RUTHFULLY YOURS

There was a rush to judgment last week on Peter Strzok, a top FBI counterintelligence agent and one of the lead agents on the Hillary Clinton emails investigation, after revelations that Strzok exchanged text messages during the 2016 campaign with an FBI lawyer that were pro-Clinton and anti-Trump. The lawyer was Lisa Page, with whom he was having an extramarital affair.

Like Strzok, Page worked on both the Clinton probe and on special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of possible Trump campaign collusion with Russia.

In light of the obvious appearance of bias, Mueller rightly removed Strzok from the Trump-Russia case. (Page had already left the investigation.) Nevertheless, Strzok and the Mueller investigation were slammed as Clintonian pillars of anti-Trump animus. Not only were there calls for a purge of possibly corrupt bureaucrats in the FBI and Justice Department, but one Fox News host asserted that these government lawyers and agents should be “taken out in handcuffs” and “locked up.”

Interesting thing: Mueller recently took a guilty plea from Michael Flynn, fleetingly President Trump’s national security adviser, for lying in an FBI interview. News that the interview was conducted by Strzok added fuel to the bias fire.

Yet, as the Wall Street Journal reported last week, former FBI Director James Comey told the House Intelligence Committee in closed session last March that the agents who interviewed Flynn believed he had been truthful. Far from railroading Flynn (and, derivatively, Trump), it appears that Strzok and Comey’s FBI did not seek his prosecution. That decision was made months later, by Mueller’s investigators. It was based on additional investigation, which is hard to depict as skewed since Flynn, after all, has admitted his guilt.

There is significant reason to be concerned about investigative bias.

In a serendipitous bit of typesetting, two opposing views of human nature are posted in Saturday’s Times. On the op-ed page are Gail Collins and Greg Weiner, each propounding the justice of forcing Al Franken to resign; the former stressing his refusal to accept total responsibility for his vaguely remembered misdeeds, the latter insisting that a statesman’s character is paramount in his calling and his role is to “refine and enlarge,” not simply reflect the public’s views (Federalist 10 NYT op-ed 12/9/17) Then, on the back page is an article about Judge Jack Weinstein calling for more alternatives in sentencing violent offenders facing prison.

The Al Franken lynch-mob sees his non-violent transgressions as rendering him unfit for his elected office and have no pangs of conscience on drastically affecting his career and life. The judge is worried about violent men “who have been trapped in a gang culture, and condemned to a life of poverty and probable crime.” The particular young men in this case broke into a family’s apartment where five children under ten witnessed the gun wielders terrify and rob the victims. Collins and Weiner have no truck with mercy for Franken, a comedian at the time he committed the heinous act of posing for a picture that simulated groping a sleeping woman. The judge has so much mercy that he surely short-changes those law-abiding men of East New York who have sufficient character and determinatiion to graduate from school, get jobs and avoid lives of crime. The giveaway is his viewing the criminals as “condemned” to their lifestyle, as opposed to having opted for it as a quicker more lucrative path than the daily drudge of school and work.

Kristen Gillibrand, our New York senator who got the job largely through monetary and political help of both Clintons, had this to say about the current epidemic of cleansing society of abusive males: “I think when we start having to talk about the differences between sexual assault and sexual harassment and unwanted groping you are having the wrong conversation. You need to draw a line in the sand and say none of it is ok.” (Capitol News Conference) What would Judge Weinstein say to this type of non-differential thinking if the senator were representing one of the criminals in his courtroom? Is an unwanted grope really no different than a rape? And if we condemn those who are tried in the court of public opinion for deeds committed years and decades ago, why not ask Ms. Gillibrand to resign for having accepted the favors of a man who committed perjury and didn’t need to search his memory. All of us could see the truth as plainly as that finger wagging across our tv screens protesting that he “had not had sex with that woman” – the one whose dress was stained with DNA from an appendage that yielded far more credible evidence than that lying finger.

Democrats and feminists who supported Bill then, now have to decide whether it’s better to admit to being hypocrites or stick with being too dense to make distinctions between sexual harassment and sexual assault. They also must ask themselves how their movement has failed to give its constituency the necessary gumption to stand up for themselves in the workplace. Rules about sexual harassment have been in place since Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and many women have availed themselves of this recourse. After all the talk of giving women a voice, are we really willing to settle for applauding women who, years after the fact, slink into the groupthink hashtagmetoo? What can we say about the women who preferred saying nothing and collecting large sums of money for their silence? At the same time that we accept the stories women tell without the need for independent corroboration, we are encouraging a stampede of indiscriminate firings that give the lie to the notion of due process. Senator McCarthy had more to go on than the senators who just killed Al Franken with an act of meaningless hypocrisy. Al would have had a better shot in Judge Weinstein’s criminal court than with the esteemed jury of his senatorial peers.

