RUTHFULLY YOURS

Antisthenes the Cynic, when informed that he had been applauded by bad men, said, “I’m horribly afraid I have done something wrong.” Too many Republicans need to learn that being praised by progressives is a bad sign.

The two latest examples of this failure of discernment are Senators Bob Corker and Jeff Flake. They have both announced that they will not run for reelection, at the same time recycling all the stale talking points about “presidential decorum” and “character” and “boorish behavior.” And like the NeverTrump Republicans, both pols have been praised by the progressive establishment. Here’s a tweet from long-time Senate operator Chuck Schumer: “Jeff Flake is one of the finest human beings I’ve met in politics. He is moral, upright, strong & will be missed in the Senate.”

These pats on the head are the reward for Flake’s being a reliable “good Republican” (i.e. Trump-hater). In a sympathetic story in The Washington Post, Flake’s “more-sorrow-than-anger” decision included pious pronouncements such as “I couldn’t sleep at night having to embrace the president or condoning his behavior or being okay with some of his positions,” he said. “I just couldn’t do it — it was never in the cards.” Hillary running-mate Tim Kaine tweeted that Flake is a “friend,” “a good man,” and “an honest broker.” And then they wonder why the average voter complains about the “deep state” and RINOs. They know that such praise is code for “a chump we can roll.”

Meanwhile, Republican voters can smell the moral preening and virtue-signaling from Flake a mile away. His haughty disdain for rank-and-file Republicans is obvious in the Post story when he calls support for Trump a “fever” he is “confident” will eventually “break.” In other words, only someone with a moral and cognitive disease could support such a political monster. But read the Post article carefully and Flake’s real careerist calculation becomes apparent. Here’s the key sentence: “The fight he picked with Trump followed years of cooperation with Democrats on immigration policy, global trade deals and reestablishing diplomatic ties to Cuba.”

That is, as a consequence of plumping for progressive policies anathema to average Republicans and common sense, Flake finds himself down by double-digits in the polls months before the primary. Maybe he’s acting on principle, or maybe he’s just showing some Falstaffian “valor,” which is defined by shamelessly seeing to one’s own best self-interests. Thus he validates the perception that establishment Republicans are more interested in their own status and self-regard than in undoing the decades of progressive misrule.

Similarly, Bob Corker, who acted as Obama’s political flak in supporting the atrocious Iran nuclear deal, claims he’s not running again because Trump is “debasing” the nation with his “reckless, outrageous, and undignified behavior.” And he too has earned praise from establishment Democrats. Tim Kaine likened him to Flake in that they both are amenable to bipartisan cooperation “no matter what their leadership says, no matter what the polls say.” An ex Obama spokesman added, “we should embrace rational Republicans that are willing to stand up to Trump and to combat the erosion of democratic ideals and institutions.”

As usual, “bipartisan” in Prog Speak means giving the Dems what they want even when the policies–– like amnesty for illegal aliens, or letting a fanatical apocalyptic cult acquire nuclear weapons––are dangerously wrong-headed and contrary to the wishes of the voters. And speaking of “democratic institutions,” as much as the progressives have dismantled the Constitutional order, we still have one of the critical foundations of political freedom: regularly scheduled elections in which politicians are held accountable to the people. In the reckoning of the people of Tennessee, according to one poll, two-thirds of those who have paid “some” or “a lot” of attention to Corker’s spat with Trump disapprove of the Senator. The vox populi may not be the voice of God, but it will be the voice of doom when you ignore it.

A grand jury convened by Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III has indicted an unidentified person on unspecified charges in Mueller’s off-the-rails investigation into the Trump campaign’s hypothesized electoral collusion with Russia, according to media reports.

The indictment could be unsealed as soon as today. Three congressional committees are also investigating the Trump-Russia collusion conspiracy theory.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R), a former federal prosecutor, said the person concerned probably already knows what’s on its way. “Believe me, if you’re the person, you know,” Christie said on a public affairs show Sunday.

