Tag Archives: Robert Mueller

News From The Coming Week

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Clarice Feldman posted an article at The American Thinker today highlighting things that will be in the news in the coming week. That’s not as much of a challenge as it sounds as many of these stories were breaking late Friday and early Saturday.

The first story deals with the recent budget fiasco.

The article reports:

Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, unhampered because of the filibuster rule, which allows them to block any budget not supported by a Senate supermajority of 60, and aware of the desperate need of our military for funding, publicly rejoiced that they were able to force through Congress a ridiculously extravagant budget.  Fiscal conservatives were furious, but the president had little choice but to sign the bill into law.  “He who laughs last laughs best” is the saying, and in this case, there may be no joy in Demville.  James Freeman at the Wall Street Journal explains:

The political left is getting nervous because a virtuous and lawful reduction in federal spending is suddenly looking much more likely.  This column is told that Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R., Wisc.) is now on board.

Specifically, Mr. Ryan likes the idea of paring back the huge spending hikes in the recently enacted budget bill.  While the budget required 60 votes in the Senate and therefore Democratic support, a “rescission” bill to repeal the spending increases needs only a simple majority in each house.

If the Republicans plan to remain in the majority, they have no choice but to cut this budget. Otherwise the conservative wing of the party will happily vote them out of office for reneging on every promise they made while running for office.

The second story to watch for will be the beginning of criminally prosecuting illegal aliens as they cross the border. Crossing the border is no longer going to be taken lightly.

The third story is the end of the standoff between Congress and the FBI and DOJ.

The article reports:

Sundance at Conservative Treehouse broke the welcome news early Saturday morning.

Until today the only people allowed to review the full Title-1 FISA application were Trey Gowdy, Adam Schiff, Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte and Rep John Ratcliffe.

In an interesting development, the Department of Justice has responded to HPSCI Chairman Devin Nunes notifying him the DOJ will allow all members of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees full access to review the unredacted FBI/DOJ FISA application used to gain a Title-1 surveillance warrant against U.S. citizen Carter Page.

According to CNN: ‘Separately, Justice Department spokesman Ian Prior said the department on Monday will supplement its document production to the House Judiciary Committee by producing another 1,000 pages of materials in response to a subpoena issued by committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte.’

This will probably lead to the declassification of the FISA applications. That will probably tell us all we need to know about the Russian collusion investigation and its roots.

The final news article for the coming week will be information about the investigation of the Clinton Foundation.

The article reports:

The story of the Clintons’ misuse of charity solicitation, reporting, and accounting laws begins in 1997 and continues on past Clinton’s term as president where people familiar to us in the present DOJ-FBI investigations failed to prosecute the Clintons for obvious charity fraud and violation of federal and state law on charitable solicitations.  The most recent investigation of the Clinton foundation took place under Rod Rosenstein, then U.S. attorney for Baltimore.  He utterly flubbed the task, as Ortel (Charles Ortel, a retired investment banker) notes.

…At the moment, some state attorneys general are investigating Clinton foundation fraud and illegality.  So are some foreign governments whose laws were violated by the foundation.  While in the U.S. opportunities to prosecute longstanding frauds may be barred by the passage of time and the statute of limitations, this latest Clinton-Bush Haiti Fund transaction seems not to be.  If I were to speculate, I’d suggest that it is not unlikely (now that the Clintons are fairly politically neutered) that whistleblowers inside the foundation, the donors’ offices, and the government – particularly the IRS – may come forward, at long last, to expose the frauds which Rosenstein, Mueller, and Comey seem to have lacked the integrity and guts to do.

This week may be the week that some of the swamp gets drained.t

Now This Is Finally Starting To Make Sense

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The Conservative Treehouse posted an article today that explains a lot about the Mueller investigation and the timing of various events in that investigation. It also explains where the team of partisan investigators was chosen. I am going to attempt to summarize the article, but I strongly suggest that you follow the link above and read the entire article.

The article includes a previously unknown letter from Asst. Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to Robert Mueller outlining the specific authority of his investigative appointment. The letter is dated August 2, 2017.

The article asks several questions about the letter:

  • Question #1) Why did Asst. Attorney General Rod Rosenstein deliver a non-public outline of investigative authority to Mueller on August 2nd, 2017?
  • Question #2) Why would Robert Mueller be seeking a signed more specific outline of his investigative authority on August 2nd, 2017; a full three months after he was assigned the role of Special Counsel?
  • Question #3) Why would Robert Mueller need to redact the content of an official outline of his investigative instructions from the Asst. Attorney General?

The article also includes the original May 17th, 2017, Press Release announcing the appointment of a Special Prosecutor.

The article states:

So there we have the three areas of direct authority:  ¹Links or coordination between the Russian Government and the campaign of Donald Trump.  ²Matters that may arise from the investigation of the Russian government and the campaign of Donald Trump. And ³other matters within the scope of 28 C.F.R. § 600.4(a). [<- ie. ‘Jurisdiction‘]

So there’s the instructions to Robert Mueller and his team on May 17th, 2017.

The article explains where the Special Prosecutor’s team came from:

Now, as we previously discussed: “Robert Mueller didn’t necessarily appoint or select a team of lawyers and investigators…. the previously assembled team of lawyers and investigators selected him.”  The key player in that assembly was FBI Chief-Legal-Counsel and personal confidant to Robert Mueller, James Baker. (pictured right)

Remember, the “small group”, career officials inside the DOJ and FBI needed to continue their group effort after the election.  Therefore they needed to stay assembled as a group; they needed to stay on task, to facilitate the original intent of their association.  The Special Counsel was merely a way, an approach, a tool for this specific team to continue their efforts after the 2016 presidential election, nothing more – nothing less.

The team already existed. The objectives already existed. The only thing they needed was a willfully-blind leader and an excuse to continue their ideological efforts. Robert Mueller became their selected willfully-blind leader because the small group already knew him and they knew they could manipulate/use him.

Their ideological association is why the same people behind Phase 1 (Clinton Exoneration ’15, ’16), and Phase 2 (opposition research, counterintelligence and surveillance against Trump ’15, ’16, ’17), became the same people in Phase 3, the post-election vast Russian-Trump Collusion Conspiracy; also known as “The Insurance Policy”.  In many ways Phase 3 was/is more of a continued opposition research endeavor, part of the “resistance” per se, with a good dose of self-preservation binding them all together.

The article concludes:

Because Mueller’s team, the small group of political officials and lawyers, know all of these people inside the DOJ apparatus.  These are their peers, their comrades in ideology… this is their crew and social circle.  The last thing their legal endeavors need is to be put in a position of intel or information about their brethren.

And for Team-Leader Robert Mueller, against the back-drop of this information; and with IG Horowitz giving him details about Page/Strzok messages; there’s a strong motive to ask for a signed letter from Rosenstein prior to continuing to investigate the President of the United States knowing President Donald Trump was also a target of this plan – and these details were going to surface at some point.

Lastly, and specifically about Rod Rosenstein, perhaps at a certain point in the spring and early summer 2017 he might have thought there was a substantive way for the assembly to carry out their plan.  Perhaps he even believed the popular leftist narrative and thought there might be something to these ‘Trump-Russia-Collusion’ claims.  Perhaps that’s why he directed the Muller investigative mandate in May 2017 to the exclusivity of President Donald Trump with no mention of any other campaign (Hillary Clinton) contact with Russian entities.

However, by August 2017 with full information coming from IG Horowitz about the likelihood of criminal conduct by FBI and DOJ officials; at the time Rosenstein wrote the more carefully detailed outline; he had to know the investigation into Trump was heading no-where.

This is the best explanation of what the ‘deep state’ does that I have seen. It puts clarity on the ‘meeting in Andy’s office to discuss the insurance policy.’ What we have here is an illustration of exactly how that insurance policy has worked and continues to work.

Leaping To Conclusions To Make A Non-Existent Case

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Russia, Russia, Russia has begun to sound like Marsha, Marsha, Marsha from the Brady Bunch. Even when there is nothing there, the mainstream media reports on what they think might be there. It has gotten very old. It has also gotten very expensive for the taxpayers to pay for an investigation that has lasted for more than a year and found nothing related to the campaign. They did find international businessmen who were not playing by the correct rules, and they did find someone who misremembered something, but campaign collusion with Russia? Not on the Republican side.

Yesterday Byron York posted an interesting story at The Washington Examiner that perfectly illustrates how insane the campaign to undo the 2016 election has become. The headline of the story is, “So why was Trump aide talking to a Russian spy?” Wow. It sounds like we have finally caught the Republicans (and Trump) red-handed. Well, not so fast.

