RUTHFULLY YOURS

We live in a dangerous world. For the 70,000 officers at Homeland Security and the 40,000 officers within the Department of Justice, proper training and equipment are vital to their daily law enforcement duties. Over a nearly two-year period – the last years of the Obama administration (FY2015 – FY2016), these law enforcement agencies spent $138 million on new guns and ammunition. That seems reasonable.

What’s curious, however, is that traditionally administrative agencies spent more than $20 million. Four notable examples:

1) The 2,300 Special Agents at the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) are allowed to carry AR-15’s, P90 tactical rifles, and other heavy weaponry. Recently, the IRS armed up with $1.2 million in new ammunition. This was in addition to the $11 million procurement of guns, ammunition, and military-style equipment procured between 2006-2014.

2) The Small Business Administration (SBA) spent tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars to load its gun locker with Glocks last year. The SBA wasn’t alone – the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service modified their Glocks with silencers.

3) The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has a relatively new police force. In 1996, the VA had zero employees with arrest and firearm authority. Today, the VA has 3,700 officers, armed with millions of dollars’ worth of guns and ammunition including AR-15’s, Sig Sauer handguns, and semi-automatic pistols.

4) Meanwhile, Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) agents carry the same sophisticated weapons platforms used by our Special Forces military warriors. The HHS gun locker is housed in a new “National Training Operations Center” – a facility at an undisclosed location within the DC beltway.

Last year, we released our OpenTheBooks.com Oversight Report: The Militarization of America in an editorial published with former-U.S. Senator Dr. Tom Coburn at The Wall Street Journal. Our report quantified the $1.48 billion spent by 67 non-military federal agencies on guns, ammunition, and military-style equipment from 2006-2014.

This week, our organization at OpenTheBooks.com updated our data to include gun and ammo purchases over fiscal year 2015 and a partial FY2016. Spending on guns and ammo at 58 non-military federal agencies – including 40 regulatory, administrative agencies – amounted to $158 million.

The continued growth of the federal arsenal begs the question: Just whom are the feds planning to battle?

More examples of agencies amassing firepower over the last two years:

Loading the Gun Locker – Federal agencies spent $44 million on guns, including an “urgent” order for 20 M-16 Rifles with extra magazines at the Department of Energy ($49,559); shotguns and Glock pistols at the General Services Administration ($16,568); and a bulk order of pistols, sights, and accessories by the Bureau of Reclamation whose main job is to build dams, power plants, and canals ($697,182).

Buying Bullets in Bulk – The government spent $114 million on ammunition, including bulk purchases by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) ($66,927); the Smithsonian ($42,687); and the Railroad Retirement Board ($6,941). The Social Security Administration spent $61,129 on bullets including 50,000 rounds of ammunition plus 12-gauge buckshot and slug ammo.

The EPA special agents purchased ammunition for their .357 and 9mm revolvers and buckshot for their shotguns. While Bernie Sanders claimed that the biggest adversary to the United States was climate change, the EPA stood ready to fight in ways we couldn’t have imagined.

Hollow-Point Bullets – Despite being outlawed by the Geneva Convention, federal agencies spent $426,268 on hollow-point bullets, including orders from the Forest Service, National Park Service, Office of Inspector General, Bureau of Fiscal Service, as well as Drug Enforcement Administration, U.S. Marshals, and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Let’s put the Uranium One scandal in perspective: The cool half-million bucks the Putin regime funneled to Bill Clinton was five times the amount it spent on those Facebook ads — the ones the media-Democrat complex ludicrously suggests swung the 2016 presidential election to Donald Trump.

The Facebook-ad buy, which started in June 2015 — before Donald Trump entered the race — was more left-wing agitprop (ads pushing hysteria on racism, immigration, guns, etc.) than electioneering. The Clintons’ own long-time political strategist Mark Penn estimates that just $6,500 went to actual electioneering. (You read that right: 65 hundred dollars.) By contrast, the staggering $500,000 payday from a Kremlin-tied Russian bank for a single speech was part of a multi-million-dollar influence-peddling scheme to enrich the former president and his wife, then–secretary of state Hillary Clinton. At the time, Russia was plotting — successfully — to secure U.S. government approval for its acquisition of Uranium One, and with it, tens of billions of dollars in U.S. uranium reserves.

