RUTHFULLY YOURS

On the overwrought, partisan allegations that Attorney General Jeff Sessions committed perjury in his confirmation-hearing testimony, let’s cut to the chase: There is a good deal of political hay to be made because Sessions made a statement that was inaccurate — or at least incomplete — especially when mined out of its context. But the claim that his testimony was perjurious as a matter of law is wholly without merit.

Perjury is not inaccuracy. It must be willfully false testimony. Willfulness is the criminal law’s most demanding mens rea (state of mind) requirement. Prosecutors must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the speaker knowingly, voluntarily, and intentionally — not by accident, misunderstanding, or confusion — said something that was untrue, with a specific purpose to disobey or disregard the law. Therefore, when there is an allegation of perjury, the alleged false statements must be considered in context. Any ambiguity is construed in favor of innocence. If there is potential misunderstanding, the lack of clarity is deemed the fault of the questioner, not the accused.

We will turn momentarily to the transcript of the exchange between Sessions and Senator Al Franken (D., Minn.). First, let’s highlight the inaccuracy in the testimony. Sessions stated that he did not have “communications with the Russians.” It is now known that there were at least two occasions during the 2016 campaign on which Sessions, then a senator and a member of the chamber’s Armed Services Committee, had contact with Sergey Kislyak, the Russian ambassador to the United States.

One of these occasions is easily dismissed: Apparently, Sessions saw Kislyak, in addition to dozens of other ambassadors, at a Heritage Foundation reception during the Republican convention. As Sessions was leaving the podium, a smaller group of these diplomats, including Kislyak, approached Sessions to chat briefly — mainly to compliment him on his remarks. Even the Washington Post doesn’t think much of this chance meeting (buried deep in its story) other than the fact that it happened.

A second meeting occurred in September in Sessions’s Senate office. The Post dramatically claims that this meeting occurred “at the height of what U.S. intelligence officials say was a Russian cyber campaign to upend the U.S. presidential race.” That is a curious description. The report by intelligence officials claimed that the Russian cyber effort targeted both major parties, not just Democrats. Moreover, the successful hacking of Democratic e-mail accounts had already occurred by September. There is not a shred of evidence that anyone in the Trump campaign was in any way complicit in the hacking, much less that the hacking affected the outcome of the election. To the unknowable but probably inconsequential extent that the Trump campaign may have benefited from disclosure of John Podesta’s e-mails, there is nothing criminal about that — no more than there is anything criminal in the fact that the much of the American media skew their coverage in favor of Democrats.

The story about the connection between Russia and the Donald Trump presidential campaign is either the most elaborate cover-up of all time, or the dumbest. More evidence for the dumb theory arrives with the news that during his confirmation hearings Attorney General Jeff Sessions didn’t tell Senators about two 2016 meetings with Russia’s ambassador to the U.S.

The Washington Post reported late Wednesday that Mr. Sessions had two conversations with Sergei Kislyak last year, one a brief chat amid a gaggle of other ambassadors at a public event at the GOP convention in July, another in September at the then-Senator’s office.

Yet at his Jan. 10 confirmation hearing, Democrat Al Franken asked Mr. Sessions what he would do if he learned that anyone affiliated with the Trump campaign had communicated with the Russian government. “I’m not aware of any of those activities,” Mr. Sessions replied, adding that “I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign and I did not have communications with the Russians.”

In a written question, Democrat Pat Leahy asked, “Have you been in contact with anyone connected to any part of the Russian government about the 2016 election, either before or after election day?” Mr. Sessions replied: “No.”

Democrats are calling this perjury and demanding that Mr. Sessions resign, but his only certain offense is ineptitude. A spokesman for Mr. Sessions late Wednesday defended the AG by saying, “He was asked during the hearing about communications between Russia and the Trump campaign—not about meetings he took as a senator and a member of the Armed Services Committee.”

Mr. Sessions added at a press conference Thursday that he would recuse himself from any FBI investigation of the Trump campaign or Russian interference in 2016, adding that his answers in the Senate were “honest and correct as I understood the questions at the time.”

This may be technically true, but it won’t wash politically amid a Beltway feeding frenzy. Mr. Sessions knew Democrats were hunting for any Russian-Trump campaign ties, and meeting with the Russian ambassador is no offense for a Senator or campaign adviser. So why not admit the meetings up front? Give Democrats and the media nowhere to go.