The article tells us that Rick Gates is the Trump aide who spoke to the Russian spy.

The article points out:

“CNN has learned why special counsel Robert Mueller wants the cooperation of former Trump campaign deputy Rick Gates,” anchor Alisyn Camerota said Friday. “Court documents indicate that Gates could be critical to nabbing even bigger fish in a collusion case involving the Kremlin.”

Reporter Shimon Prokupecz said the Mueller team “has been primarily using Rick Gates for information about what they call the central mission of the investigation, which has been Russian interference and collusion in the 2016 campaign.” Gates pleaded guilty in February to charges unrelated to collusion and is now cooperating with Mueller.

 Prokupecz said he had learned Mueller did not need Gates’ cooperation in the tax evasion and fraud case against former employer (and short-lived Trump campaign chairman) Paul Manafort. “Instead, [Mueller] wanted to hear about what he knew about contacts between the Trump campaign and Russians.” A “hint” about Mueller’s intentions, Prokupecz said, was contained in a new court filing that “shows Gates was communicating with a Russian intelligence official who was also a close associate of Paul Manafort, and the court document said that Gates knew of this connection while he was working for the Trump campaign.”

One wonders how “CNN has learned.” That’s my first question. The second question is the method used to get Gates’ cooperation–“Gates pleaded guilty in February to charges unrelated to collusion and is now cooperating with Mueller. Why was Mueller even investigating charges unrelated to collusion? The third question is how much information was left out of the CNN story–that’s where things get interesting.

The article concludes:

So putting it all together, yes, Gates was “in contact with a Russian intelligence officer.” And who knows? Perhaps they were plotting to fix the U.S. presidential election for President Trump. But the evidence that Mueller has revealed, and the statements he has made, suggest something more prosaic. Manafort, Gates, and Kilimnik were engaged in all sorts of shady and possibly illegal conduct in Ukraine. They were not interested in the world knowing about it. In addition, Manafort and Gates were strapped for cash and thought some Ukrainians owed them millions of dollars. Which means there were plenty of reasons for Gates and Kilimnik to be in contact in 2016, none of which they would want prosecutors to know about.

Ron Brownstein was right when he advised caution in drawing conclusions about the Mueller investigation. There is still too much that is hidden. But it is reasonable to assess what we know so far. And for the moment at least, the bread crumbs do not add up to a hoagie.

If jumping to conclusions counted as exercise, the mainstream media would put Richard Simmons to shame!

 

 

 

Common Sense From Alan Dershowitz

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Alan Dershowitz is a civil liberties attorney whose politics are generally left of center. He loves America, he loves the U.S. Constitution, and he is concerned about the direction in which the country is headed–not because of President Trump, but because of the intensity of the attacks on President Trump.

Attorney Dershowitz was recently interviewed by CBS News. Please follow the link and read the entire interview. It is very insightful.

Here are some highlights from that interview.

Dershowitz spoke to CBS 11 political reporter Jack Fink about Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians to affect the outcome of the 2016 election.

“I think the investigation should end and I think the Congress should appoint a special non-partisan commission,” said Dershowitz. He said he thinks a Congressional committee would be too partisan.

“That’s the way it’s done in other western democracies,” he continued. “They don’t appoint a special counsel and tell them to ‘Get that guy…’ that’s what they did in the Soviet Union. Lavrentiy Beria, the head of the KGB said to Stalin, ‘Show me the man, and I’ll find you the crime!’” That’s what special counsel does.”

Dershowitz was quick to point out that he was not making a direct correlation between the United States and the former Soviet Union. “I’m not comparing obviously the Soviet Union and the United States. We have structural protections in our Bill Of Rights but it’s going down the wrong direction.”

“The issue of criminalization [of political differences] has not been subject to rational discourse,” said Dershowitz. “Democrats hate when they politicize and criminalize political differences against Democrats… when they did it with Bill Clinton. Republicans hate when they do it against their people… President Trump. But each one supports it when they’re against their enemies and partisanship prevails over principle. It’s very hard to have a reasonable discussion.”

Until politicians on both sides of the aisle begin to put the interests of the country above their political interests and the interests of their particular political party, I don’t think any reasonable discussion will be possible.

Attorney Dershowitz added:

Dershowitz said that citizens should fear the direction of this investigation for their own sake. He warned that today criminalization of political differences appears – now – to only affect presidents and political leaders. “Tomorrow it can affect you and me. If you give the prosecutor the ability to stretch the criminal law to fit a target, it’s very dangerous.”

Dershowitz said that special counsels are not the right way to approach criminal justice. “When you appoint a special counsel you give them targets and you say, ‘You better get that guy or the people around him…and we’re going to give you tens of millions of dollars. And if you come up empty handed you’re a failure.’”

Dershowitz said that if an ordinary prosecutor goes months without finding a crime then “that’s great, no… there have been no crimes committed.” He says not so with a special counsel. “Special Counsel always has the goal of ‘getting the people.’ They’re going to find crimes, or they’re going to manufacture crimes or they’re going to stretch the criminal law to fit the ‘crimes’ because they’re not going to come away empty handed.”

Dershowitz was asked what he thinks should happen now. Should Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein curtail the investigation? “I think Rod Rosenstein needs to say to the special counsel, ‘Do not investigate the private finances of the president before he became president; do not investigate his relatives; do not investigate his sex life.’ Don’t do – to President Trump – what Ken Starr did to President Clinton,” said Dershowitz . “It started with Whitewater and ended up with a blue dress. That’s not the appropriate way a special counsel should operate.”

I don’t agree with Alan Dershowitz on much, but in this case he is totally right.

Getting Through The Establishment In Washington Is A Fight

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Yesterday Byron York posted an article at The Washington Examiner that shows how slowly and frustratingly things can move in Washington.

The article reports:

Last week the House Judiciary Committee sent a subpoena to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein demanding documents from the Justice Department and the FBI “regarding charging decisions in the investigation surrounding former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton‘s private email server, potential abuses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and the FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibility recommendation to fire former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe,” according to a committee press release.

In a letter accompanying the subpoena, Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., told Rosenstein the committee had asked for the documents months ago and received little or nothing in response. “Given the department’s ongoing delays in producing these documents, I am left with no choice but to issue [a] subpoena to compel production of these documents,” Goodlatte wrote.

We have a problem right now in Washington. There is a very powerful group of people entrenched in the Washington bureaucracy that would very much like to undo the results of the 2016 election, and they are trying very hard to use any means at their disposal to do that. This group is composed of both Republicans and Democrats. Many have grown used to accepting perks from lobbyists and other groups and don’t want to give those perks up. Others simply do not believe in the principles that established America and want to undo them in favor of one-world government (with them in charge of course).

The article concludes:

In recent days Jordan and Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., chairman of the House Oversight Committee‘s subcommittee on government operations, have been sending staff to the Justice Department to view less redacted copies of key documents in the various investigations under review. The presence of those congressional investigators sent a clear message to the Justice Department that the House was not going to give up.

Now, the Justice Department is promising to do better — and the attorney general has signaled that he is not happy with the FBI director’s performance. Now, lawmakers will wait to see what that means.

Voting according to political party is not going to work anymore–both parties have elements of corruption in them. The only real answer to the corruption in Washington is for more Americans to become informed voters and vote out those politicians who represent groups other than the voters. All of us need to pay more attention to the votes our Congressmen have cast and who is donating to their campaigns. Congress.gov and Open Secrets.org are good places to begin your research.

Getting Rid Of The Deep State Is A Slow Methodical Process

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I am sure that I am not the only person who gets discouraged and impatient about the seeming lack of speed in dealing with the corruption that seems to run rampant in Washington. However, it seems like things are happening outside the public eye that should give us all hope that the mess in the Justice Department, FBI, and other places will be cleaned up. One of the major problems is leaks to the media, which can seriously hamper an investigation. Unfortunately we have seen a lot of leaks, generally from people with a political agenda.

Yesterday The Conservative Treehouse posted an article about the investigation into Washington corruption. The article included some things that should cause the average America to be mildly optimistic.

The article reports:

Today chairman Bob Goodlatte sends a formal subpoena to the DOJ (Inspector General Michael Horowitz) for documents regarding the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s private email server, potential abuses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and the FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibility recommendation to fire former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.

The article notes the response:

You can read the Goodlatte Subpoenas – HERE – along with the letter that accompanies his demand.   However, more important is the response from the DOJ as communicated by Fox News journalist Chad Pergram (emphasis mine):

So exactly what is going on here?  The article explains:

Oh, what’s that? Yes, the DOJ has to review the demand for evidence because release of those documents might conflict with ongoing Grand Jury information (evidence). Yes, that means a Grand Jury is impaneled, exactly as we expected.

