Tag Archives: National security

This Is Not Surprising

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For a long time, America trusted its news sources. However, in recent years, those sources have come into question as they have become more and more biased. There are also some real questions as to what is being left out of what is being reported. The addition of alternative news has helped balance things out for those who are willing to do their own research, but a large segment of the American population still believes that everything they hear on the mainstream media is true. That is one of many reasons for the division we see among Americans. There are, however, some elements of our society who like the current lack of unbiased information and would like the division to continue. Unfortunately many of these elements are found inside of our government.

Yesterday The Conservative Treehouse posted an article titled, “Former Intel Officials Want Efforts to Break Up Big Tech Stopped–Data Control and Retention of Social Media Partnership Is A National Security Imperative.” Just for the record, controlling the media in our free republic is not only not a national security  imperative–it is totally unconstitutional.

Please follow the link to read the entire article. It is long and complicated, but worth the read. I will post a few important points here.

The article reports:

Former Obama era intelligence officials, those who helped construct, organize and assemble the public-private partnership between intelligence data networks and supported social media companies, have written a letter to congress warning that any effort to break up Big Tech (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Google, Microsoft, etc.) would be catastrophic for the national security system they have created.

[READ LETTER HERE]

Citing the information control mechanisms they assembled, vis-a-vis the ability of social media networks to control and approve what is available for the public to read and review, the intelligence officials declare that any effort to break up the private side of the intel/tech partnership will only result in less ability of the intelligence apparatus to control public opinion.

They willfully admit that open and uncensored information is adverse to the interests of the intelligence state and therefore too dangerous to permit. They specifically argue, if the modern system created by the partnership between the U.S. government and Big Tech is not retained, the national security of the United States is compromised. Let that sink in for a moment.

The article concludes:

The influence of the Intelligence Branch now reaches into our lives, our personal lives through their efforts in social media.

In the decades before 9/11/01 the intelligence apparatus intersected with government, influenced government, and undoubtedly controlled many institutions with it. Back then, the legislative oversight function was weak and growing weaker, but it still existed and could have been used to keep the IC in check. However, after the events of 9/11/01, the short-sighted legislative reactions opened the door to allow the surveillance state to weaponize.

After the Patriot Act was triggered, not coincidentally only six weeks after 9/11, a slow and dangerous fuse was lit that ends with the intelligence apparatus being granted a massive amount of power. The problem with assembled power is always what happens when a Machiavellian network takes control over that power and begins the process to weaponize the tools for their own malicious benefit. That is exactly what the installation of Barack Obama was all about.

The Obama era intelligence team took pre-assembled intelligence weapons we should never have allowed to be created and turned those weapons into tools for radical, political and fundamental change. The target was the essential fabric of our nation. Ultimately, this corrupt political process gave power to create the Fourth Branch of Government, the Intelligence Branch. From that perspective, the fundamental change was successful.

…It’s all Connected Folks, SEE HERE

[…] “The vision was first outlined in the Intelligence Community Information Technology Enterprise plan championed by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and IC Chief Information Officer Al Tarasiuk almost three years ago.” … “It is difficult to underestimate the cloud contract’s importance. In a recent public appearance, CIA Chief Information Officer Douglas Wolfe called it “one of the most important technology procurements in recent history,” with ramifications far outside the realm of technology.” (READ MORE)

One job…. “take the preexisting system and retool it so the weapons of government only targeted one side of the political continuum.”

Welcome to 1984.

Your Tax Dollars At Work

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Yesterday Breitbart reported that the Biden administration’s pause on the construction of the wall at America’s southern border is costing taxpayers about six million dollars per day. That does not include the cost of dealing with the refugees that are overrunning the border.

The article reports:

According to the source, the expenditures are required for materials orders placed before the pause and expenses for the cost of equipment sitting idle. When the issuance of a stop work order causes a contractor to idle equipment, they are entitled to be compensated for rental expenses or costs of ownership.

Shortly after taking office, President Biden signed an executive order temporarily halting any further progress on the border wall so individual contracts could be evaluated. With the exception of “make-safe” activities at the worksites, construction projects immediately came to a standstill, Breitbart Texas reported. The end of the 60-day pause does not, however, signal an automatic restart of construction.

Early in the pause, a spokesperson for the United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) informed Breitbart Texas that contractors would be informed of a final decision sometime after the 60-day pause concludes. The time was to be used for evaluating each contract to reach a decision to terminate-for-cause or continue.

The Biden administration has not indicated which direction they will take regarding the end of the pause. Little information concerning the immigration crisis on the border has come from the leadership team within DHS and U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Senior officials within DHS reported being instructed not to speak to national media on the issues facing DHS at the border.  Information from other agencies within the new administration is equally elusive. USACE did not respond to a request for information concerning the end of the pause and the border wall contracts currently being evaluated.

The right thing to do would be to finish the wall. Under any circumstances, a secure border is an integral part of national security.  In a time of a national pandemic, a secure border is a public health issue. A country cannot remain a country without a secure border. I realize there are problems with our immigration laws, but let’s secure the border before we worry about the less urgent issues.

Please Consider This Before Voting

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In the October issue of The AMAC (The Association of Mature American Citizens) Magazine included an article titled, “The Accomplishments of President Donald J. Trump.” The list is too long to include in this article, but I would encourage you to follow the link for the entire list. It is an impressive list.

Here are a few highlights:

Building Economic Prosperity

    • Created an historic economic expansion that benefitted all Americans and will do so again following the interruption caused by coronavirus
    • Passed historic tax cuts, providing much-needed relief for American families and putting American businesses on a level playing field.
    • Created Opportunity Zones to spur investment and job creation in forgotten communities.
    • Restored American manufacturing, putting in place policies to bring supply chains back from overseas.
    • Preserving and Protecting social security for seniors.

Historic Deregulation

    • Cut regulations at a historic pace to free up American businesses— meeting and far exceeding the promise to cut two regulations for every new one.
    • Ended the Obama Administration’s war on coal as promised, rolling back the so-called Clean Power Plan, WOTUS (waters of the United States), stream protection rule, and other overregulations.
    • Replaced the Obama Administration’s disastrous CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) standards and rolled back burden- some Dodd-Frank provisions, as promised.
    • Regulatory relief will save Americans $377 billion per year, or $3100 per households.

Lifting Up American Workers and Families

    • Put in place policies to lift up working families, including releasing the first presidential budget in history to include a national paid family leave plan.
    • Invested in workforce development to ensure American workers are prepared to gain high-paying, family-supporting jobs.
    • Promoted school choice to ensure all families have access to quality education for their children.

Achieving Fair and Balanced Trade

    • Withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership to protect American jobs.
    • Negotiated monumental new or revised deals with Canada, Mexico, South Korea, Japan, and other countries to put American workers first.
    • Confronted China’s decades of trade abuses, placing tariffs of hundreds of billions of dollars on Chinese goods.
    • Put in place tariffs on foreign steel that was undermining critical American industries.

Unleashing American Energy

    • Freed American energy producers to conduct their business, leading to record oil and natural gas production and expanded energy exports.
    • Followed through on his promise to approve new pipelines, including the Keystone and Dakota Access pipelines.
    • Withdrew from the job-killing Paris Agreement.
    • The typical American family now saves an average of $2500/year on their energy bills.