Here’s the kicker: The Uranium One scandal is not only, or even principally, a Clinton scandal. It is an Obama-administration scandal.

The Clintons were just doing what the Clintons do: cashing in on their “public service.” The Obama administration, with Secretary Clinton at the forefront but hardly alone, was knowingly compromising American national-security interests. The administration green-lighted the transfer of control over one-fifth of American uranium-mining capacity to Russia, a hostile regime — and specifically to Russia’s state-controlled nuclear-energy conglomerate, Rosatom. Worse, at the time the administration approved the transfer, it knew that Rosatom’s American subsidiary was engaged in a lucrative racketeering enterprise that had already committed felony, extortion, fraud, and money-laundering offenses.

The Obama administration also knew that congressional Republicans were trying to stop the transfer. Consequently, the Justice Department concealed what it knew. DOJ allowed the racketeering enterprise to continue compromising the American uranium industry rather than commencing a prosecution that would have scotched the transfer. Prosecutors waited four years before quietly pleading the case out for a song, in violation of Justice Department charging guidelines. Meanwhile, the administration stonewalled Congress, reportedly threatening an informant who wanted to go public.

Obama’s ‘Reset’

To understand what happened here, we need to go back to the beginning.

The first-tier military arsenal of Putin’s Russia belies its status as a third-rate economic power. For well over a decade, the regime has thus sought to develop and exploit its capacity as a nuclear-energy producer. Naïvely viewing Russia as a “strategic partner” rather than a malevolent competitor, the Bush administration made a nuclear-cooperation agreement with the Kremlin in May 2008. That blunder, however, was tabled before Congress could consider it. That is because Russia, being Russia, invaded Georgia.

In 2009, notwithstanding this aggression (which continues to this day with Russia’s occupation of Abkhazia and South Ossetia), President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton signaled the new administration’s determination to “reset” relations with Moscow. In this reset, renewed cooperation and commerce in nuclear energy would be central.

There had been such cooperation and commerce since the Soviet Union imploded. In 1992, the administration of President George H. W. Bush agreed with the nascent Russian federation that U.S. nuclear providers would be permitted to purchase uranium from Russia’s disassembled nuclear warheads (after it had been down-blended from its highly enriched weapons-grade level). The Russian commercial agent responsible for the sale and transportation of this uranium to the U.S. is the Kremlin-controlled company “Tenex” (formally, JSC Techsnabexport). Tenex is a subsidiary of Rosatom.

Tenex (and by extension, Rosatom) have an American arm called “Tenam USA.” Tenam is based in Bethesda, Md. Around the time President Obama came to power, the Russian official in charge of Tenam was Vadim Mikerin.

In 2010, the FBI arrested ten Russian spies as part of “Operation Ghost Stories.” According to a top FBI official, the agency had to act quickly because the “deep cover” agents had come very close to “a sitting US cabinet member.” They had already infiltrated then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s inner circle, befriending a Democratic fundraiser close to Clinton.

Clinton’s Russian connections have attracted more scrutiny following recent revelations of an FBI investigation into Russian company Rosatom, which gained control of 20 percent of U.S. uranium in the 2010 Uranium One deal. The fact that the Russian spies attempted to infiltrate Clinton’s network just before the Uranium One deal has been previously reported by PJ Media’s Pat Poole, and the connection to the recent revelations of the FBI investigation into Rosatom was reported by Center for Security Policy analyst J. Michael Waller in The Daily Caller Friday.

“We were becoming very concerned,” Frank Figliuzzi, the FBI’s assistant director of counterintelligence, told the BBC in 2012. “They were getting close enough to a sitting US cabinet member that we thought we could no longer allow this to continue.”

