RUTHFULLY YOURS

The Alabama Senate election was about everything except Alabama. And in the end, Alabamans stayed home and let the inevitable turnout tide of passion politics take its course. Minority voters rallied to Obama. Republicans stayed home. And the GOP is now holding on to a bare one-seat Senate majority.

The Democrats had abandoned Alabama, along with much of the South. They weren’t interested in Doug Jones until they smelled weakness. And they still aren’t interested in representing Alabamans now. They just want another Senate seat to bring them closer to blocking and impeaching President Trump.

Alabama isn’t a place to them. It’s another chess piece in a Washington D.C. game that they can use to block judicial nominations, shut down the government and reverse the results of the previous election. They have Alabama now, but history suggests that unless they learn the lessons that cost them their former strongholds in the South, they won’t hold on to the seat that they paid a very pretty penny for.

The Alabama River follows a long and meandering course. But not nearly as long and meandering as the dark river of money that poured into the Alabama Senate race.

The tide of cash swirled, eddied and drifted along the secret rivers that flowed from Washington D.C. and San Francisco, from Las Vegas and New York City, and decided an election. Timed spending meant that they could avoid revealing their donors. And the biggest spender in the race had no money.

Some of these rivers had strange names.

There was Highway 31.The real Highway 31 links Alabama to Michigan. But the Highway 31 SuperPAC was a money route worth over $4 million leading back to Washington D.C. and New York City. Behind the local name were Senate Schumer’s Senate Majority PAC and the Obama/Hillary Priorities USA Action which was best known for a slimy ad accusing Mitt Romney of killing a steelworker’s wife.

Soros money may have poured down Highway 31 as the secretive shell group became the biggest outside spender in the race. Even though officially its bank account was empty. Instead consulting firms run by Obama staffers did the work on credit for Highway 31. That meant Highway 31 didn’t have to reveal its donors until after the election. Meanwhile Highway 31 ran an ad warning Alabama voters that their votes in the election were a matter of “public record” and that their “community will know.”

Coming up behind Highway 31 was Stand Up Republic. Like Highway 31, Stand Up Republic is a folksy false front. Behind the name that could easily belong to a jeans company or a chain of comedy club is Evan McMullin, a former CIA agent, Wall Streeter and independent 2016 presidential candidate.

Stand Up Republic claims to be fighting for “democratic norms”. McMullin claims to be a Never Trumper conservative. Neither claim holds up very well considering that the only known donor to SUR is Persian billionaire Pierre Omidyar who provided $250,000 to McMullin’s group. The Franco-Persian tycoon is best known for funding The Intercept, a radical left-wing site that specializes in undermining national security and which will be forever linked to the Snowden spy case.

McMullin has claimed that, “Donald Trump is not a loyal American and we should prepare for the next four years accordingly.” His own loyalties appear to be rather complicated. Omidyar’s SUR grant is listed alongside grants like Veterans Against Islamaphophia and Strategies for American Muslim Communities.

Out of these murky waters came $500K in ads.

Rex Tillerson should be the darling of the liberal media. He supported sticking with the Iran deal, which basically allows Iran to develop nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles. He opposed stating the obvious: that Israel’s capital is Jerusalem. And he supported the ridiculous Paris climate change treaty.

But the media have been harder on him than on any other Cabinet member. A week does not pass without the publication of explicit articles or opinion pieces calling on Tillerson to resign (such as here, here, here, and here).

Why?

Because Tillerson has been working assiduously to cut the staff of the State Department. He wants to cut the State Department staff by 8%. Liberals are horrified. They don’t have the faintest idea how many people should be working at the State Department. All they know is that however many there are, there shouldn’t be fewer. Even worse, Tillerson hasn’t filled many senior political positions at the State Department, and he’s been criticized for not consulting with the staff there – he makes them feel unimportant!

The media are full of stories of the “understaffed” State Department.

Vox says the understaffed State Department makes the situation with North Korea more dangerous.

The result is a North Korea crisis where America’s typical tools for crisis management – high-level statements and consultation with allies – aren’t functioning. And experts agree that the consequences are unpredictable, but potentially severe.

We need a fully staffed State Department to “make high-level statements.” Or do we? But in the same article, Vox, incredibly, admits that perhaps the State Department just doesn’t matter:

It’s more than possible that all of this amounts to nothing – that we muddle through this latest North Korea provocation and future ones on the strength of America’s long-term commitment to South Korean and Japanese security[.]

Here’s another great quote from the WaPo where in one sentence it also says the understaffing will have a terrible effect – and no effect at all!

The lack of movement on filling ambassadorial posts is not likely to damage U.S. credibility or leverage abroad right away, diplomats and others said, but it threatens to undermine the work of a department that is understaffed and facing severe budget cuts.

Rep. Adam Schiff’s life just got a little more complicated.

Donald Trump Jr. wants the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence to look into leaks of confidential, non-public information he says took place during and after his eight-hour interview with the committee on December 6.