Protecting Our Nation

    • Rebuilt our military with historic investments in our defense and provided our troops the largest military pay raise in a decade.
    • Defeated ISIS’s territorial caliphate and brought terrorist leaders to justice, including ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
    • Restored American leadership in space and established the Space Force.
    • Took action to ensure America leads the way on the technologies of the future, like AI and 5G.

Restoring American Leadership on the World Stage

    • Ended the disastrous Iran deal and reimposed strong sanctions on the regime.
    • Stood up for our ally Israel and followed through on the pledge to move the American embassy to Jerusalem.
    • Released a vision for peace and prosperity in the Middle East.
    • Successfully urged our NATO allies to increase their defense spending to meet their obligations.
    • Reversed the Obama Administration’s disastrous Cuba appeasement policy.

Even this small portion of the article highlights some awesome achievements. Before you vote, consider the contrast of the impact of eight years of Obama-Biden versus almost four years of President Trump.

Losing Energy Independence

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There are two groups of people who are attempting to end America’s energy independence–OPEC (The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) and the Democrat Party. OPEC is fighting American energy independence because it represents competition and loss of OPEC’s worldwide influence. I am not really sure what the Democrat Party stands to gain by fighting American energy independence except that the position opposes President Trump’s position, which seems to be their platform–if President Trump is for it, we’re against it.

Yesterday Fox News posted an article about the resistance to America’s energy independence.

The article reported:

The battle to win U.S. energy independence has been long, hard and well worth it but the industry is facing new foreign threats from OPEC as well as right here at home from Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.

Biden wants to ban U.S. fracking, which was the key to our winning the war of energy independence. The former vice president at one point has said “no new fracking” — which, because of the nature of the shale decline rate, would end the U.S. shale revolution. This would not only cost the U.S. thousands of high-paying jobs, it would allow other countries to fill the void and produce more oil and gas.

…Biden has also said he has a goal to completely eliminate fossil fuels. While all men are created equal, energy sources are not. The move to fossil fuel alternatives in the near future is not reasonable and handicapping the U.S. energy industry will only put U.S. energy security at risk.

In fact, because of demand drops due to the COVID-19 shutdowns, many alternative fuels have also seen setbacks in investment and are not viable. The truth is the road to get the world off of fossil fuels will be much longer than the original goal of energy independence and in some form, we will be using fossil fuels for energy for generations to come.

Having a presidential contender looking to curb the U.S. energy industry comes at a time when threats from foreign actors are rising amid allegations they have conspired to try to bankrupt the U.S. energy industry so that we return to depending on them for our economic and national security.

While Saudi Arabia and Russia denied it, many believe that the goal of an oil production war in the midst of COVID-19’s oil demand collapse was to once and for all neutralize and bury the hard-won U.S. energy independence.

Does anyone remember the gasoline crisis of the 1970’s? Because we were almost totally dependent on foreign oil, we had gas lines and high gasoline prices. Does anyone really want to do that again? Energy independence is an economic issue, a national security issue, and a geopolitical issue. It determines our economy, our national security, and can influence our foreign policy. The less dependent we are on foreign oil, the more free we are to stand up to tyrants in countries with large supplies of oil. Energy independence should not even be debatable–it it necessary for the survival of our republic.

The Senate Actually Passed A Bill

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One America News is reporting today that the Senate has passed a bill sanctioning Chinese officials over the country’s actions against Hong Kong. The bipartisan Hong Kong Autonomy Act passed with unanimous consent Thursday.

This is good news. China needs to pay a price for what it has done to Hong Kong. Otherwise Taiwan is next. Taiwan is probably next anyway, but at least we can try to slow things down a little.

The article reports:

The bill would place sanctions on businesses, individuals and police that interfere with Hong Kong’s freedoms. This came after China announced a national security law that is expected pass on June 30, which is threatening Hong Kong’s autonomy.

A resolution introduced by Sen. Josh Hawley (r-Mo.) was also approved, formally condemning China’s’ actions.

“The Senate needs to act now, Mr. President, to send a clear signal now that we will stand up to this aggression,” he stated. “…to rally free peoples now in defense of the rights and liberties of Hong Kong.”

Hitting China in the pocketbook is probably the only was to deal with them successfully.

The Root Of The Problem

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President Obama seemed to be a president who held grudges. He never missed an opportunity to say an unkind word about someone who had disagreed with him at some point. It should be no surprise that General Flynn was so brutally targeted by some in the Obama administration. On May 12, The Tennessee Star posted a commentary piece that detailed reasons why the author believes that President Obama was behind the mistreatment of General Flynn. One of the unusual things that President Obama did after leaving office was to remain in Washington. There has been some speculation that his purpose was to make sure that the policies he instituted as President would not be undone. Many of those policies have been undone, but attacking General Flynn would be a way to protect some of President Obama’s foreign policy decisions.

George Rasley wrote the commentary in The Tennessee Star. Here are a few of his reasons for putting President Obama behind the targeting of General Flynn:

General Flynn’s must-read book, Field of Fight, is a searing indictment of Obama’s policies in the Near East and Afghanistan. It was also a damning indictment of Obama’s pro-Muslim supremacist policies that downplayed the cultural and constitutional threat of importing vast numbers of Muslims to America.

It is easy to forget now, but Mike Flynn was one of Donald Trump’s most effective surrogates during the campaign. Along with a few other military and intelligence outsiders like Rich Higgins, he hoisted the pirate flag and pounded Obama and Hillary Clinton with broadside after broadside. He also helped Trump craft his America First national security platform. A key piece of Trump’s appeal to voters wary of the Obama – Clinton pro-Muslim immigration policies.

And beyond the military, political and cultural critique of Obama’s destructive policies there was the fact that Flynn had been on the inside of Obama’s intelligence apparatus and cried foul, causing Obama to push him out as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency. Flynn was, as far a we can remember, the only Obama insider to break ranks and switch sides.

In short, Flynn earned Obama’s hatred the easy way – he told the truth.

The article also notes:

Remember – when Obama fired Flynn as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2014, Obama cited insubordination, while Flynn asserted he was pushed out for his aggressive stance on combating lslamic extremism.

The topic of the disputed phone call with then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak was, among other things, another Obama policy Flynn and Trump planned to undo – Obama’s sanctions on Russia.

Or from Obama’s perspective, another act of insubordination by Mike Flynn.

It is unknown who informed Obama of the intercepted Flynn – Kislyak phone call, and it remains to be seen if Yates, Comey, Biden or anyone else will tell the full truth about what was said directly or between the lines in the January 5, 2017 “stay behind” meeting. However, one thing is clear even from the sketchy details available today – Obama was out to get Flynn and he had some willing accomplices available at the January 5, 2017 Oval Office meeting.

The commentary provides a much more complete picture than these two excerpts. Please follow the link above to read the entire article.

What has happened to the Trump administration is a blatant example of a political party made up of sore losers who refused to allow the peaceful transfer of power in a representative republic.

A Partial Solution–Not A Real One

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On Friday, Reuters reported the following:

Britain is prepared to offer extended visa rights and a pathway to citizenship for almost 3 million Hong Kong residents in response to China’s push to impose national security legislation in the former British colony.

The national security legislation recently put in place in Hong Kong by China is going to have repercussions worldwide. As a free state, Hong Kong has been a global financial center. Its residents have enjoyed the fruits of that status. As simply another part of Communist China, Hong Kong will not have the same economy or status.

