RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://thefederalist.com/2019/06/03/top-28-moments-from-bombshell-barr-interview/

The idea of resisting a democratically elected president and…really changing the norms on the grounds that we have to stop this president, that is where the shredding of our norms and our institutions is occurring.’

Attorney General William Barr’s nearly hour-long interview with CBS News’ Jan Crawford last week was full of fascinating details about the special counsel probe, the debunked Russia collusion theory that roiled Washington for years, and Barr’s investigation into how the FBI and Department of Justice used the “bogus” theory to investigate the Trump campaign.

The interview was downplayed by the media, which is implicated in perpetuating the Russia hoax Barr is investigating, and which came in for criticism from Barr for its failure to care about violations of civil liberties. Here are the top 28 take-aways from the interview.

1. Mueller ‘Could Have Reached a Conclusion’

Crawford, whose questions revealed a command of the facts not demonstrated by many of her mainstream media peers, asked Barr about Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s decision to outline 11 instances where President Trump’s frustration at falsely being accused of treason could amount to “possible obstruction” followed by a refusal to decide whether they did.

https://www.capitolhilloutsider.com/a-new-growing-strain-of-anti-semitism/

Ilhan Abdullahi Omar of Minnesota, a Somalian by birth and Rashida Harbi Tlaib of Michigan, of Palestinian descent are the first two Muslim women ever to serve in the US Congress. They have been given carte blanche to do and spew anything they wish without any retribution or repercussions.

These two freshman Jew hating anti-Semites did not waste any time in attacking Israel and the Jewish people the moment they arrived at Capitol Hill.  Like their fellow Muslims, they consider Jews and Israel the sworn enemies of Islam. This hostility dates to the time of Muhammad’s own treatment of the Jews in Medina. At first, expediently, Muhammad called the Jews “people of the book,” and accorded them a measure of tolerance until he gained enough power to unleash his devastating wrath upon them.

“Israel has hypnotized the world,” Omar tweeted in 2012. “May Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel.”

Anti-Semitism sentiment has always existed throughout the ages for no valid reason. However, there is new strain of violent anti-Semitism now widespread throughout the left, permeating well into the Democrat party’s lowest and highest echelons of their left-wing. It is a raw Jew-hatred that covers itself as “anti-Zionism.”

For days, the Democrats struggled with whether or not to discipline lawmaker Ilhan Omar for her anti-Semitic views, arguing over whether Omar, one of two Muslim women in Congress, should be singled out, what other types of bias should be decried in the text and whether the party would tolerate opposing views on Israel. But they could not come up with a way to condemn her simply because she is a Muslim. Muslims all over the world get a free pass simply because the elected officials are fearful of being labeled racist, even though Islam is not a race.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/06/somalis_have_changed_minneapolis.html

Everyone not lying to themselves predicted when the federal government under Bill Clinton – aided and abetted by Lutheran Social Services, Catholic Charities and World Relief Minnesota — plopped 30,000 Somalis down into the midst of the kind, virtue-signaling, eager-to-help Midwesterners of Minneapolis (of which I am one) that it would lead to some grave consequences for our community.

Now, due to continuing refugee placements as well as chain migration there are an estimated 80,000 Somalis living in the Twin Cities metro area, or more like 79,000 if you subtract those who’ve left the country to join terrorist organizations like ISIS.

Anyhoo, here’s a week Minneapolitans had with their Somali neighbors last month:

On Wednesday, May 15th a couple of University students were attacked on campus at the East Bank Train station by two Somali thugs. It was an attempted robbery that the guys rebuffed sustaining injuries that required a hospital visit.

On Thursday, May 16th two Somalis burned down the pavilion at Lake Calhoun [or Lake Bde Maka Ska if you’re a virtue signaler) an eating and hanging out meeting place in the heart of the city enjoyed by generations of Americans around the prettiest city lake you’ve ever seen. This is in the most expensive neighborhood in Minneapolis.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/william-barrs-fresh-air-11559510133

If you want to know why William Barr is under political attack, consider his interview last week with Jan Crawford of CBS News. It’s a humdinger, in which the Attorney General challenges the received wisdom about the investigation into Trump-Russia collusion.

