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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION

50 STATES AND DC, CONGRESS AND THE PRESIDENT

1,100 former federal prosecutors and DOJ officials demand Barr’s resignation By Andrea Widburg

What we’re seeing here is the fruit of the corruption of America’s institutions of higher education, ensuring that the educated classes are dedicated socialists.

Roger Stone, a nasty, sleazy person who refused to participate in the Russian hoax, was convicted of lying to Congress and making ill-tempered threats that his “victim” found laughable. He was a first-time, non-violent, elderly offender so, of course, prosecutors tied to Bob Mueller decided to pay exquisite homage to the letter of the law, without reference to the spirit, and demanded of the judge that Stone get 7-9 years in prison. Political leakers and hardcore criminals get shorter sentences. Insiders like Andrew McCabe don’t even get prosecuted.

When Trump learned about the prosecutors’ demands he posted a tweet calling out this travesty. Simultaneously, and completely separately from Trump’s angry tweets, Bill Barr also learned for the first time about the sentencing request and pulled it, instead asking the judge to exercise her discretion when it came to sentencing Stone. While all this was going on, it turned out that the jury foreman lied about her animus towards Trump and his circle, as well as her knowledge about and hostility towards Stone.

The Democrats hate Barr because they understand that he is focused on the law as it should be, not on politics as it is. With Barr applying common sense and rationality to an extreme and partisan attack on an old man, the leftists think they’ve got him:

More than 1,100 former federal prosecutors and Justice Department officials called on Attorney General William P. Barr on Sunday to step down after he intervened last week to lower the Justice Department’s sentencing recommendation for President Trump’s longtime friend Roger J. Stone Jr.

Juror 1261 in Roger Stone’s case: Was justice undone? Jonathan Turley

https://thehill.com/opinion/criminal-justice/483210-juror-1261-in-roger-stones-case-was-justice-undone

She was Juror No. 1261, and her examination by the federal court and counsel before the trial was anything but notable. And that is precisely the problem.

Juror 1261, we now know, was Tomeka Hart. Her identity would have remained publicly unknown except for a public statement she made after the Department of Justice (DOJ) rescinded its initial sentencing recommendation for Trump confidant Roger Stone. In the midst of the firestorm of allegations of political interference, Hart disclosed that she was the foreperson on the Stone jury and gave a full-throated defense of the trial prosecutors: “It pains me to see the DOJ now interfere with the hard work of the prosecutors.”

That statement led many people to Google her name, and what they found was a litany of postings not only hostile to President Trump and his administration but also specifically commenting on Stone and his arrest — before she ever appeared for jury duty.

I have previously written about how I believe that the DOJ was correct in its rejection of the absurdly high recommendation of seven to nine years in prison for Stone. However, there are legitimate questions that must still be addressed on how the Justice Department came to that decision. Yet while cable shows exhaustively cover that story, there is an equally serious question as to whether the conviction itself, rather than the sentencing recommendation, should be reevaluated.

Hart is a Democratic activist and critic of the Trump administration. She was the Memphis City Schools board president. Not surprisingly, given her political background (including a run for Congress), Hart has been vocal in public on her views of Trump and his associates.

She referred to the President with a hashtag of “klanpresident” and spoke out against “Trump and the white supremacist racists.” She posted about how she and others protested outside a Trump hotel and shouted, “Shame, shame, shame!” When profanities were projected on the Trump hotel, she exclaimed on Jan. 13, 2018, “Gotta love it.” On March 24, 2019, she shared a Facebook post — no longer public — while calling attention to “the numerous indictments, guilty pleas, and convictions of people in 45’s inner-circle.”

Why Wasn’t Andrew McCabe Charged? By Andrew C. McCarthy

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/02/why-wasnt-andrew-mccabe-charged/

The proof that he willfully deceived investigators appears strong, but the Justice Department likely felt there were too many obstacles to convicting him.

