RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2019/07/31/baltimores-81000-public-employees-cost-taxpayers-5-billion-and-cant-save-their-own-city/#510381f119a3

President Donald Trump’s recent tweet about Baltimore ignited a firestorm of controversy. Baltimore has since become the focal point of a very public fight between Trump and local congressman Elijah Cummings (MD-7).

People on both sides have strong views about Trump’s motives. However, on one level, Trump served to highlight the videos of a local political activist Kimberly Klacik. These videos revealed Baltimore’s systemic problems of rats, abandoned buildings, and trash. Klacik reported that many of the city’s residents feel that they have been forgotten.

Our auditors at OpenTheBooks.com investigated just how much taxpayer money flows into the Baltimore bureaucracy at every level: federal, state, and local. We found the city drowning in taxpayer dollars.The last time we analyzed the amount of federal grants and direct payments flowing into major U.S. cities (FY2016), Baltimore received more funding per resident ($573) than the comparable cities of Portland, OR ($274); Nashville, TN ($353); Oklahoma City, OK ($201); Detroit, MI ($372); and Milwaukee, WI ($183). However, Baltimore also lagged cities like Chicago, IL ($1,942); New York, NY ($894); and was on par with San Francisco, CA ($588).

Our audit shows that $1.1 billion in grants and direct payments (subsidies and assistance) flowed into Baltimore city agencies and other city-based entities including non-profit organizations, corporations, and colleges during the last four years (FY2015-FY2018). That’s the equivalent of nearly $7,000 in federal aid per family of four living in Baltimore during this period.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/08/the-doj-will-not-prosecute-james-comey-over-trump-memos/

Turning the page away from the politicization of investigations

A  free society cannot stay free for long if the criminal-justice system becomes a political weapon, if that becomes our norm.

The most alarming aspect of the Trump–Russia investigation, and of the stark difference between the aggression with which it was pursued and the see-no-evil passivity of the Clinton emails caper, is the way the investigative process was used to influence political outcomes.

The way to right that wrong is to prevent it from becoming the new normal, not to turn the tables of abuse when power shifts from one side to the other. We can only make things worse by losing the distinction between rebuking errors in judgment and criminalizing them.

Ardent Trump supporters are growling over news that the FBI’s former director, James Comey, will not be prosecuted by the Justice Department for the mishandling of memoranda he wrote about his contacts with the president. The news has been reported by The Hill’s John Solomon and the Washington Post’s Devlin Barrett, among others.

Comey’s handling of his memos is one aspect of probes related to investigations attendant to the 2016 election, which are being conducted by Justice Department independent counsel Michael Horowitz. Indications are that Horowitz referred the memos issue to the Justice Department for possible prosecution and that, after reviewing the IG’s findings, Justice declined to pursue the matter as a criminal case.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/trump-pulls-john-ratcliffes-director-of-national-intelligence-nomination/

President Trump announced Friday that Representative John Ratcliffe (R., Texas) is withdrawing from contention to be his next director of national intelligence to escape the media scrutiny surrounding the already-contentious confirmation process.

“Our great Republican Congressman John Ratcliffe is being treated very unfairly by the LameStream Media. Rather than going through months of slander and libel, I explained to John how miserable it would be for him and his family to deal with these people….”

Donald J. Trump

✔ @realDonaldTrump

….John has therefore decided to stay in Congress where he has done such an outstanding job representing the people of Texas, and our Country. I will be announcing my nomination for DNI shortly.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/274484/new-evidence-unveils-disturbing-facts-about-deborah-weiss

In breaking news, the American Center for Law and Justice or ACLJ (Jay Sekulow’s organization, not related to his role as the President’s attorney), has obtained actual copies of the immunity agreements pertaining to Cheryl Mills and Heather Samuelson in the Hillary email scandal. This was a stunning litigation win, hard-fought after years of litigation by the ACLJ attorneys, who were unable to extract the documents through the normal FOIA processes, due to a lack of cooperation by the government.  

In reviewing what the agreements uncovered, keep in mind that Cheryl Mills was Secretary Clinton’s Chief of Staff at the State Department and then bizarrely, she subsequently served as Clinton’s attorney, representing her in the email scandal.  Heather Samuelson worked on Hillary Clinton’s 2008 campaign, and then became a Senior Advisor to her at the State Department, as well as the White House liaison. Somehow, she also became one of Clinton’s personal attorneys during the email scandal.

