RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://thefederalist.com/2019/04/10/barr-confirms-multiple-intel-agencies-implicated-in-anti-trump-spy-operation/

“Spying on a political campaign is a big deal,” Attorney General William Barr told a Senate committee on Wednesday morning. Barr’s comments came in the context of potential Justice Department reviews of the Trump-Russia investigation and how it began in 2016.

While it is important that the top law enforcement in the United States publicly acknowledged that the Obama administration and its intelligence agencies surveilled its domestic political opponents during the heat of a presidential election, it is what he said next that was most startling: that the CIA and other federal agencies in addition to the FBI may have been involved. “I’m not talking about the FBI necessarily, but intelligence agencies more broadly,” he said.

The FBI, which has incredibly friendly relations with the media, has taken the brunt of the public outcry against the anti-Trump operation. That project included the use of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants, national security letters, human informants, and strategic leaking to craft a narrative of treasonous collusion with Russia to steal an election from Hillary Clinton. It even included leaks of classified records from former FBI director James Comey, which he said was done for the purpose of launching a special counsel investigation as retaliation for his firing.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/spying-did-occur-11554932442

The Attorney General of the United States told a Senate subcommittee today that the federal government spied on a U.S. political campaign in 2016. Now Americans need to know which executive branch officials were responsible for turning Washington’s formidable surveillance powers against the party out of power.

The Journal reports:

Attorney General William Barr will ask a team inside the Justice Department to examine the origins of the counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign’s possible ties to Russia, he told Congress on Wednesday, responding to lingering Republican concerns about law enforcement decisions during the 2016 election.

Mr. Barr characterized the law-enforcement activities that were directed at people affiliated with the Trump campaign as “spying,” telling a Senate panel that he will examine the gamut of intelligence activities that were directed at members of the campaign in 2016, looking at how and why surveillance decisions were made.

“I think spying on a political campaign is a big deal,” Mr. Barr said in a hearing, invoking Vietnam-era intelligence abuses, such as the surveillance of antiwar activists as a reason to raise these questions. “Spying did occur. The question is whether it was adequately predicated.”

It is a big deal, even if much of the press corps runs every development in this story through the filter of whether it is good news or bad news for Donald Trump. It is unconditionally bad news for the citizens of a free society if it becomes acceptable for the government to spy on domestic political opponents.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/barr-forms-team-to-probe-possible-fbi-abuses-in-trump-russia-investigation/

Attorney General William Barr has formed a team to investigate potential abuses by FBI and Department of Justice officials involved in the the investigation into the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russia in the summer of 2016, Bloomberg reported Wednesday.

Congressional Republicans have for the past year called for a thorough accounting of the origins of the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign, which many of them believe began as a result of anti-Trump bias on the part of senior DOJ and FBI officials.

“I am reviewing the conduct of the investigation and trying to get my arms around all the aspects of the counterintelligence investigation that was conducted during the summer of 2016,” Barr told the House Appropriations Committee on Tuesday.

The investigation that will reportedly be carried out by Barr’s newly-formed team comes atop the existing DOJ Inspector General investigation into the origins of the counterintelligence probe, which Barr has said should be completed as early as May or June.

Senator Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) has emerged as perhaps the most vocal Republican calling for further investigation into whether FBI officials misled the FISA court by failing to disclose that the Steele dossier — an unverified opposition research file that was used as a pretext in the FISA application to surveil Carter Page — was initially funded by Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.

https://thefederalist.com/2019/04/10/top-fbi-lawyer-testified-rosenstein-discussed-removing-trump-office/

James Baker, the former top lawyer of the FBI, testified to members of Congress last fall that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and other FBI officials discussed wearing a wire in meetings with President Trump and removing him from office, according to a transcript of Baker’s testimony released on Tuesday.

In a joint committee on October 3, 2018, Baker was questioned in a closed-door interview on his knowledge of the Christopher Steele dossier, classified information leaked to the media, and invoking the 25th Amendment against President Trump.

Baker’s testimony confirmed what former acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe previously said about national security officials strategizing to remove President Trump from office. Baker said Rosenstein made a serious suggestion to wear a wire when near the president in order to collect evidence that the president obstructed the investigation on Russian collusion. Baker also said he suspected Rosenstein was acting in response to the firing of James Comey, and that he felt he had been “used” by the president in his justification for firing Comey.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273387/new-york-democrats-pass-tax-pain-daniel-greenfield

In the movie Escape From New York, the island of Manhattan was walled off and mined. For its fortieth anniversary, New York City will try to recreate its plot by walling off parts of Manhattan with toll booths. The walls of toll booths to impose congestion pricing on the locals will fulfill the dream of former Mayor Bloomberg whose wildest ideas now seem downright tame to the new Dem radicals.

You could try to bypass the toll booths along 61st Street by taking an Uber, but good luck.

New York City has also been leading a crackdown on ridesharing on behalf of taxi drivers who began committing suicide because they were no longer able to overcharge, rip off and rob tourists. Uber will be capped, taxed and pushed out of the city along with all the other cars to encourage people to use public transportation. Unfortunately, public transportation doesn’t work anymore.

You can still ride a bike, if you don’t mind suffering bruises, bumps and skull fractures.

The New York City subway is failing badly. To quote the New York Times, “Century-old tunnels and track routes are crumbling… Just 65 percent of weekday trains reach their destinations on time, the lowest rate since the transit crisis of the 1970s”. Cars are being taxed to help fund this collapsing system. But the problem isn’t a lack of money: the money is being diverted by unions and political sweetheart deals.