Yes, that also means there are “law enforcement actions” currently ongoing as a result of the prosecutor assigned to reviewing the evidence discovered by Inspector General Horowitz.

Congress keeps asking for another Special Counsel. The author of the article at The Conservative Treehouse opines that he believes that Congress has not been informed that there is a Grand Jury investigating the corruption at the DOJ and FBI.

The article further reports:

Within this specific investigation there is a triple role. ¹A DOJ Inspector General conducting an internal investigation; ² Appropriate congressional oversight; and ³ the collection of evidence that might also be used in criminal indictments.

Within the IG collection of evidence there are two competing issues: #1) Evidence of misconduct and political bias (shared openly with congress and oversight); and #2) evidence of illegal activity (retained from congress to preserve integrity of evidence for later used in criminal proceedings); this is where the “outside DC prosecutor” comes in.

The article reminds us where this is leading and of the uproar we can expect from the media when it comes together. The article also encourages us to be patient:

You and I might be frustrated with the pace of the activity for a myriad of righteous reasons.  However, we must also remind ourselves of the scale and scope of the corruption here that is inherent within the BIG PICTURE.  All of this was done on purpose.  None of this was accidental.

The prosecutor could, likely would, be having to outline the biggest political conspiracy in the history of politics.  It is entirely possible officials within the CIA, NSA, DOJ, FBI, State Department, ODNI, and national security apparatus along with the Obama White House, Clinton campaign officials, politicians, career bureaucrats and possibly judges are all entwined and involved.

Add into this likelihood the complicit ideological media who will go absolutely bananas about any single member of their team being indicted; and a better than average chance the media will follow instructions from their leadership and send tens-of-thousands of low-info sycophants into the streets in protest, and well… you see the picture.

The left only know one narrative: “Jeff Sessions is doing Trump’s evil bidding.” That’s it. That’s the drumbeat. 24/7/365 That’s the narrative pushed over and over.

Just look at the media reaction to Andrew McCabe’s simple firing, which Trump had nothing to do with, and think about what their response would be to indictments?

Get out the popcorn.

Washington Incest?

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A website called THEYIG posted an article yesterday about Lisa Barsoomian. She is a lawyer who graduated from Georgetown Law School and is a protege of James Comey and Robert Muller. She and her boss R Craig Lawrence have a very interesting portfolio. They represented Bill Clinton 40 times, Robert Mueller 3 times, James Comey 5 times, Barack Obama 45 times, Hillary Clinton 17 timesand Kathleen Sebelius 56 times. She represented the FBI at least 5 times. Actually, that is a pretty impressive resume. It is also a somewhat politically biased resume, but there are no laws against that. A lawyer has every right to pick and choose who they represent.

Here’s where it gets interesting. The article reports:

Someone out there cares so much that they’ve purged all Barsoomian court documents for her Clinton representation in Hamburg vs. Clinton in 1998 and its appeal in 1999 from the DC District and Appeals court dockets

 Someone out there cares so much that the internet has been purged of all information pertaining to Barsoomian.

 Historically this indicates that the individual is a protected CIA operative.

 Additionally Lisa Barsoomian has specialized in opposing Freedom of Information Act requests on behalf of the intelligence community

 And although Barsoomian has been involved in hundreds of cases representing the DC Office of the US Attorney her email address is Lisa Barsoomian at NIH gov.

 The NIH stands for National Institutes of Health.

This is a tactic routinely used by the CIA to protect an operative by using another government organization to shield their activities.

It’s a cover, so big deal right, I mean what does one more attorney with ties to the US intelligence community really matter.

It wouldn’t under normal circumstances. However, she is Assistant Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s WIFE.

This is a blatant example of the incest that is the swamp in Washington, D.C. There is no way Rod Rosenstein should be anywhere near anything involving the Clintons, Robert Mueller or James Comey. It’s time to bring new people into the FBI, DOJ, and CIA. The ones who are there now have too many interconnections.

 

All Americans Are Equal Under The Law…Except Those Who Are Not

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Yesterday Tablet Magazine posted an article about the ongoing Robert Mueller investigation. The magazine has a unique take on the investigation and cites numerous events that illustrate why they drew the conclusions they did.

The article reminds us of some of Robert Mueller’s recent activities:

News that special counselor Robert Mueller has turned his attention to Erik Prince’s January 11, 2017 meeting in the Seychelles with a Russian banker, a Lebanese-American political fixer, and officials from the United Arab Emirates, helps clarify the nature of Mueller’s work. It’s not an investigation that the former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation is leading—rather, it’s a cover-up.

After all, Mueller took his job not at the behest of the man who by all accounts he is likely to professionally and personally disdain, Donald Trump, but of the blue-chip Beltway elite of which he is a charter member. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed him nearly a year ago to lead an investigation without parameters. That’s because Mueller’s job is to obscure the abuses of the US surveillance apparatus that occurred under the Obama administration.

The fact that someone at the level of former FBI director was called in to sweep up the mess left by bad actors in the bureau and Central Intelligence Agency and other parts of the intelligence bureaucracy suggests that the problems are even worse than previously thought. And that means the constituency for Mueller’s political intervention is enormous.

Mueller is said to believe that the Prince meeting was to set up a back channel with the Kremlin. But that makes no sense. According to the foundational text of the collusion narrative, the dossier allegedly written by former British spy Christopher Steele, the Kremlin had cultivated Trump himself for years. So what’s the purpose of a back channel, when Vladimir Putin already had a key to the front door of Mar-a-Lago?

The group behind the goals of this investigation are counting on the American people to get bored and stop paying attention. They are also hoping that we are not asking questions about the cost and strange direction the investigation has taken.

The article also reveals that some of the information the investigation is using could have only come from illegal unmasking of the people involved:

Prince was thrown into the middle of Russiagate after an April 3, 2017 Washington Post story reported his meeting with the Russian banker. But how did anyone know about the meeting? After the story came out, Prince said he was shown “specific evidence” by sources from the intelligence community that the information was swept up in the collection of electronic communications and his identity was unmasked. The US official or officials who gave his name to the Post broke the law when they leaked classified intelligence. “Unless The Washington Post has somehow miraculously recruited the bartender of a hotel in the Seychelles,” Prince told the House Intelligence Committee in December, “the only way that’s happening is through SIGINT [signals intelligence].”

Mueller presumably knows whether Prince’s name was indeed unmasked and then leaked to the press—and that the leak was a crime. Mueller certainly knows that most of the case he has regarding Russian interference in the 2016 election was built by abuses of the foreign intelligence surveillance apparatus and other related crimes that are punishable with jail time. The identity of Trump’s short-tenured National Security Adviser Michael Flynn was swept up and leaked to the press in the same way as Prince’s. It was leaked to the same newspaper, the Washington Post.

As I explained last week, the identity of Attorney General Jeff Sessions was also unmasked from intelligence intercepts and leaked to the Washington Post. The fact that the FBI had secured a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant on Carter Page was also leaked to the Post. The warrant on Page was secured on the basis of the findings in the Steele dossier, an unverified piece of opposition research paid for by the Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee.

One of the main conclusions in the article:

The purpose of the Mueller inquiry is therefore not to investigate the mostly ludicrous-seeming charges in the Steele dossier, but to protect the institution of the FBI, former colleagues, as well as the national security surveillance system. Therefore the inquiry has to cover up the sinful origins of the collusion narrative itself—which was born in repeated abuses of power and subsequent crimes committed by US officials in the intelligence bureaucracy and the Obama administration.

Please follow the link to read the entire article. It reveals some of what President Trump is up against in trying to reclaim America for the average American.

All The Roads Seem To Lead To The Same Place

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John Solomon and Alison Spann posted an article at The Hill yesterday (updated today) about a new development in the Russia-Trump-Collusion investigation. It seems that every lead that formed the basis for the appointment of a Special Prosecutor goes back to the Clintons. Somehow that does not seem like an incredible coincidence.

The article is detailed with a lot of reference information, so I strongly suggest that you follow the link above and read the entire article. It really is chilling to see how the power of government could be abused so totally as to be turned against one man.

The article reports:

The Australian diplomat whose tip in 2016 prompted the Russia-Trump investigation previously arranged one of the largest foreign donations to Bill and Hillary Clinton’s charitable efforts, documents show.

Former Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer’s role in securing $25 million in aid from his country to help the Clinton Foundation fight AIDS is chronicled in decade-old government memos archived on the Australian foreign ministry’s website.

Downer and former President Clinton jointly signed a Memorandum of Understanding in February 2006 that spread out the grant money over four years for a project to provide screening and drug treatment to AIDS patients in Asia.

