RUTHFULLY YOURS

By using the justice system as a political weapon, Mueller and his supporters in both parties are confirming what many Americans already believe: We are not all equal under one law.

News that special counselor Robert Mueller has turned his attention to Erik Prince’s January 11, 2017 meeting in the Seychelles with a Russian banker, a Lebanese-American political fixer, and officials from the United Arab Emirates, helps clarify the nature of Mueller’s work. It’s not an investigation that the former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation is leading—rather, it’s a cover-up.

After all, Mueller took his job not at the behest of the man who by all accounts he is likely to professionally and personally disdain, Donald Trump, but of the blue-chip Beltway elite of which he is a charter member. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed him nearly a year ago to lead an investigation without parameters. That’s because Mueller’s job is to obscure the abuses of the US surveillance apparatus that occurred under the Obama administration.

The fact that someone at the level of former FBI director was called in to sweep up the mess left by bad actors in the bureau and Central Intelligence Agency and other parts of the intelligence bureaucracy suggests that the problems are even worse than previously thought. And that means the constituency for Mueller’s political intervention is enormous.

Mueller is said to believe that the Prince meeting was to set up a back channel with the Kremlin. But that makes no sense. According to the foundational text of the collusion narrative, the dossier allegedly written by former British spy Christopher Steele, the Kremlin had cultivated Trump himself for years. So what’s the purpose of a back channel, when Vladimir Putin already had a key to the front door of Mar-a-Lago?

Further, the collusion thesis holds that the Trump circle teamed with high-level Russian officials for the purpose of winning the 2016 election. How does a meeting that Erik Prince had a week before Trump’s inauguration advance the crooked election victory plot? It doesn’t—it contradicts it.

I don’t think anyone is too surprised.

Clapper ended up on CNN. And usually there’s some sort of preexisting relationship there. Government insiders cultivate media contacts. They build up a relationship by leaking the information they want out there. And there’s the understanding that when they leave the government, there might be some sort of expert or commentator slot available for them. Not always, but if they’re important enough.

And as Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper was certainly important.

Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper allegedly leaked information to CNN early last year regarding the classified briefings given to then President-Elect Donald Trump and President Barrack Obama on the salacious dossier claiming the Russians had compromising information on the president-elect, according to government sources, who noted the evidence of the leak was collected during the House Intelligence Committee’s Russia investigation.

Clapper, who was one of four senior Obama administration officials to attend the briefing with the presidents, also stated his “profound dismay at the leaks” in an official statement issued in January, 2017 and warned that the leaks were “extremely corrosive and damaging” to national security, according to his press release.

And he was shocked at all the gambling going on in Rick’s Cafe.

The dossier, which was compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele, at the behest of embattled research firm Fusion GPS, was already being shopped around by Steele to journalists in Washington as early as the summer of 2016, according to reports. At the time, journalists who had heard of the dossier were reluctant to publish the findings because of its unverified content. “[Clapper] gave the dossier legs and news agencies began to publish its contents because it had now become official news…”

But it was when CNN published the first report that Trump and Obama had been briefed the dossier’s findings that other news agencies began to report on it. The committee found evidence that Clapper, who is now a contributor at CNN, contacted CNN shortly before the story was published by Tapper, Evan Perez, and Jim Sciutto.

The story detailed the briefings given to Trump by the senior officials on the contents of the dossier and “gave the dossier legs and news agencies began to publish its contents because it had now become official news,” one congressional source told this reporter.

President Trump tweeted on Tuesday morning his decision to remove Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and his plans to replace him with CIA Director Mike Pompeo: “Mike Pompeo, Director of the CIA, will become our new Secretary of State. He will do a fantastic job! Thank you to Rex Tillerson for his service! Gina Haspel will become the new Director of the CIA, and the first woman so chosen. Congratulations to all!” According to NBC News, Mr. Tillerson learned of the president’s decision from the tweet, although White House Chief of Staff John Kelly had reportedly told Mr. Tillerson last Friday that the president planned to ask the Secretary of State to “step aside.”

Secretary of State Tillerson said his goodbyes without anything positive to say about the president. His official final day in office will be March 31st.

The State Department’s press office said in a prepared statement that Secretary of State Tillerson “had every intention of remaining because of the tangible progress made on critical national security issues. The Secretary did not speak to the President this morning and is unaware of the reason, but he is grateful for the opportunity to serve, and still believes strongly that public service is a noble calling and not to be regretted.”

President Trump told reporters that he had made the decision to remove Mr. Tillerson because they had “a different mindset.”

The abrupt firing Tuesday of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson follows months of infighting between the State Department and White House over efforts by Tillerson to save the Iran nuclear deal and ignore President Donald Trump’s demands that the agreement be fixed or completely scrapped by the United States, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the situation who spoke to the Washington Free Beacon.

In the weeks leading up to Tillerson’s departure, he had been spearheading efforts to convince European allies to agree to a range of fixes to the nuclear deal that would address Iran’s ongoing ballistic missile program and continued nuclear research.

While Trump had prescribed a range of fixes that he viewed as tightening the deal’s flaws, Tillerson recently caved to European pressure to walk back these demands and appease Tehran while preserving the deal, according to these sources. The Free Beacon first disclosed this tension last week in a wide-ranging report.

White House allies warned Tillerson’s senior staff for weeks that efforts to save the nuclear deal and balk on Trump’s key demands regarding the deal could cost Tillerson his job, a warning that became reality Tuesday when Trump fired Tillerson by tweet.

Tillerson will be replaced by CIA Director Mike Pompeo, a former member of Congress who established a record as being tough on Iran and echoing many of the policies called for by Trump. Insiders expect Pompeo to take a much harder line on the nuclear deal and pursue many of the fixes advocated by Trump, such as outlawing Iran’s ballistic missile program and instating fierce repercussions for any future breach.

