presumptions.

It’s time to stop spending taxpayer money on this circus.

 

Somehow The Mainstream Media Left This Out

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Yesterday Townhall posted an article about some of the testimony being selectively released by the House Intelligence Committee.

The article includes two tweets by Representative Mark Meadows: Is America ready to impeach a President based on a presumption because the Democrats did not like the results of the 2016 election?

 

The Charade Continues

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Byron York posted an article at The Washington Examiner today titled, “The Adam Schiff Empowerment Act.” So what is he talking about? The bill before the House of Representatives today takes the impeachment inquiry out of the hands of the Judicial Committee (where it has traditionally been) and places it in the hands of the Intelligence Committee headed by Adam Schiff.

The article reports:

The resolution gives Rep. Schiff, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, far-reaching power over the Trump impeachment proceedings. Speaker Nancy Pelosi remains the ultimate authority, of course, but, like a chairman of the board choosing a chief executive officer, she has picked Schiff to run the show. And in the resolution, Democrats will give him near-total control.

The first thing the resolution will do is give the impeachment investigation to the Intelligence Committee. Until now, three committees — Intelligence, Oversight, and Foreign Affairs — have been conducting impeachment interviews. Going forward, Oversight and Foreign Affairs will be out of the interview picture in favor of Intelligence.

Among other things, that would mean that some Republicans who have been persistent critics of the process but who have been allowed into depositions by virtue of their membership in other participating committees — two examples are Oversight Committee members Rep. Jim Jordan and Rep. Mark Meadows — will no longer be allowed in the interview room.

“It’s totally one-sided,” Meadows told me Wednesday evening. “They can continue to do secret depositions. They have noticed depositions for John Bolton and others next week in anticipation of a positive vote Thursday. All it does is limit the committees that will be involved in the depositions.”

Any Congressman who votes for this travesty needs to be voted out of office in 2020.

The article continues:

The resolution would also give Schiff the authority to call and conduct public hearings on impeachment. Schiff will control the witnesses. Although there has been some discussion about whether Republicans will have the right to call witnesses, the resolution only gives the ranking Republican on the Intelligence Community, Rep. Devin Nunes, the right to ask Schiff to call a witness.

“To allow for full evaluation of minority witness requests, the ranking minority member may submit to the chair, in writing, any requests for witness testimony relevant to the investigation,” the resolution says. “Any such request shall be accompanied by a detailed written justification of the relevance of the testimony of each requested witnesses to the investigation.” Republicans will get nothing that Schiff does not approve.

“There’s no guarantee we can call any witnesses,” said Republican Rep. Brad Wenstrup, a member of the Intelligence Committee, in an interview Wednesday.

“The rules the Democrats rammed through simply confirm the absolute control Schiff has been exercising this entire time,” Nunes said. “He shouldn’t be involved in impeachment at all since none of this has any intelligence component, but Pelosi obviously thinks Nadler is incompetent.”

This process totally ignores the rights of a defendant guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution. It is really sad that the political hotheads in the Democrat party have brought us to this place.

There Is Always A Problem With A House Of Cards

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On Tuesday, John Solomon posted an opinion piece at The Hill that is going to create problems for those diehards still trying to justify the political use of the intelligence community under President Obama. As we all remember, the Steele Dossier was the main justification for spying on the Trump campaign (and the transition team and the entire administration in its early days). We all know that the Steele Dossier was political opposition research. Some of us wonder how the FBI and the FISA Court did not know that fact (or if they did and chose to ignore it). Well, we are finally getting answers.

The Hill notes:

Some in the news media have tried in recent days to rekindle their long-lost love affair with former MI6 agent Christopher Steele and his now infamous dossier.

The main trigger was a lengthy interview in June with the Department of Justice (DOJ) inspector general, which some news outlets suggested meant U.S. officials have found Steele, the former Hillary Clinton-backed political muckraker, to be believable. 

“Investigators ultimately found Steele’s testimony credible and even surprising,” Politico crowed. The Washington Post went even further, suggesting Steele’s assistance to the inspector general might “undermine Trumpworld’s alt-narrative” that the Russia-collusion investigation was flawed.

