RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/04/17/hillary-comey-and-brennan-must-face-justice-for-deep-state-spying-on-trump/

The media have been saturated with coronavirus news for weeks now, with literally hundreds of stories each day about the pandemic. But while you’re quarantined and self-distancing yourself from the dreaded COVID-19 virus, you might not have noticed something big: the investigation into the Russian spygate fiasco is coming to a head.

As the old saying goes, the wheels of justice turn slowly but grind exceedingly fine. Some time after our nation reopens for business in a few weeks, the wheels will turn when the Durham report on the Russian collusion case will be released and hit the front pages.

If recent revelations are any indication, it will be a blockbuster, potentially leading to indictments of former senior intelligence and justice officials.

By now, most of us know that top officials in the Justice Department, FBI and CIA pursued an investigation of the 2016 Trump campaign for alleged “collusion” with Russia to tilt the 2016 election in Donald Trump’s favor.

The main premise of that investigation proved to be false, as the subsequent Mueller report showed conclusively.

That’s bad enough. But new revelations show that not only did U.S. officials wrongly pursue the investigation and spy on the Trump campaign, they did so knowing that it was based on Russian disinformation.

And why did they do it? To aid the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, which financed the spurious anti-Trump “dossier” put together by former British spy Christopher Steele.
Damning Footnotes

As investigative reporter Sara Carter recently noted, “Newly declassified footnotes from Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s December FBI report reveals that senior Obama officials, including members of the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane team, knew the dossier compiled by a former British spy during the 2016 election was Russian disinformation to target President Donald Trump.”

The FBI used the bogus evidence anyway to convince a FISA court to let the FBI spy on Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. Page resigned as a Trump adviser in September 2016. But by spying on him, the FBI opened a backdoor into Trump’s entire campaign.

Let the irony of that sink in. U.S. officials knowingly colluded with Russian intelligence using tainted evidence to prove that Trump colluded with the Russian government to weaken Clinton’s campaign.

If so, they were willingly duped by former KGB agent Vladimir Putin.

In addition, the footnotes show that these same senior officials “were aware of the disinformation when they included the dossier in the Obama administration’s Intelligence Communities Assessment.”

Under the legal “fruit of a poisonous tree” doctrine, evidence obtained illegally cannot be used as a predicate for legal action. That means the whole Trump investigation, including the tapping of Trump campaign officials’ communications, was illegitimate if not downright illegal.

The upshot of all this is that former FBI chief James Comey, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, CIA top spy John Brennan and an array of their underlings knew the information that came from the Steele dossier was tainted, but used it anyway.
Spying On Trump To Help Hillary

They did so again not for reasons of justice, but to prop up Clinton. In essence, the FBI, CIA and Clinton campaign formed a cozy little cabal using taxpayer money and federal investigative agencies to take down Trump’s campaign.

Moreover, it never ended. Even after Trump was elected, a ring of senior officials plotted ways to remove Trump from office. To us, it was little more than a silent coup attempt.

But ask an attorney: That’s called “conspiracy,” and it’s a felony.

Just look at how Steele, who worked in Moscow for Britain’s MI6, got paid for putting together his bogus dossier. He was paid $168,000 for his work with the political opposition research firm GPS Fusion. But that came from an even bigger chunk of money, $1.02 million to be exact, paid to Steele’s Orbis Business Intelligence Ltd., a business intelligence firm staffed by former spooks.

All this money came from the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee. To hide its true source, payments were “facilitated” by the left-leaning Seattle-based Perkins Coie law firm, which worked both for the DNC and Clinton.

Contrary to later reporting in the mainstream media about Steele being “trusted” and “professional,” the FBI had repeated warnings going back all the way to 2015 that Steele’s contacts included sketchy Russian underworld characters and untrustworthy intelligence sources.

Spying on a presidential campaign was one of the most disgraceful episodes of recent American history, exceeding even the burglary of the DNC by former President Richard Nixon’s campaign.

For those who engaged in this unlawful and unethical behavior, things just got real, as the saying goes.
Barr’s Shot Across The Bow

Speaking to Laura Ingraham earlier this week, U.S. Attorney General William Barr called the FBI-Clinton spying on Trump “one of the greatest travesties in American history.”

He promised that the current investigation of wrongdoing by U.S. Attorney John Durham would “bring to justice people who were engaged in abuses” in the Russia investigation, and that those who broke the law would be “prosecuted.”

This should include Clinton, who has become an increasingly unhinged and vocal critic of all things Trump. If there was indeed a Deep State conspiracy, wasn’t she at its very center?

In addition to resolving the Russia spygate mess, which Clinton helped set in motion, the Justice Department said it will not block depositions by former Secretary of State Clinton and her deputy Cheryl Mills, as recently ordered by a federal judge.

