Don’t Let Your Love Of American Interfere With Your Ego And Personality Conflicts

I realize John McCain is dying. I am sorry about that. His family has my sympathies, and I pray that his suffering is alleviated. However, that does not excuse petty, damaging things he has done in the recent past. Possibly the brain cancer has interfered with his better judgement for a while, and I need to give him the benefit of the doubt, but some of his past actions have had a detrimental impact on America‘s government.

Yesterday The Daily Beast posted an article about a recent action taken by John McCain that has consequences that are still reverberating. The only good thing I can say about what he did is that his actions may be partially responsible for revealing the depth of the Washington swamp (of which he is a member) and making it more easy to drain.

The article reports:

In his new book, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) defends his decision to give a controversial dossier about President Trump to former FBI chief James Comey.

“I agreed to receive a copy of what is now referred to as ‘the dossier,’” McCain writes in the upcoming book, titled The Restless Wave, referencing information compiled by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele. “I reviewed its contents. The allegations were disturbing, but I had no idea which if any were true. I could not independently verify any of it, and so I did what any American who cares about our nation’s security should have done.”

If you had no idea if the allegations were true, why didn’t you investigate who paid for the dossier and check the background of Christopher Steele? The statement in the book is designed to put a positive spin on one of the nastiest political stunts ever pulled. McCain has previously stated his intense dislike for Donald Trump and had no problem passing on questionable information that had the potential of destroying the Trump presidency (if that information had actually been true). I have no doubt that McCain wanted Hillary Clinton elected and Donald Trump destroyed. He knew James Comey was aligned with the Clintons (not known for playing fair in the political game) and could have guessed what would happen next.

As I said, I am sorry that John McCain is dying, I acknowledge that he is a war hero, but his recent actions were just plain sleazy.

Admiral Mike Rogers Retires

The Conservative Treehouse reported yesterday that Admiral Mike Rogers has retired as National Security Agency Director. He will be replaced by Army General Paul Nakasone. Ordinarily this would not be a particularly newsworthy event, but there are some things that have been going on behind the scenes that make this noteworthy.

The article reminds us:

It does not seem coincidental that today, in the background of events, there is also a great deal of activity within the aggregate intelligence community (FBI/DOJ).  As DNI Dan Coats and NSA Director Mike Rogers are together in a formal and official capacity for the final time, the FBI was purging usurping agents (Page, Baker). Indeed with Admiral Rogers exit from service, he is now able to testify regarding his knowledge of prior FISA issues.

You might remember it was DNI Dan Coats and NSA Mike Rogers who worked together to investigate the FISA abuses and declassify the FISA court opinion presented by Presiding Judge Rosemary Collyer in April 2017.  It was also Mike Rogers who went to see President Elect Donald Trump in November of 2016 and alerted him to the counterintelligence surveillance being conducted by FBI and DOJ officials within the Obama Administration.

The most important aspect of Admiral Rogers’ retirement:

Indeed with Admiral Rogers exit from service, he is now able to testify regarding his knowledge of prior FISA issues.

Stay tuned.

The Circus Continues

The National Review posted an article today by Andrew McCarthy on the subject of the questions Robert Mueller would like to ask President Trump. The article is written on the assumption that the list of leaked questions is relatively accurate.

Andrew McCarthy makes some very good points as to why the Justice Department should block any interview of President Trump by the Special Prosecutor.

Andrew McCarthy points out that there is no evidence of a crime:

A president should not be subjected to prosecutorial scrutiny over poor judgment, venality, bad taste, or policy disputes. Absent concrete evidence that the president has committed a serious crime, the checks on the president should be Congress and the ballot box — and the civil courts, to the extent that individuals are harmed by abusive executive action. Otherwise, a special-counsel investigation — especially one staffed by the president’s political opponents — is apt to become a thinly veiled political scheme, enabling the losers to relitigate the election and obstruct the president from pursuing the agenda on which he ran.

That is what we are now witnessing.

Pretextual appointment of the special counsel
Robert Mueller was appointed special counsel for two reasons: (1) ostensibly to take over a counterintelligence probe; (2) in reality, as a cave-in to (mostly) Democratic caviling over Trump’s firing of FBI director James Comey — which was lawful but incompetently executed. Democrats contended that Comey’s dismissal, in conjunction with Comey’s leak of Trump’s alleged pressure to drop the FBI’s investigation of Michael Flynn, warranted a criminal-obstruction probe. That is, the pretext of obstruction was added to “Russia-gate,” the already-existing pretext for carping about the purported need for a special counsel.

Neither of these reasons was a valid basis for a special-counsel investigation.

Andrew McCarthy also explains that the whole premise of the investigation is flawed:

As we have repeatedly noted, a counterintelligence investigation is not a criminal investigation. To the extent it has a “subject,” it is a foreign power that threatens the United States, not an American believed to have violated the law. A counterintelligence investigation aims to gather information about America’s adversaries, not build a courtroom prosecution. For these (and other reasons), such investigations are classified and the Justice Department does not assign prosecutors to them, as it does to criminal cases. Counterintelligence is not lawyer work; it is the work of trained intelligence officers and analysts. It is not enough to say that Justice Department regulations do not authorize the appointment of a special counsel for a counterintelligence probe. The point is that counterintelligence is not prosecution and is therefore not a mission for a prosecutor.

