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50 STATES AND DC, CONGRESS AND THE PRESIDENT

Hillary’s Role in the Russia Smear The Sussmann trial provides more evidence that she personally directed the effort. By Douglas Schoen and Andrew Stein

https://www.wsj.com/articles/hillary-clinton-role-in-the-russia-smear-michael-sussmann-acquit-alfa-bank-donald-trump-11654439905?mod=opinion_lead_pos6

The acquittal of former Hillary Clinton lawyer Michael Sussmann—charged with lying to the Federal Bureau of Investigation while acting on behalf of her 2016 campaign—leaves major questions unanswered about Mrs. Clinton’s role in her campaign’s effort to tie Donald Trump to Russia. It also provides new evidence that she personally directed the effort.

In July 2016, John Brennan, then director of the Central Intelligence Agency, briefed President Obama that Mrs. Clinton gave “approval” for a “proposal from one of her foreign policy advisors to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up scandal and claiming interference by the Russian security service,” according to Mr. Brennan’s notes from the meeting, which were obtained by Fox News.

During Mr. Sussmann’s trial, Mrs. Clinton’s campaign manager, Robby Mook, testified that he and other top aides decided to feed the press a story in October 2016 about the now-disproven allegations of secret ties between the Trump Organization and Alfa Bank. Importantly, Mr. Mook said that Mrs. Clinton was aware of, and approved of, this plan. “We discussed it with Hillary,” Mr. Mook testified. “She agreed with the decision.”

When the campaign leaked the unverified story, Clinton aide Jake Sullivan—now President Biden’s national security adviser, and perhaps the foreign-policy adviser to whom Mr. Brennan referred—issued a statement indicating that a probe could be imminent: “We can only assume that federal authorities will now explore this direct connection between Trump and Russia as part of their existing probe into Russia’s meddling in our elections.” Mrs. Clinton tweeted out Mr. Sullivan’s statement.

Dismantle the D.C. Company Town It’s time that Americans faced up to the reality that their governing apparat is a corrupt, self-engorging Leviathan. By Roger Kimball

https://amgreatness.com/2022/06/04/dismantle-the-d-c-company-town/

Gertrude Stein famously warned that it was important to know how far to go when going too far. 

It pains me to admit that Democrats seem to have a far better sense of all that than do Republicans. Perhaps it’s because Democrats have a visceral appreciation of William Hazlitt’s observation that “those who lack delicacy hold us in their power.” The Democrats, that is to say, long ago became expert at the game of holding their opponents to standards that they themselves violate not just with impunity but with ostentatious glee. 

The news last week that Michael Sussmann was found not guilty by a D.C. jury of his ideological peers was another thumb in the eye of the American so-called system of justice. Scary-looking super-cop John Durham had indicted Sussmann for the same thing that brought down Trump’s flash-in-the-pan National Security Advisor Mike Flynn—lying to the FBI—but no one who has been paying attention thought the two men would be treated the same way. Flynn was close to Donald Trump, therefore he must be considered a sacrificial beast, someone to be made an example of, a pariah. And so he was. 

Sussmann, by contrast, was a covert employee of the Hillary Clinton campaign. He helped get the Russian Collusion Delusion going and lied to the FBI in the process. But he was on the side of the regime party, so, as Jonathan Turley observed as the Sussmann case unfolded, he was afforded every consideration while Flynn found himself ruined. In this tale of two trials, we got a textbook illustration of how you can deploy a two-tier system of justice in which, as George Orwell put it in Animal Farm: All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others. 

Sure, it’s a contradiction. It doesn’t, intellectually, make sense. It also violates every canon of justice, which depends upon a publicly acknowledged ideal of impartiality. But in the larger, more cynical realm of the Thrasymachean dispensation of American regime politics circa 2022, it is just what the doctor ordered. Washington, D.C., is a company town. The company is the regime, the deep state, populated by swamp creatures battening at the public trough and fueled by the rancid clichés of identity politics. I think Roger Simon was right when he observed that Sussmann’s exoneration marked “the end of American justice as we know it.” (Actually, it was just another plaque on the tombstone; “American justice” has been an oxymoron for years.) 

