RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2018/12/09/will-the-leakers-in-the-flynn

Two years ago this month, the set-up of Lt. General Michael Flynn began. And now that Special Counsel Robert Mueller has recommended the lightest sentence possible for Flynn’s crime of lying to the FBI in 2017, Americans are reminded that the real criminals—top officials at our nation’s most trusted agencies—have yet to be charged for illegally leaking classified information about Flynn to the news media in an effort to sabotage Donald Trump’s presidency.

Flynn was toward the top of Barack Obama’s enemies list. Forced out of the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2014 by Obama loyalist James Clapper, Flynn joined the Trump campaign and became an outspoken critic of Obama and Hillary Clinton. Famously, he led the “lock her up” chants at the Republican National Convention. Ten days later, James Comey’s FBI opened up a counterintelligence probe into possible election collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. Flynn was one of four campaign associates targeted by the agency for his “suspected Russian ties.” (It’s unclear whether Comey also obtained a FISA order on Flynn, as he had on Carter Page.)

Obama warned Trump not to hire Flynn during their post-election meeting in the Oval Office on November 10. When Trump defied that advice, Team Obama made him pay.

In December 2016, Flynn held several conversations with Sergey Kislyak, the Russian ambassador to the United States. Trump’s incoming national security advisor legally and appropriately spoke with Kislyak about a number of topics, including a scheduled call between the nation’s two leaders after the inauguration.

Logan Act Hype
What Flynn may not have known at the time is that his conversations—and perhaps all of his communications—with the Russian diplomat were being monitored by James Comey’s FBI. Someone in the Obama Administration illegally leaked details about Flynn’s call to Washington Post reporter David Ignatius.

https://amgreatness.com/2018/12/09/defeat-and-the-dossier

Donald Trump’s former consiglieri Michael Cohen, along with being charged with tax avoidance and improper business deals, allegedly is guilty also of trying to leverage money and attention by exaggerating his influence with candidate and later President Trump.

In other words, Cohen to spec followed the standard creepy daily fare for Washington and New York wannabe fixers. But did we need Robert Mueller’s 18 months and $40 million to uncover and redirect to federal attorneys what was largely self-evident? Could not the U.S. government long ago, without the prompt of a special counsel, have uncovered that Michael Cohen did not fully pay his taxes—in the manner of an Al Sharpton, Timothy Geithner, and Tom Daschle?

The diabolical Cohen also tried to enforce, extend, or create non-disclosure agreements (Swampese for hush money) with two women from Trump’s past. The two reappeared out of nowhere in 2016, apparently to translate their alleged Trump hookups of a few hours in years past to notoriety and additional profit in the new age of “President Trump.”

Swamp Crimes
In other words, Michael Cohen was a sort of rough-hewn version of former Bill Clinton crony Vernon Jordan. The latter, remember, was the erstwhile Clinton fixer who in 1998 had sought to keep the still unknown Clinton paramour Monica Lewinsky quiet—and to whisk her away from the Washington media, by arranging for Monica a quid pro quo $40,000 a year job with Revlon in New York, via Clinton friend and Revlon CEO Ron Perelman—all with impunity.

Cohen certainly lacked the tact and savvy of another Clinton clean-up specialist, Betsey Wright, who in 1992 coined the term “bimbo eruptions” for her efforts to track down and neutralize any sudden public confessionals from the legions of past Clinton hookups.

Who knows, had we a Robert Mueller in 1933 he might have been able to charge General Douglas MacArthur and his alleged bag man, aide Major Dwight Eisenhower, with at least something for secretly delivering a bribe of $15,000 to MacArthur’s then 19-year old mistress, Isabel Rosario Cooper (who allegedly had been the general’s mistress since she was 16). The plan was to get her out of the United States and away from the reporting of sleazy muckraker Drew Pearson, who was eager to break the story.

Cohen’s efforts to pay off the Trump gals were understandably rebranded by federal attorneys into the acquitted John Edwards-style “campaign finance violations.” And who knows, now Cohen may well have to pay far more than the existing record federal elections commission fine of $375,000 involving 1,300 undisclosed contributions levied on the 2008 Barack Obama campaign—an event generally ignored by the media given the extenuating hurrahs of 2009.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/all-the-fbis-documents-1544398491

Donald Trump took to Twitter Sunday to rage about “Leakin’ James Comey, ” claiming the former FBI director lied to Congress. We can understand his pique, since we advised Mr. Trump in January 2017 to fire Mr. Comey as soon as he became President. But fuming in frustration now won’t do any good. The way to expose the truth about the FBI’s behavior in the 2016 presidential campaign is to declassify and release all the relevant documents.

Mr. Trump promised this fall to release many of these records only to renege under FBI and insider pressure. After the election the President again threatened to release them if Democrats went ahead with their multiple investigations into the 2016 campaign.

Well, what are you waiting for, Mr. Trump? Every Democrat in range of a microphone is promising to investigate your every Presidential decision, plus your taxes, business and family.

Meanwhile, New York Democrat Jerrold Nadler, who will chair the House Judiciary Committee in January, said Friday he will shut down the investigation into FBI and Justice decision-making. He called it “a waste of time to start with.” If Mr. Trump really wants Americans to know about the FBI’s 2016 political machinations, he’ll have to be the agent of transparency.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/wrap-it-up-mr-mueller-1544398545

Last week was supposed to be earth-shaking in Robert Mueller’s special counsel probe, with the release of sentencing memos on three former members of the Trump universe—Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen. Yet Americans learned little new and nothing decisive about the allegations of Russia-Trump collusion that triggered this long investigation.

The main Russia-related news is the disclosure, in Mr. Mueller’s memo on Mr. Cohen, of a previously unknown attempt by an unidentified Russian to reach out to the Trump presidential campaign. “In or around November 2015, Cohen received the contact information for, and spoke with, a Russian national who claimed to be a ‘trusted person’ in the Russian Federation who could offer the campaign ‘political synergy’ and ‘synergy on a government level,’” the memo says.

The Russian also offered the possibility of a meeting between Mr. Trump and Vladimir Putin. Alas for conspiracy hopefuls, Mr. Cohen “did not follow up on this invitation,” the memo says, because Mr. Cohen says he was already talking to other Russians about a Trump Tower hotel project that has been previously disclosed. Mr. Trump has said he shut down that hotel negotiation in 2016 because he was running for President.

So a Russian wanted to insinuate himself into the Trump orbit but nothing happened. Why drop this into a sentencing memo? The press is breathing heavily that it signals Mr. Mueller’s intention to promote a narrative that the Trumpians were all too willing, for commercial and political reasons, to hear Russian solicitations.

This would make Trump officials look dumb or naive, as Donald Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner were when they took that famous meeting at Trump Tower in June 2016. Such a narrative would be politically embarrassing, but it’s not conspiring to hack and release the email of Democratic Party officials.