RUTHFULLY YOURS

Democrats have made a political calculation to delay or challenge every Donald Trump nominee, no matter the merits, and one egregious episode is playing out now. The left is smearing a nominee for CIA Director as a queen of torture, but the White House can win this argument if it rebuts the charges head on.

On Wednesday Gina Haspel will appear before the Senate Intelligence Committee for a confirmation hearing, and her critics are gearing up for a mugging. Ms. Haspel is largely unknown to the American public: Only recently did the CIA declassify some of the details of her 33-year CIA career. Ms. Haspel started as a case officer in Africa and after assignments around the world in its operations directorate became deputy director in 2017.

Ms. Haspel is the first CIA officer in more than five decades to reach the top position. She won the confidence of former director Mike Pompeo as his deputy, so the agency’s leadership transition would be straightforward.

The problem is that Democrats and Rand Paul of Kentucky are painting her as an unrepentant torturer. The specific rap is that Ms. Haspel in the early 2000s “ran a secret center in Thailand where prisoners were tortured,” as Mr. Paul put it in an op-ed. She is also branded for involvement in destroying tapes of CIA waterboarding.

Americans can disagree about the merits of enhanced interrogation after 9/11, but there’s no debating that the CIA’s interrogation program was legal at the time. The Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel produced memos making the legal case. The memos were withdrawn some years later, and Congress has also since changed the law to ban some of the techniques that were used in the immediate wake of 9/11. But Ms. Haspel is not responsible for any legal errors. Her job was to protect the country.

Special counsel Robert Mueller is used to getting kid-glove treatment. That changed Friday in a federal courtroom in Virginia, where Judge T.S. Ellis directed a blunt challenge to the Mueller team prosecuting former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort on charges of tax and bank fraud, some of which date back to 2005.

“I don’t see what relation this indictment has with what the special counsel is authorized to investigate. You don’t really care about Mr. Manafort’s bank fraud,” Judge Ellis told Michael Dreeben, who was representing Mr. Mueller in court. “What you really care about is what information Mr. Manafort could give you that would reflect on Mr. Trump or lead to his prosecution or impeachment.”

Judge Ellis won’t win a diplomacy-in-judging prize, but his sharp words expose a central problem with the evolution of the Mueller probe. Though he was appointed to investigate collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign in 2016, Mr. Mueller’s indictments thus far have concerned other matters—lying to the FBI, or in Mr. Manafort’s case actions relating to his business with Ukraine.

Mr. Manafort’s team wants Judge Ellis to throw out the charges on grounds they exceed Mr. Mueller’s original mandate. And the judge’s questions leave the Mueller team in a difficult position. Essentially Mr. Mueller’s prosecutors now have to argue that even if they violated the Justice Department’s rules, it shouldn’t matter.

Mr. Dreeben of Team Mueller responded that the indictment doesn’t exceed the special counsel’s mandate, but the judge wants to see specifically the full and unredacted August 2, 2017 memo from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein saying what Mr. Mueller could pursue. The judge put it this way: “What we don’t want in this country, we don’t want anyone with unfettered power. It’s unlikely you’re going to persuade me the special counsel has unlimited powers to do anything he or she wants.”

https://www.openthebooks.com/
The federal government doled out 560,771 grants in fiscal year 2016, totaling $583 billion. On average, each grant exceeded $1 million.
Research shows pork-barrel spending is bipartisan, as the top 50 grant-receiving districts are represented by 27 democrats and 23 republicans. The top 10 congressional districts are evenly split: 5 democrats and 5 republicans.

Consider just a few examples of taxpayer abuse:

*Virtual Reality Platform to Teach Children in China How to Cross the Street – $183,750 from the Department of Health and Human Services funded a virtual reality platform in China to teach safe pedestrian techniqueNew *

*Condom Design with More Lubrication – $200,601 in taxpayer money funded a new condom design that lowers the chance of breakage and increases “satisfaction between partners.”

*Cigar Taste Test – $114,375 funded a study to determine whether cigar flavor affected its addictiveness.

*Sex Ed for Prostitutes in California – $1.5 million funded “safer sex and needle” education for prostitutes in California even though prostitution is illegal in the state.

*Space Racers: An Animated Children’s Cartoon – $2.5 million in NASA funding supported the production of two seasons of a children’s cartoon series about galactic adventures.
These grants flowed to state governments ($505 billion); higher education institutions ($35 billion); for profit organizations including Fortune 100 companies ($2.5 billion); nonprofit organizations ($19.8 billion); and more.

Fortune 100 companies received $3.2 billion in federal grants between fiscal year 2014 and 2016. Boeing can’t argue it needed $774 million in federal grants while reporting nearly $95 billion in 2016 annual revenue.

How can we rein in this insanity? The people must bring the heat, so the politicians see the light on fiscal restraint.

Imagine if a right-wing version of Robert Mueller, backed by a properly pro-Trump legal team, had sent former President Barack Obama the same sort of questions that Mueller allegedly delivered this week to President Trump. The special counsel might dress them up in legalese, innuendo, and with perjury-trap IEDs, thereby casting suspicion with the mere nature of the questions.

If so, the interrogatories might run like the following—

President Obama:

What did you mean when you were heard, by accident, on a hot mic, providing the following assurances to outgoing Russian Prime Minister Medvedev: “On all these issues, but particularly missile defense, this, this can be solved, but it’s important for him to give me space . . . This is my last election. After my election, I have more flexibility”?

Did you and the Russian government have any private agreements to readjust Russian-American relations during your own 2012 reelection campaign? Were there other such discussions similar to your comments to Prime Minister Medvedev?

If so, do you believe such Russian collusion had any influence on the outcome of the 2012 election?

Did your subsequent reported suspension of, or reduction in, some planned missile defense programs, especially in Eastern Europe, have anything to do with the assurances that you gave to the Russian Prime Minister?

Did the subsequent Russian quietude during your 2012 reelection campaign have anything to do with your assurances of promised changes in U.S. foreign policy?

Did you adjudicate U.S. responses to Russian behavior on the basis of your own campaign re-election concerns?

More specifically, what exactly did you mean when you asked the Russian Prime Minister for “space”? And further what did you intend by suggesting that after your 2012 election you would have more “flexibility” with the Russian government?

Would you please define “flexibility” in this context?

What do you think Prime Minister Medvedev meant when he replied to your request for space, and your promise for flexibility after the election, with: “Yeah, I understand. I understand your message about space. Space for you . . . I understand . . . I will transmit this information to Vladimir.”

Did you hear subsequently from the Russians that Prime Medvedev had delivered the message that you had intended for Vladimir Putin?