Maher: “Toxic Positivity” And The Lack Of Shame and Judgment Has Led To The Decline Of Civilization By Ian Schwartz

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2022/06/04/maher_toxic_positivity_and_the_lack_of_shame_

On the Friday broadcast of his program ‘Real Time,’ during a discussion of homelessness and addiction, Maher highlighted several government-sponsored PSAs in cities like New York and San Francisco that encourage safe drug use as an example of societal decline. See photos of the adverts below.

“I think part of the problem with us not having a solution to this is there are people out there that heard you say ‘first-world country’ and went ‘How dare you?’ because part of the problem with losing civilization is when you fail to make judgments about how some things are better than others,” Maher said. “We have seen this over and over again. Nothing is better than anything else. Keeping women in burqas is just a different way to go. And it’s just not a different way to go. And having shit in the park, human feces, when you’re trying to have a little baseball game with your kids or something is just worse.”

Maher read a poster that encouraged people to feel “empowered” for “safely” using drugs: ‘Don’t be ashamed you are using.’

“Okay, that’s the first thing it says. Yes, this is part of the problem of losing civilization. Shame is part of life. We do this to everything. Toxic positivity. ‘Everything is positive.’ Everything is not positive. You should be ashamed that you are using, that might help you to stop,” the HBO host said.
“Remember defining deviancy downward, that phrase from Patrick Moynihan?” Maher asked his panel.

If Only We Could Turn Hillary Loose on the FBI Andrew McCarthy

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/06/if-only-we-could-turn-hillary-loose-on-the-fbi/

If historical accountability now outweighs all concerns about due process, how could you do better than a Hillary Clinton trial?

‘Whither John Durham?” That is now the pressing question for every Russiagate watcher. Admittedly, the crowd of Russiagate watchers has grown smaller since Tuesday, when a Democrat-heavy jury in Washington, D.C., acquitted Michael Sussmann, the heavyweight Democratic lawyer, of Special Counsel Durham’s charge that Sussmann had lied to the FBI.

The answer, if we are to learn the central lesson of the Sussmann case, is simple: Indict Hillary Clinton.

But . . . for what?

I’ll resist the urge to say, “There’s always something,” which would be more a commentary on the career of the former secretary of state (and cattle-futures trader, travel-office-staff director, grand-jury amnesiac, “bimbo eruptions” scourge, pardons coordinator, voice of calm, suspender of disbelief, Russian “reset” visionary, Benghazi bungler, Muslim-movie maven, charity entrepreneur, and homebrew-server savant) than a real answer.

The truth is I have no idea whether Hillary has done anything indictable this time. Orchestrating the Trump–Russia collusion farce is icky politics and maybe even civil libel. But whether it violated the criminal law in some way is a tougher question.

I do know this, though: If you really want to get to the bottom of what is scandalous about Russiagate, there could be no surer way to do it than to indict that most ruthless of cutthroat, cold-blooded politicians and sit back and enjoy the show as she sets her phalanx of gladiator–lawyers on the FBI, the Justice Department, the intelligence agencies, and the Obama White House.

Corporate Wokeness Is the Last Refuge of Scoundrels By Dan McLaughlin

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/corporate-wokeness-is-the-last-refuge-of-scoundrels/

On Wednesday, Sheryl Sandberg — chief operating officer of Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, and author of the 2013 female-empowerment book Lean In — told Fortune that she was resigning because of the fierce urgency of the moment with the impending overturning of Roe v. Wade: “This is a really important moment for women. This is a really important moment for me to be able to do more with my philanthropy, with my foundation.”

