Fallows On America.Are We Already In A Civil War? Few Listened. Mueller Questions Obama. Flynn's No Crime Committed.Do We Distrust God? Iran Deal?

James Fallow was , I believe, Chief of Staff at one time for Sen. Sam Nunn.

How is America doing? (See 1 below.)

Are we already in a Civil War of sorts? (See 1a below.)

And how is Israel doing? There are many examples of the successful results of Israeli teamwork in this week's positive newsletter from Israel.

Please recommend www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com and forward this email to friends, family and colleagues and especially to any individuals whom you think need to know about the good work that Israel does.

Don't forget to visit www.IsraelActive.com and use the SEARCH box to retrieve archived articles on subjects that are of interest to you.

Best regards
Michael

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Obama warned us and few listened.  I did and concluded I could not stomach what I was hearing and for this I have been criticized incessantly.

Caveat - have not checked that everything in quotes is factually correct.  (See 2 below.)
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My kind of doctor. (See 3 below.)
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Worth re-posting:  https://amgreatness.com/2018/05/04/what-if-mueller-questioned-barack-obama/

And what about Flynn's conviction when there was no crime?(See 4 below.)

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Sessions continues to allow his agency to resist sending Congress what it legally is entitled to receive and even when Justice does they insist in redacting so much the information is basically worthless.

It appears when the redacted material issue is finally resolved  the reason was not because of national security but was a matter of the FBI being embarrassed for the way they conducted themselves. (See 5 below.)
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A few memos ago I spoke about "The Land of The Free and Home of The Brave."

There is another phrase which once defined Americans and which no longer seems to have currency. "In God We Trust." Progressives have cleansed/sanitized us through PC'ism and those who embrace religion, believe in a higher being are mocked, rebuked and according to Obama are angry and disgruntled gun owners.  Hillary referred to them as "deplorables."

Communism does not recognize religion because central authority sets the terms and dictates not some distant being and/or conceptual entity..

As the posting above suggests Communism failed and so will the world if man has nothing to aspire to beyond self. One does not necessarily have to belong to a religious order to embrace this concept.

Man is flawed but by aspiring to a higher being/concept he remains challenged to better himself.Putting his faith in government certainly is not the answer to man's betterment.

Government can protect man, can, collectively speaking, provide a structure with laws t that dictate behaviour but religion, belief in God is an internal spiritual matter and government does not fill the bill when it comes to one's soul.

Lamentably, religion has proven to be a mixed blessing because man has, all too frequently, used religion as a source of justifying some aberrant behaviour but that is not the fault of religion. Religion is meant to be a glue not used as a form of gunpowder.

The fact that Americans have allowed progressives to disconnect our Constitutional form of government from a Godly link  is tragic act of human  un-mooring. Though I have no proof I also believe the increased use of drugs is related to man's disengagement with religion.

Should America become a "godless" nation not only will we decline beyond redemption but the world will suffer beyond belief. 

This is why I often warn of the influence of the Soros' of the world who monetary influence seeks to finance those who would love nothing more than to bring America to its knees. (See 6 below.)
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Tomorrow we will know whether Trump is walking away from Obama's great accomplishment, The Iran Deal.

If Trump wants to take a straightforward position he will walk but if he wants to pay lip service to France and Germany's leaders he will throw the ball to them, give them six months to re-negotiate the  "deal" and challenge them to resolve the issue of inspection access, development of weaponized missiles and their sponsor of world terrorism.

They, of course, will not be able to do anything along these lines so Iran will simply have another 6 months to press forward.

The one thing that Trump can do and should, regardless of what position he takes is increase the sanctions because Iran's economy is suffering, strikes are breaking out and civil unrest is growing.

Russia has had to cut funding for it's military because of the cost of their foray in Syria and paying surrogates and Iran's economy is in serious decline as inflation is going up while their currency is plunging. We will know tomorrow at 2P if not before due to leaks.
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Dick

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1) Is America Failing or Improving?

Cynicism and despondency are easy to find in America today.  Scan the headlines or peruse your social networks, and you will come across plenty of doomsday prophecies and disgruntled gripes. 

But is our media an accurate representation of our national character and status?  James Fallow believes that it is not.  While some would have us believe that we are crumbling toward a nearly inevitable collapse, Fallow argues that the reality is much more positive and productive once we dig beneath the turbulent and disagreeable veneer.

In his article “The Reinvention of America” in The Atlantic this month, Fallow attests that “Americans don’t realize how fast the country is moving toward becoming a better version of itself.”

Fallow should know - a reporter and pilot, he and his wife have spent the last several years traveling throughout the country from small town to small town in their two-seater propeller plane.  What they have found outside the metropolitan centers which generally dictate our headlines, is that common Americans are far more sanguine than we would be led to believe by politicians who are seeking our vote or journalists who are trying to sell papers.

