Tag Archives: Watergate

Don’t Pass It Until People Are Held Accountable

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One America News posted an article today about Congressional attempts to extend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Frankly, I don’t think it should be extended until those who abused it in the past are held accountable for their actions. FISA was used (just as the Watergate break-in was attempted to be used) to spy on an opposing political campaign. If the act is extended and no one is held accountable, it is a pretty safe bet that political parties that are in power could do the same thing that the Obama administration did–use the law to spy on the political campaign of their opposition. That is not acceptable. That sort of action puts us on the road to having a two-tiered justice system with the government having almost unlimited authority to spy on Americans.

The article reports:

The Senate voted on a temporary extension of recently lapsed intelligence programs to provide time for discussion on major provisions in the renewal process. The extension was passed Monday, just minutes before a scheduled procedural vote on the matter.

The move came as a way to give lawmakers more time to consider the bill, which would reauthorize the controversial Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). However, the extension for the Senate was unanimously agreed to in order to give members more time to debate on the House’s revisions.

Specifically, there is bipartisan push-back to FISA, which senators on both sides of the aisle fear violates people’s privacy rights. Two of the most vocal opponents to the act are Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah).

“The secret FISA court should be forbidden from allowing spying on political campaigns ever again, period,” said Sen. Paul. “…History has proven just how dangerous it can be when we sacrifice our rights to create a temporary and ultimately false sense of security.”

Until I see indictments of people who knowingly lied to the FISA court, I don’t want to see FISA renewed.

Investigating The Investigators

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As the House of Representatives recycles Watergate, the Department of Justice is actually getting something done. The Daily Caller posted an article yesterday about the investigation into the roots of the Russian collusion hoax.

The article reports:

“It is now well established that, in 2016, the U.S. government and others undertook certain intelligence-gathering and investigative steps directed at persons associated with the Trump Campaign,” Boyd (Justice Department official Stephen E. Boyd) wrote Nadler, adding that “there remain open questions relating to the origins of this counter-intelligence investigation and the U.S. and foreign intelligence activities that took place prior to and during that investigation.”

“The Review is broad in scope and multifaceted, and is intended to illuminate open questions regarding the activities of U.S. and foreign intelligence services as well as non-governmental organizations and individuals,” Boyd wrote.

He did not explain the references to foreign intelligence services or non-governmental organizations. It is known that the Australian and British governments were involved in some degree to the counterintelligence activities against Trump associates. Fusion GPS and Christopher Steele, a former British spy, investigated President Donald Trump and his campaign associates on behalf of the Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee.

We are not engaged in a battle between the Democrats and Republicans–many of them are working on the same side. We are engaged in a battle between globalists and those who believe in American sovereignty. That is the reason the globalists in the Obama administration were able to get foreign help in their quest to stop President Trump, who is not a globalist. A strong America is a globalists’ nightmare, and that is what President Trump is building. I suspect there may be some surprises as the rocks are turned over in the investigation of the misuse of government agencies to spy of candidate Trump and later President Trump.

Objectivity From An Unexpected Source

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Paul Farhi posted an article yesterday at The Washington Post about the media’s role in the Mueller investigation.

The article reports:

After more than two years of intense reporting and endless talking-head speculation about possible collusion between Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and Russian agents in 2016, special counsel Robert S. Mueller III put a huge spike in all of it on Sunday. Attorney General William P. Barr relayed Mueller’s key findings in a four-page summary of the 22-month investigation: The evidence was insufficient to conclude that Trump or his associates conspired with Russians to interfere in the campaign.

Barr’s announcement was a thunderclap to mainstream news outlets and the cadre of mostly liberal-leaning commentators who have spent months emphasizing the possible-collusion narrative in opinion columns and cable TV panel discussions.

“Nobody wants to hear this, but news that Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller is headed home without issuing new charges is a death-blow for the reputation of the American news media,” Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi wrote in a column published Saturday, a day before Barr nailed the collusion coffin shut. He added: “Nothing Trump is accused of from now on by the press will be believed by huge chunks of the population.”

That’s bad enough, but there is another noteworthy observation in the article:

Other news outlets defended their reporting as well, noting that much of it is undisputed and has led to indictments and guilty pleas by figures associated with Trump’s campaign.