Please follow the link above to read the entire article. It is extremely informative. What we have going on right now is a very expensive attempt to prove that the 2016 election victory was stolen from Hillary Clinton. It wasn’t. Get over it. She was a very flawed candidate that somehow committed numerous crimes that the Justice Department chose to ignore. The innate sense of fairness of the American voter and the American voters’ belief in equal justice under the law probably had something to do with Hillary Clinton’s defeat in 2016. The Special Prosecutor needs to stop spending money looking for a crime and deal with the crimes that were actually committed–mishandling of classified material, pay-for-play as illustrated by Uranium One, fixing the Democratic primary, etc.

We Should Have Been Told This At The Beginning

The Gateway Pundit posted an article today about some conflicts of interest that should have disqualified Robert Mueller from becoming Special Prosecutor. The article provides insight into the networks currently found in the deep state.

The article reminds us of requirements of the Special Prosecutor:

(b) The Attorney General shall consult with the Assistant Attorney General for Administration to ensure an appropriate method of appointment, and to ensure that a Special Counsel undergoes an appropriate background investigation and a detailed review of ethics and conflicts of interest issues. A Special Counsel shall be appointed as a “confidential employee” as defined in 5 U.S.C. 7511(b)(2)(C).

Robert Mueller has a number of conflict of interest issues:

Mueller is best friends with James Comey who was and is a key player in the FISA and Trump scandals.

…Mueller was the FBI Director during the Uranium One scandal. He even delivered uranium to Russia on an airport tarmac in Europe per Hillary Clinton’s instructions!

According to Big League Politics:

Robert Mueller worked for WilmerHale — the very firm representing Paul Manafort — when Rod Rosenstein contacted Mueller to give him the go-ahead to investigate Manafort for suspected Russia ties. That should have come up in any fair (and legally required) background check that Rosenstein should have done on Mueller.

Mueller was a partner at WilmerHale when he switched over to become Special Counsel, and he has brought members of the WilmerHale team over to his federal investigation team.

So Mueller was working for the firm representing Manafort at the time he was given the green light to investigate Manafort. This is just a little bit too cozy.

There are definitely conflict of interest issues here.

Some Of The Fallout From The Inspector General’s Report Has Begun

Andrew McCarthy posted an article at National Review reporting that the Justice Department’s inspector general has referred Andrew McCabe to the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, D.C., for a possible false-statements prosecution. Andrew McCarthy points out that the important fact here is not that Andrew McCabe lied, but what he lied about. Andrew McCabe leaked a conversation in which the Obama Justice Department pressured the FBI to stand down on the Clinton Foundation investigation. He later lied about leaking the information.

The article reports:

The report concludes that the former deputy director “lacked candor,” the standard for internal discipline at the FBI, from which McCabe was fired. It is a charge similar to those spelled out in the federal penal code’s false-statements and perjury laws. Specifically, the report cites four instances of lack of candor; more comprehensively, McCabe is depicted as an insidious operator.

About two weeks before Election Day 2016, the then–deputy director was stung by a Wall Street Journal story that questioned his fitness to lead an investigation of Hillary Clinton, the Democrats’ nominee. McCabe’s wife had received $675,000 in donations from a political action committee controlled by the Clintons’ notorious confidant, Virginia’s then–governor Terry McAuliffe — an eye-popping amount for a state senate campaign (which Mrs. McCabe lost). It was perfectly reasonable to question McCabe’s objectivity: The justice system’s integrity hinges on the perception, as well as the reality, of impartiality.

The reporter on the story, Devlin Barrett (then with the Journal, now at the Washington Post), soon had questions for the Bureau for a follow-up he was working on: Back in July, according to Barrett’s sources, McCabe had instructed agents to refrain from making overt moves that could alert the public that Hillary Clinton, the Democrats’ nominee, was yet again on the FBI’s radar — this time, owing to a probe of the Clinton Foundation.

The article concludes:

The Obama Justice Department “guidance” about the Clinton Foundation probe reminds us of their approach to the Clinton emails caper — call it a “matter” not an investigation; do not use the grand jury; instead of subpoenas, try saying “pretty please” to obtain evidence; do not ask the co-conspirators hard questions because they’re lawyers so that might infringe attorney–client privilege; let the witnesses sit in on each other’s interviews; let the suspects represent each other as lawyers; if someone lies, ignore it; if someone incriminates himself, give him immunity; have the attorney general meet with the main subject’s former-president husband on the tarmac a few days before dropping the whole thing; oh, and don’t forget to write up the exoneration statement months before key witnesses — including the main subject — are interviewed. 

With the Clintons, though, enough is never enough. Obama Justice Department officials, figuring they were only a few days from succeeding in their quest to become Clinton Justice Department officials, decided to try to disappear the Clinton Foundation investigation, too. (The underline is mine.)

After nearly two years of digging, there is still no proof of Trump-campaign collusion in Russian election-meddling. But we have collusion all right: the executive branch’s law-enforcement and intelligence apparatus placed by the Obama administration in the service of the Clinton campaign. To find that, you don’t need to dig. You just need to open your eyes.

The picture here is becoming very clear–Hillary was going to be elected, and all criminal investigations regarding the Clintons were going to disappear. We were very close to becoming a country where justice was not blind–it was well-funded and biased. Hopefully we can get some of the swamp drained in a reasonable amount of time. It took us a long time to get here–it is going to take a while to reinstate equal justice under the law.

