RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/05/mueller-report-volume-ii-available-top-congressional-democrats/

As Congressional Democrats prepare to hold attorney general William Barr in contempt over his supposed lack of transparency, it’s worth remembering that he has made available to top Democrats the entirety of volume II of the Mueller report, save for two full and seven partial lines, which were redacted to protect grand jury secrecy in keeping with federal law.

In order to provide lawmakers with greater transparency into special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, the Department of Justice placed a less-redacted version of his report in a secure room on Capitol Hill, and granted access to that room to congressional leaders of both parties, as well as the chairmen and ranking members of intelligence and judiciary committees in the House and Senate.

As of this writing, not one of the six Democrats granted access to what amounts to 99.9 percent of volume II of the Mueller report, which details the president’s behavior as it relates to obstruction of justice, have taken the opportunity to examine it. If they had, they could have viewed the entirety of Mueller’s obstruction case against Trump except for the following seven redactions, two of which are applied to footnotes.

https://amgreatness.com/2019/05/08/jim-jordan-explains-why-democrats-are-really-holding-bill-barr-in-contempt/

The House Judiciary Committee voted 22-12 Wednesday morning to hold Attorney General William Barr in contempt of Congress for refusing to give the committee the full, unredacted Mueller report, essentially holding him in contempt for following the law. The full House will reportedly vote on the measure some time Wednesday afternoon.

“Even in redacted form, the special counsel’s report offers disturbing evidence and analysis that Trump engaged in obstruction of justice at the highest levels. Congress must see the full report and underlying evidence to determine how to best move forward with oversight, legislation and other constitutional responsibilities,” Nadler said in a statement on Monday to explain the move.

“The attorney general’s failure to comply with our subpoena, after extensive accommodation efforts, leaves us no choice but to initiate contempt proceedings in order to enforce the subpoena and access the full, unredacted report. If the department presents us with a good-faith offer for access to the full report and the underlying evidence, I reserve the right to postpone these proceedings,” he added.

Barr, however, has already provided a 99 percent unredacted version of the report to 12 members of Congress–six Democrats and six Republicans– to read in a SCIF at Justice Department headquarters or a secure room on Capitol Hill. Every single Democrat passed on the opportunity.

https://thefederalist.com/2019/05/08/san-franciscans-fiddle-streets-riddled-needles-feces/

One of the most annoying — and notorious — aspects of life in San Francisco is locals’ tendency to micromanage nearly all of everyday life, from shopping bags to perfumes to any attempt to use a carbon-fueled vehicle. When SF residents find someone in violation of their rules, whether or not formally codified, they call him on it in all their self-righteous glory.

Brock Keeling, the editor of a popular local site sf.curbed, is a “self-described and proud ‘militant pedestrian.’” He penned “Pedestrian Etiquette Guide: How To Use The Sidewalk Like A Good Person.” Those who activate his pet peeves are inherently bad, I guess. No treats for us.

According to Keeling, the need for sidewalk etiquette is enormous. There have been a lot of traffic fatalities, and, get this: “Ride-hailing companies have turned streets into cash cows. And said companies use San Francisco streets as testing grounds for driverless cars.”

God forbid Uber makes any profit. Of course, none of it proves that San Francisco pedestrians are incapable of using a sidewalk, but, nonetheless, Keeling came up with a total of 17 (seventeen!) rules, and posted them under the “Beginner’s Guide To San Francisco” category. Because in San Francisco, existing should be a chore.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/05/feds_knew_steele_dossier_was_politically_motivated_before_it_was_submitted_to_fisa_court_to_permit_spying_on_trump_campaign.html

John Solomon of The Hill has yet another scoop that demonstrates lying to the FISA Court, thereby enabling spying on the Trump campaign. He writes:

If ever there were an admission that taints the FBI’s secret warrant to surveil Donald Trump’s campaign, it sat buried for more than 2 1/2 years in the files of a high-ranking State Department official.

Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Kathleen Kavalec’s written account of her Oct. 11, 2016, meeting with FBI informant Christopher Steele shows the Hillary Clinton campaign-funded British intelligence operative admitted that his research was political and facing an Election Day deadline.

And that confession occurred 10 days before the FBI used Steele’s now-discredited dossier to justify securing a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant to surveil former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page and the campaign’s ties to Russia.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/robert-mueller-trump-russia-investigation-history-witch-hunts/

Robert Mueller’s Russian-collusion investigation is often called a “witch hunt,” and there has been considerable debate over whether this is a proper description. For what it’s worth, the earliest known use of the phrase in American politics occurred a century ago this spring, and it involved Russian attempts to influence the U.S. government. In February and March of 1919, the Senate Judiciary Committee held hearings on “Bolshevik Propaganda,” and at one point the following exchange occurred between Raymond Robins, a progressive economist who advocated recognizing the Bolshevik regime, and Senator Lee S. Overman (D., N.C.) (emphasis added):

Mr. Robins. . . . And, Senator, I believe that when we know the beast, with the united intelligence of the free men and women of America, I have faith enough in our institutions to believe that we will throw that foreign culture, born out of a foreign despotism, back out of our land, not by treating it with the method of tyranny, not by a witch hunt, nor by hysteria, but by strong, intelligent action, the intelligent action of Senators of the United States making a report that gets before the people the truth of the situation and mobolizes [sic] the consciences and the intelligence of the men and women of our land.

Senator Overman. What do you mean by witch hunt?

Mr. Robins. I mean this, Senator. You are familiar with the old witch-hunt attitude, that when people get frightened at things and see bogies, then they get out witch proclamations, and mob action and all kinds of hysteria takes place.

Senator Overman. This committee has been called a witch hunt.

Mr. Robins. I wish to make no possible sort of criticism of the committee. I wish to say that I have never been treated more fairly than I have been here.

Nowadays the phrase is generally understood to refer to the witch trials of colonial New England, which, in the popular mind, are thought to have differed from modern-day criminal trials in several ways:

a) the outcome was often determined in advance;
b) shoddy, fabricated, or unreliable evidence was accepted;
c) they were motivated by a desire to scapegoat members of disfavored groups; and
d) the whole thing was ridiculous because the crime being prosecuted does not exist.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/nadler-v-barr/

The House Judiciary Committee is scheduled to vote Wednesday morning on holding Attorney General William Barr in contempt for refusing to make the full Mueller report widely available to Congress.

But the Justice Department is accusing congressional Democrats of playing politics. Assistant Attorney General Stephen Boyd wrote in a letter on Monday that if congressional Democratic leaders really cared about transparency, they would have read an almost entirely unredacted version of the report that’s been available to them for weeks.

The Mueller report that was made available to the public on April 18 redacted four types of information: grand-jury material, sensitive intelligence, matters that could affect ongoing investigations, and material that would infringe on the privacy of “peripheral third parties.” Barr made a version of the report available to congressional leaders of both parties and the chairmen and ranking members of intelligence and judiciary committees in the House and Senate that only excluded grand-jury material, which legally must be kept secret. So far, none of the six Democrats provided with the opportunity to review this fuller version of the report has taken the opportunity to do so.

Boyd’s letter on Monday said that congressional Democrats’ refusal to read the fuller report already available to them “naturally raises questions about the sincerity of the committee’s interest in and purported need for the redacted material.”

So why haven’t congressional Democrats taken up Barr’s offer? They argue that the full report, including grand-jury material (which could be released via judicial order), needs to be made available to the entire Congress. And they say that if they were to take a look at what’s already available to them that would undercut their negotiating position.

“Every member of Congress ought to be able to see that version,” Mark Warner, ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, tells National Review. “I think if I were to go, you’d lessen the case.”