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Shame the FBI or Abuses Will Escalate If the FBI can selectively leak portions of the affidavit agents used to justify the search of Mar-a-Lago, then why should it be allowed to conceal the rest of the affidavit? By Adam Mill

https://amgreatness.com/2022/08/18/shame-the-fbi-or-abuses-will-escalate/

I have been unable to locate any condemnation by the FBI of the leaks to the New York Times of the “highly sensitive information about witnesses, including witnesses interviewed by the government,” in connection with the Mar-a-Lago raid. That’s strange because only a day earlier the Justice Department told a federal judge that releasing the names of these witnesses would, “jeopardize the integrity of this national security investigation.” The silence is deafening. 

On Monday, the Department of Justice filed an opposition to the release of the affidavit the FBI used to justify its “panty raid” on Mar-a-Lago.“Disclosure at this juncture of the affidavit supporting probable cause would, by contrast, cause significant and irreparable damage to this ongoing criminal investigation,”  the government argued. “As the Court is aware from its review of the affidavit, it contains, among other critically important and detailed investigative facts: highly sensitive information about witnesses, including witnesses interviewed by the government.”

The very next day, within 24 hours, the Times published an article exposing “Pat A. Cipollone and Patrick F. Philbin, the White House counsel and his deputy under President Donald J. Trump,” as the very witnesses whose identity the Department of Justice said it wanted to protect. If this were a real investigation, the target would now be warned to be careful talking to these two witnesses. 

The source for the Times article? “Three people familiar with the matter.” It’s conceivable that at the very moment a Justice Department lawyer wrote the warning to the court about revealing witness identities, three of the involved FBI agents were doing just that. 

Of course, there will be no condemnation of the leaks of the identity of these witnesses because it’s part of the FBI’s public relations campaign and election interference strategy. In spite of the FBI constantly seeking secrecy to protect its “sources and methods,” it’s more than happy to leak its sources as one of its very dirty methods. 

Suppression of the Truth: The Order of Our Day And the lifeblood of the Left. Matthew Hanley

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/08/suppressio-veri-order-our-day-matthew-hanley/

In Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff’s recent, perfectly entitled book: The Truth is No Defense, she recounts how her life as an Austrian woman was turned upside down because she accurately articulated things that Islam deems permissible and virtuous. Including child marriage. As per Mohammed’s example.

For her trouble, she was subject to burdensome litigation that wound its way up to Europe’s highest court. And she lost. Although what she communicated was true – factually correct – the court ruled that expressing some truths may be hurtful, and therefore must be disallowed due to the overriding need to protect the feelings of Muslims.

That Muslim authorities themselves defend child marriage (and other unflattering practices) as something beyond reproach and therefore by definition not hurtful is a massive inconsistency worthy of further exploration another time.

For now, I wish to stress that Suppressio Veri – suppression of the truth – was literally a court order.  Not only because properly functioning courts are specifically meant to venerate the truth and rule against its disregard either by acts of commission or omission. But because it strikes me that, more broadly, Suppressio Veri is quite simply the order of the day – the defining characteristic of our era, along with its correlate Suggestio Falsi – the insinuation of an untruth.

Suppressio Veri most certainly is the lifeblood of the Left. Examples abound so that they can hardly be enumerated. The transgender falsehood is almost too obvious to mention. Yet we have a man named Richard calling himself Rachel serving as the Assistant Secretary for Health for the HHS, and no one bats an eye. Everyone pretends – as if at the point of a sword – that this is real.

Prominent Putin Critic Dies under Mysterious Circumstances in D.C., Friends Suspect Foul Play By Diana Glebova

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/prominent-putin-critic-dies-under-mysterious-circumstances-in-d-c-friends-suspect-foul-play/

A fierce Latvian-American critic of Vladimir Putin living in exile in Washington, D.C., was found dead Sunday evening on the sidewalk outside his apartment building, police said.

Authorities told National Review they don’t suspect foul play, but those close to 52-year-old businessman Dan Rapoport are raising questions about the circumstances surrounding his death, which they doubt was the result of suicide.

“The stakes of getting to the bottom of [Rapoport’s death] are high,” prominent Russia historian and journalist David Satter, who was a friend of Rapoport, told National Review.

