RUTHFULLY YOURS

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s appointment of Robert S. Mueller III as “special counsel” for purposes of the so-called Russia investigation underscores a point I have made through the years, whenever the subject of special prosecutors or independent counsels rears its head. Because there is no such thing as an independent counsel (i.e., a lawyer who wields prosecutorial power independent of the executive branch), the structure of a “special counsel” arrangement will never give anyone confidence. A special counsel is appointed by the attorney general (here, it’s the deputy attorney general because AG Jeff Sessions has recused himself). A special counsel also reports ultimately to the president — meaning that, like any other executive-branch official (other than the vice president), a special counsel serves at the pleasure of the president and may be dismissed at any time.

Therefore, the public perception that the special-counsel arrangement has integrity hinges exclusively on the lawyer who is appointed. It is the lawyer’s reputation for probity and professionalism, and that alone, that can convince people a real investigation, governed by law and evidence not politics, is being conducted.

In this instance, Rosenstein has chosen well.

Bob Mueller is a widely respected former prosecutor, U.S. attorney, high-ranking Justice Department official, and FBI director. He is highly regarded by both parties. This is perhaps best exhibited by the fact that when his ten-year term as the FBI director appointed by President George W. Bush expired in 2011, President Obama asked him to stay on for an additional two years, and Congress quickly agreed to extend his term. He is a straight shooter, by the book, and studiously devoid of flash.

He is also fondly remembered by Democrats as having joined then–deputy attorney general James Comey in the famous showdown, at then–attorney general John Ashcroft’s hospital bed, over President Bush’s warrantless surveillance program. It was at the insistence of Comey and Mueller that Bush made modifications to the program to bring it into the Justice Department’s revised understanding of lawfulness.

Mueller notwithstanding, there remain peculiar aspects of this special-counsel appointment. Foremost of these (as we’ve also repeatedly noted) is that the so-called Russia investigation is a counterintelligence investigation, not a criminal investigation. In the Justice Department, counterintelligence investigations are not assigned a prosecutor as criminal cases are because the point is to collect information about a foreign power (an investigative and analytical intelligence function), not to build a prosecutable case against a suspect for a violation of penal law.

Lawyers in the Justice Department’s National Security Division (NSD) oversee the government’s domestic national-security operations and assist the FBI in obtaining warrants from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court — court orders that authorize the agents to collect information and monitor suspected foreign agents. Presumably, Mueller will supplant the NSD for purposes of the Russia investigation, which is described in Rosenstein’s order as an investigation of “any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump.” That is to say, when it comes time to announce the conclusions of this counterintelligence probe, it will be Mueller making the findings.

NEW LONDON, Conn.—President Donald Trump advised graduates to “never give up” even when subjected to unfair attacks, in remarks at a commencement address Wednesday that came as he faces new questions over his conversations with fired FBI director James Comey.

“Look at the way I’ve been treated lately, especially by the media,” Mr. Trump said. “No politician in history has been treated more unfairly. You can’t let them get you down.”

The commencement address Wednesday at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy marked the president’s first public comments—he stayed off Twitter Wednesday morning—after Tuesday evening’s reports that he asked then-FBI Director Comey to end the agency’s investigation of Gen. Michael Flynn, his former national security adviser, during a private dinner in February, as Mr. Comey recorded in a memo that is now being shared with reporters after his abrupt firing last week.

“I hope you can let this go,” Mr. Trump told Mr. Comey, according to the memo, which was described in detail by a person close to Mr. Comey.

The White House has denied the Comey account.

Mr. Trump has also faced fire over reports that he revealed sensitive intelligence during last week’s Oval Office meeting with the Russian foreign minister. CONTINUE AT SITE

MAY 17TH 2017

Here is what is on President Trump’s agenda today:

In the morning, President Trump will depart the White House for Joint Base Andrews en route to Groton, Connecticut.
The President will then give remarks at the United States Coast Guard Academy Commencement Ceremony.
In the afternoon, the President will depart Groton, Connecticut, for Washington, D.C., en route to the White House.

