Friday, May 31, 2019


PRISON, ANYONE?   By Joan Swirsky, CFP


For President Trump’s deranged enemies, I suggest hiring good attorneys and hoping for decent obituaries in the now-tabloid NY Times. For the rest of us, get out the popcorn!


Well, whaddaya know? In the midterm elections of November 6, 2018, the American people rewarded the president—for only the third time in almost a hundred years—with a net gain of three and possibly four Senate seats, lost half the House seats that his predecessor lost, and left the radical leftwing Democrats not rejoicing at their meager gains, but still chomping at the bit to bring down the president who has effectively destroyed everything they believed in, worked for, and thought they achieved over the past 75 years.
Yes, President Trump posed a mortal threat to the Left’s very raison d’etre—a globalist one-world order controlled by them! And so way back in 2015, when he announced his intention to run for the presidency, the “connected” guys of the D.C. swamp—to use the vocabulary of the mob—decided to pool their formidable resources to “clip” the billionaire business mogul, if not physically (although I wouldn’t put that past them), then by proving that their manufactured fiction of candidate Trump’s collusion with Russia to win the presidency was, in fact, true and therefore impeachable.
In that article, I listed all the fanatical Detectives Javert—the top dogs at our top-secret intelligence agencies (and many of their wives who also played central roles)—and elaborated on their impressive credentials, privileged educations, vast experience, and, oh, their appointments to high office by the former occupant of the Oval Office, Barack Obama.
Don’t forget—the fish always stinks from the head!

THE WITCH HUNT

Special Counsel Robert Mueller took his time—more than two years—as he hired almost two-dozen partisan Democrats (who contributed to the Obama and Clinton campaigns) to join his “objective” truth-finding effort. Here is a breakdown of the invasive colonoscopy he performed on the President of the United States.
  • Over 675-days,
  • Over $30 million dollars,
  • Over 2,800 subpoenas,
  • Over 500 warrants,
  • Over 500 witness interviews, including those whose lives were ruined for offenses unrelated to President Trump,
  • Over a million documents submitted by the White House.
The net result, as we all now know—the president committed no collusion and no obstruction, although the Regressives who continue to pursue some bogus crime—I refer to the obsessed Representatives Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, and Adam Schiff (D-CA), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, and a few others, who, as they say, can’t let go!
But why? Most of these people once figuratively kissed the ring of businessman Donald Trump when he was a Democrat and they groveled for the campaign cash he generously doled out and lusted for an invitation to play golf with the mega-mogul or to dine in the company of his exquisite wife at the palatial Mar-a-Lago resort or at numerous other residences, including his Manhattan penthouse in Trump Tower.
Why then the wild-eyed, ferocious animosity when he announced for the presidency and—to their horror—was elected America’s 45th president?

IT’S NOT ABOUT THE BENJAMINS, BABY!

In most cases in politics, when you peel back the layers of the onion, it’s all about the money. But not in this case.
And it’s not about the bogus excuse that Hillary lost the election. Most people can’t stand the woman. While some women would have reflexively voted for any person with the right plumbing, who can take feminists seriously anymore, now that they’ve embraced infanticide as a “human right”? In truth, most people cringed throughout Hillary’s coughing-fit, seizure-plagued, issue-impoverished campaign and were—and are—happy, finally, to have her off the national stage.
And it wasn’t candidate Trump’s “treatment” of women or his locker-room talk, when Americans had already endured eight years of Bill Clinton spitting in Hillary’s face every day with his serial philandering or, without his Secret Service detail flying 26 times on the “Lolita Express” to Jeffrey Epstein’s private island.
And it wasn’t the right-of-center platform candidate Trump was running on because Democrats had already raised to an art form the softening up and watering down of other Republican presidents’ wish lists. And they’d already succeeded in inflicting Americans with socialized medicine (Obamacare) and socialized education (Common Core), with degrading our military, contaminating the public imagination with the hoax of global warming, and actualizing the Cloward-Piven strategy to overload the welfare system by establishing Sanctuary Cities with the goal of segueing from socialism to their preferred system of government, communism.
And it wasn’t about the power of the media to shape/influence/determine public opinion. As I wrote in a former article, “Media Whores,” people who have the conceit to call themselves journalists are really employees who take direct orders from their employers. Today, only six media empires rule radio, TV and print publications—five of them run by globalists and only one by soon-to-retire conservative Rupert Murdoch (Fox TV, the NY Post, the Wall St. Journal, et al)—and now by his liberal son, Lachlan…hence the unfortunate leftist infiltration of Fox.
And it wasn’t even my original theory, which was that Mr. Trump threatened to disrupt the globalists’ One World Order. The powers-that-be in the D.C. swamp are too arrogant and narcissistic to entertain the notion that a single individual could upset their decades-old, carefully constructed apple cart.
None of these things inspired the predatory animus of the Democrats that we’ve witnessed for the past three years. Instead, as candidate Trump’s campaign proceeded and he summarily withered “Low-energy Jeb,” “Lyin’ Ted,” “Little Marco,” “Crooked Hillary,” “Crazy Bernie,” “Pocahantus,” on and on, a cold chill began to rise in the ranks of the left: Nothing can touch this guy!
They knew that the brash billionaire certainly couldn’t be bought by lobbyists or Arabs—Qatar is but one dramatic and damning example—like so many of our legislators have been.
They saw that even before the election he could single-handedly destroy a hot career like Megyn Kelly’s.
And nothing they threw at him succeeded in denting the natural ebullience and epic energy that infuriates them to this day.