“So much in this doesn’t make sense, that clarifying this has got to be a very, very high priority,” Satter said, adding that his death could possibly be an “organized assignation” carried out by Russia in the streets of America’s capital, but that more information needed to be released to determine how Rapoport died.

The Metropolitan Police Department responded “in reference to a jumper,” and filed a police report about their discovery at 8:50 p.m. on Sunday.

Police officers found articles of clothing, a broken headphone, a cracked cellphone, $2,620 and a Florida driver’s license at the scene, according to the police report.

Rapoport was pronounced dead at the hospital.

On the Guilty Plea of Trump’s Finance Guy, Weisselberg By Andrew C. McCarthy

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/on-the-guilty-plea-of-trumps-finance-guy-weisselberg/?utm_s

With all the violent crime that goes unaddressed in New York City, how great to see that Alvin Bragg has resources to prosecute septuagenarians for failing to report their grandchildren’s comped school tuition to the taxman. But, for whatever it’s worth to him, the Manhattan DA has gotten his man — or at least a man close to his man. To settle the case against him, Allen Weisselberg, longtime financial officer for Donald Trump’s real-estate organization, was made to plead guilty to 15 counts of behavior so serious that he’ll be looking at . . . yes . . . 100 days in prison.

As the New York Times put it, with surprising bluntness, Bragg will “gain a victory” here because “Mr. Weisselberg, an accountant who served a vital role as the company’s financial gatekeeper, will be branded as a felon.” So will Trump’s organization when the case against it comes up in October, unless there is a plea before then. This is an exercise in branding political enemies, and the media will speak about the dispositions in those terms. The fact, however, is that the DA is settling for a puny case against the company because it can’t hook the big fish.

FBI Unit Leading Mar-a-Lago Probe Earlier Ran Discredited Trump-Russia Investigation By Paul Sperry

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2022/08/18/fbi_unit_leading_mar-a-lago_probe_previously_led_russiagate_hoax_848582.html

The FBI division overseeing the investigation of former President Trump’s handling of classified material at his Mar-a-Lago residence is also a focus of Special Counsel John Durham’s investigation of the bureau’s alleged abuses of power and political bias during its years-long Russiagate probe of Trump.

The FBI’s nine-hour, 30-agent raid of the former president’s Florida estate is part of a counterintelligence case run out of Washington – not Miami, as has been widely reported – according to FBI case documents and sources with knowledge of the matter. The bureau’s counterintelligence division led the 2016-2017 Russia “collusion” investigation of Trump, codenamed “Crossfire Hurricane.”

Although the former head of Crossfire Hurricane, Peter Strzok, was fired after the disclosure of his vitriolic anti-Trump tweets, several members of his team remain working in the counterintelligence unit, the sources say, even though they are under active investigation by both Durham and the bureau’s disciplinary arm, the Office of Professional Responsibility. The FBI declined to respond to questions about any role they may be taking in the Mar-a-Lago case.

In addition, a key member of the Crossfire team – Supervisory Intelligence Analyst Brian Auten – has continued to be involved in politically sensitive investigations, including the ongoing federal probe of potentially incriminating content found on the abandoned laptop of President Biden’s son Hunter Biden, according to recent correspondence between the Senate Judiciary Committee and FBI Director Christopher Wray. FBI whistleblowers have alleged that Auten tried to falsely discredit derogatory evidence against Hunter Biden during the 2020 campaign by labeling it Russian “disinformation,” an assessment that caused investigative activity to cease.

Auten has been allowed to work on sensitive cases even though he has been under internal investigation since 2019, when Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz referred him for disciplinary review for his role in vetting a Hillary Clinton campaign-funded dossier used by the FBI to obtain a series of wiretap warrants to spy on former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. Horowitz singled out Auten for cutting a number of corners in the verification process and even allowing information he knew to be incorrect slip into warrant affidavits and mislead the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court.

The biggest threat to American support for Israel comes from the left “Top Story” with Jonathan Tobin and Matthew Continetti

https://www.jns.org/the-biggest-threat-to-american-support-for-israel-comes-from-the-left/?utm_source=Old+Daily+Syndicate&utm_

So long as liberals and their corporate media cheerleaders continue to treat conservatives as illegitimate “deplorables,” the polarization of American politics and public discourse will continue, says JNS editor-in-chief Jonathan Tobin. That’s why a dispassionate history and analysis of the conservative movement is important, he argues.

