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POLITICS

Cheryl Mills’s Legal Privileges The evidence of a politicized Clinton probe keeps building.

The more we learn about the Justice Department’s investigation of Hillary Clinton’s private email, the worse it looks. The latest revelation is that, along with granting immunity to two Clinton aides, Justice agreed to secret side deals that provided highly unusual protections from potential prosecution.

The side agreements came to light this week in a letter from House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte to Attorney General Loretta Lynch. Mr. Goodlatte says he learned about the side deals by examining the immunity agreements, which haven’t been released to the public.

We already knew that Justice offered immunity to at least five central figures in the private email probe, including Cheryl Mills and Heather Samuelson, the aides in charge of deciding which of the former Secretary of State’s emails on her private server would be turned over to the State Department. FBI Director James Comey struggled to explain to Congress last week why immunity was necessary to obtain the laptops the two had used for sorting the emails.

Now we learn that Ms. Mills and Ms. Samuelson also obtained guarantees that investigators would not search these laptops after Jan. 31, 2015. More amazing, Justice agreed to destroy both laptops after examining them. Think about that: Before the authorities knew what was on the laptops, they agreed to destroy potential evidence in their investigation. The evidence was also under a congressional subpoena and preservation order.

The “no-look” date beyond Jan. 31, 2015 means the FBI couldn’t see what the two aides said or did after the news of Mrs. Clinton’s private server became public in March 2015. Investigators would be unable to determine if Ms. Mills or Ms. Samuelson had engaged, as Mr. Goodlatte put it in his letter, in “destruction of evidence or obstruction of justice related to Secretary Clinton’s unauthorized use of a private email server.” Why else would time limits be necessary given that the two women already had immunity?

We’re told by prosecutors that this kind of special treatment is all but unheard of. Justice would typically empanel a grand jury, which would issue subpoenas to obtain physical evidence like the laptops. No grant of immunity would have been necessary.

So why no grand jury? Mr. Comey told Congress last week that the FBI was eager to see the laptop evidence and that it is sometimes easier to have informal agreements to obtain it. But surely it’s possible to negotiate with lawyers and conduct a grand jury at the same time. Without the threat of a grand jury the Clinton entourage had all the leverage, and they were able to get away with what amounted to formal get-out-of-jail-free cards. CONTINUE AT SITE

The FBI Treated Clinton With Kid Gloves Investigators went after Gov. Bob McDonnell with every tool they had. The double standard is obvious. By Noel J. Francisco and James M. Burnham

Tim Kaine repeatedly defended Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server during Tuesday night’s vice-presidential debate. “The FBI did an investigation,” he said at one point, “and they concluded that there was no reasonable prosecutor who would take it further.” But such a statement is credible only if it follows a real criminal investigation—that is, the sort of investigation that the FBI and the Justice Department conduct when they actually care about a case and want convictions.

We know all too well what that kind of investigation looks like, as two of the lawyers who defended a recent target: former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell. That story had a happy ending for the governor and his wife. The Supreme Court unanimously ruled in their favor this summer and all charges were dropped in September. But their victory certainly wasn’t due to lack of investigatory zeal on the part of the FBI and Justice Department.

Below are only a few of the heavy-handed tactics federal investigators used to build their case against the McDonnells. See how they compare to how Mrs. Clinton was treated.

Conduct ambush interviews. The first contact between law enforcement and the McDonnells was an ambush interview of the governor’s wife. The agents lied to her about the topic of the meeting, forbade Gov. McDonnell’s staff from attending, and then grilled her on their suspicions about potential public corruption. Statements from that interview later took center stage in the trial of her and her husband.

In Mrs. Clinton’s case, no ambush interviews were conducted, and witnesses were generously accommodated. The FBI and Justice Department even allowed a fact witness and potential target— Cheryl Mills, formerly the State Department’s chief of staff—to simultaneously represent Mrs. Clinton as her counsel.