The Alabama Senate election was about everything except Alabama. And in the end, Alabamans stayed home and let the inevitable turnout tide of passion politics take its course. Minority voters rallied to Obama. Republicans stayed home. And the GOP is now holding on to a bare one-seat Senate majority.

The Democrats had abandoned Alabama, along with much of the South. They weren’t interested in Doug Jones until they smelled weakness. And they still aren’t interested in representing Alabamans now. They just want another Senate seat to bring them closer to blocking and impeaching President Trump.

Alabama isn’t a place to them. It’s another chess piece in a Washington D.C. game that they can use to block judicial nominations, shut down the government and reverse the results of the previous election. They have Alabama now, but history suggests that unless they learn the lessons that cost them their former strongholds in the South, they won’t hold on to the seat that they paid a very pretty penny for.

The Alabama River follows a long and meandering course. But not nearly as long and meandering as the dark river of money that poured into the Alabama Senate race.

The tide of cash swirled, eddied and drifted along the secret rivers that flowed from Washington D.C. and San Francisco, from Las Vegas and New York City, and decided an election. Timed spending meant that they could avoid revealing their donors. And the biggest spender in the race had no money.

Some of these rivers had strange names.

There was Highway 31.The real Highway 31 links Alabama to Michigan. But the Highway 31 SuperPAC was a money route worth over $4 million leading back to Washington D.C. and New York City. Behind the local name were Senate Schumer’s Senate Majority PAC and the Obama/Hillary Priorities USA Action which was best known for a slimy ad accusing Mitt Romney of killing a steelworker’s wife.

Soros money may have poured down Highway 31 as the secretive shell group became the biggest outside spender in the race. Even though officially its bank account was empty. Instead consulting firms run by Obama staffers did the work on credit for Highway 31. That meant Highway 31 didn’t have to reveal its donors until after the election. Meanwhile Highway 31 ran an ad warning Alabama voters that their votes in the election were a matter of “public record” and that their “community will know.”

Coming up behind Highway 31 was Stand Up Republic. Like Highway 31, Stand Up Republic is a folksy false front. Behind the name that could easily belong to a jeans company or a chain of comedy club is Evan McMullin, a former CIA agent, Wall Streeter and independent 2016 presidential candidate.

Stand Up Republic claims to be fighting for “democratic norms”. McMullin claims to be a Never Trumper conservative. Neither claim holds up very well considering that the only known donor to SUR is Persian billionaire Pierre Omidyar who provided $250,000 to McMullin’s group. The Franco-Persian tycoon is best known for funding The Intercept, a radical left-wing site that specializes in undermining national security and which will be forever linked to the Snowden spy case.

McMullin has claimed that, “Donald Trump is not a loyal American and we should prepare for the next four years accordingly.” His own loyalties appear to be rather complicated. Omidyar’s SUR grant is listed alongside grants like Veterans Against Islamaphophia and Strategies for American Muslim Communities.

Out of these murky waters came $500K in ads.

Rex Tillerson should be the darling of the liberal media. He supported sticking with the Iran deal, which basically allows Iran to develop nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles. He opposed stating the obvious: that Israel’s capital is Jerusalem. And he supported the ridiculous Paris climate change treaty.

But the media have been harder on him than on any other Cabinet member. A week does not pass without the publication of explicit articles or opinion pieces calling on Tillerson to resign (such as here, here, here, and here).

Why?

Because Tillerson has been working assiduously to cut the staff of the State Department. He wants to cut the State Department staff by 8%. Liberals are horrified. They don’t have the faintest idea how many people should be working at the State Department. All they know is that however many there are, there shouldn’t be fewer. Even worse, Tillerson hasn’t filled many senior political positions at the State Department, and he’s been criticized for not consulting with the staff there – he makes them feel unimportant!

The media are full of stories of the “understaffed” State Department.

Vox says the understaffed State Department makes the situation with North Korea more dangerous.

The result is a North Korea crisis where America’s typical tools for crisis management – high-level statements and consultation with allies – aren’t functioning. And experts agree that the consequences are unpredictable, but potentially severe.

We need a fully staffed State Department to “make high-level statements.” Or do we? But in the same article, Vox, incredibly, admits that perhaps the State Department just doesn’t matter:

It’s more than possible that all of this amounts to nothing – that we muddle through this latest North Korea provocation and future ones on the strength of America’s long-term commitment to South Korean and Japanese security[.]

Here’s another great quote from the WaPo where in one sentence it also says the understaffing will have a terrible effect – and no effect at all!

The lack of movement on filling ambassadorial posts is not likely to damage U.S. credibility or leverage abroad right away, diplomats and others said, but it threatens to undermine the work of a department that is understaffed and facing severe budget cuts.

Rep. Adam Schiff’s life just got a little more complicated.

Donald Trump Jr. wants the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence to look into leaks of confidential, non-public information he says took place during and after his eight-hour interview with the committee on December 6.

