Tag Archives: Department of Justice (DOJ)

Weaponizing Government Agencies For Political Purposes

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On April 13th, Project Veritas reported that between November 2020 and March 2021, the Department of Justice issued nine secret subpoenas and warrants to Apple and Google for the private information of Project Veritas journalists.

The article reports:

  • In addition to using Apple and Google to surveil the data of Project Veritas’ journalists, the DOJ also spied on journalists’ security detail, accessing private information about them, as well.
  • Documents show the Department of Justice compelled Apple and Google not to disclose that they were providing the individual’s private data to the government.
  • In the case of Google, the DOJ accessed individuals’ payment information, MAC address and browsing history, in addition to other personal information.
  • Project Veritas’ attorneys filed a motion outlining how the DOJ’s seizures violated the Privacy Protection Act and the Fourth Amendment, in addition to the First Amendment and Common Law Reporter’s Privilege.

The article also notes:

In a statement, the ACLU said they were “deeply troubled” by the “secret electronic surveillance” conducted by the Department of Justice.

Paul Calli, an attorney for Project Veritas, pointed out that the actions from the government were disproportionate, in addition to arguing the DOJ violated the Privacy Protection Act, the First and Fourth Amendments, and Common Law Reporter’s Privilege.

“By no reasonable measure can the wholesale seizure of newsgathering materials, attorney-client privileged communications, and irrelevant personal information be considered a proportional response to an alleged low-grade larceny, much less to a non-crime,” said Calli in Project Veritas’ motion filed in response to the disclosures from Microsoft.

The DOJ’s spying campaign represents the latest example of governmental misconduct in, what appears to be, a politically motivated investigation. President Biden’s Department of Justice has placed its crosshairs squarely on Project Veritas’ newsgathering activities pertaining to apparent allegations against then-candidate, Joe Biden, which were made by his daughter, Ashley Biden, in her diary.

Please follow the link above to read the entire article. It includes screenshots of the notification Project Veritas received from Apple about the surveillance.

If we continue to elect members of the Washington swamp to Congress and to the Presidency, we will reach a point where we are no longer free to exercise our First Amendment rights. Please consider that when you vote in upcoming elections.

Does Breaking The Law Actually Have Consequences?

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On Friday, The Western Journal posted an article confirming something almost all of us already knew.

The article reports:

Former acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell said the FBI absolutely broke the law with its surveillance of Donald Trump both when he was a candidate and after he became president.

In an interview with Just the News’ John Solomon published on Wednesday, Grenell agreed that leadership at the bureau and the Department of Justice must have known ahead of time that evidence that Trump somehow “colluded” with Russia to affect the outcome of the 2016 election was false.

“Political appointees and the leaders of the FBI and DOJ purposefully manipulated the truth,” he told Solomon.

Grenell also said he has spoken with FBI operatives who knew the investigation into Trump was faulty.

“The people in the middle management, I’ve talked to them. I’ve talked to FBI agents. They knew that this was a phony exercise,” he said.

The people who chose to break the law to further a political agenda need to be in jail. They lied to the courts to get permission to spy on the Trump campaign and later on the President. If this is the kind of activity the FBI and the DOJ choose to engage in, they we either need to eliminate these departments totally or fire everyone in them and start from scratch.

Please read the entire article for details on who has been indicted so far and what the consequences have been for those people.

The Swamp Is Deep

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The Washington swamp is deep. I am not sure if America is capable of cleaning it out. On Tuesday, The Conservative Treehouse posted an article that illustrates how difficult it is to fight corruption in Washington.

The article reports:

Emphasis mine:

“#Durham filing reveals his team learned for first time, this month, the Office of the Inspector General had TWO cellphones for former FBI General Counsel who is central witness in Sussmann case, “the Government has been working diligently to review their contents.””

The Office of Inspector General (OIG) has known about the Durham probe of Michael Sussmann for how long?  And specifically, the criminal case against Sussmann revolved around the central witness, the point of contact with former FBI General Counsel, Jim Baker.  Yet the OIG said nothing to John Durham about their possession of Baker’s phones until this month?

Think about what that tells us?

TechnoFog has more details about the latest court filing SEE HERE.  He also notes the issue of the Durham team only recently being notified by the OIG in January:

…”There is also a curious paragraph discussing the fact that Durham, in January 2022 – learned from the DOJ Inspector General that they possessed “two FBI cellphones of the former FBI General Counsel to whom the defendant made his alleged false statement, along with forensic reports analyzing those cellphones.” Durham’s team is going through those cell phones now to analyze their contents.

And there will be more, with Durham stating, “the Government expects to receive additional information and documents in the coming weeks that may be relevant to the charged conduct.”

The article also notes:

The OIG is the internal watchdog, the internal police of the federal police apparatus. The guys who are supposed to be holding the justice system to account are the same guys who are keeping the justice system from accountability.

Chew on that for a few minutes while you contemplate all the previous OIG reports that resulted in exactly nothing, despite – or actually as a feature of their carefully worded content.

Yes, that would put the main office in charge of official justice obfuscation and damage control squarely in the hands of DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz. Does that make all those OIG reports shade a slightly different, perhaps darker color grey?

Factually, the Trump-Russia collusion narrative was always a complete ruse perpetrated upon the American people, with the intended objective to stop candidate Trump, then hamstring President Trump, then cover up what they were doing to accomplish those goals, and then finally destroy the Trump presidency. Y’all know the story, I am not repeating it.

However, all of these tentacles of intrigue and rabbit hole exploration can get so intentionally complex that people lose sight of the bigger picture. The current question should be ‘why didn’t the DOJ-OIG inform Durham of the evidence they carried’?

Unfortunately, when you start asking those types of questions, you start to get too close to the heart of the issue. The entire apparatus of the U.S. Dept of Justice and the FBI are corrupt. As to the bigger question: will the Durham probe finally outline all the evidence to prove all the years of deception and fraud perpetrated by the massive aligned system of corrupt government? My short and painful answer is, NO.

Please follow the link above to read the entire article. It does not paint an encouraging picture. Elections are the way to drain the swamp, but we need well-educated voters who will share what they know about the swamp in drain the swamp.

A New Level Of Chutzpah

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Yesterday Just the News posted an article about some recent rather questionable activities by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). There has been some criticism that the FBI has been politicized under the Biden administration. There recent actions do nothing to dispel that idea.