“I am well aware that this message runs so counter to prevailing emotions and ideas as to seem preposterous,” Fallow writes.  But, as he points out, “reporting is the process of learning what you didn’t know before you showed up. And by showing up in Mississippi and Kansas and South Dakota and inland California and Rust Belt Pennsylvania, we saw repeated examples of what is happening in America’s here and now that have important and underappreciated implications for America’s future.”

Quick to admit that there are certainly obvious ways in which the country has devolved and drifted from its compass,  Fallow identifies a number of significant issues in which we are growing stronger and better.  These include civic governance, schools, manufacturing, conservation, and several other indicators which he explores and explains in depth. 

Fallow also points out an interesting discrepancy in the views that many Americans profess about the country as a whole versus the sense of their own local communities.  Citing a national study from 2016, he reports that “only 36 percent of Americans thought the country as a whole was headed in the right direction. But in the same poll, two-thirds of Americans said they were satisfied with their own financial situation, and 85 percent said they were very or somewhat satisfied with their general position in life and their ability to pursue the American dream. Other polls in the past half-dozen years have found that most Americans believe the country to be on the wrong course—but that their own communities are improving.”

The picture that Fallow paints is of a country that is flourishing in spite of its negative self-image.  The implication of his findings, which will be published in greater depth in his upcoming book Our Towns: A 100,000-Mile Journey Into the Heart of America, seems to be that it is not from our elected leaders or our national media that  we will find an accurate portrayal of our nation.  It is rather the common Americans, with our common dreams and our common decency, who can tell us what America truly is and what it has the very real potential to become. 

Read Fallow’s “The Reinvention of America” here or by clicking the image above.

1a)Two or more sides disagree on who runs the country. And they can’t settle the question through elections because they don’t even agree that elections are how you decide who’s in charge.

That’s the basic issue here. Who decides who runs the country? When you hate each other but accept the election results, you have a country. When you stop accepting election results, you have a countdown to a civil war.

 The Mueller investigation is about removing President Trump from office and overturning the results of an election. We all know that. But it’s not the first time they’ve done this. The first time a Republican president was elected this century, they said he didn’t really win. The Supreme Court gave him the election. There’s a pattern here.

What do sure odds of the Democrats rejecting the next Republican president really mean? It means they don’t accept the results of any election that they don’t win. It means they don’t believe that transfers of power in this country are determined by elections.

That’s a civil war.‼️

There’s no shooting. At least not unless you count the attempt to kill a bunch of Republicans at a charity baseball game practice. But the Democrats have rejected our system of government.

This isn’t dissent. It’s not disagreement. You can hate the other party. You can think they’re the worst thing that ever happened to the country. But then you work harder to win the next election. When you consistently reject the results of elections that you don’t win, what you want is a dictatorship.

Your very own dictatorship‼️

The only legitimate exercise of power in this country, according to Democrats, is its own. Whenever Republicans exercise power, it’s inherently illegitimate. The Democrats lost Congress. They lost the White House. So what did they do? They began trying to run the country through Federal judges and bureaucrats. Every time that a Federal judge issues an order saying that the President of the United States can’t scratch his own back without his say so, that’s the civil war.

 Our system of government is based on the constitution, but that’s not the system that runs this country. The Democrat's system is that any part of government that it runs gets total and unlimited power over the country.

 If the Democrats are in the White House, then the president can do anything. And I mean anything. He can have his own amnesty for illegal aliens. He can fine you for not having health insurance. His power is unlimited. He’s a dictator.

But when Republicans get into the White House, suddenly the President can’t do anything. He isn’t even allowed to undo the illegal alien amnesty that his predecessor illegally invented. A Democrat in the White House has “discretion” to completely decide every aspect of immigration policy. A Republican doesn’t even have the “discretion” to reverse him. That’s how the game is played. That’s how our country is run. Sad but true, although the left hasn’t yet won that particular fight.

When a Democrat is in the White House, states aren’t even allowed to enforce immigration law. But when a Republican is in the White House, states can create their own immigration laws. Under Obama, a state wasn’t allowed to go to the bathroom without asking permission. But under Trump, Jerry Brown can go around saying that California is an independent republic and sign treaties with other countries.

The Constitution has something to say about that.

Whether it’s Federal or State, Executive, Legislative or Judiciary, the left moves power around to run the country. If it controls an institution, then that institution is suddenly the supreme power in the land. This is what I call a moving dictatorship.

Donald Trump has caused the Shadow Government to come out of hiding: Professional government is a guild. Like medieval guilds. You can’t serve in if you’re not a member. If you haven’t been indoctrinated into its arcane rituals. If you aren’t in the club. And Trump isn’t in the club. He brought in a bunch of people who aren’t in the club with him.

Now we’re seeing what the pros do when amateurs try to walk in on them. They spy on them, they investigate them and they send them to jail. They use the tools of power to bring them down.‼️

 That’s not a free country.‼️

It’s not a free country when FBI agents who support Hillary take out an “insurance policy” against Trump winning the election. It’s not a free country when Obama officials engage in massive unmasking of the opposition. It’s not a free country when the media responds to the other guy winning by trying to ban the conservative media that supported him from social media. It’s not a free country when all of the above collude together to overturn an election because the guy who wasn’t supposed to win won.