My first question is whether or not China will allow a mass exodus of Hong Kong residents. Is Hong Kong a valuable asset if the majority of the people leave? How many residents would be willing to give up the life they have known for the sake of freedom? According to worldometers.info, Hong Kong has a population of about 7.5 million. The median age of that population is about 44 years old.

The article reports:

Foreign minister Dominic Raab said on Thursday that if Beijing went ahead, Britain would extend the rights of 350,000 ‘British National Overseas’ passport holders.

On Friday the interior ministry said that this policy would apply to all BNOs currently in Hong Kong – a much larger group of around 2.9 million people according to British government figures.

“If China imposes this law, we will explore options to allow British Nationals Overseas to apply for leave to stay in the UK, including a path to citizenship,” Home Secretary Priti Patel said in a statement.

“We will continue to defend the rights and freedoms of the people of Hong Kong.”

The article concludes:

Beijing says the new legislation, likely to come into force before September, will tackle secession, subversion, terrorism and foreign interference in the city.

Chinese authorities and Hong Kong’s government say the legislation poses no threat to the city’s autonomy and the interests of foreign investors will be preserved.

Somehow I doubt that any of the claims China is currently making are true.

Getting Rid Of A Speed Bump

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The Conservative Treehouse posted an article yesterday reporting the following:

Finally, the DOJ has moved to remove one of the biggest background corrupt officials within the FBI. According to multiple media sources FBI chief legal counsel Dana Boente was forced to resign on Friday.  Finally, sunlight has removed a very corrupt player.

In prior positions as U.S. Attorney for Virginia; and while leading the DOJ National Security Division; and then later shifting to the FBI as chief legal counsel under Chris Wray; Dana Boente was at the epicenter of corrupt intent and malign activity toward the Trump administration.

The article is very detailed, so I suggest that you follow the link to read the entire article. I will attempt to summarize it here:

To understand the background, specifically as it pertains to why AG Barr had to make this move now, is complex.   A sequence of previous articles that CTH presented in/around the Dana Boente issue(s) have merged within this decision.

It is easiest to capture the full background content in this sequence:

♦June 2019 – Devin Nunes threatens criminal referrals for Dana Boente and Chris Wray – This background highlights Boente as a very bad actor [SEE HERE].

♦April 24, 2020 – Boente and Wray try to block release of Flynn documents.  AG Bill Bar intervenes.  This is the Flynn firetruck story, that ties to the release of the July 2018 letter from the DOJ-NSD and FBI to the FISA court. [SEE HERE]

♦April 26, 2020 – CTH Open Letter to Bill Barr – Outlines the corruption of Boente and Wray in the long-view and how it all comes together. [SEE HERE]

My educated hunch is the July 12, 2018, letter from the DOJ/FBI that was fraught with false information and purposeful lies to the FISA court, is really the issue that DOJ Bill Barr could not avoid.  The lies within the letter are just too brutally obvious, and contrast heavily against revelations coming from the outside USAO’s that Barr has brought in to review all of the prior DOJ and FBI activity.

Why do I think that’s the final straw?  Because if you take that moment in time and start working backward what you find is demonstrable and provable evidence that Dana Boente was one of the original Trump-era officials who participated in protecting “spygate” and using his support of the Mueller investigation as an internal weapon.   Remember, all the corrupt FBI players on Mueller’s team reported to Boente, including David Archey.

The article concludes:

At the heart of the matter, in the real activity that took place, there was a multi-branch seditious effort to remove President Donald J Trump.  Within that effort was a necessary group of embeds specifically assigned to conceal the activity.  Dana Boente was one of those embeds.

Dana Boente has now been removed.

Last point – this would not be happening right now if Durham was not coming toward the end of his investigation.  Generally speaking, DC provides identified corruptocrats with an opportunity for a graceful exit before the evidence against them surfaces publicly.

I have no doubt we are going to see more high-level resignations in the immediate future.

Saving The Taxpayers Money While Draining The Swamp

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Yesterday The New York Post reported that National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien has dramatically cut down the size of the National Security Council.

The article reports:

The job cuts are an attempt to streamline the foreign policy outfit, which ballooned under the Obama administration to almost 240 staffers — still up from 115 during Condoleezza Rice’s tenure as George W. Bush’s NSA in the early 2000s, a senior White House official said.

By the end of this summer, the NSC will consist of just 105 staff, the official said.

The changes come as O’Brien — Trump’s fourth national security adviser — tries to remake the forum in his image after replacing fiery predecessor John Bolton, who was ousted last October following a high-profile dispute with the president.

…Trump reportedly instructed O’Brien to substantially reduce the size of the agency shortly after he arrived at the White House — an effort O’Brien detailed in a Washington Post opinion piece.

At the time, the foreign policy operation was at the center of an impeachment inquiry sparked by a whistleblower complaint related to the agency’s work.

“Under previous administrations, the NSC more than doubled in size and duplicated many of the functions of DoD, State and the intelligence community,” O’Brien told The Post on Tuesday.

“Under President Trump, we have brought the NSC back to its proper size and role as a coordinating body,” he continued.

“To make that happen we require the best leaders, many of whom are women. Our goal is always to find the very best professionals for each job, and I am very proud of the team we have assembled at the NSC to further President Trump’s agenda,” he said.

In 2016, Republicans in both houses of Congress introduced bills that would have slashed the NSC staff to no more than 150 people — legislation the Obama administration opposed.

 

Created by President Harry Truman in 1947, the NSC is an interagency panel that advises and assists the president on national security and foreign policy.

It should also be noted that the President also cut 70 Obama-era holdovers from the National Security Agency in February.

The deep state is slowly being removed.

When Lady Justice Removes Her Blindfold Things Go Downhill Quickly

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This article is about the Michael Flynn case. I wanted to bring everyone up to date on some recent information about Judge Emmett Sullivan, but I also wanted to inform readers about some of the reasons the deep state does not like General Flynn.

First, the current news. The Gateway Pundit posted an article today which stated that in the past Judge Emmett Sullivan arranged a speaking gig for James Comey at Howard University for $100,000. That does not sound like a person who would be likely to be an impartial judge in the Flynn case. There are some other problems with Judge Emmett Sullivan as an impartial judge listed in the article. Please follow the link above to read the details.

Now, let’s review some past history. The information I am about to share came from the blogosphere. I am sure there are other sources, but these were the most available to me.

On December 4, 2017, Pacific Pundit reported:

Corrupt Andrew McCabe has long been overlooked in this whole “Russia-Collusion” BS that lead to the fake news of Mike Flynn claiming Trump as a POTUS candidate told him to contact the Russians. There McCabe is a Clinton hack who’s wife donated to Hillary’s BFF, Democrat Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe in the amount of $500,000. But there’s more to this whole Flynn story than what’s been reported by the fake news media. While working for Obama, Flynn intervened after a female employee named Robyn Gritz accused Andrew McCabe of sexual harassment. This enraged McCabe and it lead to the retaliation of investigating Flynn by McCabe and other hacks at the FBI. Funny how the media doesn’t report this story.

…Flynn’s intervention on behalf of Supervisory Special Agent Robyn Gritz was highly unusual, and included a letter in 2014 on his official Pentagon stationary, a public interview in 2015 supporting Gritz’s case and an offer to testify on her behalf. His offer put him as a hostile witness in a case against McCabe, who was soaring through the bureau’s leadership ranks.

