RUTHFULLY YOURS

Establishment DC types who reflexively defend Mueller haven’t explained how they came to trust him so completely. It’s a question worth asking given the bumpy historical record of Mueller’s tenure as FBI director.

Journalist Mike Allen of Axios recently said that one word described Special Counsel Robert Mueller, and that word was “unafraid.”

The context for his remarks on Fox News’ “Special Report” was that Mueller had just spun off to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York a bit of his limitless investigation into President Donald J. Trump. Allen’s comment was like so many others from media and pundit types since the special counsel was launched. If there’s one word to describe the media’s relationship to Mueller, it’s “unquestioning.”

Pundits and politicians have said, repeatedly, that he is “somebody we all trust” with “impeccable credentials.” No matter what his office does, from hiring Democratic donors to run the Trump probe to aggressively prosecuting process crimes, he is defended by most media voices. Criticism of Mueller by people who aren’t part of the Trump Resistance is strongly fought, with claims that disapproval of anything related to Mueller and how he runs his investigation undermine the rule of law.

The media and establishment DC who reflexively defend Mueller haven’t explained how they came to trust him so completely. It’s a question worth asking given the bumpy historical record of Mueller’s tenure as FBI director from 2001 to 2013.

New York attorney general Eric Schneiderman is advocating a change to the state’s double-jeopardy laws that would allow him and other local prosecutors to bring charges against individuals pardoned by President Donald Trump, according to a letter he sent to the governor and state legislators Wednesday.

The letter, obtained by the New York Times, makes the case that the double-jeopardy law, which holds that an individual can’t be charged with the same crime twice, should be modified so that Trump aides who escape federal prosecution via a presidential pardon can be charged with the same crime in state court.

The proposal, if approved by state lawmakers and Governor Andrew Cuomo, would cement Schneiderman’s office — which is currently suing the Trump administration in connection with issues ranging from tech policy to environment regulations — as a bulwark of the so-called resistance.

“We are disturbed by reports that the president is considering pardons of individuals who may have committed serious federal financial, tax, and other crimes — acts that may also violate New York law,” Mr. Schneiderman said in a statement provided by his office.

Schneiderman and Trump share a contentious history. Schniederman oversaw the investigation into Trump University, which resulted in a $25 million fine, and Trump responded in characteristic fashion, calling Schneiderman “dopey,” a “lightweight,” and a “loser.”

The Fifth Amendment to the Constitution only prohibits multiple prosecutions at the federal level, but roughly half of the states, including New York, have additional double-jeopardy protections that prohibit state prosecutors from charging a person with the same crime they were exonerated for in federal court.

“New York’s statutory protections could result in the unintended and unjust consequence of insulating someone pardoned for serious federal crimes from subsequent prosecution for state crimes,” Schneiderman writes in his letter, “even if that person was never tried or convicted in federal court, and never served a single day in federal prison.”

Trump, who recently pardoned Scooter Libby — a former aide to Vice President Dick Cheney convicted of perjury, obstruction of justice, and lying to the FBI in connection with the “outing” of CIA agent Valerie Plame — has yet to comment on the move.

In yesterday’s column, I contended that it was outrageous for federal district judge Kimba Wood to direct that talk-radio and Fox News host Sean Hannity be publicly identified as Michael Cohen’s third client. Cohen, whose law practice is, shall we say, less than thriving, is under criminal investigation by the FBI and federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York (SDNY). He claims only three clients. The other two, President Trump and GOP fundraiser Elliott Broidy, acknowledge retaining Cohen. Hannity denies ever having had a formal attorney-client relationship with him.

The court’s order that Hannity’s name be disclosed in open court violated longstanding, judicially endorsed standards against identifying uncharged persons in legal proceedings attendant to criminal investigations.

Forget about evidence of wrongdoing. There is not even a suggestion that Hannity is involved in any crimes. He is a longtime friend of Cohen’s. He says they’ve had some informal legal discussions about such matters as real estate — and as any lawyer will tell you, informal discussions with non-lawyer friends are common. Hannity insists, however, that he has never retained Cohen to represent him in any legal matter, and has never paid him or received an invoice from him. There is no public evidence to contradict this, and no suggestion that Cohen has previously represented himself as Hannity’s attorney.