Have no doubt, we’re in a civil war between conservative volunteer government and a leftist Democrat professional government.
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 2)Sorry to say that we were warned by the perpetrator.... We should have paid more attention to what he said.

What the hell were we thinking?

Where did the Hatred for the Flag start?

Code, Title 36, Chapter 10, Sec. 171... During rendition of the national anthem, when the flag is displayed, all present (except those in uniform) are expected to stand at attention facing the flag with the right hand over the heart. Or, at the very least, "Stand and Face It". Senator Obama replied : "As I've said about the flag pin, I don't want to be perceived as taking sides." "There are a lot of people in the world to whom the American flag is a symbol of oppression..." "The anthem itself conveys a war-like message. You know, the bombs bursting in air and all that sort of thing." Obama continued: "The National Anthem should be 'swapped' for something less parochial and less bellicose. I like the song 'I'd Like To Teach the World To Sing'. If that were our anthem, then, I might salute it. In my opinion, we should consider reinventing our National Anthem as well as 'redesign' our Flag to better offer our enemies hope and love. It’s my intention, if elected, to disarm America to the level of acceptance to our Middle East Brethren. If we, as a Nation of warring people, conduct ourselves like the nations of Islam, where peace prevails, perhaps a state or period of mutual accord could exist between our governments". When I Become President, I will seek a pact of agreement to end hostilities between those who have been at war or in a state of enmity, and a freedom from disquieting oppressive thoughts. We as a Nation, have placed upon the nations of Islam, an unfair injustice which is WHY my wife disrespects the Flag and she and I have attended several flag burning ceremonies in the past". "Of course now, I have found myself about to become The President of the United States and I have put my hatred aside. I will use my power to bring CHANGE to this Nation, and offer the people a new path.My wife and I look forward to becoming our Country's First black Family. Indeed, CHANGE is about to overwhelm the United States of America." Yes, you read it right.