For sure, Steele may have valuable information to aid Justice’s internal affairs probe into misconduct during the 2016 Russia election probe. His dossier alleging a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Moscow ultimately was disproven, but not before his intelligence was used to secure a surveillance warrant targeting the Trump campaign in the final days of the 2016 election.  

…Multiple sources familiar with the FBI spreadsheet tell me the vast majority of Steele’s claims were deemed to be wrong, or could not be corroborated even with the most awesome tools available to the U.S. intelligence community. One source estimated the spreadsheet found upward of 90 percent of the dossier’s claims to be either wrong, nonverifiable or open-source intelligence found with a Google search.

In other words, it was mostly useless.

The article concludes:

Even State officials, who listened to Steele’s theories in October 2016 – less than two weeks before his dossier was used to support the FISA request – instantly determined he was grossly wrong on some points.

Any effort to use Steele’s belated cooperation with the inspector general’s investigation to prop up the credibility of his 2016 anti-Trump dossier or the FBI’s reliance on it for the FISA warrant is deeply misguided.

Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), a key defender of Trump, said he talked with DOJ officials after the most recent stories surfaced about Steele and was told the reporting is wrong. “Based on my conversations with DOJ officials, recent reports which suggest Christopher Steele’s dossier and allegations are somehow deemed credible by DOJ, are simply false and not based on any confirmation from sources with direct knowledge of ongoing investigations,” Meadows told me.

The FBI’s own spreadsheet was so conclusive that it prompted then-FBI Director James Comey (no fan of Trump, mind you) to dismiss the document as “salacious and unverified” and for lead FBI agent Peter Strzok to text, “There’s no big there there.” FBI lawyer Lisa Page testified that nine months into reviewing Steele’s dossier they had not found evidence of the collusion that Steele alleged.

Two years later, Mueller came to the same conclusion: Steele’s intelligence alleging a conspiracy was never verified. 

The next time you hear a pundit suggesting Steele’s dossier is credible or that the FBI’s reliance on it as FISA evidence was justified, just picture all those blanks in that FBI spreadsheet.

They speak volumes as to what went wrong in the Russia investigation.

Some people in the Obama administration have some ‘splainin’ to do. If we truly have equal justice under the law, some of them will see jail time.

Maybe The Race Wasn’t About Gender

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On Wednesday, The Hill posted an article with the following headline, “Heavy loss by female candidate in Republican NC runoff sparks shock.” Wow. This is totally biased reporting. I live in North Carolina’s Third Congressional District. I voted in the election The Hill is talking about. It wasn’t about gender.

The article notes:

Murphy had earned the endorsement of a slew of high-profile Republicans, including Freedom Caucus founders Reps. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) and Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), after the legislator pledged to join the group if elected.

The House Freedom Action Fund, which is affiliated with the Freedom Caucus, spent $236,000 to defeat Perry in the contest. 

Former New York City Mayor and Trump confidant Rudy Giuliani also threw his weight behind Murphy in the final days of the race, recording robocalls on behalf of the candidate. 

However, Perry was not without funds or endorsements. She ended up raising $373,851 for the primary and the runoff, below the $543,991 raised by Murphy.

But she had the backing of various Republican female PACs, including the Winning For Women Action Fund, which dropped more than $680,000 supporting Perry and opposing Murphy in the runoff.

So if you add up those numbers, Murphy had $779,001, and Perry had $1,053,851. That may explain why I received a mailing (sometimes two) from Joan Perry every day. It was annoying. I voted for Greg Murphy. The fact that Joan Perry is a woman was not a consideration for me. She is very smart and very well spoken. I have heard her speak and was impressed with her as a person. However, she is a doctor. She is not a business woman, and she is not a politician. She would have been a total novice in Washington. The determining factor for me was the fact that Greg Murphy aligned himself with the Freedom Caucus. She did not have the experience to do that–he did.

Identity politics does not work. It’s wrong. People are getting wise to it. I want experience, ideas, and some hope of being honestly represented.