The article reports:

Even as the Department of Justice Inspector General released a report this week criticizing the politicization of the department, the FBI on Tuesday raided the homes of a Republican election official and several of her associates in Mesa County, Colo., in connection with a dispute about efforts to preserve 2020 election files.

In collaboration with state and county law enforcement, the FBI raided the homes of Mesa County Clerk and Recorder Tina Peters, Colorado Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert’s former campaign manager Sherronna Bishop, and two others.

The FBI operations targeting skeptics of the 2020 election results follow the bureau’s raids earlier this month on the homes of conservative guerrilla journalist James O’Keefe and several of his associates with Project Veritas.

Numerous elected officials, reporters, and the American Civil Liberties Union have voiced their concerns about potential infringement of press freedom by the FBI and Justice Department in the O’Keefe raid. These fears were exacerbated when information collected in the raid was published in the New York Times, which has been defending itself against a lawsuit filed by Project Veritas.

The DOJ’s inspector general released a report this week rebuking the department for straying from its own policies on avoiding the appearance of political bias.

The article concludes:

The secretary of state alleges that Peters lied about having the unauthorized person involved in the voting system update as she attempted to expose alleged election irregularities.

Peters said in August at a news conference, “The Mesa County Clerk and Recorder’s office directed her staff to turn off the video surveillance of the voting equipment,” CBS 4 Denver reported.

Peters explained that she had copied files on the voting machines for security before the update was made.

“I was concerned they were going to delete important election files, I did a backup image before and after they did that,” Peters told the news outlet.

She alleges that the images showed numerous voter files were removed during the update and her job was to supervise the files.

In October, Peters was prohibited by a Mesa County judge from overseeing the county’s election in a ruling on a lawsuit filed by Griswold, according to Colorado Politics.

If you don’t see a pattern by now, you probably never will. It seems that ordinary Americans who are trying to do their jobs conscientiously and who happen to support President Trump are being investigated, and intimidated while having their civil rights ignored by the current Justice Department. I have no idea how we clean this mess up, but it definitely needs to be scrubbed thoroughly.

The Fix Is In

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The Justice Department of the Biden administration is not known for its even-handed justice. The way the January 6th protesters were treated versus the way the rioters from the summer were treated is a glaring example of that. Now the Justice Department is attempting to cover their tracks on the scandals involved in surveillance of President Trump’s campaign.

Yesterday The Conservative Treehouse posted an article about Carter Page’s civil lawsuit against those who illegally obtained a FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) Warrant and spied on him.

The article reports:

Today the civil lawsuit Carter Page -vs- James Comey, former FBI Director at the time when Page was targeted, was assigned to a new judge….. and who do you think the judge “randomly selected” was?

Yup…. James Boasberg, current presiding judge over the FISA Court.

Wow. What an incredible coincidence.

The article continues:

“Randomly reassigned” my ass.

Judge James Boasberg is up to his neck in this.

OK, bear with me and remember, this “random assignment” is a civil case against James Comey.

Not only was Judge James Boasberg the judge that signed off on the third extension of the search warrant that contained the fraudulent Steele dossier as its primary evidence to support it…..  James Boasberg was also the “randomly selected” presiding judge in the criminal case against Kevin Clinesmith, the FBI lawyer who doctored emails to deny that Carter Page was a CIA asset in order to justify the warrant.

Judge James Boasberg was also the presiding judge in the media lawsuit seeking the James Comey memos the FBI and DOJ refused to release.  It was Judge Boasberg who ruled the DOJ could keep the Comey memos hidden from the public (link) to protect the integrity of the Robert Mueller special counsel investigation.  Robert Mueller was also put in place to cover up the illegal political surveillance (ie. “Spygate”) that was also the primary purpose of the fraudulent search warrant.

But wait, it gets worse… Robert Mueller filed the final renewal of the fraudulent warrant (June 29, 2017), and it was Judge James Boasberg signed it.

Let’s be really clear here. The FISA court is a small unit. The judges in/around Washington DC are also a small unit. They know everything that is going on in and around their DC network. A FISA judge inside that DC system knows every granular detail of everything that comes into their purview. All of it. Judge Boasberg even wrote the last two FISA court opinions (2019 and 2020) about the FBI abuses of the FISA-702 process and warrantless, illegal violations of the NSA database.

Now we are to believe it is just another random coincidence that James Boasberg is selected to be the judge in the civil case between Carter Page and James Comey?

Don’t bet on a fair decision in this case. This is the stuff of banana republics. I don’t know if we will be able to put the blindfold back on lady justice.

 

The Coercion In This Is Just Weird

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Yesterday The American Thinker posted an article about a telephone call from the White House to the Department of Justice targeting religious objects to receiving the Covid vaccine.

The article reports:

That good Catholic, Joe Biden, is troubled by the fact that people are raising religious objections to taking the COVID vaccine. We know this because a leaked White House telephone call lets us listen in as a Department of Justice attorney works with the administration to brainstorm ways to force vaccines on religious people over their faith-based objections. The First Amendment is a dead letter in the Biden White House.

In 1558, when Elizabeth I ascended the English throne, England had seen Catholics and Protestants engaged in deadly fighting for 25 years. Elizabeth wanted none of it. “I would not open windows into men’s souls,” she said, voicing the world’s first expression of religious liberty. By the 18th century, though, Britain had passed a series of laws mandating religious tests barring non-Anglicans from roles in government or academia.

In response, the Founding Fathers ratified the First Amendment, which prohibits the government from requiring religious tests for people to participate in society. “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof[.]” And thanks to the Fourteenth Amendment, the First Amendment applies to all governments in America, whether federal or state.

Additionally, contrary to what many leftists assert, the First Amendment does not operate to bar people from having their religious beliefs inform their politics or their dealings with the state. It’s a limit on government, not on people. Or as Elizabeth would have said, the government cannot open windows into men’s souls.

Nevertheless, a leaked White House recording of Marty Lederman, a Department of Justice attorney, has him cynically talking about getting COVID vaccines into those Americans who object on religious grounds. He doubts their faith but reluctantly concedes that there’s little the government can do — except for using government force to override them by claiming a compelling government need:

The question of religion and medicine is not a new one. The Christian Science religion does not believe in taking drugs of any kind. The Catholic religion objects to the fact that fetal tissue may have been used in the development of the Covid vaccine. Up to this point, religious objections to vaccines or other medical procedures have been accepted.