EVER WONDER WHERE COLIN KAEPERNICK GOT HIS IDEA TO KNEEL AND DISRESPECT THE FLAG? ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 3) Q: Doctor, I've heard that cardiovascularar exercise can prolong life.  Is this true?  A: Your heart only good for so many beats, and that it... Don't waste on exercise.  Everything wear out eventually.  Speeding up heart not make you live longer; it like saying you extend life of car by driving faster.  Want to live longer?  Take nap. Q: Should I reduce my alcohol intake? A:  No, not at all.  Wine made from fruit.  Brandy is distilled wine, that mean they take water out of fruity bit so you get even more of goodness that way.  Beer also made of grain.  Bottom up! Q: How can I calculate my body/fat ratio? A: Well, if you have body and you have fat, your ratio one to one.  If you have two bodies, your ratio two to one, etc. Q: What are some of the advantages of participating in a regular exercise program? A: Can't think of single one, sorry.  My philosophy is: No pain...good!           Q:  Aren't fried foods bad for you? A:  YOU NOT LISTENING!  Food are fried these day in vegetable oil.  In fact, they permeated by it.  How could getting more vegetable be bad for you?!? Q:  Will sit-ups help prevent me from getting a little soft around the middle?  A: Definitely not!  When you exercise muscle, it get bigger.  You should only be doing sit-up if you want bigger stomach. Q:  Is chocolate bad for me?  A:  Are you crazy?!?  HEL-LO-O!!  Cocoa bean!  Another vegetable!  It best feel-good food around! Q:  Is swimming good for your figure?   A:  If swimming good for your figure, explain whale to me.. Q:  Is getting in shape important for my lifestyle?  A:  Hey!  'Round' is shape! Well... I hope this has cleared up any misconceptions you may have had about food and diets. And  remember:  \ Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well-preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways - Chardonnay in one hand - chocolate in the other - body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming "WOO-HOO, what a ride!!"     AND..... For  those of you who watch what you eat, here's the final word on nutrition and health.  It's a relief to know the truth after all those conflicting nutritional studies.    1. The Japanese eat very little fat and suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans. 2. The Mexicans eat a lot of fat and suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans. 3. The Chinese drink very little red wine and suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans. 4. The Italians drink a lot of red wine and suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans.. 5. The Germans drink a lot of beer and eat lots of sausages and fats and suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans. 6. People from India eat very little meat and suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans. CONCLUSION: Eat and drink what you like. Speaking English is apparently what kills you. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 4)By  The Editorial Board Biography May 6, 2018 5:07 p.m. ET 119 COMMENTS One of the stranger moments of Robert Mueller’s special counsel probe is Michael Flynn’s Dec. 1, 2017 guilty plea for lying to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The former White House national security adviser pleaded guilty to a single count of making false statements, even though then FBI director James Comey had told Congress in March that the two FBI agents who interviewed Mr. Flynn believed he hadn’t lied. These columns reported this Comey testimony based on sources at the time of Mr. Flynn’s plea (“The Flynn Information,” Dec. 1, 2017). Now comes confirmation from a less redacted version of the House Intelligence Committee’s Russia report released late Friday. On pages 53-54, the report notes that in March 2017 “Director Comey testified to the Committee that ‘the agents . . . discerned no physical indications of deception. They didn’t see any change in posture, in tone, in inflection, in eye contact. They saw nothing that indicated to them that he knew he was lying to them.’” The quotes are from the committee transcript of Mr. Comey’s remarks. The report goes on to say that then Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe “confirmed the interviewing agent’s initial impression and stated that the ‘conundrum that we faced on their return from the interview is that although [the agents] didn’t detect deception in the statements that he made in the interview . . . the statements were inconsistent with our understanding of the conversation that he had actually had with the ambassador.’” Recall that the inconsistency concerned whether Mr. Flynn had discussed U.S. sanctions against Russia with the Russian ambassador to the U.S. Vice President Mike Pence had said publicly that Mr. Flynn had not discussed sanctions, and once it came to light that he had, Mr. Flynn resigned. But Mr. McCabe also nonetheless told the House Intelligence Committee that “‘the two people who interviewed [Flynn] didn’t think he was lying, [which] was not [a] great beginning of a false statement case.’” All of this relates to the mystery of why Mr. Flynn pleaded guilty to making false statements. It made little sense for him to lie since as a seasoned intelligence officer he would know the U.S. eavesdrops on the Russian ambassador. He also willingly sat for the FBI interview with no legal counsel, suggesting he felt no risk in doing so. Certainly the statements about the FBI agent’s impression of Mr. Flynn would not have helped Mr. Mueller’s case at trial had Mr. Flynn not pleaded guilty. The plea deal noted that Mr. Flynn’s sentence would depend on his “assistance in the investigation,” and perhaps Mr. Flynn felt he lacked the money to defend himself in court. He also may have wanted to spare his son, whom Mr. Mueller was also targeting. In any case it is a dubious practice for a prosecutor to force a cooperating witness to plead guilty to a crime he didn’t commit. Perhaps Mr. Flynn is supplying testimony behind the scenes that puts all of this in a better light, but the facts on the public record to date don’t reflect well on Mr. Mueller’s prosecutorial tactics toward Mr. Flynn. The House report also reflects poorly on Mr. Comey’s credibility. Despite the transcript of his testimony, Mr. Comey at least three times on his book tour has denied telling Congress that the FBI agents did not think Mr. Flynn was lying. “Did you tell lawmakers that FBI agents didn’t believe former national security adviser Michael Flynn was lying intentionally to investigators?” Fox News’ Bret Baier asked Mr. Comey on April 26. “No,” Mr. Comey replied, adding that “I didn’t