THE COUP DE GRACE

And then it happened! The Kiss of Death, so to speak—the nine words that locked the Regressives in combat with candidate and then President Trump forever.
It was in early October of 2016 when Mr. Trump was engaged in one of the campaign’s many debates that he said the following: “If I were president, Hillary would be in jail.”
That was it—simple as that!
Now you know what this three-year safari for Big Game has been all about! It’s been about all the deeply corrupt—indeed criminal—swamp creatures creating so much chaos, so many dirt roads, so many bogus accusations and innuendos and tabloid headlines in order to keep the real collusion experts and the real obstructers of justice out of the spotlight, out of the courthouse, and out of Leavenworth!
There are so many crimes—or potential crimes—involved in what the Obama White House orchestrated through his Justice Department and FBI (among other departments) that it’s impossible to list them all.
In a stunning analysis in the World Tribune entitled Justice: Suddenly, the hunters have become the hunted, historian Victor Davis Hanson is quoted as saying that those “who cried the loudest about leaking, collusion, lying, and obstruction are themselves soon very likely to be accused of just those crimes.” Among them, Hanson lists the following:
  • James Comey: The former FBI director falsely testified that the Steele dossier was not the main basis for obtaining FISA court warrants. On at least 245 occasions, Comey swore under oath that he either did not know, or could not remember, when asked direct questions about his conduct at the FBI. He likely lied when he testified that he did not conclude his assessment of the Clinton illegal email use before he had even interviewed Clinton, an assertion contradicted by his own written report. I guess his credo andmodus operandiare reflected in the subtitle of his recent autobiographyA Higher Loyalty: “Truth, Lies, and Leadership.”
  • Andrew McCabe: The former FBI deputy director currently is under criminal referral for lying to federal investigators about leaking to the media. He and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein each have accused each other of not telling the whole truth about their shared caper of trying to force President Trump out of office by invoking the 25th Amendment.
  • James Clapper: The former director of national intelligence has admitted to lying under oath to Congress—and since lied about his earlier admission of that lying. His recent sworn congressional testimony of not having leaked information about the Steele dossier to the media is again likely to be untrue, given that Clapper had admitted to speaking to CNN’s Jake Tapper about the dossier’s contents. CNN, remember, would in turn go on to hire the mendacious Clapper as an analyst. And once on air, Clapper would insist that Trump was both a Russian asset and thus guilty of collusion crimes greater than those of Watergate. Lies. All lies.
  • John Brennan: The former CIA director has admitted to lying under oath to Congress on two occasions. He may well face further legal exposure. When helost his security clearance, he repeatedly lied that Trump was guilty of collusion, however that non-crime is defined. And as the Mueller probe wound down, Brennan with pseudo-authority and trumped-up hints of phony access to secret intelligence sources deceitfully assured the nation that Trump within days would face indictment—perhaps along with his family members.
  • Huma AbedinandCheryl Mills: The Hillary Clinton aides likely also lied to FBI investigators when they claimed they had no knowledge while working at the State Department that their boss was using an illegal private email server. In fact, they had read her communications on it and actually inquired about its efficacy.
  • Samantha Power: The former UN ambassador in her last year in office requested on more than 260 occasions to unmask names of Americans monitored by the government. Yet Power later claimed that most of these requests werenotmade by her. And yet she either does not know or does not cite who exactly used her name to make such requests during the election cycle. In any case, no one has come forward to admit to the improper use of Power’s name to request the hundreds of unmaskings.
  • Susan Rice: The former Obama national security adviser could have made a number of unmasking requests in Power’s name, although she initially denied making any requests in her own name—a lie she immediately amended. Rice, remember, repeatedly lied on national television about the cause and origins of the Benghazi attack, denied there were cash payments for hostages in the Iran deal, misled aboutthe conduct of Beau Bergdahl, and prevaricated over the existence and destruction of weapons of mass destruction in Syria.
  • Bruce Ohr, the former deputy attorney general did not tell the truth on a federal written disclosure required by law when he omitted the key fact that his wife Nellie worked on Christopher Steele’s Fusion GPS dossier. Ohr’s testimony that he completely briefed key FBI officials on the dossier in July or August 2016 is not compatible to what former FBI attorney Lisa Page has testified to concerning the dates of her own knowledge of the Steele material.
Hanson has also written at length about the bogus Obstruction of Justice accusation, the illegally obtained FISA warrants, the phony Steele dossier paid for by Hillary Clinton, the fishy “coincidental” meeting of Bill Clinton with AG Loretta Lynch on a Phoenix airport tarmac, and the wrongness of Andrew McCabe, Rod Rosenstein, and so many others ever having been in charge of investigations that smacked of conflicts of interest and other malfeasances—all worthy of criminal investigation and, from what I’ve read, indictment!
And that is not to omit the destruction of 33,000 e-mails by Ms. Hillary, and the much more egregious and criminal issue of Benghazi!