 

Evidently Telling The Truth Was Inconvenient

Yesterday Investor’s Business Daily posted an editorial about James Comey‘s memos. The editorial lists a number of times that James Comey lied to President Trump to advance his own agenda rather than to serve the President.

The first instance occurred when James Comey briefed President Trump on the the Russian dossier.

The editorial reports:

He says Trump was surprised that the press hadn’t already run with the story, to which Comey replied “they would get killed for reporting straight up from the source reports.”

It turns out it was Comey himself who gave the press the hook they were looking for. Just days after, CNN used Comey’s briefing of Trump as the very pretext to report on the dossier that, up until that point, they’d refused to touch.

In other words, it’s far less likely that Comey briefed Trump because he was worried the press would report on the dossier, and more likely that he briefed Trump to ensure that those details would leak.

Further evidence that Comey wasn’t being honest with Trump comes in his Jan. 28 memo, in which he fundamentally changes the reason given for why he briefed Trump in the first place.

In that memo, he says the reason he gave Trump the briefing was because “the media, CNN in particular, was telling us they were about to run with it.”

…But at the time, Comey could have easily put that story to rest, because he knew that the dossier was bought and paid for by Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee. All he had to do was tell Trump, or the public, and the entire story would have been dismissed as a Democratic smear campaign.

Instead, he never told Trump the truth about the dossier’s origins. He told ABC News this month that he didn’t because “it wasn’t necessary for my goal.”

Wasn’t necessary for his goal?

In fact, out of all the leaks coming out of the FBI about Trump, the origins of the dossier remained the best kept secret in Washington all the way until October 2017.

Comey was planting the seeds for the actions he thought would get rid of President Trump.

Please follow the link above to read the entire article–it illustrates the basic dishonesty James Comey showed in his dealings with President Trump. It is truly a shame that James Comey was not fired on day one.

 

The Questions I Haven’t Heard The Media Ask

Scott Johnson at Power Line posted an article today that included a portion of a Wall Street Journal article by Kimberley Strassel. The article at The Wall Street Journal is behind the subscriber wall, so I am not linking to it.

Kimberley Strassel listed a number of questions she would like to hear James Comey answer.

Power Line listed six of these questions:

  • You admit the Christopher Steele dossier was still “unverified” when the FBI used it as the basis of a surveillance warrant against Carter Page. Please explain. Also explain the decision to withhold from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that the dossier was financed by the Hillary Clinton campaign.
  • You say you knew the dossier was funded by a “Democrat-aligned” group but that you “never knew” which one. Why not? Didn’t the FBI have a duty to find out?
  • Please explain the extraordinary accommodations the FBI provided Team Clinton during the email investigation. Why was Cheryl Mills —whose emails suggest she had early knowledge of the irregular server as Mrs. Clinton’s chief of staff—allowed to claim attorney-client privilege and represent Mrs. Clinton at her interview? Why did that interview happen only at the end? Especially since you say any case hung entirely on her “intent”?
  • You’ve surely now read the texts between the FBI’s Peter Strzok and Lisa Page. That happened on your watch. Is this appropriate FBI behavior? Should we believe such behavior is limited to them? In addition to overt political bias, the texts prove the FBI took politics into account—worrying, for instance, about how much manpower to put into investigating the woman who could be our “next president.” Why should the public have any faith in the integrity of the Clinton or Trump investigation?
  • The texts ridicule former Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s decision to step aside from the Clinton probe, “since she knows no charges will be brought.” This was before the FBI even interviewed Mrs. Clinton. And it contradicts your claim at the start of your July 2016 press conference that no one at the Justice Department knew what you were about to say. Please explain.
  • You dismiss Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s memo as nothing but a “pretext” to fire you. Yet you don’t address its claims. Please point to the internal policies or regulations that gave you the authority to announce that Mrs. Clinton was being cleared and why. Please provide any examples of similar announcements by FBI directors. Please address the criticisms of the prior attorneys general and deputy attorneys general from both parties cited in the Rosenstein memo.

Works for me.

 

Rats Deserting A Sinking Ship…

Katie Pavlich posted an article at Townhall today about an interview of Loretta Lynch by NBC’s Lester Holt. The discussion centered around James Comey‘s testimony that he was uncomfortable with being asked to call the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email server a ‘matter.’

The article reports:

LESTER HOLT: But, so Comey says you want to call it, “The Clinton matter.” He wants to call it, “The Clinton investigation.” To the extent, though, that he noted it, that it bothered him did he go to you and question your credibility with regard to the Clinton case?

LORETTA LYNCH: Well, look I can tell you that, you know, it was a meeting like any other that we that we had had where we talked about the issues. And we had a full and open discussion about it.

LESTER HOLT: And he didn’t raise any concerns about?

LORETTA LYNCH: And concerns were not raised.

Note that she is not denying that she asked him to call it “The Clinton matter.” She is just saying that he was not overly concerned about calling it that.

There are also some other problems brewing in the investigation of FBI and DOJ activities under Obama:

Fired Deputy Director Andrew McCabe‘s story about leaking information to the press also conflicts with Comey’s testimony. McCabe says he had the permission of the Director to do so. 

“I chose to share with a reporter through my public affairs officer and a legal counselor,” McCabe said after he was fired for lack of candor. “As deputy director, I was one of only a few people who had the authority to do that. It was not a secret, it took place over several days, and others, including the director, were aware of the interaction with the reporter.”