The Justice Department announced Friday that it is closing its investigation of Andrew McCabe, the FBI’s former deputy director, over his false statements to investigators probing an unauthorized leak that McCabe had orchestrated. McCabe was fired in March 2018, shortly after a blistering Justice Department inspector general (IG) report concluded that he repeatedly and blatantly lied — or, as the Bureau lexicon puts it, “lacked candor” — when questioned, including under oath.

Why not indict McCabe on felony false-statements charges? That is the question being pressed by incensed Trump supporters. After all, the constitutional guarantee of equal justice under the law is supposed to mean that McCabe gets the same quality of justice afforded to the sad sacks pursued with unseemly zeal by McCabe’s FBI and Robert Mueller’s prosecutors. George Papadopoulos was convicted of making a trivial false statement about the date of a meeting. Roger Stone was convicted of obstruction long after the special counsel knew there was no Trump–Russia conspiracy, even though his meanderings did not impede the investigation in any meaningful way. And in the case of Michael Flynn’s false-statements conviction, as McCabe himself acknowledged to the House Intelligence Committee, even the agents who interviewed him did not believe he intentionally misled them.

I emphasize Flynn’s intent because purported lack of intent is McCabe’s principal defense, too. Even McCabe himself, to say nothing of his lawyers and his apologists in the anti-Trump network of bureaucrats-turned-pundits, cannot deny that he made false statements to FBI agents and the IG. Rather, they argue that the 21-year senior law-enforcement official did not mean to lie, that he was too distracted by his high-level responsibilities to focus on anything as mundane as a leak — even though he seemed pretty damned focused on the leak while he was orchestrating it.

How the Justice Department Avoids Becoming the ‘Injustice Department’ It was good news that the Justice Department announced Friday it had engaged an outside prosecutor to review the government’s case against Michael Flynn. But restoring the department’s credibility will be a long and arduous process. Roger Kimball

https://amgreatness.com/2020/02/15/how-the-justice-department-avoids-becoming-the-injustice-department/

The news Friday that the Department of Justice had decided not to charge former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe got me thinking once again about the legend chiseled into the façade of the Supreme Court: “Equal Justice Under Law.”

Is that what we have? Michael Horowitz, the Obama-appointed inspector general, concluded that McCabe had lied under oath. But as Andrew McCarthy noted last summer, “Government officials who leak while demonstrating their contempt for Donald Trump manage to land on their feet.” Like James Clapper, Obama’s director of national intelligence, McCabe left his government job to be a commentator on CNN.

Clapper, McCarthy pointed out,

is best known for lying to Congress about the government’s bulk collection of telephone metadata . . . and for discussing Steele dossier information with CNN shortly before the network published a report about it . . . CNN missed out on former Obama CIA director John Brennan, who falsely denied to the Senate that his agency spied on the chamber’s intelligence committee. Brennan, who said he was really sorry, was inked by MSNBC.

Contrast what happened with McCabe, Clapper, and Brennan with what happened to George Papadopoulos, who told the FBI he had met the international man of mystery Joseph Mifsud slightly before he had joined the Trump campaign when, in fact, it was slightly after he joined. Result: he is nabbed, disembarking from a plane at night, thrown into jail overnight, and was later sentenced to two weeks in jail.

Or contrast McCabe’s fate with that of Roger Stone, a former advisor to and pal of Donald Trump’s. Stone was subjected to one of Robert Mueller’s signature pre-dawn raids, hit with seven felony counts for allegedly obstructing Congress’s Russia investigation, lying, and threatening a witness (who later said he did not feel threatened). Prosecutors—including a couple who were on team Mueller—initially recommended a jail term of nine years—for a nonviolent first-offender.

A few days ago, news broke that the Justice Department had recommended a lighter sentence. The Left, true to form, went nuts.

Pelosi Names First Head of House Whistleblower Office By Zachary Stieber

https://www.theepochtimes.com/pelosi-names-first-head-of-house-whistleblower-office_3239173.html

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Saturday announced the first director of a new office, the House of Representatives’ Office of the Whistleblower Ombudsman.

The office was established at the beginning of the current Congress and is charged with developing best practices for whistleblower intake for House offices and providing trainings to House offices on how to safely and confidentially receive information from whistleblowers.