There is something really strange going on here. First of all, anecdotal information from morticians and hospital workers indicates that the vaccine does not protect you from catching the disease, being hospitalized with the disease, or from dying from the disease. If the vaccine does not truly protect you, why is the government pushing it so hard? Why is the government putting corporations in a position where they are firing people for not receiving an ineffective vaccine? Why are the statistics on injuries caused by the vaccine not being made available to public on a regular basis?

What To Look Forward To In 2022

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The Conservative Treehouse is one of my favorite blogs. The writers have an ability to spot trends and see what is being planned. They are very good a predicting the moves made by the deep state. Yesterday they posted an article detailing what to expect in the 2022 mid-term elections. The deep state recently got their marching orders.

The article reports:

David Plouffe is the former campaign manager for Barack Obama, a senior advisor to all current politicians who are connected to that Obama network, and a senior strategist of influence in the entire network of people pulling the strings of puppet and avatar for Obama’s third-term, Joe Biden.

Plouffe is paid and funded by the corporate system, private companies and allies within the multinational sector, for his leverage and influence within the entire political apparatus. Today Plouffe is signaling his political allies [Tweet Here], those actual foot-soldiers who corrupted the 2020 election, they will have to re-double their efforts in 2022 if they are going to pull-off another election construct similar to the fraud they executed in 2020.

This is a screenshot of a Tweet from the article:

The article notes that this is not a casual statement.

The article reports:

Plouffe is the kind of person who would select the 7 key urban areas that needed the specific targeting for local election fraud: Atlanta (GA), Phoenix (AZ), Detroit (MI), Clark County (NV), Philadelphia (PA), Madison (Wisc), etc. Plouffe plots the map and turns it over to folks like Bob Creamer (see project Veritas expose’).

As a consequence of the transparent voter fraud, some states have taken defensive action against the mail-in ballot scheme; others are still trying. The DOJ (Garland) is attempting to block those voter integrity measures. The institutional network (government and media) is pushing the Delta Variant (mid-term variant) to keep the 2020 deployed gateway open for 2022. David Plouffe is signaling the crew to be prepared to go even one-step further in 2022.

The article notes the role the deep-state Republicans will play in this effort:

However, there’s another angle from the other wing of the UniParty (legislative multinationals and globalists) on the Republican side. Given the scale of the 2020 MAGA turnout, the GOPe now have a reference for the MAGA supervote. Republicans have to start positioning themselves to defend against the possibility that Trump’s army might just win, with a big wave, in the 2022 election.

Republicans need an insurance policy to protect their power if MAGA moves into their castle.

Watch Senator John Thune. For several years Mitch McConnell has been helping Thune position to take his power position within the senate chamber of the DC system. If the MAGA monster vote leads to Republicans taking control of the senate, the Decepticons need insurance. The GOPe move to tamp-down and control MAGA outrage against McConnell will be for Mitch to give up his position as Senate Majority leader, and that’s where Thune will step in.

Stay tuned. The establishment Republicans will do just about anything to keep the American people from actually electing people who represent them and will work for them.

This Needs To Be Repeated Every Day Until It Ends

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The Federalist posted an article today about the contrast between how the Justice Department is treating those arrested in Washington on January 6th and those arrested during the riots in America’s major cities last summer.

The article reports:

One would think a major report from a group representing America’s top law enforcement leaders analyzing the widespread riots of 2020 would have garnered significant media attention. One also would think such a report would garner widespread discussion after the January 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capital due to the parallels between it and the 2020 riots. Given our hyper-partisan environment, however, one would be woefully wrong.

Specifically, back in October 2020, the Major Cities Chiefs (MCC) released a comprehensive report full of data from dozens of cities that provides deep insights into the 2020 riots that plagued America after George Floyd’s death in Minnesota. The MCC’s “Report on the 2020 Protests and Civil Unrest” served as an excellent after-action report that cities, states, and the federal government could use to reform their practices and, equally importantly, to prepare for future riots.

The article notes the difference in the events of last summer and the events of January 6th:

Now here’s a prime example of dissimilar treatment for far worse actions. The January 6 riot involved no guns or fires among protesters, only makeshift weapons like flag poles, batons, and objects from the area.

In contrast, the 2020 riots involved guns, incendiary devices, lasers, paint bombs, and fireworks that were used to torch buildings and cars, hurt police officers, and destroy meaningful parts of many U.S. cities. Despite the far greater violence and destruction the 2020 rioters perpetrated, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) haven’t hunted those rioters down with anywhere near the vigor and vim used against what are in many cases at most trespassers.

…In stark contrast, the left and the media continue to falsely claim law enforcement officers were killed on January 6. While some law enforcement officers were certainly injured during that riot, the numbers and severity are far below the law enforcement injuries from the 2020 riots.

More than 2,000 law enforcement officers were injured during the 2020 riots, with numerous officers being shot and one, retired captain David Dorn, brutally murdered while protecting his friend’s shop from rioters. The 2020 rioters also shot other protestors.

In contrast, the only person violently killed on January 6 was the unarmed protester Ashli Babbitt, at the hands of a Capitol Police officer whose identity still remains unconfirmed by public officials.

The article notes:

Left-wing rioters wisely did their acts in cities controlled by Democrats and with Democrat district attorneys, who went soft on them despite their disproportionate violence. In contrast, those who rioted on January 6 had the great misfortune of being in a jurisdiction controlled by anti-Trump Democrats and zealously left-wing U.S. attorneys looking to impress their fellow leftists.

Most of the people involved in the civil unrest that took place last summer have had their charges dropped. Many of the people involved in the January 6th unrest have been refused bail. Please follow the link above to read the entire article. It is a chilling commentary on what has happened to our justice system in recent years.

Everyone Needs To Be Screaming About This

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The Epoch Times posted an article yesterday about a protest in Washington. This protest didn’t get a lot of news coverage because leftists were doing the protesting.

The article reports:

A small cadre of Republican lawmakers gathered outside the Department of Justice on Tuesday afternoon to air concerns about the treatment of prisoners arrested for allegedly participating in the Jan. 6 Capitol Hill riots.