The depositions are in response to a Freedom Of Information Act suit brought by the legal watchdog group Judicial Watch over Clinton’s possibly illegal use of an unsecured private email server to conduct State Department business.

Stay tuned. The Russian collusion investigation, which was in fact a partisan witch hunt funded by public money, is coming to an end. And it may lead to one or more major former public officials being indicted and going to prison.

For a nation based on the idea of one standard of justice for all, this reckoning is long overdue.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/04/fauci_time_and_the_coronavirus_vaccine.html

The American coronavirus vaccine’s Phase 1 clinical trials are bogged down. They began on March 3 and are not scheduled to end until June 1, 2021.

Why fifteen months for the first American vaccine’s clinical trials? The reason is simple. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of NIAID (National Institute of Allergy and Infections Diseases), is conducting them in Fauci Time.  (Fauci is also conducting the clinical trials to see if Remdesivir is effective against COVID-19 in Fauci Time – those trials are not scheduled to end until April 1, 2023.)

Normally, during a health emergency, the U.S. gets out a vaccine within months. Take the H1N1 (Swine Flu) pandemic of 2009. The CDC has published a timeline:

April 15. First human infection.
May 5. School closings affect 607,778 students.
July 22. Clinical trials begin.
September 15. Four vaccines approved.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/04/remember_federalism_covid19_takes_us_back.html

States, jealous of their power and prerogatives when it suits, have been furious over what some governors call federal inaction on COVID-19, deliberate or not. But equally, each state has a department of public health, a director of that department and staff. Each state is presumed to have a plan for emergencies: floods, forest fires, airliner crashes (the last fatal crash in the U.S. occurred in 2009, but it used to be on the “prepare for” list) or pandemics. Closing schools and parks is not handled in Washington. Calling out the state National Guard is, as its name suggests, a state prerogative.

Emergency plans are expensive, and states are often strapped for cash; so is Washington. And, now that the feds and the states are beginning to plan for “reopening,” each will look for a way to take credit and lay blame. President Donald Trump has pre-empted some of this with his announcement that the White House will work with all 50 governors to create reopening plans. Governor Andrew Cuomo conceded that New York cannot manage without Washington when he announced that he won’t fight with the President. If he won’t, no one outside the media will.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/vitamin-d-and-coronavirus-disparities-11587078141?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

Black Americans are dying of Covid-19 at a higher rate than whites. Socioeconomic factors such as gaps in access to health care no doubt play a role. But another possible factor has been largely overlooked: vitamin D deficiency that weakens the immune system.

Researchers last week released the first data supporting this link. They found that the nations with the highest mortality rates—Italy, Spain and France—also had the lowest average vitamin D levels among countries affected by the pandemic.

Vitamin D is produced by a reaction in the skin to the ultraviolet rays in sunlight. Many Americans are low in vitamin D, but those with darker skin are at a particular disadvantage because melanin inhibits the vitamin’s production. As an Indian-American, my skin type is Fitzpatrick IV, or “moderate brown.” Compared with my white friends, I need double or triple the sun exposure to synthesize the same amount of vitamin D, so I supplement with 5,000 international units of vitamin D3 daily, which maintains my level in the normal range. Most African-Americans are Fitzpatrick type V or VI, so they would need even more.

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/04/16/pelosi-schumer-take-small-businesses-h

Small business relief that was included in the $2.2 trillion legislation passed by Congress and signed into law by President Donald Trump to shore up payrolls of millions of American workers during the Chinese coronavirus pandemic has been so popular that it is in danger of running out.

As of Tuesday, the $350 billion program had already exhausted $257 billion as President Trump’s top economic advisor told Fox Business, “At the present run-rate, we’re going to be out of money.”

Thirty million small businesses employ up to 60 million Americans, the backbone of the U.S. economy, and for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), the shortfalls are just fine. Those are hostages.

The trouble is everyone knows they’ll kill the hostages, figuratively speaking, of course.

That is, they’ll let those funds run out, even if it means tens of millions more Americans will lose their jobs for good while they wait to exact another toll from taxpayers on behalf of their own special interests, including state and local governments they want to bail out again.

It’s a free for all.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/phase-one-of-reopening-will-be-expanding-list-of-essential-businesses-ny-governor_3314817.html

Businesses that aren’t currently labeled essential could soon be allowed to reopen in New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said, suggesting the first phase of reopening will be expanding the list businesses deemed “essential.”

Cuomo last month ordered so-called non-essential businesses to shut down as part of his stay-at-home order, which largely restricted people to their homes. The order and similar ones made by governors across the country crippled the economy and cost millions of jobs. Some experts say they helped slow the spread of the he CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, a novel coronavirus that emerged from mainland China last year, but others say less strict social distancing measures could have accomplished similar effects.

Hospitalizations dropped again in New York overnight, prompting Cuomo to unveil details on the regional plan for reopening.

Officials will work on determining which companies that were shut down can be reopened.

