RUTHFULLY YOURS

This weekend is the first anniversary of the inauguration, which we shall commemorate in today’s movie feature later. It’s also the twentieth anniversary of a turbulent weekend in Washington, culminating in the launch down the catway of Monica Lewinsky’s little black dress. The drama of January 1998 put certain words and phrases in the public discourse for the next two years, including “impeachment”, “vast right-wing conspiracy”, “the meaning of ‘is'”, and “completion”, which President Clinton was said by Monica in the Starr Report not to reach.

Yes, it was twenty years ago today/Slick Willie taught the intern to play! In a sense, the Clintons have never reached completion – which is why, two decades on, the news is full of Uranium One, Hillary-commissioned dirty dossiers and Huma’s emails – not to mention the exposure of Harvey Weinstein and other Clinton buddies for availing themselves of the same interns-with-benefits approach to the workplace. We may run some old pieces from the Dawning of the Age of Incompletion in the weeks ahead. But, if you’re wondering what we were talking about before Monica, the answer is Paula – who became near totally eclipsed by Miss Lewinsky. This was my Sunday Telegraph column of January 18th 1998. I blush to say some of the lines herein have wound up in anthologies of quotations, including most recently in Matthew Parris’ collection Scorn – though I have to say I don’t think my Scornometer was cranked all the way up to eleven. I suppose it’s all comparative, which brings us back to that poor Media-ite fellow…

Last week, President Clinton declared most of storm-ravaged northern New England a federal disaster area. This weekend, he was back in Washington attending to the real federal disaster area: his pants.

They are, alas, not eligible for government financial assistance, although after spending most of his presidency trying to shake off the dogged Paula Jones, they could surely use some. Yesterday’s trip to his lawyers’ office to give his sworn deposition on sexual-harassment allegations was, according to the White House, his first “face to face” meeting with Mrs Jones – an artful, quintessentially Clintonesque choice of words with which she would not disagree, given her testimony re the previous encounter. He also denied that the case was proving a distraction: “I just try to put it in a little box and go on and do my work.”

First Apple and now Starbucks . Reliably Democratic precincts in corporate America keep reporting good news for both owners and workers as a result of Republican tax reform. Now the biggest political question of 2018 is whether an economic upshift will trigger a shift in U.S. voting patterns this fall.

The Associated Press reports today:

Starbucks is giving its U.S. workers pay raises and stock grants this year, citing recent changes to the tax law.

All employees will soon be able to earn paid sick time off, and the company’s parental leave benefits will include all non-birth parents. Starbucks Corp. said Wednesday that the changes affect about 150,000 full-time, part-time, hourly and salaried employees, most of whom work as baristas or shop managers. The new benefits apply to workers at more than 8,200 company-owned stores but not at the 5,700 licensed shops like those found inside supermarkets.

Starbucks is the latest to say it’s boosting pay or benefits due to the passage of the Republican tax plan, which slashed the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent. Walmart, for example, raised its starting hourly salary from $9 to $11 earlier this month, and also expanded its parental leave benefits.

In a press release, Starbucks adds, “These new offerings are in addition to the nearly $7 billion of capital that Starbucks will deploy to build and renovate stores, manufacturing plants and technology platforms in the U.S. over the next five years.”

On Thursday after the markets close, Starbucks will report its earnings for the quarter ended in December. “Following several disappointing quarters, there is hope that an improving retail environment may benefit Starbucks,” notes the Journal.

As the Democratic Party has moved sharply leftward in recent years, it has increasingly become the party of government and the non-profit sector. As the Journal’s Daniel Henninger has been chronicling for years, Democrats have systematically been disconnecting themselves from the private economy. Seattle-based Starbucks and the tech giants of Silicon Valley are among the notable exceptions.

Normally a stalwart outpost of cultural liberalism, Starbucks employs people who gave Hillary Clinton about fifty times as much as they gave Donald Trump in the 2016 election cycle, according to OpenSecrets.org. But will rising prosperity from the shop counter to the executive suite change political behavior? Sure it’s only money but of course money allows baristas and everyone else in our economy the freedom to pursue whatever activity or agenda they choose. CONTINUE AT SITE

New FBI documents released in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) investigation suggest then-FBI Director Robert Mueller was involved in a potential coverup denying that the FBI found connections between a Saudi Arabian family living in Sarasota, Fla., and the September 11, 2001 attacks. Mueller’s involvement in this case might cast a pall over his investigation into Donald Trump’s alleged connections with Russia.