“We weren’t even let in the lobby,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) said, standing at the DOJ’s doorstep.

They weren’t left alone outside of the lobby, either. After about 15 minutes, a group of what appeared to be leftist protestors swarmed Greene’s podium and the surrounding area.

As Greene was speaking, protestors appeared to be circling behind her and the other Republicans—much to the concern of the staffers and security.

“We have to wrap it up,” a man near Greene could be heard saying, before more urgently repeating, “We have to go. We need to break.”

“The left is interrupting the press conference,” the man then announced to the crowd.

Seconds later, the group of protestors walked through the podium area as the Republican lawmakers and others scattered.

The article notes:

According to numerous reports, Jan. 6 inmates have been beaten, held in solitary confinement, and denied access to evidence about their own cases.

The Republican lawmakers said that they have attempted to investigate these reports, but have been stonewalled by the DOJ, as well as the Washington DC Department of Corrections and Capitol Police. A joint letter from Reps Greene, Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) and Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) lists six unanswered inquiries Republicans have sent to federal authorities.

“Are we housing political prisoners?” Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) said at Tuesday’s press conference. “We need to know the answers.”

A former defense attorney and Texas district judge, Gohmert said he’s spent his career fighting for due process for all defendants, including those on death row. During his time as judge, Gohmert said he would make unannounced visits to jails and prisons to make sure the conditions weren’t abusive.

“No matter whom you are in this country, you have the right to a fair trial and the right to see the evidence against you, including all potentially exculpatory or exonerating evidence. A plea agreement should not even be offered until these requirements are met,” Gohmert said.

“These are basic, fundamental requirements of our law that are ingrained in the justice system of these United States. Disregarding these procedures is a violation of any American citizen’s civil rights.”

We need to have hearings on the mistreatment of these Americans. Their civil rights are being violated, and the majority of Congress is silent.

When Justice Disappears

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Yesterday The Epoch Times posted an article about the investigation into coronavirus deaths in nursing homes in any of the states run by Democrat governors. It’s interesting that it’s the Democrat governors who sent the elderly coronavirus patients into nursing homes.

The article reports:

The U.S. Department of Justice has opted against investigating any of the Democrat governors who last year ordered nursing homes to accept residents who tested positive for COVID-19 against the recommendations of health groups.

Federal officials reviewed information they received from New York, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and New Jersey last year regarding the orders.

Based on the review, they’re not opening Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act (CRIPA) investigations in the first three states, Joe Gaeta, deputy assistant attorney general, told Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) in a letter on Friday.

The act enables the attorney general to launch a case in court against a state or local government, or its employees or agents, when officials suspect or find that people in institutions owned or run by such a government have had their rights denied.

The article continues:

The CDC issued guidance in March 2020, before the orders were released, saying COVID-positive patients could be released from healthcare facilities to long-term care facilities but if that happened, the facilities should be equipped with “adequate personal protective equipment supplies and an ability to adhere to infection prevention and control recommendations for the care of COVID-19 patients.”

“Preferably, the patient would be placed at a facility that has already cared for COVID-19 cases, in a specific unit designated to care for COVID-19 residents,” the guidance stated.

The orders in question were imposed by Cuomo and the others early in the COVID-19 pandemic. They informed nursing home operators that they could not turn away residents solely on the basis of a confirmed or suspected diagnosis of COVID-19.

Health groups like The Society for Post-Acute and Long-Term Care Medicine warned against the orders, stating in a resolution in March 2020 that “admitting patients with suspected or documented COVID-19 infection represents a clear and present danger to all of the residents of a nursing home.”

Large percentages of deaths pinned to COVID-19 in the four states took place among nursing homes.

We no longer have equal justice under the law in America.

What Are They Afraid Of?

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Yesterday The Conservative Treehouse reported that the Department of Justice is attempting to get involved in the ballot audit that is currently taking place in Maricopa County, Arizona.

The article reports:

Last week a group of Lawfare activists [SEE HERE], including New York University Law School – which leads to Andrew Weissmann, asked the DOJ to get involved.

The ridiculous letter from the Biden DOJ goes on to cite media reports from the Washington Post as evidence to justify their involvement.

Remember, previously the DOJ narrative was that each state makes up its own election rules.  Now the DOJ is saying, falsely, that Arizona might be breaking federal laws.

Their first concern [as predicted] centers around ballot security.  Again, remember, the Maricopa County election board would not let the auditors use the county tabulation center [SEE HERE] so the ballots and equipment had to be moved to Veterans Memorial Coliseum (AZ State Fairgrounds).   Now the DOJ is citing that move as a potential issue for the security of the ballots and auditing procedures.

It is interesting that the same names keep coming up.

Please follow the link to read the entire article. It includes the letter written to the Arizona State Senate. If the election was without fraud, why not let the audit continue? The only logical conclusion is that the Department of Justice (currently a political organization) is concerned about what might be uncovered.

It’s Getting Harder To Hold Honest Elections

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On Friday, The Epoch Times posted an article about Georgia’s new election law.

The article reports:

The Biden administration is looking at options to reverse or counter a newly enacted voting law in Georgia that brings in a sweeping number of election reforms to the state.

President Joe Biden told reporters on Friday that the Justice Department and his administration are “taking a look” at the legislation, which he claims is an “attack on the right to vote” in the Peach State.

“We’re working on that right now. We don’t know quite exactly what we can do at this point. The Justice Department’s taking a look as well,” Biden said.

In a separate statement on Friday, Biden characterized the state’s move to protect the sanctity of the ballot box as “a blatant attack on the Constitution and good conscience.” He also labeled the law as the “Jim Crow in the 21st Century,” referring to Jim Crow laws that enforced racial segregation in the south.

The 95-page law adds a slew of changes to the way Georgians vote, including requiring photo or state-approved identification to vote absentee by mail. The law also mandates that secure drop boxes be placed inside early voting locations, with constant surveillance, and expand early voting across the state.

The law also shortens the election cycle from nine weeks to four weeks and requires a minimum of one week of early voting before election day. People who wish to vote absentee are faced with new requirements as well.

All of these changes would increase election integrity. Requiring photo identification is not a racial issue–people of all races need photo identification to cash a check, open a bank account, receive healthcare, purchase certain items, travel by air, etc. Limiting early voting does not restrict voter rights–we used to be able to hold elections on one day without early voting. The arguments against this law are not valid. The Biden administration supports HR1, which would declare open season on election fraud. That is the reason they are threatening to take action against the Georgia legislation. Hopefully when lawsuits follow, the courts will follow the Constitution.