“Our constitutional republic is being shaken to its foundation by corrupt unelected officials like James Clapper who conspire to undermine a duly elected president.”

As the House Intelligence Committee on Monday announced its findings that there was no collusion between Team Trump and Russia. More evidence of the collusion between Deep State swamp creatures and a disloyal media to undermine the presidency of Donald Trump was also revealed. James Clapper has been exposed as both a perjurer and a criminal leaker of classified information to the press.

The cynicism of Americans regarding integrity and accountability in government grew as swamp thing James Clapper avoided his part of the bog being drained. The statute of limitations for prosecuting his perjury before Congress regarding surveillance of Americans expired on Monday:

Clapper, director of national intelligence from 2010 to 2017, admitted giving “clearly erroneous” testimony about mass surveillance in March 2013, and offered differing explanations for why.

Two criminal statutes that cover lying to Congress have five-year statutes of limitations, establishing a Monday deadline to charge Clapper, who in retirement has emerged as a leading critic of President Trump.

The under-oath untruth was exposed by National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, who sparked national debate on surveillance policy with leaks to the press.

Many members of Congress, mostly Republicans supportive of new limits on electronic surveillance, called for Clapper to be prosecuted as the deadline neared, saying unpunished perjury jeopardizes the ability of Congress to perform oversight.

From Wisconsin to Warsaw, voters around the world have been expressing their deep dissatisfaction with political elites. Yet establishment politicians have preferred to rely on a politically convenient narrative to explain away the populist explosion: Russian interference.

Russian meddling is a real and serious problem. Much more could be done to address it, from naming and punishing those responsible to improving trans-Atlantic efforts to combat it. But the obsession over Russia, sparked by Donald Trump’s 2016 victory, distracts attention from the real causes of populist anger.

Take Italy. Two euroskeptic movements, 5 Star and Northern League, made a strong showing in the general election earlier this month. The result proved vexing to some. “Italy joins long list of elections influenced by Russia,” tweeted Samantha Power, President Obama’s U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. “Sputnik will do what Sputnik does.”

What nonsense. There are plenty of plausible explanations for the result that don’t lead back to Vladimir Putin. Italy’s youth unemployment rate, the third highest in the European Union, stands at 31.5%. The last time Italy’s economic growth topped 2% was 2006. It has struggled to reach 1% since 2010. More than 150,000 African and Middle Eastern refugees landed on Italy’s shores in 2015 alone. Transparency International last year ranked Italy 54th in corruption perceptions. Namibia ranks higher.

Those factors alone ought to be enough to explain Italy’s populist turn, though populism is hardly a new phenomenon in postwar Italy. And Italy isn’t alone. Russian bots supposedly were behind the Brexit campaign, America’s #ReleaseTheMemo hashtag and the Catalan independence movement. That’s not to mention the credit Russia is given for all the racial tension in the U.S. and the political clashes that follow school shootings like the one last month in Parkland, Fla.

Russian interference, apparently, can do almost anything. It seems income stagnation, unbridled immigration, economic inequality, automation and the opioid crisis don’t influence voters as much as a few poorly produced memes. CONTINUE AT SITE

The shock of losing the Presidency to Donald Trump has to be mind-blowing, but Hillary Clinton keeps offering evidence for why she may have been the only Democrat in 2016 who could have managed the feat.

Mrs. Clinton provided the latest demonstration on a visit to India in which she was asked to explain her loss. She blamed the “backwards” parts of America where “you didn’t like black people getting rights; you don’t like women, you know, getting jobs; you don’t want to, you know, see that Indian-American succeeding more than you are.”

This a reprise of her famous “deplorables” crack from the campaign trail, but she didn’t stop there. She also complained about “married white women” who supported Mr. Trump because they were too weak to stand up to “a sort of ongoing pressure to vote the way that your husband, your boss, your son, whoever, believes you should.”

Mrs. Clinton was supposed to be the first female President who rose as the feminist champion for the aspirations of all American women. Yet it turns out she really believes that any woman who voted against her must have been a mental or emotional prisoner of some man, trapped in a kind of political purdah.

Democrats may think Mr. Trump is unfit to be President, but maybe they should take responsibility for nominating a candidate who had such contempt for so many Americans.

President Trump’s decision to replace Rex Tillerson with CIA director Mike Pompeo as Secretary of State looks like a trade up for the Administration and perhaps for U.S. foreign policy. Mr. Tillerson deserved better than the shabby way he was fired, but Mr. Pompeo shares more of the President’s views and is likely to carry more clout with Mr. Trump and foreign leaders.

Mr. Trump was initially attracted to the former Exxon CEO’s status and business success, and boosters like former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice hoped he’d mesh with a businessman president. But foreign policy isn’t made in flow charts, and Mr. Tillerson squandered political capital by trying to reorganize the State Department.

The most successful recent Secretaries— Henry Kissinger, George Shultz, James Baker —used the department’s assets to serve their agendas. They put allies in key jobs to manage the biggest issues, while letting the career staff run lesser portfolios. But more than a year into the Trump era, most senior State posts remain vacant, as do key ambassadorships to the likes of South Korea, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. Mr. Tillerson relied on too many diplomats who served the bureaucracy’s agenda.

Mr. Tillerson’s larger problem was that he disagreed with his boss on key issues. From the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris climate pact to the Saudi Arabia-Qatar dispute, Mr. Tillerson took positions publicly at odds with the White House. This offended Mr. Trump’s easily offended ego, and the President struck back with tweets that undercut Mr. Tillerson at key moments. As if to prove the point, on Tuesday the White House fired another senior State official for contradicting the White House line on Mr. Tillerson’s ouster.