Comey said under oath he was unaware of any authorized leaks to the media, besides his own of course.

I suspect the swamp is getting a little nervous right now.

The Information Is Finally Coming Out

When Andrew McCabe was fired, there were a lot of questions as to why he was fired and why he was fired when he was fired. That information is slowly leaking out. The other information that is leaking out with that is that the alleged affair between Strzok and Page may have simply been a shiny object put in front of the public to take our attention away from what was actually happening.

The Conservative Treehouse posted an article today about Andrew McCabe. It seems that the reason for Mr. McCabe’s firing was that he had made a number of false statements to the Inspector General, to internal federal investigators, and to James Comey. The interesting aspect of this information is that it comes from leaks at CNN.

The article reports:

Giving credence to the reason why Inspector General Horowitz and Federal Prosecutor Huber don’t want to release unredacted investigative information to a leaky congress, a report surfaces via anonymous sources to CNN.

The leaked information comes after the DOJ released the substance behind the FBI Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) recommendation to fire former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe. Previously, Inspector General Michael Horowitz referred McCabe’s false statements to the OPR; the OPR reviewed, investigated and then recommended McCabe’s termination to Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Sessions fired him.

Congress was recently provided information from within the IG referral and OPR report.  Those details are now leaked, with an accompanying narrative, to CNN.

I’m skipping most of the narrative outline because, well, it’s an editorial narrative. However, at the bottom of the CNN narrative there’s an important series of dates which highlight the larger issue with McCabe. 

The truth on what was actually going on at the FBI is coming out slowly, but it is coming out.

An article at Power Line notes:

If the report of serial lying by McCabe is accurate then he has bigger problems than his sacking by Jeff Sessions. Criminal charges may well be in his future.

McCabe has already raised $500,000 via a fundraising page for his legal defense. Smart move.

I don’t like to see anyone’s life ruined by stupid mistakes, but it seems as if some of the higher ups in the FBI were out to destroy other people’s lives. I guess poetic justice (and karma) have a way of catching up with all of us.

When A Scandal Just Isn’t Sexy

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.

Caught In A Boldfaced Lie

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

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?

Complex Scandals Generally Don’t Make Mainstream Media Headlines–Aside From The Politics, They Are Too Hard To Follow

The Conservative Treehouse has been an excellent source to follow the corruption that was rampant in the Justice Department and Federal Bureau of Investigation during the Obama Administration. The mainstream media has largely ignored this story partially for political reasons and partially because it is very complex and hard to follow. The mainstream media is simply hoping that the average American voter will ignore the story rather than sort through it. Hopefully they are wrong–many of the actions taken by the FBI and DOJ under the Obama Administration were illegal and should have jail terms attached to them. Whether or not they will remains to be seen.

These are some highlights from The Conservative Treehouse:

Proving, once again, this is a well thought-out strategy, Chuck Grassley’s newest partly declassified version of the Graham-Grassley memo highlights the DOJ didn’t care about Bruce Ohr meeting with Christopher Steele until Inspector General Michael Horowitz found out.

Page #5 of the Grassley Memo (pg. 7 pdf), highlights the FBI interviewed DOJ Deputy Attorney Bruce Ohr on November 22nd, and December 12th, 2016 [FD-302 Interview Notes], yet didn’t take any action about their discoveries until Inspector General Michael Horowitz found out and revealed the interviews on December 7th, 2017.

The article at The Conservative Treehouse includes screen shots and inserts of memos and letters backing up the claims made in the article.

More highlights:

The Devin Nunes HPSCI memo revealed that Fusion-GPS employee Nellie Ohr, was funneling Clinton Opposition research to her husband Bruce Ohr for use by the DOJ in assembling the ‘Clinton-Steele dossier’; as justification to acquire a FISA “Title 1” surveillance warrant; for retroactive surveillance authority against Carter Page and the Trump Campaign.

…Obviously the ‘small group’ within the DOJ and FBI didn’t have any issue with the activity of Bruce and Nellie Ohr during 2016 until IG Horowitz found out and exposed it in 2017.

After a few feeble attempts at brush back pitches… with the release of the lesser redacted memo, Senator Chuck Grassley took a 3-1 pitch and rocked a solid double off the wall, putting him on Second Base and Devin Nunes confidently standing on Third.

With no-one out, and first base open, the Democrats are stressed.

Adam Schiff calls for a pitching change as House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte steps up to the plate.

However, they can’t pitch around Goodlatte because clean-up hitter Horowitz is on deck. Schiff needs to bring the infield in close and hope for a double-play. They’re down to their last pitcher and he doesn’t look good.

In the next few months we are going to find out if the principle of equal justice under the law still applies in America.

Please follow the link at the beginning of this post to read the entire article. It is chilling that this was going on right under the noses of the oversight committee.

The Memo Is Released

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.

Why The FBI And The Department Of Justice Would Really Rather Not Talk To Congress

Scott Johnson at Power Line posted an article this morning with a possible explanation as to why the FBI and the Department of Justice (DOJ) are withholding information from Congress. Evidently a lot of rather dubious actions that would have been buried had Hillary Clinton been elected President are beginning to come to light.

The explanation comes from a retired FBI agent. He explains:

As a retired FBI Special Agent with over two decades of experience in counterintelligence, I’d like to make a point that Scott and Paul are surely aware of, but which it’s useful to keep at the front of your mind.

