RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://pjmedia.com/trending/flashback-2-obama-era-officials-violated-hatch-act-but-werent-removed-from-office/

WASHINGTON — The Office of the Special Counsel has recommended the removal of White House Counselor Kellyanne Conway over violations of the Hatch Act.

The OSC wrote that her “violations, if left unpunished, would send a message to all federal employees that they need not abide by the Hatch Act’s restrictions. Her actions thus erode the principal foundation of our democratic system — the rule of law.”

This isn’t the first time a White House or cabinet official violated the Hatch Act. It happened several times in the Obama administration but the OSC didn’t recommend the removal of the official.

In 2012, the OSC said Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius made “extemporaneous partisan remarks” in her official capacity in violation of the Hatch Act. Sebelius acknowledged her remarks were a “mistake” and she was not removed from her position due to the violation.

Former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro, who is now a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, violated the Hatch Act in 2016 by praising then-Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in an interview at his HUD office, but President Obama did not remove him from his position.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/special-counsel-recommends-firing-kellyanne-conway-over-alleged-hatch-act-violations/ar-AACPSk8

The Office of Special Counsel recommended Thursday that Kellyanne Conway be fired from the federal government for violating the Hatch Act on “numerous occasions.”

The Hatch Act is a federal law that limits certain political activities of federal employees.

The OSC, which is separate from the office with a similar name previously run by Robert Mueller, said in a report released Thursday that White House Counselor Conway violated the Hatch Act by “disparaging Democratic presidential candidates while speaking in her official capacity during television interviews and on social media.”

“Ms. Conway’s violations, if left unpunished, would send a message to all federal employees that they need not abide by the Hatch Act’s restrictions. Her actions thus erode the principal foundation of our democratic system — the rule of law,” the OSC said in a statement Thursday, noting that Conway has been a “repeat offender.”

The law’s purpose is to ensure federal programs are “administered in a nonpartisan fashion, to protect federal employees from political coercion in the workplace, and to ensure that federal employees are advanced based on merit and not based on political affiliation,” according to the OSC. The office is an independent federal agency that monitors compliance with that law and others.

The White House on Thursday blasted the OSC ruling as “unprecedented.”

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/justice-dept-seeks-to-question-cia-officers-in-russia-inquiry-review/ar-AACN4gI

WASHINGTON — Justice Department officials intend to interview senior C.I.A. officers as they review the Russia investigation, according to people briefed on the matter, indicating they are focused partly on the intelligence agencies’ most explosive conclusion about the 2016 election: that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia intervened to benefit Donald J. Trump.

The interview plans are the latest sign the Justice Department will take a critical look at the C.I.A.’s work on Russia’s election interference. Investigators want to talk with at least one senior counterintelligence official and a senior C.I.A. analyst, the people said. Both officials were involved in the agency’s work on understanding the Russian campaign to sabotage the election in 2016.

While the Justice Department review is not a criminal inquiry, it has provoked anxiety in the ranks of the C.I.A., according to former officials. Senior agency officials have questioned why the C.I.A.’s analytical work should be subjected to a federal prosecutor’s scrutiny. Attorney General William P. Barr, who is overseeing the review, assigned the United States attorney in Connecticut, John H. Durham, to conduct it.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/06/the-lessons-of-the-mueller-probe/

Our government must make transparent, good-faith efforts to police itself, or risk losing legitimacy in the public’s eyes.

Editor’s Note: The following is the written testimony submitted by Mr. McCarthy in connection with a hearing earlier today before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence on the Mueller Report (specifically, the first volume of the report, which addresses Russia’s interference in the 2016 campaign, as to which Special Counsel Mueller found no conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin). The hearing was broadcast on C-SPAN, here.

Chairman Schiff, Ranking Member Nunes, members of the Committee, thank you for inviting me to this morning’s hearing.

I served as a federal prosecutor for nearly 20 years, almost all at the Office of the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, from which I retired in 2003 as the chief assistant U.S. attorney in charge of the Southern District’s satellite office in White Plains. I’ve also done a short stint working on an independent-counsel probe, and for several months in 2004, I was a consultant to the deputy secretary of defense while the Pentagon was grappling with various legal issues after the onset of post-9/11 military operations. During my years as a prosecutor, I was honored to receive the Attorney General’s Distinguished Service Award in 1988 and the Attorney General’s Exceptional Service Award in 1996 for my work on international-organized-crime and international-terrorism cases.

Since leaving government service, I have been a writer and commentator. I am appearing this morning in my personal capacity as a former government official who cares deeply about our national security and the rule of law.