Media reveals classified information and that’s cool

After spending more than 24 hours going completely bonkers about the alleged content of a meeting between the White House and Russian officials, the media — ever obsessed with itself and its importance — chose to up the ante, insert itself into the story and release classified information to the world.

In case you haven’t been paying attention, President Trump, along with NSC Advisor H.R. McMaster, Deputy NSC Advisor Dina Powell and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, met with Sergey V. Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, and Sergey I. Kislyak, the Russian ambassador, last week. “Someone” leaked out part of the discussion that concerned intelligence the U.S. had about an ISIS terror threat involving laptops and airplanes. The leaker went to the Washington Post and the Washington Post reported that Trump shared classified information with the Russians — and the media and left went wild. There was much concern.

We do not know what was said in the meeting and at least initially, we did not know where the intelligence came from or what exactly that intelligence was. The media and the left were shrieking like banshees about how sharing this information was a breach of classified information and how our allies would not share intelligence with us any longer because Trump can’t keep a secret. Impeachment was mentioned, but it’s always mentioned so that’s nothing new. Also of little concern: leaking classified information to the media.

All three of the U.S. officials at the meeting denied confidences were breached or that inappropriate information was shared with the Russians, and McMaster told the media Trump did not even know the origin of this intelligence — but that did not stop the spiral of hysteria.

And then all of a sudden…those concerns went away when the New York Times revealed that the country that shared that information with the U.S. is Israel.

The classified intelligence that President Trump disclosed in a meeting last week with Russian officials at the White House was provided by Israel, according to a current and a former American official familiar with how the United States obtained the information. The revelation adds a potential diplomatic complication to an episode that has renewed questions about how the White House handles sensitive intelligence.

Israel is one of the United States’ most important allies and runs one of the most active espionage networks in the Middle East. Mr. Trump’s boasting about some of Israel’s most sensitive information to the Russians could damage the relationship between the two countries and raises the possibility that the information could be passed to Iran, Russia’s close ally and Israel’s main threat in the region.

Israeli officials would not confirm that they were the source of the information that Mr. Trump shared, which was about an Islamic State plot. In a statement emailed to The New York Times, Ron Dermer, the Israeli ambassador to the United States, reaffirmed that the two countries would maintain a close counterterrorism relationship.

The public went from knowing Trump told the Russians the U.S. has knowledge of a terror plot involving laptops and airplanes, something we already know since there was a very public ban against flying into the U.S. with carry-on laptops from certain countries, to knowing who provided this information to us, precisely the issue the media and the left was so concerned about.

The NYT writes:

It was not clear whether the president or the other Americans in the meeting were aware of the sensitivity of what was shared. Only afterward, when notes on the discussion were circulated among National Security Council officials, was the information flagged as too sensitive to be shared, even among many American officials, the officials said.

Should Mike Pence become president, the Left will surely lead us in a national chorus of “Whew! Back to normal.” Correct? After all, our friends in the Democratic party have been saying for many months that President Trump is not normal, that he is uniquely unfit for office, that his brand of mendaciousness, volatility, poor character, and immaturity have no precedent in the Oval Office, that he is a Nazi sympathizer and even a fascist, that he is an extremist who exists outside the bounds of ordinary political disagreement.

Mike Pence, on the other hand, is so normal that one of the things that the late-night comics mock him for is being too normal. If the Resistance or Trump’s own folly actually succeeds in separating Trump from his current office, then the Left will sing hosannas to the Pencian restoration of the agreed boundaries of disputation. The political temperature will recede from scalding to balmy. The volume dial will spin sharply in a counterclockwise direction. Hysterical shrieking will be replaced by reasoned conversational tones.

Right? Of course not.

If Trump leaves office prematurely for any reason, President Pence will immediately be denounced as far worse. In fact, it would happen before he even took office. In fact it’s already happening. That this is true is testament to the fundamentally unprincipled nature of the Left. Whatever looks like a winning strategy on Thursday is what matters, even if it nullifies everything you said you believed on Monday.

Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen did some preliminary construction work on what will become the new party line if it appears Pence is likely to replace Trump in office. In his absurd May 15 take — “Trump doesn’t embody what’s wrong with Washington. Pence does.” — Cohen blasts Pence for being a “bobblehead” who nods too much when standing near Trump at press conferences, for publicly stating things that Trump told him, and for having failed to quit being Trump’s running mate while Trump said rude things. In other words, Pence is worse than Trump for being in Trump’s proximity while Trump misbehaves. By that standard every hack and flack who went on TV to defend Bill Clinton in 1998 is worse than Clinton, including the person who blamed the true reports about his misconduct on the lies of a “vast right-wing conspiracy.”

On April 10, 2016, President Obama publicly stated that Hillary Clinton had shown “carelessness” in using a private e-mail server to handle classified information, but he insisted that she had not intended to endanger national security (which is not an element of the relevant criminal statute). The president acknowledged that classified information had been transmitted via Secretary Clinton’s server, but he suggested that, in the greater scheme of things, its importance had been vastly overstated.

On July 5, 2016, FBI director James Comey publicly stated that Clinton had been “extremely careless” in using a private email server to handle classified information, but he insisted that she had not intended to endanger national security (which is not an element of the relevant criminal statute). The director acknowledged that classified information had been transmitted via Secretary Clinton’s server, but he suggested that, in the greater scheme of things, it was just a small percentage of the emails involved.

Case dismissed.

Could there be more striking parallels? A cynic might say that Obama had clearly signaled to the FBI and the Justice Department that he did not want Mrs. Clinton to be charged with a crime, and that, with this not-so-subtle pressure in the air, the president’s subordinates dropped the case — exactly what Obama wanted, relying precisely on Obama’s stated rationale.

Yet the media yawned.

Of course, they’re not yawning now. Now it is Donald Trump, not Barack Obama, sending Comey signals. So now, such signals are a major issue — not merely of obstruction of justice, but of high crimes and misdemeanors.

Trump hysteria seems to be a permanent condition, a combustive compound of media-Democrat derangement surrounding a president who keeps providing derangement material. Let’s try to keep our feet on the ground, but with a commitment to get the evidence and go wherever it takes us.

For now, we don’t have much evidence. Essentially, we’ve got single statement, mined by the New York Times from a memo that no one outside a tight circle inside the FBI has seen — indeed, that the Times has not seen. According to anonymous sources, the memo was written by then–FBI director Comey shortly after a private meeting with President Trump — only two of them in the room after Trump asked other officials to leave. This was on February 14, the day after National Security Adviser Michael Flynn resigned over inaccurate statements he made to senior administration officials in recounting conversations he’d had with Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak.

Trump is said to have told Comey, “I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.”

Other than telling us that Comey replied, “I agree he is a good guy,” the Times provides no context of the conversation. Its report gives no indication of whether the memo provides such context.

The two big stories are about Pres. Trump:

(1) The discussion with then-FBI Director Comey about the Mike Flynn investigation, and

(2) The discussion with the Russians about ISIS.

Let me offer comments on each, rather than a regular news roundup.

My goal is to say what we know and don’t know about each and put their importance and potential consequences in some perspective.

◆ Comment on FBI Director Comey’s private meeting with President Trump

The meeting was in mid-February, the day after Flynn was fired as National Security Adviser

The most grievous possibility is that Trump was asking Comey to stop the investigation, which could be seen as obstruction of justice. That’s a very serious charge.

Comey claims to have written a memo-to-self after the meeting. He held it secretly for three months and then had friends leak it to the press on Tuesday. The anonymous friends read excerpts from the memo and did not release it to the press. They kept their own identities secret, as well.

Since it was Comey’s own memo, the leak had to come from him. No one besides Comey and the friends though whom he is leaking has actually seen the memo. We don’t know if he wrote memos on other meetings with Trump (or with others), but he probably did.

I suspect this memo and any others he wrote will be subpoenaed. That could get very interesting. The Democrats, in particular, will enjoy the circus and the stench of scandal, using it to block the Trump presidency.

Personally, I am disturbed Trump even broached the subject of the Flynn-Russia investigation with Comey.