Scott regularly refers to the Trump dossier as the “Rosetta Stone” of the “muh Russia” narrative. That’s true, but it’s helpful to go one step further. The real importance of the Trump dossier from a criminal law standpoint lies in the use it was put to for official government purposes. To understand that we need to know whether the dossier was used to justify the initiation of Full Investigations (FIs), according to the relevant AG Guidelines for National Security investigations.

The former agent explains the problem with that:

The full relevance of these considerations can be seen from Scott and Paul’s review of just how threadbare the dossier really was in terms of authentication. If it was used in applications to the FISC with the knowledge that it was “oppo research” and likely not credible, and if that knowledge was withheld from the FISC, I suspect we’re looking at the real possibility of criminal conduct. And bear in mind that such applications (for FISA coverage relating to a candidate for President or a President-elect) would have been approved only at the highest levels before submission to the FISC.

To put two names to that process: James Comey and Loretta Lynch. If they knowingly deceived the FISC–and that depends, as far as we can tell at this point, largely on how they may have used the “dossier”–they’re looking at serious criminal liability.

Here we have an example of the FBI and the DOJ being used for political purposes.

The agent concludes:

Investigations of the magnitude we’re discussing necessarily include a fair number of people and the testimony of those other people would likely shed valuable light on the true nature of the process that was followed, who made the decisions, what was known about the credibility of information that was used to justify official actions, who really believed those justifications, the nature of coordination with other government agencies, etc. This is where the investigative rubber will hit the road.

This sort of political spying is the sort of thing that happens in dictatorships where leaders are grasping to hold on to power. I guess President Obama thought that the election of Hillary Clinton would be his third term as President.

Some Random Thoughts On Government Corruption

These comments are loosely based on an article that appeared in The Independent Journal Review (IJR) yesterday.

It is becoming apparent that there were some very strange aspects of the deal that gave Russia control of twenty percent of America‘s uranium resources. There are also some questions as to whether or not the part of the agreement that required that the uranium in that deal not leave the country.

This is the basic summary from The Independent Journal Review article:

The FBI informant who worked undercover for years was “threatened” with prosecution by the Obama Justice Department if he told Congress about the unfolding Russia nuclear corruption case, according to his attorney.

The confidential witness, an American businessman, alleged he witnessed transactions and discussions showing the Russian nuclear industry tried to woo Bill and Hillary Clinton and attempted to influence the Obama administration.

Attorney Victoria Toensing told the Hill her client was first asked to sign a nondisclosure agreement by the FBI. When he wanted to bring troubling information to Congress, the Obama DOJ “threatened him with loss of freedom” last year, she said.

Sounds like a cover-up to me. Some of the names that have been mentioned in connection with the Justice Department withholding information from Congress are Rod Rosenstein, Andrew McCabe, James Comey, and Robert Mueller. It seems that a lot of people in the FBI and Department of Justice decided that Hillary Clinton was going to be the next President and doing what was right was unnecessary and possibly not a good career move.

The IJR further reports:

Toensing says her client possesses information about claims made by Russian executives regarding how they “facilitated” the Obama administration’s controversial Uranium One deal and sent millions to an entity that assists the Clinton Foundation.

Hillary Clinton was secretary of state when the Uranium One deal was approved.

“There was corruption going on and it was never brought forward,“ Toensing told the Hill. ”And in fact, the sale of the uranium went on despite the government knowing about all of this corruption. So he’s coming forward. He wants the right thing to be done, but he cannot do it unless he is released from the NDA.”

It is time to purge the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation of everyone who was involved in this investigation. It is time to relieve Robert Mueller of his duties as Special Prosecutor–it is becoming obvious that he is a dirty cop. This is the deep state. Every day the deep state continues is a threat to the freedom and safety of Americans.

Transparency is Obviously A Lost Art

Yesterday The Washington Examiner posted an article about the battle between CNN and the government about making public James Comey’s memos about his discussions with President Trump regarding the Russian investigation.

There are a few things that need to be noted here. In June, I posted an article which included the following:

In a statement delivered on the Senate floor, Grassley (Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA)) said that in March, former FBI Director James Comey had told him, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), and the group of Senate and House members known as the “Gang of Eight” that the president was not under investigation.

But Schumer, who is part of the Gang of Eight, continued to tell the media Trump was under investigation, Grassley said.

Okay. So if those Senators knew in March that President Trump was not under investigation, why did Senator Schumer claim he was and why is Robert Mueller continuing to investigate something that was already known?

At any rate, the article at The Washington Examiner reports:

Government lawyers asked a judge Friday to deny CNN’s request to force the FBI to publicly disclose former FBI Director James Comey’s memos documenting his interactions with President Trump about the Russia investigation.

The news network made the case in a lawsuit filed with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in June that there was high public interest in Comey’s memos and that the notes were not classified, as insisted by Comey himself in testimony. CNN, along with other outlets and watchdog groups, had requested the memos under the Freedom of Information Act.

However, a report from CNN on Saturday explained that parts of Comey’s memos were determined to be classified and the government argued that to make them public would “reveal the scope and focus of the investigation and thereby harm the investigation” and possible prosecutions.

The government is also requesting that an unnamed “FBI employee” make the government’s case in secret.

Was the memo Comey leaked to Columbia University professor Daniel Richman, (who then at the request of Comey revealed the details of the notes to the New York Times to make sure a special prosecutor was appointed) a secret? if so, why hasn’t Comey been held accountable? Who is the government actually working for?