“If you’ve been told you’re a target, believe me, you’re not sleeping well anyway.”

Rep. Adam Schiff of California, the senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, speculated yesterday that the indictment could name former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort or former U.S. National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, both of whom quit their posts over ties to foreign governments. The two men may be at the top of Mueller’s list because foreign entanglements are what his probe is supposed to be about.

Meanwhile, it was reported over the weekend that the FBI has been investigating more than $3 million in suspicious wire transfers made in 2012 and 2013 by offshore companies linked to Manafort. The theory is that Manafort, who has repeatedly denied wrongdoing, may have helped the Ukrainian regime close to Russian President Vladimir Putin launder money.

Trump defenders say Mueller has too many serious conflicts of interest to be leading the probe and that the president should fire him. Mueller “has so many conflicts of interest it’s almost an absurdity,” former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) said previously.

Mueller, whose investigative team is chock full of Democrats, may himself end up being implicated in the Russian uranium scandal.

As Peter Berkowitz, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, wrote in the Wall Street Journal, The Hill newspaper reported recently that in 2009 the FBI “gathered substantial evidence that Russian nuclear industry officials were engaged in bribery, kickbacks, extortion and money laundering designed to grow Vladimir Putin’s atomic energy business inside the United States.”

The FBI kept that information from Congress and the public … even as Hillary Clinton’s State Department in 2010 approved a deal that transferred control of more than 20% of America’s uranium supply to a Russian company. The Hill also reported the FBI had documents showing that during this period Russia engineered the transmission of millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation.

An informant is said to be ready to testify that a $500,000 fee a Russian concern paid to Bill Clinton for a single speech, along with the millions of dollars of so-called donations to the Clinton Foundation constitute a “quid pro quo” given in exchange for Hillary’s help.

“My client can put some meat on those bones and tell you what the Russians were saying during that time,” the informant’s lawyer, Victoria Toensing, told Fox News.

A political group tied to the former president — Obama for America (OFA) — paid nearly a million dollars to the same law firm used by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Hillary for America to funnel money to Fusion GPS, The Federalist reported Sunday. Fusion GPS is the shady opposition research firm behind the unverified Steele dossier.

OFA has paid over $972,000 to Perkins Coie, an international law firm, since April of 2016, Federal Election Commission (FEC) records show.

As the Washington Post reported, last week, FEC filings show that the Clinton campaign and the DNC paid Perkins Coie a combined $12.4 million in 2016. Marc Elias, general counsel to Hillary for America and a partner at Perkins Coie, retained Fusion GPS in April of 2016 to dig up dirt on President Trump. In the spring and summer of 2016, Fusion GPS also received money indirectly from a senior Russian government official, according to Bill Browder, the CEO and co-founder of Hermitage Capital, in testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee last July.

Fusion GPS calls itself a “research and strategic intelligence firm” but is well known in Washington to be an opposition-research group for Democrats. The firm’s founders are reportedly “more political activists than journalists” and in 2016 had “a pro-Hillary, anti-Trump agenda.”

Fusion GPS hired Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer, to compile a dossier on Trump.

The result was a salacious hodgepodge of unverified sexual allegations and political allegations that Trump and his campaign colluded with the Russian government during the 2016 election. According to top Russia expert David Satter, the dossier “employed standard Russian techniques of disinformation and manipulation.”

Via The Federalist:

OFA, Obama’s official campaign arm in 2016, paid nearly $800,000 to Perkins Coie in 2016 alone, according to FEC records. The first 2016 payments to Perkins Coie, classified only as “Legal Services,” were made April 25-26, 2016, and totaled $98,047. A second batch of payments, also classified as “Legal Services,” were disbursed to the law firm on September 29, 2016, and totaled exactly $700,000. Payments from OFA to Perkins Coie in 2017 totaled $174,725 through August 22, 2017.