The case revolves around Abdulaziz al-Hijji, his wife Anoud, and her father Esam Ghazzawi, an advisor to a Saudi prince. The al-Hijjis abruptly left their home in Sarasota two weeks before the September 11 attacks, leaving behind jewelry, clothing, and cars.

An original FBI investigation reportedly uncovered links between the Hijjis and the 9/11 attacks, but subsequent FBI statements denied the connections. In 2012, the website Broward Bulldog (now Florida Bulldog) filed a FOIA request for FBI files regarding the case.

In 2014, the FBI released 11 pages, including statements reiterating that the al-Hijjis had left the U.S. shortly before the 9/11 attacks and that “further investigation” had revealed “many connections” between the family and 9/11 suspects, the Miami Herald reported.

The FBI later claimed there were no connections between the al-Hijjis and 9/11 — and that’s where Mueller comes into the picture.

One FBI document, dated September 2012, was a copy of an April 16, 2002, report that agents found “many connections” between the family and “individuals associated with the terrorist attacks on 9/11/2001.” The couple’s name was blanked out, but remained discernible. This flatly contradicted FBI statements that agents had found no connections.

FBI Supervisory Special Agent Jacqueline Maguire wrote in a 2014 memorandum that the 2002 report was “a bad statement. It was overly speculative and there was no basis for the statement.”

The FBI had at least three reports detailing connections between the family and the 9/11 hijackers, however.

In response to Florida Bulldog’s FOIA request, the FBI produced 80,000 classified pages for U.S. District Judge William J. Zloch of Fort Lauderdale, Fla. The FBI also gave Zloch the index organization to process the files. Mueller, now special counsel in the Trump-Russia investigation, was referenced in a document in this database.

The former FBI director was mentioned in a note about an FBI white paper dating back to September 15, 2010. The paper was written shortly after the Bulldog and the Miami Herald published a story about the departure of the al-Hijjis shortly before 9/11.

“It was created to brief the FBI Director concerning the FBI’s investigation of 4224 Escondito Circle,” the al-Hijjis’ Sarasota address, according to the index. CONTINUE AT SITE

Glenn Simpson, founder of the D.C.-based news-for-hire firm Fusion GPS, is a conspiracy theorist. He says so himself. On page 126 of a transcript released last week from Simpson’s Nov. 14 testimony before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, here’s how the ex-reporter describes his own state of mind: “As sort of cynical and conspiracy-minded as I am,” Simpson told committee members and staff investigating issues related to Russia and the 2016 elections, “I am still shocked by all kinds of things that have happened here.”

For more than a year now, the opposition research that the former Wall Street Journal reporter prepared for his paying customers at the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign has dominated the news cycle. The Steele dossier, produced by Fusion GPS and named after the former British spy Christopher Steele, who allegedly authored it, is the foundation of the grand speculation that Donald Trump won the 2016 election by colluding with Russia.

The collusion narrative has kicked off three congressional inquiries plus Robert Mueller’s special investigation. Far-flung conspiracy theories about Russia, Trump, Putin, Facebook and whoever else are treated as normal “news” every day of the week, with the result that Russiaphobia has swept through Democratic-leaning metropolitan strongholds, which now believe Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump are equally responsible for Hillary Clinton’s loss last November.

In some sense, none of this should be surprising. Before he left the practice of journalism in 2009, Glenn Simpson was an investigative reporter. As every journalist knows, the investigative reporter is a special breed, valued because of his or her ability to see connections that are likely lost on others—often because there is no connection. What newspaper editors will never admit when they are scooping up prizes won by their ace investigative reporters, but every professional who has been around the block in the news business knows, is that nine of every 10 stories pitched by an investigative reporter are indelibly riddled with speculative lunacy. The one good lead needs to be carefully managed for months by at least one sub-editor before it ever reaches the desk of the top editor, whose publication, and professional reputation, requires excising every trace of madness before the story sees print. If you doubt this, here’s a sample of what a legendary Pulitzer Prize-winning ace investigative reporter like Seymour Hersh sounds like unplugged, i.e. pretty much like every other investigative reporter I have ever met.

For a brief, shining moment, CNN paused in its nonstop coverage of everything it loathes about President Trump for some actual “breaking news.” One of the network’s reporters had noticed that Congress was looking into malfeasance and political corruption at the Obama-era Department of Justice, FBI, and intelligence agencies. This is still news to most mainstream outlets.