Be Careful What You Wish For

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CNS News posted an article today about the upcoming appearance of Robert Mueller before the House of Representatives.

The article notes:

Be careful what you wish for, Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) told Fox News’s Laura Ingraham Tuesday night:

“Listen, it is not a good day for America, but Bob Mueller better be prepared. Because I can tell you, he will be cross-examined for the first time, and the American people will start to see the flaws in his report.”

Republicans have many unanswered questions about the scope of Mueller’s investigation, including the process leading up to the FISA warrant on Carter Page and when Mueller’s team learned that there was no coordination between the Trump campaign and the Russians.

Meadows said Democrats have courted Mueller “just so that they can harass the president” and keep the collusion/obstruction narrative going for political reasons.

Meadows predicted that Mueller’s testimony will “backfire” on Democrats.

Mueller, in his only public comment on the report, said it speaks for itself and he would have nothing to add beyond what is in it.

But “Congress has questions that go beyond the report,” Rep. Schiff told CNN Tuesday night:

“So we have any number of questions about the counter-intelligence investigation, and the role of the counter-intelligence agents within his team to questions about some of the prosecutorial decisions that were made. We have fact questions about some of the statements that are made in the report, so there are any number of issues that we wish to cover with him,” Schiff said.

So what about the questions some of the rest of us have:

  • How was the investigation team chosen?
  • Why was the investigation team composed solely of Democrat campaign contributors and in one case a lawyer who had worked for the Clintons?
  • Why was someone put in charge of investigating the President right after the President had rejected his job application? Was he expected to be objective?
  • Why did the Mueller Report totally ignore Christopher Steele, Bruce Ohr, Nellie Ohr, etc.?
  • Why was an unverified dossier used as the basis for a FISA Warrant?
  • How many attempts were made to place undercover agents in the Trump campaign?
  • Why were charges against Paul Manafort that had been deemed not worth prosecuting more than ten years ago suddenly brought to life again?
  • Why did the investigation look equally into both campaigns?
  • Did the report include the fact that the Democrats never allowed the FBI to examine their computer servers that they claimed the Russians had hacked?
  • When did Robert Mueller realize that there was no collusion between President Trump and Russia?

Those questions might make for an interesting hearing. I would be willing to watch that on C-SPAN.

When The Roots Are Rotten

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John Solomon posted an article at The Hill yesterday about some recent information dealing with the roots of the charges that candidate Donald Trump was colluding with the Russians.

The article reports:

And the behavior of FBI agents and federal prosecutors who promoted that faulty evidence may disturb us more than we now know.

The first, the Christopher Steele dossier, has received enormous attention. And the more scrutiny it receives, the more its truthfulness wanes. Its credibility has declined so much that many now openly question how the FBI used it to support a surveillance warrant against the Trump campaign in October 2016.

At its best, the Steele dossier is an “unverified and salacious” political research memo funded by Trump’s Democratic rivals. At worst, it may be Russian disinformation worthy of the “garbage” label given it by esteemed reporter Bob Woodward.

The second document, known as the “black cash ledger,” remarkably has escaped the same scrutiny, even though its emergence in Ukraine in the summer of 2016 forced Paul Manafort to resign as Trump’s campaign chairman and eventually face U.S. indictment.

In search warrant affidavits, the FBI portrayed the ledger as one reason it resurrected a criminal case against Manafort that was dropped in 2014 and needed search warrants in 2017 for bank records to prove he worked for the Russian-backed Party of Regions in Ukraine.

There’s just one problem: The FBI’s public reliance on the ledger came months after the feds were warned repeatedly that the document couldn’t be trusted and likely was a fake, according to documents and more than a dozen interviews with knowledgeable sources.

The article explains the problem with the “black cash ledger”:

For example, Ukraine’s top anticorruption prosecutor, Nazar Kholodnytsky, told me he warned the U.S. State Department’s law enforcement liaison and multiple FBI agents in late summer 2016 that Ukrainian authorities who recovered the ledger believed it likely was a fraud.