FEC records as well as federal court records show that Marc Elias, the Perkins Coie lawyer whom the Washington Post reported was responsible for the payments to Fusion GPS on behalf of Clinton’s campaign and the DNC, also previously served as a counsel for OFA. In Shamblin v. Obama for America, a 2013 case in federal court in Florida, federal court records list Elias as simultaneously serving as lead attorney for both OFA and the DNC.

OFA, which grew out of Obama’s 2008 campaign, became “Organizing for Action,” a non-profit, tax-exempt group, in early 2013. The retooled organization was focused on building public support for his left-wing agenda in his second term. OFA relaunched again after the 2016 election to use its resources to oppose President Trump. CONTINUE AT SITE

On Friday, an anonymous source leaked to CNN that a federal grand jury had approved the filing of charges against a person involved in the Russian collusion investigation. CNN could not identify that person or the charges against him, and a spokesman from Robert Mueller’s special counsel office declined to comment.

The timing of this report is suspicious. Earlier in the week, the Hillary campaign and the DNC had been identified as having funded the famous Trump dossier, in which the first allegations of Trump-Russia collusion appeared. This had been the week’s top story, until the leak from Mueller’s office.

Is the special counsel’s office trying to divert media attention? Are Mueller’s people timing leaks to undercut the focus on Hillary? The leaker told CNN to expect an arrest today. When we learn the identity of the culprit and the charges against him, MSM commentators will speculate about what these new developments imply about Trump’s involvement and the future of his presidency, and Hillary’s pay-for-Russian-gossip story will be yesterday’s news.

Hillary has been on TV quite often these days as she’s gone around the country hawking her book What Happened. Up to now, she’s been taking questions from friendly moderators; on C-Span last week, she said, “Trump and his allies, including Fox News, are really experts at distraction and diversion.” Projection, anyone?

Hillary continued: “So the closer the investigation about real Russian ties between Trump associates and real Russians… the more they just want to throw mud on the wall. I’m their favorite target. Me and President Obama, we are the ones they like to put in the crosshairs.”

As Hillary’s book tour proceeds with ten more appearances before the end of the year, it will be interesting to see if she continues to take questions and whether she continues to speak about “ties between Trump associates and real Russians.” In light of recent information, that message would appear to be non-operational.

In the meantime, the investigative calendar is packed. A former FBI informant has just been released from an FBI-imposed nondisclosure agreement and will testify before Congress about his personal knowledge concerning the Russian purchase of Uranium One. Expect new revelations about Clinton corruption.

And expect more anonymous leaks from Mueller’s office.

The Trump presidency has been consumed by Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s efforts to uncover collusion between the Trump campaign and Moscow. Mr. Mueller reportedly has secured one or more indictments that he will announce Monday. Some Republicans now seek a new special counsel to investigate if the Clinton Campaign “colluded” with Russians to smear Candidate Trump, along with other aspects of the Clintons’ relationship with Russia and Russian nationals. But one special counsel already is one too many.

During the 1980s and ’90s, American politics was repeatedly distorted, and lives devastated, through the appointment of independent counsels under the post-Watergate Ethics in Government Act. These constitutionally anomalous prosecutors were given unlimited time and resources to investigate officials, including President Clinton, and scandals, such as Iran-Contra. Once appointed, almost all independent counsels built little Justice Departments of their own and set out to find something—anything—to prosecute. Hardly anyone lamented the expiration of this pernicious law in 1999.

But special counsels, appointed by the attorney general and in theory subject to Justice Department oversight, haven’t proved any better in practice. Mr. Mueller’s investigation has already morphed into an open-ended inquiry. It is examining issues—like Donald Trump’s private business transactions—that are far removed from the Russian question. It also has expanded its focus beyond the original question of collusion with the Russians to whether anyone involved in the Russia investigation has committed some related offense. That is evident from investigators’ efforts to interview White House aides who were not involved in the 2016 campaign, and from leaks suggesting that Mr. Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey might have “obstructed” justice.