Putting Americans Last

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Yesterday The Conservative Treehouse posted an article about an investigation into Elon Musk. It seems that Elon Musk is being investigated for discrimination against non-citizens in his hiring practices.

The article notes:

WASHINGTON DC – The U.S. Department of Justice is investigating SpaceX over whether the company discriminates against non-U.S. citizens in its hiring practices and said Elon Musk’s company is stonewalling a subpoena for information, court documents revealed Thursday.

The DOJ’s Immigrant and Employee Rights Section received a complaint of employment discrimination from a non-U.S. citizen claiming that the company discriminated against him based on his citizenship status.

“The charge alleges that on or about March 10, 2020, during the Charging Party’s interview for the position of Technology Strategy Associate, SpaceX made inquiries about his citizenship status and ultimately failed to hire him for the position because he is not a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident,” DOJ attorney Lisa Sandoval wrote in a court document filed Thursday. The document was a request for a judge to order SpaceX to comply with an administrative subpoena for documents related to how the company hires.

Back in the age of dinosaurs when I was still working, you had to prove that you were an American citizen and eligible to work before you were hired. Why in the world did we change that? It seems to me that in America, American citizens should be first in line for jobs.

Holding Rioters Accountable

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On Sunday, Law Enforcement Today posted an article about the recent riots in Portland.

The article reports:

On Friday, the Department of Justice (DOJ) reported that 18 people were arrested and are facing federal charges for their roles in several weeknight protests at the Mark O. Hatfield U.S. Courthouse in Portland.

According to police, protesters in downtown Portland set several fires and breached the fence surrounding the Hatfield Federal Courthouse Thursday night, July 22nd and into early Friday morning, July 23rd. 

For several hours, more than 1,000 people gathered outside of the Justice Center and the federal courthouse blocking traffic and participating in a demonstration. Around 11 p.m., members of the group set fires inside the fence, shook the fence, threw things over the fence, and tried to dissemble the fence. Several members of the group actually breached the fence.

Police also said that protesters threw harmful items including incendiaries at the federal officers who came outside to protect the federal building and attempt to disperse the violent crowd. By 1 a.m., more protesters had returned back to the fence and continued to set fires, breached the fence, and threw commercial-grade fireworks towards the federal courthouse.

The article lists the charges:

According to a news release from the DOJ, the charges include assaulting federal police officers, arson, and damaging government property. Since May 26th, Portland has seen nightly protests that have been followed by violent and criminal activity. The Hatfield Federal Courthouse has been a nightly target of vandalism and from that has sustained extensive damage.

The article notes that all the defendants charged are believed to be local residents.

Attacking a federal building is a crime. Those charged deserve fair trials, but if they are found guilty, they need to spend some time in jail. Hopefully their arrest will remind those participating in the riots that they also might be arrested.

Chutzpah In Action

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On Tuesday, Judicial Watch posted an article about a drug smuggling tunnel recently discovered in San Diego.

The article reports:

Mexican drug smugglers are really getting bold. A cross-border tunnel recently discovered by U.S. authorities exits in a San Diego warehouse right next to a busy Customs and Border Protection (CBP) port of entry. It gets better. The southern California warehouse is manned by Illegal immigrants even though it is situated just a few hundred yards from a hectic border crossing staffed with federal agents around the clock.

A Mexican national with legal residency has been arrested and charged in connection to the operation, federal prosecutors announced this month. His name is Rogelio Flores Guzman and he helped construct the tunnel, which runs 2,000 feet from a Tijuana warehouse to the south San Diego depot. The U.S. has charged the 31-year-old with trafficking fentanyl, methamphetamine, heroin, cocaine and marijuana via a subterranean tunnel stretching from Mexico to a warehouse in Otay Mesa. When authorities entered the tunnel, they found around 575 packages of drugs worth nearly $30 million, according to a bulletin issued by the Department of Justice (DOJ). This sets a record because it marks the first time that five different types of drugs are found in a tunnel, according to the feds.

Agents from a special tunnel task force confiscated 394 packages containing 585 kilograms of cocaine; 133 packages containing 1,355 kilograms of marijuana; 40 packages containing 39.12 kilograms of methamphetamine; Seven packages containing 7.74 kilograms of heroin and one package containing 1.1 kilograms of fentanyl. “Cross-border tunnels always spark fascination, but in reality they are a very dangerous means for major drug dealers to move large quantities of narcotics with impunity until we intervene,” said the federal prosecutor in charge of the case, U.S. Attorney Robert Brewer. “We have seized this tunnel, confiscated almost $30 million in drugs and now we’ve charged one of the alleged crew members.”

That $30 million in drugs might have killed a lot of Americans.

The article notes the changes in drug smuggling techniques since President Trump closed the border:

There was a significant increase in Mexican smuggling tunnels after President Donald Trump increased border security in 2017. One southern California news conglomerate reported that criminal organizations in Mexico were improving the tunnels they use to smuggle people and drugs under Trump’s border fence, making them smaller and maintaining a high level of sophistication that includes railways and electricity. “In San Diego, tunnels are usually sophisticated partly because of the highly organized criminal organization operating in Baja California – the Sinaloa Cartel – as well as the characteristics of Otay Mesa, a neighborhood that exists on both sides of the border,” the article states. “In the U.S. and in Mexico, Otay Mesa is crowded with warehouses, providing numerous spaces to hide tunnel entry and exit points.” Operating one right next to a U.S. border crossing packed with federal agents is quite brazen.

We need to stop the smuggling, but we also need to find a way to help the people who are addicted to these drugs. There would be no point in smuggling the drugs if there were no market for them in America.

A Subtle Way To Infringe On A Constitutional Right

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“America’s 1st Freedom” is a magazine distributed by the National Rifle Association. I am not including a link to the article I am posting about because I can’t find the article electronically although it is in the April 2020 issue of the magazine.

The title of the article is “The New Gun-Control Activism.” It deals with the strategy those who oppose the right of Americans to own guns are using to limit the availability of guns to Americans.