“I’m comfortable with our coverage,” said Dean Baquet, the New York Times’s top editor. “It is never our job to determine illegality, but to expose the actions of people in power. And that’s what we and others have done and will continue to do.”

He noted that Barr’s letter summarizing Mueller’s findings points out that the actions that warranted an obstruction inquiry were “the subject of public reporting” — a fact “that’s to the credit of the media.”

In fact, revelations by the Times and The Washington Post about contacts between Russian agents and Trump’s campaign advisers in 2016 helped prompt the inquiry that the special counsel took over in May 2017. The two newspapers shared a Pulitzer Prize for their reporting on the issue that year.

Although the mainstream media tried to make this Watergate, it wasn’t, and I suspect they have little or no intention of admitting their misreporting of major aspects of the story. First of all, where was the reporting of the abuse of power by the Obama administration in surveillance of an opposition party political campaign? Second, where was the commentary on inflammatory statements by former intelligence officials that later proved to be wrong? Third, where was the commentary on the accomplishments of the Trump administration in trade, taxes, and economic policy? If you are still watching the mainstream media and believing what they say, you will continue to be misinformed and mislead.

The Double Standard Is Alive And Well In The Media

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Newsbusters posted an article yesterday that illustrates that media bias is not anything new.

The article reports:

It’s always big news when a former associate of a President goes on trial, right? Well actually no.

When Bill Clinton’s Whitewater business partners Jim and Susan McDougal and the former Arkansas Governor Jim Guy Tucker were tried (and convicted) for conspiracy and fraud charges the Big Three (ABC, CBS, NBC) evening news programs devoted (on average) just 36 seconds per night (March 3, 1996 – May 29, 1996) to the trial. This despite the fact that the then-sitting President offered video testimony during the court proceedings.   

In contrast, the trial of Donald Trump’s one-time campaign manager Paul Manafort – for charges in a tax fraud case that had nothing to do with President Trump or alleged Russian collusion –  averaged 2 minutes and 18 seconds per night (July 31 – August 21) on those same evening programs. This was at a rate almost 4x higher than network coverage of the 1996 trial. 

…In total ABC, CBS and NBC spent 51 minutes and 28 seconds in 87 days on the trial of Clinton’s business partners.

In contrast, ABC, CBS and NBC almost reached that total (50 minutes, 30 seconds) in just 22 days of coverage of the Manafort trial.

Let’s not forget the lack of reporting on President Obama’s close association with Reverend Wright, Bill Ayers, and Bernadette Dorn.

The thing to remember in dealing with the 24/7 coverage of anything detrimental to President Trump is that the heyday of the power of the American press was Watergate–when they drove President Nixon from office. The would love to repeat that performance. For whatever reason, the mainstream press is unaware that attempting to drive a duly-elected President from power does not help the republic.

Unfortunately The Odds Are Against An Honest Investigation

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Someone once said, “It’s not the people who vote that count. It’s the people who count the votes.” The same thing applies to investigations. If you look back on the history of Watergate, which I believe is the Democratic template guiding their current activities, you find out that Archibald Cox was a close friend of the Kennedy family and that the majority of the investigators he was working with came from the Bobby Kennedy team that investigated organized crime. There was no way that this was going to be a non-partisan group. This was a group of people who wanted to see Ted Kennedy elected President. They managed to turn a fourth rate burglary into a Presidential resignation. I believe that is the primary goal of those who supported Robert Mueller as a special prosecutor to find Russian involvement in the 2016 election. The secondary goal is to tie up the Trump Administration with lawsuits so that the Trump Agenda cannot move forward. There is no desire here to do what is right for the American people. This is simply the deep state gaining a legal foothold.

Yesterday Lifezette posted an article about the team Robert Mueller is assembling.

The article lists some members of the team:

One of the hires, Jeannie Rhee, also worked as a lawyer for the Clinton Foundation and helped persuade a federal judge to block a conservative activist’s attempts to force Bill and Hillary Clinton to answer questions under oath about operations of the family-run charity.

Campaign-finance reports show that Rhee gave Clinton the maximum contributions of $2,700 in 2015 and again last year to support her presidential campaign. She also donated $2,300 to Obama in 2008 and $2,500 in 2011. While still at the Justice Department, she gave $250 to the Democratic National Committee Services Corp.