Excluding Attorney General Jeff Sessions from the meeting casts further doubt on the propriety of the President’s behavior.

But there are problems with interpreting the information we currently have as an attempt to obstruct justice, which is how the Democrats and their favorite media are spinning it.

First, if there was an attempt to obstruct justice, Comey had a clear legal obligation to report it. He did not. That suggests he thought it was not such an attempt.
Second, Comey never discussed this potential obstruction with the second-in-command at his agency, which he presumably would have done if it were a disturbing issue or a close call.
Third, Comey never threatened to resign, a threat he famously made during the George W. Bush administration over a DOJ decision. He presumably would have done so–or told his associates about his doubts–if he thought Trump was trying to block an FBI investigation.
Fourth, Comey gave very detailed briefings to senior Congressional investigators about the Russian investigation and never mentioned it.
Fifth, Comey did not leak this bombshell memo while he was employed at the FBI. He kept it private for three months and only disclosed it after being fired. That means he either did not think the information sufficiently damning or else he thought it was his “job insurance” in case Trump wanted to fire him (a very disturbing possibility, reminiscent of J. Edgar Hoover). Right now, we simply don’t know why he kept it secret, especially if he thought it was so important.
Sixth, it is possible that Trump’s statement was less a request to kill the investigation of Michael Flynn (which would be obstruction, if that was Trump’s specific intention) and more a vague aspiration that he hoped this mess would end soon with Flynn cleared. (Again, I do not think the President should say any such thing to the leader of that investigation. That’s true even if his statement falls well short of obstruction.)

It was the Obama administration in 2009 that talked about a reset with Russia and a desire to reset relationships. It was Hillary Clinton who signed off on the deal that gave a Russian company one-fifth of the U.S. uranium supply. Where is the questioning about that? What did they get?
The federal gumshoe told Fox that Rich transferred 44,053 emails and 17,761 attachments between DNC leaders, dated from January 2015 through late May 2016, to MacFadyen before May 21 last year. On July 22 last year, 12 days after Rich’s death, WikiLeaks published internal DNC emails that seemed to indicate senior party officials colluded to prevent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont from securing the Democratic presidential nomination.

The emails revealed, among other things, that DNC officials threatened to out Sanders as an atheist to hurt his candidacy in believer-rich Kentucky and West Virginia. One problem: Sanders, unlike most of his fellow Marxists, isn’t an atheist. He is a Jew who has made statements indicating he is religious and spiritual and that these things are important to him.

Outrage over the DNC rigging the primaries on behalf of eventual nominee Hillary Clinton cost DNC chairman Debbie Wasserman Schultz her job.

Rich’s family, D.C. police, the DNC, an anonymous former federal law enforcement official, and a current FBI official deny Wheeler’s claims. Rich’s laptop “never contained any e-mails related to WikiLeaks, and the FBI never had it,” the former official told NBC News. The current FBI official told NBC Washington’s Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) never gave Rich’s computer to the FBI.

Of Wheeler’s claims, DNC flak Xochitl Hinojosa said, “We know of no evidence that supports these allegations. We are continuing to cooperate with investigators and have no further comment.”

Rich was 27 when he was shot twice in the back by a person or persons unknown near his Washington, D.C. home at 4:20 in the morning on July 10, 2016. Apparently there was a struggle but his wallet, credit cards, cellphone, and wristwatch were not stolen. Even though the evidence doesn’t suggest he was robbed, the MPD has characterized the unsolved case as a botched robbery, reportedly because Rich’s Bloomingdale neighborhood had recently seen several muggings.

Rich had been active in Democratic Party politics since high school and graduated from Omaha, Nebraska-based Creighton University in 2011 with a degree in political science and history. At the time of his death, he served as the DNC’s Deputy Director-Data-for-Voter Protection/Expansion.

The police won’t say if Rich was able to identify his attackers or offer any information before he died in a hospital. A surveillance video reportedly shows Rich being followed by two men, but police refuse to make it public.