Immunize only witnesses who can help deliver convictions. One person in Gov. McDonnell’s case got immunity: Jonnie Williams, the prosecution’s star witness. For his testimony, Mr. Williams earned a wealth of blanket immunity—not simply from potential bribery prosecution but also from unrelated crimes he might have committed (including securities and tax fraud). Reluctant witnesses—Gov. McDonnell’s children and friends—were called before a grand jury and forced to testify. CONTINUE AT SITE

The Trump Tax Setup The means being used to defeat him are the best argument for his candidacy.By Holman W. Jenkins, Jr

Worth a second glance is Rudy Giuliani defending Donald Trump in response to the media’s ridiculously disingenuous reaction to a leaked Trump tax return for 1995.

That return shows a giant net operating loss (NOL) of $916 million from the turmoil that engulfed Mr. Trump in the early 1990s. This loss Mr. Trump may—may—have used to offset his prodigious TV and licensing earnings in later years.

It was Mr. Giuliani, in a case that hasn’t stood the test of time, who indicted Michael Milken and brought down Drexel Burnham Lambert, collapsing the junk-bond market on which Mr. Trump was depending to refinance his then-tottering, recession-battered empire of Atlantic City casinos, New York’s Plaza Hotel and the Eastern Airlines Shuttle (renamed Trump Shuttle).
Trump properties began missing debt payments, some of which Mr. Trump personally guaranteed. By early 1992, Businessweek estimated that Mr. Trump was personally underwater by $1.4 billion.

A good 15 years later, Dale Black, CFO of Trump Entertainment Resorts, was still admitting that “absent a large change in income, we’re not going to pay cash taxes for the foreseeable future with the NOLs that we have.” It didn’t help. Last year the company was back in bankruptcy, though Mr. Trump’s stake by now had been whittled down to 10% (and that mostly in exchange for continued use of his name and likeness). Now owned by Carl Icahn, the last Trump-era casino in Atlantic City—the Taj Mahal—is finally slated for permanent closure this coming Monday.

Books have been written about the Trump casino disaster. It used to be the press’s business to check out claims. Now it’s satisfied to trumpet the possibility that Mr. Trump used the losses to offset his income-tax liability in later years.

It’s all part of a show, ably directed by the Clinton campaign, whose theme is not only that Mr. Trump is unfit to be president, but you are déclassé, a lowlife, a sucker if you vote for him.

But it’s also true that Mr. Trump hasn’t done even a passable job of late. To the observation (allegation? complaint?) that he received a loan from his father, how does he not say, Yes, that’s how businesses get started in America, with loans from family and friends. CONTINUE AT SITE

Trump’s Best Debate Mike Pence shows how to make an optimistic case for change.

If Donald Trump could make the case for Donald Trump half as well as Mike Pence makes the case for Donald Trump, the New York businessman would be well on his way to the White House. That’s our conclusion from Tuesday’s vice presidential debate, in which the Indiana Governor made the sustained case against the Hillary Clinton-Barack Obama status quo in Washington that Mr. Trump should have made last week.

Mr. Pence is a former radio talk show host, and it showed with his cool, articulate delivery. His earnest, low-key demeanor was a notable contrast to Tim Kaine, whose strategy seemed to be to interrupt Mr. Pence at every opportunity. Perhaps the Virginia Senator studied Joe Biden’s strategy from four years ago when the Vice President did the same against Paul Ryan, but Mr. Kaine is not a natural bully. Our guess is that his endless interruptions grated on millions of viewers.

Mr. Kaine’s marching orders clearly were to absorb the Clinton campaign’s opposition research file on Mr. Trump, keep repeating it, and dare Mr. Pence to defend it. The point seemed to be to remind Americans that Mr. Trump can be crude, nasty and untutored. This fits the Clinton campaign strategy to delegitimize Mr. Trump personally as a potential President. His affirmative case for Mrs. Clinton and her agenda were almost afterthoughts.

For the most part Mr. Pence dodged this trap, going back on offense against the Clinton-Obama record rather than defend every Trump statement, many of which are indefensible. This is a useful lesson for Mr. Trump to take into the next debate on Sunday night, a town hall in which audience members will ask the questions. People want to like their Presidents.

The most notable substantive exchanges occurred on foreign policy, with Mr. Pence offering a detailed critique of Mr. Obama’s record and growing global disorder. Mr. Kaine kept saying that Hillary Clinton was part of the team that killed Osama bin Laden, but that is old antiterror news. Mr. Pence replied that the main terror threat now is Islamic State, which he rightly said grew out of “the vacuum” left when President Obama withdrew all U.S. troops from Iraq.