The article notes:

Last year, for example, Connecticut State Treasurer Shawn Wooden, who commands $37 billion in public pension funds, announced plans to pull $30 million worth of shares from civilian firearm manufacturer securities. Wooden also intends to prohibit similar investments in the future and to establish incentives for banks and financial institutions to adopt anti-gun protocols. The proposition was immediately praised by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and other Connecticut politicians who view the divestment from five companies–Clarus Corp., Daicel Corp., Vista Outdoor Inc., Olin Corp., and ammunition maker Northrop Grumman–as a step toward reducing gun violence.

…Wooden also requested that financial bodies disclose their gun-related portfolios when endeavoring to wok with the treasurer’s office. Wooden subsequently selected tow firms, Citibank and Rick Financial Product (both had expressed the desire to be part of the “solution on gun violence”), to take on the roll of senior bankers in Connecticut’s then-forthcoming $890 million general obligation bond sale.

Technically I guess this is legal. It is a very subtle infringement on the Second Amendment and would be very difficult to prove in court. It is also not a new approach. During the Obama administration, the administration put in place guidelines that prevented gun dealers from getting business loans from banks.

On May 19, 2014, The New American reported:

Following the Obama administration’s “Operation Broken Trust,” an operation that began just months into his first term, the Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force was created initially to “root out and expose” investment scams. After bringing 343 criminal and 189 civil cases, the task force began looking for other targets.

The task force is a gigantic interagency behemoth, involving not only the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the FBI, but also the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the U.S. Postal Service, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), and the U.S. Secret Service.

The next target for the task force was credit card payment processors, such as PayPal, along with porn shops and drug paraphernalia stores. In 2011, it expanded its list of “high risk” businesses to include gun shops. Peter Weinstock, an attorney with Hunton & Williams, explained:

This administration has very clearly told the banking industry which customers they feel represent “reputational risk” to do business with….

Any companies that engage in any margin of risk as defined by this administration are being dropped.

In 2012, Bank of America terminated its 12-year relationship with McMillan Group International, a gun manufacturer in Phoenix, and American Spirit Arms in Scottsdale. Said Joe Sirochman, owner of American Spirit Arms:

At first, it was the bigger guys — gun parts manufacturers or high-profile retailers. Now the smaller mom-and-pop shops are being choked out….

They need their cash [and credit lines] to buy inventory. Freezing their assets will put them out of business.

That’s the whole point, according to Kelly McMillan:

This is an attempt by the federal government to keep people from buying guns and a way for them to combat the Second Amendment rights we have. It’s a covert way for them to control our right to manufacture guns and individuals to buy guns.

With the Obama administration unable to foist its gun control agenda onto American citizens frontally, this is a backdoor approach that threatens the very oxygen these businesses need to breathe. Richard Riese, a senior VP at the American Bankers Association, expanded on the attack through the banks’ back doors:

We’re being threatened with a regulatory regime that attempts to foist on us the obligation to monitor all types of transactions.

All of this is predicated on the notion that the banks are a choke point for all businesses.

How you vote matters.

This Case Is Still Relevant

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On Tuesday The Epoch Times posted an article about the Awan scandal. In case you have forgotten, various members and friends of the Awan family were IT aides to more than 40 Democratic members of key national security and foreign policy committees in the House of Representatives. Their positions gave the aides access to all of the members’ digital communications and documents.

The article reminds us:

With the exception of Imran Awan, all of the Awan network members lost their access to the House IT network in February 2017, as a result of a report by the top House administrative officials that said the aides “are an ongoing and serious risk to the House of Representatives, possibly threatening the integrity of our information systems and thereby members’ capacity to serve constituents.”

Imran Awan was kept on the House payroll by then-Democratic National Committee Chairman Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D-Fla.) until he was arrested by federal agents while trying to leave the United States.

Awan was subsequently charged with bank fraud in connection with a loan from the Congressional Federal Credit Union.

The article reports the current activities on the case:

An apparently frustrated federal judge ordered attorneys for the Department of Justice (DOJ) to appear Jan. 15 for a “snap” hearing to explain why the government isn’t producing documents sought by Judicial Watch concerning former Democratic information technology aide Imran Awan.

U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia Judge Amit Mehta’s unusual order followed a sealed submission by DOJ attorneys Jan. 10 in the case prompted by the nonprofit government watchdog’s November 2018 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit.

Such hastily convened hearings are extremely unusual in a federal judicial system so jammed that months can pass before cases are litigated in courtrooms.

“In a hearing last month, U.S. District Court Judge Amit P. Mehta expressed frustration and ordered the Justice Department to explain its failure to produce records by January 10 and to provide Judicial Watch some details about the delay,” Judicial Watch said in a statement Jan. 14 about the snap hearing.

“Instead, the Justice Department made its filing under seal and has yet to provide Judicial Watch with any details about its failure to produce records as promised to the court,” Judicial Watch said.

Federal attorneys previously said in December 2019 that they were unable to provide the documents sought in the Judicial Watch FOIA requests because they include materials from a “related sealed criminal matter.”

Thank God for Judicial Watch.

The article concludes:

The Awan scandal was first exposed by Daily Caller investigative journalist Luke Rosiak, who subsequently published a book on his findings, titled “Obstruction of Justice: How the Deep State Risked National Security to Protect the Democrats.”

None of the Awan network members were reportedly required to undergo security background checks prior to being employed on congressional staffs.

Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said in the nonprofit’s statement that “the DOJ’s handling of the Awan brothers case has long been an issue of concern and now we are expected to believe some secret investigation prevents the public from knowing the full truth about this scandal. We are skeptical.”

Just another example of inexplicable actions by the Justice Department.

The Truth Continues To Seep Out

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Yesterday The American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) posted the following on its website:

The ACLJ has just obtained previously unreleased documents related to the Clinton investigation and immunity agreements given to top Clinton aids. These agreements reveal that James Comey’s Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Loretta Lynch’s Department of Justice (DOJ) granted immunity to Hillary Clinton’s aids and lawyers, Cheryl Mills and Heather Samuelson, from prosecution for anything found on their laptops violating multiple felony criminal statutes governing the mishandling of classified information and/or the removal or destruction of records, including Espionage Act provisions. Further, the DOJ and FBI also agreed to evade the statutory requirements of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) by purporting to deem the contents of the laptops as not under DOJ or FBI “custody or control.”