There are many reasons to suggest Clinton was this “sitting US cabinet member.” In June 2010, Barbara Morea, president of Morea Financial Services in Manhattan, confirmed that “Cynthia Murphy,” Russian External Intelligence Service (SVR) spy Lidiya Guryeva, was a longtime employee and vice president at the company. The company managed the finances of Alan Patricof, one of New York’s top Democratic donors, who fundraised for Clinton’s Senate and presidential campaigns.

Federal court documents reported that Guryeva had “several work-related personal meetings” with “a prominent New York-based financier.” The complaint added that Guryeva and her husband reported back to Moscow that the financier was “prominent in politics,” “an active fundraiser for” a major political party, and a “personal friend” of a current Cabinet official. Patricof fit every one of these descriptions.

Orders from Moscow suggested Patricof might “provide [Guryeva] with remarks re US foreign policy, ‘roumors’ [sic] about White house internal ‘kitchen…'” Worse, the court document also noted that Guryeva “explained to [her husband] that he would not be able to work at the top echelons of certain parts of the United States Government — the State Department, for example.”

While the documents never mention Hillary Clinton by name, the evidence all points in her direction. Guryeva was focused on Patricof, a close friend of Clinton’s, sought to gain information about the White House from a source close to Clinton, and expressed a familiarity with the State Department, the agency Hillary Clinton ran.

Patricof confirmed that he appeared to have been the target, and said he had never talked politics with Guryeva.

Clinton spokesmen at the time insisted that the secretary of State was not the Russian spy ring’s target, but Figliuzzi’s comment suggests a fear that the SVR agents would get too close to a certain cabinet member.

The FBI arrested the Russian spies on June 28, 2010, one day before Bill Clinton gave a speech in Moscow to a Kremlin-connected investment bank, Renaissance Capital. Clinton received $500,000 for this speech. CONTINUE AT SITE

Once again, the Left—in its frenzy to deploy any weapon at hand to damage President Trump—made the critical mistake of allowing us to peer behind the curtain and see what they’re really up to. https://amgreatness.com/2017/10/20/kelly-exposes-ugliness-on-the-left-limpness-on-the-right/

Democrats and their accomplices in the media attempted to gin up controversy following the deaths of four service members killed in Niger earlier this month. They pounced again after a notorious Democratic Party hack, and self-proclaimed “rock star,” Rep. Frederica S. Wilson (D-Fla.), said Trump’s call to one of the Gold Star families was “insensitive.”

Wilson announced with indignation that Trump told a widow of one of the slain soldiers her husband “knew what he signed up for…but when it happens, it hurts anyway.” The furrowed brows crowd populating our illustrious Democratic-media complex ran with the story, eager to tar Trump and turn Niger into his Benghazi—only this time, it would be a Benghazi that actually mattered to them.

This was not to be, however, because we no longer live in the Bush era. Trump and his team understand the importance of fighting back in the face of reckless criticism. Absorbing low blows from your political adversaries serves no good purpose when they are beyond shame.

So General John Kelly, Trump’s chief of staff, stepped in and gave them a much-deserved thrashing.

Kelly manfully detailed the heart-wrenching process of what happens after a member of our armed services dies in combat. He spoke of how a family is notified—an experience with which he is all too familiar, both as a commander and as a father who has lost a son in Afghanistan. He defended Trump from the media’s attacks but, even more important, he eviscerated the credibility and the honor of Rep. Wilson and her characteristically self-serving misrepresentations. (Misrepresentations that have been refuted now by other families, too.)

After doing so, he took us back to a place of honor—back to the “stones” of Arlington National Cemetery that mark the final resting places of the finest men and women our great nation has ever produced. These stories about the sacrifices made by our men and women in the military (and the sacrifices of their families) should shame us all as we gobble up this media-created spectacle. How can we reflect on these incredible acts of valor and then wish to wallow in the latest attempt to exploit every misfortune and turn it into an anti-Trump talking point?

Regarding what Trump said to the widow, Kelly maintained it was nothing more than advice he gave the president prior to the call:

Well, let me tell you what I told him. Let me tell you what my best friend, Joe Dunford, told me—because he was my casualty officer. He said, Kel, he was doing exactly what he wanted to do when he was killed. He knew what he was getting into by joining that 1 percent. He knew what the possibilities were because we’re at war. And when he died, in the four cases we’re talking about, Niger, and my son’s case in Afghanistan—when he died, he was surrounded by the best men on this Earth: his friends. That’s what the President tried to say to four families the other day.