We know that the dossier had ties to the Clintons. Now we know that the other basis for the investigation also had ties to the Clintons.

The Clintons handled the money with their usual level of integrity:

In the years that followed, the project won praise for helping thousands of HIV-infected patients in Papua New Guinea, Vietnam, China and Indonesia, but also garnered criticism from auditors about “management weaknesses” and inadequate budget oversight, the memos show.

The article observes:

Downer, now Australia’s ambassador to London, provided the account of a conversation with Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos at a London bar in 2016 that became the official reason the FBI opened the Russia counterintelligence probe.

But lawmakers say the FBI didn’t tell Congress about Downer’s prior connection to the Clinton Foundation. Republicans say they are concerned the new information means nearly all of the early evidence the FBI used to justify its election-year probe of Trump came from sources supportive of the Clintons, including the controversial Steele dossier.

“The Clintons’ tentacles go everywhere. So, that’s why it’s important,” said Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) chairman of a House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee that has been taking an increasingly visible role defending the Trump administration in the Russia probe. “We continue to get new information every week it seems that sort of underscores the fact that the FBI hasn’t been square with us.”

The Democrats of course replied with their usual spin:

Democrats accuse the GOP of overreaching, saying Downer’s role in trying to help the Clinton Foundation fight AIDS shouldn’t be used to question his assistance to the FBI.

“The effort to attack the FBI and DOJ as a way of defending the President continues,” said Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the top Democrat on the House Intelligence panel. “Not content to disparage our British allies and one of their former intelligence officers, the majority now seeks to defame our Australian partners as a way of undermining the Russia probe. It will not succeed, but may do lasting damage to our institutions and allies in the process.”

Nick Merrill, Hillary Clinton’s spokesman, said any effort to connect the 2006 grant with the current Russia investigation was “laughable.”

I guess it’s reassuring to know that the Clintons’ corruption is not merely limited to America.

The Clintons also responded to the implication that the money might not have been spent exactly as warranted:

Craig Minassian, a spokesman for the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation, said the focus should be on the foundation’s success helping tens of thousands of AIDS patients.

It really is time to send Mr. Mueller packing and clean out the upper levels of the FBI and Department of Justice. They have been hopelessly compromised. Every one of the people who provided the foundation for the investigation of President Trump has ties to the Clintons. There is no way that the Special Prosecutor should ever have been appointed. Unless Robert Mueller is fired and the investigation ended, we will never see equal justice under the law in America. Note that the questionable activities of the Clinton Foundation or the various scandals of the Clintons have never been fully investigated or prosecuted.

Some Perspective From Victor Davis Hanson

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Victor Davis Hanson posted an article at National Review today about Russia’s relationship to American politics. The timeline of the article begins about 2009.

The article begins with the following:

Start with two givens: Vladimir Putin is neither stupid nor content to watch an aging, shrinking, corrupt, and dysfunctional — but still large and nuclear — Russia recede to second- or third-power status. From 2009 to 2015, in one of the most remarkable and Machiavellian efforts in recent strategic history, Putin almost single-handedly parlayed a deserved losing hand into a winning one. He pulled this off by flattering, manipulating, threatening, and outsmarting an inept and politically obsessed Obama administration.

Under the Obama presidency and the tenures of Secretaries of State Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, Russia made astounding strategic gains — given its intrinsic economic, social, and military weaknesses. The Obama reaction was usually incoherent (Putin was caricatured as a “bored kid in the back of the classroom” or as captive of a macho shtick). After each aggressive Russian act, the administration lectured that “it is not in Russia’s interest to . . . ” — as if Obama knew better than a thuggish Putin what was best for autocratic Russia.

A review of Russian inroads, presented in no particular order, is one of the more depressing chapters in post-war U.S. diplomatic history.

The article lists the missteps of the Obama Administration regarding Russia. It notes that Russia successfully annexed Crimea with little response from NATO. Russia essentially took control of eastern Ukraine. Russia also exerted enough pressure to prevent America from supplying the Czech Republic and Poland the missile defense systems they had been promised.

The article reminds us:

Russia since 2013 had sought to interfere in U.S. elections with impunity, so much so that as late as October 18, 2016, on the eve of the anticipated Clinton landslide, Obama mocked any suggestion that an entity could ever successfully warp the outcome of a U.S. election. (“There is no serious person out there who would suggest somehow that you could even rig America’s elections. There’s no evidence that that has happened in the past or that it will happen this time, and so I’d invite Mr. Trump to stop whining and make his case to get votes.”)

After a near 40-year hiatus, Russia was invited into the Middle East by the Obama administration. It soon became the power broker in Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq and to some extent offered passive-aggressive support for Israel and Turkey — a position of influence that it retains to this day and that would now be hard to undo. It posed as a “helper” to the Obama administration with Iran and helped broker the disastrous Iran deal — and then used U.S. acquiescence to Iran to fuel the ascendance of the Iran-Hezbollah-Assad crescent.

Inviting Russia into the Middle East is not a recipe for peace. The article also cites other instances of Russia managing to create chaos in America. Please follow the link to read the entire article for the full picture.

The article concludes:

The verdict on Russia, the Obama administration, and the Clinton campaign is now becoming clearer. Russian reset resurrected Putin’s profile and hurt U.S. interests. It grew out of a partisan rebuke of the Bush administration’s perceived harshness to Russia and was later massaged to help Barack Obama’s reelection campaign by granting Russia concessions in hopes of a foreign-policy success that would lead to perceived calm. Russia deliberately inserted itself into the 2016 election, as it had in previous elections, because 1) it had suffered few if any prior consequences, 2) it wanted to sow chaos in the American political system, and 3) it saw a way to warp Clinton’s efforts to smear Donald Trump, first, no doubt to compromise a likely President Clinton, and, in unexpected fashion, later to undermine an actual President Trump.

 At very little cost, Russia has embarrassed American democracy, played the media for the partisans they are, completely discredited the Clinton campaign and name, and created a year of nonstop hysteria to undermine the Trump administration.

And it is not over yet.

I would disagree that the Russia has embarrassed American democracy–I think we have done that ourselves. The election of President Trump so unhinged the media and the Democratic Party that they forgot the rules of fair play. I understand that during political campaigns sometimes things go on that shouldn’t, but the Clinton campaign overstepped the bounds of running for office in ways that we have not seen before. At least during the Nixon administration when Nixon tried to use the government to collect information or government agencies as political weapons there were enough people in government agencies with integrity to tell him no. Evidently that is no longer the case.

 

 

It Really Is Time To End This

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Yesterday The Conservative Treehouse posted an article about the latest maneuver by Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller. Their legal maneuvers are not illegal, but they are not really what this particular investigation is about.

The article reports:

Nothing about this has any relationship to President Trump; however, the DOJ cronies under Special Counsel Robert Mueller, Greg Andres and Andrew Weissmann, made a slick move today by unsealing indictments in Virginia against Paul Manafort opening up two legal fronts in an effort to wear down Manafort’s financial ability to defend his interests.

The maneuver comes after Team Mueller lost DC District Judge Contreras, who was replaced by a far more critical Emmet Sullivan, and who is forcing Mueller’s team to show all exculpatory evidence (Flynn case). The new indictments against Manafort were not in DC where they filed the first set but in Northern Virginia District Court.

If the new indictments were filed in DC it is likely they would have been consolidated under the current judge. Filing in Virginia makes Manafort fight in 2 separate courts. We’ll have to wait and see if Mueller moves to have the entire case transferred to Northern Virginia or if Mueller drops the initial DC case. Of course Manafort can, likely will, petition the court to move both cases against him into the DC circuit.

This is all about convincing Paul Manafort to testify that there was collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign–it doesn’t matter that there is no evidence of any collusion of that there was no collusion, if Mueller can get Manafort to testify that there was collusion, then there is a witness to collusion. This case has wandered so far from what was supposed to be investigated it is ridiculous. Hopefully Congress will develop the backbone to put a stop to this charade soon. It is costing American taxpayers endless money and doing nothing but further divide the country. I guess that means the Russians have succeeded in creating the chaos they intended to create.

The Special Prosecutor Indicts…

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Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller has indicted Paul Manafort and Rick Gates according to The Gateway Pundit. As stated in the article below this one, Special Prosecutors indict people. It’s what they do. They indict people for anything they can find whether or not it is related to whatever they are supposed to be investigating.

The article reports:

Dirty Cop Robert Mueller’s Special Counsel indicted former Trump campaign manager with 32 bank fraud charges.
The charges were based on his business ventures from 2006 through 2013 and one from 2015.