For most of my first several years as a prosecutor, my work focused on international organized crime. After the World Trade Center was bombed on February 26, 1993, I spent much of the last decade of my tenure working on national-security investigations. I am proud to have led the successful prosecution of Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman and eleven other jihadists for conspiring to wage a war of urban terrorism against the United States, which included the Trade Center attack, a plot to bomb New York City landmarks, and other plots to carry out political assassinations and terrorist strikes against civilian populations. In that effort, I was privileged to work alongside a superb team of federal prosecutors, support staff, and investigators assigned to the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force.

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2019/06/24/against-the-democrats-court-packing-scheme/

A terrible idea is getting new support

No bad idea is ever truly dead. The latest to rise from the crypt is Court-packing: expanding the size of the Supreme Court to pack it with justices who can outvote the current majority. Progressive activist groups — including one, bluntly titled “Pack the Court,” that boasts it will spend millions in 2020 — have formed to push the idea. Prominently on board are Hillary Clinton’s former press secretary and Harvard law professors Laurence Tribe and Mark Tushnet. Democratic presidential contenders noticed. Pete Buttigieg first attracted national attention when he pushed Court-packing, and he has since rolled out a complex plan, to create a 15-member Supreme Court, that NBC News described as “front-and-center of his campaign.” Several rivals followed suit, including Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Beto O’Rourke, and Kirsten Gillibrand.

Court-packing is a Rubicon we should dread to cross. It last appeared on the national agenda in 1937, the high-water mark of one-party federal government at home and ideological authoritarianism around the globe. Even then, it was roundly rejected by the American body politic. In one swoop, it would irreparably destroy the American tradition of judicial independence of the political branches. In short order, this would end the American experiment of the rule of law and a government of separated and limited powers.

The Supreme Court has always been political in various ways, but at a remove from direct control by politicians. Life tenure, rare vacancies, justices long outlasting the elected terms of the people who appoint them — these things sustain the Court as a separate branch. Allowing the Court to be swamped with new appointees whenever the president wants new precedents is something we recognize as a banana-republic tactic when we see it in other countries. Our own system, strong and durable as it has proven, is not immune. Court-packing would set off an unstoppable dynamic of reciprocal escalations. Even Bernie Sanders has criticized the proposal on the grounds that Republicans would retaliate in kind and the Court would be destroyed in the process. We’ve had cries of wolf before about threats to judicial independence and the rule of law. But to quote Justice Scalia, this wolf comes as a wolf.

https://thefederalist.com/2019/06/12/forum-reflects-rising-concerns-jews-across-world/

A shift in tone at the 2019 AJC Global Forum seems to be a sign of these trying political times and the recent spike in anti-Semitism.

What does it look like when our vulgar and polarized political era collides with one of American Jews’ oldest and most genteel organizations? Rather like the 2019 American Jewish Committee (AJC) Global Forum.

Last week, nearly 2,500 people representing the United States and 50 other nations gathered in Washington D.C. for the organization’s annual conference. Myriad speakers addressed issues concerning Jews across the world, reflecting AJC’s global advocacy efforts.

Those concerns, which recurred across three days of speakers, panels, and videos, included such weighty issues as the resurgence of anti-Semitism in the United States and Europe, hyper-partisanship in our politics, concerns about the misrepresentation of Jews and other minorities, a defense of values including civility, an affirmation of a community of conscience, and a discussion of whether American global leadership is in decline.

As is typical of these annual conferences, there was a star-studded lineup of speakers. However, as AJC CEO David Harris noted in his call to action this year, organizers focused more than usual on capturing the zeitgeist. So, while the conference included AJC’s hallmark bipartisanship (among speakers) and brainy bent, the event had a different feel this year.

Changing Times

For example, when Jason Isaacson, AJC’s chief policy and political affairs officer, introduced Neera Tanden and Michael Anton’s debate over whether American global leadership is in decline, Isaacson felt compelled to remind the crowd that booing would not be tolerated. I didn’t hear any booing, but having attended multiple such gatherings since 2001, I also don’t recall ever hearing such a warning before. It’s clearly a sign of the times.

Another striking change appeared in the ongoing conversation over resurgent anti-Semitism. A panel on this subject was introduced by a video that led with American examples, including assaults in Brooklyn, as well as the deadly attacks in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Poway, California. AJC has been warning about this resurgence for nearly 20 years. However, even a year ago, this video and the ensuing discussion would have been laser-focused on Europe. No more.

https://www.city-journal.org/california-progressive-policies-hurt-working-and-middle-class

The recent California Democratic Party convention in San Francisco exposed the divide between the state’s progressive and working-class voters. Progressives, in their militant certitude, support left-wing policies that often don’t affect them; it’s the working class that suffers the consequences of these proposals. But the Green New Deal, widely embraced by party leaders, pushed too far, triggering a backlash at the convention. The state’s private-sector labor unions, notably the building trades, organized a “Blue Collar Revolution” protest against the Democrats’ climate legislation.