The FBI sought to block Flynn’s support for the agent, asking a federal administrative law judge in May 2014 to keep Flynn and others from becoming a witness in her Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) case, memos obtained by Circa show. Two years later, the FBI opened its inquiry of Flynn.

The EEOC case, which is still pending, was serious enough to require McCabe to submit to a sworn statement to investigators, the documents show.

There’s more. On February 4, 2017, The Washington Free Beacon reported:

The abrupt resignation Monday evening of White House national security adviser Michael Flynn is the culmination of a secret, months-long campaign by former Obama administration confidantes to handicap President Donald Trump’s national security apparatus and preserve the nuclear deal with Iran, according to multiple sources in and out of the White House who described to the Washington Free Beacon a behind-the-scenes effort by these officials to plant a series of damaging stories about Flynn in the national media.

The effort, said to include former Obama administration adviser Ben Rhodes—the architect of a separate White House effort to create what he described as a pro-Iran echo chamber—included a small task force of Obama loyalists who deluged media outlets with stories aimed at eroding Flynn’s credibility, multiple sources revealed.

The operation primarily focused on discrediting Flynn, an opponent of the Iran nuclear deal, in order to handicap the Trump administration’s efforts to disclose secret details of the nuclear deal with Iran that had been long hidden by the Obama administration.

Insiders familiar with the anti-Flynn campaign told the Free Beacon that these Obama loyalists plotted in the months before Trump’s inauguration to establish a set of roadblocks before Trump’s national security team, which includes several prominent opponents of diplomacy with Iran. The Free Beacon first reported on this effort in January.

I am posting this to illustrate the undermining of President Trump that has been going on since before he took office. This is not acceptable behavior in a representative republic. If this is not dealt with and consequences felt, we will lose our republic.

It Begins Again

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Hot Air posted an article yesterday about what is currently happening in Hong Kong.

The article reports:

When we were discussing China’s new “national security” law for Hong Kong yesterday, it was noted that pro-democracy advocates were already railing against the betrayal of the promises China made when taking over control of the city from Great Britain. Protests were planned, but pro-Beijing lawmakers were warning that any sort of public demonstrations could be dealt with harshly. Well, that took all of one day to come to pass. Despite concerns about a new wave of coronavirus infections, demonstrators took to the streets and were quickly met by police forces firing tear gas canisters indiscriminately into the crowds at a large shopping center. And then the arrests began.

…Tam Tak-chi, one of the city’s most well-known democracy advocates, was arrested shortly after the protests began. He had previously predicted that he would be detained if China moved forward with its new legislation and it turned out to be a self-fulfilling prophesy. He was charged with holding “an unauthorized assembly.”

The article concludes:

In that sense, much of the “freedom” enjoyed by Hong Kong since 1997 has largely been illusory anyway. China regularly intervenes in local elections if the residents begin electing too many people with crazy ideas about freedom and democracy. The top leadership positions, currently exemplified by Carrie Lam, are always held by pro-Beijing politicians who take their marching orders from the CCP. People have regularly been arrested in Hong Kong for demonstrating, giving speeches or contacting foreign media outlets, things that people in free nations simply take for granted.

Up until now, a certain amount of demonstrating and chatter about democracy has been allowed, apparently just to humor the locals. But now it appears that China isn’t going to even bother providing a fig leaf to the 1997 agreement they entered into. They’re probably sure that they can get away with it because nobody is going to risk going to war with them or attempt any sort of direct military intervention right on China’s doorstep to free Hong Kong’s citizens. And while it’s sad to say, they’re probably right.

This was predictable. I don’t know if the outcome would have been any different had the British not signed the treaty with China. However, we need to learn from what we are watching–China is not a reliable partner in any treaty. On May 5th, I posted an article citing a provision in the recent trade agreement (signed before the coronavirus outbreak in America) that says if there is a natural occurring disaster, the two parties will renegotiate. This is another example of the fact that China, under communism, is not willing to play fair on the international stage. Best wishes to the people of Hong Kong. I am not optimistic about your future.

Sunlight Is The Best Disinfactant

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Townhall is reporting today that Acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell has declassified documents showing the Obama administration officials allegedly involved in the “unmasking” of Michael Flynn in transcripts of calls he had with Russia’s former ambassador, Sergey Kislyak.

The article reports:

Information on the Flynn-Kislyak phone call was leaked to The Washington Post in 2017, leading many to wonder whether an Obama administration official had illegally disclosed classified information.

In 2017, Rep. Devin Nunes, who was then the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said he had evidence “current and former government officials had easy access to U.S. person information and that it is possible that they used this information to achieve partisan political purposes, including the selective, anonymous leaking of such information.”

He continued, “The committee has learned that one official, whose position had no apparent intelligence-related function, made hundreds of unmasking requests during the final year of the Obama administration.”

The article notes:

Both former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper were pressed by GOP senators in 2017 about their role in alleged unmasking abuses, and denied any wrongdoing. There were reports that United Nations Ambassador Samantha Power unmasked hundreds of U.S. persons, but she has said this is “absolutely false.”

Former FBI Director James Comey told the House Intelligence Committee in 2017 that the National Security Agency, the CIA, the FBI, and the Justice Department all had the ability to unmask individuals.

U.S. Attorney John Durham is reportedly investigating the leaks of potentially classified information related to Flynn to the media in early 2017. (Washington Examiner)

There were many things that went on during the Obama administration regarding classified information that need to be examined. Things that should have remained classified were leaked for political purposes, and things that were classified solely for the purpose of hiding illegal surveillance activities by the administration were kept secret. It’s time to examine that and correct the misdeeds.

This Seems Obscure, But Needs Watching

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We have just experienced a month-plus shutdown of the American economy (along with many Americans experiencing cabin fever and many children abruptly being home-schooled). It will take a while for the economy to open back up and recover. However, what we are currently experiencing is nothing like the disruption that would be caused by an electromagnetic pulse attack (also by a particularly strong solar flare). The American power grid is very vulnerable to attack from many sources. Our power grid provides power for the computers that route trucking, support supply chains, guide airplanes, keep grocery store coolers cold, etc. The power grid is all interconnected and computerized. It is an attractive target.

On May 1, Just The News reported the following:

The Energy Department said Friday that President Trump has banned the purchasing and installation of specific types of foreign gear for power plants and the transmission system. The move is a strategic effort to block the U.S. grid from falling victim to attacks from Russia and China.

The president’s executive order increases the secretary of Energy’s ability to prevent the use of select equipment that creates a national security risk. It also allows the secretary to determine which parts of the grid system are at risk and therefore in need of replacement.

Officials leading the effort will assess recent threats from abroad based on information from the U.S. intelligence community. They will then make a judgment on which elements of the power system need replacing. Agencies have been warning for several years that America’s electrical grid is an attractive and vulnerable target to foreign hackers.

This is a great move, but somehow electromagnetic pulse protection seems to be left behind.

In November 2019, Politico reported the following:

Turnover in President Donald Trump’s national security staff may be having a little-noticed side effect: Worries about nuclear weapons zapping America’s electric grid will return to the fringe.

Warnings about electromagnetic pulse attacks have long inspired eye-rolls or outright guffaws among national security experts, but advocates of the issue briefly found a home on Trump’s National Security Council, and the president himself issued an executive order on the topic in March. That respectability boom shows signs of fading, however, as those advocates leave the administration.