Speaking with Matthew Continetti, author of “The Right: The Hundred Year War for American Conservatism,” the two discussed how the rise of former President Donald Trump and his populist approach to politics can be traced to trends that have always been part of the arguments on the right dating back decades. As Continetti noted, “the leadership of a movement matters just as much, if not more, than what that movement stands for.”

They also discussed the role that conspiracy theories and anti-Semitism play in American politics.

“One of the strengths of American conservative thought in the 20th century was that the facts were on its side,” argues Continetti. He also notes that being supportive of Israel was a key part of Trump’s ability to win the GOP presidential nomination in 2016. That was, he says, “more of the party bringing Trump along than it was Trump moving the party. … The evangelical Christian community has been the bulwark of support for Israel in this country for about 40 years.”

According to Continetti, “The biggest threat to American support for Israel, to Israel’s legitimacy and I think to the success of the American Jewish community does come from the left today and not from the right.”

10 Similarities Between The FBI’s Mar-A-Lago Raid And Spygate By: Margot Cleveland

https://thefederalist.com/2022/08/17/in-latest-anti-trump-operation-doj-and-media-deploy-same-old-russiagate-tricks/

The DOJ and FBI think they can execute the same game plan they did for the last six years without the public noticing. They can’t.

The FBI’s raid on Mar-a-Lago reveals the deep-state cabal and their corrupt media partners deployed no fewer than 10 of the same tradecrafts used to push the Russia-collusion hoax. And with that, history is repeating itself with the same corrupt plot.

1. A Shocking Storyline of Trump Putting America at Risk

With the Russia-collusion hoax, Democrats and a complicit media cartel warned the country that Trump’s relationship with Russia presented a clear and present danger to America. While the reporting oscillated from Trump being too pally with Vladimir Putin to Putin having leverage over Trump, to Trump being a Russian agent, the narrative underlying the hoax was one that, if true, presented the public with a serious national security concern.

Similarly, the hoax surrounding the search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home rests on claimed misconduct which, if true, raises concerns of a dire national security crisis. Like having a Russian stooge or agent in the White House, Trump keeping supposedly top-secret documents unsecured in his Florida home suggests a serious threat to our national security. 

In both cases, the seriousness of the supposed threat to America’s national security seeks to justify the government’s extreme measures to target Trump.

2. The Building of a Narrative

To support the idea that Trump’s supposed misconduct created a serious risk to America, both the Biden administration and the press quickly converged on the “classified materials” narrative. But none of the crimes on which the Mar-a-Lago search warrant was premised involved crimes related to the illegal possession or storage of “classified materials.” Nonetheless, the media coverage immediately framed the raid as based on the presence of “classified” and even “top secret” materials. Supposed government sources even went so far as to claim the material kept at Trump’s home related to nuclear secrets. 

The Bogus Lawsuit against Ron DeSantis for Removing a Rogue Prosecutor By Dan McLaughlin

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-bogus-lawsuit-against-ron-desantis-for-removing-a-rogue-prosecutor/

Florida governor Ron DeSantis suspended Hillsborough County state attorney Andrew Warren for announcing his refusal to prosecute entire categories of cases. Warren, a Democrat, is angry and suing the Republican governor to get his job back. But DeSantis is on solid legal ground.

Warren’s effort faces three problems, which I have explained at length. One, Florida’s constitution gives DeSantis the explicit power to suspend a state attorney. Two, the permitted grounds for doing so include “neglect of duty,” and the Florida supreme court has construed that phrase broadly as far back as 1937 to include failure to prosecute classes of cases, and confirmed the breadth of that power as recently as a 2019 decision upholding a DeSantis suspension of a sheriff. Three, the Florida Supreme Court has also recognized since that 1937 case that all the governor has to do is announce legitimate grounds for suspension; by the explicit division of authority in the Florida constitution, deciding whether the facts support the governor’s conclusion is up to the state senate, not the courts. Florida’s Republican-run state senate is unlikely to sympathize with Warren.