It’s time for the government to start cooperating with the citizens. I realize that might by an alien concept to some government employees, but I am sure they could get used to the idea that they work for the citizens, not the other way around. It truly is time for some transparency in government.

 

When A Simple Investigation Turns Into A Witch Hunt

I have previously posted articles about the bias that seems to be part of Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller‘s investigation into Russian interference into the 2016 presidential election. (You can locate these articles using the search engine at the top of the blog to locate articles about Robert Mueller.)  The list of people he hired and the strong-arm tactics used against Paul Manafort are an indication that he had decided on the verdict before he conducted the investigation–much like his friend James Comey and the investigation into Hillary Clinton‘s emails. Well, this endless and wandering investigation may be called on to provide some accountability.

Yesterday The Gateway Pundit reported that nineteen Republican Congressmen have called for hearings on Robert Mueller’s investigation. It is definitely about time.

Following is the letter they sent:

Special Prosecutors need a deadline, a specific investigation subject, and a budget. The abuses connected with special prosecutors are numerous. If Congress is unwilling to terminate the position, they should at least limit it.

In Danger Of Being Hoisted On Your Own Petard

The Gateway Pundit posted an article today with the headline, “Mueller Investigation Desperate As More Information About Obama‘s Illegal Spying Is Uncovered.” How did the Obama Administration expect to get away with their massive abuse of government power? If Hillary Clinton had won the election, there would never be an investigation. Even with the election of President Trump, I am not sure anyone in Washington has the intestinal fortitude to investigate the wiretaps fully (this is a g-rated blog–intestinal fortitude was the closest I could come to what I really wanted to say). Bad things happen to people who investigate the Clintons or people close to the Clintons.

The article reports:

Mueller’s investigation is a farce and now  Clarice Feldman at American Thinker reports that Mueller’s team is getting desperate to find any crime related to Trump:

I agree with Daniel Greenfield. Based on what I’ve read and observed, while the initial surveillance was to stop Trump and help Clinton, Obama used FISA to provide a “national security” cover for politically spying on Trump right up to the inauguration. As he notes, the first 2016 application was made the month after Trump obtained the nomination and the second in October, the month before the election.

As the unmasking picked up pace after the election, the reasonable assumption is that its purpose was to undo the results of the election or hamstring the incoming President.

Now Obama and his allies are or should be terrified that the scope of the illegal surveillance is revealing their criminal acts.

This is why I believe Mueller is growing increasingly desperate to find one crime by one person he can force by threat of jail to provide any shred of anything that might be used to justify their illegal espionage. Greenfield’s conclusion is apt: “The left is sitting on the biggest crime committed by a sitting president. The only way to cover it up is to destroy his Republican successor. A turning point in history is here. If Obama goes down, the left will go down with him. If his coup succeeds, then America ends.”

The current US Attorney General is either over his head or part of the swamp. He recused himself from the phony Russia scandal and left our President open for attack. He’s the man in charge when the FBI recently declined a request for information related to the Hillary Clinton email investigation. He let crooked IRS officials walk after targeting thousands of conservative Americans. Sessions should either address the corruption in his shop or the President should find someone who will.

This is scary stuff for those of us who want America to survive as a place where all men are equal under the law and our government has some degree of integrity.

The Deep State Or The Police State?

Sharyl Attkisson posted an article at The Hill today about the Obama Administration’s spying on Donald Trump. I don’t care which side of the political spectrum you are on, this story should disturb you.

The article reports:

According to media reports this week, the FBI did indeed “wiretap” the former head of Trump’s campaign, Paul Manafort, both before and after Trump was elected. If Trump officials — or Trump himself — communicated with Manafort during the wiretaps, they would have been recorded, too.

But we’re missing the bigger story.

If these reports are accurate, it means U.S. intelligence agencies secretly surveilled at least a half dozen Trump associates. And those are just the ones we know about.

Besides Manafort, the officials include former Trump advisers Carter Page and Michael Flynn. Last week, we discovered multiple Trump “transition officials” were “incidentally” captured during government surveillance of a foreign official. We know this because former Obama adviser Susan Rice reportedly admitted “unmasking,” or asking to know the identities of, the officials. Spying on U.S. citizens is considered so sensitive, their names are supposed to be hidden or “masked,” even inside the government, to protect their privacy.

In May, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates acknowledged they, too, reviewed communications of political figures, secretly collected under President Obama. 

The article goes on to remind us that James Clapper assured Congress in 2013 that the NSA was not collecting data on American citizens.

The article also lists many of the violations of the rights of Congressmen, reporters, and other political figures. This is illegal.

The article concludes:

Officials involved in the surveillance and unmasking of U.S. citizens have said their actions were legal and not politically motivated. And there are certainly legitimate areas of inquiry to be made by law enforcement and intelligence agencies. But look at the patterns. It seems that government monitoring of journalists, members of Congress and political enemies — under multiple administrations — has become more common than anyone would have imagined two decades ago. So has the unmasking of sensitive and highly protected names by political officials.

Those deflecting with minutiae are missing the point. To me, they sound like the ones who aren’t thinking.

If we want to keep our privacy and our freedom, the people responsible for spying on us need to face the consequences of their breaking the law.