If Mr. Sessions was trying to cover up some dark Russian secret, he’s the Jim Carrey of cover-up artists. Surely he knew someone would discover a meeting in his Senate office, which isn’t exactly a drop-site in the Virginia suburbs, and the meeting in Cleveland had multiple witnesses. Like former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn not telling Vice President Mike Pence about his meeting with the ambassador, this is a case of dumb and dumber.

The most important fact so far about the larger Trump-Russia collusion story is that there are so few salient facts. The Russian hacks of the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign chair John Podesta were embarrassing but had little bearing on the election. The dossier of supposed contacts between Trumpians and Russians published by BuzzFeed has never been corroborated.

Democrats on the House and Senate intelligence committees investigating the ties have reported nothing of substance. What we have on the evidence so far is a hapless cover-up without an underlying scandal.

Meanwhile, news emerged Thursday that Obama Administration officials ran a government intel operation on the Trump campaign. The New York Times reports that political appointees signed off on surveillance of “associates” of the Trump campaign, though “the nature of these contacts remains unknown.” The officials then spread this raw intelligence throughout the government and to foreign counterparts, ensuring they’d be widely read and supposedly to prevent their Trump successors from covering up the truth.

Headstones at a local Jewish cemetery were recently knocked over.

The headstones were knocked over at the Stone Road Cemetery, located on Stonewood Avenue.

The manager of the cemetery says they’re not considering the vandalism a hate crime, but they’re also not ruling it out. Whatever happened there, they say it’s unconscionable.

“There’s no evidence of desecration, which leads us to believe that it was just a random act of violence, random act of vandalism,” says Michael Phillips, president of Britton Road Association. “The only thing we saw was someone’s glove on the ground that may have been one of the perpetrators that lost a glove.”

Sixteen headstones were toppled over at the Stone Road cemetery. The manager of the property says it happened sometime Tuesday night and was discovered on Wednesday.

“It’s almost not even a hate crime,” says Phillips. “It’s almost just an act that’s unconscionable when you’re a younger person and you think about your parents, and would you like them doing that to you, I don’t even think that goes through their mind.”

Governor Cuomo however announced Thursday he’s launching a full investigation into what happened: “New York has zero tolerance for bias or discrimination of any kind, and we will always stand united in the face of anti-Semitism and divisiveness. It is repugnant to everything we believe as New Yorkers, and we will continue to do everything in our power to bring to justice those responsible for these cowardly attacks on the values we hold dear.”

Some interesting number crunching from Seth Franzman on anti-Semitic attacks. And some of the results are striking.

When we tally the total number of incidents between 2009 and 2015, the overall number of attacks reaches more than 7,000. However, the number of assaults increased, almost doubling during the Obama administration.

Overall, there was an average of 84 incidents a month under the Obama administration. Let’s step back for a moment and compare that to the 95 incidents between January and February 2017. That’s a 10% increase. It could be more once all the data comes in. But the media haven’t been telling us there is a slight increase; the narrative has been that there is an antisemitic wave sweeping the US. In Berlin, there was a 16% increase in antisemitic incidents by comparison. …

One of the key indicators of rising antisemitism during the Obama years was the number of physical assaults. From a low of 17 in 2012 they rose to 56 in 2015. The ADL noted a “dramatic rise” in assaults that year.

Where was the media in 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 to highlight thousands of incidents of antisemitism? 210 physical assaults on Jews. 3,900 threats against Jews and Jewish institutions. 2,900 incidents of vandalism. 180 incidents of antisemitism on campus. Every six days, a Jewish person in America was being attacked in 2015 and it went largely ignored. On average, there were threats every day against Jews and Jewish institutions over the last eight years and most of them did not receive headlines.

There were also incidents of vandalism every day on average. Why did 7,034 incidents of antisemitism not get major headlines for so long? Was it because of an agenda to protect the Obama administration from criticism, or due to complacency and people becoming inured to the phenomenon?

The obvious answer is that there was no interest in discussing the issue. Jews are low down on the intersectional privilege caste system. And anti-Semitism is widespread on the left.

Furthermore quite a few plots against synagogues came from Muslims. And their perpetrators were defended and whitewashed by the left as victims of law enforcement.

The rash of bomb threats were picked up because they played into a larger media narrative about a rise in bigotry under Trump. Not because the media actually cares. Their perpetrators are unknown, but if they turn out to be Muslims, the story will be dropped like a hot potato.

