RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2023/06/14/trumps_indictment_and_the_collapse_of_confidence_in_our_institutions_149353.html

Democracies cannot thrive – and may not survive – when citizens lose confidence in their basic institutions. That is exactly what is happening in America today. This loss of confidence and a bitter ideological divide are our country’s most profound challenges. Those challenges form the essential backdrop for understanding the controversy surrounding Donald Trump’s indictment.

Before turning to the charges facing Trump, consider their larger political setting, which begins with any democratic government’s most fundamental responsibilities: preserving public order, ensuring its citizens’ safety, and applying the law fairly. The institutions charged with those responsibilities are crumbling at the local, state, and federal levels, and millions of voters on both sides of our gaping ideological spectrum know it. Each blames the other and accepts no blame for themselves.

This collapse of public order is painfully obvious in many major cities, where violent crime, massive organized shoplifting, and homeless encampments have become dangerous facts of ordinary life. Law-abiding citizens, the backbone of those cities, have found the quality of their lives declining.

They bear much of the blame themselves. They elected the district attorneys who refuse to prosecute serious crimes and so encourage even more. They elected the mayors and legislators who justify such rampant disorder under the heart-warming name of “social justice.” How do armed robberies, looting, and gang violence qualify as social justice? The same citizens stood silent as police forces were decimated by “defund the police” movements and a torrent of criticism from senior elected officials and political activists.

The results were predictable. The cops hired to “serve and protect” began to retire, without adequate replacements. Who wants that dangerous and thankless job? Many of those who remained on the force concluded that it was smarter and safer to sit in their cars than to pursue criminals. When they know the mayor and city council won’t offer support, why not remain in the squad car, await their pension, and retire early?

https://spectator.org/bidens-banana-republic/

It was amazing to see Attorney General Merrick Garland’s appointed special counsel, Jack Smith, step in front of the cameras and say of the indictment of former President Donald Trump: “No one is above the law.”

Which is to say, Jack Smith looked the American people in the eye and straight up lied. It was the stuff of a banana republic.

Fact? Joe Biden, who did the same thing with classified documents as Donald Trump — and four times over — is not being indicted. He is above the law.

Fact? As Rep. James Comer’s House Oversight Committee is revealing, Joe Biden now stands accused of routinely accepting bribes from China to enrich his family. No indictment forthcoming. Because Joe Biden is above the law.

As the New York Post reports: 

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer has said the FBI has additional documents expanding on an informant file alleging President Biden participated in a multimillion-dollar bribery scheme during his vice presidency.

Fact? Hillary Clinton broke the law in handling her emails. No indictment. Because Hillary Clinton is above the law.

All of which is to say that Biden, Garland, and Smith — with ex-FBI Director James Comey coming in right behind them — are four of the most corrupt officials to come down the pike in all of American history.

No less than the Wall Street Journal, no fan of the former president, correctly warns that: 

[H]is indictment by President Biden’s Justice Department is a fraught moment for American democracy. For the first time in U.S. history, the prosecutorial power of the federal government has been used against a former President who is also running against the sitting President.

https://tippinsights.com/deep-state-vs-trump-persecution-through-prosecution/?ref=tippinsights-newsletter

Friday marked a somber day for America as the nation crossed a Rubicon with the 37-count criminal indictment of former President Trump, making it the first-ever federal indictment of a former president in the nation’s history. Trump now faces a maximum sentence of 400 years in prison and a $9M fine due to the indictment.

Ongoing War

Americans must realize that there is more to this situation than meets the eye. The administrative state has been waging a war against Donald Trump, and Friday’s indictment is the most recent development in this ongoing conflict—a fresh offensive against Trump. The administrative state is torpedoing Trump with lawfare, aiming to break his resolve and force him to stand down from running in 2024.

The war actually began before the 2016 election, when the FBI initiated a counterintelligence probe called ‘Crossfire Hurricane’ without proper justification. Following the inauguration, the administrative state launched a relentless assault on the new president, who was a non-politician, through the protracted Russia hoax.

President Trump recognizes this.

At the CPAC 2023, he said: “I didn’t know that they want to lynch you for doing nothing wrong. I didn’t know they want to lynch you for doing a great job. I didn’t know they want to put you away because your poll numbers are better than anybody they’ve seen in years.”

Politically, Trump is winning. He is the frontrunner for the Republican party for the 2024 presidential race.

He is also winning in the game of optics. For example, the recent Durham Report disproved claims that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to win the 2016 election. The FBI and the DOJ looked terrible for perpetrating the hoax for nearly three years, and President Trump was vindicated.

Deep State And Media Are Terrified

The administrative state and its media partners are deeply terrified by the prospect of Trump’s potential return to the presidency in 2024. Their fear is palpable, and a few recent examples echo this deep-seated unease.

MSNBC’s Jen Psaki’s sit-down interview with Former FBI Director James Comey aired past Sunday.

