RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/05/flynn-and-the-anatomy-of-a-political-narrative/

Obama officials and FBI collaborated to invent the ‘Russian collusion’ narrative

The FBI coordinated very closely with the Obama White House on the investigation of Michael Flynn, while the Obama Justice Department was asleep at the switch. That is among the most revealing takeaways from Thursday’s decision by Attorney General Bill Barr to pull the plug on the prosecution of Flynn, who fleetingly served as President Trump’s first National Security Advisor. Flynn had been seeking to withdraw his guilty plea to a false-statements charge brought in late 2017 by Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

While working on the Trump transition team in December 2016, Flynn spoke with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak, in conversations that were intercepted by our government (because Russian-government operatives, such as Kislyak, are routinely monitored by the FBI and other U.S. intelligence agencies). Among the topics Flynn and Kislyak discussed was the imposition of sanctions against Russia, which President Obama had just announced.

That these conversations took place has been known for over three years — ever since a still-unidentified government official leaked that classified information to the Washington Post. For almost as long, it has been known that the FBI became aware of the Flynn–Kislyak discussions very shortly after they happened. What was not known until this week was that then–acting attorney general Yates was out of the loop. She found out about the discussions nearly a week afterwards — from President Obama, of all people.

https://justthenews.com/accountability/russia-and-ukraine-scandals/dirty-dozen-12-revelations-sunk-muellers-case-against

Shortly after my colleague Sara Carter and I began reporting in 2017 on the possibility that the FBI was abusing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to spy on Americans during the Russia investigation, I received a call. It was an intermediary for someone high up in the intelligence community.

The story that source told me that day — initially I feared it may have been too spectacular to be true — was that FBI line agents had actually cleared former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn of any wrongdoing with Russia only to have the bureau’s leadership hijack the process to build a case that he lied during a subsequent interview.

In fact, my notes show, the source used the words “concoct a 1001 false statements case” to describe the objections of career agents who did not believe Flynn had intended to deceive the FBI. A leak of a transcript of Flynn’s call with the Russian ambassador was just part of a campaign, the source alleged.

The tip resulted in a two-and-a-half-year journey by myself and a small group of curious and determined journalists like Carter, Catherine Herridge, Greg Jarrett, Mollie Hemingway, Lee Smith, Byron York, and Kimberly Strassel to slowly peel back the onion.

The pursuit of the truth ended Thursday when the Justice Department formally asked a court to vacate Flynn’s conviction and end the criminal case, acknowledging the former general had indeed been cleared by FBI agents and that the bureau did not have a lawful purpose when it interviewed him in January 2017.

Attorney General William Barr put it more bluntly in an interview Thursday: “They kept it open for the express purpose of trying to catch, to lay a perjury trap for General Flynn.”

https://amgreatness.com/2020/05/08/melinda-gates-criticizes-trump-administrations-coronavirus-response/

Melinda Gates, wife of Microsoft founder and mega-billionaire Bill Gates, gave the Trump Administration a “grade” of D- for its response to the coronavirus pandemic, as reported by Politico.

In her assessment, Gates falsely claimed that there was no coordinated national response from the Trump Administration, and instead claimed that most of the burden was taken up by the nation’s governors. She also falsely claimed that America has not done enough testing, and compared the American response to Germany’s response, claiming that the latter was better.

Gates said during an interview with Politico that “if we were doing the things that the exemplar countries are doing, like Germany, we would be testing.” However, the United States has already been testing, and President Trump recently confirmed in a press conference that the United States has tested more people than any other country in the world.

She also claimed that America was “lacking in its response” with regards to other countries suffering from similar outbreaks, and said that the United States should give more foreign aid to African countries.

Gates and her husband Bill have been actively calling for an expedited process in developing a coronavirus vaccine. As a result, Gates has come under heavy scrutiny for his various investments and business interests in companies working on possible vaccines, and has become the subject of many conspiracy theories alleging some level of deliberate involvement, planning, or foreknowledge of the coronavirus outbreak.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/bad-state-decisions-about-nursing-homes-are-heavily-driving-the-coronavirus-outbreak/

Coronavirus outbreaks in nursing homes have been particularly deadly in California, Illinois, Michigan, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York.

You could make a strong argument that the country’s deadly coronavirus problem is largely a nursing home problem, dangerous everywhere but far more prevalent in a half-dozen or so of the country’s more heavily and densely populated states. What’s more, many of these states enacted coronavirus response policies that likely put nursing and assisted-living home residents at higher risk for infection.