The immunity agreements issued by the government, were crafted so that the agencies could extract information from the parties, despite the fact that this is not necessary because DOJ has the power to require that the information be turned over.  Clinton kept classified emails on a private server in violation of Federal law, and the immunity agreements reveal that both Cheryl Mills and Heather Samuelson were actively involved in the cover-up of these emails as well as in the destruction of evidence. According to Jordon Sekulow, Executive Director of the ACLJ, it is extremely unusual for someone involved in a criminal cover up, who needs an immunity deal to ensure the evasion of jail time, later becomes the attorney representing the other potential criminal or co-conspirator.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/08/president_trump_shatters_leftwing_myths.html

President Trump is boldly providing much-needed relief to the American people. He is untying us from the bands of political correctness that have, in un-American fashion, forced Americans to accept liberal myths and farces.  He is telling it like it is, showing Americans that their freedom of speech cannot be muzzled by liberal censors or taken away by the left-wing speech and thought police.

It’s about time someone, as the President did, stopped all this baloney and labeled Al Sharpton the con-man he has been for decades. In the name of being a “civil rights leader”, Sharpton has gotten away with not paying millions of dollars in owed taxes; fomented rioting against Brooklyn’s religious Jews; led — with self-proclaimed racist Sonny Carson — a boycott of a Korean grocery store, where protesters called the owners “yellow monkeys”; held anti-Semitic, racially-charged rallies that led to the Freddy’s Department Store massacre; and knowingly and purposely destroyed the lives of two white police officers in the Tawana Brawley hoax.  Sharpton has been shoved down our throats as “reverend” while threatening “no justice, no peace.”

Finally, someone has demonstrated a compelling inner sense of truth to portray Sharpton as what he is: a creator of hoaxes and shakedowns, and a serial inciter of violence and racial strife for his own power and self-enrichment.

President Trump is broadening the scope of the Presidency by taking on issues no previous leader was willing to do. First he alerted us to a media no longer impartial but zealously preoccupied by manufacturing fake news in behalf of a radical left-wing agenda. He then exposed us to the dangerous reality of a vast government bureaucracy, akin to a shadow government, operating in behalf of its own interests and concerns and not those of the American people. The Deep State, confidently and without checks and balances, ignores representatives elected by the American people while pursuing a globalist and self-serving agenda.

https://amgreatness.com/2019/07/31/confessions-of-a-recovering-neoconservative/

The realignment of the political Right has prompted a public confessional of sorts, a raw acknowledgement that millions of us were led astray by Republiican leaders we trusted, we voted for, and we defended during times of war. We only have ourselves to blame, of course, because we did it with our eyes wide open. But the Trump era is forcing many Republicans to reexamine what we once believed and reassess what actually is true.

In a fiery speech earlier this month at the National Conservatism conference in Washington, D.C., Fox News host Tucker Carlson talked about purging his “mental attic” to dust off the ideas that he had accepted as legitimate over past few decades.

“The Trump election was so shocking . . . that it did cause some significant percentage of people to say ‘wait a second, if that can happen, what else is true?’” Carlson said. “Just look around . . . who are the good guys and who are the bad guys? A lot of the people we’ve been told are good guys are not. Some of them are the worst guys. I’ll let you figure out who.”

Carlson didn’t need to name names because the conservatives in the room, I assume, envisioned pretty much the same collection of bad guys—and they aren’t on the Left.

For the most part, the list would include Republican villains such as Bill Kristol, Carlson’s former boss at the now-defunct Weekly Standard, and a number of other conservative commentators still clinging to the mantras that afford them their sinecures; Bush family members and certain administration officials; former Republican presidential candidates Mitt Romney and the late John McCain; former Republican congressional leaders such as ex-Speaker of the House Paul Ryan; and an assortment of well-heeled donors.

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2019/08/robert-mueller-the-little-man-behind-the-curtain/

Robert Mueller, decorated Vietnam veteran, distinguished lawyer, two-term director of the FBI and, more recently,  Russiagate special counsel, recently testified for some seven hours before two select committees on Capitol Hill. What the world witnessed was sad, pitiful and largely farcical as the vague and mentally adrift champion of those who long hoped he would bring down an elected President saw their ambitions not merely dashed but pulverised. For Mueller it was bad; for Democrats it was much worse.

As soon as Donald Trump announced his presidential aspirations and entered the Republican primaries an almighty deluge of derision and ridicule was unleashed from all quarters. He was known primarily as the brash, domineering central character in the TV program The Apprentice, and less so as a very wealthy, successful property developer. Neither persona would serve to endear him to the masses, the elites of the punditocracy opined,  speaking mostly for themselves as it turned out. All forms of the media were especially savage. They branded him a vulgar buffoon and much worse. Comedians mockingly encouraged him to ‘run, please run, and let us enjoy your humiliation of failing’. By the time he looked like winning the nomination a nascent fear was rippling through the Washington swamp the candidate had pledged to drain. True, Hillary Clinton’s ascension to the Oval Office was accepted by the Left and like-minded as an inevitability, yet the signs were ominous. ‘Regular, everyday Americans’, the trans-Pacific counterparts of John Howard’s battlers, liked much of what he was saying and did not mind the way he was saying it. After he was confirmed as the Republican candidate for the presidency, the camp of Trump’s followers grew rapidly and Clinton’s supporters became concerned that the “unimaginable” might just possibly come to pass. In the top layers of this cabal a  strategy to prevent it or, failing that, to destroy it took root and flourished. The plan’s objective was no less than a fully fledged, bloodless political coup to unseat a duly elected president. Much of the conspiracy is well known already, including the identities of the plotters in the top tiers of the FBI, the CIA, other security organisations, in the Justice and State departments, among prominent politicians of both major parties.