Nearby we excerpt Mr. Barr’s comments about the behavior of former top FBI officials James Comey and Andrew McCabe. Note how he disagrees with President Trump’s charge of “treason.” As the AG points out, the Constitution specifically defines treason as “only in levying War against [the United States], or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.”

But note too that Mr. Barr takes seriously the bias displayed by FBI officials against Mr. Trump. And he calls out the press for a double standard in failing to be alarmed about a potential abuse of power by law enforcement and intelligence agencies in spying on an American presidential campaign.

“The fact that today people just seem to brush aside the idea that it is okay to, you know, to engage in these activities against a political campaign is stunning to me especially when the media doesn’t seem to think that it’s worth looking into,” Mr. Barr says. “They’re supposed to be the watchdogs of, you know, our civil liberties.” This is not something the press corps likes to hear about its own biases.

https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/446457-mueller-must-testify-publicly-to-answer-three-critical-questions

In that twinkling zone between man and myth, Robert Mueller transcends the mundane. Even in refusing to reach a conclusion on criminal conduct, he is excused. As Mueller himself declared, we are to ask him no questions or expect any answers beyond his report. But his motivations as special counsel can only be found within an approved range that starts at “selfless” and ends at “heroic.” Representative Mike Quigley defended Mueller’s refusal to reach a conclusion as simply “protecting” President Trump in a moment of “extreme fairness.”

Yet, as I noted previously, Mueller’s position on the investigation has become increasingly conflicted and, at points, unintelligible. As someone who defended Mueller’s motivations against the unrelenting attacks of Trump, I found his press conference to be baffling, and it raised serious concerns over whether some key decisions are easier to reconcile on a political rather than a legal basis. Three decisions stand out that are hard to square with Mueller’s image as an apolitical icon. If he ever deigns to answer questions, his legacy may depend on his explanations.

Refusal to identify grand jury material

One of the most surprising disclosures made by Attorney General William Barr was that he and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein expressly told Mueller to submit his report with grand jury material clearly marked to facilitate the release of a public version. The Justice Department cannot release grand jury material without a court order. Mueller knew that. He also knew his people had to mark the material because they were in the grand jury proceedings.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/william-barr-counter-intelligence-probe-of-trump-campaign-crossed-serious-red-line/

Attorney General William Barr said Friday that the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation of the Trump campaign “crossed” a “serious red line” and should be “carefully looked at.”

“The use of foreign intelligence capabilities and counterintelligence capabilities against an American political campaign to me is unprecedented and it’s a serious red line that’s been crossed,” Barr said in an interview with CBS.

The attorney general is currently investigating the origins of the probe to determine whether the U.S. intelligence community’s surveillance of the Trump campaign was warranted. He has expressed skepticism about the explanations for some of the investigative actions taken.

During testimony to the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee last month, Barr stated that “spying did occur” on the Trump campaign, angering Democratic lawmakers.

“I guess it’s become a dirty word somehow,” Barr told CBS. “I think there is nothing wrong with spying. The question is always whether it is authorized by law.”

“There were counterintelligence activities undertaken against the Trump campaign, And I’m not saying there was not a basis for it, that it was legitimate, but I want to see what that basis was and make sure it was legitimate,” he added.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/05/robert-mueller-investigation-was-always-impeachment-probe/

The special counsel abdicated on obstruction to avoid a confrontation with the Justice Department and get his evidence to Congress.

Why mention the OLC guidance at all?

That is the question for Bob Mueller, left hanging by the statement his office jointly issued with Justice Department flacks on Wednesday, clarifying (as it were) remarks he had made hours earlier at his parting-shot press conference.

At issue is Mueller’s decision to punt on the question of whether President Trump should be indicted for obstruction of justice. In his startling remarks, Mueller sought to justify himself by citing instruction from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel. The longstanding OLC opinion, an outgrowth of Nixon- and Clinton-era scandals, holds that a sitting president may not be indicted. The two press offices were struggling to reconcile (a) Mueller’s pointed reliance on this OLC guidance at the presser with (b) his prior disclaimers of such reliance.