Also notable was the debate on Russia, with Mr. Kaine claiming that Mr. Trump has business ties with “oligarchs” that cause him to apologize for Vladimir Putin. Mr. Trump’s admiration for Mr. Putin is mysterious and worrisome. But Mr. Pence pointed out that Mrs. Clinton’s hawkishness-come-lately on Russia follows years of weak policy that invited Mr. Putin’s aggression. Mr. Pence reminded the audience what a classic Republican security policy sounds like—if only Mr. Trump would adopt it. CONTINUE AT SITE

Bill Whittle’s Firewall: Debating Hillary, Part 1: The Economy Wow, Hillary: so many falsehoods and so little time

Today TruthRevolt unleashes Part 1 of a six part — that’s right, six-part — series from Firewall host Bill Whittle in response to the issues left untouched in the first presidential debate. Part 1 focuses on countering Hillary Clinton’s ECONOMIC proposals.

Transcript below:

Well, the first Trump-Clinton debate is behind us, and the thing that struck me so much about this first debate was not so much what Donald Trump said to Hillary Clinton, but rather what he did not say.

So let me give the Conservative response to many of the points that Madam Clinton made and went unanswered.

CLINTON: We also have to make the economy fairer. That starts with raising the national minimum wage and also guarantee, finally, equal pay for women’s work. I also want to see more companies do profit-sharing. If you help create the profits, you should be able to share in them, not just the executives at the top.

How are we going to do it? We’re going to do it by having the wealthy pay their fair share and close the corporate loopholes.

Wow, Hillary: so many falsehoods and so little time…

Let’s start with the $15 minimum wage.

Some cities, like Seattle, have instituted $15/hr minimum wage laws. It turns out that small business owners – the kind of people that pay minimum wage – did not reluctantly lurk to their underground money cavern and drag up more sacks of gold stolen from the workers. The minimum wage was never INTENDED to be a “living wage:” it is and should be for entry-level jobs for people who want to START their work resume in a minimum-wage job – not END it there.

As far as unequal pay for women – the 80 cents on the dollar argument — well that is a gigantic lie and you know it. It is true that if you average all the male salaries, and all the female salaries, men do make more then women, and the reason they make more than women is because they put in longer hours at higher-paying and often vastly more dangerous jobs. The idea that someone at Wal-Mart could say to a woman applicant that the job pays $35,000 a year – for men — but only $27,000 for you sweet cheeks is absurd and you know it. It’s also illegal, and has been for decades, but needless to say, knowledge of and obedience to the law doesn’t seem to be one of your primary virtues.

Voter Fraud Rising Illegal interference in the battleground states. Matthew Vadum

There is already evidence that voter fraud is being perpetrated in critical battleground states like Virginia and Colorado a month before Election Day.

Voter fraud is commonplace. Completely eliminating it is impossible. The most policymakers can do is create laws and policies that attempt to minimize it.

Voter fraud is unlawful interference with the electoral process in an effort to bring about a desired result. Voter fraud is also called vote fraud, election fraud, and electoral fraud. It refers to fraudulent voting, impersonation, intimidation, perjury, voter registration fraud, forgery, counterfeiting, bribery, destroying already cast ballots, and a multitude of crimes related to the electoral process.

Reasonable people can disagree over how serious a problem voter fraud is in today’s America, but the evidence it actually exists cannot be ignored.

This is where people on the Right and Left differ. Conservatives think fighting voter fraud is important; liberals and progressives don’t care — and many of them go further, arguing that voter fraud is an imaginary problem.

News of the illegal voting in Virginia and Colorado comes as Republican candidate Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed in campaign speeches that the system, including the electoral system, is “rigged.”

Trump has been issuing this warning about the election for months. After a series of anti-voter fraud laws were struck down in several states by federal courts, the candidate raised the possibility that people will vote over and over in the election, voting for which is already underway in many states.

“There’s a lot of dirty pool played at the election, meaning the election is rigged,” Trump said two months ago. “I would not be surprised. The voter ID, they’re fighting as hard as you can fight so that they don’t have to show voter ID. So, what’s the purpose of that?”

