RUTHFULLY YOURS

This new Daniel Greenfield Moment presents Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Fellow at the Freedom Center and editor of The Point atFrontpagemag.com.

Daniel discusses The Entrapment of Michael Flynn, unveiling a leftist political witch-hunt that is standing justice on its head.

Don’t miss it!http://jamieglazov.com/2017/12/12/glazov-gang-the-entrapment-of-michael-flynn/

Special prosecutors, investigators, and counsels are usually a bad idea. They are admissions that constitutionally mandated institutions don’t work — and can be rescued only by supposed superhuman moralists, who are without the innate biases inherent in human nature.

The record from Lawrence Walsh to Ken Starr to Patrick Fitzgerald suggests otherwise. Originally narrow mandates inevitably expand — on the cynical theory that everyone has something embarrassing to hide. Promised “short” timelines and limited budgets are quickly forgotten. Prosecutors search for ever new crimes to justify the expense and public expectations of the special-counsel appointment.

Soon the investigators need to be investigated for their own conflicts of interest, as if we need special-special or really, really special prosecutors. Special investigations often quickly turn Soviet, in the sense of “Show me the man and I’ll find you the crime.”

Special Counsel Robert Mueller has led what seems to be an exemplary life of public service. No doubt he believes that as a disinterested investigator he can get to the bottom of the once contentious charge of “Russian collusion” in the 2016 election. But can he?

A Mandate Gone Wild
Something has gone terribly wrong with the Mueller investigation.

The investigation is venturing well beyond the original mandate of rooting out evidence of Russian collusion. Indeed, the word “collusion” is now rarely invoked at all. It has given way to its successor, “obstruction.” The latter likely will soon beget yet another catchphrase to justify the next iteration of the investigations.

There seems far less special investigatory concern with the far more likely Russian collusion in the matters of the origins and dissemination of the Fusion GPS/Steele dossier, and its possible role in the Obama-administration gambit of improper or illegal surveilling, unmasking, and leaking of the names of American citizens.

Leaks from the Mueller investigation so far abound. They have seemed calibrated to create a public consensus that particular individuals are currently under investigation, likely to be indicted — or indeed likely guilty.

These public worries are not groundless. They are deeply rooted in the nature and liberal composition of the Mueller investigative team — whose left-leaning appointments just months ago had understandably made the liberal media giddy with anticipation from the outset. Wired, for instance, published this headline on June 14: “Robert Mueller Chooses His Investigatory Dream Team.” Vox, on August 22, wrote: “Meet the all-star legal team who may take down Trump.” The Daily Beast, two day later, chimed in: “Inside Robert Mueller’s Army.”

For years after the 9/11 destruction of the World Trade Center towers, it was a point of civic pride among New Yorkers and their stellar police department that no serious terrorist attack had succeeded again in America’s foremost urban target. Now that may be changing, which raises questions about whether the post 9/11 status quo needs to be re-examined.

Monday morning’s failed pipe bombing by Bangladeshi Akayed Ullah at rush hour near the Port Authority bus terminal is the third attack in New York City by an Islamic terrorist in the past 14 months.

On Halloween day this year, Sayfullo Saipov, a New Jersey resident, drove a truck down a lower Manhattan bicycle path and killed eight people. A year before, Ahmad Khan Rahimi, also of New Jersey, detonated a pressure cooker filled with ball bearings on a street in the downtown Chelsea neighborhood. Rahimi planted two other bombs, one nearby in Chelsea and another in Seaside, N.J. No one died but he wounded 30.

The fact that no one died in two of these incidents is little solace. Make no mistake: On Monday New York City averted a major calamity.

In won’t do to dwell on the New York terrorists’ bomb-detonation ineptitude. That’s dumb luck. The driver who plowed through pedestrians in Nice on Bastille Day last year killed 86, and the United Kingdom’s Manchester Arena suicide bomber this May killed 23 and injured more than 500 people.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said Monday morning, “This is one of my worst nightmares—a terrorist attack in the subway system.” That’s right, Governor, as it is constantly for all the millions of New Yorkers sitting in those subway cars every day.

After 9/11, two of the most significant terror-related incidents were political disputes about police surveillance. In 2007 Mitch Silber, then the NYPD’s top terrorism analyst, issued a detailed report, “Radicalization in the West: The Homegrown Threat.” Mr. Silber and co-author Arvin Bhatt were prescient, but civil liberties groups denounced his report for its “stigmatizing effects” and supposed religious profiling.