What we do know — and Mueller did not at his marathon testimonies — is that the Clinton campaign paid a British ex-spy to gather (manufacture?) fallacious information from dubious Russian sources about Trump having engaged in salacious conduct involving prostitutes while staying years earlier in a Moscow hotel. This was disseminated throughout Washington and passed to tame reporters, the specific intention being to drive Trump from the office should he be elected. This plot was “the insurance” and involved American and British individuals and, though he laughs it off as a joke, the curious involvement of Alexander Downer.

People have long misunderstood and misrepresented Baltimore, my cherished hometown, but much of what President Donald Trump said this past weekend about Charm City was right on the nose. The president categorized Baltimore as a “disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess,” which sparked ire among his always-vocal choir of critics but offered no untrue information.

The president was responding to longtime Maryland Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings, whose district includes Baltimore, who had issued an incendiary attack on acting Department of Homeland Security head Kevin McAleenan for conditions on the U.S. southern border. Cummings yelled at McAleenan during a House Oversight hearing, claiming he possessed an “empathy deficit” about migrant families at the border.

An Unfiltered Look

Disparaging remarks about Baltimore are not new. Politicians, celebrities, and even residents of the city have easily mocked the soaring crime rate, rodent infestation, and never-ending parade of local government scandals. The three most recently departed mayors have left in disgrace. One was convicted of fraud that involved stealing gift cards from needy families, and another is under active investigation for embezzling government funds.

A local Baltimore Fox affiliate even attempted to shine a light on their own problem in 2018 using an “unfiltered” look at the city with recently ousted Mayor Catherine Pugh. “Whoa, you can smell the rats,” Pugh said during the program as a camera crew followed her around the streets of the decaying city.

Trump critics, of course, called him a “racist” for shifting the spotlight from the southern border to the troubled, predominantly black city only 40 miles away from the nation’s capital.

https://thefederalist.com/2019/08/01/doj-ig-referred-james-comey-criminal-prosecution-leaking-classified-information/

The Department of Justice’s Inspector General Michael Horowitz is preparing a report recommending a criminal referral for FBI Director James Comey, concluding that he leaked classified memos and showed a lack of candor with investigators, according to a new report from The Hill.

Attorney General William Barr and DOJ prosecutors have reportedly found the IG report compelling but declined to follow through with charges because of a lack certainty surrounding Comey’s intent to break the law.

Investigative journalist John Solomon reported that the DOJ did not want to “make its first case against the Russia investigators with such thin margins and look petty and vindictive.”

The report shows that Comey transmitted classified information via an insecure email account and gave memos, some of which were classified up to the “secret” level, to his private lawyers.

One memo in question includes classified information Comey leaked to a friend, with the intention that it would be leaked to the media. Indeed, the New York Times reported information from the “confidential” memo, which said President Trump asked Comey to drop an investigation into then-national security adviser Michael Flynn.

https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/455616-james-comeys-next-reckoning-is-imminent-this-time-for-leaking

The Justice Department’s chief watchdog is preparing a damning report on James Comey’s conduct in his final days as FBI director that likely will conclude he leaked classified information and showed a lack of candor after his own agency began looking into his feud with President Trump over the Russia probe.

Inspector General (IG) Michael Horowitz’s team referred Comey for possible prosecution under the classified information protection laws, but Department of Justice (DOJ) prosecutors working for Attorney General William Barr reportedly have decided to decline prosecution — a decision that’s likely to upset Comey’s conservative critics.

Prosecutors found the IG’s findings compelling but decided not to bring charges because they did not believe they had enough evidence of Comey’s intent to violate the law, according to multiple sources. 

The concerns stem from the fact that one memo that Comey leaked to a friend specifically to be published by the media — as he admitted in congressional testimony — contained information classified at the lowest level of “confidential,” and that classification was made by the FBI after Comey had transmitted the information, the sources said.

Although a technical violation, the DOJ did not want to “make its first case against the Russia investigators with such thin margins and look petty and vindictive,” a source told me, explaining the DOJ’s rationale.

But Comey and others inside the FBI and the DOJ during his tenure still face legal jeopardy in ongoing probes by the IG and Barr-appointed special prosecutor John Durham. Those investigations are focused on the origins of the Russia investigation that included a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant targeting the Trump campaign at the end of the 2016 election, the source said.

“There are significant issues emerging with how the FISA was handled and other conduct in the investigation, and everyone involved remains under scrutiny,” a second source said.