After the murder, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange made the claim that he had been working with Rich and seemingly implied he was killed because he was the source of the hacked DNC emails. At least $150,000 in rewards have been offered for information in the case. WikiLeaks is offering $20,000. The MPD is offering $25,000. Republican lobbyist Jack Burkman, who has worked with the Rich family, is also offering a reward. Fox News and other media outlets report Burkman’s reward is $130,000 but Washingtonian magazine gives the figure as $105,000.

Although the received wisdom in Washington is that Russia, absolutely, positively, hacked the DNC and gave WikiLeaks the DNC documents, Assange has long insisted neither the Russian government nor any “state party” handed his group those documents.

The question of who or what hacked into the DNC’s servers – if there were cyber-attacks at all – isn’t as clear-cut or settled as the mainstream media suggests.

Hacker “Guccifer 2.0” claimed credit for the attacks on DNC servers.

A private cyber-security firm hired by the DNC claimed Russia was the culprit. But the Central Intelligence Agency reportedly now has the ability to mimic foreign intelligence agencies’ hack attacks by leaving electronic “fingerprints” creating the false impression of a foreign intrusion into computer networks.

According to WikiLeaks, “[t]he CIA’s Remote Devices Branch’s UMBRAGE group collects and maintains a substantial library of attack techniques ‘stolen’ from malware produced in other states including the Russian Federation.”

With UMBRAGE and related projects the CIA cannot only increase its total number of attack types but also misdirect attribution by leaving behind the “fingerprints” of the groups that the attack techniques were stolen from. UMBRAGE components cover keyloggers, password collection, webcam capture, data destruction, persistence, privilege escalation, stealth, anti-virus (PSP) avoidance and survey techniques.

Come to think of it, the DNC’s certainty that it was hacked by Russia and only by Russia has always seemed a bit suspect.

James Bamford, a columnist at the left-wing magazine Foreign Policy, raised concerns about the claim last August.

Maine, which once led the nation in dependence on government welfare, is taking yet another step forward to fix its welfare system.

After six years of tackling tough welfare problems, Maine’s governor, Paul LePage, recently introduced a bill to further overhaul taxpayer-funded benefits programs. The Welfare Reform for Increased Security and Employment (RISE) Act would reinvent Maine’s welfare system to put work first, protect benefits for the truly needy, and make welfare a temporary hand up, not a lifetime handout.

LePage is no stranger to poverty himself. One of 18 children, LePage fled home at eleven to escape an abusive father. He spent time living on the streets and in cars, working odd jobs, and learning English as a second language. LePage’s rise from the streets to the Blaine House taught him broad lessons that he has applied to Maine’s welfare programs.

Governor LePage learned firsthand that the way out of poverty is not government welfare but personal responsibility, employment, and community support.

Applying these lessons learned, LePage has transformed Maine into a national leader tackling the welfare-dependency crisis. In 2011, one out of three Mainers was on welfare, and Maine was leading the way in many measures of dependency; it ranked in the top six for percentage of the population on food stamps, cash welfare, and Medicaid enrollment.

Governor LePage and his health and human services commissioner, Mary Mayhew, implemented time limits, work requirements, and anti-fraud programs that have already moved tens of thousands of Mainers from welfare back into the work force, helping businesses grow.

Nearly 250,000 Mainers (out of a total population of about 1.3 million) were dependent on food stamps when LePage assumed office in 2011. By 2016, that number had dropped to 180,000. While other states are crashing headlong into budget crises caused by Medicaid expansion, Maine has transitioned more than 80,000 people out of Medicaid, refocusing the program on the truly needy — all while the uninsured rate has declined. Maine now has $1 billion in the bank and a 40-year low in unemployment.

Now LePage wants to make sure that this trend continues for generations to come. The RISE Act focuses on work and individual responsibility — the key to moving people out of poverty and onto a more secure path. When LePage required able-bodied adults on food stamps to work, train, or volunteer, their average income more than doubled in just one year. That higher income more than offset the food stamps they lost, leaving them better off. Employment increased, incomes rose, and poverty declined. The research is clear: Jobs do a much better job of putting food on the table than an EBT card does. The RISE Act, if passed, will make sure that this work requirement continues in Maine.