According to Attorney General Bill Barr, in a meeting over two weeks before Mueller submitted his final report, the special counsel emphatically denied that his refusal to render a prosecutorial judgment on obstruction hinged on the OLC guidance. Naturally, in their continuing quest to frame Barr as the most diabolical villain since Lex Luthor, the media-Democrat complex insisted that the AG must be lying.

In an hour-long interview with CBS News’ Jan Crawford released on Friday, Attorney General William Barr reflected on the Russia investigation, the Robert Mueller report, the personal attacks against him, and his career at the Department of Justice.

Barr laid into the abuses of power happening among top officials at the FBI, the lack of evidence found by Mueller’s investigation, and the media hypocrisy exposed by coverage of stories like the “appalling” texts between FBI agent lovers Peter Strzok and Lisa Page.

“Mueller has spent two and half years and the fact is there is no evidence of a conspiracy,” Barr said. “So it was bogus, this whole idea that the Trump was in cahoots with the Russians is bogus.”

Barr has been critiqued for seeking to declassify documents concerning the Russia investigation. He argued that reviewing standards and procedures at the highest levels are an “important way of making sure that government power is being conscientiously and properly applied.”

When Crawford asked if he was concerned with bias among FBI investigators, Barr said the Strzok-Page texts were “very damning” and argued that there would be an outrage if the same stunts had been pulled against the Obama campaign.

“If those kinds of discussions were held, you know, when Obama first ran for office, people talking about Obama in those tones and suggesting that ‘Oh that he might be a Manchurian candidate for Islam or something like that.’ You know some wild accusations like that, and you had that kind of discussion back and forth, you don’t think we would be hearing a lot more about it?” he asked.

https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/445983-dershowitz-shame-on-robert-mueller-for-exceeding-his-role

The statement by special counsel Robert Mueller in a Wednesday press conference that “if we had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said that” is worse than the statement made by then-FBI Director James Comey regarding Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential campaign. Comey declared in a July 2016 press conference that “although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.”

Comey was universally criticized for going beyond his responsibility to state whether there was sufficient evidence to indict Clinton. Mueller, however, did even more. He went beyond the conclusion of his report and gave a political gift to Democrats in Congress who are seeking to institute impeachment proceedings against President Trump. By implying that President Trump might have committed obstruction of justice, Mueller effectively invited Democrats to institute impeachment proceedings. Obstruction of justice is a “high crime and misdemeanor” which, under the Constitution, authorizes impeachment and removal of the president.

https://amgreatness.com/2019/05/29/another-mueller-comey-one-two-punch/

Most Americans are unaware of the long history of comradeship and chicanery between Special Counsel Robert Mueller and former FBI Director James Comey. For nearly two decades, the pair have held the same jobs, earned the same foes, and swaggered in the same rarified sphere of political prestige and privilege.

This week, the country has been treated to another reminder of how often the twosome operates in tandem.

In fact, their prior relationship should have disqualified Mueller from overseeing an investigation into one of Comey’s fiercest critics and the man who fired him, President Donald Trump. Without Comey helping to fabricate the Trump-Russia collusion narrative in 2016, there wouldn’t have been a Mueller investigation into fabricated Trump-Russia election collusion.

Further, Comey admitted he leaked his internal “memos” to the New York Times after his dismissal in May 2017 in an attempt to prompt the appointment of a special counsel. Comey also would be a witness in Mueller’s investigation; his extemporaneous memos that documented alleged conversations with the president in early 2017 are cited as evidence throughout the obstruction of justice section of Mueller’s report. The conflicts are rife and overshadow the legitimacy of the entire Mueller probe.

Comey and Mueller share similar traits: The lofty rhetoric about the rule of law; the self-aggrandizement disguised as adulation of the government institutions they run; the lust for power; the superiority complex; the petty thirst for vengeance. They are New York natives who once claimed to be Republican. Both served as deputy attorney general for President George W. Bush and director of the FBI for President Barack Obama.