On Sept. 13, controversial physicist, self-declared climate skeptic and backer of the fight against EMPs William Happer left the White House. Three days earlier, Trump had ousted national security adviser John Bolton, who according to people close to the congressional EMP effort was also a backer of hardening power plants and the electric grid against the threat.

“With Bolton gone and some of the people he had brought in … this has disrupted the process,” said Peter Pry, executive director of the now-disbanded congressional advisory board that studied EMPs.

Trump’s executive order on March 29 was meant to aid coordination between the departments of Homeland Security, Energy and Defense, as well as numerous other federal agencies, to address the long-debated risk. The utility industry has resisted hardening the grid to EMP attacks because of the high cost of addressing what it considers an unlikely threat.

“The bureaucracy does not want this executive order,” Pry added, referring to the president’s order on EMP resilience. “What they’re trying to do is lowball the EMP threat … to such a level that basically industry will have to do little or nothing.”

I really don’t know if I should credit this bad advice to the deep state or just to general ignorance, but we need to get the emp protection program back up and running. This is an area where we are truly vulnerable to attack (or a natural phenomina such as a giant solar flare).

Has Anyone Been Paying Attention To This?

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The Conservative Treehouse posted an article today quoting some recent remarks by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

The article includes a video of the remarks, but below is the transcript of the important points:

[Transcript at 01:45] […] “Last year, I received an invitation to an event that promised to be, quote, “an occasion for exclusive deal-making.” It said, quote, “the opportunities for mutually beneficial economic development between China and our individual states [are] tremendous,” end of quote.”

“Deal-making sounds like it might have come from President Trump, but the invitation was actually from a former governor.

I was being invited to the U.S.-China Governors’ Collaboration Summit.

It was an event co-hosted by the National Governors Association and something called the Chinese People’s Association For Friendship and Foreign Countries. Sounds pretty harmless.

What the invitation did not say is that the group – the group I just mentioned – is the public face of the Chinese Communist Party’s official foreign influence agency, the United Front Work Department.

Now, I was lucky. I was familiar with that organization from my time as the director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

But it got me thinking.

How many of you made the link between that group and Chinese Communist Party officials?

What if you made a new friend while you were at that event?

What if your new friend asked you for introductions to other politically connected and powerful people?

What if your new friend offered to invest big money in your state, perhaps in your pension, in industries sensitive to our national security?

These aren’t hypotheticals. These scenarios are all too true, and they impact American foreign policy significantly.

Indeed, last year, a Chinese Government-backed think tank in Beijing produced a report that assessed all 50 of America’s governors on their attitudes towards China. They labeled each of you “friendly,” “hardline,” or “ambiguous.”

I’ll let you decide where you think you belong. Someone in China already has. Many of you, indeed, in that report are referenced by name.

So here’s the lesson: The lesson is that competition with China is not just a federal issue. It’s why I wanted to be here today, Governor Hogan. It’s happening in your states with consequences for our foreign policy, for the citizens that reside in your states, and indeed, for each of you.

And, in fact, whether you are viewed by the CCP as friendly or hardline, know that it’s working you, know that it’s working the team around you.

Competition with China is happening inside of your state, and it affects our capacity to perform America’s vital national security functions.” (Keep Reading)

The author of the article notes that he believes that President Trump and Secretary Pompeo have a list of the governors that are being influenced by China. That list may come in handy in the coming days of balancing the response to the coronavirus.

Two-Track Justice

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Yesterday The National Review posted an article with the title, “With Liberty and Two-Track Justice for All.” Unless things change quickly, we will officially become a banana republic.

The article notes the contrasts in the way similar charges against Americans were handled:

• President Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, is doing seven and a half years at the Federal Correctional Institution in Loretto, Pa., for his pre-Trump tax and bank fraud. Manafort has endured solitary confinement.

• Former campaign aide George Papadopoulos served twelve days in the slammer for false statements to FBI officers. His steep legal bills and spooked clients drove him back into his parents’ house.

• Former national security adviser Michael Flynn awaits sentencing, and wants his charges dropped, after pleading guilty to false statements. Flynn reportedly took a plea after selling his house to pay his lawyers. DOJ prosecuted Flynn, although no less than Andrew McCabe acknowledged that “the two people who interviewed [Flynn] didn’t think he was lying.” Indeed, the G-men who spoke with Flynn later reported: “Throughout the interview, Flynn had a very ‘sure’ demeanor and did not give any indicators of deception. He did not parse his words or hesitate in any of his answers.” Never mind those details; Flynn still could wind up in an orange jump suit.

The article compares the above scenarios with the fate of James Comey:

As the OIG concluded:

Comey violated applicable policies and his Employment Agreement by failing to either surrender his copies of Memos 2, 4, 6, and 7 to the FBI or seek authorization to retain them; by releasing official FBI information and records to third parties without authorization; and by failing to immediately alert the FBI about his disclosures to his personal attorneys once he became aware in June 2017 that Memo 2 contained six words (four of which were names of foreign countries mentioned by the President) that the FBI had determined were classified at the “CONFIDENTIAL” level.

So, Comey did spill state secrets.

“By not safeguarding sensitive information obtained during the course of his FBI employment, and by using it to create public pressure for official action,” the OIG concluded in August, “Comey set a dangerous example for the over 35,000 current FBI employees — and the many thousands more former FBI employees — who similarly have access to or knowledge of non-public information.”

So, is Comey breaking rocks? Awaiting his prison sentence? Preparing for trial?

The article notes the activities of Hillary Clinton:

Despite 588 security violations that the State Department attributed to Hillary Clinton and her associates in the Emailgate scandal, as well as her role in purchasing the “dirty dossier” that triggered the Russia hoax, the former first lady has suffered zero consequences for an entire career of professional misconduct. Anyone who survived her husband’s presidency recalls Hillary as a latter-day Ma Barker, or Bonnie to Bill’s Clyde. Regardless, Hillary always walks away, Scot-free. And she always gets paid.

Her 2014 book Hard Choices scored her some $14 million. The next year, Business Insider reports, she made $12 million in speaking fees to well-connected organizations and huge corporations. A sample of these for 2015 included:

California Medical Association: $100,000 (via satellite!)

Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce: $150,000

Institute of Scrap Metal Recycling Industries: $225,000

National Automobile Dealers Association: $225,500

United Fresh Produce Association: $225,000

eBay Inc.: $315,000 (for a 20-minute speech)

Cisco: $325,000 (She reportedly sat onstage with the CEO)

Biotechnology Industry Organization: $335,000

Qualcomm Incorporated: $335,000

GTCR Private Equity: $780,000

Atop this steady cash, Hillary never stops playing presidential-campaign hokey-pokey: She puts her left foot in, she takes her left foot out, she puts her left foot in, and she shakes it all about. Rumors that Michael Bloomberg is considering her as a potential running mate gives this entitled woman yet another opportunity to show some West Wing ankle.

Lois Lerner also made the list of insiders with minimal consequences for breaking the law:

Lois Lerner ran the IRS unit that perpetrated the systematic political profiling of conservative groups that sought tax-exempt designation. IRS’s wingtip-dragging, relentless demands for paperwork, and Orwellian questions (“please provide the percentage of time your organization spends on prayer groups”) all subjected to extra scrutiny 94 percent of center-right and Tea Party groups that sought 501(c)(3) and (c)(4)status, versus 6 percent of analogous liberal outfits, the House Ways and Means Committee found in August 2013. Consequently, rather than educate citizens on limited-government principles before the 2012 election, scores of these organizations either failed to launch or did so, only to run out of fuel and tumble back to earth.