Kelly also hit back hard against Wilson’s despicable attacks:

I was stunned when I came to work yesterday morning, and broken-hearted at what I saw a member of Congress doing. A member of Congress who listened in on a phone call from the President of the United States to a young wife, and in his way tried to express that opinion—that he’s a brave man, a fallen hero, he knew what he was getting himself into because he enlisted. There’s no reason to enlist; he enlisted. And he was where he wanted to be, exactly where he wanted to be, with exactly the people he wanted to be with when his life was taken.

If Wilson had any part of character or virtue, she would silently accept Kelly’s damning judgment. Instead, and unbelievably, she reacted to Kelly’s emotional presser by stating that he was simply “trying to keep his job.” “He will say anything,” she said. And this newly-minted “rock star” then debased herself further:

Her appalling words are surpassed only by her abominable behavior. In truth, she ought to resign immediately.

Harvey Silverglate, a criminal defense and First Amendment lawyer and writer, is WGBH/News’ “Freedom Watch” columnist. He practices law in an “of counsel” capacity in the Boston law firm Zalkind Duncan & Bernstein LLP. He is the author, most recently, of Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent (New York: Encounter Books, updated edition 2011). The author thanks his research assistant, Nathan McGuire, for his invaluable work on this series.

Is special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, appointed in mid-May to lead the investigation into suspected ties between Donald Trump’s campaign and various shady (aren’t they all?) Russian officials, the choirboy that he’s being touted to be, or is he more akin to a modern-day Tomas de Torquemada, the Castilian Dominican friar who was the first Grand Inquisitor in the 15th Century Spanish Inquisition?

Given the rampant media partisanship since the election, one would think that Mueller’s appointment would lend credibility to the hunt for violations of law by candidate, now President Trump and his minions.

But I have known Mueller during key moments of his career as a federal prosecutor. My experience has taught me to approach whatever he does in the Trump investigation with a requisite degree of skepticism or, at the very least, extreme caution.

When Mueller was the acting United States Attorney in Boston, I was defense counsel in a federal criminal case in which a rather odd fellow contacted me to tell me that he had information that could assist my client. He asked to see me, and I agreed to meet. He walked into my office wearing a striking, flowing white gauze-like shirt and sat down across from me at the conference table. He was prepared, he said, to give me an affidavit to the effect that certain real estate owned by my client was purchased with lawful currency rather than, as Mueller’s office was claiming, the proceeds of illegal drug activities.

My secretary typed up the affidavit that the witness was going to sign. Just as he picked up the pen, he looked at me and said something like: “You know, all of this is actually false, but your client is an old friend of mine and I want to help him.” As I threw the putative witness out of my office, I noticed, under the flowing white shirt, a lump on his back – he was obviously wired and recording every word between us.

Years later I ran into Mueller, and I told him of my disappointment in being the target of a sting where there was no reason to think that I would knowingly present perjured evidence to a court. Mueller, half-apologetically, told me that he never really thought that I would suborn perjury, but that he had a duty to pursue the lead given to him. (That “lead,” of course, was provided by a fellow that we lawyers, among ourselves, would indelicately refer to as a “scumbag.”)

This experience made me realize that Mueller was capable of believing, at least preliminarily, any tale of criminal wrongdoing and acting upon it, despite the palpable bad character and obviously questionable motivations of his informants and witnesses. (The lesson was particularly vivid because Mueller and I overlapped at Princeton, he in the Class of 1966 and me graduating in 1964.)

Years later, my wariness toward Mueller was bolstered in an even more revelatory way. When he led the criminal division of the U.S. Department of Justice, I arranged in December 1990 to meet with him in Washington. I was then lead defense counsel for Dr. Jeffrey R. MacDonald, who had been convicted in federal court in North Carolina in 1979 of murdering his wife and two young children while stationed at Fort Bragg. Years after the trial, MacDonald (also at Princeton when Mueller and I were there) hired me and my colleagues to represent him and obtain a new trial based on shocking newly discovered evidence that demonstrated MacDonald had been framed in part by the connivance of military investigators and FBI agents. Over the years, MacDonald and his various lawyers and investigators had collected a large trove of such evidence.