MEANWHILE, BACK IN REALITY….

  • A booming economy.
  • Blacks, Hispanics, Asian-Americans, women and youth are enjoying higher employment than any time in the past 50 years!
  • ISIS is in its death throes.
  • Members of NATO are finally paying their fair share.
  • Our military is flourishing.
  • Investments are flowing back to the U.S.
  • Deregulation has helped our economy explode!
  • Healthcare, combatting opioid abuse, and infrastructure programs are on the front burner.
  • Confirmation of more U.S. Circuit Court judges, two dozen U. S. Circuit Court judges, and two Supreme Court judges confirmed.
  • On and on and on and on.
For President Trump’s deranged enemies, I suggest hiring good attorneys and hoping for decent obituaries in the now-tabloid NY Times.
For the rest of us, get out the popcorn!
Joan Swirsky is an award winning author and journalist. Her work can be found at joanswirsky.com

MORE FAKE NEWS: NAVY CONFIRMS MEDIA LIED ABOUT PRESIDENT TRUMP AND THE USS JOHN MCCAIN May 30, 2019


MORE FAKE NEWS: NAVY CONFIRMS MEDIA LIED ABOUT PRESIDENT TRUMP AND THE USS JOHN MCCAIN   May 30, 2019


Is Facebook going to flag the Wall Street Journal and all the other fake news outlets who reported this fictional anti-Trump story?


So basically The Wall Street Journal has been banging on about some claim from somewhere that the White House per President Trump’s request wanted the USS John McCain “out of sight” for when the President made his visit.

The WSJ also reported Wednesday that a tarp was put in place to cover the ship’s name.

Then a few media outlets, “journalists” and your all round anti-Trumper circulated the image of the USS John McCain with a tarp covering the name of the ship.

Is the claim true?

Of course not, this is the mainstream media we are talking about.

The picture was from Friday.

A spokesperson for the Pacific Fleet even confirmed the image is from Friday and the tarp was taken down on Saturday.

“We didn’t do anything to obstruct the name of the ship. The Wall Street Journal piece refers to a photo of a tarp covering the ship, that photo was taken Friday, May 24, the tarp was removed the following day,” another US Navy official said.

“All ships remained in normal configuration during the President’s visit” CDR Nate Christensen said.

Another claim is that the White House Military Office emailed lower-level US Navy officials about keeping the ship out of view. A claim reported by CNN of course.

The Wall Street Journal also reported that a barge had been moved so as to obscure the name of the ship. Also not true, one official said: “the barge had been there regularly. At one angle, you might not have seen the ship’s name, but the name was visible at all times.”

The ship was not moved nor was anything done to obscure John McCain’s name. This was also confirmed by Cmdr. Clay Doss, a spokesman for the 7th Fleet.

The US Navy’s chief of information, Rear Adm. Charlie Brown, also tweeted Wednesday night that the name had been visible.

“The name of USS John S. McCain was not obscured during the POTUS visit to Yokosuka on Memorial Day,” Brown said in a tweet. “The Navy is proud of that ship, its crew, its namesake and its heritage.”

President Trump tweeted Wednesday night that he was “not informed about anything having to do with the Navy Ship USS John S. McCain.”

Speaking to reporters on Thursday morning before leaving the White House, President Trump said that although he “is not a big fan” of McCain, he wouldn’t have supported moving the ship, obstructing it or covering the name.

So there it is folks, another ridiculous made up story from the mainstream media debunked…again.


MUELLER AND THE FATAL FLAW OF THE TRUMP-RUSSIA AFFAIR


MUELLER AND THE FATAL FLAW OF THE TRUMP-RUSSIA AFFAIR



by Byron York  | May 29, 2019 


https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/byron-york-retrospective-mueller-and-the-fatal-flaw-of-the-trump-russia-affair?utm_source=breaking_push&utm_medium=app&utm_campaign=push_notifications&utm_source=WEX_News%20Brief_05/29/2019&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=WEX_News%20Brief&rid=111695

It's not unusual to hear House Democrats vow to "get to the bottom" of the Trump-Russia matter — as if the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller, with 500 witnesses, 2,800 subpoenas, 500 search-and-seizure warrants, and nearly 300 records of electronic communications, was somehow unable to fully probe allegations that the Trump campaign and Russia conspired to fix the 2016 election.

What really concerns Democrats is that Mueller's investigation, conducted with law enforcement powers that Congress does not have, failed to establish any Trump-Russia conspiracy or coordination. And in doing so, Mueller exposed the fatal flaw of the Trump-Russia matter: It was driven entirely by the conspiracy/coordination allegation, which turned out to be false.

The backdrop of conspiracy and coordination made every Trump-Russia episode, including routine political activities, look sinister. The Trump Tower meeting looked ominous in the context of conspiracy and coordination. Donald Trump's public statements about Russia and its president Vladimir Putin looked incriminating. Michael Flynn's conversations with the Russian ambassador looked suspicious. And more.

If one believed that Trump and the Russians were conspiring or coordinating to influence the campaign, then any bit of information having anything to do with Russia and the Trump campaign looked portentous. The Russia frenzy became so intense that reputable news organizations published long stories cataloging all known "contacts with Russians" by anyone associated with the Trump campaign.