Notice the California policy described by the San Jose Mercury News:

Even as senior care centers have been particularly hard hit by the coronavirus — with patient and staff deaths accounting for nearly 40 percent of all COVID-19 deaths across California — the state is calling on assisted living facilities to house infected patients in exchange for money.

A letter from the state Department of Social Services sent to licensees of senior and adult care residential facilities on Friday urged them to temporarily take in patients who have tested positive for the virus — for up to $1,000 a day — to make room in hospitals for people who become critically ill and require acute care.

But health experts and advocates say the plan risks introducing the virus into facilities that have been spared or those already dealing with their own outbreaks.

That need continues to grow. As of May 3, nearly 10,000 patients and staff in long-term care facilities in the state of California have tested positive for the virus, and 926 of them have died, according to figures released by DSS, which oversees assisted living, and the California Department of Public Health.

Notice the complaints described by Health News Illinois: “The Illinois Health Care Association and the Health Care Council of Illinois, the state’s two largest nursing home associations, say they have been asking for more testing for weeks. And that personal protective equipment has been hit or miss across facilities, with some operating on a day-to-day supply.”

https://thefederalist.com/2020/05/08/obama-biden-oval-office-meeting-on-january-5-was-key-to-entire-anti-trump-operation/

Susan Rice’s bizarre Inauguration Day email about that meeting helps explain the campaign of leaks, lies, and obstruction that followed.

Information released in the Justice Department’s motion to dismiss the case it brought against Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn confirms the significance of a January 5, 2017, meeting at the Obama White House. It was at this meeting that Obama gave guidance to key officials who would be tasked with protecting his administration’s utilization of secretly funded Clinton campaign research, which alleged Trump was involved in a treasonous plot to collude with Russia, from being discovered or stopped by the incoming administration.

“President Obama said he wants to be sure that, as we engage with the incoming team, we are mindful to ascertain if there is any reason that we cannot share information fully as it relates to Russia,” National Security Advisor Susan Rice wrote in an unusual email to herself about the meeting that was also attended by Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, FBI Director James Comey, and Vice President Joe Biden.

A clearer picture is emerging of the drastic steps that were taken to accomplish Obama’s goal in the following weeks and months. Shortly thereafter, high-level operatives began intensely leaking selective information supporting a supposed Russia-Trump conspiracy theory, the incoming National Security Advisor was ambushed, and the incoming Attorney General was forced to recuse himself from oversight of investigations of President Trump. At each major point in the operation, explosive media leaks were a key strategy in the operation to take down Trump.

Not only was information on Russia not fully shared with the incoming Trump team, as Obama directs, the leaks and ambushes made the transition chaotic, scared quality individuals away from working in the administration, made effective governance almost impossible, and materially damaged national security. When Comey was finally fired on May 9, in part for his duplicitousness regarding his handling of the Russia collusion theory, he orchestrated the launch of a Special Counsel probe that continued his efforts for another two years. That probe ended with Mueller finding no evidence of any American colluding with Russia to steal the 2016 election, much less Trump or anyone connected to him.

https://nypost.com/2020/05/07/michael-flynns-prosecution-was-a-travesty-of-justice/

It has long been obvious that the case brought by Special Counsel Robert Mueller against Michael Flynn stunk to high heaven. That has been copiously confirmed over the last three weeks as the Justice Department made a series of stunning disclosures that undermined whatever vestige of propriety remained.

General Flynn, former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, served fleetingly as President Trump’s first national security advisor. At the time, in the wake of Hillary Clinton’s stunning defeat in the 2016 election, the media-Democrat complex fueled a “collusion” narrative — purportedly, Trump had schemed with Russia to hack Democratic email accounts, and would now do the Kremlin’s bidding from the Oval Office.

Flynn was caught up in this fever dream because, as a top Trump campaign adviser and transition official, he had some conversations with the Russian ambassador — just as he was speaking with many foreign dignitaries.

Although the FBI and the Obama administration had recordings of these calls and knew Flynn had done nothing improper, the fact that they occurred was used to stoke the claim that Flynn may have agreed on Trump’s behalf to drop sanctions Obama had imposed on Russia. He had not, but the mere mention of sanctions was politically explosive.