One of the more obvious things about the Trump economy is how much better it is than the Obama economy.

Yet incredibly, President Obama, as if jealously looking on at this night-and-day difference, is trying to claim credit for it.

From the Washington Times:

Former President Barack Obama is taking credit for the robust economic growth that is taking place under President Trump.

At a conference of mayors in Chicago, Mr. Obama congratulated himself Tuesday for strong employment numbers in the U.S. this year, saying his climate-change policies have contributed to growth.

“As we took these actions, we saw the U.S. economy grow consistently,” Mr. Obama said. “We saw the longest streak of job creation in American history by far, a streak that still continues by the way.”

He added wryly, “Thanks, Obama.”

Investor’s Business Daily did two fine editorials on what was really going on, how and why the economy was growing, here and here, and American Thinker noted one of these editorials here. Cutting taxes, throwing out regulations, and ending the harassment of Obama-unfavored industries such as oil and coal have done wonders.

Now White House press secretary Sarah Sanders called Obama out on his bid to claim credit.

“Donald Trump’s relentless focus on tax cuts, deregulation and draining the swamp is great for job growth… with minorities, women, men and even those with low incomes, showing the best gains” https://t.co/DpvWtKlCY6

— Sarah Sanders (@PressSec) December 10, 2017

Since the election “the jobless rate for African Americans dropped from 8% to 7.3%, while for Hispanics it fell from 5.7% to 4.7%…and with Trump’s big tax cuts on the way, job growth isn’t likely to end soon -more good news for all Americans.” -Investor’s Business Daily

— Sarah Sanders (@PressSec) December 10, 2017

Can’t make it up: Obama now wants credit for the booming Trump economy. At least we can all agree the economy is better under President Trump.

— Sarah Sanders (@PressSec) December 10, 2017

I’m old enough to remember when President Trump’s election was going to “crash the market.” One year later: market up over 30%, two million new jobs & 1,000 new manufacturing jobs created every day just last month…and now Obama wants credit for the booming Trump economy.

— Sarah Sanders (@PressSec) December 10, 2017

Obama’s claims to credit are not new. Ben Rhodes has been crafting this “narrative” for several months now on Twitter as news after news comes out about the U.S. finally seeing better economic times under President Trump.

Anybody who still believes that there is no Deep State in America might recall three major Deep State rebellions against constitutionally elected administrations in recent history.

1. The Stalin period, when communists, both overt and covert, had deeply infiltrated the State Department; the White House; and, most dangerously, the Manhattan Project of DOD, which built the first two nuclear bombs. At that time, the Communist Party of the USA was directly controlled by Stalin’s Comintern in Moscow, the international center for worldwide infiltration, sabotage, espionage, and agitation-propaganda aiming to destroy the United States and its allies. Stalin’s Comintern was especially powerful in Hollywood, in universities and the media.

2. The Watergate period, when historically anti-communist President Richard Nixon was destroyed by a revenge campaign, combining the NYT-WaPo media axis with the FBI’s Mark Felt and the Democrats (among them Hillary Clinton) to bring down the duly elected president of the U.S. by unconstitutional means.

The extra-constitutional office of the special prosecutor was made up at that time, with no constitutional warrant or standing, and indeed in direct violation of the U.S. Constitution (USC Amendments I-IV).

3. Today, we are seeing a third example of an attempted coup d’état by the Deep State and the left-controlled media, both monsters that were never imagined by the Founders. In 2016, Hillary Clinton was openly endorsed by the Communist Party USA, and Hillary never rejected that endorsement. That fact speaks for itself.

In the meantime, the corrupt media keep aiming for conservative scalps. If Roy Moore is elected to the Senate, he will be harassed and scapegoated next. That is 100 percent predictable, because for the left, the swamp, and the corrupt media, there are no credible punishments.

Today, we see another politically motivated special counsel in close cahoots with the Democratic Party and three Deep State chiefs who were recently fired by Donald J. Trump: James Comey, George Brennan, and Jim Clapper. These individuals, as well as Mr. Mueller, were appointed by Barack H. Obama, who has repeatedly expressed his open contempt for the clearly delimited powers of the U.S. Constitution.