“It was not to be considered a document of Manafort. It was not authenticated. And at that time it should not be used in any way to bring accusations against anybody,” Kholodnytsky said, recalling what he told FBI agents. 

Likewise, Manafort’s Ukrainian business partner Konstantin Kilimnik, a regular informer for the State Department, told the U.S. government almost immediately after The New York Times wrote about the ledger in August 2016 that the document probably was fake.

Manafort “could not have possibly taken large amounts of cash across three borders. It was always a different arrangement — payments were in wire transfers to his companies, which is not a violation,” Kilimnik wrote in an email to a senior U.S. official on Aug. 22, 2016.

He added: “I have some questions about this black cash stuff, because those published records do not make sense. The timeframe doesn’t match anything related to payments made to Manafort. … It does not match my records. All fees Manafort got were wires, not cash.”

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team and the FBI were given copies of Kilimnik’s warning, according to three sources familiar with the documents.

So why didn’t Mueller simply end the investigation because the roots of it were proven to be false?

The article concludes:

Rep. Mark Meadows, a senior Republican on the House Government Oversight and Reform Committee, told me Wednesday night he is asking the Justice Department inspector general to investigate the FBI and prosecutors’ handling of the Manafort warrants, including any media leaks and evidence that the government knew the black ledger was potentially unreliable or suspect evidence.

The question of whether the Mueller team should have used the ledger in search warrant affidavits before that is for the courts to decide.

But the public has a substantial interest in questioning whether, more broadly, the FBI should have sustained a Trump-Russia collusion investigation for more than two years based on the suspect Steele dossier and black ledger. 

Understandably, there isn’t much public sympathy for foreign lobbyists such as Manafort. But the FBI and prosecutors should be required to play by the rules and use solid evidence when making its cases.

It does not appear to have been the prevailing practice in the Russia collusion investigation. And that should trouble us all.

It is becoming very obvious that the Mueller investigation did not follow normal investigative rules or procedures. When he knew that both pieces of evidence were totally unreliable, Robert Mueller should have ended the investigation. I suspect that would have been long before the 2018 mid-term election. Somehow I think the clown show we are currently seeing in the House of Representatives as a result of the Democrats taking the majority is at least partially the result of continuing the Mueller investigation combined with reckless, baseless charges made against the President by some Washington insiders now working in the media.

There Is A Key

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The following appeared on my Facebook feed yesterday. I feel that it sums up Robert Mueller’s final statement on his investigation:

However, there is a new wrinkle in the investigation of the roots of the Russian collusion charge that is very interesting. Yesterday John Solomon posted an article at The Hill that contains what he describes as surprising information.

The article reports:

Multiple witnesses have told Congress that, a week before Trump’s inauguration in January 2017, Britain’s top national security official sent a private communique to the incoming administration, addressing his country’s participation in the counterintelligence probe into the now-debunked Trump-Russia election collusion.

Most significantly, then-British national security adviser Sir Mark Lyall Grant claimed in the memo, hand-delivered to incoming U.S. national security adviser Mike Flynn’s team, that the British government lacked confidence in the credibility of former MI6 spy Christopher Steele’s Russia collusion evidence, according to congressional investigators who interviewed witnesses familiar with the memo.

It gets more interesting:

Congressional investigators have interviewed two U.S. officials who handled the memo, confirmed with the British government that a communique was sent and alerted the Department of Justice (DOJ) to the information. One witness confirmed to Congress that he was interviewed by special counsel Robert Mueller about the memo.

Now the race is on to locate the document in U.S. intelligence archives to see if the witnesses’ recollections are correct. And Trump is headed to Britain this weekend, where he might just get a chance to ask his own questions.

“A whistleblower recently revealed the existence of a communique from our allies in Great Britain during the early days of the Russia collusion investigation,” Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), a member of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, told me.

So Robert Mueller knew that there were doubts about the Steele Dossier–the basis for the charge of Russian collusion.

The story continues:

The revelation of a possible warning from the British government about Steele surfaces less than a month after a long-concealed document was made public, showing that a State Department official in October 2016 met with Steele and took notes that raised concerns about the accuracy of some information he provided.

