RUTHFULLY YOURS

Today, we released our OpenTheBooks investigation of the National Foundation on the Arts and Humanities.

With editorial coverage at the Wall Street Journal, we ask whether or not nonprofits have a right to public funding no matter how strong their balance sheet?

In 2016, nonprofit and higher education organizations across America received grants of $183 million. Recipients of $20.5 million included 71 financially rich entities – each with assets exceeding $1 billion. Those entities were awarded $120 million in taxpayer funds since 2009.

In the arts community, there is a stark contrast between the haves and have-nots. There were the “starving artist” organizations – 1,027 organizations with assets under $1 million – that received just $41 million in federal grants (FY2016).

This report raises several questions:

Why are taxpayers funding nonprofits that have assets of at least $1 billion? Do charities have a right to public funding no matter how strong their balance sheet?
If the public purpose is to fund the starving artist, then why are small organizations (less than $1 million in assets) receiving just $1 of every $4 in NFA-H nonprofit grant-making?
Should prestigious universities receive arts and humanities funding despite their billion-dollar endowments?
Who can explain the public purpose in forcing working-class taxpayers to fund arts organizations that obviously don’t need the money?

Read our investigation of the National Foundation on the Arts and Humanities.

Join the Transparency Revolution! Join Us.

After all, it’s your money.

President Trump has accused former FBI director James Comey of illegality in leaking memos that may have contained classified information. If it is true that the leaked Comey memos – laundered through a law professor in an effort to pressure Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein into appointing a special counsel – contained classified information, who will investigate Comey? Surely the Special Counsel, Comey’s friend who he helped get appointed, could not conduct a credible investigation. Nor could Rod Rosenstein, who made the appointment. Will yet another special counsel have to be appointed to conduct an investigation of Comey’s leaking?

Then-Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, James Comey, testifies in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee, May 3, 2017, in Washington, DC. (Photo by Eric Thayer/Getty Images)

On the basis of what we now know, it does not appear that Comey committed a crime. What he did, if the allegation turns out to be true, is remarkably similar to what he investigated with regard to Hillary Clinton’s improper use of a private email server. Both Clinton and Comey were sloppy in their handling of classified material and both deserve to be criticized for their negligence. But neither crossed the line into willful criminality. Of course, Hillary’s enemies argue that she did cross the line. And Comey’s enemies will argue the same as to his conduct. But judged by a uniform standard, neither should be prosecuted for what appear to be honest mistakes.

We don’t know at this point whether the Comey memos actually contained information that is classified, and even if so, was it so designated before or after Comey disclosed it? We also don’t know the level of classification, if any. What we do know is that Comey’s claim that he was entitled to leak the memos because he was a “private citizen” is bogus. The memos contained information he obtained as a government employees and the memos were the property of the government. If they contained classified information, he was not entitled to leak them without prior approval.

President Trump was quick to Tweet that Comey’s actions were “so illegal.” That is, of course, what Trump’s critics are saying about his actions, and those of his family, his campaign aids and his transition team members. Both sides are rushing to judgment when it comes to criminalizing the political acts of their opponents. Both sides seem to believe that if something done by their opponents is wrong, it should be criminal. But that’s not how our system of justice works. For something to be criminal, it must be explicitly prohibited by an existing criminal statute. There must be a criminal act, accompanied by a criminal intent. Moreover, the law must be clear and unambiguous. These salutary rules are designed to protect Democrats and Republicans alike. But they are being abused by Republicans and Democrats alike in the short term interest of partisan advantage.

Perhaps the most extreme example of stretching the law to target an individual for a political sin is the recent statement by Richard Painter directed against Donald Trump’s son, who attended a meeting with a Russian lawyer who suggested that she might provide him with negative information about Hillary Clinton. This is what Painter said: “This was an effort to get opposition research on an opponent in an American political campaign from the Russians, who were known to be engaged in spying inside the United States.” He suggested that Trump’s son might be guilty of treason and should be in custody. But the Constitution specifically defines treason, providing that its definition is exclusive and limited. Here is what it says: “Treason against the United States shall consist only levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.” (Emphasis added) This definition clearly does not cover “an effort to get opposition research” from the Russians. But the Constitution doesn’t seem to matter to those who are convinced that any wrongful action must also be criminal.