Trump’s attorney, Alan Futerfas, sent a letter to Rep. Mike Conaway of Texas, who took over the committee’s investigation of Russian actions during the 2016 election from Devin Nunes after Nunes recused himself earlier this year amid ethics complaints.

Last week the House Ethics Committee cleared Nunes of claims that he had improperly disclosed classified information while leading the investigation, though Rep. Mike Conaway said Monday that he would continue running the probe.

But while Nunes was falsely accused of leaking, Democrats on the committee have been getting away with leaking like sieves all year.

According to the letter, Trump Jr. and his attorneys were promised that the interview would be “kept strictly confidential and not discussed publicly unless and until the full committee voted to release the transcript.”

Yet while he was still being interviewed, “members of the committee and/or their staff began selectively leaking the information provided during the interview to various press outlets, most notably CNN.”

The letter cited tweets from CNN’s congressional reporter Manu Raju as evidence of leaking.

Don Jr. made case to House investigators that he did NOT tell his father about the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting, I’m told. Made similar case to Senate Judiciary staff in September
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) December 6, 2017

“Donald Trump Jr. told House investigators that he did not communicate directly with his father when confronted with news reports about his June 2016 Trump Tower meeting, according to multiple sources with knowledge of his testimony,” CNN reported on Dec. 6. CONTINUE AT SITE

At a moment when the special counsel’s team is busy calling its own fairness and impartiality into question, why would Donald Trump even think of firing Robert Mueller ?

When the special counsel picked his team, almost half the lawyers he selected had donated to Hillary Clinton. Legally that may not be disqualifying. It was, however, highly imprudent for a man presiding over the nation’s most sensitive investigation. Not a single Mueller prosecutor had contributed to Mr. Trump.

Those donations now provide the context for more recent revelations about the partisan preferences of Team Mueller. Start with the lead FBI agent, Peter Strzok, who exchanged anti-Trump, pro-Hillary text messages with his mistress, an FBI lawyer named Lisa Page —who was then also working for Mr. Mueller. Andrew Weissmann, the lead prosecutor, not only attended Mrs. Clinton’s election-night soiree but turns out to have cheered an Obama holdover at the Justice Department, Sally Yates, for her refusal to carry out a presidential order. Meanwhile we learn that a senior Justice official, Bruce Ohr, met with both Trump dossier author Christopher Steele and Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson during the 2016 campaign—and that his wife worked for Fusion GPS.

These developments, alas, have encouraged two horrible responses from Republicans. The first is the call for Mr. Trump to sack Mr. Mueller, an idea news reports say is gaining traction inside the White House. The other is for a new special counsel to investigate the existing special counsel.
Robert S. Mueller. Photo: Universal History Archive/UIG via Bridgeman Images

Either would make a bad situation worse. If the president fires Mr. Mueller now, it will look as though he has something to hide; if another special counsel is appointed, it will further diminish the proper investigative authority here—i.e., Congress. There are better ways forward.

Start with the president. If it’s true that there is no obstruction or Russian collusion, his overriding interest lies in full transparency. In a recent piece for National Review, former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy asks why Mr. Trump doesn’t just order the declassification of material such as the FBI’s application for Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court warrants to wiretap Trump associates, so Americans can see for themselves whether the FBI used or misused information from the infamous Steele dossier. Good question. CONTINUE AT SITE

Alabama voters can be forgiven if they preferred to sit out Tuesday’s special Senate election, but those who turned out narrowly elected Democrat Doug Jones to fill the seat vacated by Attorney General Jeff Sessions. The result is a painful lesson for the Alabama Republicans who nominated Roy Moore in the September primary. But it’s also a useful act of political hygiene for the national Republican Party given the accusations of sexual misconduct against the former judge.

The cost of defeat will be high and immediate. Despite his campaign vows to “cross the aisle” to work with Republicans, Mr. Jones will fit right in with Senate Democrats. He will be a reliable vote for Chuck Schumer on any important matter, including judicial nominees. Had he shown even a scintilla of moderation on abortion, for example, he would have won in a rout.

Mr. Moore’s defeat narrows the GOP majority’s margin to 51-49, which will give even more leverage to individual Senators who want to grandstand or satisfy a political constituency. Alabama evangelical Christians who supported Mr. Moore over appointed Sen. Luther Strange in the GOP primary should know that they have now made a conservative Supreme Court nominee less likely if Justice Anthony Kennedy retires in 2018. Senators Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins will hold the balance of judicial confirmation power, and watch the media lobby them in waves.

The good news is that Mr. Moore’s loss may give the GOP a better chance of holding the Senate majority next year. Democrats were primed to make Mr. Moore a national symbol of sexual harassment to drive turnout among women. GOP incumbents would have been asked about Mr. Moore every day.

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.