RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/08/james-buckley-pioneer-conservative-thought-and-politics/

James L. Buckley, a pioneer in conservative thought and politics, looks back over an eventful life.

In the beautiful landscape of northwestern Connecticut, far from the madding crowd, lives James Lane Buckley, the 95-year-old elder brother of William F. Buckley Jr. and founder of the conservative movement.

That is not a title that political historians often bestow on James. The honor is often reserved for Bill, the tireless apostle behind National Review and Firing Line, whose influence in forming the American Right is incalculable. Yet the movement that nominated Barry Goldwater for the presidency in 1964 won its first electoral victory in 1970, when Jim Buckley was elected U.S. senator from New York on the Conservative ticket in a three-way race. Though the last third-party candidate elected to Congress, he played a vital role in turning the GOP into a party that could elect Ronald Reagan.

His current residence stands in the shadow of Great Elm, the elegant house bought by his father, William F. Buckley Sr., in 1923. It took its name from the largest such tree in Connecticut, which governed the 46-acre estate until it fell victim to Dutch elm disease. When the family moved in, Jim was a few months old, preceded in birth by Aloïse, John, and Priscilla, while Jane, William, Patricia, Reid, Maureen, and Carol were yet to come.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/when-justice-is-partial-1535063261

U.S. Attorney Robert Khuzami took a few moments in his Tuesday statement about Michael Cohen’s plea deal to sing neutrality’s praise: “His day of reckoning serves as a reminder that we are a nation of laws, with one set of rules that applies equally to everyone.”

Noble words, and they used to mean something. But a disparity of justice is at the heart of our current crisis of faith in institutions. Americans aren’t outraged that the Federal Bureau of Investigation felt obliged to investigate allegations leveled at campaigns, or that a special counsel is looking at Russian electoral interference. They are instead furious that Lady Justice seems to have it in for only one side.

The country has watched the FBI treat one presidential campaign with kid gloves, the other with informants, warrants and eavesdropping. They’ve seen the Justice Department resist all efforts at accountability, even as it fails to hold its own accountable. And don’t get them started on the one-sided media.

And they are now witnessing unequal treatment in special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe. Yes, the former FBI director deserves credit for smoking out the Russian trolls who interfered in 2016. And one can argue he is obliged to pursue any evidence of criminal acts, even those unrelated to Russia. But what cannot be justified is the one-sided nature of his probe.

Consider Mr. Cohen, the former Trump lawyer who this week pleaded guilty to eight felony charges. Six related to his personal business dealings; the other two involved campaign-finance violations arising from payments to women claiming affairs with Donald Trump. The criminal prosecution of campaign-finance offenses is exceptionally rare (most charges are civil), but let’s take Mr. Khuzami’s word for it when he says Mr. Cohen’s crimes are “particularly significant” because he’s a lawyer who should know better, and also because the payments were for the purpose of “influencing an election” and undermining its “integrity.” CONTINUE AT SITE

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/08/campaign-finance-law-clinton-campaign-committed-worse-violations/

Mueller should investigate more than just the 2016 Trump campaign

Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s proxy prosecutor in New York City has obtained a plea agreement with Michael Cohen on some pretty slimy personal-business issues, and in the process, obtained pleas to two federal campaign-finance-law violations . . . that, from my experience as an attorney in the field, do not appear to violate federal campaign-finance law. That aside, maybe this means that Mueller might step out of his snipe hunt of an investigation of Russian “collusion” in 2016 to take an actual interest in whether there was compliance with federal campaign-finance law by both 2016 presidential campaigns, not just President Trump’s. If Mueller is actually concerned, as his designated prosecutor in the Cohen case apparently is, about compliance with the federal statutes setting limits on contributions and reporting of expenditures by campaigns, parties, and candidates, his interest is long overdue. There are several serious enforcement and prosecutorial undertakings awaiting his attention — none involving President Trump or his campaign.