There has been no intimation that Hannity has any pertinent information about the activities for which Cohen is under investigation. His only relevance to the probe involves the question of whether there is a factual basis for Cohen to claim that an attorney-client (A-C) relationship with Hannity should prevent investigators from perusing some materials seized by the FBI from Cohen’s office and residences. And since Hannity is not suspected of wrongdoing, even that question appears to be of little importance.

Someone at the Internal Revenue Service seems to have kicked a plug out of the wall on Tuesday: The agency’s computer system tanked on, of all days, tax filing deadline day. Thus arrived an irresistible metaphor for government incompetence, albeit with the perennial calls for more funding.

Many taxpayers arrived at the IRS website on Tuesday prepared to sign away significant portions of their income. According to news stories, a message greeted them that the IRS website had a “planned outage” from April 17, 2018 to “December 31, 9999.” Should we check back in the morning or afternoon?

The agency said it “encountered system issues” and extended the filing deadline by a day, which is nice. But collecting revenue is the purpose of this bureaucracy. This debacle is like having an aircraft carrier that can’t move off the docks when a war starts.

On cue came the armada blaming budget cuts. Former IRS Commissioner John Koskinen lectured that he knew a system failure was coming without more money. It seems lost on Mr. Koskinen that this failure is an indictment of his leadership. The IRS budget has decreased by about 9% in nominal terms since 2010. But the IRS has $11 billion to play with in 2018, which is presumably enough to keep the computers working on the most important day of the year.

But the agency hasn’t addressed some of its own manifold problems, and the House has held hearings detailing the dysfunction. One problem, surprise, has been updating information technology.

A Treasury Department Inspector General last fall told Congress: “The IRS’s reliance on legacy (i.e., older) systems, aged hardware, and outdated programming languages pose significant risks to the IRS’s ability to deliver its mission. Modernizing the IRS’s computer systems has been a persistent challenge for several decades and will likely remain a challenge for the foreseeable future.”

While Donald Trump’s allies hope he won’t fire special counsel Robert Mueller and his opponents pray he will, each side recognizes it would jeopardize his Presidency. But Congress would compound the damage if it passes legislation aimed at curtailing Mr. Trump’s right as head of the executive branch to do so.

Last week a bipartisan group of Senators including Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.), Thom Tillis (R., N.C.), Christopher Coons (D., Del.) and Cory Booker (D., N.J.) introduced the Special Counsel Independence and Integrity Act. The bill would codify that the special counsel can be fired only by a senior Justice Department official for cause. If Mr. Mueller were fired, he would have 10 days to appeal to a panel of three judges.

Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Tuesday he won’t bring the bill up for a vote, and Democrats are howling. But the bill is bad government and unconstitutional. As the late Justice Antonin Scalia noted in his famous dissent in Morrison v. Olson, giving another branch a say in a decision about what is properly an executive branch power threatens the separation of powers that is at the heart of American liberty.

Scalia was writing about the independent counsel law, which Congress has since let expire. The special counsel provisions that took its place are more modest and technically under Justice Department supervision. But to the degree he is insulated from accountability to the leader of the executive branch, a special counsel still often leads to mischief and excess.

Senate Democrats have stalled nearly every Trump nominee in government, but their growing opposition to Mike Pompeo as Secretary of State suggests they don’t want the President to have even his top national security officials. Their new standard seems to be that any nominee who agrees with the elected President is disqualified.

“I don’t want a Secretary of State who is going to exacerbate the [sic] President Trump’s tendencies to oppose diplomacy,” Democratic Senator Tim Kaine (D., Va.) told CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday. He cited Mr. Pompeo’s opposition to Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Tehran and his support for “regime change,” although moderator Margaret Brennan didn’t let him finish that thought.

Mr. Kaine may recall that Donald Trump campaigned and won while opposing the Iran nuclear deal, and if Mr. Kaine is still sore about the outcome he should have told his running mate to campaign in Wisconsin. As for regime change, that isn’t Mr. Trump’s policy as far as we can tell, though does Mr. Kaine think the world is better with a regime in Iran that spreads terror around the world?