Lerner supervised this virtual gag-the-Right scheme. When GOP congressional overseers sought Lerner’s laptop hard drive, they learned that it was shipped to a Federal Bureau of Prisons recycling facility in Florida. As the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration testified in 2015, “this shipment of hard drives was destroyed using an AMERI-SHRED AMS-750HD shredder.” The industrial-strength machine chopped the drives into quarter-sized pieces. The Feds then sold this material as scrap.

Was Lerner punished? Reprimanded? Ordered to stand in the corner for 20 minutes?

Lerner was placed on administrative leave. This is Potomac for “paid vacation.” She received her $177,000 annual salary while she stayed home and relaxed. (If she were U.S. senator Lois Lerner, she would have earned $3,000 less.) According to the Washington Post, “Lerner has received a $100,000 annual pension since retiring from the IRS in September 2013, and she and her husband, an attorney with a national law firm, live in a $2.5 million home in Bethesda,” Maryland, where she walks her dogs and gardens outside her 6,500-square-foot house.

The article concludes:

America needs equal justice, but neither undue leniency nor undeserved cruelty toward Stone.

Given Stone’s sentence, McCabe, Comey, Clinton, and Lerner should be locked up.

But since those four got zero prison time, plus book deals, TV contracts, and a hefty pension, then Roger Stone deserves to walk into a green room at Fox News Channel. I would expect to congratulate him there on his new contributor agreement and hear all about his upcoming memoir.

Fair is fair.

I agree.

But It Was Such A Great Piece Of Fake News

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Breitbart is reporting today that the the leak saying that Russia is interfering in the 2020 election is not true. Just as an aside, Russia has always interfered in our elections–they don’t care who wins–they just want to disrupt things and hopefully cause Americans to lose faith in the electoral process. Unfortunately they have been more successful at times than I would have liked.

The article reports:

U.S. intelligence and national security officials have reportedly refuted the claim that Russia is interfering in the 2020 elections to help President Donald Trump’s re-election, arguing in media reports published over the weekend that the United States does not have evidence to support the allegation.

House Democrat lawmakers pushing the allegation that the Kremlin is trying to help Trump “misheard or misinterpreted” the intelligence community’s formal assessment of ongoing U.S. election interference by the Russians, unnamed U.S. officials suggested to the New York Times. 

Just another example of fake news put forth by the Democrats and the mainstream media.

The article concludes:

Citing sources familiar with the matter, the Washington Post recently reported that U.S. officials had warned Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) that Russia is trying to get him to the White House. Sanders is currently the front-runner for the Democrat presidential nomination.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA) has described the assertion that Russia is trying to help Sanders as “false,” lambasting Trump for repeating it.

Echoing the U.S. intelligence and national security officers who spoke to CNN and the Times, White House national security adviser Robert O’Brien and Vice President Mike Pence’s chief of staff Marc Short denied the ODNI official’s claim that Russia is interfering in the 2020 presidential election to aid Trump’s re-election.

Nevertheless, Democrat lawmakers continue to claim that Russia is interfering in the U.S. elections on behalf of Trump.

President Trump has called for an investigation into a possible leak of classified intelligence unveiled during the briefing on election interference, accusing Schiff of leaking the information.

What needs to happen here is that the person who leaked whatever information was leaked needs to be prosecuted for leaking.

The Truth Is Slowly Coming To Light

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The Federalist posted an article today about the Inspector General’s (IG) report on Operation Crossfire Hurricane.

The article notes:

Sens. Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson dropped that bombshell in a letter delivered to Attorney General William Barr that requested Barr declassify the information hidden in the redacted footnotes. While the declassified version of the Grassley-Johnson letter did not identify the four footnotes at issue, a detailed analysis of the IG report suggests the redacted information concerned Christopher Steele’s sources and potentially the FBI’s purported predication for the launch of Crossfire Hurricane. These conclusions come from a deep-dive into the IG report read in tandem with the Grassley-Johnson letter.

That letter noted that the senators had “reviewed the classified report of the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) with regard to the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation, and [were] deeply concerned about certain information that remains classified.” Their concern? “That certain sections of the public version of the report are misleading because they are contradicted by relevant and probative classified information redacted in four footnotes.”

The next sentence is the key, as it establishes that the redacted information concerns not just a few details addressed in the IG report, but goes to the heart of the entire Crossfire Hurricane investigation: “This classified information is significant not only because it contradicts key statements in a section of the report, but also because it provides insight essential for an accurate evaluation of the entire investigation.”

The author of the article reads between the lines to list the contradictions within the report and provides the connections between the parts of the report’s footnotes that were redacted and areas of the report those footnotes contradict. The bottom line here is that the redactions are made to protect the intelligence community–not in the interest of national security.

The article concludes:

Without Barr declassifying the information contained in these footnotes, as well as other material, such as the complete FISA applications, we’ll just have to take Grassley and Johnson’s word that the redacted information contradicts other portions of the IG report, making “certain sections of the public version of the report” “misleading.” However, given the accuracy and honesty of Rep. Devin Nunes’ memo on FISA abuse, I’m inclined to trust the Republican senators.

It’s time for full disclosure. The people in the government who misused their power seem very comfortable with the idea that they will not be held accountable for their misconduct. I hope they are wrong.

Fixing A Broken Law

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The Daily Signal posted an article yesterday about the State Department’s beginning to look into what to do about ‘birth tourism.’

The article reports:

“Birth tourism” has become big business. Today, hundreds of companies advertise to pregnant women—particularly upper-middle-class women from China, Nigeria, Russia, and Turkey—offering assistance to get visas that would allow them to visit the U.S. during the time they expect to give birth.

The U.S. hosts tens of thousands of “birth tourists” every year. In 2015, the Center for Immigration Studies pegged the number at 35,000. The Qianzhan Industry Research Institute reported that, in 2016, as many as 80,000 birth tourists came to the U.S. Whatever the total number, it appears to be growing.

What draws these women to our shores isn’t U.S. obstetric or natal care. It’s automatic U.S. citizenship for their babies.

The 14th Amendment declares: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, [emphasis added] are citizens of the United States … .” The government currently interprets this as meaning that anyone born on U.S. soil is a U.S. citizen, regardless of the parent’s nationality or immigration status. Essentially, this reading ignores the qualifying phrase italicized above.

The article lists some of the reasons behind the growth of ‘birth tourism’:

U.S. citizenship makes a child eligible for free public education and loan programs, government food assistance, Medicaid, and other welfare programs. Costs can run into the billions. Furthermore, when birth-tourist babies become adults, they may then apply for immigrant visas (green cards) for their family members, increasing chain migration.

The wealth of benefits offered by the U.S. are a major selling point for the birth tourism industry. Last January, the Justice Department unsealed indictments for 19 people involved in Chinese birth tourism schemes.

The indictments revealed that the “birthing house” operators told pregnant women that they could seek U.S. visas to obtain the “most attractive nationality,” “priority for jobs in U.S. government,” “free education from junior high to public high school,” and “senior supplement benefits when the parent is living overseas.”

After paying a fee—which ranged from $15,000 to $50,000—each client received coaching on how to pass visa interviews; overstay visas once in the U.S.; and apply for federal benefits.