Warren has filed suit seeking a writ of quo warranto under Florida law, the same remedy the courts denied in those previous cases. In an attempt to get around the clear Florida caselaw, however, Warren filed his suit in federal court, and tacked on a First Amendment claim. It won’t help him. Warren’s complaint and his press conference announcing it were full of florid rhetoric about how DeSantis is supposedly trying to “toss out the results of an election” by exercising a constitutional power of oversight, and this bit of nonsense: “Warren brings this lawsuit to confirm that the First Amendment still applies even though DeSantis is the Governor of Florida and that the Constitution of the State of Florida means what the courts say it means, not whatever DeSantis needs it to mean to silence his critics, promote his loyalists, and subvert the will of the voters.” Critics of DeSantis who call his move “fascist” and a sign of “autocracy” and ask,  “Since when does the governor have veto power over the people’s choice?” should probably have read the Florida constitution and the cases. So should Warren and his lawyers at Perkins Coie before filing this stunt lawsuit.

‘Civil War’ Porn Those who warn most of some mythical civil war are those most likely to incite one. By Victor Davis Hanson

https://amgreatness.com/2022/08/17/civil-war-porn/

As Joe Biden’s polls stagnate and the midterms approach, we are now serially treated to yet another progressive melodrama about the dangers of a supposed impending radical right-wing violent takeover. 

This time the alleged threat is a Neanderthal desire for a “civil war.”  

The FBI raid on Donald Trump’s Florida home, the dubious rationale for such a historic swoop, and the popular pushback at the FBI and Department of Justice from roughly half the country have further fueled these giddy “civil war” conjectures. 

Recently “presidential historian” Michael Beschloss speculated about the parameters of such an envisioned civil war.

Beschloss is an ironic source. Just days earlier, he had tweeted references to the executions of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who passed U.S. nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union in the 1950s, in connection with the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago.  

That was a lunatic insinuation that Trump might justly suffer the same lethal fate due to supposedly mishandling of “nuclear secrets.” Unhinged former CIA Director Michael Hayden picked up on Beschloss death-penalty prompt, adding that it “sounds about right.”                                                                                                       

Hayden had gained recent notoriety for comparing Trump’s continuance of the Obama Administration’s border detention facilities to Hitler’s death camps. And he had assured the public that Hunter Biden’s lost and incriminating laptop was likely “Russian disinformation”. 

So, like the earlier “Russian collusion” hoax, and the January 6 “insurrection,” the supposed right-wing inspired civil war is the latest shrill warning from the Left about how “democracy dies in darkness” and the impending end of progressive control of Congress in a few months. 

On cue, Hollywood now joins the civil war bandwagon. It has issued a few bad, grade-C movies. They focus on deranged white “insurrectionists” who seek to take over the United States in hopes of driving out or killing off various “marginalized” peoples. 

Pentagon grandees promise to learn about “white rage” in the military and to root it out. But never do they offer any hard data to suggest white males express any greater degree of racial or ethnic chauvinism than any other demographic.

Deplatforming Doctors, Distracting Parents Helen Roy (January 2022)

https://americanmind.org/salvo/deplatforming-doctors-distracting-parents/

The regime wants to replace you

This week, for wondering aloud why we are now approving medication for children with no trial data, medical doctor Steven Bishop was flagged by the Twitter commissars. Now, his tweet is labelled “misleading,” users cannot see any of the tens of thousands of likes and responses accumulated over the week, and further engagement is permanently limited.

Within the same week, YouTube removed Joe Rogan’s recent interviews with Drs. Robert Malone and Peter McCullough, skeptics of the covid regime, both of whom also highlighted the absurdity and abusive nature of the response in regard to children. Throughout history, the old have sacrificed for the sake of the young, Malone suggested in his interview. The way American adults have recklessly mismanaged the lives of young people, he went on, is not only out of line with the natural way of things, but it will likely generate dramatic, civilization-threatening consequences in the near future.

Big Tech must come down on this information for the same reason they have come down hard on Christopher Rufo. It is the kind of thing that can and should galvanize parents. Any parent who has not completely resigned themselves to being, as I put it last week, the “temporary and essentially fungible custodian of state property” would react to this information with righteous indignation. Yes, those parents are a diminishing minority. But the narrative that the managerial elite cooperate to uphold is part of the reason parents feel alone, vulnerable, and totally powerless.

I challenge my readers to think of a single avenue of public life where parental authority remains a legitimate claim over the life and well-being of children.