The indictment is here.

The Special Counsel of liberal partisans is out to destroy this man.

What in the world does this have to do with Russian collusion in the 2016 election or with President Trump?

The following tweet from Mike Cernovich sums up the situation:

When A Scandal Just Isn’t Sexy

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The problem with the Special Council investigation, the electronic surveillance of the Trump campaign and transition team, Hillary Clinton‘s server, and the Uranium One scandal is that none of them are sexy. That and the inherent media bias that currently exists results in the fact that most Americans are thoroughly unaware of the details of any of these scandals. They are difficult to follow and deal with intricacies of law that most of us just really don’t care about or are familiar with. However, there are aspects of all of these scandals that will eventually have an impact on all of us. For instance–what are the guidelines for spying on American citizens, how important is it that those in positions of authority handle classified information correctly, and does it matter how much uranium America has and how much uranium Russia has. Unfortunately all of these are issues that may come back to bite all of us in the future.

Yesterday The Daily Caller posted a story about one aspect of the Robert Mueller investigation. Recent revelations have put certain aspects of the investigation under the spotlight again.

The article reports:

Extraordinary manipulation by powerful people led to the creation of Robert Mueller’s continuing investigation and prosecution of General Michael Flynn. Notably, the recent postponement of General Flynn’s sentencing provides an opportunity for more evidence to be revealed that will provide massive ammunition for a motion to withdraw Flynn’s guilty plea and dismiss the charges against him.

It was Judge Rudolph Contreras who accepted General Flynn’s guilty plea, but he suddenly was recused from the case. The likely reason is that Judge Contreras served on the special court that allowed the Federal Bureau of Investigation to surveil the Trump campaign based on the dubious FISA application. Judge Contreras may have approved one of those four warrants.

The judge assigned to Flynn’s case now is Emmet G. Sullivan. Judge Sullivan immediately issued what is called a “Brady” order requiring Mueller to provide Flynn all information that is favorable to the defense whether with respect to guilt or punishment. Just today, Mueller’s team filed an agreed motion to provide discovery to General Flynn under a protective order so that it can be reviewed by counsel but not disclosed otherwise.

Judge Sullivan has had some experience with out of control federal prosecutors.

The article reminds us:

Judge Sullivan is the perfect judge to decide General Flynn’s motion. The judicial hero of my book, Emmet Sullivan held federal prosecutors in contempt for failing to disclose evidence, dismissed the corrupted prosecution of Alaska Senator Ted Stevens and appointed a special prosecutor to investigate the Department of Justice.

As you may remember, Ted Stevens was found guilty eight days before he was narrowly defeated in a re-election bid. After the election the indictment was dismissed because an investigation of the Justice Department found evidence of gross prosecutorial misconduct. The charges had served their purpose–Senator Stevens lost the election, and Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich (a Democrat) was elected.

The article points out:

Since Flynn entered his guilty plea, we’ve learned that information Mr. Comey leaked deliberately to “trigger” Robert Mueller’s entire investigation was classified. Also, FBI agents Peter Strzok, Lisa Page and Deputy Director Andrew McCabe were working on an “insurance policy” to protect the country against a Trump presidency. It seems plausible that this “insurance policy” included the appointment of a special prosecutor.

It gets worse. One problem with the whole special prosecutor investigation is that Robert Mueller chose Andrew Weissmann as his deputy. Mr. Weissmann’s history as a prosecutor is somewhat spotty.

The article concludes:

Watching guilty pleas evaporate is nothing new for Mr. Mueller’s favored lieutenant Andrew Weissmann. Along with his Enron Task Force comrade Leslie Caldwell, Weissmann terrorized Arthur Andersen partner David Duncan into pleading guilty. (RELATED: Meet The Very Shady Prosecutor Robert Mueller Has Hired For The Russia Investigation)

Weissmann and Caldwell made Duncan testify at length against Arthur Andersen when they destroyed the company and 85,000 jobs only to be reversed by a unanimous Supreme Court three years later. Turns out, the “crime” they “convinced” Mr. Duncan to plead guilty to was not a crime at all. The court allowed Duncan to withdraw his plea. And, that was not the only Weissmann-induced plea to be withdrawn either. Just ask Christopher Calger.

Judge Sullivan is the country’s premiere jurist experienced in the abuses of our Department of Justice. He knows a cover-up when he sees one. Until the Department is cleaned out with Clorox and firehoses, along with its “friends” at the FBI, Judge Sullivan is the best person to confront the egregious government misconduct that has led to and been perpetrated by the Mueller-Weissmann “investigation” and to right the injustices that have arisen from it. Stay tuned for the fireworks.

I believe there are common elements in the cases of Ted Stevens and Michael Flynn. The charges against General Flynn were brought to hurt the Trump Administration and to prop up the idea of some sort of Russian collusion. They have probably done as much damage as they are capable of doing, and I suspect they will be dropped in the near future. My question is what can we do to avoid this sort of political misuse of the justice system in the future.

Things Just Got Murkier

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Yesterday The Washington Examiner posted an article by Byron York about General Michael Flynn.

The article reports:

There was also a lot of concern in Congress, at least among Republicans, about the leak of the wiretapped Flynn-Kislyak conversation. Such intelligence is classified at the highest level of secrecy, yet someone — Republicans suspected Obama appointees in the Justice Department and intelligence community — revealed it to the press.

So in March, lawmakers wanted Comey to tell them what was up. And what they heard from the director did not match what they were hearing in the media.

According to two sources familiar with the meetings, Comey told lawmakers that the FBI agents who interviewed Flynn did not believe that Flynn had lied to them, or that any inaccuracies in his answers were intentional. As a result, some of those in attendance came away with the impression that Flynn would not be charged with a crime pertaining to the Jan. 24 interview.

So what happened?

There seem to be some serious irregularities in the whole episode.

The article further reports:

It has sometimes been asked why Flynn, a man long familiar with the ways of Washington, would talk to the FBI without a lawyer. There seems to be no clear answer. On the one hand, as national security adviser, Flynn had plenty of reasons to talk to the FBI, and he could have reasonably thought the meeting would be about a prosaic issue involved in getting the new Trump National Security Council up and running. On the other hand, the media was filled with talk about the investigation into his conversations with Kislyak, and he might just as reasonably have thought that’s what the agents wanted to discuss. In any event, Flynn went ahead without an attorney present.

In addition, it appears the FBI did not tell White House officials, including the National Security Council’s legal adviser or the White House counsel, that agents were coming to interview the national security adviser over a potentially criminal matter.

On February 13th, General Flynn resigned as National Security Advisor after charges that he had lied to the FBI were leaked. General Flynn later pleaded guilty to Special Prosecutor Mueller’s charges of lying to the FBI on January 24th. The only way this makes sense is when you consider the financial and emotional cost of defending yourself against the government. This is particularly disturbing when the weight of the government is aimed at the destruction of one innocent person.

This is reminiscent of the tactics used against Billy Dale during the Clinton Administration. On November 17, 1995, The Los Angeles Times posted the following:

Billy R. Dale, a White House official fired for allegedly mismanaging staff and press travel arrangements, was acquitted Thursday by a federal court jury of charges that he embezzled $68,000.

Culminating a 13-day trial, jurors decided in less than two hours that federal prosecutors had failed to prove charges that Dale stole funds paid to his office by reporters and photographers who traveled with the President.

A White House employee for more than 30 years, Dale broke into tears as the verdict was announced.

Dale, 58, was at the center of a Clinton Administration travel office fiasco two years ago that resulted in seven employees being fired, and later in reprimands for those responsible for the dismissals.

The 1993 dismissals were inspired by complaints of mismanagement from Catherine Cornelius, a distant cousin of the President, and Hollywood producer Harry Thomason, a close friend of Clinton’s.

Cornelius wanted a more powerful job in the travel office, and Thomason was seeking a federal aviation contract.

There was no mention in the article of the financial and emotional toll this ordeal took on Billy Dale.

If we are going to end the government being used as a weapon against innocent Americans, we have to begin to send those guilty of doing the weaponization to jail.

General Flynn was charged after an illegal wiretap. The charges should not be against General Flynn–they should be against the people involved in the wiretap. If we want to see the misuse of the intelligence agencies end, the guilty parties have to go to jail–regardless of who they are.

Caught In A Boldfaced Lie

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The problem with the information superhighway is that you can find anyone saying anything at any given time. If you tell the truth all the time, that is not a problem; however, if you say something untrue, what you said can come back to bite you. That just happened to former President Obama.

PJ Media posted an article today about a discrepancy between what President Obama told Chris Wallace and something that appears in one of the emails between Peter Strzok and Lisa Page.