The office is meant to be independent and nonpartisan, according to Pelosi’s office.

Pelosi said the first director of the office is Shanna Devine, who most recently advocated for whistleblower and other occupational rights for Public Citizen, a public interest organization located in Washington. She began her career with the Government Accountability Project.

The director is selected by the speaker of the House with advice from the chairs and ranking members of the House Committees on Administration and Oversight and Reform.

Devine’s “deep policy experience will be vital, as the first-ever Director of the Office of the Whistleblower Ombudsman, as she works to ensure that the House has the support and tools to carry out our legislative oversight responsibilities for the American people,” Pelosi said in a statement.

Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), chairwoman of the House Administration Committee, added in a statement: “The establishment of the House Office of the Whistleblower Ombudsman and the appointment of Shanna Devine to lead this new office is an important step to uphold our end of the bargain by providing offices of the House of Representatives with the resources and trainings necessary to protect and empower those who strive to bring about accountability and transparency for the American people.”

President Trump Keeps Promises to the ‘Forgotten Americans’ Kay C. James

https://patriotpost.us/opinion/68525-president-trump-keeps-promises-to-the-forgotten-americans-2020-02-12

In his 2016 victory speech, Donald Trump talked about “the forgotten men and women of our country,” declaring that they “will be forgotten no longer.” Today, after months of impeachment proceedings, accusations of wrongdoing and a media that has reported overwhelmingly negative stories about him for three years, his polling numbers are at their highest ever.

Why? Because the president kept his promise to remember the forgotten, and he’s continued to push ahead with policies to help them and every American.

President Trump’s “forgotten men and women” are the farmer, the factory worker, and the middle-class men and women who have been ignored or even sneered at by Washington politicians. They are the people of “flyover country” and “Middle America.” They are the people CNN host Don Lemon and his guests recently made fun of when they called Trump supporters rubes and used mock Southern accents to paint them as uneducated, illiterate and unable to find places like Ukraine on a map.

Mr. Trump’s “forgotten” are the average, patriotic hard-working Americans who pay taxes for government programs many of them will never use. Many are religious. Some are gun owners. A surprising number are Democrats, independents or political agnostics.

REMEMBERING DANIEL PEARL by Jeff Benson

https://www.algemeiner.com/2020/02/14/remembering-daniel-pearl/

This Friday, I will be at a minyan for morning prayers. It will be the 19th of Shevat — 18 years since the journalist and musician Daniel Pearl was murdered in Pakistan by Islamic terrorists because he was a Jew. I will remember Danny’s warm, encouraging smile, and I will speak the kaddish in his memory.

Hating Jews is, sadly, an outsized and grotesque part of the human story. But, on that day in 2002, when evil embodied in man stole from us the future of Daniel Pearl, he left us with words that can help us shape and determine our future, yet unrevealed.

After Danny’s murder, his parents, Ruth and Judea Pearl, published a book, I Am Jewish: Personal Reflections Inspired by the Last Words of Daniel Pearl. In it, Dr. Pearl recalls Danny’s last words: “Back in the town of Bnei Brak, there is a street named after my great-grandfather, Chayim Pearl, who was one of the founders of the town.”

Elizabeth Warren has run out of steam, danken gott (thank God), her professorial persona full of numbers that she equates with ethics failing…

In 1924, Danny’s great-grandfather knew he had to return to his ancestral home. He left behind the hatred endured in exile, purchased a sandy plot in the land of Israel, and brought his wife and four children to a place where he was free to build a better life for his family, and to help fashion a better future for the world.

Danny’s father, Judea, believes that Danny freely chose to recount the actions of his great-grandfather as a rebuke to those who were about to murder him and steal his life. Danny wanted his murderers to know that — in contrast to their destruction — Jews plant and build and toil to fashion a better world, a better future for all people.