This is what is known as getting ahead of the story. The very next day, the Wall Street Journal reported the real story:

In reality, it was the culmination of a yearslong process in which one of the world’s most powerful executives became increasingly burned out and disconnected from the mega-business that she was instrumental in building. More recently, there was a fresh irritation: Earlier this year, The Wall Street Journal contacted Meta about two incidents from several years ago in which Ms. Sandberg, the chief operating officer, pressed a U.K. tabloid to shelve an article about her former boyfriend, Activision Blizzard Inc. Chief Executive Bobby Kotick, and a 2014 temporary restraining order against him. The episode dovetailed with a company investigation into Ms. Sandberg’s activities, which hasn’t been previously reported, including a review of her use of corporate resources to help plan her coming wedding to Tom Bernthal, a consultant, the people said. The couple has been engaged since 2020.

Hillary’s Attorney ‘Operated’ an FBI Office at Law Firm, But Wait, It Gets Worse… By Victoria Taft

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/victoria-taft/2022/06/03/hillarys-attorney-operated-an-fbi-office-at-law-firm-but-wait-it-gets-worse-n1602734

Do you ever get the feeling that we’re playing checkers while our enemies are playing chess? That things are not as they seem? That’s the way it feels in the story of Spygate, the Trump-Russia collusion lie, FBI corruption, and the latest chapter of that entire sad and duplicitous saga that was lived out in a D.C. courtroom this week. Hillary Clinton and Democratic National Committee attorney Michael Sussmann was acquitted by a jury whose forewoman said she felt the special counsel team led by John Durham should have better things to do than investigate a lawyer supposedly lying to the FBI about the president being a Russian spy.

No biggie, you understand.

As I reported for PJ Media, the evidence in the Sussmann case pointed to an extraordinarily cozy relationship between the FBI and Perkins Coie. Sussmann had credentials to get inside the FBI and was considered to be a trusted Confidential Human Source (CHS).

But the latest news about this relationship gives rise to more and more troubling questions.

Congressmen Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Matt Gaetz (R-Fla) say a whistleblower informed them that Perkins Coie, for which Hillary and the DNC’s campaign attorneys Marc Elias and Sussmann worked, had an FBI outpost there. That’s right, an office space inside the Perkins Coie law firm was run  “in concert with the FBI,” according to Gaetz. And Michael Sussmann was “operating that worksite.”

There could be a simple (cough) explanation to which the proletariat are not privy on why the FBI would have an outpost there, but Gaetz has a few questions. In an appearance on Fox News Channel’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight” (see video below) Gaetz wondered, “What reason would there be for that? What leverage would the Perkins law firm have over the FBI given this work they’re doing together? Why would [FBI Director] Christopher Wray allow it to continue?”

Joe Biden Lied about Gun-Manufacturer Immunity. He Wasn’t Close to the Truth.By Dan McLaughlin

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/joe-biden-lied-about-gun-manufacturer-immunity-he-wasnt-close-to-the-truth/?utm_

I know this will be hard to believe, but Joe Biden lied in last night’s speech to the nation. Here is one especially egregious example:

We should repeal the liability shield that often protects gun manufacturers from being sued for the death and destruction caused by their weapons. They’re the only industry in this country that has that kind of immunity. Imagine. Imagine if the tobacco industry had been immune from being sued, where we’d be today. The gun industry’s special protections are outrageous. It must end.

Biden has made this claim before, as did Hillary Clinton. Politifact rated it false in 2015. As Biden knows perfectly well, or should know unless his mind is completely shot, there are multiple industries that enjoy federal statutory immunity from lawsuits over the use of their products.

Biden refers to the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA), passed with overwhelming bipartisan support and signed by President George W. Bush in 2005. (Biden opposed it at the time.) Under the ordinary principles of tort law, product-liability lawsuits are for defective products that malfunction; the manufacturer of a legal product cannot be held responsible for the product working as designed, unless it has somehow failed to warn users of a risk of use. This is why Biden’s analogy to cigarettes is flawed: The theory of many product-liability lawsuits against cigarette manufacturers was either that cigarettes were marketed with false assurances of their safety or that the manufacturers concealed dangers of the product. That is obviously not true of guns: Everybody knows that guns are lethal weapons if used as designed.