Linda Sarsour knows how to attract attention. She may be the most visible Islamist activist in the United States today, and her use of the word “jihad” during a speech to the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) July 1 generated a predictable response from opponents, followed by an even more predictable wave of sympathetic media coverage.

The Huffington Post and Time magazine published op-eds defending Sarsour, who until recently directed the Arab American Association of New York, and accepting that she did not use to word to incite violence. The Washington Post went further, giving Sarsour her own op-ed to cast herself as “a target of the Islamophobia industry.”

It might be easier to give her the benefit of the doubt if she didn’t have such a deep history of hatred and extremism, especially against everyone who supports Israel’s right to exist. It also might help if she didn’t make a point of lauding radical Islamists and at least one terrorist.

In addition to mentioning jihad, Sarsour used her ISNA remarks to praise Imam Siraj Wahhaj as “my favorite person in this room,” calling him “a mentor, a motivator an encourager of mine. Someone who has taught me to speak truth to power and not worry about the consequences.”

Muslims shouldn’t become politically active because it is “the American thing to do,” Wahhaj said in 1991. Muslims who do get involved should “be very careful [to remember] that your leader is for Allah … You get involved in politics because politics can be a weapon to use in the cause of Islam.”

In 1995, Wahhaj also described America as “a garbage can … filthy and sick.”

Does Sarsour agree with her mentor? She should say so publicly and with the same conviction that she uses to attack her critics.

Wahhaj was listed as an unindicted co-conspirator in the prosecution of the first World Trade Center bombing mastermind Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman. He defended Abdel-Rahman as a “respected scholar,” and a “bold, as a strong preacher of Islam.”

Years later, Wahhaj spoke at a fundraiser for Aafia Siddiqui, known as “Lady al-Qaida,” following her conviction on terrorism charges. “I studied the case a little bit,” he said in 2011. “I think that she innocent. And I think at least there is grounds, there’s reasonable doubt. And by law, if there’s reasonable doubt, you have to acquit.”

A powerful House Republican is calling on the Department of Justice to launch an investigation into former FBI Director James Comey’s alleged leaks of classified information, the Washington Free Beacon reported Tuesday.

Comey admitted in testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee last month that he leaked information from one memo to the news media to spur the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate alleged collusion with Russia during the 2016 campaign.

Rep. Ron DeSantis (R., Fla.), a member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and chair of its National Security subcommittee, also called on President Trump to purge Obama holdovers still working in the federal government.

In an exclusive interview with the Beacon, DeSantis claimed that “the holdovers and their allies outside the White House are responsible for an unprecedented series of national security leaks aimed at damaging the Trump administration’s national security apparatus.” And he singled out none other than Ben Rhodes, the creator of the Obama White House echo chamber (which is still operational), as the person responsible for most of the leaks. DeSantis said he wants to get Rhodes under oath to testify before Congress about his nefarious activities since he left the White House.

Via the Washington Free Beacon:

DeSantis named Ben Rhodes—the former National Security Council official responsible for creating an in-house “echo chamber” meant to mislead reporters and the public about the landmark nuclear deal with Iran—as a primary source of these leaks and urged the House Intelligence Committee to call Rhodes and other former Obama officials to testify publicly about any role they may be playing in spreading classified information to reporters.

Comey’s behavior warrants a DOJ investigation due to the former FBI director’s admittance that he disclosed private information to the public in order to damage the Trump administration, according to DeSantis.

“Congress needs to press Sessions and other people to make sure they are investigating this because the American people need the truth,” DeSantis told the Free Beacon in a wide-ranging interview. “If he did violate any laws, he needs to be held accountable. If you’re violating laws in service of doing political warfare, that is just absolutely unacceptable, particularly for someone who held such a high position in the government.”