A Russian company, whose former executive was the target of an FBI investigation and who admitted to corrupt payments to influence the awarding of contracts with the Russian state-owned nuclear energy corporation, paid millions of dollars in consulting fees to an American firm in 2010 and 2011 to lobby the U.S. regulatory agencies and assist the Russians, who would go on to acquire twenty percent of American uranium, according to court documents, a former FBI informant and extensive interviews with law enforcement sources.

Roughly $3 million in payments from 2010 to 2011 were made to APCO Worldwide Inc. The firm also provided in kind pro-bono services to Bill Clinton’s foundation, the Clinton Global Initiative, services they begin 2007, according to APCO officials who spoke with Circa and press releases from the company. In 2010, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was part of the Obama administration board that would eventually approve the sale of U.S. uranium supply to a Russian company.

According to the contract obtained by Circa, the “total fee is comprised of the fixed quarterly fee which shall be $750,000 per each of the four three-month periods of rendering Services here under during the validity period of this contract, including the 18 percent Russian VAT payable in the territory of the Russian Federation.”

Long-time Clinton supporter and APCO CEO, Margery Kraus signed the continuing contract on April 12, 2010, with TENEX, as the Russian company’s top executive Russian businessman Vadim Milkerin was being investigated by the FBI for kickbacks and bribery involving American companies, according to the APCO TENEX contract and court documents obtained by Circa. TENEX is a subsidiary of the the Russian state owned nuclear giant Rosatom, according to financial filings of the company.

APCO Worldwide Inc. said in a statement to Circa, “APCO was not involved on any aspect of Uranium One, or the CFIUS process relating to it. APCO Worldwide undertook activities on behalf of Tenex in 2010 and 2011 relating to civil nuclear cooperation, which APCO properly disclosed in detail at the time in public filings. Separately, since 2007-2008, APCO provided services in kind to the Clinton Global Initiative. APCO’s work for Tenex and APCO’s work for the Clinton Global Initiative were separate and unconnected, publicly documented from the outset, and fully consistent with all regulations and US law.”

APCO also told Circa in the statement that “Milkerin was not involved in APCO’s contract with Tenex and APCO did not have any relationship with him.”

“We have never been interviewed by the FBI … and we discovered the charges like everyone else ,” an APCO official familiar with contract said.

The Clinton Foundation did not respond to numerous attempts for comment.

Russian efforts to influence the U.S. political system have fascinated the American media for much of the past year—but not this week. A sudden and likely temporary loss of appetite to explore collusion theories seems to have developed early on Tuesday.

That’s around the time that the The Hill began breaking a series of stories on Russia’s efforts to influence Obama Administration policy and advance the interests of the Russian nuclear industry. Expect the condition to persist until the next leak from special counsel Robert Mueller’s office.

The Hill’s Tuesday’s bombshell noted:

Before the Obama administration approved a controversial deal in 2010 giving Moscow control of a large swath of American uranium, the FBI had gathered substantial evidence that Russian nuclear industry officials were engaged in bribery, kickbacks, extortion and money laundering designed to grow Vladimir Putin’s atomic energy business inside the United States, according to government documents and interviews…

[U.S. investigators] also obtained an eyewitness account — backed by documents — indicating Russian nuclear officials had routed millions of dollars to the U.S. designed to benefit former President Bill Clinton’s charitable foundation during the time Secretary of State Hillary Clinton served on a government body that provided a favorable decision to Moscow, sources told The Hill.

On Wednesday, the publication added more to the story:

An American businessman who worked for years undercover as an FBI confidential witness was blocked by the Obama Justice Department from telling Congress about conversations and transactions he witnessed related to the Russian nuclear industry’s efforts to win favor with Bill and Hillary Clinton and influence Obama administration decisions, his lawyer tells The Hill.