The article reports:

U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, released additional Strzok/Page text messages  on Wednesday as part of a majority staff report titled “The Clinton Email Scandal And The FBI’s Investigation Of It.

One text causing raised eyebrows today seems to implicate the president: “potus wants to know everything we’re doing,” former FBI lawyer Lisa Page texted to her paramour, then-FBI counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok, on Sept. 2, 2016.  She said that she had just been in a meeting to discuss “TPs for D” (talking points for the director, i.e. FBI Director James Comey) to brief the president on their investigation.

The rabidly anti-Trump Strzok played a key role in the Clinton email and Russia investigations.

While it’s not clear which investigation Page was referring to in the text, it looks bad for Obama because he had forcefully claimed throughout 2016 that he does not get involved with pending investigations. “FULL STOP.”

Fox News’ Chris Wallace asked him about widespread concerns that the Clinton email case was being handled on political grounds. Obama stressed that there was “a strict line” that he never crossed. “I do not talk to the attorney general about pending investigations. I do not talk to FBI directors about pending investigations,” he insisted.

“I guarantee that there is no political influence in any investigation conducted by the Justice Department or the FBI — not just in this case, but in any case. FULL STOP. PERIOD. Guaranteed. Nobody gets treated differently when it comes to the Justice Department,” he said.

It will be interesting to see what the Democratic spin is on this. Some of the Congressional oversight committees are getting very close to the truth about the government corruption during the Obama Administration.  An FBI informer testified before Congress today about the Uranium One scandal. It seems as if the noose is tightening on those involved in corruption in our nation’s capital. Voters need to keep in mind that none of this corruption would have been exposed if Hillary Clinton had been elected President. It would have been buried so deep that no one would ever find it. It is time for the voters to ask themselves what kind of government they want for America. Do they want a government that dispenses justice equally or a government that allows a corrupt cabal of crooks to use their offices for their personal enrichment?

The American Thinker Asks A Very Good Question

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On January 29th, The American Thinker posted an article with the following title:

Why aren’t the Democrats horrified by the corruption at the FBI and DOJ?

That is a really good question. When the government bureaucracies can be politicized in one direction, there is nothing to say that they can’t be politicized in another direction. What has happened in our upper levels of government is a threat to all of us.

The article reports:

The public has seen only a fraction of the material that, according to those who have seen it, proves higher-ups at the DOJ and FBI colluded to clear Hillary Clinton of any responsibility for her many crimes.   These operatives knew she had ignored all the rules regarding classified material by having her own private server.  They likely all knew the Clinton Foundation was nothing but a pay-to-play outfit to enrich the Clintons (only 6% of its funds went to charity).  And this bunch still thought she was qualified to be President,  this woman with a forty-year history of lying, cheating and scheming!  

Are there no essential values among these persons privileged to wield power over the rest of us?  In collusion with the Clinton campaign,  the DNC, the FBI and DOJ worked together to produce and then use fabricated opposition research to obtain FISA warrants to spy on possibly hundreds of people connected to the Trump family and campaign.  They did this to bring him down by any means necessary.  As many people have observed, this is the stuff of the former Soviet Union and third-world dictatorships.

The article concludes:

What is so distressing is that no elected Democrat,  not one, has expressed shock or concern that these agencies have been so corrupted.  Given what we know so far, every member of Congress and every member of the press should  be equally horrified.  This level of criminality should offend everyone, every citizen and every elected official.  But to the left, it’s just another dust-up created by those rascally Republicans.   Use our law enforcement agencies to destroy a campaign and/or to bring about the impeachment of a President?   “So what” seems to be the attitude on the left.  The Constitution be damned.  

Among these culprits, who include Obama, Hillary Clinton, John Brennan, James Clapper, Susan Rice, Samantha Power, Andrew McCabe, James Comey, Rod Rosenstein, Lisa Page, and Peter Strzok,  there is no honor, no respect for the law, the truth or the American people.   

Shouldn’t the Democrats be as angry about this as Republicans?  Has their hatred for Trump so impaired their judgment that they have sacrificed their integrity,  their respect for ethics and the law?   How else to explain their full engagement in the cover-up, fueled by their wholesale denial of the facts? 

Once DOJ IG Michael Horowitz’s report is released,  and if the FISA memo is made public, much more will be clear to everyone.  One has to wonder how the Democrats will recover their lost dignity.  Their many months-long defense of the indefensible will have done significant damage to their brand unless Democrat voters are as unscrupulous, as unconcerned about honor and ethics as their elected representatives have proven to be.

Isn’t the lack of integrity in the upper levels of government under the Obama Administration something all Americans should be concerned about?

More To Come

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In case you are not yet convinced that there were government connections to the campaign of Hillary Clinton, more evidence has surfaced.

The Washington Examiner is reporting today that there was a second Christopher Steele dossier.

The article reports:

A newly released document from the Senate Judiciary Committee says Christopher Steele, the former British spy who compiled the Trump dossier, wrote an additional memo on the subject of Donald Trump and Russia that was not among those published by BuzzFeed in January 2017.

The newly released document is an unclassified and heavily redacted version of the criminal referral targeting Steele filed on Jan. 4 by Republican Sens. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. It appears to confirm some level of coordination between the extended Clinton circle and the Obama administration in the effort to seek damaging information about then-candidate Trump.

According to the referral, Steele wrote the additional memo based on anti-Trump information that originated with a foreign source. In a convoluted scheme outlined in the referral, the foreign source gave the information to an unnamed associate of Hillary and Bill Clinton, who then gave the information to an unnamed official in the Obama State Department, who then gave the information to Steele. Steele wrote a report based on the information, but the redacted version of the referral does not say what Steele did with the report after that.

The article includes the heavily redacted memo to Rod Rosenstein referring Christopher Steele for potential violation of federal law. As more of this use of the government for political purposes comes to light, one can only hope that there will be a series of jail sentences for those involved.

Winners And Losers In The Release Of The Nunes Memo

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So far no one has come forward saying that anything in the Nunes memo is untrue. The charges have been that it somehow endangers national security or that it is partisan. There is no evidence of either–in fact it may have done nothing more than expose the partisanship of governmental organizations that are supposed to be non-partisan.

The Washington Times posted an article yesterday indicating its choice for winners and losers in the release of the memo.

The article lists the winners as President Trump, Representative Devin Nunes (author of the memo), the Republicans, and the American people. The American government is not supposed to operate in secrecy except where necessary for national security. National security was not involved in the surveillance of President Trump–politics was.

The losers are listed as James Comey and Andrew McCabe are totally compromised by their actions. They have lost their jobs due to engaging in the political shenanigans of the Obama Administration. Christopher Steele, whose personal feelings about Donald Trump strongly interfered with his integrity is also listed as a loser with the release of the memo. Rod Rosenstein, who signed off on a questionable FISA warrant that began the entire illegal process, is also listed. Lastly, Robert Mueller, whose investigation now appears to be based on a fraudulent dossier and whose role as special prosecutor has become a witch hunt, is named in the article as a loser.

Generally speaking, the losers are the people involved in this scandal who were willing to use their positions in the government (and government agencies) for partisan purposes. It is time for all of the losers listed to find other avenues of employment. It is quite possible that laws were broken and some of them belong in jail, but I am not sure Congress is that committed to justice at this point. It will be interesting to see what the Inspector General recommends.

The Memo Is Released

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The long-awaited memo put out by the House Intelligence Committee has been released. The news source you listen to may determine your evaluation of how important the memo is. There is enough nastiness, hand wringing, and shouts of triumph to provide a space for everyone.

John Hinderaker at Power Line posted an article about the memo at Power Line. John Hinderaker is a lawyer from Minnesota who operates Power Line Blog. The blog includes a few lawyers as writers and can always be depended upon for logical, clear-headed analysis of any situation.

The article at Power Line reports a few items in the memo:

The FISA warrants that are the subject of the memo all relate to Carter Page. The original warrant was sought on October 21, 2016, and the memo says that there were three renewals, which apparently occur every 90 days. This would appear to take the surveillance well past the presidential election, and beyond President Trump’s inauguration. The memo does not explain this aspect of the timing. The FISA applications were signed by some familiar names: James Comey signed three, and Andrew McCabe, Sally Yates and Rod Rosenstein all signed one or more.

The fake “dossier” compiled by Christopher Steele with the assistance of unknown Russians “formed an essential part of the Carter Page FISA application. In fact, McCabe testified before the committee that no FISA warrant would have been sought without the fake dossier. Steele was paid over $160,000 by the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign to come up with derogatory information–true or false, apparently–on Donald Trump.