believe that and didn’t say that.” Asked a similar question by NBC’s Chuck Todd, Mr. Comey responded, “Not true. And I don’t know what people heard me say, if they’re reporting it accurately, what they heard me say, they misunderstood. But that’s not accurate.” Perhaps Mr. Comey’s memory is faulty, as happens with human beings, though then he might commiserate with Mr. Flynn. On the other hand, Mr. Comey has jailed many Americans for false statements to the FBI, with no accommodation for mistakes of memory. The latest House release also shows again the games that the Department of Justice and FBI are playing with redactions. The FBI has for weeks fought Intelligence Committee requests to declassify this portion of its report, though the only harm from public knowledge is to Mr. Comey’s reputation and to the credibility of Mr. Mueller’s prosecution. The FBI has a conflict of interest in overseeing redactions given that the behavior of its leaders and agents are in question. This is one more reason for President Trump to use his authority to declassify all of the Russia 2016 files. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 5) Outrageous Redactions to the Russia Report By Andrew C. McCarthy Posted By Ruth King on May 7th, 2018 https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/05/russia-report-redactions-cover-fbi-missteps/ The FBI and DOJ have been burying the investigators’ questionable judgments and information helpful to Flynn. Cute how this works: Kick off the week with some “the Department of Justice is not going to be extorted” bombast from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, by which he rationalizes that his defiance of subpoenas and slow-walking document production to Congress — which is probing investigative irregularities related to the 2016 campaign — is required by DOJ policy and “the rule of law.” Then end the week with the Friday-night bad-news dump: the grudging removal of DOJ and FBI redactions from a House Intelligence Committee report on Russia’s election meddling. Now that we can see what they wanted to conceal, it is clear, yet again, that the Justice Department and the FBI cannot be trusted to decide what the public gets to learn about their decision-making. They tell us that their lack of transparency is necessary for the protection of national security, vital intelligence, and investigative operations. But what we find out is that they were concealing their own questionable judgments and conflicting explanations for their actions; their use of foreign-intelligence and criminal-investigative authorities to investigate Michael Flynn, Trump’s top campaign supporter and former national-security adviser; and their explicitly stated belief that Flynn did not lie in the FBI interview for which Special Counsel Robert Mueller has since prosecuted him on false-statements charges. It is simply ridiculous for President Trump to continue bloviating about this situation on Twitter and in friendly media interviews, and for congressional Republicans to continue pretending that the problem is Justice Department and FBI leadership — as if Trump were not responsible for his own administration’s actions. The president has not only the authority but the duty to ensure that his subordinates honor lawful disclosure requests from Congress. What happened with these redactions is inexcusable. Background A little over a week ago, the House committee chaired by Representative Devin Nunes (R., Calif.) published its lengthy report on Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. The report was actually completed weeks earlier but was withheld while the committee battled to disclose information that the Justice Department and FBI insisted on blacking out. As usual, the DOJ claimed that the declassification and release of the information would damage investigations and national security. No, it wouldn’t, countered Chairmen Nunes and other Republicans who knew what had been redacted. When the Comey memos were finally disclosed, we learned that there was no investigative or national-security reason to have concealed them. This has become a depressingly familiar dance. Justice and the Bureau previously insisted that the sky would fall if Congress forced the release of an Intelligence Committee report on government abuse of foreign-intelligence surveillance powers. To the contrary, we learned that the FBI and DOJ had used the unverified Steele dossier to obtain surveillance warrants on at least one person tied to the Trump campaign, in contravention of express guidelines that “only documented and verified information may be used to support FBI applications to the [FISA] court” (see Nunes’s March 1 letter to Attorney General Jeff Sessions). In addition, we learned that the FISA court was not told that the dossier was a Clinton campaign opposition-research project, and that its author, Christopher Steele, had been terminated as an informant for lying to the FBI about his contacts with the media. More recently, the FBI severely restricted access to former FBI director James Comey’s memos of his meetings with President Trump. Finally, three congressional committees protested that there was no legal basis for such restriction. When the memos were finally disclosed, we learned that there was no investigative or national-security reason to have concealed them. They did, however, provide greater insight about such matters as how a briefing of then-president-elect Trump on a salacious sliver of the dossier (but not on its sensational allegations of a traitorous conspiracy with the Kremlin) led to an intelligence-community leak about the briefing and the consequent media publication of the dossier — the backbone of the media-Democratic “collusion with Russia” narrative. (See Mollie Hemingway’s analysis at The Federalist.) That leads us to last Friday’s disclosure of some — but not nearly all — previously redacted sections of the Intelligence Committee’s Russia Report. Comey vs. the Committee: Did Agents Believe Flynn Lied? When the House first issued its report on the Russia investigation, a heavily redacted portion (pp. 53–54) related that Trump’s original national-security adviser, Michael Flynn, had pled guilty to a false-statements charge based on misleading statements to FBI agents about his December 2016 conversations with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak. The report explained that Flynn had been rebuffed by Kislyak when, based on instructions from the Trump transition team, Flynn asked Russia to refrain from voting in favor of a U.N. resolution condemning Israel. Flynn also discussed with the transition team what, if anything, he should communicate to Kislyak about Trump’s position on the sanctions