Comey has gone on record stating that he “leaked in order to trigger a special counsel, which in some ways is pretty extraordinary,” DeSantis noted.

Comey’s actions raise further questions about his ethics, DeSantis said.

“Not only is he leaking this stuff, not only were the memos done in the course of his employment and likely government property, he may have disclosed classified information in this quest to basically wage a vendetta against the president because the president fired him and to try and create a special counsel,” DeSantis said.

“This guy is really a creature of the swamp. He maneuvers around D.C. in ways that are very similar to how D.C. insiders operate,” DeSantis said of Comey. “He’s one of the best in those regards.”

DeSantis and other lawmakers are now seeking copies of Comey’s complete memos in order to review whether classified information may have been leaked to the press in violation of U.S. law.

“Comey has made a concerted effort to not disclose these memos,” DeSantis revealed. “I think Congress obviously has a right to get them.”

DeSantis is pushing his colleagues on the House Oversight Committee to subpoena Comey in order to obtain the memos. CONTINUE AT SITE

President Trump’s critics claim to have uncovered proof, finally, of 2016 collusion between the campaign and the Kremlin. Another reading of the meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and a well-connected Russian lawyer is, well, political farce.

In June 2016, Mr. Trump Jr. arranged an appointment in Trump Tower with the lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya. He said in a statement that he hoped to acquire opposition research about Hillary Clinton, and he even pulled in Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner and then campaign manager Paul Manafort. By Mr. Trump Jr.’s account, Ms. Veselnitskaya relayed nothing to compromise Mrs. Clinton and then lobbied him about the Magnitsky Act, a 2012 U.S. law that sanctions Russian human-rights abusers.

According to the emails that Mr. Trump Jr. released Tuesday, Mr. Trump Jr. agreed to meet with Ms. Veselnitskaya after he was approached by Rob Goldstone, a publicist who offered to pass along “some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father.” He wrote that this information “is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.”

The appropriate response from a political competent would have been to alert the FBI if a cut-out promised material supplied by a foreign government. Mr. Trump Jr. instead replied that “if it’s what you say I love it.”

Then again, the Trumps knew Mr. Goldstone through the Russian pop star Emin, aka Emin Agalarov, whose father partnered with Donald Trump Sr. in bringing the Miss Universe beauty pageant to Moscow in 2013. Mr. Trump Sr. appeared in a music video with Emin the same year. Mr. Goldstone said that “Emin just called and asked me to contact you with something very interesting”—info his father got from the “Crown prosecutor of Russia.” Russia’s “Crown prosecutor” doesn’t exist.

Mr. Trump Jr. responded that “perhaps I just speak to Emin first.” Mr. Goldstone brokered the call, reporting that “Ok he’s on stage in Moscow but should be off within 20 Minutes so I am sure can call.” Subsequent messages show Emin asked Mr. Trump Jr. to meet with Ms. Veselnitskaya, who was well-known as an anti-Magnitsky operative at the time. Mr. Goldstone publicly checked into Trump Tower on Facebook during the meeting, which isn’t how a KGB man would normally conceal the handoff of state secrets.

In the daisy chain from Russian oligarch to singer to PR go-between to lawyer to Trump scion, which is more plausible? That Don Jr. was canny enough to coordinate a global plot to rig the election but not canny enough to notice that this plot was detailed in his personal emails? Or that some Russians took advantage of a political naif named Trump in an unsuccessful bid to undermine the Magnitsky law they hated?

The problem is that President Trump has too often made the implausible plausible by undermining his own credibility on Russia. He’s stocked his cabinet with Russia hawks but dallied with characters like the legendary Beltway bandit Mr. Manafort or the conspiratorialist Roger Stone. His Syrian bombing and energy policy are tough on Russia, but Mr. Trump thinks that if he says Russia interfered in 2016 he will play into the Democratic narrative that his victory is illegitimate.

Thus in retrospect the John Podesta and Democratic National Committee hacks—still so far the tangible extent of Russian meddling—did less damage to U.S. democracy than it has done to the Trump Presidency. The person who should be maddest about the Russian hacks is Mr. Trump.