Editor’s note: Below is the fourth installment in a series of articles highlighting the network of major hate groups in America that are supported and funded by the Left. Click the following for the previous profiles on the Souther Poverty Law Center, Students for Justice in Palestine and the New Black Panther Party.

A number of major Democrats have cultivated highly significant ties to the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). For example: Congressman Keith Ellison (Minnesota), who narrowly lost in his bid to become DNC chairman a few days ago, has spoken at ISNA’s massive national conferences on a number of occasions. Congressman Andre Carson (Indiana) has received thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from ISNA-affiliated donors, as have Keith Ellison, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama. And ISNA president Mohamed Magid was a key figure in Barack Obama’s Department of Homeland Security, where he was authorized to train and advise personnel affiliated with the FBI and other federal agencies.

Yet most Americans are entirely unaware of just how subversive and anti-American the Islamic Society of North America is.

ISNA was established in July 1981 by U.S-based members of the Muslim Brotherhood who also had been leaders of the Muslim Students Association (MSA). Muslim Brothers would dominate ISNA’s leadership throughout the Society’s early years, when it was highly dependent upon Saudi funding. ISNA’s founding mission was “to advance the cause of Islam and serve Muslims in North America so as to enable them to adopt Islam as a complete way of life.” Today ISNA is the largest Muslim organization on the continent. Its annual conferences routinely draw 30,000 to 40,000 attendees.

When ISNA was incorporated on July 14, 1981, its headquarters were located at the same address as those of the MSA. Eventually, the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF)—the U.S.-based financing wing of Hamas—would share the address as well.

One of ISNA’s key founders in 1981 was Sami Al-Arian, who subsequently became the North American leader of the terrorist organization Palestinian Islamic Jihad. He was indicted by the Justice Department in 2003, was held under house arrest for several years, and finally was deported in 2015.

Another ISNA co-founder was Muzammil Siddiqi, who went on to serve two terms (1997-2001) as ISNA president and continues to sit on the organization’s governing board. Siddiqi has praised Islamic suicide bombers as “those who die on the part of justice” and consequently reside “with the Lord” in a place of “the highest honor.” Moreover, he has defined jihad as “the path” and “the way [for Muslims] to receive the honor.”

Yet another prominent founding member of ISNA was Mahboob Khan, who in 1983 helped establish the California-based Muslim Community Association, which at least twice hosted and raised money for Ayman al-Zawahiri, who would later go on to become al Qaeda’s second-in-command.

In November 1987, ISNA established its own Political Awareness Committee headed by Abdurahman Alamoudi, a Muslim Brotherhood operative who in 2004 would be convicted on terrorism-related charges and sentenced to 23 years in prison.

Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN), the new deputy chairman of the Democratic National Committee, and the first Muslim elected to Congress, has a plan to recruit additional Muslim lawmakers like him — including possible candidates sponsored by a terror-tied Islamist group for which he helped raise millions of dollars, according to a source who once prayed alongside him in the basement of the Capitol.

Ellison has held Friday, or jummah, prayers with other Muslims, including staffers from the Congressional Muslim Staff Association and officials from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), in a prayer room, or musallah, in the lower level of the Capitol building.

CAIR has been declared a terrorist organization by the United Arab Emirates and was named by federal prosecutors as an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas terrorist-funding operation.

A former CAIR intern who prayed with Ellison says Ellison once boasted that his breaking of the Muslim barrier on the Hill would usher in dozens of other Muslim lawmakers like him, and that he had an election-by-election vision for increasing their ranks.

“In the summer of 2008, I was working as an intern at CAIR,” Chris Gaubatz recalled in an exclusive interview with FrontPageMagazine.com. “During a Friday prayer at the Capitol Building, Ellison was talking about the second Muslim congressman being elected (Andre Carson) and said, “Insha’allah (Allah willing), next election we will have four Muslim congressman, and insha’allah, after that eight, and insha’allah, after that 16.’ ”

He said he also envisioned a Congressional Muslim Caucus that would rival the Black Caucus in size and influence, and push for “Muslim-friendly public policies,” such as gutting the Patriot Act, criminalizing the profiling of Muslims in terrorism investigations, and preventing the surveillance of mosques.

Ellison’s vision did not play out, as Democrats lost control of Congress to Republicans.

But at Saturday’s DNC elections, Tom Perez, who edged out Ellison as chairman of the committee, broke with party rules and named Ellison deputy chairman, creating a new position at the DNC. The DNC leadership controls spending priorities, organization and messaging for Democrats, as well as influences the recruitment and training of candidates.