The Democrats are calling for the elimination of fossil fuels by 2030, which would result in California’s immiseration, especially for workers in the state’s energy-production sector, the nation’s fourth-largest. In 2012, the oil and gas industry employed over 400,000 Californians, but these workers—unionized and well-paid—can expect pink slips with the green package. California’s renewable mandates also threaten the building-trades unions, which count 400,000 members statewide—a sizable contingent, though considerably below the industry’s 2007 numbers.

While new wealth drives demand for expensive housing, building restrictions that stymie expansion into suburbia limit the sector’s growth. Not long ago, building-trade union members were considered part of California’s aristocracy, but they can no longer afford median-priced homes in any of the state’s urban counties. Residential sales have dropped statewide, and California’s rate of new housing permits has fallen behind the national average, making construction workers’ economic prospects even dimmer. And the manufacturing sector has stagnated—this despite a 4 percent national expansion, along with 5 percent and 14 percent growth in neighboring Arizona and Nevada.

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2019/06/10/it_started_with_a_lie_bruce_ohrs_linchpin_role_in_russiagate.html

Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr was perfectly positioned to advance the Russia collusion narrative. He had a rare set of relationships — ties to opposition researchers and the FBI — and would use his links to both in 2016 to connect federal law enforcement to those advancing Trump-Russia conspiracy theories.

A mystery remains: To some in his narrow circle, Ohr was upfront about the compromising nature of his connections, yet he hid that fact from officials charged with overseeing ethics at the Justice Department. Why, then, did Bruce Ohr admit to the FBI that his wife worked for opposition researchers Fusion GPS while failing to disclose it to the DoJ? The answer speaks volumes not just about how the Trump-Russia affair gained traction but about the way Washington works.

Christopher Steele: “Love and Best Wishes to you, Nellie and all the family,” he wrote to Bruce Ohr (top photo).
Orbis Business Intelligence Ltd.

Ohr has since confirmed to Congress who the conspiracy theorists were: “Chris Steele, as I understand it, was hired by Fusion GPS to do research or gather information. He provided information to me,” Ohr has testified. “Glenn Simpson, who is, as I understand it, a principal of Fusion GPS, on a couple of occasions, he provided information to me. And on one occasion my wife, who was a contractor with Fusion GPS, provided some information to me.”

The average opposition researcher would be hard-pressed to get the attention of an associate deputy attorney general, let alone his cooperation. But the Fusion GPS crowd had the right connections. Steele and Ohr are close enough that Steele could sign an email to his old friend with “Love and Best Wishes to you, Nellie and all the family.” Simpson is an acquaintance of long standing. Nellie is, well, Ohr’s wife.

Fusion GPS didn’t just get Bruce Ohr’s valuable attention, the firm used it to make an ask. Nellie Ohr acknowledged in her own congressional interview what Fusion GPS had in mind when Steele invited her and her husband to breakfast at the Mayflower Hotel on July 30, 2016. “Chris Steele was hoping that Bruce would put in a word with the FBI to follow up on the information in some way.” He did just that.

https://amgreatness.com/2019/06/11/another-media-fueled-collusion-narrative-falls-apart/

It’s a familiar pattern in the Trump era: A partisan figure tasked with thwarting the president—say, Special Counsel Robert Mueller or former FBI Director James Comey—is portrayed as a fair-minded arbiter of truth and justice, a vanguard of our highest democratic institutions, bravely taking on the Bad Orange Man. Such figures are cast as heroes impervious to political bias. Every move they make, we are told, is for our own good. We are not to question their unimpeachable integrity, their stellar reputation or their motives.

Such was the case with Christopher Steele, the author of the infamous dossier that served as the raison d’etre for the FBI’s investigation into Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

In order to legitimize the dossier’s dubious claims, the media characterized Steele as an objective player in the nascent Russian collusion plotline, a former British intelligence officer leveraging his long-time Kremlin connections to root out a corrupt scheme between Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin to steal an American election. His work was a profile in courage, we were told; he was a highly-regarded compatriot in America’s fight to make sure our new president was not in fact a covert Russian stooge.

But now that Steele faces questioning by a federal prosecutor assigned to investigate the corrupt origins of the FBI’s probe into the Trump campaign, it’s obvious that the early hype about Steele was just one more example of the media’s complicity in the Russian collusion coup.