There are now three major congressional investigations, peeling away layers of political bias, unequal application of the law, and, perhaps even felonies by senior officials who may have leaked classified documents, obstructed justice, and violated Fourth Amendment guarantees against unreasonable search and seizure.

These probes center on credible allegations that the FBI and DOJ fixed the investigation of Hillary Clinton to clear her and her top associates, and then launched an investigation of Donald Trump for partisan political reasons. If these allegations are true—and they have not yet been proven—this is the biggest American political scandal since Watergate. It would mean that the executive branch agency tasked with enforcing the law, instead subverted the law to protect its favored presidential candidate and damage the opposition party’s. Then, it tried to cover it all up.

If true, this would be a very deep pool of corruption, but CNN dove head-first into the shallow end. What most concerned the network was that Rep. Devin Nunes would not give the FBI his classified memo detailing the evidence uncovered so far. The CNN on-air panel discussing this topic featured a former Obama-era intelligence official, and he was shocked, shocked at Nunes and Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee. The FBI should get that memo immediately, he said, because it is the lead law enforcement agency in such matters. The CNN panel could only think of one reason Nunes was being so secretive: He was just trying to distract from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of alleged Trump-Russia collusion. For its part, CNN wasn’t distracted at all. It was entirely focused on Trump.

From the first, these columns have argued that the whitewash of the Hillary Clinton–emails caper was President Barack Obama’s call — not the FBI’s, and not the Justice Department’s. (See, e.g., here, here, and here.) The decision was inevitable. Obama, using a pseudonymous email account, had repeatedly communicated with Secretary Clinton over her private, non-secure email account.

These emails must have involved some classified information, given the nature of consultations between presidents and secretaries of state, the broad outlines of Obama’s own executive order defining classified intelligence (see EO 13526, section 1.4), and the fact that the Obama administration adamantly refused to disclose the Clinton–Obama emails. If classified information was mishandled, it was necessarily mishandled on both ends of these email exchanges.

If Clinton had been charged, Obama’s culpable involvement would have been patent. In any prosecution of Clinton, the Clinton–Obama emails would have been in the spotlight. For the prosecution, they would be more proof of willful (or, if you prefer, grossly negligent) mishandling of intelligence. More significantly, for Clinton’s defense, they would show that Obama was complicit in Clinton’s conduct yet faced no criminal charges.

That is why such an indictment of Hillary Clinton was never going to happen. The latest jaw-dropping disclosures of text messages between FBI agent Peter Strzok and his paramour, FBI lawyer Lisa Page, illustrate this point.

For the moment, I want to put aside the latest controversy — the FBI’s failure to retain five months of text messages between Strzok and Page, those chattiest of star-crossed lovers. Yes, this “glitch” closes our window on a critical time in the Trump-Russia investigation: mid December 2016 through mid May 2017. That is when the bureau and Justice Department were reportedly conducting and renewing (in 90-day intervals) court-approved FISA surveillance that may well have focused on the newly sworn-in president of the United States. (Remember: The bureau’s then-director, James Comey, testified at a March 20 House Intelligence Committee hearing that the investigation was probing possible coordination with Trump’s campaign and Kremlin interference in the election.)

A week after the election, groups inside and outside the government, some calling themselves Obama Anonymous, had begun meeting to plan the “resistance” to Trump. Unlike the angry protesters in the streets, this resistance wasn’t a new organization. It consisted of Washington D.C. government lifers.

At the CFPB, there was a group calling itself Dumbledore’s Army. Within the FBI and the DOJ, there was a nameless “secret society”. Its details are being derived from text messages exchanged between Peter Strzok, a disgraced member of Mueller’s team, and his mistress, Lisa Page, who worked for FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe. Previous Strzok texts had spoken of taking out “insurance” against a Trump win. This was all the more significant since Strzok had investigated Hillary and interviewed Flynn. He was a crucial figure in both the investigations of Hillary Clinton and President Trump.

House Oversight Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy revealed that the day after Trump won the election, texts between Strzok and Page suggested, “Perhaps this is the first meeting of the secret society.”