These laptops were critical to any meaningful investigation of Hillary Clinton’s handling of classified emails and records. According to the DOJ Inspector General, who identified these as the “culling laptops,” “[a]ll 62,320 emails pulled from the Clinton servers were stored at one time on these laptops.” Having taken control of these laptops, agreeing to severely limit its searches, agreeing to unlawfully shield the laptops from FOIA, then agreeing to dispose of the laptops, it appears the Comey FBI and Lynch DOJ did everything in their power to protect Clinton’s senior aids and lawyers from both criminal liability and public scrutiny.

While these immunity agreements and related news have been publicly discussed to some extent, the ACLJ has now obtained the actual documents so the public may see and judge them accordingly.

The article also states:

According to the DOJ’s immunity agreement with Mills:

As we have advised you, we consider Cheryl Mills to be a witness based on the information gathered to date in this investigation. We understand that Cheryl Mills is willing to voluntarily provide the Mills Laptop to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, if the United States agrees not to use any information directly obtained from the Mills Laptop in any prosecution of Cheryl Mills for the mishandling of classified information and/or the removal or destruction of records as described below.

And, according to the immunity agreement:

To that end, it is hereby agreed as follows:

    1. That, subject to the terms of consent set forth in a separate letter to the Department of Justice dated June 10, 2016, Cheryl Mills will voluntarily produce the Mills Laptop to the Federal Bureau of Investigation for its review and analysis.
    2. That no information directly obtained from the Mills Laptop will be used against your client in any prosecution under 18 U.S.C. § 793(e) and/or (f); 18 U.S.C. § 1924; and/or 18 U.S.C. § 2071.
    1. That no other promises, agreements, or understandings exist between the parties except as set forth in this agreement, and no modification of this agreement shall have effect unless executed in writing by the parties.

The agreement was then executed by Cheryl Mills. The immunity agreement with Samuelson reads the same.

Mills and Samuelson Were Granted Immunity From Prosecution Under Multiple Felony Statutes for Anything Found on Their Laptops.

Please follow the link to read the entire article. Unfortunately this is a glaring example of unequal justice under the law.

A Major Whoops From Robert Mueller

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The Gateway Pundit has posted a number of articles today about the Mueller hearing. In case you successfully avoided watching the hearings, here is another highlight.

The article reports:

In his testimony on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, former special counsel Robert Mueller was asked repeatedly about why he didn’t indict President Trump after concluding his 22-month investigation into whether the president or his campaign colluded with Russia to alter the outcome of the 2016 election.

Democratic Rep. Ted Lieu asked the question explicitly.

“The reason you did not indict Donald Trump… is because of the OLC decision. Is that correct?” 

Mueller responded: “That is correct.”

The “OLC decision” is a ruling from the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) within the Department of Justice (DOJ) — dating back to the time of Richard Nixon and Watergate — that says a sitting president cannot be indicted.

Several other Democrats asked the same question, eliciting the same response from Mueller.

But Rep. Debbie Lesko, a Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, cut through through the mess when she pointed out that Mueller said exactly the opposite in his 448-page report.

“That is not what you said in the report, and it’s not what you told Attorney General Barr,” Lesko said. “And in fact, in a joint statement that you released with DOJ on May 29 after your press conference, your office issued a joint statement with the Department of Justice that said: ‘The Attorney General has previously stated that the special counsel repeatedly affirmed that he was not saying, that but for the OLC opinion, he would have found the President obstructed justice,’ ” she said.

Lesko asked Mueller if he stood by that statement.

“I would have to look at it more closely before I said I agree,” Mueller said.

So which is it? Do you stand by your report as previously stated, or are you lying in the report or by what you are saying now?

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.

When The Statistics Tell The Truth

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One of the arguments used by the Democrat party as an excuse to let everyone into the country is that all you have to do is schedule a hearing for them and let them loose in the country. They are conscientious people who want to be here legally and will show up for their hearing. Well, not so fast.

Yesterday Breitbart reported the following:

Since December 21, 2018, DHS has released at least 190,500 border crossers and illegal aliens into the interior of the United States. Acting DHS Secretary Kevin McAleenan told Congress this month that those foreign nationals are eventually given work permits that allow them to take U.S. jobs while awaiting their asylum hearings.

In testimony before Congress this month, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials said that the agency had recently conducted a pilot program with the Department of Justice (DOJ) to test how many recent illegal aliens would show up to their asylum hearings after being released into the U.S.

The results, an ICE official told Congress, were that about 87 percent of illegal aliens, or almost 9-in-10, recently released by DHS into the U.S. did not show up to their asylum hearings. With illegal aliens not showing up to their scheduled hearings, the ICE official said, the agency is then forced to grapple with attempting to locate and deport each illegal alien, an almost impossible task that strains federal resources.

The article notes that this will be an issue in the 2020 elections:

Leading up to the 2020 presidential election, Americans are vastly opposed to releasing border crossers and illegal aliens into the interior of the country, and GOP voters have said building a border wall and reducing all illegal and legal immigration is their top priority.

About 2-in-3 American voters told Harvard-Harris pollsters last month that they are opposed to catching and then releasing border crossers and illegal aliens into the U.S. while they await their asylum hearings. Likewise, GOP voters, conservatives, and Trump supporters have ranked building a border wall and reducing all immigration as their top priorities.

For whatever reason, the current Democrat party leaders do not represent the majority of Americans. They have moved considerably to the left of center while claiming to be moderate. It will be interesting to see how much of America believes the spin or how much of America believes what they see.

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.

Dueling Gotcha’s

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Yesterday Investor’s Business Daily reported the following:

As John Solomon reported in The Hill,  “The then-senior Department of Justice (DOJ) official (Ohr) briefed both senior FBI and DOJ officials in summer 2016 about Christopher Steele’s Russia dossier, explicitly cautioning that the British intelligence operative’s work was opposition research connected to Hillary Clinton‘s campaign and might be biased.”

FBI, Justice Knew

Ohr himself told congressional investigators, “I certainly told the FBI that Fusion GPS was working with, doing opposition research on Donald Trump.  I provided information to the FBI when I thought Christopher Steele was, as I said, desperate that Trump not be elected. So, yes, of course I provided that to the FBI.”

