RUTHFULLY YOURS

The Democrats’ Ukrainian impeachment gambit is backfiring on Joe Biden. The three-time presidential hopeful is getting awfully testy with voters and journalists who dare to confront Biden about his son’s ghost-payrolling gig for a corrupt Ukrainian energy company while dad was vice president and acted as President Obama’s point man for that country.

Biden taunted an Iowa farmer during a campaign event for raising questions about Hunter Biden’s lucrative Burisma board seat; over the weekend, he repeatedly scolded a female NPR reporter who pressed him on the matter. (An outrageous display that would now dominate headlines had it been President Trump.)

But Biden’s in-your-face reaction when presented with valid inquiries about his son’s multi-million-dollar patronage job, a post that he surrendered this year only after the senior Biden announced his run for president, is telling: This is how you behave when the press runs cover for you and your boss for more than a decade.

The American public often is reminded, usually by Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and their loyalists in the American news media, that Obama’s eight-year reign was “scandal-free.” Of course, that is nowhere near the truth. From the “Fast and Furious” gun-running scam and IRS targeting of Tea Party activists to the egregious Benghazi terror attack cover-up two months before the 2012 election, the Obama Administration was among the most corrupt in U.S. history. And they have laughed all the way to Martha’s Vineyard and the Democratic presidential debate stage.

So truth-seekers should be gratified that on one day—Monday, December 9, 2019—the spin and subterfuge that the Obama White House successfully employed to hide their rampant malfeasance started to collapse under the full weight of its deceit and hubris.

Three scandals—the Russian collusion hoax, Burisma, and the disastrous Afghanistan war—blew up in their self-proclaimed “scandal-free” faces.

The Justice Department’s inspector general released his long-awaited report on the FBI investigation into Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. Michael Horowitz, who will testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, confirmed what Trump World already knew: Barack Obama’s FBI misled a secret court to obtain a warrant to spy on Carter Page, a Trump campaign advisor. James Comey accused Page of acting as a “foreign agent” of Russia in the initial filing, which was renewed three times.

The application heavily relied on the infamous Steele dossier, a collection of unverified accusations sourced by a British political operative paid by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee to dig up Russian-related dirt on Donald Trump. (In 2016, Christopher Steele worked as a Democratic Party flack, an FBI source, and a lobbyist for a Putin-linked Russian oligarch in trouble with the U.S. government.)

Obama and Biden Knew

Horowitz’s report noted several “omissions and inaccuracies” on the application submitted to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in October 2016. One glaring omission, which has been a subject of dispute, is that renewal applications failed to disclose that Steele was being paid by the DNC and Clinton campaign.

Another major revelation is that Obama’s FBI used other means to surveil the Trump campaign. “The Crossfire Hurricane team did task several confidential human sources and undercover employees [aka, spies] during the 2016 campaign” which resulted in direct contact with campaign aides. “All of the interactions were monitored by the FBI.” This directly contradicts claims by Trump foes that Obama’s FBI didn’t “spy” on Team Trump. They did.

Further, Comey notified the inspector general that he briefed President Obama and his top national security team about the FBI’s investigation into the Trump campaign in August 2016, an acknowledgment that has not previously been confirmed.

“Comey said he thought it was important that the President know the nature of the FBI’s efforts without providing any specifics,” the report says. “Comey said although he did not recall exactly what he said, he may have said there were four individuals with ‘some association or connection to the Trump campaign.’”

That means President Obama was fully aware that his top law enforcement agency was investigating his political rival’s campaign just months before Election Day—which means Joe Biden knew, too. (In fact, Biden probably played a more explicit role in the scheme since he directly participated in Situation Room meetings in 2016 with former CIA Director John Brennan and others who concocted the collusion hoax.)

More trouble is in the offing for Obama’s partisan henchmen. Shortly after the IG report was posted, Attorney General William Barr and U.S. Attorney John Durham, the prosecutor assigned to investigate the scandal, issued separate statements.

“Our investigation has included developing information from other persons and entities, both in the U.S. and outside of the U.S.,” Durham wrote. “Based on the evidence collected to date, and while our investigation is ongoing, last month we advised the Inspector General that we do not agree with some of the report’s conclusions as to predication and how the FBI case was opened.”

Durham announced earlier this year that his investigation is now a criminal one.

There was more bad news Monday for the squeaky-clean Obama administration.

The Afghanistan Disaster Exposed

Before Horowitz’s report posted online, the Washington Post published a scathing exposé about the war in Afghanistan. Sourced from more than 2,000 documents, the Post blasted political, military, and diplomatic leaders for lying about their failed, 18-year campaign in that country. The $1 trillion conflict has claimed the lives of 2,300 American troops and injured more than 20,000.

Barack Obama managed the conflict longer than any other president. As casualties mounted during Obama’s first term—half of the total number of soldiers killed in action in Afghanistan died between 2009 and 2012—Obama and his chiefs assured Congress their plan was working. “The campaign, as I’ve pointed out before, I think has made significant progress,” Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said in 2012.

Obama, according to the Post, repeatedly misled the American public. “A person identified only as a senior National Security Council official said there was constant pressure from the Obama White House and Pentagon to produce figures to show the troop surge of 2009 to 2011 was working, despite hard evidence to the contrary,” the Post reports.

(In a bit of crossover between the two scandals, Lt. General Michael Flynn is cited in the Post piece; as a one-time deputy to former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, Flynn was highly critical of the Afghan war. “If we are doing such a great job, why does it feel like we’re losing?” Flynn asked in 2015. The following year, Comey opened up an investigation into Flynn for suspected Russian “collusion.”)

The Obama White House would “spin [bad news] to the point of absurdity,” one national security official disclosed. Drug trafficking has flourished; more than 80 percent of the world’s opium supply now is cultivated in Afghanistan. Tens of billions of U.S. tax dollars were wasted on futile infrastructure modernization plans.

President Trump is planning to exit Afghanistan.

More Judiciary Committee Follies

As the Post article and the Horowitz report made the rounds on Monday, a Capitol Hill sideshow further marred the legacy of the “scandal-free” Obama-Biden Administration: The Democrats’ impeachment charade.

The House Judiciary Committee held another hearing intended to bolster evidence that Donald Trump should be removed from office for his contacts with Ukraine, however, the widely-televised event offered more coverage of the Bidens shady dealings in the notoriously-corrupt country. “Hunter Biden” and “Burisma” are mentioned as often as “Trump” and “quid pro quo,” and that’s not good news for Joe Biden, or for his former boss and BFF.

At one point, the Democrats’ star witness admitted that as vice president, Biden asked for a quid pro quo when he threatened to withhold U.S. aid unless a Ukrainian prosecutor investigating Burisma was fired. Dan Goldman also detailed President Trump’s phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, which again highlighted Hunter Biden’s grift and Vice President Biden’s attempts to cover it up.

Sadly, it appears that the news media have learned no lessons. Early press coverage of the Horowitz report is attempting to defend the collusion hoax they peddled for more than three years; the press is all-in on selling impeachment while trying to avoid asking Biden the tough questions that have been raised during the process. It’s hard to predict how they’ll follow-up the Post report. And what would it matter, even if they did start asking genuine questions? Their sudden interest in how poorly Obama and Biden managed the Afghanistan war won’t bring back any lives.

They lied to a secret court. They lied to the incoming president of the United States. They lied to the American public. Now Obama and Biden are doing it again.

The only thing more scandalous than the numerous, destructive scandals that happened on Obama’s watch is the way the news media ignored, justified, or covered them up. Astonishing how, all in one day, Americans have had the opportunity to see the truth.