The Clinton Foundation took large amounts of money from Russia. Do you think Ms. Rhee is going to want to investigate how much of that money was used in the campaign or exactly where it came from?

The list continues:

James Quarles, who worked on the Watergate investigation as a young prosecutor, has an even longer history of supporting Democratic politicians. He gave $1,300 to Obama in 2007 and $2,300 in 2008. He also gave $2,700 to Clinton last year.

Not exactly politically neutral.

And there’s more:

Andrew Weissmann, a former Justice Department lawyer who now is at Jenner & Block, contributed $2,300 to Obama in 2008 and $2,000 to the DNC Services Corp. in 2006. Weissmann served as chief of the Justice Department’s criminal fraud section and worked on the Enron fraud case.

A fourth lawyer on Mueller’s staff, Michael Dreeben, donated $1,000 to Clinton 2006 and $250 to Obama in both 2007 and 2008. He was deputy solicitor general and has appeared many times before the Supreme Court.

I know it would be politically unwise to fire the special prosecutor, but now that it has been stated numerous times that there was no connection between the Trump campaign and Russia, why are we still paying for this investigation? Is the special prosecutor going to investigate the unmasking of American citizens after taping their phone calls? Is the special prosecutor going to find out why the DNC would not let the FBI look at their computers after claiming that Russia had hacked them? Is the special prosecutor going to finally investigate Hillary’s private server and its security risks? I seriously doubt it.

Unfortunately we are in for an extended period of political theater. The political left is not interested in seeing America succeed–they are only interested in regaining the control they lost in the last election. If you doubt this, I would like to remind you of some recent history of special prosecutors. Patrick Fitzgerald charged Scooter Libby with revealing the identity of Valerie Plame. It was known when the investigation started that Richard Armitage was the leaker, but Scooter Libby was charged on a ‘process crime.’ He said something under oath that turned out to be not true (evidently his memory was not perfect–it was a minor point). Meanwhile, Valerie Plame, undercover agent, drove to CIA Headquarters every day to go to work. This is how twisted an investigation by a special prosecutor with an agenda can get.

A Perspective From A Good Reporter Who Continues To Be A Good Reporter

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Sharyl Attkisson was part of the Washington bureau for CBS News. She resigned earlier this year when after investigating the Fast and Furious scandal and the Benghazi scandal, she realized that the network was not interested in reporting the stories she was investigating. The major networks have a political agenda, and they do not deviate from that political agenda regardless of how important a scandal is.

The video below is found on YouTube. It is Sharyl Attkisson on ABC This Week explaining how Watergate would be handled today:

More information on Sharyl Attkisson’s reporting can be found on her website.

The Current Cost Of Being A Whistleblower

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This article is based on two articles, one posted at Real Clear Politics today, and one posted at BuzzFeed Politics today. Both have to do with how the Obama Administration deals with people who do not tow the line in reporting events or testifying before Congress.

The article at BuzzFeed Politics deals with the testimony of Gregory Hicks, the former Deputy Chief of Mission in Libya, who was in Tripoli at the time of the Benghazi attack. Mr. Hicks testified today at the House Oversight Committee hearing on Benghazi that he was told not to meet with a congressman sent to investigate the attack on the American consulate in Benghazi. Hicks said a State Department lawyer accompanied the delegation and attempted to be in every single meeting he was involved in. That doesn’t sound as if the State Department was looking for the truth–that sounds like the State Department was trying to protect itself from the truth.

Real Clear Politics reminds us of the history of whistleblowers in the Obama Administration:

ATF insiders who testified before Congress about Obama’s Fast and Furious gun-running nightmare faced systemic retaliation and harassment — both from government supervisors who openly declared witch hunts against them and from liberal media water-carriers.

Maverick journalist Sharyl Attkisson of CBS News faced White House retaliation of her own over her Fast and Furious investigations. Department of Justice spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler “was just yelling at me,” and White House spokesman Eric Schultz “literally screamed at me and cussed at me,” she told radio talk show host Laura Ingraham in 2011.