There was no basis to believe Flynn, a decorated former US combat commander, would ever be Moscow’s mole, much less that he had committed a crime. But Obama officials speculated that perhaps they could nail him for violating the Logan Act. On the books since 1799, this provision purports to make it a crime to engage freelance diplomacy without government authorization. It is almost certainly unconstitutional, no one has ever been successfully prosecuted for violating it, and the government hasn’t even tried to indict anyone on it since before the Civil War. It would be absurd to try to apply it to any American, but to contemplate doing it against a transition official slated to become national security adviser was particularly ludicrous.

https://ruleofreason.blogspot.com/2020/05/stealth-fascism-ii-dissalution-of-civil.html

I wrote the following just to illustrate a term I invented to capture the character of what is happening today, in 2020, because of the coronovirus and about the changing character of America:

Stealth Fascism

Taking my cue from Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead , what would Howard Roark do or not do? Imagine he is faced with the likes of the Coronovirus in the 1920s and 1930s. He would laugh.

He would touch his face, while scratching his head over a designing problem.

He would not regularly disinfect his architectural drawings to show to prospective clients or employers.

He would take occasional trips to shop.

He would not constantly wash his hands, using a disinfectant; or a hand sanitizer.

He would go out, not stay at home, and wonder what the hell ws “discretionary” or “essential” travel.

He would go to work.

He would not use his elbow to sneeze into.
He would not wear a mask.He was already in conflict with the collectivism of his time.

He would eat and drink in a speakeasy, when he had the money.

He would not maintain a social distance from Dominique Francon.

 He would perform other actions or non-actions we should take for granted, as sane behavior, as normal in his world.

I’m really surprised and disappointed by how readily Americans are to submit to stealth fascism. It’s not a world I want to live in. It’s becoming less and less tolerable for me.

I have a good mind to order a Lone Ranger mask from Amazon.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15997/michael-flynn-innocent

From a legal and policy point of view, encouraging the FBI to misuse its legitimate authority to investigate past crimes, solely to create future crimes is both immoral and illegal.

Let us hear now from the former civil libertarians for whom any violation of law is permissible, as long as it is directed at a Trump associate.

Anyone who knows how the system works in practice would understand why an innocent man—or a defendant in a close case—might be coerced into pleading guilty…. in this case, it is alleged that the government threatened, if Flynn did not plead guilty, to indict his son.

There must be a single standard of justice and civil liberties — including the presumption of innocence — that transcends partisan politics. This message has been forgotten by both parties.

More than a year ago I wrote that it was clear General Michael Flynn should never have pleaded guilty because he did not commit a crime. Even if he lied to the FBI, his lie was not “material.” For a lie to be a crime under federal law, it must be material to the investigation – meaning that the lies pertain to the issues being legitimately investigated. The role of the FBI is to investigate past crimes, not to create new ones. Because the FBI investigators already knew the answer to the question they asked him—whether he had spoken to the Russian Ambassador—their purpose was not to elicit new information relevant to their investigation, but rather to spring a perjury trap on him. When they asked Flynn the question, they had a recording of his conversation with the Russian, of which he was presumably unaware. So his answer was not material to the investigation because they already had the information about which they were inquiring.

https://amgreatness.com/2020/05/07/is-the-cdc-meddling-with-the-2020-election/

The coronavirus crisis is reaping big political benefits for Democrats. President Trump’s signature achievement—a booming economy with record low unemployment, rising middle-class wages, and a sky-high stock market—lies in tatters. At least 33 million Americans abruptly and without warning are out of work. Second-quarter gross domestic product estimates are horrifying, a double-digit dive that the country has never experienced even in the direst economic times.

Americans are scared for their health and fearful of the future. Neighbors are turning on each other; the inner tyrant of every state governor, mayor, and police officer has been unleashed. And President Trump has been denied access to his only stimulant—energetic political rallies where he connects directly with supporters across the country.

Instead, the president has been stuck in Washington, D.C., listening to the advice of “experts” who used fraudulent models to convince him in late March to “shut down” the country.

Trump’s rival, Joe Biden, has been safely shuttered away in his home studio where he struggles to read teleprompter scripts or offer articulate responses to softball questions from late-night hosts. The Democratic National Convention has been canceled so the American electorate won’t be able to assess Biden’s frailty and incoherence on a national stage a few months before Election Day.

At the same time, near-daily disclosures confirm that corrupt federal prosecutors and cops loyal to Barack Obama targeted Trump associates to sabotage his 2016 candidacy and then derail his presidency under the ruse of Russian election collusion.