After less than a year in office, President Donald J. Trump has exceeded the expectations of his supporters and confounded his enemies.

Economic growth is accelerating, stock prices are rising, and consumer confidence is soaring. The only distressed asset in the US market is conventional wisdom, which dismissed the former real-estate developer and reality TV star as a blundering amateur.

On the contrary, Trump evinces a shrewdness about American voters better than that of any politician of his generation. Even more importantly, he has the nerve to take risks in order to draw his opponents into battles that he thinks he can win. I can think of no politician with his combination of courage and cunning since Franklin Delano Roosevelt, to whom I compared the then president-elect in a December 2016 essay for Standpoint.

In the past week alone:

– The White House shepherded its tax cut bill through the Senate and probably will have reconciled legislation from the House and Senate on the President’s desk before year-end;

– The mainstream media’s efforts to tar Trump with the charge of collusion with Russian interference in the 2016 elections flamed out in some of the most embarrassing blunders in television history;

– Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of alleged Trump collusion ran into land mines as evidence of political conflicts of interest surfaced; and

– Most impressively of all, Trump appears to have inflicted punishing losses on the National Football League, which suffered a sharp drop in viewers after the president attacked team owners for allowing players to refuse to stand for the national anthem.

It’s one thing to take on the Senate Republicans or the Federal Bureau of Investigation, quite another to persuade Americans to turn off football.

The kneeling protests of black football stars who refused to honor the national anthem may seem trivial beside the great questions of economics and national security. Trump’s adroit handling of the issue, though, shows both his political virtuosity and the fatal weakness of the Democrats, who have turned their party into the defender of racial, sexual and ethnic victimhood.

Chanukah’s historical context according to the Books of the Maccabees, The Scroll of Antiochus and The War of the Jews by Joseph Ben Mattityahu (Josephus Plavius):

In 175 BCE, the Seleucid Emperor Antiochus (IV) Epiphanies of Syria (1/3 of the disintegrated Greek Empire) wished to exterminate Judaism and forcibly convert Jews to Hellenism. He suspected that the Jews were allies of his chief rival, Egypt. In 169 BCE, upon returning to Syria from a war against Egypt, he devastated Jerusalem, massacred Jews, forbade the practice of Judaism and desecrated the Temple.

The 167 BCE Jewish rebellion featured the Hasmonean (Maccabee) family: Mattityahu, a priest from Modi’in, and his five sons, Yochanan, Judah, Shimon, Yonatan and Elazar. The heroic, creative battle tactics of the Maccabees, were consistent with the reputation of Jews as superb warriors, who were frequently hired as mercenaries by Egypt, Syria, Rome and other global and regional powers. The battles of the Maccabees inspired the future Jewish rebellion against the Roman Empire: from the battle against Pompey in 63 BCE through the suppression of the Bar Kokhba Rebellion in 135 CE.

2. The name Maccabee (מכבי or מקבי) is a derivative of the Hebrew word Makevet (מקבת), power hammer in Hebrew. It is also a derivative of the Hebrew verb Cabeh (כבה), to extinguish. Maccabee, מכבי, is also the Hebrew acronym of “Who could resemble you among gods, O Jehovah” מי כמוך באלים יי)). In Latin, the C is sometimes pronounced like a TZ, and Maccabee could be the Latin spelling of the Hebrew word Matzbee, a commander-in-chief.

3. Chanukah ( חנוכהin Hebrew) celebrates the initiation/inauguration (חנוכ) of the reconstructed Temple. Chanukah (חנוכה) is education-oriented (חנוכ). A key feature of Chanukah is the education/mentoring of the family and community, recognizing education as the foundation of human behavior.

According to the First Book of Maccabees, Judah the Maccabee instituted an 8-day holiday on the 25th day of the Jewish month of Kislev 165 BCE (just like King Solomon’s 8-day celebration of the inauguration of the First Temple), in order to commemorate Jewish history, in general, and the inauguration and deliverance of the holy altar and the Temple, in particular. The Hebrew word, Chanukah, חנוכה, consists of two words, Hanu-Kah ( חנו-כהin Hebrew) which means “they camped/rested” (חנו) on the 25th day (כה equals 25 in Hebrew) of the Jewish month of Kislev.