On Thursday, The Hill reported:

As he prepared to collect a $500,000 payday in Moscow in 2010, Bill Clinton sought clearance from the State Department to meet with a key board director of the Russian nuclear energy firm Rosatom — which at the time needed the Obama administration’s approval for a controversial uranium deal, government records show.

The Rosatom director named Arkady Dvorkovich, was “a top aide to then-Russian President Dmitri Medvedev and one of the highest-ranking government officials to serve on Rosatom’s board of supervisors, was listed on a May 14, 2010, email as one of 15 Russians the former president wanted to meet during a late June 2010 trip, the documents show,” wrote the Hill.

Mr. Clinton ended up meeting with Russian strongman Vladimir Putin instead. The Russians ended up getting control of the uranium. The sale benefited donors to the Clinton Foundation, which failed to disclose some of the money donated as required by an agreement Mrs. Clinton had struck with the Obama Administration.

The Hill is hardly a conservative publication but its impressive reporting this week seems to have captured little attention beyond right-of-center columnists and websites. Reporters at The Hill must be wondering what it will take to arouse the curiosity of most of their media brethren. The Tuesday report also noted that the Russian plot actually resulted in criminal convictions—although almost nobody knew that at the time: CONTINUE AT SITE

1.

GRASSLEY: What are you doing to find out how the Russian takeover of the American uranium was allowed to occur despite criminal conduct by the Russian company that the Obama administration approved to make the purchase?

SESSIONS: Mr Chairman, we will hear your concern, the Department of Justice will take such actions as is appropriate I know, and I would offer that some people have gone to jail in that transaction already, but the article talks about other issues. So without confirming or denying the existence of any particular investigation I would say I hear your concerns and they will be reviewed.

2.

GRASSLEY: I think I know why you’re probably reluctant to go into some detail on that, but I would like to remind you that Deputy Attorney Rosenstein directly supervised the criminal case when he was US Attorney in Maryland. I don’t think it would be proper for him to supervise a review of his own conduct, do you?

SESSIONS: It would be his decision. He’s a man of integrity and ability. If he feels that he has a inability to proceed with any investigation, it would be his responsibility to make the determination and should consult, as I told you I would and as I have done, with the senior ethics people at the Department.

3.

GRASSLEY: Reports suggest the Clinton Foundation received millions of dollars from interested parties of the transaction. Bill Clinton received $500,000 for a speech in Moscow, June 2010, from the Russian-government-aligned bank. The same month as the speech, Russia began the uranium acquisition process. This fact pattern raises serious concerns about improper political influence on the process by the Clintons during the Obama administration. Has the Justice Department fully investigated whether the Russians compromised the Obama administration’s decisions to smooth the way for transactions, and if not, why not?

SESSIONS: Mr Chairman, we’re working hard to maintain discipline in the Department. It wouldn’t be appropriate for me to comment on any ongoing investigation.

—

That was it. That was all and everything AG Sessions had to say, in that studiously evasive way of all good custodians of the Swamp, about the sell-out of American national security — the transfer of 20 percent of US uranium stocks to Russia for the multi-million-dollar-benefit of the Clinton Foundation and its cronies, and, of course, for the miitary benefit of Russia.

People seem to forget that.

The fact that the Obama administration approved the sale of US uranium stocks by a Canadian company called Uranium One (whose board members “contributed” some $148 million to the Clinton Foundation) to a Russian government entity called Rosatom became even more of a flaming scandal this week when we learned that Rosatom had been under US criminal investigation for bribery and extortion in the run-up to the Obama administration’s approval of the sale! Why are we learning about this criminal investigation only now? Because the Obama administration was so successful for so many years in hushing it up.

That would be the Obama administration of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the FBI of Robert Mueller and James Comey, the Justice Department of Andrew McCabe and US Attorney now Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.

Still, according to AG Sessions, it “wouldn’t be appropriate” for him to comment to the American people in reply to these questions Senator Grassley asked on our behalf. (Nor would it be improper for DAG Rosenstein to investigate himself!)

