RUTHFULLY YOURS

About every two months, there are rumors that Gen. H. R. McMaster might be let go as Trump’s national-security adviser (along with many other stellar appointees).

The world, however, is a much more logical and predictable place than it was 14 months ago. We’ve restored ties to the Gulf monarchies; Israel is again treated with respect. There is no talk any more of an ascendant ISIS caliphate. Ukrainians have been armed; Putin has had tighter sanctions slapped on him. NATO-member defense expenditures are up 5 percent. The U.S. military is being rebooted. Controversial moves, such as leaving the Paris climate accords and moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, are no longer controversial and are winning a consensus that such moves were overdue. The existential threat of a North Korean nuclear missile with the potential to hit the West Coast that was dropped on the nation last year is being dealt with through stepped up efforts to recalibrate missile defense, regional allied solidarity, historically tough U.N. sanctions, and a restored U.S. deterrence, rather than the old talk, talk, talk/give, give, give protocol of the “Agreed Framework,” “Six-Party Talks,” and “Strategic Patience” failures of the last 30 years.

The general doctrine of the National Security Council’s strategic blueprint — principled realism — is more or less a euphemism for the restoration of deterrence. Perhaps it is now less likely that Iran will send missiles in the direction of U.S. warships or take American sailors hostage or that U.S. diplomats in hostile countries will be subject to hearing loss. Much of that turnabout has been due, in various ways, public and private, to Trump’s national-security team of Mattis-Haley-Pompeo — and McMaster — who all have tried to define Trump’s Jacksonianism as an approach that is neither Obama recessional nor Bush-era preemptory nation-building. The appointment of Mike Pompeo at State solidifies that team.

On the principle that failure is punished and success rewarded, it makes no sense to lose someone integral to such progress, much less to chronically leak a wrongheaded move that would disrupt a successful team on the eve of dealing with both the North Korean threat and the various surreal side agreements and absurd protocols of the flawed Iran nuclear deal.

Newly redacted text messages discovered by congressional investigators reveal that an embattled FBI agent at the center of the Russia investigation controversy was close friends with a District of Columbia judge who recused himself from the criminal case over former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, congressional members said, and text documents show.

The never before seen text messages, which were a part of the texts given to Congress by the Department of Justice, show that FBI Special Agent Peter Strzok and his paramour FBI attorney Lisa Page discussed Strzok’s relationship with U.S. District Court Judge Rudolph Contreras, who presided over a Dec. 1, 2017, hearing where former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI. Strzok was removed from Robert Mueller’s Special Counsel’s Office last year after anti-Trump text messages between him and his FBI agent lover were discovered by the DOJ’s Inspector General Michael Horowitz. But on Dec. 7, without warning, Judge Rudolph Contreras was removed as the presiding judge on Flynn’s case. Little information was given at the time as to why Contreras was removed.

“We’re asking the department of justice and the FBI to give us the documents we need to do proper oversight…”
Mark Meadows (R-NC)

DOJ officials did not immediately respond for comment.

In a text message chain from Page to Strzok on July 25, 2016, she writes, “Rudy is on the FISC! Did you know that? Just appointed two months ago.” At that point, the pair continues to discuss other issues but comes back to Contreras, “I did. We talked about it before and after. I need to get together with him.” Then later Strzok appears to return to his discussion about Contreras.

A Democratic lawmaker in Massachusetts adopted the “Me Too” slogan, suggesting that a sign honoring a Civil War hero above the entrance to the Massachusetts State House constitutes an act of sexual harassment.

“R U a ‘General Hooker’? Of course not! Yet the main entrance of the Mass State House says otherwise. #MeToo,” State Rep. Michelle Du Bois (D-Brockton) tweeted Wednesday. She suggested that the #MeToo movement is “not all about rape & harassment but also women’s dignity. A ‘funny’ double entendres misrepresented as respect for a long dead general?”

Friday’s firing of FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, based on a report from the Office of Professional Responsibility, is only the beginning of what is likely to be the most explosive series of revelations in American history.

Forget Watergate. It will be the distant past once the Inspector General’s reports—there apparently will be more than one—start to come out. This will be the “Gate of Gates.”

From the FBI and across the intelligence agencies an astonishing number of people are going to find themselves accused, one can safely predict at this point, of some atrocious behavior in a free republic. And it will not just be the small change of Peter Strzok (the dimwitted director of counter-intelligence) and his gal pal Lisa Page. It will include—on one level or another—James Comey, Loretta Lynch, John Brennan, James Clapper, Susan Rice and, almost inevitably, Barack Obama, not to mention others known and unknown.

All these people’s reputations will be damaged forever for the pathetic purpose of getting Hillary Clinton elected president and later for their determination to manipulate the FBI and intelligence agencies to wound as severely as possible Trump’s presidency. That they didn’t stop to think that they might be wounding America at the same time is extraordinarily selfish and nauseating.

Further, that a Russia collusion investigation was employed by these people for their nefarious purposes is darkly ironic because their technique itself reeks of Stalin’s NKVD.

In the case of Mike Flynn particularly, they worked under the famous dictum of Comrade Beria: “Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime.”

This is, however, a great day for our country since so many of our citizens have lost confidence in the FBI. This can be the beginning of a new and better FBI.

Democrats, who are all over Twitter at the moment defending McCabe, are making a huge mistake. They will be embarrassed when the details come out. The Office of Professional Responsibility is not a partisan adjunct of the Republican Party or anything close. Furthermore, it was the Democratic Party that called for the Inspector General to investigate. He was appointed by Obama. As the old saying goes, be careful what you wish for. CONTINUE AT SITE

Twitter is often the intellectual equivalent of a tavern at 2 a.m., but it has illuminating moments. An example came Friday when Senator Elizabeth Warren, the Harvard populist, offered a hilarious commentary on her proudest political accomplishment—the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

“I’m giving @MickMulvaneyOMB one last chance to answer my questions about his actions at the @CFPB. If he won’t, he should be called immediately to testify under oath before my colleagues and me on the Senate Banking Committee,” the Senator thundered to her 4.3 million Twitter followers. Mick Mulvaney is the acting head of the CFPB, and it seems he is not suitably attentive to Ms. Warren’s demands.

Like Donald Trump, Ms. Warren might want to let an editor see her tweets before she sends them. Iain Murray of the Competitive Enterprise Institute quickly responded to Ms. Warren by tweeting, “If only the CFPB had any meaningful accountability to Congress . . .”

Someone get the smelling salts because Ms. Warren is down for the count.

As Mr. Murray and readers of these columns know, Ms. Warren designed the CFPB as an independent agency like no other precisely so it could ignore Congress. The bureau is funded not with an annual appropriation like the rest of the government, but by the Federal Reserve based on a request from the head of the CFPB. Congress thus can’t use its constitutional power of the purse to enforce public accountability.

Unlike other so-called independent agencies like the Securities and Exchange Commission, the CFPB also isn’t composed of a bipartisan set of commissioners. It’s a one man show whose five-year term transcends elections and thus Administrations.