People will be able to vote “multiple times,” he said. “How about like 10 times. Why not? If you don’t have voter ID [requirements], you can just keep voting and voting and voting.”

In fact the Left has made it easy to commit voter fraud. Bill Clinton’s Motor-Voter law of 1993 opened the floodgates to fraud.

In debate No. 2, Trump owes it to the ‘deplorables’ to focus on the issues and exert some self-control. By Victor Davis Hanson

“Trump owes it to these forgotten Deplorables to prepare for the last two debates and to talk about them, and not himself. If he doesn’t, he will wreck their hopes, betray their trust, and walk away a loser as few others in history.But if Trump fights Hillary with a coherent plan that is the antithesis of the last eight years, rather than harping about his business reputation and obsessing with the trivial, he still might win a conservative Congress, a cadre of loyal conservative cabinet officers, a rare chance to remake the Supreme Court in a fashion not seen since the 1930s — and at 70 years of age make all his prior celebrity achievements of the past seem as nothing in comparison.”

In the first debate, Hillary stuck out her jaw on cybersecurity, the treatment of women, sermons on the need for restrained language, and talk about the shenanigans of the rich — and Trump passed on her e-mail scandals, her denigration of Bill’s women, her reckless smears like “deplorables,” and her pay-for-pay Clinton Foundation enrichment, obsessed instead with the irrelevant and insignificant.

In fact, the first presidential debate resembled the final scene out of the Caine Mutiny. Trump was melting down like the baited Captain Queeg (Humphrey Bogart), in his convoluted wild-goose-chase defenses of his arcane business career. Watching it was as painful as it was for the admiral judges in the movie who saw fellow officer Queeg reduced to empty shouting about strawberries.

Hillary Clinton egged him on in the role of the know-it-all, conniver of the same movie, the smug lieutenant Tom Keefer (Fred MacMurray), who had goaded Queeg, playacted sophisticated and learned — but ultimately proved a vain, empty, and unattractive vessel.

In sum, conservative viewers tuned in, in hopes of seeing Trump as Bull Halsey, the heroic admiral of the Navy’s Third Fleet in WWII, and they got instead Hollywood’s Captain Queeg.

Trump’s detours de nihilo, the constant unanswered race/class/gender jabs by a haughty Hillary, and Trump’s addictions to broken-off phrases, and loud empty superlative adjectives (tremendous, awesome, great, and fantastic) won’t win him the necessary extra 3–4 percent of women, independents, and establishment Never Trump Republicans. Trump’s bragging that he has “properties” in your state or that he found a way to creatively account his way out of income taxes does not come off as synonymous with a plan to make you well off, too.

Moderator Lester Holt did what all mainstream debate moderators of a now corrupt profession customarily do: Before the debate he leaked that they might possibly be conservative, feigned fairness, and then reestablished his left-wing credentials by focusing solely on fact-checking Trump, so that he wouldn’t be targeted later by leftist elites whose pique could lead to temporary ostracism from the people and places Holt values.

So, of course, he audited Trump and exempted Clinton, as if Trump’s businesses were as overtly crooked as the play-for-pay Clinton syndicate, or Trump’s supposed insensitivities to a pampered beauty queen (with a checkered past) were morally equivalent to Hillary’s denigration of Bill’s women who had claimed sexual assault or her eerie post facto chortling over getting a defendant, accused of raping a 12-year-old girl, off with lesser charges.

Most newsreaders know little more than how to news read. So we should not have been surprised that Holt’s audits of Trump on the legality of stop-and-frisk, or Holt’s denial that violent crime was up, was about as accurate as Candy Crowley’s hijacking of the second 2012 debate to rewrite what Barack Obama said into what she thought he should have said. Trump, in fact, was right that his microphone did not work properly and right that the media was biased — but wrong that bringing any of that up mattered in analyses of his debate performance.

The Clinton debate formula should have been clear: Bait and prod Trump to go into egocentric rants about his businesses, or a beauty queen, or another non-story, and then let the moderator massage the playing field, and let Hillary fill in dead time with empty platitudes (we are all racists/we need more solar panels/the wealthy don’t pay their fair share), and unfunded promises, while pandering along race, class, and gender lines.