“How essential is that business service, right? You have to start somewhere. Right now, we have the economy working with ‘essential workers’ so we want to start to bring the economy back, move up one tranche with how you define essential,” Cuomo told reporters in Albany on Thursday.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/coronavirus-small-businesses-relief-funds-run-dry-amid-congressional-deadlock/

The $349 billion in emergency funding for small businesses has run out less than one month after it was created as part of the $2.2 trillion phase-three coronavirus economic relief bill.

“The SBA is currently unable to accept new applications for the Paycheck Protection Program based on available appropriations funding,” the Small Business Administrations said in a statement Thursday. “Similarly, we are unable to enroll new PPP lenders at this time.” Earlier Thursday, the agency said it had approved over 1.6 million loan applications.

It is unclear when the program might be replenished since Congress is not due to be back in session until May 4. Republicans and the White House attempted to add $251 billion more to the program last week, but Democrats pushed back, calling for more targeted relief to minority- and women-owned companies as well as local governments and hospitals.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/04/coronavirus-testing-will-reveal-much-about-virus-lockdowns/

Timelines grow shorter. The virus and the draconian reaction to it are wearing down a quarantined America.

We are a few days away from a rendezvous with some tough conclusions about COVID-19.

A number of concurrent developments are coming to a head. Most will bring light where so far there was only heat.

Greater information about the virus might cause as much acrimony as conciliation. Some experts will be discredited, others reaffirmed.

Antibody testing is expected to get under way shortly. Soon, several representative studies will give the country an accurate idea of how many Americans have been infected in the past few months.

With a more trustworthy denominator to compare against known deaths, we will finally learn just how lethal the virus is and whether comparisons to a severe annual flu are legitimate or still inapplicable.

Likewise, there will be greater precision in distinguishing those whose deaths were exclusively virus-related from those who were afflicted by serious chronic illnesses along with the virus. That will also help provide better data about the actual toxicity of the virus.

Those with antibodies will likely be able to return to work with little risk. Arguments will arise over whether their status should be cataloged and banked, or whether such classification would institutionalize creepy two-tier categories of citizenship.

The prior pessimism of most epidemic models will either be confirmed or refuted, depending on the percentages of Americans who have already weathered the virus.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/trump-who-funding-halt-does-he-have-the-power-to-do-it/

President Trump announced yesterday that he plans to halt U.S. taxpayer funding for the World Health Organization. Our recent editorial laid out chapter and verse on how appallingly the WHO has performed in connection with the pandemic. It continues to be China’s cat’s paw, peddling Beijing’s propaganda and helping obfuscate its culpability. But even agreeing, as I do, that our government should cut off the WHO, does the president have the power to do it?

The question presses because the United States is the top financial backer of the WHO. No other country is close. The WHO’s budget is about $6 billion per annum, and the American contribution is over $400 million — about ten times China’s contribution, as the president has pointed out. Democrats are gearing up to fight Trump on the plan to halt WHO funding, and they will get help from the usual array of moneyed progressives (Bill Gates is already raising alarms) and the self-regarding “international community” . . . not least the WHO itself. There will be lawsuits challenging the president — bank on it.

Which, naturally, raises the question: Is it legal for the president to do this? Probably so, but it’s tricky.

The simplest route is to repurpose the congressionally authorized funding. We’ll have to see what the budgeting fine print says, but as we noted when the president reprogrammed some Defense Department funding for the purpose of border-wall construction, presidents often have wiggle to move appropriated money around. This is especially so when there is a national emergency. Recall that there are many emergency provisions in federal law, some going back decades, through which Congress has given the president spending discretion. Recall in addition that President Trump has already invoked Stafford Act emergency provisions in responding to the coronavirus pandemic.

https://justthenews.com/accountability/russia-and-ukraine-scandals/fbi-received-repeated-warnings-about-steele-informant

The FBI received repeated warnings dating to 2015 that Christopher Steele, the ex-British spy it used to build a case against President Trump, had concerning contacts with Russian oligarchs and intelligence figures that might call into question the credibility of his intelligence reporting, newly declassified documents showed Monday.

The suspect sources included a person described as a strong supporter of Hillary Clinton’s campaign and a Russian intelligence figure under separate counterintelligence investigation by the FBI, the memos show. And the red flags included a warning that Russian intelligence appeared to be aware as early as July 2016 that Steele was working on a U.S. election-related investigation, making him susceptible to misinformation.

The revelations are found in newly declassified footnotes from Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s December, 2019 report about failures in the Russia probe that included using false evidence to secure a FISA warrant against Trump campaign adviser Carter Page in October 2016.

Some of those red flags were raised prior to the bureau’s decision to rely on Steele’s dossier as key evidence in seeking the FISA warrant targeting the Trump campaign in the final days of the 2016 election, and nearly all were raised before Special Counsel Robert Mueller opened his probe in spring 2017.