that President Obama had imposed on Russia over its interference in the 2016 election. None of this was new information. Indeed, the committee noted that it was drawn from public court filings by Special Counsel Robert Mueller in connection with Flynn’s guilty plea. But there was one intriguing disclosure in the redacted report: Flynn pled guilty “even though the [FBI] agents did not detect any deception during Flynn’s interview.” There was no elaboration on this point — no discussion of why Flynn was interrogated by FBI agents in the first place; no insight on deliberations within the FBI and Justice Department about whether Flynn had deceptive intent; no explanation of how he came to be charged months later by Mueller’s prosecutors even though the trained investigators who observed Flynn’s demeanor during the interview did not believe he’d lied. This news that Flynn’s interrogators had not sensed deception was not altogether new. It had been reported that then–FBI director James Comey had made this revelation in closed-session testimony before the committee on March 2, 2017. (See my column.) Yet, during media interviews to promote his just-released memoir, Comey — who has rebuked the House Intelligence Committee report as an effort to tear down our law-enforcement institutions — repeatedly expressed bafflement that anyone could possibly have construed his testimony to imply that the agents believed Flynn had not lied. Byron York recounts the interviews at the Washington Examiner. In one, Comey told ABC host and Clinton pal George Stephanopoulos: I don’t know where that’s coming from. . . . That — unless I’m — I said something that people misunderstood, I don’t remember even intending to say that. So, my recollection is I never said that to anybody. The now-unredacted passages reveal that top Obama DOJ and FBI officials provided the committee with ‘conflicting testimony’ about why the FBI interviewed Flynn as if he were a criminal suspect. Well, shortly after the redactions were lifted late on Friday, The Federalist’s Sean Davis got busy on Twitter, posting side-by-side comparisons of the original heavily redacted pages and the new, more transparent version. The disclosures are stunning. I know this will amaze you, but it turns out the redactions had absolutely nothing to do with concerns about the need to protect national security or pending investigations. Instead, the now-unredacted passages: ·         Elaborate on why the FBI did not believe Flynn had lied, including quotations from Comey’s testimony. ·         Reveal that for some period of time during 2016, the FBI conducted a counterintelligence (CI) investigation of Flynn. ·         Note that top Obama Justice Department and FBI officials provided the committee with “conflicting testimony” about why the FBI interviewed Flynn as if he were a criminal suspect. ·         Illustrate that the FBI and Justice Department originally insisted on concealment of facts helpful to Flynn that are already public. Counterintelligence Investigation of Flynn The now-unredacted passages relate that, for some period of time during 2016, the FBI was conducting a “CI investigation into General Flynn.” It was Comey’s recollection that he had “authorized the closure” of that investigation “by late December 2016.” As we have discussed in connection with Carter Page, a former Trump campaign adviser against whom the Obama Justice Department obtained FISA surveillance warrants, a CI investigation on an American citizen proceeds on the suspicion that the citizen is an agent of a foreign power whose clandestine activities violate federal criminal law. That is, it appears possible (if not likely) that the Justice Department was operating on the theory that Flynn — a decorated combat veteran and co-author of a 2016 book that brands Russia as an implacable enemy of the United States — was an agent of the Kremlin. At some point, moreover, Justice rationalized the investigation into Flynn, at least in part, by relying on the Logan Act. An almost surely unconstitutional 18th-century statute, the Logan Act purports to prohibit Americans from unauthorized freelancing in foreign-policy. It has never been successfully used to prosecute anyone. (Compare then-director Comey’s July 5, 2016, press conference and subsequent testimony, in which he theorized that charging Hillary Clinton for a rarely prosecuted classified-information offense would violate Justice Department policy against selective prosecution.) The startling fact that there was a CI investigation of Flynn does not, of course, tell us on what evidence suspicions against him were based. As I’ve previously contended (when it was not known that there was a CI investigation, but it was apparent that Flynn had been seen as a criminal suspect), there are profound reasons to question the legitimacy of Flynn’s treatment. Notwithstanding Friday night’s unveiling of blacked-out passages, the report still contains redacted paragraphs about Flynn. Two of them (on pp. 52–53) sandwich a passage about a business trip Flynn took to Moscow in late 2015 (seven months before he branded Russia a committed enemy in his book). The trip followed a visit to Kislyak by Flynn and his son at the ambassador’s Washington residence. Though not mentioned in the unredacted passage, it has been reported that Flynn was paid more than $45,000 by Russia’s state-owned propaganda network, RT, for a speech he gave while in Moscow — an event at which he sat next to President Vladimir Putin. On the current state of disclosure, we do not know how, if at all, this incident played into the decision to investigate Flynn. Neither do we know whether the FBI and Justice Department took any action when former President Bill Clinton received $500,000  from a Kremlin-connected bank for a short speech delivered in 2010 on a trip to Russia, during which he met with Putin — even as his wife, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, was among the U.S. officials considering and ultimately green-lighting Russia’s effort to acquire rights to one-fifth of America’s uranium stock. The suggestion that Flynn’s post-election contacts with Russia were improper, let alone unlawful, is absurd. Flynn was the designated national-security adviser for the incoming administration and a key member of the Trump transition team. To have communications with officials of foreign governments was a legitimate and necessary part of his job. It is worth noting that Flynn had been fired by Obama from his post as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency and is despised by Obama intelligence officials for having become an ardent public adversary against Obama’s national-security policy, most prominently as candidate