California Democrat Dianne Feinstein attributes her come-lately opposition to Mr. Pompeo’s allegedly undiplomatic statements about “Muslims and the LGBT community.” She doesn’t like that Mr. Pompeo supports traditional marriage. This has nothing to do with rallying allies to support a containment strategy for Iran, though it might relate to her Senate primary challenge from the left this year.

Sens. Feinstein and Kaine and 12 other Democrats voted to confirm Mr. Pompeo as CIA director—he was confirmed 66-32—perhaps because he’s so well qualified. Mr. Pompeo is a West Point and Harvard Law graduate who served three terms in Congress, and along with fellow Republican Tom Cotton unearthed the Obama Administration’s secret side deals with Tehran. He has invigorated the CIA clandestine service, tried to give Mr. Trump options on North Korea, and has gained the President’s trust. With Rex Tillerson out at State, Mr. Trump said Wednesday he had already dispatched Mr. Pompeo to conduct diplomacy with Kim Jong Un in Pyongyang.

Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz has released his watchdog report on the conduct of former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe and it is scathing. As I discussed in an earlier column, McCabe took the unprecedented step of a top former FBI officer of asking for donations on GoFundMe and racked in more than half a million dollars. He notably raised the money and then closed the site not long before the release of the report showing that he repeatedly made false statements to investigators as well as Comey. It was like creating a victim fund before police concludes whether you were attacked or the attacker. Horowitz did not convey any doubt as to McCabe being the culprit. He and his career staff found that McCabe not only lied but did so to advance his personal — the public’s — interest. If that is the case, it only magnifies the concerns over the treatment of McCabe as opposed to the Trump officials (like Michael Flynn) who he once investigated. The fact that he had the audacity to raise a half million dollars before the facts were made public only heightens these concerns.

At issue is the leak to The Wall Street Journal about an FBI probe of the Clinton Foundation.

Notably, the report itself belies the allegation of McCabe that he was victim of a witch hunt loyalists. Not only was Horowitz an Obama appointee but his staff were all career officials. More importantly, the report confirms that opened this review a week before Trump was sworn in. It preceded and had no connection to Mueller.

The report takes apart McCabe’s spin with clinical precision. It found that McCabe, 50, lied or misled investigators on not one but four occasions. It also found that these lies were clearly meant to help McCabe alone. McCabe said that he had full authority to make the disclosures. The IG found no evidence to support those claims. It also found that there was no evidence that then FBI Director James Comey was informed by McCabe. The IG states:

Hillary Clinton picked Judge Kimba Wood to be her husband’s Attorney General. According to various accounts from the period, Hillary was looking for someone “loyal” who would allow her to stack the Justice Department with her own political allies. It was still early in the game, but Hillary had always been Bill’s main plumber and she was anticipating all of the Clinton scandals that were yet to come.

Hillary had interviewed Kimba Wood for twice as long as her husband did. But the Clintons had also been allegedly encouraged to pick Wood by Michael Kramer who had been Time’s chief political correspondent and the judge’s husband. After interviewing Bill for Time’s fawning Man of the Year piece, he allegedly suggested that the President of the United States make his wife his Attorney General.

But even though Kramer had compared Bill Clinton to Lincoln and FDR, it was not to be. Between Wood’s employment of an illegal alien and her past as a Playboy bunny, it was all over. Kimba Wood, whose “rectitude” the media never stopped praising, went on to be involved in a sleazy scandal. She became known as the “Love Judge” for her role in her current husband’s affair. She filed for divorce accusing her former husband of withholding sex. Rectitude doesn’t get more old-fashioned than this.

“Wood is universally described as a woman of almost old-fashioned rectitude” (New York Magazine) and “Kimba Wood’s rectitude is something between a legend” (Detroit Free Press).

(Author’s note: In August 2016, I wrote an article entitled “James Comey and the Stinking Fish Factor,” warning readers that the Comey fish was already rotting and that things were bound to get worse. Clearly, they just did. And it’s just as clear that the uncontrolled hysteria we are witnessing from Democrats has to do not with bogus accusations about Russia but about the criminal indictments coming down the pike for the people they’ve blindly defended for decades—that would be Bill & Hill Clinton—and possibly against even bigger fish! I’ve updated this article by abbreviating its length but also adding a few sentences. -JS)

I always thought that James Comey was a company man. As it happens, the company he headed is among the most influential, powerful and scary companies in the world—the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

But still, a company guy. Whether working for a president on the moderate-to-conservative spectrum like G.W. Bush or for a far-left Alinsky acolyte like Barack Obama, makes absolutely no difference to this type of obedient—and also subservient—accommodator.