Trump has to find a way to blow apart that script — largely by repressing his ego and simply not talking about any of his businesses or going down into the Clinton muck. Period.

Who cares about an ancient writ or a spat with a contractor?

Tony Thomas: Hillary, the Alleged Rapist’s Enabler

She presents herself as the champion of all women everywhere, but there are more than a few exceptions — starting with the cavalcade of underlings, willing and unwilling, who have enjoyed or endured her priapic husband’s attentions. Whenever their names emerge, she leads the charge to silence them.
On September 14, 2015, this message occupied pride of place on Hillary Clinton’s campaign site: “I want to send a message to every survivor of sexual assault: Don’t let anyone silence your voice. You have the right to be heard.” By February 4, 2016, the quote had been stealth edited to and “You have the right to be believed, and we’re with you” had been deleted.

Hillary Clinton presented herself as defender of liberal womanhood at last month’s presidential debate. She berated Trump: “This is a man who has called women pigs, slobs and dogs.”[1]

Trump should have responded: “This is a woman whose President-husband paid $US850,000 to settle a lawsuit by Paula Jones alleging sexual harassment.[2] This is a conniving woman who has disparaged and harassed women who were sexually assaulted by her husband.”

I’d like to issue a trigger warning now that my corroborative detail may be sordid and upsetting to unsophisticated Quadrant readers. The Clinton couple exist in a miasma of sexual sleaze. Bill has indulged his sexual appetites with third-party women before, during and after his presidency. Hillary winks at it. Victims of Bill’s predations also claim Hillary has led campaigns to discredit them.

Interviewed after the debate, Trump claimed he had held back on Bill because he didn’t want to parade Bill’s vices in front of the Clintons’ daughter, Chelsea, who was in the audience.[3] I’d therefore give him credit as a gentleman, especially as Chelsea is no impressionable teen but a married woman, now 36, who owns an apartment stretching across an entire block of lower Manhattan.

Here are a few names of Bill’s other women, on whom he either forced himself or exploited their subordinate status in ways rightly banned in private enterprise and academia: Gennifer Flowers, Paula Jone, Monica Lewinsky, Christy Zercher, Kathleen Willey, Juanita Broaddrick, Carolyn Moffett. All were Democrat supporters, all took enormous risks in going public and taking on the super-powerful Democrat machine. Their lives and reputations typically suffered irreparable damage. Who knows how many others stayed fearfully silent?

No lesser a reporter than Watergate’s Carl Bernstein wrote of Hillary’s response when Gennifer Flowers alleged she had a long-term affair with Bill. Hillary’s response, Bernstein said, was to throw herself into efforts to discredit Flowers. This included trying to persuade horrified campaign aides to bring out rumors that George Bush (Sr) had not always been faithful to wife Barbara. Nice one, Hillary!

In July last year Bernstein on CNN TV said of Hillary’s penchant for “fudging”, i.e. lying,[4] She “has become a kind of specialist at it. Why has she become a kind of specialist? It has to do I think with the peculiarity of the Clinton situation. It had partly to do with the history of Bill Clinton and women in which she’s had to defend him. It’s been very difficult to do with the whole truth and nothing but the truth.” Sorry, Carl, but this supposed champion of downtrodden women didn’t have to defend Bill, she could have defended his victims. Bernstein’s biography also documents how Hillary undertook an “aggressive, explicit direction of the campaign to discredit” Gennifer Flowers.

How does the Bill/Hillary marriage since 1975 work? One needs to trawl back to 1979 for Hillary’s only candid description:

Yes Virginia, Aliens Are Registered or Voting… and in Pennsylvania, by the Thousands By J. Christian Adams

Wouldn’t it be nice if just once, some of the people whom Soros pays to tell us that voter fraud doesn’t exist admitted they were wrong? What if government documents were produced to show at least 1,000 instances of voter fraud showing aliens registering or voting in a key swing state? Would they recant?

That’s asking too much. They earn their salaries by pretending voter fraud is a myth, and convincing others in the media to parrot their lies.

So today we learn that in the key swing state of Virginia, voter registration rolls have been polluted with an excess of a thousand aliens, and most certainly far more. This detailed study by the Public Interest Legal Foundation, or PILF, (which I assisted on) documents more than one thousand aliens on the voter rolls. It provides the government documents with the names.