This kind of fraudulent behavior not only undermines the integrity of our immigration system, it generates national security concerns, as well.

The article concludes:

President Donald Trump has heard the call of those clamoring for an end to birthright citizenship and has pledged to end the policy. Since the 14th Amendment does not require universal birthright citizenship, a constitutional amendment is not necessary to change current policy. All that’s needed is a new policy.

And that’s exactly what the State Department is issuing—a final rule designed to combat birth tourism in the United States.

Specifically, the rule amends the State Department’s regulation on temporary visitors seeking a “B” (business or pleasure) nonimmigrant visa. It stipulates that such visas are granted to accommodate temporary visits for pleasure and not visits taken for the primary purpose of giving birth in this country.

It also states that, if a consular officer has reason to believe that a visa applicant would give birth while in the U.S., he or she may presume that the primary purpose is to gain citizenship for the unborn child. Unless the applicant is able to rebut that presumption, she would be ineligible for the visa.

Ending birthright citizenship would restore order to our immigration system, decrease welfare costs, and improve national security. The State Department’s new rule to combat birth tourism is a good first step.

This is definitely a move in the right direction.

National Security Includes Immigration

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On Sunday, The Clarion Project reported:

A Saudi student in New Mexico arrested for illegal possession of a handgun had a hit list of people he planned to kill.

The list included professors at the University of New Mexico, where he was an engineering student.

Hassan Alqahtani, 27, who also received his bachelor’s degree from UNM, turned himself in to authorities on Friday.

Alqahtani allegedly had a gun and wanted to buy other guns. The FBI received a tip about Alqahtani’s illegal possession of a gun by a person who also reported that Alqahtani had compiled a “list of people who he wants to kill before he leaves the U.S.”

The list included the acquaintance of Alqahtani who tipped off the FBI.

The incident follows the deadly shooting at the Pensacola, Florida naval base, in which a 21-year old Saudi aviation student killed three and wounded eight when he open fired with a handgun.

Those who want to harm America already have people in place. We need to be very careful about who we allow to come to our country–for whatever reason. It really is the time to reevaluate the relationship between Saudi Arabia and terrorism. I understand that we need Saudi Arabia as an ally to counter Iran in the Middle East, but we are not being smart about the Saudis we allow into our country. Thank God they arrested this man before he had a chance to carry out his plans.

Why Your News Source Matters

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Yesterday CNS News posted an article about recent events involving Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court judge Rosemary M. Collyer and the FBI.

The article reports:

A complete and total blackout. That was how ABC, CBS, and NBC reacted on their Tuesday evening newscasts when the top Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court judge, Rosemary M. Collyer blasted the FBI for misleading the court when seeking surveillance warrants for a former Trump campaign staffer. The order was damning, accusing an FBI lawyer of a criminal act in intentionally lying to the court. It added that the court’s confidence in the FBI’s evidence was so shaken they needed extra oversight for all cases.

Judge Collyer penned the four-page order declaring: “When FBI personnel mislead NSD [National Security Division] in the ways described above, they equally mislead the FISC.” Much of the order explained the application process for obtaining FISA warrants and what happened in the case of Carter Page; in order for the public to “appreciate the seriousness of that misconduct and its implications…”

On page three of the order, the judge accused an unnamed FBI lawyer of intentionally lying to other FBI personnel and the FISC in turn, which was a criminal act:

In addition, while the fourth electronic surveillance application for Mr. Page was being prepared, an attorney in the FBI’s Office of General Counsel (OGC) engaged in conduct that apparently was intended to mislead the FBI agent who ultimately swore to the facts in that application about whether Mr. Page had been a source of another government agency.

She added that the FISC couldn’t trust anything the FBI told them anymore:

The frequency with which representations made by FBI personnel turned out to be unsupported or contradicted by information in their possession, and with which they withheld information detrimental to their case, calls into question whether information contained in other FBI applications is reliable.

From Fox News:

Please follow the link to the CNS News article to read the entire piece. Not only were the civil rights of American citizens violated, the mainstream media has refused to report what is going on.

 

Even Rolling Stone Has Figured It Out!

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Yesterday Rolling Stone posted an article about the Inspector General’s Report. Please follow the link to read the entire article–it is well written and informative. I will try to highlight some of it, but you really do need to read the whole thing.

The article notes:

The Guardian headline reads: “DOJ Internal watchdog report clears FBI of illegal surveillance of Trump adviser.”

If the report released Monday by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz constitutes a “clearing” of the FBI, never clear me of anything. Holy God, what a clown show the Trump-Russia investigation was.

Like the much-ballyhooed report by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, the Horowitz report is a Rorschach test, in which partisans will find what they want to find.

Much of the press is concentrating on Horowitz’s conclusion that there was no evidence of “political bias or improper motivation” in the FBI’s probe of Donald Trump’s Russia contacts, an investigation Horowitz says the bureau had “authorized purpose” to conduct.

Horowitz uses phrases like “serious performance failures,” describing his 416-page catalogue of errors and manipulations as incompetence rather than corruption. This throws water on the notion that the Trump investigation was a vast frame-up.

However, Horowitz describes at great length an FBI whose “serious” procedural problems and omissions of “significant information” in pursuit of surveillance authority all fell in the direction of expanding the unprecedented investigation of a presidential candidate (later, a president).

The article comments on the role the news media played in this drama:

Not only did obtaining a FISA warrant allow authorities a window into other Trump figures with whom Page communicated, they led to a slew of leaked “bombshell” news stories that advanced many public misconceptions, including that a court had ruled there was “probable cause” that a Trump figure was an “agent of a foreign power.”

There are too many to list in one column, but the Horowitz report show years of breathless headlines were wrong. Some key points:

The so-called “Steele dossier” was, actually, crucial to the FBI’s decision to seek secret surveillance of Page.

Press figures have derided the idea that Steele was crucial to the FISA application, with some insisting it was only a “small part” of the application. Horowitz is clear: 

We determined that the Crossfire Hurricane team’s receipt of Steele’s election reporting on September 19, 2016 played a central and essential role in the FBI’s and Department’s decision to seek the FISA order.  

The report describes how, prior to receiving Steele’s reports, the FBI General Counsel (OGC) and/or the National Security Division’s Office of Intelligence (OI) wouldn’t budge on seeking FISA authority. But after getting the reports, the OGC unit chief said, “receipt of the Steele reporting changed her mind on whether they could establish probable cause.”

The article notes:

Steele in his “reports” embellished his sources’ quotes, played up nonexistent angles, invented attributions, and ignored inconsistencies. The FBI then transplanted this bad reporting in the form of a warrant application and an addendum to the Intelligence Assessment that included the Steele material, ignoring a new layer of inconsistencies and red flags its analysts uncovered in the review process.

Then, following a series of leaks, the news media essentially reported on the FBI’s wrong reporting of Steele’s wrong reporting.

The impact was greater than just securing a warrant to monitor Page. More significant were the years of headlines that grew out of this process, beginning with the leaking of the meeting with Trump about Steele’s blackmail allegations, the insertion of Steele’s conclusions in the Intelligence Assessment about Russian interference, and the leak of news about the approval of the Page FISA warrant.

As a result, a “well-developed conspiracy” theory based on a report that Comey described as “salacious and unverified material that a responsible journalist wouldn’t report without corroborating,” became the driving news story in a superpower nation for two years. Even the New York Times, which published a lot of these stories, is in the wake of the Horowitz report noting Steele’s role in “unleashing a flood of speculation in the news media about the new president’s relationship with Russia.”