Ohr at the time was the No. 4 official at the Justice Department, a powerful post. Even so, he claims he told the FBI that both his wife, Nellie Ohr, and Steele both worked for Fusion GPS. Hillary Clinton’s campaign hired Fusion GPS through their law firm, Perkins Coie, to do opposition research on Trump.

The article concludes:

They started a dirty campaign operation against Trump, used it to spy on him, then opened a special investigation that probed virtually all areas of his life and business affairs, not just his supposed collusion with Russia. It originated with the Hillary Clinton campaign. Yes, but it found more-than-willing participants in the remnants of Obama’s national security and intelligence Deep State.

None of this behavior is legal, of course. The politicization of the FBI and Justice are crimes, plain and simple. As Roger Kimball recently noted, this is not on a par with Watergate — it’s far worse. Our system is tragically broken when government officials can lie and deceive in an effort to thwart an American election.

This is the stuff of Banana Republics, where rule of law means nothing. That’s not America, where rule of law is everything. But if these crimes go unpunished, we  will surely become a Banana Republic, too.

Mediaite reported today:

Anthony Cormier is one of the two investigative reporter at BuzzfeedNews who co-authored the bombshell report published Thursday night — a report which claimed President Donald Trump directed his former lawyer Michael Cohen to lie during Congressional testimony over discussions between the Trump Organization and Russian authorities about a Trump Tower Moscow project.

Cormier appeared on CNN’s New Day and revealed that he had not seen the evidence underlying his report.

Frankly I think Michael Cohen would tell Mueller that he saw Donald Trump cavorting with alien creatures from a spaceship in his back yard in order to stay out of jail. I guess I am skeptical.

Breitbart notes the following in an article posted today:

Thanks to the media’s previous bombshell report on this very same subject, a report that proved — like all the others — to be fake news, when the president’s own son, Donald Trump Jr., testified before congress on this Russia deal, he told the truth, he told congress that this particular Russia deal stayed alive (in some nebulous form) until June of 2016.

But now we’re supposed to believe that, even though his own son told the truth, Trump still instructed Cohen to lie — to testify the Russian deal died six months earlier, in January of 2016.

I think Michael Cohen might do better with the aliens and spaceships.

UPDATE: The Special Counsel has openly denied the Mediaite report. Hopefully that will be the end of this lie.

The Deep State Continues To Block Investigations

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The Hill posted an article today about Nellie Ohr’s refusal to answer questions asked by members of a congressional task force investigating the FBI’s handling of the infamous Steele dossier. The questions were asked in a closed-door session.

The article reports:

Congress faced another hurdle this week in its effort to establish the record of how, why and when the FBI was given information from Fusion GPS on its controversial investigation of President Trump.

Just last week, Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson refused to answer any additional questions by invoking his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination. Now, former Fusion employee Nellie Ohr, the wife of Justice Department official Bruce Ohr, has invoked spousal privilege to refuse to answer questions from the committee. The use of spousal privilege in this context, however, could prove more damaging for Congress than the underlying allegations involving Ohr. Congress needs to seriously examine of the basis and scope of this common-law privilege in the context of an oversight investigation.

Despite exaggerated claims on both sides, Congress has a legitimate interest in establishing the underlying facts concerning the work of Fusion GPS and the novel involvement of the Ohrs. The fact that a secret investigation was launched under the Obama administration targeting associates of a political opponent should concern all citizens. We now know the Clinton campaign funneled a huge amount of money through its campaign counsel to fund the report by former British spy Christopher Steele. Fusion GPS and Steele also actively tried to place negative media stories about Donald Trump during the presidential campaign.

There was an obvious attempt to block the election of President Trump and an obvious attempt to limit his ability as President to accomplish anything. It appears that Mrs. Ohr was part of that effort, along with many high-ranking members of the FBI and Department of Justice (DOJ). We need to find out who did what and what happened. If we don’t hold the people involved accountable, we can expect our justice system to be used in the future for political purposes. If we don’t deal with the wrongdoing that went on during the 2016 election and beyond, we will lose the principle of ‘equal justice under the law.’

The article concludes:

Washington is a small town filled with power couples. Under Ohr’s approach, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and his wife, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, could refuse to answer questions on a corruption scandal due to their speaking more as spouses than officials.

Ohr may have been asked questions that inappropriately delved into marital confidences; such questions can threaten the “harmony” of marriages long protected under the rule. If, however, Ohr used the privilege to refuse to answer an array of questions, as was reported, then Congress may want to challenge the assertion or, at the very least, consider how to approach such questions in the future.

Nellie and Bruce Ohr chose to mix their marital and professional worlds. The use of the privilege outside of marital conversations would be opportunistic, obstructionist and increasingly irresistible, if allowed. None of this means that the allegations involving Nellie Ohr are true — but she needs to answer those questions in her professional, not her marital, capacity.

The American public is entitled to answers to all questions regarding the corruption in the FBI and DOJ. Congress needs to use its power to get those answers.

Footnote 43

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Yesterday John Solomon posted an article at The Hill about the redactions in the House Intelligence Committee Report Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

The article reports the following about declassifying the report:

The Department of Justice (DOJ) and the FBI have tried to thwart President Trump on releasing the evidence, suggesting it will harm national security, make allies less willing to cooperate, or even leave him vulnerable to accusations that he is trying to obstruct the end of the Russia probe.

Before you judge the DOJ’s and FBI’s arguments — which are similar to those offered to stop the release of information in other major episodes of American history, from the Bay of Pigs to 9/11 — consider Footnote 43 on Page 57 of Chapter 3 of the House Intelligence Committee’s report earlier this year on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Until this past week, the footnote really had garnered no public intrigue, in part because the U.S. intelligence community blacked out the vast majority of its verbiage in the name of national security before the report was made public.

From the heavy redactions, all one could tell is that FBI general counsel James Baker met with an unnamed person who provided some information in September 2016 about Russia, email hacking and a possible link to the Trump campaign.

Not a reporter or policymaker would have batted an eyelash over such a revelation.

Then, last Wednesday, I broke the story that Baker admitted to Congress in an unclassified setting — repeat, in an unclassified setting — that he had met with a top lawyer at the firm representing the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and received allegations from that lawyer about Russia, Trump and possible hacking.

It is becoming very obvious that releasing the report of the Committee will not harm national security as much as it will harm the reputation of the Department of Justice and FBI. It’s time to release the report.