Here’s the most frightening part: the sample is only eight Virginia counties and doesn’t include the behemoths of Arlington and Fairfax Counties. I’ll get to why that information is being concealed by election officials in a moment below.

In just eight Virginia counties, 1,046 alien non-citizens successfully registered to vote. Mind you, these are just the aliens who were accidentally caught because when they renewed their driver’s license, the told the truth they were a non-citizen.

That’s because of Motor Voter. Motor Voter, or the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, mandates that anyone who applies for a driver’s license must be offered voter registration. To register, they must merely mark a checkbox that they are a citizen and sign the form. It’s a yes-no question, and thousands are lying — just in Virginia.

Virginia has no citizenship verification requirements like other states do, so the vulnerabilities in Motor Voter are amplified. Voter ID is no solution either. These aliens are getting registered to vote when they are getting their photo ID cards!

Some groups like it this way. Soros-fueled organizations have brought lawsuits to stop states from verifying citizenship of registrants. The Advancement Project and Demos are the answers to the Jeopardy question: Who would ever be against verifying the citizenship of voters?

Another question – why would they fight steps to prevent foreign influence on American elections? – raises even more ominous possibilities.

The Virginia report by PILF contains the responses of just eight Virginia counties to public inspection requests under Motor Voter for list maintenance documents demonstrating aliens who have been removed from the rolls.

The report only reflects the eight counties who complied with the request, and only reflects the aliens who were caught. Without question, many many more aliens remain on the rolls who haven’t been caught. But at least now we have the names of people who were removed from the rolls by the hundreds for citizenship problems.

WHEN IT COMES TO TAXES AND CHARITY HILLARY LIVES IN A GLASS HOUSE

https://pjmedia.com/trending/2016/08/12/almost-all-of-hillary-clintons-charitable-donations-went-to-this-one-organization/
Almost All of Hillary Clinton’s Charitable Donations Went to This One Organization By Rick Moram (August 12, 2016)

According to tax returns for 2015 released by the Clinton campaign, 96% of the candidate’s charitable donations went to the Clinton Foundation.

Daily Caller:

The documents show that the power couple earned $10,745,378 last year, mostly on income earned from giving public speeches.

Of that, they gave just over a million to charity. But the contributions can hardly be seen as altruistic, since the money flowed back to an entity they control.

The other $42,000 contribution was to Desert Classic Charities. That group hosts an annual PGA golf event. Doug Band, a Clinton Foundation adviser and Bill Clinton’s longtime assistant, was on the board of directors of that organization through 2014, according to its IRS filings.

Desert Classic Charities effectively returned that donation back into the Clinton orbit. Its 2015 tax filing shows that it contributed $700,000 to the Clinton Foundation for work on obesity programs. The group handed out $1.6 million in grants that whole year.

The Clinton Foundation dispenses contracts to Clinton cronies like Doug Band while also paying for the non-political travel of the Clintons and staffers. It’s all perfectly legal — and disgustingly unethical. The Foundation is used as a slush fund that enriches friends of the Clintons while allowing foreign businesses and governments to purchase influence.

I doubt this story will get much play beyond the conservative net. It might cast Hillary in a bad light, and we can’t have that when the press now sees that it has a holy quest to keep Donald Trump from winning.

But you would think after what they wrote about Mitt Romney’s charitable giving, they’d at least give the appearance of balance:

Romney paid $1.9 million in taxes and gave $4 million in charity on income of $14 million. But many liberal commentators criticized the Republican because a majority of those charitable contributions went to the Mormon church. Another chunk went to a foundation controlled by his family.

The Nation, a far-left magazine, published an article entitled “Romney’s Ungenerous Donations.”

Mother Jones, another liberal publication, published several articles skewering Romney for giving to his own church.

“Romney Tax Tips: 10 Ways to Stiff the IRS,” is one such article. “Vetting Romney’s $3 Million in Charity” is another.

We’re used to this sort of media malpractice. Double standards are a specialty of the leftist press. But they’re all too busy denying there’s a problem with the Foundation to notice that Hillary Clinton believes that the #1 charitable cause in the world is herself and her husband.