The FBI Is Beginning To Look Like Tammany Hall

On Wednesday, Circa posted an article about the current culture in the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Circa is one of the few current news outlets that is actually doing investigative reporting. I don’t know how big their footprint is in the news world, but I know that I have found them to be a reliable source and a source that generally has a story before the mainstream media.

The article reports:

When the FBI launched an investigation into former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, one of the bureau’s top former counterterrorism agents believed that FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe would have to recuse himself from the investigation.

Former Supervisory Special Agent Robyn Gritz was one of the bureau’s top intelligence analysts and terrorism experts but resigned from the bureau five years ago after she said she was harassed and her career was blocked by top FBI management. She filed a formal sexual discrimination complaint against the bureau in 2013 and it was Flynn, among many others, who publicly came to her aide.

In her first on-camera interview she described the retaliation from McCabe and others in the bureau as “vicious.”

…She told Circa, current senior level management, including McCabe, created a “cancer like” bureaucracy striking fear into FBI agents and causing others to resign. She eventually resigned herself, but her case is still pending.

…McCabe, who is under three separate federal inquiries, did not respond to requests for comment. (The italics are mine)

The article details some of the legal issues surrounding Deputy Director McCabe:

In June, a Circa investigation revealed that two weeks after Gritz filed her EEOC complaint, McCabe referred her for an Office of Professional Responsibility investigation for timecard irregularities.

Although the FBI claimed they had filed their OPR investigation prior to Gritz’s EEOC, McCabe’s own sworn testimony painted a much different picture. Gritz’s case, which is still pending, was required McCabe to submit to a sworn statement. In his testimony he recounted a conversation on June 19, 2012 in which he authorized the OPR investigation of Gritz after one of his deputies told him she was about to file a complaint, as reported by Circa.

And McCabe is also challenged with an Office of Special Counsel investigation.

The embattled former agent filed a complaint in April, alleging McCabe violated the Hatch Act, as reported by Circa in June.

The OSC is the government’s main whistle blower agency. The Hatch Act prohibits FBI employees from engaging “in political activity in concert with a political party, a candidate for partisan political office, or a partisan political group.” McCabe appeared to be participating in his wife’s unsuccessful bid for Virginia State Senate in 2015, according to Gritz and documents obtained by Circa.

The Justice Department Inspector General investigation is also investigating McCabe after Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, an Iowa Republican, alleged McCabe may not have properly disclosed the roughly $700,000 in campaign contributions to his Democratic wife on his ethics report and should have recused himself from the Clinton server case.

It seems that much of the FBI is part of the Washington swamp.

Why The Deep State Matters

The Gateway Pundit posted an article yesterday about the number of leaks coming out of Washington during the first 126 days of the Trump Administration.

The article reports:

Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI), Chairman of the US Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, examined media leaks between January 20, 2017, and May 25, 2017 — the first 126 days of President Trump’s administration.

The article includes the following chart:

The article further reports:

A couple observations not in Senator Johnson’s report are that many of the leaks are related to James Comey in one way or another and the former FBI Director has admitted leaking information to the press.  Another observation is that a significant amount of the so called leaks have been proven false at later dates.  This makes you wonder if they are just being made up by someone like John Podesta.

Regardless of who is creating them, leaking them or reporting them, the criminal leaks are damaging to the US Intelligence community and are clear attacks against President Trump.

Our government officials should not be working to undermine an elected President. There needs to be some action taken against the guilty parties.

The Web That Keeps On Growing

Yesterday Ari Lieberman posted an article at Front Page Magazine about the latest developments in the case of Hillary Clinton’s emails. It is becoming very obvious that there were many reasons why Mrs. Clinton preferred to keep these emails from seeing the light of day.

The article reports:

But perhaps most damning for Clinton was her email scandal which dogged her campaign like a bad rash that wouldn’t go away. Clinton believed that her troubles were behind her when Comey announced in July 2016 that “no charges are appropriate in this case.” But her hopes were soon dashed when her emails once again popped up, this time on Anthony Weiner’s laptop. Clinton’s emails now had the stench of Anthony Weiner all over them. She was furious but there was nothing she could do. This was a problem of her own making. 

The emails were transferred by Clinton aide and confidant, Huma Abedin to her husband’s laptop. They were inadvertently uncovered by FBI agents during their probe of Weiner for sending sexually explicit emails to a minor. The timing of the revelation could not have been worse for Clinton – just 11 days prior to the election.  

If you thought that Clinton’s loss in the general elections put her email scandal to rest, you thought wrong. Clinton’s emails continue to ricochet like exploding shrapnel, tarnishing the Democratic Party and hampering its objectives.

The two latest peripheral victims of the email scandal are Loretta Lynch and current acting FBI director, Andrew McCabe.  In open testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, James Comey testified that Loretta Lynch asked him to refer to the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s email server as a ‘matter’, echoing the term used by the Clinton presidential campaign. In private testimony, Comey admitted confronting Loretta Lynch with a document implicating Loretta Lynch in a plan to derail the FBI investigation. There is also the matter of the meeting between Loretta Lynch and Bill Clinton on the tarmac at Phoenix Airport. It doesn’t take a giant leap of faith to assume that Loretta Lynch had been assured of a place in the Clinton Administration if she could tamp down the investigation into Hillary Clinton and her emails.

Andrew McCabe has also been caught up in this web.

The article explains his connection to the scandal:

McCabe has revealed himself to be a deeply problematic figure who is currently the subject of at least three separate investigations which include massive conflicts of interest and possible violations of the Hatch act.