“We have to recruit the right kind of candidates,” Ellison asserted in a recent DNC candidate forum.
His new key role in bringing more Muslims into Congress concerns security experts, because Ellison has made anti-Semitic remarks to Muslim groups and aligned himself with known radical Islamists, and would likely recruit more Islamists with help from terrorist front groups like CAIR.

A radical group linked to rogue billionaire George Soros has been providing scripts containing anti-Trump talking points for constituents to read aloud during congressional town hall meetings.

One of the scripts distributed by the Revolutionary Love Project encourages town hall participants meeting with their member of Congress to accuse the Trump administration of – wait for it – “xenophobia, racism, and Islamophobia.” Constituents are urged to use those precise words to “forcefully condemn” President Trump’s immigration and border security initiatives, Aaron Klein reports at Breitbart News.

Information about the scripts came as leaked audio from anti-Trump activists associated with the group Indivisible surfaced. Their target was a town hall hosted by Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.). They planned to deploy an “inside team” to occupy as many seats as possible and an “outside team” to “give [the media] the coverage they want.” Activists were urged to “dress like conservatives” and avoid “any signifier that you’re a liberal” so they could dominate the meeting.

“Game plan number one is to fill as many seats as we can, right? If it’s all of us in there and the poor people of Breaux Bridge are sitting behind us, well then tough luck for them,” James Proctor of Indivisible reportedly said.

“If we can arrange it so he doesn’t hear one sympathetic question–great. That only magnifies our impact,” he added.

This is a standard, old-time organizing technique used by followers of Rules for Radicals author Saul Alinsky.

It has another name in politics: astroturfing.

Meanwhile, the Revolutionary Love Project states on its website that its supporters “resist all policies, actions, and rhetoric that put people in harm’s way,” and “fight for justice through the ethic of love — love for others, our opponents, and ourselves.” This language is reminiscent of communist revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara’s famous statement that “the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love.”

It is rare that we get a glimpse at the guiding principles that motivate a president and his team, but White House senior adviser Stephen Bannon’s recent remarks at the Conservative Political Action Conference may have provided unique insight into the Trump administration’s operations and goals.

For conservatives, it was a mixed bag. Bannon’s emphasis on economic nationalism raises concerns about autarky and statism. But as Rich Lowry observes, his pledge for the “deconstruction of the administrative state” was music to conservatives’ ears.

Regulatory sprawl and executive overreach have been the target of principled conservatives for some time. Efforts to tame the administrative state predate President Trump and even President Obama, whose proclivity for executive action has been subject of plenty of NRO commentary.

Conservative animus toward the administrative state is focused on more than just its economic costs, which come in the form of less investment and job creation. The principal objection is that it undermines the role of the legislative branch relative to the executive. As Bannon quipped: “The way the progressive left runs, if they can’t get it passed [by Congress], they’re just going to put it in some regulation.” This tendency to governance by regulation and executive rulemaking must therefore be reversed for both economic and political reasons.

What steps can the Trump administration and conservatives both agree to take toward reducing the size and scope of the administrative state? An obvious step would be to give Congress some way to review and scrutinize regulations and executive rulemaking, as has been done in other jurisdictions.

The U.S. Constitution indisputably places responsibility for lawmaking with Congress. The legislative branch promulgates and passes laws, and the president and his appointees implement and enforce them.

But that is not how the system of government has evolved. Many of the laws passed by Congress delegate authority to departments and agencies to produce rules and regulations to effectuate or administer them. These secondary or accompanying policies are sometimes called “delegated legislation,” because they have the full force of the law.

One good (or bad, depending on your perspective) example is the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. The 2,300-page statute covered a far-reaching set of issues — including financial instruments, executive compensation, mortgage lending, and government oversight — and established three new agencies, including the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. While comprehensive in its scope, the law was light on details. Federal agencies were granted considerable discretion to promulgate delegated authorities to accompany the statute, with no congressional role.

Vague drafting that agencies “may” issue rules or shall issue rules as they “determine are necessary and appropriate” give the executive branch tremendous power to define, broaden, and interpret the law. As the Hudson Institute’s Christopher DeMuth has put it: “In these cases, the agencies make the hard policy choices. They are the lawmakers.” The upshot is that, in 2016, Congress passed 211 laws and the federal government issued 3,853 rules and regulations. It is fair to say that this 18:1 ratio is not what James Madison had in mind.