But it all depended on conspiracy or coordination. And when Mueller was unable to establish that any such conspiracy or coordination actually occurred, suspicious-seeming events could no longer be credibly cast as suspicious. The Trump-Russia bubble deflated.

That left Democrats with the allegation that the president obstructed the investigation. Some hope that will be enough to impeach Trump, but in recent weeks, they have discovered it might be a hard sell. While it is possible to pursue an obstruction allegation without an underlying crime, impeaching the president on that basis could prove politically difficult. So Democrats vow more investigation to "get to the bottom" of the Trump-Russia matter or perhaps find something else entirely unrelated to Russia to pursue against the president.

The post-Mueller debate on Capitol Hill shows just how critically important the conspiracy and coordination narrative was. Without it, everything has changed. So now that Mueller has formally closed his office and left the Justice Department, it is worth looking at how conspiracy and coordination — often referred to by the widely used word "collusion" — came to dominate American politics for the last three years. Was it a hoax? Hysteria? Or simply partisanship on steroids?

In June 2016, the Washington Post reported that "Russian government hackers penetrated the computer network of the Democratic National Committee." The paper also noted that "the networks of presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were also targeted by Russian spies, as were the computers of some Republican political action committees." By the beginning of summer 2016, then, it was public knowledge that the Russians were up to something.

At the same time, and especially as the Republican and Democratic conventions approached in July, Democrats began suggesting that Trump might be up to something with the Russians. Candidate Trump had expressed admiration for Putin and indicated that, if elected, he would like to have better relations with Russia. Trump also vowed to press NATO countries to pay more for their own defense, a position Trump's adversaries interpreted as pro-Russian. Trump had also hired Paul Manafort, who had extensive business ties to pro-Russian candidates in Ukraine, as his campaign chairman.

In the days leading up to the Democratic convention, the Clinton campaign and its allies in the press saw Russia as a potentially valuable weapon for attacking Trump. On July 20, the New York Times' Andrew Rosenthal wrote a column headlined, "Is Trump Obsessed With Putin and Russia?" Two days later, Rosenthal's Times colleague Paul Krugman wrote a piece entitled, "Donald Trump, the Siberian Candidate," in which he asked, "If elected, would Donald Trump be Vladimir Putin's man in the White House?"

That same day, July 22, Wikileaks released emails from the Democratic National Committee. Two days later, on the 24th, Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook went on television to claim that not only was Russia behind the hack — that was later proven true — but also that the Trump campaign was in league with Russia.

"Donald Trump changed the Republican platform to become what some experts would regard as pro-Russian," Mook told ABC News, referring to a just-published Washington Post story that reported, incorrectly, that Trump aides had weakened the portion of the GOP platform regarding Russia and Ukraine.

"He has praised Vladimir Putin," Mook continued. "It's troubling."

Also on July 24, the Times published a news story headlined, "As Democrats Gather, a Russian Subplot Raises Intrigue." "Even at the height of the Cold War," the paper reported, "it was hard to find a presidential campaign willing to charge that its rival was essentially secretly doing the bidding of a key American adversary. But the accusation is emerging as a theme of Mrs. Clinton's campaign."

In the next few days, there were reports that U.S. intelligence agencies had confirmed Russia's responsibility for the hack, followed by the first appearances of the C-word.

"Donald Trump said he has 'never spoken' to Vladimir Putin amid allegations that his campaign colluded with the Russian president," ABC reported on July 27.

"The Clinton campaign is basically saying that there's collusion between Trump and Russia," the New York Times' Maggie Haberman said on CNN on July 29.

The reporters did not present the allegation as fact but rather as news that Clinton people were accusing Trump of colluding with Russia. Over the next few months, the accusations grew and grew and grew.

At the same time, Marc Elias, a lawyer for the Clinton campaign and the DNC, retained the opposition research firm Fusion GPS, which in turn retained the former British spy Christopher Steele to search for dirt on Trump and Russia. On June 20, 2016, Steele finished the first installment of what became known as the dossier. It was a blockbuster, alleging that Russia had been "cultivating, supporting and assisting" Trump for at least five years, that Trump had accepted "a regular flow of intelligence from the Kremlin," and that Trump was the target of blackmail since Russian intelligence services taped him watching a kinky sex act with prostitutes in a Moscow hotel room in 2013.

According to Russian Roulette, the book by reporters Michael Isikoff and David Corn, Steele sent the first installment to Fusion GPS in June 2016. Fusion, in turn, "gave Steele's reports and other research documents to Elias," according to a Washington Post account. And Elias briefed the Clinton campaign.

"We were getting briefings that were put together by the law firm with information," Mook recalled in an interview with CNN in late 2017. "So our internal team was presenting information, our lawyer was presenting information, you know, and we — and we sort of learned things in pieces."

So as Clinton and her aides pushed the collusion narrative, with the help of an enthusiastic press, campaign officials were also being briefed on the newest, freshest allegations from Steele.

The problem, of course, was that the allegations were not true. Steele also gave his reports to the FBI, which tried to verify them "line by line," according to former FBI general counsel James Baker. It did not succeed. Nearly three years later, the Mueller report failed to corroborate any of the dossier's serious allegations. It was wrong at best, a fraud at worst.