Those notes, as I have written, quoted the British operative as saying he had a political deadline of Election Day to make his information public and that he was leaking to the news media — two claims that would weigh against his credibility as an FBI informant. They also flagged a piece of demonstrably false intelligence he provided.

The British Embassy in Washington did not return a call or email seeking comment. Grant, who left his post in April 2017, did not respond to a request for comment at the university where he works. His former top deputy, Paddy McGuinness, declined comment.

The article concludes:

If the British memo exists, it was never shared with the House Intelligence, House Judiciary, House Oversight and Reform or Senate Judiciary committees, despite their exhaustive investigations into the Steele dossier, congressional investigators told me. These investigators learned about the document in the past few weeks, setting off a mad scramble to locate it and talk to witnesses.

If the witnesses’ recollections are correct, the British communique could become one of the most significant pieces of evidence to emerge in the investigation of the Russia-collusion investigators.

It would mean that Trump was never told of the warning Flynn’s team received, and that the FBI and DOJ continued to rely on Steele’s uncorroborated allegations for many months as they renewed the FISA warrant at least two more times and named Mueller as special prosecutor to investigate Russia collusion.

Former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), whose staff has been fighting unsuccessfully to gain access to the British communique, told me Wednesday its public release would further accentuate “that the FBI and DOJ were dead wrong to rely on the dossier in the Russia investigation and to use it as a basis to spy on Americans.”

The investigation into President Trump was a hoax, pure and simple. However, that won’t stop impeachment proceedings. As the truth dribbles out, those impeachment proceedings are going to look really silly.

Who Has The Transcript? Who Is Leaking The Transcript? Why Is It Being Leaked?

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Byron York posted an article at The Washington Examiner today about James Baker’s two interviews with House of Representatives investigators last October. The article notes that Republican Rep. Mark Meadows called parts of Baker’s testimony “explosive.”

The article reports:

Republicans intended to make the interview transcripts public. The questioning was not conducted in a classified setting, and Baker had FBI and other lawyers with him the whole time. But the House still had to send the transcripts to the FBI for clearance, just to make sure public release would not reveal any classified or otherwise secret information.

If Republicans hoped for a quick OK from the bureau, they were sorely disappointed. October passed. Then November. Then December. And now, half of January. The FBI still has the transcripts, and there is no word on when the bureau will clear them for release.

Even though the transcripts have not been released, they are in the news.

The article explains:

Two major news stories in the past few days have been based in whole or in part on what Baker told lawmakers. Some news organizations appear to have read the transcripts, or at least significant portions of them, or had them read to reporters by someone with access. Suddenly, the Baker transcripts are hot.

Again, the FBI still has the transcripts and is not yet saying when they will be cleared for release.

It seems as if both The New York Times and CNN have reported on information in the transcripts (along with comments by Jim Jordan and Mark Meadows):

The Baker excerpt, revealing the criminal investigation, is a new and important part of the story of the FBI’s handling of the Trump-Russia investigation. Release of the full transcripts could shed new light on the FBI’s use of the Trump dossier in the Russia probe. But they remain secret — and it is the FBI that has the final word on whether and when to allow the release of information that is unflattering to the FBI.

The second big story that came in part from the Baker transcript was the New York Times piece last Friday headlined, “FBI Opened Inquiry Into Whether Trump Was Secretly Working on Behalf of Russia.”

The story caused intense excitement in anti-Trump circles. “Counterintelligence investigators had to consider whether the president’s own actions constituted a possible threat to national security,” the Times reported. “Agents also sought to determine whether Mr. Trump was knowingly working for Russia or had unwittingly fallen under Moscow’s influence.”

In the piece, the bureau’s reasoning was explained by references to … the secret Baker transcripts. The paper said Baker told lawmakers that the FBI viewed President Trump’s firing of Director James Comey as a national security issue. “Not only would it be an issue of obstructing an investigation, but the obstruction itself would hurt our ability to figure out what the Russians had done, and that is what would be the threat to national security,” Baker said in the still-secret testimony, according to the Times. The paper said portions of the testimony “were read to The New York Times.”