One of those investigations centers on his deep involvement in the Clinton email probe. According to the Wall Street Journal, McCabe “was part of the executive leadership team overseeing the Clinton email investigation.” While McCabe was ostensibly investigating Clinton, his wife Jill was accepting $500,000 for her state senate campaign from long-time Clinton ally, Terry McAuliffe. McCabe failed to disclose this critical piece of information. Insiders believe that it is likely that McCabe will be relieved of his duties in the not too distant future. 

The swamp in Washington has become so deep and so entangled that if you pull out something by the roots, you will find other things attached to those roots. The connections and cronyism run deep. Hopefully the Trump Administration can at least begin to undo some of the mess that is there.

Why Most Americans Don’t Trust Politicians

Yesterday Breitbart posted an article which illustrates why Americans don’t trust politicians.

The article reports:

In a statement delivered on the Senate floor, Grassley (Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA)) said that in March, former FBI Director James Comey had told him, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), and the group of Senate and House members known as the “Gang of Eight” that the president was not under investigation.

But Schumer, who is part of the Gang of Eight, continued to tell the media Trump was under investigation, Grassley said.

 “That helped feed the media hysteria,” he said. “The Minority Leader even tried to say that the Senate shouldn’t vote on the Supreme Court nomination because the president was under investigation. And the whole time, he knew it wasn’t true.”

In once instance, Schumer told reporters on March 21, “There is a cloud now hanging over the head of the president, and while that’s happening, to have a lifetime appointment made by this president seems very unseemly and there ought to be a delay.”

Grassley said it was not until months later that it came to light, on May 12, when Trump revealed in a letter firing Comey that the FBI director had told him three times he was not under investigation.

Grassley also said he had asked Comey to come out and tell the public Trump was not under investigation, but he had refused to do so over a hypothetical situation where he might have to correct the record.

Now, because some of our so-called leaders in Washington refused to be honest, we have a special prosecutor spending millions of taxpayer money investigating something that never happened. Worse than that, the special prosecutor has put together a team of political hacks that will pursue political interests over truth–all at taxpayers’ expense.

It truly is time to throw the bums out and replace them with people who actually care about America more than they care about political expediency.

While Congress Was Flashing A Shiny Object Over Here…

Sleight of hand is something I used to associate with magicians and people who do card tricks. Lately I associate it with politicians in Washington.

On Tuesday, Investor’s Business Daily posted an editorial listing the scandals that Congress is not investigating. Oddly enough, there is more concrete, obvious evidence easily visible in the scandals they are ignoring than in the scandals they choose to investigate.

Some highlights from the editorial:

“Prosecutors, Congress, and the public will want to know when the National Security Council shipped off the records about potential intelligence abuses by Susan Rice and others in the Obama White House to the memory hole of the Obama Presidential Library,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.

Fitton fittingly left journalists off his list of those who will want to know about this, since the latest weird twist in this story garnered precious little interest among the mainstream media.

Nor did an earlier development in this case, when the House Intelligence Committee issued subpoenas for information related to unmasking requests involving Rice as well as former CIA Director John Brennan, and former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Power.

These subpoenas were, Rep. Devin Nunes said, “just further escalation in the concern we have of the unmaskings of Americans by the senior leaders of the Obama administration.”

Loretta Lynch Scandal: Despite blanket coverage of James Comey‘s testimony about his firing by Trump, few noted the bombshell Comey dropped about Obama’s attorney general, Loretta Lynch, who, Comey said, pressured him to downplay the significance of the FBI‘s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s reckless handling of classified emails on her private server. Comey said Lynch told him to call it a “matter,” not an investigation.

Comey said this gave him a “queasy” feeling, since Lynch was specifically asking him to parrot the words the Clinton campaign was using to describe the FBI probe. That, on top of the Lynch’s private meeting with Bill Clinton, as well as the unusually lenient immunity deals the Justice Department cut with key witnesses in the Clinton email case, suggest Lynch had turned the Justice Department into an arm of the Clinton campaign.

…NSA Spying Scandal: In late May, Circa News published a truly bombshell report about how the National Security Agency had been conducting illegal searches on American citizens for years, “routinely violat(ing) American privacy protections while scouring through overseas intercepts.” In addition, the administration “failed to disclose the extent of the problems until the final days before Donald Trump was elected president last fall.”

Classified documents obtained by Circa showed that “one out of every 20 searches seeking upstream internet data on Americans inside the NSA’s so-called Section 702 database violated the safeguards Obama and his intelligence chiefs vowed to follow in 2011.”

Circa also reported that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court blasted Obama administration officials, saying that the improper searches posed a “very serious Fourth Amendment issue” and the administration’s failure to disclose the violations amounted to an “institutional lack of candor.”

Media response? The three network news programs all ignored this report, and it got little attention by any of the other mainstream news outlets.

Under the Obama Administration, Americans were spied on because of their political beliefs. That is a trait of a tyrannical government–not a representative republic. Would that have continued if Hillary Clinton had been elected? I don’t know.

It is time Congress, the Democrats, and the media stop chasing unicorns and actually investigate the constitutional abuses that took place during the Obama Administration. If these unconstitutional actions go unpunished, we have lost the concept of equal justice under the law. Congress and the people who continually vote for the Congressmen and Congresswomen who choose to ignore these violations of the law are responsible for this loss of equal justice. Unfortunately, all of us will eventually pay the price.