Covid Vindication for Ron DeSantis A Florida Inspector General report debunks the charge that the state manipulated case and death counts.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/florida-ron-desantis-governor-covid-data-manipulation-rebekah-jones-ig-report-11654292011?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

A frequent phenomenon of our times is the flurry over an alleged scandal that on examination turns out to be false. The latest case is the claim that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis manipulated Covid data.

Mr. DeSantis became public-health enemy number one by defying the left’s lockdown consensus early in the pandemic. When former state health department employee Rebekah Jones claimed she was fired for refusing to fudge state Covid data to support the state’s reopening in spring 2020, national and local media outlets reported her allegations as fact.

“Florida Dismisses A Scientist For Her Refusal To Manipulate State’s Coronavirus Data,” NPR reported. After the Florida Department of Law Enforcement executed a search warrant of her home, Ms. Jones claimed Mr. DeSantis had “sent the gestapo” to silence her. “FDLE raid dramatizes Florida’s COVID-19 coverup” the South Florida Sun Sentinel editorialized.

But according to the Governor’s office, Ms. Jones was fired for repeated “insubordination” and making “unilateral decisions to modify the Department’s COVID-19 dashboard without input or approval from the epidemiological team or her supervisors.”

George Washington, George Jarkesy, and the Administrative State’s Lack of Fundamental Justice John Berlau

https://cei.org/blog/george-washington-george-jarkesy-and-the-administrative-states-lack-of-fundamental-justice/

The recent ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in Jarkesy v. SEC is a victory for limited constitutional government on many levels. As Mario Loyola, professor at Florida International University and senior fellow here at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, writes in The Wall Street Journal, the court “has taken what could be a historic step toward restoring the Constitution’s checks and balances.”

The case involved the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) seeking penalties for alleged fraud against hedge fund manager George Jarkesy. Utilizing a provision of the Dodd-Frank “financial reform” of 2010, the SEC chose to pursue Jarkesy in an internal proceeding before an administrative law judge (ALJ) rather than a normal federal court that is part of the judicial branch created by the Constitution’s Article III. As Loyola points out, in Jarkesy’s and other cases, the SEC “acts as rulemaker, prosecutor, and judge for America’s securities laws.”

On multiple grounds, the Fifth Circuit majority found the SEC’s denying Jarkesy the venue of a federal court in which to defend himself to be in violation of the Constitution. The court ruled that, because fraud has been a common-law offense to which jury trial right attaches, and the SEC in-house proceeding lacked a jury of his peers, Jarkesy was denied his Seventh Amendment guarantee of trial by jury.

Sussmann’s cozy relationship with the FBI revealed by Jerry Dunleavy

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/justice/sussmanns-cozy-relationship-with-the-fbi-revealed

Michael Sussmann’s cozy relationship with the FBI was revealed during his two-week trial and in a new letter by congressional Republicans, shedding new light on the Hillary Clinton campaign lawyer’s close ties to the bureau as he pushed since-debunked Trump-Russia claims.

Sussmann, a former Perkins Coie lawyer who represented the Democratic National Committee when it was hacked in 2016, was acquitted by a jury this week after being charged with lying to the FBI about whom he was representing when, in September 2016, he pushed false allegations of a secret back channel between the Trump Organization and Russia’s Alfa-Bank.

Reps. Jim Jordan and Matt Gaetz sent a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray this week with details they had learned about the relationship between Perkins, Sussmann, and the bureau.

“We have learned that since March 2012, the FBI approved and facilitated a Secure Work Environment at Perkins Coie’s Washington, D.C., office, which continues to be operational. In a letter dated May 25, 2022, the law firm confirmed and acknowledged the arrangement,” Jordan and Gaetz told Wray.

“We have been informed that former Perkins Coie partner Michael Sussmann had access to this Secure Work Environment, and during the course of his recent trial, it was disclosed he had special badge access to FBI headquarters.”