DOJ and FBI failed to mention in their FISA application that it was based on opposition research paid for by the Clinton campaign and the DNC, even though this apparently was known to the FBI. The application apparently tried to mislead the FISA court by saying that Steele “was working for a named U.S. person”–the memo doesn’t tell us who that person was–but not disclosing Fusion GPS or Glenn Simpson, let alone Hillary Clinton and the DNC. This appears to be a deliberate deception of the court.

In addition to Steele’s fake dossier, the FISA application cited an article about Carter Page that appeared on Yahoo News. The application “assessed” that this corroborating account did not originate with Christopher Steele. In fact, it did: Steele himself leaked the information to Yahoo News.

The memo casually notes that “the FBI had separately authorized payment to Steele for the same information.” This is news to me. It has been reported that Steele sought funding from the FBI, but I believe prior reports have been to the effect that the Bureau refused. Was the FBI paying Steele, known to be working for the Hillary Clinton campaign?

Please follow the link to the article at Power Line to read the rest of the highlights.

So what does this mean?

This is the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution:

Amendment IV

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

The FISA act establishes procedures for the physical and electronic surveillance and collection of “foreign intelligence information” between “foreign powers” and “agents of foreign powers” suspected of espionage or terrorism.

The FISA act states:

Approval of a FISA application requires the court find probable cause that the target of the surveillance be a “foreign power” or an “agent of a foreign power”, and that the places at which surveillance is requested is used or will be used by that foreign power or its agent. In addition, the court must find that the proposed surveillance meet certain “minimization requirements” for information pertaining to U.S. persons. Depending on the type of surveillance, approved orders or extensions of orders may be active for 90 days, 120 days, or a year.

It is becoming very obvious that the FISA applications were being used for political purposes. This is the kind of thing that goes on in a police state. All the people who knowingly engaged in this activity violated their Oath of Office to act in accordance with the U.S. Constitution. Everyone involved needs to be charged with a crime appropriate to their level of involvement. The decisions made from this point forward will determine whether we are a nation of equal justice under the law or we have become a nation where the powerful are exempt from the law.

Putting 2017 In Perspective

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Victor Davis Hanson posted an article today at a website called American Greatness. It is an amazing article in that it lists all the activities of the anti-Trump people during President Trump’s first year in office. The article is appropriately named, “From Conspiracy Theories to Conspiracies.” As you read the article (I strongly suggest that you follow the link and read the entire article–my summary cannot do it justice), remember that the opposition to candidate (and later President) Trump came from Democrats and some Republicans.

My favorite part of the article states:

What better way to derail a presidency would there be than to allow a blank-check special counsel to search out alleged criminal activity on the part of the president? We have seen FBI Director James Comey confess that he deliberately leaked, likely illegally, confidential notes of a meeting with president Trump to the media, with the expressed intent of creating a “scandal” requiring a “special counsel”—a gambit that worked to perfection when Comey’s close friend, former FBI Director Robert Mueller was appointed.

To facilitate those efforts, the counsel would appoint to his team several attorneys who despised the very target of their investigation. In fact, many special investigators have given generously to the campaign of Trump’s past political opponent Hillary Clinton and in at least one case had worked previously for the Clinton Foundation. Note that after nearly a year, the Mueller investigation has not indicted anyone on collusion charges and is unlikely to. Rather, in special counsel trademark, low-bar fashion, it is seeking to indict and convict suspects for not telling the whole truth during interrogations, or violating other statutes. As Peter Strzok—once one of the FBI’s lead investigators in the Mueller investigation—concluded of the “collusion” allegation to his mistress Lisa Page: there was “no big there there.”

The FBI itself would have earlier trafficked in a fraudulent document funded by the Clinton campaign to “prove” Trump and his team were such dangers to the republic that they required surveillance under FISA court warrants and thus should surrender their constitutional rights of privacy. The ensuing surveillance, then, would be widely disseminated among Obama Administration officials, with the likely intent that names would be unmasked and leaked to the anti-Trump press—again, in efforts to discredit, first, the Trump campaign, and later the Trump transition and presidency. A top official of the prior Department of Justice would personally consult the authors of the smear dossier in efforts to ensure that its contents would become useful and known.

It is totally scary that this has happened.

The article concludes:

Subversion as Plain as Day
Key officials of the prior government would likewise weigh in constantly to oppose the subsequent Trump agenda and demonize their own president. Samantha Power, Susan Rice, and Ben Rhodes would warn the country of the threats posed by their successor, but fail to disclose that they had previously requested to view FISA surveillance of the Trump team and to unmask the names of U.S. citizens which predictably soon appeared in media reports. Former Secretary of State John Kerry, according to the Jerusalem Post, assured a prominent Palestinian government leader, “that he should stay strong in his spirit and play for time, that he will not break and will not yield to President Trump’s demands.” Kerry reportedly further assured the Palestinian representative that the president may not be in White House for much longer and would likely not complete his first term. In sum, the former American secretary of state all but advised a foreign government that his own president is illegitimate and thus to be ignored or resisted in the remaining time before he is removed.

If any of these efforts were undertaken in 2009 to subvert the presidency of Barack Obama popular outrage might well have led to criminal indictments. If Hollywood grandees had promised to do to Barack Obama what they boast doing to Donald Trump, the entire industry would have been discredited—or given the Obama investigatory treatment.

Indeed, in many cases between 2009-2017, U.S. citizens the Obama Administration found noncompliant with its agendas became targets of the IRS for their political activity or monitored by the Justice Department. The latter included reporters from the Associated Press and James Rosen of Fox News. Many a journalist’s sources were prosecuted under the Espionage Act of 1917.  In another case, a filmmaker had his parole revoked and was scapegoated and jailed to advance a false administration narrative about the death of four Americans in Benghazi. Still others were surveilled by using fraudulent documents to obtain FISA court orders.

Everyone should be keen to distinguish conspiracies from conspiracy theories. The above are real events, not the tales told by the paranoid.

In contrast, unhinged conspiracy theorists, for example, might obsess yet again over the machinations of multibillionaire and leftist globalist bogeyman George Soros, and float wild yarns that he would fly to Davos to assure the global elite that he considers Trump “a danger to the world,” while reassuring them that the American president was “a purely temporary phenomenon that will disappear in 2020—or even sooner.” . . . 

It is becoming very obvious that some of the people in high government positions belong in jail. The question is whether or not they will go there. If equal justice under the law is truly one of our founding principles, it needs to be practiced at all times–regardless of the political consequence.

What To Expect This Coming Week

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I expect the memo Congress has put together detailing domestic abuses by the FBI and DOJ to be released Tuesday or Wednesday. I also suspect that the Democrats will plan something dramatic to distract Americans from the release of the memo. It should be pointed out that because the Executive Branch of our government is in charge of the FBI and the DOJ, those agencies need to ask President Trump–not Congress–to give them access to the memo.

So what will happen when the memo is released? Democrats will dismiss it as Republican talking points. If that happens, the Republicans may release the source documents–which are not talking points. The Democrats will have to figure out whether it is better to ignore the memo or deal with the source documents. Since the media will help the Democrats whichever path they choose, expect to see a lot of Democratic spin regarding the memo.

If the memo shows that illegal spying took place, will anyone be prosecuted? As much as I would like to see certain people in jail, I suspect the more visible culprits will be pardoned by President Trump. It would make America look like a banana republic if key players in the previous administration were arrested by the administration that followed. I also realize that it makes America look like a banana republic when a sailor who took a picture of his work station goes to jail for having a classified picture on his cell phone and has his life ruined, and the President and Secretary of State routinely send classified documents over an unsecured server with no consequences. However, I believe that the entire upper echelon of the FBI and DOJ needs to be fired. Although I believe the spying was orchestrated at the highest level, the leadership of those agencies had the choice as to whether or not they would participate. If a few of the leaders of the FBI and DOJ had had the courage to resign, questions might have been asked and this whole mess avoided.

It is a safe bet that this week is going to be a roller coaster. Although I believe the memo will be released, there are no guarantees. I also expect that we will see a degree of spin that we haven’t seen since Bill Clinton was in the White House and told us he didn’t have sex with Monica Lewinsky.

The Emails Speak For Themselves

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An article at The Conservative Treehouse posted today includes the following screenshot of an email from Peter Strzok:

The article reports:

Peter Strzok then goes on to say when/if the full FOIA is released, presumably post-election, Jim, Trisha, Dave and Mike are going to have to figure out how to deal with the discrepancy:

…”I’m sure Jim and Trisha and Dave and Mike are all considering how things like that will play out as they talk among themselves.”