Former DOJ attorney J. Christian Adams, who blew the whistle on Attorney General Eric Holder’s rule of law-perverting, race-baiting reign, was basely smeared as a “liar” and perjurer by DOJ proxy and Washington Post tool E.J. Dionne — who ignored Adams’ stellar career record at DOJ and unassailable sworn testimony.

Gerald Walpin, former AmeriCorps inspector general, was pushed out of his job by the Obamas after exposing fraud and corruption perpetrated by Democratic mayor of Sacramento and Obama friend Kevin Johnson. The White House baselessly questioned the veteran watchdog’s mental health and never apologized for slandering him.

The article also reminds us of two California newspapers who were bullied and mistreated for articles unflattering to the Obama Administration. There were also threats against health insurance providers if they blamed rising premiums on Obamacare.

The Obama Administration does not play well with those who do not share their ideology. Real Clear Politics reminds us that the Obama Administration has already begun its smear campaigns against those who testified today. At this point I would not believe anything I read in the mainstream media–they have too much to lose if the actions of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are what they seem to be.

Benghazi is worse than Watergate–four people died, but somehow the press has not handled it the same way. Once Woodward and Bernstein grabbed the Watergate story, it was on the front page of every major newspaper in America every day. I am not sure the Benghazi hearings are even being reported.  Richard Nixon resigned more than two years after the Watergate burglary because he did not want to put the country through the impeachment process. We are less than a year away from Benghazi, and even if everything stated today is proved true, President Obama will not be impeached, nor will he resign. The only thing that can possibly be accomplished by the Benghazi hearings is that every American will know what actually happened and should hang his head in shame that four Americans were left behind to avoid a negative political situation.

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When Did Watergate Become Legal?

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We have all been hearing about the bugging of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell‘s meeting with his campaign staff on February 2. Evidently it is now okay to secretly tape someone’s campaign meetings and not face consequences. I am not going to bother with the details of the story since it has been in the headlines and you can pretty much read the details anywhere.

However, I do want to quote the last line from an article posted at Power Line today:

James Taranto has been following the affair on Twitter and derives an edifying judgment of public policy: “So post-Watergate ‘reforms’ led to the creation of super PACs, which are now committing Watergate-like crimes. Brilliant.”

Further proof that generally speaking, when Congress attempts to fix a problem by creating more laws, they only make things worse. I am sure there are laws that were broken in this taping, It is truly a shame that no one chooses to enforce those laws.

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Everything I Thought I Knew About Watergate Probably Isn’t True

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A few months ago I heard a snippet of an interview of someone who had written a book about Watergate (unfortunately I don’t remember the name of the book) and thought, “This contradicts everything I have ever heard or remember about the Watergate scandal.” Since then I have occasionally come across more information that makes me wonder about what I read and heard at the time. The interview I heard dealt with some of the connections between some of the main players and the political opponents of the Nixon administration. As we approach the 40th anniversary of the Watergate break-in, it seems as if more information is coming out.

Pat Buchanan posted an article at Human Events today which adds to the debate on what Watergate was actually about.

Mr. Buchanan points out:

During Watergate, Woodward and Bernstein sought to breach the secrecy of the grand jury. The Post lawyer, Edward Bennett Williams, had to go to see Judge John Sirica to prevent their being charged with jury tampering.
   
No breach had occurred, we were assured.
   
We were deceived. 
   
According to Himmelman, not only did Bernstein try to breach the grand jury, he succeeded. One juror, a woman identified as “Z,” had collaborated. Notes of Bernstein’s interviews with Z were found in Bradlee’s files.
   
Writes Himmelman: “Carl and Bob, with Ben’s explicit permission, lured a grand juror over the line of illegality …”
   
This means that either Woodward, Bernstein and Bradlee lied to Williams about breaching the grand jury, or the legendary lawyer lied to Sirica, or Sirica was told the truth but let it go, as all were engaged in the same noble cause — bringing down Nixon.
   
Who was that grand juror? Woodward, Bernstein and Bradlee know, but none is talking and no one is asking. The cover-up continues.

This is one of those situations where we may never know the truth. The biggest danger to us is assuming that everything we have heard or read so far is true. Hopefully the people involved in what happened after the Watergate break-in will begin to tell the entire story as they pass from the scene.

 

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