Trump’s most visible supporter. The interest of Obama’s DOJ and FBI in Flynn appears to have intensified after Trump won the election, when Flynn was presumed to be laying groundwork to reverse Obama’s positions — as Trump promised to do throughout the campaign. While it is only natural that Obama officials would seethe over Flynn’s ascendancy, the suggestion that his post-election contacts with Russia were improper, let alone unlawful, is absurd. Flynn was the designated national-security adviser for the incoming administration and a key member of the Trump transition team. To have communications with officials of foreign governments was a legitimate and necessary part of his job. Plus, Kislyak was a foreign agent subject to FISA surveillance, so the FBI had recordings of his communications with Flynn and knew that Flynn had done nothing improper. (It has been presumed that Flynn’s communications with Kislyak were intercepted because Kislyak, not Flynn, was the subject of a FISA warrant; now, with confirmation that Flynn was the subject of a counterintelligence investigation, we may need to revisit that presumption.) Whatever prompted the CI investigation of Flynn, the now-unredacted passages of the report recount that it had come to nothing by the end of 2016. The FBI’s former deputy director, Andrew McCabe, told the committee that “we really had not substantiated anything particularly significant against General Flynn.” As noted above, Comey stated that he had approved the closure of the investigation in late December. It seems strange that the file was not closed at that time. Comey indicated that it was “kept open due to the public discrepancy surrounding General Flynn’s communications with Kislyak.” But that “discrepancy” did not arise until mid January, as Trump’s inauguration neared. It was not much of a discrepancy, which no doubt factored into the interviewing agents’ perception that Flynn had not made intentional misstatements. To the Obama Justice Department, the pressing matter was whether Flynn had promised the Russian ambassador that Trump would undo the sanctions and other penalties Obama had imposed on December 29. The recorded phone call between Flynn and Kislyak proved that Flynn had made no such commitment. And so, ladies and gentlemen, what do you suppose the FBI wanted redacted from the report? If you guessed “the paragraph describing the Flynn-Kislyak phone call,” you have caught on to how this wretched game is played. Here’s the paragraph that was originally blacked out: In the call between General Flynn and Ambassador Kislyak, General Flynn “requested that Russia not escalate the situation and only respond to the U.S. sanctions in a reciprocal manner.” [Endnote (EN) 90] Russia decided not to reciprocate, which eventually led senior U.S. government officials to try to understand why. [There follows a passage of about two lines followed by EN 91, both redacted.] In a subsequent call with General Flynn, Ambassador Kislyak attributed the action to General Flynn’s request. [EN 92] I’ve left in the endnotes (report, p. 58) because they confirm that the information in this paragraph comes from a document submitted to the court by Special Counsel Mueller when Flynn pled guilty. (See Statement of the Offense, p. 3, paras. e–g.) It is a public document. To be sure, there is a classified sentence in the middle of the paragraph that may well relate to steps senior U.S. officials took to try to understand Putin’s motive for refraining from retaliating against Obama’s sanctions. But what conceivable good reason can there have been for the FBI and Justice Department to redact from the report information that was already publicly disclosed? Why black out public information showing that Flynn merely did what any Obama official, or any other U.S. official, would have done — namely, suggest that Russia would only make things worse by escalating the dispute? Is it because this action, simply communicating with the Russian ambassador, is the real reason Flynn was prosecuted? Why Was Flynn Subjected to a Criminal Investigation? Yes, yes, I know — technically, Flynn was prosecuted for making false statements about the conversation, not for having the conversation. Obama officials had hoped to nail Flynn on a heinous crime — a corrupt deal to drop the sanctions as a quid pro quo for Putin’s election-meddling that purportedly helped Trump win. Instead, all they could show was a trivial misstep: Flynn’s failure to acknowledge that sanctions were mentioned in his conversation with Kislyak — a mention so innocuous that the FBI couldn’t decide whether Flynn’s failure to describe it was a lie or an innocent failure of recollection. Is this misstatement really why Flynn was pursued? I don’t think so. Obama officials hounded Flynn because, to this day, they remain vindictive toward political opponents who dared to engage in foreign affairs while Obama was still president. Democrats today are cheering former Secretary of State John Kerry’s rallying of foreign governments against President Trump’s determination to undo Obama’s Iran nuclear deal. They make no mention of possible violations of the Logan Act, which prohibits private citizens from acting on behalf of the U.S. in foreign-policy matters. Apparently, the Logan Act, which has never been successfully used to prosecute anyone, is alive and well only when it comes to General Flynn. Testifying before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee in May 2017, former acting attorney general Sally Yates — the same Sally Yates fired by Trump for insubordination over her refusal to execute his so-call travel-ban — explained that it was she who alerted Trump White House Counsel Don McGahn about problems with Flynn. She told him that Flynn’s claim that there had been no discussion of sanctions with Kislyak — an assertion later repeated by Vice President Pence, among other Trump officials, in public statements — was wrong. Yates stressed, however, that “the first thing we did was to explain to Mr. McGahn that the underlying conduct that General Flynn engaged in was problematic in and of itself.” The underlying conduct. Get it? For Obama officials, the real “crime” was that Flynn was talking to Kislyak in the first place — the Logan Act. As I’ve previously noted, since this prosecution theory doesn’t pass the laugh test, Obama officials conjured up an alternative “blackmail” theory that is even more ludicrous than the Logan Act bunkum. As Yates told the subcommittee (with a straight face, no less) Russia had “leverage” over Trump’s national-security adviser because the Kremlin knew that Flynn had discussed sanctions with Kislyak and, hence, must have lied to Pence — a lie Putin could threaten to reveal