“Jim” is likely James Baker, the Chief Legal Counsel for FBI Director James Comey.

“Trish” is likely Trisha Beth Anderson, Office of Legal Counsel for the FBI.  [Anderson was hired for the DOJ, by AG Eric Holder, from Eric Holder’s law firm.]

“Dave” and “Mike” currently remain unknown.

So it would appear, James Baker and Trisha Anderson, the legal advisers at the top of the FBI leadership apparatus, were both aware the September 2nd, 2016, FOIA release was manipulated to conceal part of Hillary Clinton’s questions and answers.

Perhaps now we can better understand the importance of this specific text message as it was released by House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte.

This message by Strzok shows a team of FBI officials intentionally conspiring to withhold “inflammatory” Clinton investigation evidence, from congress. And the decision-making goes directly to the very top leadership within the FBI.

Congress has oversight responsibilities over the FBI and DOJ. It is time that they start making recommendations based on what they have learned. I am sure there are some junior members of both organizations who have not been involved in the chicanery that the senior members have engaged in who would be qualified for promotions. The fact that many of these people still have jobs is totally unbelievable.

Prepare For An Interesting Week

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Theoretically, this is the week the infamous four-page memo detailing constitutional abuses by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Department of Justice (DOJ) will be released. The battle over the release of that memo and what is supposedly in it continues.

On Thursday, Sharyl Attkisson posted an article at The Hill explaining some aspects of the battle over the release of the memo. Ms. Attkisson formerly worked for CBS. She resigned from CBS after her investigative reporting was getting too close to the truth. Her reporting on the Fast and Furious scandal received an Emmy Award.

The article at The Hill reports:

What happens when federal agencies accused of possible wrongdoing also control the alleged evidence against them? What happens when they’re the ones in charge of who inside their agencies — or connected to them — ultimately gets investigated and possibly charged?

…First, there’s the alleged improper use of politically funded opposition research to justify secret warrants to spy on U.S. citizens for political purposes.

Second, if corruption is ultimately identified at high levels in our intel agencies, it would necessitate a re-examination of every case and issue the officials touched over the past decade — or two — under administrations of both parties.

This is why I think the concerns transcend typical party politics.

It touches everybody. It’s potentially monumental.

It is becoming obvious that America citizens had their Fourth Amendment rights violated. The questions is whether of not anyone is going to be held accountable.

The article continues:

This week, the FBI said it was unfair for the House Intelligence Committee not to provide its memo outlining alleged FBI abuses. The committee wrote the summary memo after reviewing classified government documents in the Trump-Russia probe.

The FBI’s complaint carries a note of irony considering the agency has notoriously stonewalled Congress. Even when finally agreeing to provide requested documents, the Department of Justice uses the documents’ classified nature to severely restrict who can see them — even among members of Congress who possess the appropriate security clearance. Members who wish to view the documents must report to special locations during prescribed hours in the presence of Department of Justice minders who supervise them as they’re permitted to take handwritten notes only (you know, like the 1960s).

What most people don’t know is that the FBI and Department of Justice already know exactly what Congressional investigators have flagged in the documents they’ve reviewed, because three weeks ago the Senate Judiciary Committee sent its own summary memo to FBI Director Christopher Wray and Department of Justice Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. The committee also referred to the Department of Justice a recommendation for possible charges against the author of the political opposition research file, the so-called Trump dossier: Christopher Steele.

Ms. Attkisson concludes here article by saying:

Meanwhile, the Department of Justice has officially warned the House Intelligence Committee not to release its memo. It’s like the possible defendant in a criminal trial threatening prosecutors for having the audacity to reveal alleged evidence to the judge and jury.

This is the first time I can recall open government groups and many reporters joining in the argument to keep the information secret. They are strangely uncurious about alleged improprieties with implications of the worst kind: Stasi-like tactics used against Americans. “Don’t be irresponsible and reveal sources and methods,” they plead.

As for me? I don’t care what political stripes the alleged offenders wear or whose side they’re on. If their sources and methods are inappropriate, they should be fully exposed and stopped.

The memo is supposed to be released next week–mid week–after the President’s State of the Union speech. There have been some suggestions that he read the memo instead of giving the speech. That is not an idea I support, but I understand why some people might suggest it.

The scandals abound. Who actually authorized the sale of uranium to Russia? Who decided Hillary Clinton would not be charged with a crime? What was the basis for a FISA warrant allowing spying on the Trump campaign and transition team? At what point did the upper echelon of the FBI and DOJ become political? Are the FBI and the DOJ subject to the U.S. Constitution?

Hopefully, we will have the answers to at least some of these questions by the end of next week. If the answers are what they seem to be, some of our government needs to answer some very pointed questions.

Watch For Spin

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Recently members of the public became aware of a four-page memo detailing the FISA abuses under the Obama Administration. Generally speaking, most members of the public would like to see the memo. For whatever reason, Democrats in Congress do not want the American public to see the memo. One talking point used by Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA) has been that the American public would not be able to understand the memo and put it into proper perspective. Does this man think Americans have the ability to vote intelligently?

The Gateway Pundit posted an article today about Representative Schiff’s latest attempt to block the release of the memo. Representative Schiff claimed that the tweets asking for release of the memo were from ‘Russian bots.’ Representative Schiff and Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) went as far as urging Facebook and Twitter to conduct a forensic examination into Twitter users who pushed the #ReleaseTheMemo campaign. Well, it didn’t go as planned.,

The article reports:

It turns out Rep. Adam Schiff’s office was inundated with phone calls from citizens confirming they are not Russian bots.

On Wednesday the far left Daily Beast destroyed Adam Schiff and Senator Feinstein’s conspiracy.

Twitter internal analysis found no evidence of Russian bot involvement in the “ReleaseTheMemo hashtag campaign.

It was just another lie by prominent Democrats and the liberal mainstream media!

Stay tuned–I am sure there is much more to come.

Our Government Is Not A Game To Be Played By A Privileged Few

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PJ Media posted an article yesterday about emails between Lisa Page and Peter Strzok which have recently been turned over to Congress. At this point I would also like to note that the emails between the key dates of December 14, 2017 to May 17, 2017 are missing. However, the emails that were turned over are disturbing.

The following Tweet is included in the article:

Yesterday the U.S. House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence released the following press release:

Today, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), and House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Ca.) released the following statement concerning the 384 pages of new text messages between top FBI officials:

“This weekend we met to discuss the text messages and possible next steps in our oversight of these agencies. The contents of these text messages between top FBI officials are extremely troubling in terms of when certain key decisions were made by the Department of Justice and the FBI, by whom these decisions were made, and the evident bias exhibited by those in charge of the investigation. The omission of text messages between December 2016 and May 2017, a critical gap encompassing the FBI’s Russia investigation, is equally concerning. Rather than clearing up prior FBI and DOJ actions, these recently produced documents cause us to further question the credibility and objectivity of certain officials at the FBI.”

The article at PJ Media further states:

Rep. Ratcliffe said that former FBI director James Comey needs to come back to Capitol Hill to testify again under oath on the question of when the decision to exonerate former secretary of State Hillary Clinton was made. The latest batch of text messages between Strzok and Page suggests that Comey was coordinating with Attorney General Lynch on the decision well ahead of his July 5 press conference.

“It’s really clear to me that the decision was made in May of 2016 — two months before the press conference,” Gowdy said. “Of course Loretta Lynch knew he wasn’t going to be charged. Everyone except the public knew that she was not going to be charged.”

“We knew that Strzok and Page had an intense anti-Trump bias and that’s okay so long as they check it at the door and do their job,” Ratcliffe said. “But we learned today in the thousands of text messages that we reviewed that perhaps they may not have done that.”

Ratcliffe went on to mention one particular text message that referenced a “secret society” at the Bureau. “We know about this insurance policy that was referenced in trying to prevent Donald Trump from becoming president,” he began. “We learned today about information in the immediate aftermath of his election that there may have been a ‘secret society’ of folks within the Department of Justice and the FBI to include Page and Strzok that would be working against him.”

If there is evidence that proves any of this true (and it seems as if there is), then people need to go to jail and the entire upper echelon of the Justice Department and FBI need to be fired (at the very least). These activities by the Department of Justice and the FBI have totally undermined the credibility of the organizations. I will admit that I became suspicious of the politicization of the Justice Department when the voter intimidation case involving the New Black Panthers was dismissed (article here).

There is always danger in any government that a few people will acquire more power than they can handle and misuse that power. I believe we are watching an unmasking of misuse of government power in the final months of the Obama Administration. This needs to be dealt with quickly and decisively. It is also becoming obvious that more controls are needed on the FISA laws.