Comey told Psaki, ‘Think about what four years of a retribution presidency might look like. He could order the investigation and prosecution of individuals who he sees as enemies.’

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19722/the-god-particle

Few of us could master the curriculum when we were in school. Atoms, electrons, charged particles; it was a strange and alien world that few of us understood and even fewer could embrace much less master.

Yet we live in a 21st Century world that has been defined by the fundamental discoveries revealed, controlled, and directed by the laws of physics. Far more than some distant and mysterious field of study, theoretical studies that began decades ago continue to yield results that few could have foreseen, touching people around the globe.

Consider: Quantum physics was originally the study of matter and energy, the building blocks of nature. Few lay people outside of the research labs could envision any outcome from an academic debate over electrons and photons. Yet decades later, it is the legacy of quantum physics that provided the roadmap that led to personal computers, cell phones, and technology that impacts us every day. What became apparent is that the connection between theoretical research and “real world” applications may take decades to become clear but when they do, the world around us changes.

Accordingly, we need to pay attention to the latest frontier in physics.

Scientists say that next “big thing” is the Higgs boson, a particle that was confirmed in 2012 after three decades of theoretical research. One commentator said that discovery “put the bang in the Big Bang Theory of how the universe itself came to be.”

https://amgreatness.com/2023/06/12/a-day-of-infamy-trump-arraigned/

Jack Smith, the elusive special counsel handling the criminal investigations into Donald Trump for alleged possession of classified documents and the events of January 6, made his first public appearance last week. Sporting an unkempt beard and sour puss expression, Smith slouched into the E. Barrett Prettyman Courthouse in Washington, D.C. on June 6 while ignoring questions from a news reporter.

Smith, as he knew at the time, was about to make history. A few days later, Smith made a brief statement to boast about the multicount criminal indictment, including 31 counts for the “willful retention of national defense information,” he handed down against Donald Trump. (He again ignored reporters’ questions—to the extent any regime scribe even attempted to offer one.) 

“We have one set of laws in this country, and they apply to everyone,” a visibly nervous Smith nonetheless said with a straight face. “Adherence to the rule of law is a bedrock principle of the Department of Justice.”

The veteran prosecutor with a spotty record of success was handpicked by Attorney General Merrick Garland in November 2022 to give the illusion of an “independent” investigation into the former president and potential Republican rival to Joe Biden in 2024. But Smith’s team is far from “independent”; Justice Department officials already working on both matters simply changed letterhead and office space.

None other than CNN noted Garland’s sleight-of-hand. “Smith takes over a staff that’s already nearly twice the size of Robert Mueller’s team of lawyers who worked on the Russia probe,” four CNN reporters wrote a few weeks after Smith was appointed. “A team of 20 prosecutors investigating January 6 and the effort to overturn the 2020 election are in the process of moving to work under Smith.”

After hauling in everyone associated with Mar-a-Lago—from the maids to Trump’s personal attorney—to investigate Trump’s possession of classified material and any alleged obstruction of that investigation, Smith signed his name to a federal indictment against the 45th president. He is destined to be forever known as the government official who criminally charged a former U.S. president for the first time in history.

The cottage industry of legal experts who chased every shiny object—from cell towers in Prague and pee tapes in Moscow to washed-up spinsters and porn stars—finally will be vindicated. Thanks to Garland’s rogue Justice Department, an irredeemably corrupt FBI, and a rubber-stamp D.C. court system, the walls indeed have closed in on Donald Trump.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/06/mrs_obama__were_looking_for_the_fast__furious_files.html

Whether you love or hate Trump, no one should be happy with the weaponization of justice.

We’ve crossed two dangerous lines in the last year.  First, the FBI showed up at Mr. Trump’s home looking for files.  Second, a Special Counsel followed up with an indictment about those files.

Why hadn’t this happened before?  Maybe it’s because the people who came before us were smart enough to know that political passions go both ways.  What happens if a future GOP AG gets a search warrant to look for those Fast and Furious Files at Obama’s home?

“Good morning Mr. President Obama, where are your presidential files?”

Before Trump, no one would have dared consider that.  After Trump, anything can happen and probably will.

This is why I believe that this indictment against President Trump is going to backfire. Yes, Trump, like Biden, made mistakes. However, an indictment is over the top. This is to going to blow up in their faces.  I agree with TippInsights:

Jack Smith said in his address to the media, “Our nation’s commitment to the rule of law sets an example for the world. We have one set of laws in this country, and they apply to everyone.” 

The problem with this assertion is that the world has seen how the Deep State has gone after Trump, often putting him below the law. 

https://pjmedia.com/columns/paula-bolyard/2023/06/13/report-burisma-founder-who-allegedly-bribed-joe-and-hunter-biden-is-an-russian-asset-n1702735

Jennifer Van Laar, at our sister site RedState, just dropped a bombshell exclusive report about the founder of Bursima:

Burisma Holdings founder Mykola Zlochevsky, who allegedly paid a total of $10 million in bribes to Joe and Hunter Biden in 2015 and 2016 in exchange for then-Vice President Joe Biden’s assistance in getting Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin fired, is believed to be an asset of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) by the United States intelligence community, according to a national security source speaking to RedState on condition of anonymity.