The public did not know what was happening behind the scenes. All they heard — if they watched cable TV — was collusion, collusion, collusion. After the election, the allegations consumed reporting on the Trump transition and then the Trump presidency — especially after the dossier was published in its entirety in January 2017, following the decision by the nation's top intelligence chiefs to brief President-elect Trump on parts of it.

After that, each new revelation that appeared in the press — Flynn, Manafort, Trump Tower, Michael Cohen, all of it — appeared in the context of collusion. Ordinary events became shady scheming against the backdrop of Trump-Russia collusion.

As that was happening, Mueller was trying and failing to establish that collusion ever occurred. From interviews with various players in the investigation, it now seems clear that by the end of 2017 Mueller knew that he could not establish conspiracy or coordination. That part of his investigation effectively ended when 2017 did.

Yet Mueller continued his investigation for more than a year, mostly focusing on obstruction allegations. Collusion as a topic of investigation might have been dead and gone by that time, but the fact that the Mueller investigation was still going on kept the collusion narrative alive. And that fed the public perception that events Mueller secretly knew were not part of a collusion scheme were still in some way suspicious.

The collusion narrative became so entrenched in the minds of some commentators that even when the Mueller report was made public, with its repeated statements that "the investigation did not establish that the [Trump] campaign coordinated or conspired with the Russian government in its election-interference activities," some simply would not accept the verdict.

So now Democrats are promising to carry on, to find that thing — collusion — that Mueller could not find. At the same time, others, most notably Attorney General William Barr, have decided to find out how the whole unhappy episode started and what role the nation's intelligence and law enforcement agencies played in the process. It is time to know what happened.

MUELLER AND THE FATAL FLAW OF THE TRUMP-RUSSIA AFFAIR


MUELLER AND THE FATAL FLAW OF THE TRUMP-RUSSIA AFFAIR



by Byron York  | May 29, 2019 


https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/byron-york-retrospective-mueller-and-the-fatal-flaw-of-the-trump-russia-affair?utm_source=breaking_push&utm_medium=app&utm_campaign=push_notifications&utm_source=WEX_News%20Brief_05/29/2019&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=WEX_News%20Brief&rid=111695

It's not unusual to hear House Democrats vow to "get to the bottom" of the Trump-Russia matter — as if the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller, with 500 witnesses, 2,800 subpoenas, 500 search-and-seizure warrants, and nearly 300 records of electronic communications, was somehow unable to fully probe allegations that the Trump campaign and Russia conspired to fix the 2016 election.

What really concerns Democrats is that Mueller's investigation, conducted with law enforcement powers that Congress does not have, failed to establish any Trump-Russia conspiracy or coordination. And in doing so, Mueller exposed the fatal flaw of the Trump-Russia matter: It was driven entirely by the conspiracy/coordination allegation, which turned out to be false.

The backdrop of conspiracy and coordination made every Trump-Russia episode, including routine political activities, look sinister. The Trump Tower meeting looked ominous in the context of conspiracy and coordination. Donald Trump's public statements about Russia and its president Vladimir Putin looked incriminating. Michael Flynn's conversations with the Russian ambassador looked suspicious. And more.

If one believed that Trump and the Russians were conspiring or coordinating to influence the campaign, then any bit of information having anything to do with Russia and the Trump campaign looked portentous. The Russia frenzy became so intense that reputable news organizations published long stories cataloging all known "contacts with Russians" by anyone associated with the Trump campaign.

But it all depended on conspiracy or coordination. And when Mueller was unable to establish that any such conspiracy or coordination actually occurred, suspicious-seeming events could no longer be credibly cast as suspicious. The Trump-Russia bubble deflated.

That left Democrats with the allegation that the president obstructed the investigation. Some hope that will be enough to impeach Trump, but in recent weeks, they have discovered it might be a hard sell. While it is possible to pursue an obstruction allegation without an underlying crime, impeaching the president on that basis could prove politically difficult. So Democrats vow more investigation to "get to the bottom" of the Trump-Russia matter or perhaps find something else entirely unrelated to Russia to pursue against the president.

The post-Mueller debate on Capitol Hill shows just how critically important the conspiracy and coordination narrative was. Without it, everything has changed. So now that Mueller has formally closed his office and left the Justice Department, it is worth looking at how conspiracy and coordination — often referred to by the widely used word "collusion" — came to dominate American politics for the last three years. Was it a hoax? Hysteria? Or simply partisanship on steroids?

In June 2016, the Washington Post reported that "Russian government hackers penetrated the computer network of the Democratic National Committee." The paper also noted that "the networks of presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were also targeted by Russian spies, as were the computers of some Republican political action committees." By the beginning of summer 2016, then, it was public knowledge that the Russians were up to something.

At the same time, and especially as the Republican and Democratic conventions approached in July, Democrats began suggesting that Trump might be up to something with the Russians. Candidate Trump had expressed admiration for Putin and indicated that, if elected, he would like to have better relations with Russia. Trump also vowed to press NATO countries to pay more for their own defense, a position Trump's adversaries interpreted as pro-Russian. Trump had also hired Paul Manafort, who had extensive business ties to pro-Russian candidates in Ukraine, as his campaign chairman.