Is the DOJ the US Department of Injustice? By Patricia McCarthy

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/02/is_the_doj_the_us_department_of_injustice.html

It is ironic that just as the Democrats are losing their cookies (for the umpteenth time in the past few weeks) over a Trump tweet regarding the absurd sentencing recommendation for Roger Stone, the DOJ says it is dropping charges against Andrew McCabe, the proven liar, leaker, and hoax conspirator who was part of the coup cabal at the FBI along with Comey, Strzok, Page, et al.  It seems also that Lt. Col. Vindman will not be investigated by the military.

There is one form of justice for Democrats — no charges ever — and a harsh form for any Republican.  Roger Stone is mostly a figure of fun, a wannabe player who exaggerated his proximity to actual players.  He is guilty of virtually nothing that warrants nine years in prison, but because the prosecutors, all attached to the Mueller team, had to have something to show for the $32M spent on their Russia hoax, they want him sent away to die in jail.

Is letting McCabe off the hook for lying and leaking a ploy?  Are there more serious charges coming?  He sure doesn’t think so.  He’s so self-absorbed that he is complaining about what his family has been through for two years!  His family!  He and his cohorts have ruined numerous lives with their baseless witch hunts; the families of all of them have endured far more hardship than the weasel McCabe.  Some have lost everything.  It is doubtful that McCabe and his team of traitors have ever given a thought to what they have put the president and his family through except perhaps with glee.  This bunch that tried to take down a candidate, then a president they decided should not hold that office are arrogant beyond belief; they’re smug, elitist white-collar criminals all, and it’s beginning to seem as if they are all going to get away with their treasonous crimes.

BOMBSHELL: U.S. Atty. John Durham Is investigating Whether Obama Admin Hid Evidence of Russian Meddling By Matt Margolis

https://pjmedia.com/trending/bombshell-us-atty-john-durham-is-investigating-if-obama-admin-hid-or-manipulated-evidence-of-russian-meddling/

According to a bombshell report from the New York Times Friday morning, U.S. Attorney John Durham has been investigating whether Obama administration officials hid or perhaps manipulated intelligence about Russia’s meddling.

Of course, that’s not exactly how the New York Times wants you to see this story. From the very first paragraph, the NYT tries to spin the story as a partisan fishing expedition, not a legitimate investigation of Obama-era corruption. “Trump administration officials investigating the government’s response to Russia’s election interference in 2016 appear to be hunting for a basis to accuse Obama-era intelligence officials of hiding evidence or manipulating analysis about Moscow’s covert operation, according to people familiar with aspects of the inquiry.”

Mr. Durham appears to be pursuing a theory that the C.I.A., under its former director John O. Brennan, had a preconceived notion about Russia or was trying to get to a particular result — and was nefariously trying to keep other agencies from seeing the full picture lest they interfere with that goal, the people said.

The Agony of the Democrats Bernie Sanders is riding the intellectual currents that the party and its elites have nurtured.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/agony-of-the-democrats-11581723656?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

Bernie Sanders’s victory in New Hampshire on top of his tie in Iowa makes him a favorite for the Democratic presidential nomination. Hard to believe, but in a winnable race against President Trump the opposition may nominate a socialist who wants the government to control energy production and health care, who wants nationwide rent control, and who calls America a “racist society from top to bottom.” No wonder Democrats like James Carville are in agony.

The Vermont revolutionary’s victory portends a long primary battle, unless Democratic voters elevate a single mainstream candidate who can challenge him. Mr. Sanders will get his 25% to 30% primary after primary, racking up delegates on his way to the convention. If other candidates keep dividing the other votes, he will be hard to stop, as Mr. Trump was for Republicans in 2016. Even if a single alternative emerges, Mr. Sanders won’t go down without a ferocious intra-party fight.

***

How did this happen? How did Mr. Sanders move from the socialist fringe to the brink of controlling the Democratic Party? The Senator’s dogged persistence across decades and especially the last four years is part of the explanation.

Yet Mr. Sanders wouldn’t be this close to the White House if not for the complicity of Democrats and the liberals who dominate the academy and media. Rather than fighting the ideas that animate him and his millennial voters, they have indulged and promoted them. They created the political environment in which he could prosper.