The red flag of skepticism should have gone up years ago to the American public when lavish praise was heaped on Comey by people who revile each other. While the spin insists that Comey is a lot of virtuous things—“straight-shooter,” “unbiased,” “fair-minded,” “non-partisan” “man of his word”—don’t be fooled. That’s Orwellian newspeak for someone who will do and say anything to keep his job, including, as Comey did in yet another Clinton fiasco case last summer, allow her to…

1. Create out of whole cloth an “intent” criterion in federal law to let a clearly corrupt politician––that would be Hillary––off the hook, and,

2. Appropriate the job of the Attorney General in announcing what the outcome of the FBI’s investigation should be.

While citing Hillary’s “extreme negligence” in handling classified information, a virtual litany of illegal acts committed by the then-Secretary of State, and the fact that hostile foreign operatives may have accessed her email account, Comey said he would not refer criminal charges to Attorney General Loretta Lynch and the Justice Department. Hillary, he said, was “extremely careless” and “unsophisticated,” among other spitballs he hurled in her direction before completely letting her off the hook!

Comey’s friend and colleague, Andrew C. McCarthy, said that the FBI director’s decision is tantamount to sleight-of-hand trickery. “There is no way of getting around this,” McCarthy wrote. “Hillary Clinton checked every box required for a felony violation…in essence, in order to give Mrs. Clinton a pass, the FBI rewrote the statute, inserting an intent element that Congress did not require.”

In his memoir, James Comey cites a “development still unknown to the American public to this day.” This mysterious development, he says, was central to his decision to intervene publicly in the Hillary Clinton email case.

Now this is strange because the big mystery was apparently disclosed in a flurry of reporting by the New York Times, Washington Post and CNN a year ago. His insistence in his book that the secret is likely to remain classified for decades also seems a bit hilarious when so much of the story was spontaneously declassified by anonymous leakers last spring, likely including Mr. Comey or people working for him.

Let’s recall what spawned that year-ago leakfest. It’s a question Mr. Comey leaves untouched in his book. Many in the FBI thought the intelligence was fake, possibly a Russian plant. The final reporting word was CNN’s, which cited sources saying Mr. Comey knew the evidence was probably fake but still considered it a threat to discredit the Justice Department’s handling of the Clinton email case.

A few weeks later, though, Sen. Lindsey Graham told CBS that Mr. Comey (presumably in closed hearings) had twice confirmed that the secret intelligence inspired his actions in the email case but “as early as a month ago, he never mentioned it was fake.”

Let us guess that this matter will remain classified for “decades” because it is embarrassing to Mr. Comey and the FBI. It’s also embarrassing, perhaps fatally so, to the intelligence agency that presented the intercept to Mr. Comey. The implication ought to set your hair on fire. Mr. Comey’s first intervention led to his second intervention, reopening the Hillary investigation 11 days before the election, which he now concedes he might have resisted if he had not been sure Mrs. Clinton was going to win anyway.

Many analysts, including Mrs. Clinton, believe Mr. Comey’s actions—possibly driven by fake Russian intelligence—changed the outcome of the election.

In brief, an intercepted Russian document cited a Democratic Party email that, in turn, referred to a private conversation in which Attorney General Loretta Lynch assured a Clinton aide that Ms. Lynch would sit on the email investigation.

In his book, Mr. Comey says of this unnameable intelligence that political opponents of Mrs. Clinton could use it to cast “serious doubt” on the credibility of the Justice Department investigation.

Let’s roll back the tape because Mr. Comey’s original intervention makes even less sense now. If the email was fake, how does it compromise Ms. Lynch? And whether or not it was fake, how did Mr. Comey improve matters? In fact, by intervening, didn’t he just confirm that Justice couldn’t be trusted? Finally, if the intel wasn’t fake, where are the subpoenas and obstruction-of-justice indictments that naturally follow? CONTINUE AT SITE