In the days leading up to the Democratic convention, the Clinton campaign and its allies in the press saw Russia as a potentially valuable weapon for attacking Trump. On July 20, the New York Times' Andrew Rosenthal wrote a column headlined, "Is Trump Obsessed With Putin and Russia?" Two days later, Rosenthal's Times colleague Paul Krugman wrote a piece entitled, "Donald Trump, the Siberian Candidate," in which he asked, "If elected, would Donald Trump be Vladimir Putin's man in the White House?"

That same day, July 22, Wikileaks released emails from the Democratic National Committee. Two days later, on the 24th, Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook went on television to claim that not only was Russia behind the hack — that was later proven true — but also that the Trump campaign was in league with Russia.

"Donald Trump changed the Republican platform to become what some experts would regard as pro-Russian," Mook told ABC News, referring to a just-published Washington Post story that reported, incorrectly, that Trump aides had weakened the portion of the GOP platform regarding Russia and Ukraine.

"He has praised Vladimir Putin," Mook continued. "It's troubling."

Also on July 24, the Times published a news story headlined, "As Democrats Gather, a Russian Subplot Raises Intrigue." "Even at the height of the Cold War," the paper reported, "it was hard to find a presidential campaign willing to charge that its rival was essentially secretly doing the bidding of a key American adversary. But the accusation is emerging as a theme of Mrs. Clinton's campaign."

In the next few days, there were reports that U.S. intelligence agencies had confirmed Russia's responsibility for the hack, followed by the first appearances of the C-word.

"Donald Trump said he has 'never spoken' to Vladimir Putin amid allegations that his campaign colluded with the Russian president," ABC reported on July 27.

"The Clinton campaign is basically saying that there's collusion between Trump and Russia," the New York Times' Maggie Haberman said on CNN on July 29.

The reporters did not present the allegation as fact but rather as news that Clinton people were accusing Trump of colluding with Russia. Over the next few months, the accusations grew and grew and grew.

At the same time, Marc Elias, a lawyer for the Clinton campaign and the DNC, retained the opposition research firm Fusion GPS, which in turn retained the former British spy Christopher Steele to search for dirt on Trump and Russia. On June 20, 2016, Steele finished the first installment of what became known as the dossier. It was a blockbuster, alleging that Russia had been "cultivating, supporting and assisting" Trump for at least five years, that Trump had accepted "a regular flow of intelligence from the Kremlin," and that Trump was the target of blackmail since Russian intelligence services taped him watching a kinky sex act with prostitutes in a Moscow hotel room in 2013.

According to Russian Roulette, the book by reporters Michael Isikoff and David Corn, Steele sent the first installment to Fusion GPS in June 2016. Fusion, in turn, "gave Steele's reports and other research documents to Elias," according to a Washington Post account. And Elias briefed the Clinton campaign.

"We were getting briefings that were put together by the law firm with information," Mook recalled in an interview with CNN in late 2017. "So our internal team was presenting information, our lawyer was presenting information, you know, and we — and we sort of learned things in pieces."

So as Clinton and her aides pushed the collusion narrative, with the help of an enthusiastic press, campaign officials were also being briefed on the newest, freshest allegations from Steele.

The problem, of course, was that the allegations were not true. Steele also gave his reports to the FBI, which tried to verify them "line by line," according to former FBI general counsel James Baker. It did not succeed. Nearly three years later, the Mueller report failed to corroborate any of the dossier's serious allegations. It was wrong at best, a fraud at worst.

The public did not know what was happening behind the scenes. All they heard — if they watched cable TV — was collusion, collusion, collusion. After the election, the allegations consumed reporting on the Trump transition and then the Trump presidency — especially after the dossier was published in its entirety in January 2017, following the decision by the nation's top intelligence chiefs to brief President-elect Trump on parts of it.

After that, each new revelation that appeared in the press — Flynn, Manafort, Trump Tower, Michael Cohen, all of it — appeared in the context of collusion. Ordinary events became shady scheming against the backdrop of Trump-Russia collusion.

As that was happening, Mueller was trying and failing to establish that collusion ever occurred. From interviews with various players in the investigation, it now seems clear that by the end of 2017 Mueller knew that he could not establish conspiracy or coordination. That part of his investigation effectively ended when 2017 did.

Yet Mueller continued his investigation for more than a year, mostly focusing on obstruction allegations. Collusion as a topic of investigation might have been dead and gone by that time, but the fact that the Mueller investigation was still going on kept the collusion narrative alive. And that fed the public perception that events Mueller secretly knew were not part of a collusion scheme were still in some way suspicious.

The collusion narrative became so entrenched in the minds of some commentators that even when the Mueller report was made public, with its repeated statements that "the investigation did not establish that the [Trump] campaign coordinated or conspired with the Russian government in its election-interference activities," some simply would not accept the verdict.

So now Democrats are promising to carry on, to find that thing — collusion — that Mueller could not find. At the same time, others, most notably Attorney General William Barr, have decided to find out how the whole unhappy episode started and what role the nation's intelligence and law enforcement agencies played in the process. It is time to know what happened.