Trump’s attorney, Alan Futerfas, sent a letter to Rep. Mike Conaway of Texas, who took over the committee’s investigation of Russian actions during the 2016 election from Devin Nunes after Nunes recused himself earlier this year amid ethics complaints.

Last week the House Ethics Committee cleared Nunes of claims that he had improperly disclosed classified information while leading the investigation, though Rep. Mike Conaway said Monday that he would continue running the probe.

But while Nunes was falsely accused of leaking, Democrats on the committee have been getting away with leaking like sieves all year.

According to the letter, Trump Jr. and his attorneys were promised that the interview would be “kept strictly confidential and not discussed publicly unless and until the full committee voted to release the transcript.”

Yet while he was still being interviewed, “members of the committee and/or their staff began selectively leaking the information provided during the interview to various press outlets, most notably CNN.”

The letter cited tweets from CNN’s congressional reporter Manu Raju as evidence of leaking.

Don Jr. made case to House investigators that he did NOT tell his father about the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting, I’m told. Made similar case to Senate Judiciary staff in September
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) December 6, 2017

“Donald Trump Jr. told House investigators that he did not communicate directly with his father when confronted with news reports about his June 2016 Trump Tower meeting, according to multiple sources with knowledge of his testimony,” CNN reported on Dec. 6. CONTINUE AT SITE

At a moment when the special counsel’s team is busy calling its own fairness and impartiality into question, why would Donald Trump even think of firing Robert Mueller ?

When the special counsel picked his team, almost half the lawyers he selected had donated to Hillary Clinton. Legally that may not be disqualifying. It was, however, highly imprudent for a man presiding over the nation’s most sensitive investigation. Not a single Mueller prosecutor had contributed to Mr. Trump.

Those donations now provide the context for more recent revelations about the partisan preferences of Team Mueller. Start with the lead FBI agent, Peter Strzok, who exchanged anti-Trump, pro-Hillary text messages with his mistress, an FBI lawyer named Lisa Page —who was then also working for Mr. Mueller. Andrew Weissmann, the lead prosecutor, not only attended Mrs. Clinton’s election-night soiree but turns out to have cheered an Obama holdover at the Justice Department, Sally Yates, for her refusal to carry out a presidential order. Meanwhile we learn that a senior Justice official, Bruce Ohr, met with both Trump dossier author Christopher Steele and Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson during the 2016 campaign—and that his wife worked for Fusion GPS.

These developments, alas, have encouraged two horrible responses from Republicans. The first is the call for Mr. Trump to sack Mr. Mueller, an idea news reports say is gaining traction inside the White House. The other is for a new special counsel to investigate the existing special counsel.
Robert S. Mueller. Photo: Universal History Archive/UIG via Bridgeman Images

Either would make a bad situation worse. If the president fires Mr. Mueller now, it will look as though he has something to hide; if another special counsel is appointed, it will further diminish the proper investigative authority here—i.e., Congress. There are better ways forward.

Start with the president. If it’s true that there is no obstruction or Russian collusion, his overriding interest lies in full transparency. In a recent piece for National Review, former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy asks why Mr. Trump doesn’t just order the declassification of material such as the FBI’s application for Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court warrants to wiretap Trump associates, so Americans can see for themselves whether the FBI used or misused information from the infamous Steele dossier. Good question. CONTINUE AT SITE

Alabama voters can be forgiven if they preferred to sit out Tuesday’s special Senate election, but those who turned out narrowly elected Democrat Doug Jones to fill the seat vacated by Attorney General Jeff Sessions. The result is a painful lesson for the Alabama Republicans who nominated Roy Moore in the September primary. But it’s also a useful act of political hygiene for the national Republican Party given the accusations of sexual misconduct against the former judge.

The cost of defeat will be high and immediate. Despite his campaign vows to “cross the aisle” to work with Republicans, Mr. Jones will fit right in with Senate Democrats. He will be a reliable vote for Chuck Schumer on any important matter, including judicial nominees. Had he shown even a scintilla of moderation on abortion, for example, he would have won in a rout.

Mr. Moore’s defeat narrows the GOP majority’s margin to 51-49, which will give even more leverage to individual Senators who want to grandstand or satisfy a political constituency. Alabama evangelical Christians who supported Mr. Moore over appointed Sen. Luther Strange in the GOP primary should know that they have now made a conservative Supreme Court nominee less likely if Justice Anthony Kennedy retires in 2018. Senators Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins will hold the balance of judicial confirmation power, and watch the media lobby them in waves.

The good news is that Mr. Moore’s loss may give the GOP a better chance of holding the Senate majority next year. Democrats were primed to make Mr. Moore a national symbol of sexual harassment to drive turnout among women. GOP incumbents would have been asked about Mr. Moore every day.

This new Daniel Greenfield Moment presents Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Fellow at the Freedom Center and editor of The Point atFrontpagemag.com.

Daniel discusses The Entrapment of Michael Flynn, unveiling a leftist political witch-hunt that is standing justice on its head.

Don’t miss it!http://jamieglazov.com/2017/12/12/glazov-gang-the-entrapment-of-michael-flynn/