Like the CFPB’s Dumbldore’s Army, the reference may have been meant to make the conspiracy seem more lighthearted, but joking names for secret organizations within the government don’t make their dangerously subversive nature a laughing matter. Meanwhile many of the text messages from Strzok and Page have fallen victim to the same technical glitch that claimed Lois Lerner’s emails, Hillary’s emails and the video where Obama’s State Department spokeswoman admitted lying to the media about Iran.

J. Edgar Hoover must be turning in his grave at what is happening to his venerable FBI. Then again, given Hoover’s own proclivities to abuse his powers as the director of that agency, perhaps the predicament in which the bureau finds itself is a natural stage of evolution on an arc of governmental hubris.

It’s increasingly clear that the FBI is taking on water at an accelerating rate as new revelations come, fast and furious, in the political scandals engulfing Washington. This week, for example, we see two adolescent-minded senior FBI officials, Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, involved in virtually all aspects of the Hillary Clinton email server investigation and the Donald Trump “Russian collusion” (or is it “obstruction of justice” now?) investigation, acting like hormone-fueled high school lovers, discussing a “secret society” of Trump-haters one day after President Trump’s remarkable election. We learned of this only because two patriotic congressmen, representatives Trey Gowdy and John Ratcliffe, former federal prosecutors both, revealed this stunning exchange to Fox News. Was the “secret society” a tongue-in-cheek reference? Given the mind-boggling behavior of the top echelons at the FBI and DOJ these days, one can’t be too sure.

The keel of the USS Federal Bureau of Investigation is starting to rise out of the water, like the RMS Titanic about 30 minutes after striking the iceberg. One can almost hear the bodies of top law enforcement bureaucrats crashing against each other, like so much china on a dying vessel sinking under the waves, as the embattled organization faces exposure after exposure of truly outrageous and un-American, if not illegal, conduct.

The Justice Department has dropped a second tranche of text exchanges between FBI agents Peter Strzok and Lisa Page —conveniently delivering them to the Senate at the start of last Friday night’s government shutdown. Investigators are still plowing through the 384 pages, but preliminary findings raise new questions about FBI political maneuvering during the 2016 election.

Among the biggest news is what wasn’t in the Friday delivery: The FBI claims to have “failed” to capture text messages between Mr. Strzok and Ms. Page between December 14, 2016 and May 17, 2017. This period coincides with the height of the FBI’s investigation into possible Trump-Russia collusion, on which Mr. Strzok was a lead investigator. The FBI is blaming this five-month missing link on “misconfiguration issues related to rollouts, provisioning, and software upgrades.”

These are the folks tasked with investigating Hillary Clinton’s missing emails. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Chairman Ron Johnson on Saturday wrote to FBI director Christopher Wray asking how many other FBI records were lost. Imagine how Mr. Wray’s agents would treat a private individual’s failure to turn over comparable records.

It’s time to admit that the Women’s March is a misnomer; it should be called Women Democrats Marching to Impeach Our President. As a collective of many far-left organizations, including Black Lives Matter, the Arab-American Association of New York (headed by Linda Sarsour who favors sharia law), the National Action Network (founded by Al Sharpton), The Gathering for Justice (founded by Harry Belafonte) and Jews for Racial and Economic Justice – a group concerned with the “occupation of Palestine,” Islamophobia and freedom of speech for BDS on campus. The March is the indirect recipient of some of the 246 million dollars donated by George Soros to 100 of the Women’s March Partners.

Nearly 200,000 people joined the NY March last weekend, many holding adolescent, scatological signs and banners defiantly above their pink pussy hats. Hard to imagine intelligent women being comfortable joining with their vulgarity. The organizers of the March claimed to be protesting Republican policies on abortion, immigration, the LGBTQIA community and the environment. Let’s look at just two of these – abortion and immigration.

Abortion has been legal in the U.S. since 1973. It has been on the decline since 1990 when it peaked at 1,429,247; the most current statistic available is for 2013 when the number was 644,435 out of 75.4 million women of eligible childbearing age – in other words, an abortion rate of 9 tenths of 1 percent. By contrast, the rate of female genital mutilation (FGM) in the U.S. has tripled since 1990. It has been illegal in this country since 1996 but since 1990, there have been an estimated 500,000 girls and women in the U.S. who have undergone the procedure or are at current risk. The majority are immigrants from Egypt, Ethiopia and Somalia where 3/4 of all girls and women have been victims of cutting that has no health benefits and exists only as a grotesque means of male control by destroying the female ability to derive pleasure from sex.