RUTHFULLY YOURS

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November was the “mean” month, or, rather, another “mean” month. Tweets, inanities, recriminations and a general sense of unpleasantness, swept the nation and Europe: In the U.S., ballots disappeared, others became water-damaged and some arrived without signatures. In Europe, France’s Emmanuel Macron, already on the ropes for the economy, called for a European military force: “We must protect ourselves with respect to China, Russia and even the United States.”This was said with President Trump, leader of the country that pays over 70% of the continent’s defense through NATO, standing nearby. This nastiness occurred despite the month hosting the great American holiday of Thanksgiving. Instead of giving thanks for living in this great land, the media and political elites went out of their way to find fault with anyone or anything that got in the way of their ideology, especially Donald J. Trump – witness the election results in Florida and Georgia and blame for the California wildfires. The crevasse created by identity politics, Mr. Trump’s Tweets and Trump haters grows wider and deeper. Bridging it grows more difficult and less likely.

Consider Jamal Khashoggi – not an admirable character, and not just because he was a columnist for The Washington Post, but because he was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, a right-wing, religiopolitical organization. Nevertheless, his murder was despicable and undoubtedly leaders in Saudi Arabia had fore-knowledge of the killing. But, spare me the hypocrisy – that does not make angels of those crying foul. Mr. Erdogan’s Turkey imprisons more journalists than any other nation according to PBS. Iran is a hotbed of exporting terrorism. Yemen is ground zero in the battle between Shias and Sunnis, with Iran supporting the Houthi rebels who have infiltrated the country against the Saudi-supported government. Mr. Trump does himself a disservice in the crudity of his response, but had he singled out MBS (Mohammad bin Salman) for blame, the media and the left would have found fault for his cozying up to the Turkish dictator. As well, they would blame him for a spike in oil prices, which undoubtedly would have followed an abandonment of our decades-old relationship with the Kingdom. What Mr. Trump should do, with MBS in the spotlight, is pull concessions from the Saudis. He has already told the Saudis to end the bloodshed in Yemen, but he should do more. He should push them to restore ties with Qatar and to ensure the Gulf Cooperation Council remains effective. He should pressure the Saudis to recognize Israel. Keep in mind, the Saudis remained our ally after 9/11, despite fifteen of the nineteen hijackers being Saudi citizens. And it was President Obama who, in September 2016, vetoed a bill that held Saudi Arabia legally accountable for 9/11. Fortunately, Congress overrode his veto. Just remember, there are no clear consciences when a democratic nation’s interests require allying with a dictator.

Elections in the United States were much as expected, though counting extended into the middle of the month, and one Senate race – Mississippi – not decided until November 27. (Republican Cindy Hyde-Smith won by eight points.) Some results were not accepted by those that lost, reminding one of Anthony Trollope’s 1858 novel, Dr. Thorne: “…no political delinquency is abominable in the eyes of British politicians, but no delinquency is so abominable as that of venality at elections.” The bottom line: Democrats took over the House, while Republicans increased their lead in the Senate.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/12/trump_hints_at_the_scandal_about_to_blow.html

There is big news ahead, and President Trump teased it yesterday from Argentina via Twitter. Politics has become a game of narratives, something well understood by both President Trump and his enemies in the media-Democrat establishment. For more than two years, the professionals of the cultural and media establishment have worked assiduously to create an objectively false narrative, with no evidence whatsoever, that Vladimir Putin actually changed the count of votes to hand Trump the presidency, making his victory illegitimate. Most Democrats actually believe this now and have in earlier polls as well.

But as I keep reminding our readers, President Trump was the most successful reality television producer in the history of the medium, and he understands a story arc well, as events that can be programmed unfold. That must be kept in mind in understanding this enigmatic tweet that came from the president half a world away, in Argentina for meetings with the leaders of the 20 biggest economies in the world.

Watch @seanhannity on @FoxNews NOW. Enjoy!

Here is the short (barely over a minute) segment on Hannity last night to which the president referred:

John Solomon has a smile on his face as he reveals that two prosecutors working for John Huber, the Salt Lake City U.S. attorney tasked by then-A.G. Sessions with investigating corruption beyond what the Mueller team is handling, “reached out” to a whistleblower from the Clinton Foundation.