Not long after, CNN published an article, “Transcripts detail how FBI debated whether Trump was ‘following directions’ of Russia.” CNN quoted significant portions of the Baker transcripts, in which Baker said the FBI wanted to know if Trump “was acting at the behest of and somehow following directions, somehow executing [Russia’s] will.”

It’s time for the FBI to stop playing games and release the transcripts. If there are rogue elements of the FBI that will be revealed in these transcripts, so be it. It is time that we cleaned up our justice system and brought back transparency and equal justice under the law.

 

Is This Even Legal?

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Yesterday The Gateway Pundit posted an article about Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. He has refused to appear before the House Judiciary Committee and will not turn over the subpoenaed documents to the Committee.

The article reports:

According to multiple reports, Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein has given a verbal resignation to Chief of Staff John Kelly following an explosive NYT report he wanted to wear a wire and oust Trump from office.

Last week, Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows (R-NC), who previously filed articles of impeachment against Rosenstein, called for the Deputy Attorney General to appear before Congress under oath this week.

But today Rosenstein notified Congress he will not turn over the subpoenaed memos and will not appear before the House Judiciary Committee on Thursday.

The Conservative Treehouse posted an article yesterday that included the following paragraphs:

Exposing the FBI/DOJ dirty deeds is a major priority for a contingent within congress and a multitude of Trump supporters – but for the office of the President, in the immediate future, not-so-much.

When you have this much leverage on someone, you don’t want them to quit. You want to use their damaged and tenuous position to your advantage. President Trump is in no hurry to fire Rosenstein (not yet), because the DAG is so weak and President Trump holds all the leverage in the relationship.

Rod Rosenstein knows what he did wrong; and President Trump knows what Rosenstein did wrong. Though it could change based on new discoveries of how far the DAG went along within the soft-coup process, President Trump isn’t likely to let Rosenstein go until everyone else knows what Rosenstein did wrong.

My question amid all of this palace intrigue is, “Does Congress have legal recourse to get the documents they want and to force Rosenstein to appear?” Can the Democrats run out the clock in the hopes of taking control of Congress?  If they are successful in doing that, we can expect more corruption and politicization of these agencies in the future. We can expect Republicans and conservatives to be under constant surveillance and attack. I don’t think that is what American voters want. Stay tuned, this is going to get interesting.

 

When Did The FBI Become Political?

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This article is based on two articles–one at The Conservative Treehouse and one at The Hill.

The Conservative Treehouse article reports:

The DOJ-NSD and FBI are holding a press conference today at 9:30am.  The topic is unknown, but the timing coincides with a document production subpoena from the House Judiciary Committee for McCabe Memos, the “Woods File” supporting the Carter Page FISA application, and Gang-of-Eight documents on the Russia investigation.

In related news, former FBI chief legal counsel, James Baker, delivered testimony to the Joint House Committee yesterday in the ongoing investigation of corrupt FISA processes and “spy-gate”.   Fox News and The Hill both have reports.

The Hill reports:

Congressional investigators have confirmed that a top FBI official met with Democratic Party lawyers to talk about allegations of Donald Trump-Russia collusion weeks before the 2016 election, and before the bureau secured a search warrant targeting Trump’s campaign.

Former FBI general counsel James Baker met during the 2016 season with at least one attorney from Perkins Coie, the Democratic National Committee’s private law firm.

That’s the firm used by the DNC and Hillary Clinton’s campaign to secretly pay research firm Fusion GPS and Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence operative, to compile a dossier of uncorroborated raw intelligence alleging Trump and Moscow were colluding to hijack the presidential election.

The dossier, though mostly unverified, was then used by the FBI as the main evidence seeking a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant targeting the Trump campaign in the final days of the campaign.

The revelation was confirmed both in contemporaneous evidence and testimony secured by a joint investigation by Republicans on the House Judiciary and Government Oversight committees, my source tells me.

It means the FBI had good reason to suspect the dossier was connected to the DNC’s main law firm and was the product of a Democratic opposition-research effort to defeat Trump — yet failed to disclose that information to the FISA court in October 2016, when the bureau applied for a FISA warrant to surveil Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.