CAN THEY GET ANYTHING RIGHT? LOOKS LIKE THAT ‘TRUMP WANTED THE USS MCCAIN OBSCURED’ STORY IS FAKE NEWS

  Matt Vespa   @mvespa1 |Posted: May 30, 2019 

POSTING NOTE: UNFORTUNATELY, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL APPEARS TO BE A MAJOR CULPRIT IN THIS LATEST FAKE NEWS FIASCO

The stories are endless. The list of liberal media screw-ups when covering this White House is endless. You would think that there would be a learning curve or something. Nope. They still can’t accurately report on the Trump White House. All I can say is ‘watch out for that rake.’ It all started with President Trump’s first visit to Japan, where a simple photo op between the president and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe feeding koi fish wasn’t reported properly. Fish feeding was the source of fake news, folks. That’s how bad this has become. Then, the media also forgot that Barack Obama didn’t take any questions on his first visit to China; there initially was hyperventilation from these sour patch kids that Trump did the same. Remember how Trump removed the bust of MLK, Jr. from the Oval Office, except that he didn’t.

 Do we even need to go down the numerous foul-ups over the Russian collusion myth? So, what happened now during Trump’s most recent trip to Japan? Oh, well, he wanted the U.S.S. McCain to be obscured or something (via WaPo):

The White House asked Navy officials to obscure the USS John S. McCain while President Trump was visiting Japan, Pentagon and White House officials said Wednesday night.

A senior Navy official confirmed he was aware someone at the White House sent a message to service officials in the Pacific requesting that the USS John McCain be kept out of the picture while the president was there. That led to photographs taken Friday of a tarp obscuring the McCain name, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation.

When senior Navy officials grasped what was happening, they directed Navy personnel who were present to stop, the senior official said. The tarp was removed on Saturday, before Trump’s visit, he added.

The White House request was first reported by the Wall Street Journal.

The crew of the McCain also was not invited to Trump’s visit, which occurred on the USS Wasp. But a Navy official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said it was because the crew was released from duty for the long holiday weekend, along with sailors from another ship, the USS Stethem.

A senior White House official also confirmed that they did not want the destroyer with the McCain name seen in photographs. The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said the president was not involved in the planning, but the request was made to keep Trump from being upset during the visit.


Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump
 I was not informed about anything having to do with the Navy Ship USS John S. McCain during my recent visit to Japan. Nevertheless, @FLOTUS and I loved being with our great Military Men and Women - what a spectacular job they do!


Oh, so we have the anonymous sources thing going on again. Gone are the Watergate days, where an anonymous source was actually giving solid information, or at least something that turned into a major political scandal. In general, I wouldn’t be opposed to citing such sources, but after 567-plus times of these folks being just flat wrong, maybe the media should just—you know—maybe think twice before taking a face full of buckshot being wrong…again. There’s Deep Throat, also known as the late Mark Felt, an Associate Director of the FBI, who fed information to Washington Post’s Woodward and Bernstein about the Nixon White House and some random liberal paper pusher from the Obama administration, or worse a holdout working within the Trump administration, whose just mad that Hillary isn’t president. 


And now the Navy Chief of Information:

“The name of USS John S. McCain was not obscured during the POTUS visit to Yokosuka on Memorial Day. The Navy is proud of that ship, its crew, its namesake and its heritage.”


Navy Chief of Information
@chinfo
 The name of USS John S. McCain was not obscured during the POTUS visit to Yokosuka on Memorial Day. The Navy is proud of that ship, its crew, its namesake and its heritage.

1


Red™️
@Redpainter1
Hmmm....looks obscured to me 🤔 pic.twitter.com/rfojCeNOZX


Navy Chief of Information
@chinfo
Replying to @Redpainter1
That photo is not from the day of the POTUS visit (Monday in Japan, Sunday in US), as the WSJ report itself mentions.


Yeah, this apparently upset some liberals who cited liberal media articles to fact-check...the Navy. Well, if the liberal New York Times said otherwise then the Navy is lying or something. Yeah, whatever makes you sleep at night, liberal America. 



Kurt Schlichter
@KurtSchlichter
 The USS McCain “outrage” is Covington Kidz 2, and the same suckers are falling for it.



Jesse Kelly
@JesseKellyDC
 The best part of the “Trump ordered the removal of the USS John McCain” stories will be the all the journalists holding their own profession to account for running with yet another false story in the Trump Era.

POSTING NOTE: UNFORTUNATELY, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL APPEARS TO BE A MAJOR CULPRIT IN THIS LATEST FAKE NEWS FIASCO



Thursday, May 30, 2019

A DIRTY DOJ CUTS BOTH WAYS Chris Stigall TOWN HALL 5-30-19

A DIRTY DOJ CUTS BOTH WAYS
Chris Stigall TOWN HALL 5-30-19

https://townhall.com/columnists/chrisstigall/2019/05/30/a-dirty-doj-cuts-both-ways-n2547067?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&newsletterad=05/30/2019&bcid=9930c656b2212929c884960baf64bc5a&recip=26163198


I bought into the earnest, Boy Scout description back in 2016.  I wanted to believe our nation’s top law enforcement officials were straight shooters who were in search of nothing but the truth no matter who it hurt or helped. 