On the contrary, I think it’s highly inappropriate for Jeff Sessions not to comment. It’s an outrage. I would say it’s the last straw but I’m sure there will be many more. The Clintons have been chewing up and spitting out every law on the books that apply to public service, even as they have defiled its every tradition of decorum and integrity, over more than thirty years in our faces (once known as “public life”). Simultaneously, they have been imperiling national security, from Bill Clinton’s modernization program for the Communist Chinese military for campaign cash, to Hillary Clinton’s modernization program for the Russian military for foundation cash. (I refer to the Russian “reset” tech-transfer-project known as Skolkovo, which helped Vladimir Putin to develop hypersonic cruise missile engines and who knows what else, which I think has been mentioned in Congress about one time ever.) The damage to our nation is in fact literally unknowable when we factor in Hillary Clinton’s unsecured communications system, which both the Obama administration and now the Trump administration refuse to asssess for damage, flouting protocol and, again, national security.

The Rosatom case would seem to be an especially important key to cracking the whole thing wide open.

Think Jeff Sessions actually wants to turn that key?

I wish I could say yes.

Reprinted from BadgerInstitute.org.

The Never Trump Republicans have been adamantly opposed to Donald Trump since the day in June 2015 that he announced his candidacy.

They argue that the New York mogul is singularly unfit for the presidency, that he has no experience in government, coming from the somewhat unseemly world of N.Y. construction, casino development and reality TV. They say his character and temperament are decidedly unpresidential –– vulgar, bombastic, prone to outbursts and loose with the truth. And, they argue, he besmirches the dignity of the office, tweeting promiscuously over trivial slights and announcing policy changes not discussed with his cabinet.

Most important, the Never Trumpers claim, he is not a true conservative — seemingly indifferent to the problems caused by the federal leviathan, especially runaway entitlement spending, debt and deficits. Rather, they say, he is a populist chameleon, championing those positions and policies that please his disgruntled base of working- and middle-class whites left behind by globalization and the tech revolution. More darkly, they claim, he shows authoritarian and nativist inclinations that could tar legitimate conservatism with a sinister brush.

To them, last November’s election was not a binary choice between a bad Donald Trump and a worse Hillary Clinton. It was opportunistic populism and exclusionary nationalism vs. traditional conservatism and its defining principles of small government and free markets; personal responsibility, character and virtue; and public dignity, decorum and decency. If true conservatism is to survive, they believe, conservatives must resist Trumpism and all its works.

These arguments, however, rest on questionable assumptions: that Trump is a politician unprecedented in his lack of experience, ignorance of policy and bad character and that, for all her flaws, Clinton would not have done as much damage to the conservative cause as Trump is likely to do as president.

This contrast is tendentious and blind both to the historical reality of a democratic polity that empowers the masses and to the greater dangers that eight more years of progressive policies a Clinton presidency would have created.

Presidential dignity

The complaints about Trump’s vulgarity and character flaws raise the question: compared to whom?

Presidential dignity left the White House during the presidency of Bill Clinton. HIs sordid affair with intern Monica Lewinsky, with its stained blue dress and abused cigars, marked a radical decline in what the American people expected of their presidents. Clinton’s bold lie under oath that “I did not have sexual relations with that woman” led to articles of impeachment and disbarment. That lie was more consequential for the debasement of presidential dignity than all of Trump’s exaggerations and casual relationships with the truth put together.

As for vulgarity, how about when President Barack Obama called tea party activists “tea baggers,” a vulgar reference to a sexual act? And how much more undignified can the nation’s leader get than hanging out at the White House with rappers whose songs are filled with misogynistic sexual vulgarity and casual violence?

For many Trump supporters, the Never Trumpers’ talk of decorum smells of the anti-democratic elitism that politicians of both parties have always indulged in about the masses. Thus, the Never Trumpers don’t realize that their criticisms of Trump are criticisms of his supporters and that they reinforce the perception of a snooty elite looking down their noses at the common man.