The Clinton Foundation scandal is, as President Trump would say, yuuuuge. I am told by a knowledgeable source that the official that John Solomon cites “knows where the bodies are buried.”

https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/419193-trump-russia-and-lessons-from-the-mob-did-godfathers-steer-collusion

Back in the mafia’s heyday, FBI and IRS agents had a set of surveillance rules.

If one mobster showed up in town, pay notice. If two arrived, be suspicious. If three or four were in the same vicinity, something was going down.

And if five or more headed to the same neck of the woods, a meeting of consiglieri or La Cosa Nostra’s council was likely happening. (This, because there were always five families in New York and some adjunct families elsewhere that made up the council’s leadership.)

There also was another rule of thumb: Mobsters would always have the same calling card, or excuse, to be in town. Attending a funeral (the mid-1980s mob meeting in Chicago) or a vacation in the sticks (the infamous 1957 gathering in upstate New York) were some of the more memorable ones.

Early in my reporting that unraveled the origins of the Trump-Russia collusion probe, tying it to Hillary Clinton’s campaign and possible Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) abuses, I started to see patterns just as in the old mob meetings: FBI or intelligence-connected figures kept showing up in Trump Town USA during the 2016 campaign with a common calling card.

The question now is, who sent them and why?

Interviews with more than 50 witnesses in the Trump case and reviews of hundreds of pages of court filings confirm the following:

At least six people with long-established ties to the FBI or to U.S. and Western intelligence made entrees to key figures in the Trump business organization or his presidential campaign between March and October 2016;

Campaign figures were contacted by at least two Russian figures whose justification for being in the United States were rare law enforcement parole visas controlled by the U.S. Justice Department;

Intelligence or diplomatic figures connected to two of America’s closest allies, Britain and Australia, gathered intelligence or instigated contacts with Trump campaign figures during that same period;

Some of the conversations and contacts that were monitored occurred on foreign soil and resulted in the creation of transcripts;

Nearly all of the contacts involved the same overture — a discussion about possible political dirt or stolen emails harmful to Hillary Clinton, or unsolicited business in London or Moscow;

Several of the contacts occurred before the FBI formally launched a legally authorized probe into the Trump campaign and possible collusion on July 31, 2016.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/12/robert-mueller-plan-trump-russia-investigation-report-not-case/
Special Counsel Mueller is building a report, not a case.

R ight after Special Counsel Robert Mueller racked up yet another guilty plea to a false-statements charge on Thursday, a friend asked me, “Doesn’t this destroy Michael Cohen’s credibility as a witness?”

Easier to destroy Satan’s conscience, I thought. Cohen would have to have some credibility before it could be destroyed, and how much could reside in a self-described “fixer” who openly compared himself to Tom Hagen, the lawyer-gangster in The Godfather. (I’ll stipulate that he has a law degree, but Cohen has always struck me as the Fredo of Trump World.)

Nevertheless, the flaw in my friend’s question was not the assumption that Cohen had some smidgeon of value as a witness until it was extirpated by his plea of guilty to lying to Congress (after he had already, in August, pled guilty lying to a financial institution, among other fraudulence). The real flaw was the assumption that Special Counsel Mueller is lining up witnesses and building a criminal case, like prosecutors do.

He is not.

No prosecutor builds a case the way Mueller is going about it. What prosecutor says, “Here’s our witness line-up: Michael Flynn, George Papadopoulos, Alex van der Zwaan, Rick Gates, Paul Manafort, Michael Cohen. And what is it that they have in common, ladies and gentlemen of the jury? Bingo! They’re all convicted liars.”?

For a prosecutor, like any trial lawyer, what the jury thinks is at least as important as what the law says. If the most memorable thing the jury takes into the deliberation room is that no one should believe a word your witnesses say, you are not going to convict the lowliest grifter, much less the president of the United States of America.

As a prosecutor, you build a case by having your cooperating accomplice witnesses plead guilty to the big scheme you are trying to pin on the main culprit. After all, what makes these witnesses accomplices, literally, is that they were participants in the main culprit’s crime. That’s the scheme you’re trying to prove. So, on guilty-plea day, the cooperator comes into court and admits guilt to the same conspiracy on which you are trying to nail the lead defendant.