I was in the car listening intently the late morning of July 5th, 2016 as the laundry list of misdeeds was read aloud.  Surely, we were about to hear justice was going to be delivered to Mrs. Clinton.

Instead, FBI Director James Comey torched the rule of law and broke millions of Americans’ trust in him and our institutions forever.  It was a new precedent that would be used again – in a different, but similar way – nearly three years later.

As I wrote a couple of weeks ago, I’m a fan of keeping this simple.  I’m not going to bring in lots of different names and dates and timelines.  Let’s just look at a couple of simple facts that brought us to where we are today.

First, Mrs. Clinton mishandling, routing, sharing, and ultimately destroying classified information gave way to a Comey-led investigation under President Obama.  After a clear, unambiguous set of facts was presented by Comey at that infamous July 5th, 2016 press conference, he unilaterally absolved Mrs. Clinton. 

He concluded she was reckless, but didn’t intend to break laws.  He went further and said “no reasonable prosecutor” would bring charges against her.

Here’s the thing about that.You aren’t supposed to do that when you’re leading an investigation.You’re supposed to investigate, hand over the information, and your boss – the Attorney General of the United States – decides whether to prosecute.

Further, if you don’t believe a crime has been committed – you say nothing.  You don’t hold a press conference and tell everyone what a bad person you believe the target of your investigation to be, only to then absolve the target.

This is critical to understand.  Beyond the ensuing scandal of investigating Trump and Russia, Comey had already shown himself to be a bad actor. 

You Hillary Clinton voters remember?  You hated that guy.  He trashed your girl, left a lot of questions about her guilt hanging out there and walked away.  Many of you feel he cost her the election.  Remember? 

Well, you’re right to feel that way about Comey.  This should be a bipartisan issue, but I know, it’s Trump now so you don’t care.

The second piece of the timeline is Trump firing James Comey.  Ostensibly, it’s what kicked off the entire notion he was “obstructing justice” in doing so.  Setting that aside, what no one seems to remember is who first recommended Comey be fired and why.

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. 

Yes, he’s the same guy who appointed Muller to investigate Trump, and yes, I have concerns about his role in the entire “deep state” orgy trying to take the president out.  Again, set that aside for a moment. 

Rosenstein wrote a 2017 memo to then Attorney General Sessions and the President laying out reasons why Comey violated FBI protocols and should be terminated.  TERMINATED FOR THE WAY HE HANDLED THE CLINTON INVESTIGATION FINDINGS. (Emphasis mine, again for you Trump haters.)

Fast-forward to Special Prosecutor Robert Muller who’s been ruthlessly turning over every Trump affiliated rock with unlimited money and a team of partisan attorneys in an attempt to discover whether Trump colluded with Russia and whether he tried to obstruct that investigation.

You know the outcome.  Two years, millions spent, hundreds of witnesses and zip. Nothing.  Nada. Muller again confirmed in a press conference this week he could not prove Donald Trump colluded with Russia to win the 2016 election.

But, when it came to the accusation of collusion, Mueller pulled out of his hat the 2016 trick Comey pulled with Mrs. Clinton. 

Here are the salient quotes that have media and Democrat tongues wagging:

“If we had had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so.”

“We did not make a determination as to whether (Trump) did commit a crime.  That is unconstitutional. Charging the president with a crime was, therefore, not an option we could consider.”

Folks, it’s Comey all over again.  But this time, Mueller pulls a reverse Comey.  While Comey had all the obvious evidence in the world of criminal behavior, he tarred and feathered Clinton but let it slide on her “lack of intent.”

In Mueller’s case with Trump, he can’t find evidence Trump’s done anything illegal but can’t prove for sure he DIDN’T do something wrong. (WTF is that legal standard?!) Plus, he says he didn’t have the option of charging Trump because rules say you can’t charge a sitting president.

Wait.  Remember what I said about Comey?  Same thing applies to Mueller.  His job was to investigate, hand over the facts to his boss the Attorney General, and let his boss decide.  Instead, Mueller implied Trump engaged in bad behavior, and while he can’t prove it, there was nothing anyone could do about it anyway.

Once again, like Comey, this was not Mueller’s job.  His job is not to opine or speculate or even discuss whether to charge.  That’s the Attorney General’s job.  Turn in the facts.  Shut up.

But not Mueller.  In his parting minutes this week, he reminded everyone Congress is the remedy if a sitting president needs disciplinary action. (Wink-wink, Democrats).

So, there you have it. Mueller and Comey, old friends pulling the same trick.  Both abusing their positions.  Both undermining our institutions.  Both in it for their own vanity and partisan wishes to save or tarnish the reputation of the politician in question while attempting to make themselves out to be straight-shooting paragons of virtue.

I summarized it in a tweet this way:

Deep State Clinton investigation: “We have conclusive evidence of wrongdoing, but we don’t believe she intended to."

Deep State Trump investigation: “We can’t find any conclusive evidence of wrongdoing, but we’re certain he intended to.”

There’s not much to agree on in this country anymore, but one thing is for certain.  Our Department of Justice is broken and whether you’re a Clinton voter or a Trump voter – we should demand outcomes like these investigations never happen again.

Otherwise, your favorite candidate will be next.


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