The article has a fantastic conclusion:

No matter what people think the political meaning of the Horowitz report might be, reporters who read it will know: Anybody who touched this nonsense in print should be embarrassed.

Rolling Stone doesn’t always get it right, but this time they nailed it!

Why Are We Always Hearing The Same Names?

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I’m not real fond of conspiracy theories. I don’t know the details of the John Kennedy assassination, and I have no idea if a cure for cancer is being suppressed. But the electronic age makes it possible to trace connections between people and groups through email records. I suspect there are more than a few people walking around now that don’t appreciate that fact. One person that might not have wanted his emails exposed would be Eric Ciaramella, the person most like to be the unnamed whistleblower.

Yesterday Breitbart posted an article with the following headline, “Emails: Open Society Kept Alleged ‘Whistleblower’ Eric Ciaramella Updated on George Soros’s Personal Ukraine Activities.” Eric Ciaramella is a CIA Analyst who worked for the Obama and Trump administrations. Why would he be receiving Open Society (a George Soros organization) emails (along with then-Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, who played a central role in the anti-Trump dossier affair)?

The article reports:

The emails spotlight Soros’s access to national security officials under the Obama administration on the matter of Ukraine.

In one instance, Jeff Goldstein, senior policy analyst for Eurasia at the Open Society Foundations, sent a June 9, 2016 email to Nuland and Ciaramella, who were the missive’s primary recipients.

CC’d were three other State Department officials involved in European affairs, including Alexander Kasanof who worked at the U.S. embassy in Kiev.

The message read:

I wanted to let you know that Mr. Soros met with Johannes Hahn in Brussels earlier today. One of the issues he raised was concern over the decision to delay the visa liberalization for Georgia and the implications for Ukraine.

The email revealed that “GS” – meaning Soros – “is also meeting [Georgian] President [Giorgi] Margvelashvili today and speaking with PM Groyman,” referring to Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman.

The email stated that Soros told Hahn “that Ukrainian civil society is concerned that without reciprocity from the EU for steps Ukraine has taken to put in place sensitive anti-corruption and anti-discrimination legislation and institutions it will not be possible to continue to use the leverage of EU instruments and policies to maintain pressure for reforms in the future.”

Is it possible that the current hearings focused on the actions of President Trump and the Ukrainian President trying to deal with the corruption in Ukraine are being staged to distract us from the extreme corruption that was going with the cooperation of the Obama administration?

Sometimes The Spin Is Just Laughable

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Yesterday Newsbusters posted an article about a recent statement by Chuck Todd.

The article reports:

When Todd asked Himes (Representative Jim Himes) about the Republicans, he helpfully suggested the Republicans might be “sabotaging the process” by having a different narrative that makes the process “hard to follow for the public.” Todd isn’t about to make anything difficult for the Democrats.

Just for the record, Jim Himes is a liberal Democrat representing the Fourth District of Connecticut. I would not consider him an objective source on impeachment by any stretch of the imagination.

The article also notes:

Earlier, Todd grew visibly disturbed when Sen. Paul suggested the American people think it’s unfair to treat Trump pressuring Ukraine with one standard and Vice President Biden pressuring Ukraine by a different standard. That was a distraction! Sabotage! 

So let me get this straight. We have Vice President Biden in a video talking about withholding aid to Ukraine because they are investigating his son and we have no evidence that President Trump actually withheld aid, so we are investigating President Trump. Amazing.

The interview also includes the following statement:

HIMES: The other thing, of course, Joe Biden’s son is on that witness list. They’re gonna try to do exactly what you were pushing back on Senator Paul for doing. They would like to bring Joe Biden’s son in front of the American people to discuss his role on the board of Burisma and as you pointed out with Senator Paul, we can have a long conversation whether the sons and daughters of high-ranking officials should do that sort of thing. That has nothing to do — absolutely nothing to do — with the actions of the United States president in extorting Ukraine in a way that damage our national security. 

Wow. Just wow.

Comments On John Bolton And Robert O’Brien

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I haven’t said anything about John Bolton’s leaving the White House. I think John Bolton is an honorable man who has served his country well. I also think some of his ideas were not in harmony with the ideas of President Trump. John Bolton sees traditional war as an option is almost all cases. I think the time has come to put the idea of traditional war on the back burner. We now live in the era of cyber wars, trade wars, ‘Nintendo wars’ and wars that involve the theft of intellectual property. Because of the great political divide in America, America is not capable right now of fighting a war until we win. The politics in Washington are such that war is used as an opportunity to bash the other party rather than to advance the cause of peace, freedom, or our national security.

Robert O’Brien has been appointed to replace John Bolton as National Security Advisor.

According to a post today at The Conservative Treehouse:

Robert C O’Brien … is currently the State Department’s special presidential envoy for hostage affairs.  A founding partner of the Los Angeles-based law firm Larson O’Brien.

NYT – Mr. O’Brien served with Mr. Bolton when he was President George W. Bush’s ambassador to the United Nations and has advised Republican candidates like Mitt Romney, Scott Walker and Ted Cruz. In both the Bush and Obama administrations, Mr. O’Brien worked on an initiative to train lawyers and judges in Afghanistan.  (link)

People describe O’Brien as similar to his friend John Bolton without the virulent twitchy trigger finger. In his capacity as special envoy for hostage affairs, O’Brien wrote a letter to Swedish prosecutors urging them to release A$AP Rocky.  According to CBS O’Brien’s work “on Rocky’s case endeared him to Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and one of his top advisers.”

I believe Mr. O’Brien is the right person for this job. His links to some mainstream Republicans may help heal some of the divisions in the party. It also seems that he has some very strong diplomatic skills.

We need to understand that there is an effort to draw America into another war in the Middle East. The effort is underwritten by the globalist community that seeks to weaken America. America is one of the last obstacles to global governance. Americans like our freedom. We like our inexpensive energy. We like our prosperity and our growing economy. We like our economic mobility–the ability to move from poverty to the middle class to wealth. Note that these are the things that the radicals in our country are attacking. As long as America is strong and its people have hope, we will remain free and continue to be an obstacle to those who seek global power.

This Kind Of Logic Makes My Head Hurt

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On Friday, CNS News posted an article about a recent statement by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.

The article reports:

Using money earmarked for construction projects to build a wall to secure the border “is bad for security of our border” and is “undermining our national security,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Thursday.

President Donald Trump’s decision to reallocate $3.6 billion to fund border wall construction is an “assault on Congress’s power of the purse,” Pelosi said in opening remarks at her weekly press conference:

“The President’s decision to cancel $3.6 billion for military construction initiatives makes us less safe by undermining our national security and the quality and life and the morale of our troops. And it dishonors the Constitution of the United States as the President negates the Constitution’s most fundamental principle, the principle of checks and balances, the separation of powers and his assault on the Congress’s power of the purse.

“The decision is bad for security of our border, for the security of our nation and the well‑being of our children.

How is securing our border bad for the security of our border?

It’s always about the children. What about the children who are in overcrowded classrooms due to the influx of illegal immigrants? What about the children who have contracted diseases because illegal immigrants rarely have the vaccines that American children have? What about the children whose parents are working for lower wages because illegal aliens will work for less?

The Democrat party has lost its way on national security. They are simply ignoring the negative impact of illegal immigration in order to promote a political agenda.