Trump’s appeal rests in large part on the perception that the Republican establishment has more in common with Democrats than with the people — sharing the same ZIP codes, the same top 20 university educations, the same tastes in consumption and entertainment, the same amenities of celebrity and wealth, the same obeisance to political correctness and, ultimately, the same interests: keeping themselves in charge of a bloated federal government from which both sides get their power and wealth.

It’s no wonder that enough voters picked Trump, a vulgar, plain-talking outsider who gave voice to their discontent with Republicans.

Blame Sean Hannity. Or give him all the credit. The intrepid talk show host has been claiming for months that there is nothing to the Trump-Russia allegations, that the real tale of Russian collusion is linked to Hillary Clinton. The fact that very few people have taken this seriously has only caused the firebrand conservative to dig in deeper and repeat his talking points both more often and more fervently.

His insistence the Russian story would “boomerang” against the Democrats has been largely based on his communications (both on- and off-air) with Julian Assange and investigative reporters John Solomon and Sara Carter.

It seems like only yesterday justice was closing in on the Travel Office, Whitewater, the Clinton-era transfer of missile technology to the Chinese government, Fast and Furious, Solyndra, IRS harassment of conservative groups, the Clinton emails, Benghazi and a dozen others.

We might have believed Sean Hannity’s predictions, but we’d seen this movie before. Then came Tuesday. John Solomon and Alison Spann of the Hill and Sara Carter of Circa News had a story that may have broken open the largest national security scandal since the Rosenbergs.

In 2009, the Obama Justice Department began investigating a Russian plan to expand Russia’s atomic energy business by acquiring uranium in the United States. Through bribery, kickbacks, money laundering and extortion, the Russians were able to acquire 20% of the uranium mining rights in the United States. Shareholders in the Russian firm Rosatom funneled $145 million to the Clinton Foundation in the months leading up to the Obama administration’s approval of the transaction.

The sale was officially approved in 2010 by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), whose members included both Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Attorney General Eric Holder. Apparently neither Holder nor Clinton informed the other members of the committee just what an historic act of corruption they were participants to. Not only did the DOJ and FBI let the sale proceed, they sat on the information they had gathered and let the investigation drag on until 2015, when Rosatom executive Vadim Mikerin and other defendants reached plea deals to little fanfare.

Current Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein oversaw the FBI’s investigation, as did Andrew McCabe, the current deputy FBI director. And the man in charge of the FBI during most of the Rosatom investigation was none other than Robert Mueller, the special counsel now investigating Russian influence in the 2016 election.

The government informant at the heart of the case was (and remains) forbidden to speak to Congress by an Obama Justice Department gag order (that gag order has yet to be lifted by the Trump Justice Department).

If this story is true, then all our worst fears have been confirmed, and we are indeed living in a banana republic, with one set of rules for the rich and powerful, and another set of rules for everybody else.

The question going forward: what kind of country will we live in tomorrow? Now that we know that Russian collusion is real and that the Obama administration engaged in it, what will be done about it? Will the laws against government corruption finally be enforced, or will the guilty walk again as we’re treated to another round of Congressional committee show hearings?

This scandal will be a true test — perhaps the final test — of whether American government can still work for the people. If Republicans walk away from this story for fear of ruffling Democrat feathers, we will know that the fix is in.

A lot of reputations are on the line, beginning with that of Donald Trump. Will he demand of his administration that it faithfully execute the law, without fear or favor.

Then there’s Jeff Sessions. Our attorney general will have to determine if the Trump DOJ has the stomach to investigate the Obama DOJ. Sessions has a chance to end this affair with a reputation as a true champion of law and order. Then again, he may cement his image as a chivalrous knight of old, merciless to peasants who cross borders and deal drugs, but always ready to give his social and political peers the benefit of the doubt.

Congress’ reputation is on the line, too. Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell and the rest of the GOP will have a lot to answer for if they fail to demand answers to hard questions. This isn’t a game of pin-the-tail-on-the-Trump anymore. The implications of the Clinton/Rosatom story can’t be overstated, and Congress must lead the charge in determining whether Andrew McCabe, Rod Rosenstein, and Robert Mueller should now have any role in an investigation dealing with Russian influence, and more importantly, whether they should have any role in government at all.