Let’s start with the payments from the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) to Fusion GPS for the infamous dossier that triggered the entire Mueller investigation of “Russian collusion.” It is still not known how much the Democrats paid to Fusion GPS because that information has not been released, even though it was revealed almost a year ago that the source of payment was the Democrats. We should know the exact amount paid to Fusion GPS by the DNC and the Clinton campaign because all expenditures over $200 by parties and campaigns are required to be reported to the Federal Election Commission (FEC). However, the Democrats’ payments for the discredited dossier were falsely reported as “legal fees” paid to Perkins Coie, and not disclosed as to the actual vendor, amount, or purpose — as required by federal law. It is a federal offense to falsify an FEC report, which was obviously done in this case. Perhaps there is a conflict of interest for Mueller to investigate this matter, since it involves several of his own agents as potential witnesses, thus suggesting that the investigation of the Fusion GPS payments from Perkins Coie should be referred to the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, in the same manner that Mueller transferred the Cohen case to the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/08/china-persecution-of-uyghur-minority-demands-international-response/

It is the secrecy that makes whatever is happening in Xinjiang so sinister. The silence of the Xi Jinping regime is broken only by euphemism, which raises suspicions that something epochal, horrible is going on. The population of 12 million Uyghurs seems cowed. The province is under martial rule. Anyone attracting attention is liable to wind up in — where, exactly? A concentration camp? A penal colony? Or, as the People’s Republic of China would have it, a “vocational training center”?

American officials estimate that 1 million Uyghurs have been incarcerated in these facilities, located in a province in northwest China named the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. The XUAR, or alternatively, East Turkestan, is the historic home of a group of non-Chinese, ethnically Turkic Muslims called Uyghurs. Since the Qing dynasty reasserted control of the region in the 19th century, relations between the Uyghurs and the Chinese have been tumultuous. But the mass detention and “reeducation” of them, part of China’s ongoing effort to Sinicize the province, is a step down a dark and dangerous path.

The history of the Uyghurs in China is that of a restive minority generating fears among the Chinese majority that the fringe of their empire is pulling away, and the Chinese responding with brutal consolidation. Uyghurs tried to declare independence from the Republic of China multiple times before the Communists came to power; under Mao, there was no shortage of Red Guard violence bent on stamping out their religious practice. More recently the PRC encouraged Han Chinese to move to Xinjiang, hoping to dilute the Uyghur presence in the region. And it has exploited international fears of Islamic terrorism as a pretext to build an immense surveillance state that involves DNA collection, cell-phone monitoring, and the installment of facial-recognition software.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/08/new-york-state-probes-michael-cohen-trump-organization-payments/

Did the president’s company violate the law in representing pay-off reimbursements to Cohen as legal fees?

Earlier today, we posted my column about yesterday’s revelation that federal prosecutors in Manhattan granted immunity to two American Media Inc. executives, including CEO David Pecker, a longtime friend and collaborator of President Trump’s. As I detail in the column, while news of the immunity grants just broke yesterday, the grants almost certainly happened many weeks ago — likely just after the April search warrants executed at Michael Cohen’s office and residences. The point, it appears, was to shore up the case against Cohen, President Trump’s former lawyer. The immunity grants are not a new development signaling sudden momentum in an investigation of President Trump. Of course, if there is such an investigation, they would be relevant.

In the column’s penultimate paragraph, I note that in the eight-count criminal information to which Cohen pled guilty on Tuesday, prosecutors suggested that fraud may have been committed by Cohen and the Trump Organization (President Trump’s real-estate conglomerate). At issue is the manner in which Cohen was reimbursed for the $130,000 hush-money payment to Stephanie Clifford (the porn star better known as Stormy Daniels). Specifically, there are peculiarities in the way Cohen’s reimbursement was totaled up, invoiced, and processed for payment.

Right about the time I submitted the column to my tireless editors late last night, the New York Times broke the news that the Manhattan district attorney’s office is considering criminal charges against the Trump Organization over these payments.

The Times’ William K. Rashbaum reports that this state probe is in its infancy. This, no doubt, is because it was triggered by the aforementioned criminal information the feds filed against Cohen — to be precise, the part of the Cohen case outlined in the last four paragraphs of the “Campaign Finance Violations” section of the press release issued by the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York (SDNY).

So . . . what’s this all about?

First, the president has indicated that he personally reimbursed Cohen for the $130,000 Stormy Daniels pay-off. As noted in my aforementioned column, this is important because, under campaign-finance law, there is no dollar limit on what a candidate may spend on his own campaign (while other donors have a $2,700 ceiling, which is why Cohen was charged). One question that federal prosecutors have certainly looked into is whether the president himself paid Cohen, as opposed to reimbursing him through a Trump business entity.