“This is a bombshell that unequivocally shows the real collusion was between the FBI and Donald Trump’s opposition — the DNC, Hillary and a Trump-hating British intel officer — to hijack the election, rather than some conspiracy between Putin and Trump,” a knowledgeable source told me.

Here you have the smoking gun in the Russian investigation. Unfortunately it is a smoking gun that Robert Mueller has chosen to ignore. That alone should give all of us pause. What in the world is Mueller investigating? (Or what in the world is Mueller avoiding investigating?)

The Hill further reports:

The growing body of evidence that the FBI used mostly politically-motivated, unverified intelligence from an opponent to justify spying on the GOP nominee’s campaign — just weeks before Election Day — has prompted a growing number of Republicans to ask President Trump to declassify the rest of the FBI’s main documents in the Russia collusion case.

House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), House Freedom Caucus leaders Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) and Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), veteran investigator Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) and many others have urged the president to act on declassification even as FBI and Justice Department have tried to persuade the president to keep documents secret.

Ryan has said he believes the declassification will uncover potential FBI abuses of the FISA process. Jordan said he believes there is strong evidence the bureau misled the FISA court. Nunes has said the FBI intentionally hid exculpatory evidence from the judges.

And Meadows told The Hill’s new morning television show, Rising, on Wednesday that there is evidence the FBI had sources secretly record members of the Trump campaign.

“There’s a strong suggestion that confidential human sources actually taped members within the Trump campaign,” Meadows told Hill.TV hosts Krystal Ball and Ned Ryun.

I can assure you that if those responsible for the illegal spying on the opposition campaign are not brought to justice, this will happen again in the future. In the Watergate Scandal, people went to jail. In the Russiagate Scandal, people should also go to jail. Oddly enough, it seems as if the people the Special Prosecutor is investigating are not the ones who should go to jail.

Lying To Congress Is Not A Good Idea

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It is no secret that the Department of Justice has been slow walking documents requested by Congress since Congress began their oversight investigation of corruption in the FBI and DOJ. However, with the testimony of Lisa Page, that slow walking has taken a new turn.

This article is based on articles posted at The Gateway Pundit yesterday and at The Conservative Treehouse yesterday.

The headline at The Gateway Pundit article is:

REPORT: House Conservatives Prepare to Impeach Rosenstein as Soon as Monday

This is about lying to Congress.

The article reports:

Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows dropped a bombshell Friday afternoon and said it appears the DOJ is continuing their efforts to keep material facts and even witnesses from Congress.

Meadows tweeted: Remarkably, we learned new information today suggesting the DOJ had not notified Lisa Page of Congress’ outstanding interview requests for over 7 months now. The DOJ/FBI appear to be continuing their efforts to keep material facts, and perhaps even witnesses, from Congress.

Rosenstein was defiant, smug and laughed off lawmakers during a recent Congressional hearing and refused to answer many pertinent Spygate questions.

The Deputy Attorney General has been working overtime to obstruct House conservatives from oversight while running offense for the Deep State with the Mueller witch hunt.

Both Mueller and Rosenstein are out of control and need to be prosecuted and thrown in prison.

Friday’s revelation the DOJ had not notified Lisa Page of Congress’ outstanding interview requests for over 7 months may be the last straw for GOP lawmakers; it’s way past time to get rid of Rod Rosenstein.

The Conservative Treehouse reports:

On January 3rd, 2018, House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes and DOJ Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein entered an agreement for witness testimony.   One of those witnesses was FBI Attorney Lisa Page, Andrew McCabe’s former special counsel.

WASHINGTON – January 4th – House investigators will get access this week to “all remaining investigative documents” – in unredacted form – that they had sought as part of their Russia inquiry, under a deal between Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., according to a letter obtained by Fox News.