The anonymous source told RedState, “The US intelligence community has a high degree of confidence in their assessment of Zlochevsky as SVR. This is not a new assessment; the intelligence community under Obama knew this, and Obama was briefed on it. Joe Biden and Victoria Nuland were briefed as well.”

RedState also pointed to a tweet from Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) on Monday, claiming that the foreign national who allegedly bribed the Bidens has audio recordings of his conversations with Joe and Hunter Biden. He kept the recordings “as a sort of insurance policy,” according to the senator.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/another-biden-defense-5914ec5e?mod=opinion_lead_pos11

Just like everyone else, President Joe Biden deserves the presumption of innocence when it comes to the latest allegations related to his family’s prolific collection of cash from foreign oligarchs. But given the highly consequential falsehoods he and his allies have told about lucrative Biden family engagements for which the family appeared manifestly unqualified, healthy skepticism is in order. And now there’s another highly dubious claim coming from Mr. Biden’s defenders.

As for the latest twist in the story of the Bidens and overseas oligarchs, the Journal’s William McGurn wrote last week:

“House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer subpoenaed a Federal Bureau of Investigation form he says outlines details of a $5 million bribe allegedly paid to Joe Biden while he was vice president. Until last week, the FBI wouldn’t even concede the document existed… But after Mr. Comer and Sen. Chuck Grassley told [FBI Director Christopher Wray] in a phone call last Wednesday that they’d already seen the document, pretending it doesn’t exist was no longer an option. Now that the FBI says there’s an investigation, there is a campaign to discredit the charges before the public can see them.
The first salvo came from CNN last Wednesday. Quoting “people briefed on the matter,” the network said the document had its “origins in a tranche of documents that Rudy Giuliani provided to the Justice Department in 2020.” This is what Rep. Jamie Raskin, the ranking Democrat on the Oversight Committee, is relying on to say the charges have been looked into and there’s nothing there.
Remember when the New York Post on Oct. 14, 2020, first published some of the incriminating emails from Hunter Biden’s laptop? The paper’s reporting was not only ignored but also suppressed—with the active assistance of the FBI. In its original story, the Post reported that “Hunter Biden’s lawyer refused to comment on the specifics but instead attacked Giuliani.” Some things never change.”

They sure don’t. Mr. McGurn had more on the allegations contained in an FBI form called an FD-1023, used to record information from a confidential human source:

After Monday’s meeting with the FBI, Mr. Raskin emerged to say that Trump-appointed officials including Attorney General William Barr and U.S. Attorney Scott Brady assessed the allegations against Mr. Biden and agreed not to take the investigation any further. But he didn’t say precisely which allegations were assessed—and especially if they were based on the specific information on that FD-1023 from that trusted source. Mr. Comer said the FBI told him the information in the FD-1023 is being used in an ongoing investigation and hasn’t been disproved.

https://amgreatness.com/2023/06/10/can-trump-clean-the-augean-stables-on-the-potomac/

There is a reason that, since before the time of the emperor Tiberius, treason trials have been a favorite tool of totalitarians. Such proceedings allow them to get rid of nearly anyone they dislike. Successfully brand someone a “traitor,” an “enemy of the state,” and, bang, into the oubliette they go.

I think the treason trial is the appropriate heuristic for what is happening, and what has been happening to Donald Trump ever since 2015 when he descended the escalator.

The charge that Trump was “Putin’s poodle,” a “Russian asset,” etc., during the Russia collusion hoax was a sort of treason trial. And remember how elaborate it all was, a veritable glass onion, thanks in large part to Hillary Clinton, whose campaign concocted, paid for, and disseminated the infamous fantasy “dossier” fabricated by former MI6 spook Christopher Steele. And it was Hillary, remember, who first broadcast the charge that servers in Trump Tower were secretly communicating with Russia’s Alfa Bank. The Justice Department, the FBI, the intelligence services—all were in on that game.

Trump’s two impeachments were episodes in the long-running treason trial, as was Liz Cheney’s January 6 show trial, as are the still unfolding series of indictments that have dogged his footsteps with increasing ferocity as the 2024 election looms and Trump’s poll numbers stubbornly refuse to recede.

A lot of legal hermeneutical ingenuity has been lavished on the current criminal indictment, a 37-count blockbuster revolving around charges that Trump mishandled classified documents he had stuffed away at his Mar-a-Lago mansion in Palm Beach. I think those analyses are mostly beside the point, so much wasted foolscap. The indictment, which histrionically relies heavily on the 1917 Espionage Act, is, when looked at with a sufficiently jaundiced eye, an amusing performance. Macbeth would have said it was a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.