4. The Chanukah Menorah (a 9-branched-candelabra) commemorates the legacy of the Maccabees, highlighting the prerequisites of spiritual and physical liberty, in defiance of formidable odds: value-driven faith, tenacious optimism, patriotism, attachment to roots, adherence to long-term values and interests over political-correctness and short-term convenience.

The rationale for Robert Mueller’s appointment as special counsel is that Russia conducted a cyberespionage attack — hacking — to interfere in the 2016 presidential campaign, and that the Trump campaign may somehow have “colluded” in this offense. Mueller has been at this for six months, and the FBI for a year before that. So isn’t it about time we asked: Could Mueller prove that Russia did it?

Forget Trump. What about Russia?

We have paid too much attention to the so-called collusion component of the probe — speculation about Trump-campaign coordination in Russia’s perfidy. There appears to be no proof of that sort of collusion. Because it has been our focus, though, Mueller has gotten a free pass on a defect that would be fatal to any related prosecution theory: He cannot prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Russia is guilty of hacking the Democratic National Committee and prominent Democrats.

This doesn’t mean it didn’t happen — like the U.S. intelligence agencies, I’m assuming it did, and that Russia should continue to be the subject of intense government counterintelligence efforts. The point is that Mueller can’t prove it in court, which is the only thing for which a prosecutor is needed. If he can’t establish to the required standard of proof that Russia conducted an espionage attack on the election, it is impossible to prove that anyone conspired with Russia to do so. There is no criminal case.

Plainly, that is why Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, to appease Democrats angered over former FBI director James Comey’s firing in May, appointed a special counsel without specifying any crimes that the Justice Department is purportedly too conflicted to investigate (as the pertinent regulations require). This infirmity was papered over by calling the probe a “counterintelligence” investigation — which is not a criminal investigation but an information-gathering exercise to defend the nation against foreign threats to American interests.

Rosenstein did not identify a crime because he did not have one. There are two reasons for this, but we have focused myopically on the wrong one: the fact that contacts between Trump associates and the Russian regime do not prove they conspired together in an espionage scheme. That simply shows that Mueller does not have a case. The more basic problem is that he cannot have a case. Russia’s espionage operation cannot be proved beyond a reasonable doubt, so it will never be possible to prove the Trump campaign colluded in it.

Let’s concede that there is some evidence — not much, but some — of contacts between Trump associates and operatives of the Russian regime. On its face, this is not incriminating — no more than the fact of contacts between the Clinton camp and the Russian regime. What would make the Trump-Russia contacts criminal would be indications that they facilitated Russia’s cyberespionage operation against the 2016 election.

This raises the question: What is the proof that Russia conducted a cyberespionage operation against the 2016 election? Here we get to the critical distinction between counterintelligence and criminal investigations — a distinction I have been harping on since before Mueller’s appointment.

The reaction around the world in recent days has been a reminder of the one central truth of the whole conflict. Those who cannot accept that Jerusalem is the capital of the State of Israel tend to be exactly the same as those who cannot accept the State of Israel.

Trump comes out of the whole situation well — taking on a promise that his three predecessors made, but on which only he had the courage to act. Those who have most forcibly criticised him, on the other hand, have shown something weak, as well as ugly, about themselves.

President Trump’s announcement on the status of Jerusalem last week was both historic and commendable. Historic because it is the first time that an American president has not just acknowledged that the Israeli capital is Jerusalem but decided to act on that acknowledgement. Commendable for breaking a deceitful trend and accepting what will remain the reality on the ground in every imaginable future scenario. As many people have pointed out in recent days, there is not one prospective peace deal between the Israelis and the Palestinians in which Tel Aviv becomes the capital of the Jewish state.

Yet, the Palestinian leadership, much of the mainstream media, academia and the global diplomatic community take another view. They believe that the American president should have continued with the fairy tale and should never have said “That the United States recognises Jerusalem as the capital of the State of Israel and that the United States Embassy to Israel will be relocated to Jerusalem as soon as practicable.” They claim that this is not a simple recognition of reality and not simply the American President granting the State of Israel the same right every other nation on the planet has — which is to have their capital where they like. Such forces claim that this is a “provocative” move. Amply demonstrating the illogic of this position, the first thing the Turkish Sultan Recep Tayyip Erdogan did after the American president made his announcement was to threaten a suspension of Turkish relations with Israel.