RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2018/06/29/trumps-lean-white-house-2018-payroll-on-track-to-save-taxpayers-22-million/#2c55e8384e4f

President Trump’s White House payroll has 374 employees, that’s 95 fewer staffers than Barack Obama at the same point in their presidencies. The Trump White House workforce runs 20 percent leaner.

White House staff experienced 39-percent turnover during the last 12-months. Of the 377 employees last year, only 229 remain. Most that left were quickly replaced.

Today, the Trump administration released its annual report to Congress on the White House Office Personnel. The payroll data includes employee name, status, salary, and position title for all 374 White House employees as of June 30, 2018. Search the recent Trump administration (2017 and 2018) and Obama administration (2012 through 2016) payroll data posted at OpenTheBooks.com.

Over the past 12 months, Trump was able to further shrink head count by three employees. Last year, the president employed 377 staffers and we applauded the president’s frugality in our editorial at Forbes.

http://swtotd.blogspot.com/

Perhaps the universe operates according to a plan? I don’t know. But life on earth is in constant and unpredictable flux. Change is ever-present, whether caused by nature or man. What is needed are pilots to help navigate treacherous shoals, not whether to move left or right, but to plot courses based on a moral compass, in accordance with the ideals laid down by the Founding Fathers and one dependent on simple, proven principles of right and wrong, like common sense, the Ten Commandments, or Jordan Peterson’s “12 Rules for Life.”

No month is without news highlights and June was no different. Certainly, Singapore vied for top billing. However, the story in the winning envelope was the release of the Inspector General’s report on its probe into the actions of the FBI and the Justice Department during the summer of 2016. It tells a story of corruption, collusion and bias within the nation’s premier law enforcement agency. Even The New York Times reported that it painted a harsh portrait of the FBI during the 2016 presidential election, describing a destructive culture in which James Comey, the former director was “insubordinate… Senior officials privately bashed Donald J. Trump, and agents came to distrust prosecutors.” Current FBI Director Christopher Wray, in a subsequent press conference, appeared in denial: He said he took the report seriously, but nothing in it “impugns the integrity” of the FBI. “Our brand is doing just fine.” The Wall Street Journal reported: “Though IG Michael Horowitz’s conclusions are measured, his facts are damning.” While the report claimed there was no documentary or testimonial evidence to suggest political bias, facts suggested otherwise. Most damning was the text exchange between Peter Strzok, the FBI agent in charge of the Trump-Russia investigation and his paramour, top FBI lawyer Lisa Page. In August 2016, Ms. Page texted Mr. Strzok, “[Trump’s] not ever going to become president, right?” Mr. Strzok responded, “No. No, he won’t. We’ll stop it.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/06/trump-russia-probe-house-republicans-grill-rod-rosenstein/

The political branches are designed to scrap with each other, not dictate to each other.

‘You’re the boss.”

That was Representative Jim Jordan’s terse rejoinder during a feisty exchange with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein at the House Judiciary Committee’s oversight hearing on Thursday. The Ohio Republican was blasting Rosenstein over information Republicans say Justice Department officials have concealed from Congress for a year.

As the jaw-boning continued, Rosenstein fended off claims that he had personally withheld files, redacted key portions of documents, and counseled a controversial witness, FBI agent Peter Strzok, to refuse to answer questions at a closed-door congressional interview.

These calls were made by subordinates, Rosenstein DAG-splained.

“They work for you,” Jordan bluntly replied.

And so it went. Rosenstein pointed out that, yes, 115,000 people work for him. Translation: He cannot possibly know what each of them is doing the moment they are doing it. When condescension failed, he tried earnestness: He’ll intercede with underlings if the committee brings any errors to his attention. Tin-eared, he emphasized that he had already done this several times . . . oblivious to the committee’s exasperation that it has several times been necessary to do.

Two discordant notes clanged throughout the joust. First, if Rosenstein is not actively instructing his charges to withhold information, he needs to work on his management skills, since they clearly assume this stonewall is a top-down enterprise. Has anyone been disciplined for hiding from Congress Strzok’s explosive text promising to “stop” Donald Trump from being elected? And that’s hardly an atypical concealment. If Rosenstein isn’t encouraging this nonsense, how come nobody’s walking the plank over it?

Second, while House Republicans revel in reminding anyone who will listen that DOJ’s intransigent middle managers work for Rosenstein, they never quite get around to mentioning that Rosenstein works for President Trump. The president is better positioned than the DAG to order more transparency. And if the “witch hunt” narrative is valid, the president would be the chief beneficiary of more transparency. Yet, for all his Twitter bombast, Trump abstains . . . and then House Republicans dutifully target their ire at Rosenstein.

There’s lots of “deep state” rhetoric in the air, but Thursday looked more like a quagmire: Everybody dug in, everybody more vulnerable than their bravado suggests.

The information at issue relates, in part, to the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation of Russia’s interference in the 2016 election — and specifically when and why the Obama administration monitored the Trump campaign on suspicion of “coordination” in the Kremlin’s perfidy. Also on demand are documents pertinent to the Hillary Clinton emails investigation.

https://amgreatness.com/2018/07/01/rosenstein-and-wray-squirm

Rod Rosenstein and Christopher Wray went up to Capitol Hill on Thursday to tell the House Intelligence Committee that neither one of them had noticed anything wrong with Robert Mueller’s special probe or with the anti-Trump bias of its staff.

No matter what Congress and the public had read in the massive inspector general’s report recently, they wanted everyone to know that the deputy attorney general and the FBI director had the Bureau under control now, and that Rosenstein had Wray and Mueller under control, too. Everything is fine. Nothing to see here. Couldn’t Congress just leave them alone? Here were two men metaphorically standing outside their houses now burnt to the ground, and asking the firemen inside for coffee. Should we pity them or lock them up as madmen?

Rep. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) pointed out that Rosenstein had conflicts everywhere you turned. How could he oversee the Mueller probe when he had written the memo to President Trump recommending former FBI Director James Comey be fired in the first place? If reports were true that Mueller was investigating the president for “obstruction” related to firing Comey, then hadn’t Rosenstein set up a loop to investigate himself? Wasn’t he the origin point of the whole mess?

“Congressman, I can assure you that if it were appropriate for me to recuse, I would be more than happy to do so,” Rosenstein said. “But it’s my responsibility to do it.” Apparently, he felt comfortable being the responsible party for the whole mess. That air of supreme confidence would not last long.

Then Rosenstein assured Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), “There is no one more committed to rooting out abuse and misconduct than I. We look to find any credible evidence, and we give it to Chairman Nunes.” That was a soothing answer, except for the fact it was untrue. Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) has told the world repeatedly that Rosenstein is obstructing his investigation. Nunes had even appeared on Sean Hannity’s show to tell the public that his staff felt threatened by Rosenstein.