That claim is frivolous, and it damages America’s constitutional fabric even to consider it. A president cannot obstruct justice through the exercise of his constitutional and discretionary authority over executive-branch officials like Mr. Comey. If a president can be held to account for “obstruction of justice” by ending an investigation or firing a prosecutor or law-enforcement official—an authority the constitution vests in him as chief executive—then one of the presidency’s most formidable powers is transferred from an elected, accountable official to unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats and judges.

Mr. Mueller’s investigation has been widely interpreted as partisan from the start. Mr. Trump’s opponents instantaneously started talking of impeachment—never mind that a special counsel, unlike an independent counsel, has no authority to release a report to Congress or the public. Mr. Trump’s supporters count the number of Democratic donors on the special-counsel staff. The Mueller investigation is fostering tremendous bitterness among Trump voters, who see it as an effort by Washington mandarins to nullify their votes.

Mr. Trump can end this madness by immediately issuing a blanket presidential pardon to anyone involved in supposed collusion with Russia or Russians during the 2016 presidential campaign, to anyone involved with Russian acquisition of an American uranium company during the Obama administration, and to anyone for any offense that has been investigated by Mr. Mueller’s office. Political weaponization of criminal law should give way to a politically accountable democratic process. Nefarious Russian activities, including possible interference in U.S. elections, can and should be investigated by Congress.

Partisan bitterness will not evaporate if lawmakers take up the investigation. But at least those conducting the inquiry will be legitimate and politically accountable. And the question of whether Russia intervened in the 2016 election, and of whether it made efforts to influence U.S. policy makers in previous administrations, is first and foremost one of policy and national security, not criminal law.

The president himself would be covered by the blanket pardon we recommend, but the pardon power does not extend to impeachment. If Congress finds evidence that he was somehow involved in collusion with Russia, the House can determine whether to begin impeachment proceedings. Congress also is better equipped, as part of its oversight role, to determine whether and how the FBI, Justice Department and intelligence agencies might have been involved in the whole affair, including possible misuse of surveillance and mishandling of criminal investigations. CONTINUE AT SITE

Republicans have made impressive use of the Congressional Review Act, overturning 14 last-minute Obama rules. They might be able to do more now that a government agency has confirmed that Congress can also use the law to repeal diktats the Obama Administration slipped in under the regulatory radar.

One example is the 2013 “guidance” that federal financial regulators issued on leveraged lending. This was another example of Obama officials ducking formal rule-making by claiming they were merely issuing “voluntary” suggestions. The banking industry knew better and chose to cut back on leveraged loans, denying a vital source of capital for indebted companies that lack access to public capital markets, and pushing such activity to nonbank lenders that are even less regulated and make riskier bets.

In light of this migration and uncertainty, Pennsylvania Senator Pat Toomey recently asked the Government Accountability Office to judge whether the guidance counts as a “rule” under the Congressional Review Act. The GAO has now confirmed that it does.

The opening words of the 1996 CRA read: “Before a rule can take effect,” a federal agency must submit a report to Congress. But regulators never did on the leveraged lending guidance. No one has tested the legal limits of the CRA language, but in theory it means the lending guidance is null and void until the Trump Administration submits a report.

As Mr. Toomey notes, even a more limited reading of the law gives Republicans the ability to strike down the lending guidance. The CRA says the clock for Congress’s review of a rule doesn’t begin until a report is submitted. Congress then has 60 legislative days to override with simple majorities in both chambers. Mr. Toomey says the Senate parliamentarian has found that the GAO ruling counts as the official report, and so the clock is now ticking.

Republicans would do well to override the lending guidance on policy grounds. After the financial crisis, regulators subjected banks to new capital and liquidity requirements. They then layered on new restrictions on banking activities, such as leveraged lending. The combination has needlessly driven up costs and curtailed lending.