[…] According to the letter, committee investigators also will get access to eight key witnesses this month including FBI agent Peter Strzok and FBI lawyer Lisa Page, who exchanged anti-Trump text messages during an affair and previously worked on the special counsel’s Russia probe.  (link)

The conversation was documented in a confirmation letter shared by Devin Nunes back to Rod Rosenstein the following day, January 4th, 2018.  Except there’s a problem, Lisa Page told congress today that no-one from the DOJ ever contacted her.  That means Rod Rosenstein was lying:

The impeachment of Rosenstein should be bi-partisan, but it won’t be. Both parties should be concerned when the oversight responsibilities of Congress are ignored. However, the spygate scandal runs so deep and is so obviously linked to a Democrat administration’s politicization of federal law enforcement, I will be totally surprised if any Democrats support this impeachment. That being said, I suspect many Americans are getting tired of watching people obviously break the law and not be held to the standard an average American would be held to. The Democrats block this impeachment at their own peril–the voters may protest, and there may come a day when they want the DOJ and FBI to cooperate with Congress.

 

Reading The Tea Leaves

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Some pundits and some Republicans are beginning to realize that President Trump was elected by Americans who want to see his agenda (repeal ObamaCare, tax reform, smaller government, end Iranian nuclear treaty, shrink government, build the wall, etc) move forward. Blocking that agenda is not a smart move. Many of us are tired of empty promises and lame excuses. There are a few people now concerned that if the Republican Congress does not deliver on their promises, there will no longer be a Republican Congress. Democrats are salivating, and Republicans who have never had to live up to their false promises are beginning to wonder if they will have a job after 2018.

Yesterday Breitbart posted an article quoting Representative Mark Meadows, chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, on what Republicans need to do when Congress reconvenes.

The article reports:

“We’re going to have to juggle [the debt ceiling, Obamacare repeal, spending bill, and tax reform] and if we don’t I can tell that really the next 12 days, and that’s all we have — 12 legislative days in September — will decide whether we’re going to remain in power as a Republican majority or not,” Meadows said in the interview with Breitbart Washington Political Editor Matthew Boyle on the program. “Are we serious about getting the president’s agenda done? The next 12 days will do that. You mentioned a couple of those items — the debt ceiling; obviously repeal and replace Obamacare.”

…“The vehicle that we have for that actually will soon expire,” Meadows said. “So if we don’t use that reconciliation instruction in the next 30 to 45 days we will have lost the opportunity to get it done with just 51 votes in the Senate. As I look at it is critical that we are ‘all hands on deck.’ But more importantly that we have a plan. I think the frustration that I have is that I see the critical deadlines that are coming up and yet I see a lot of talk but no action. I just talked to a friend. A guy by the name of Clay Tally, who really represents the typical Trump voter. He was saying, ‘You know what, I’m tired of the talk, let’s get some things done and why not support the president and make sure that we get it done.’”

The article concludes:

Meadows concluded by noting these 12 legislative days in September will literally determine the future of the Republican Party. 

“You may call it the bloody September — I call the Dirty Dozen because we’ve got 12 legislative days left. Hopefully we can rise to the occasion and get these things accomplished,” Meadows said. “They need to make sure that their member of Congress, their senators understand they are tired of talk. Just like my friend Clay Tally told me, they are tired of the rhetoric, they want results and they want us to get behind the president’s agenda, make sure that we support him and get it done. and if we don’t they need to let them know that there will be consequences.”

He called on Americans to rise up and call their members of Congress and make their voices heard throughout the process.

“You know the voice of the people is a very, very powerful tool,” Meadows said. “I’ve found that any time you go against the people’s voice you’re going up against a tsunami that will have unbelievable power and implications. So they need to be sure that they make their voices be heard early in September — that we go ahead and start working that first week back.”

If the Republicans choose to remain in power, they need to start listening to the voters. Otherwise they will be voted out of office. Most Americans recognize the need to ‘drain the swamp’ that is Washington, D.C. The Republicans have the choice as to whether or not they want to be the part of the swamp that is drained. We know that the majority of Democrats do not want the swamp drained–if they did, they would be doing something other than obstructing the President at every turn. It is time for the voters to unelect all Congressmen and Congresswomen who are standing for the status quo.