unless Flynn did his bidding. Your average high-school student would readily grasp how silly this is. First, Flynn and Russia also knew that the U.S. intelligence services had a recording of Flynn’s conversation with Kislyak. Blackmail only works if the compromising information is secret. The very fact that Yates knew what was on the recording illustrates that Russia had no unique knowledge it could hope to exploit against Flynn. In fact, the Kremlin knew that so many American officials were aware of Flynn’s conversation with Kislyak that one of them had leaked it to the Washington Post’s David Ignatiustwo weeks before Yates met with McGahn. Second, Russia would not have concluded that Flynn necessarily misled Pence just because Pence repeated an inaccuracy. Knowing that misinformation about diplomatic contacts is common, the Kremlin would probably have assumed that the fledgling Trump administration was telling a politically useful lie — the media and Democrats were so agitated about Obama’s sanctions that by merely mentioning them, a Trump official risked cries of “Treason!” The newly unredacted passages in the House report recount that on January 24, “following a call from Deputy Director McCabe to General Flynn, made at the direction of Director Comey,” two agents were dispatched to speak to Flynn. (Though not identified in the House report, news coverage indicates that one of these agents was Peter Strzok, then chief of the Bureau’s counterespionage section.) Three days into his job as national-security adviser, Flynn had been meeting with many government national-security agents. Strzok’s visit must have seemed routine. Having no notice that he was to be interrogated as a criminal suspect, Flynn spoke with the agents alone, without a lawyer. But why was he being treated as a suspect? The newly unredacted report elaborates: The Committee received conflicting testimony from Deputy Attorney General (DAG) Yates, Director Comey, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General [Mary] McCord, and Deputy Director McCabe about whether the primary purpose of the interview was investigating potentially misleading statements to the Vice President, which the Vice President echoed publicly[,] about the content of those calls [EN 94, citing Yates]; a possible violation of the Logan Act [EN 95, citing Yates]; or a desire to obtain more information as part of the counterintelligence investigation into General Flynn. [EN 96, citing McCabe, who did not recall that Comey had authorized closing the counterintelligence investigation a month earlier.] Ask yourself: Was this passage previously blacked out due to proper concerns about national security, or because the relevant officials couldn’t get their stories straight? Did the Interviewing Agents Believe Flynn Lied to Them? Interestingly, in her Senate testimony, Yates recalled that McGahn’s commonsense response, upon being told that the FBI had interviewed Flynn on January 24, 2017, was to ask how he did – i.e., did the agents think he lied? Yates primly told the senators that she, of course, had declined to answer that question — as if, having gone this far, she was suddenly concerned about political interference in an ongoing criminal investigation. We learn from the newly unredacted paragraphs in the House report, however, that Yates had a more strategic reason for declining to answer: Her depiction to McGahn of a cunning, compromised national-security adviser who was a threat to the president would not have been much of a story if she had to admit that the FBI believed Flynn had not lied in his interview. As earlier described, Comey has expressed bewilderment in recent media appearances over the Intelligence Committee’s assertion, based on his testimony, that interviewing agents did not believe Flynn lied. But now that the previously blacked-out passages have been unredacted, the Committee’s thinking is apparent. The report quotes Comey himself: [T]he agents . . . discerned no physical indications of deception. They didn’t see any change in posture, in tone, in inflection, in eye contact. They saw nothing that indicated to them that he knew he was lying to them. [EN 97, citing then-Director Comey’s closed-session Committee testimony on March 2, 2017.] To be fair to Comey, we have only this snippet of his testimony. Perhaps there are other sections that would put this passage in a different light. Perhaps he recalls saying something that has not been disclosed and that is more consistent with a conclusion that Flynn lied. That’s why, in addition to unredacting more of the report, there should be broad disclosure of the underlying testimony and interviews that are now classified. There is no Department of Justice in the Constitution. It is an executive-branch component created by Congress, funded with taxpayer funds appropriated by Congress, and subject to congressional oversight. At the moment, though, we know two things for sure: 1) Comey unambiguously stated that, at least initially, the agents did not find that Flynn had lied; and 2) as long as Comey was FBI director, Flynn was never charged with lying. If anything, McCabe’s December 19, 2017, testimony (currently also under lock and key) was even more favorable to Flynn. The report’s newly unredacted passages quote him: [The] conundrum that we faced on their return from the interview is that although [the agents] didn’t detect deception in the statements that [Flynn] made in the interview . . . the statements were inconsistent with our understanding of the conversation he had actually had with the [Russian] ambassador. McCabe added, in another just unredacted passage: The two people who interviewed [Flynn] didn’t think he was lying, [which] was not [a] great beginning of a false statement case. Conclusion There is no Department of Justice in the Constitution. It is an executive-branch component created by Congress, funded with taxpayer funds appropriated by Congress, and subject to congressional oversight to ensure that its operations are conducted in accordance with their statutory purposes. Because of the sensitivity of their law-enforcement and intelligence missions, the Justice Department and its premier agency, the FBI, are shown great deference when lawmakers make requests — or even demands — for information. Contrary to what Justice Department leadership apparently believes, this deference is not an entitlement. It is result of respect earned over time by an institution that — its proud alumni like to believe — has a tradition of dealing honorably and transparently with peer branches of government. It is a fact of life that the precious commodity of a good reputation takes much less time to lose than to build. Comments There is no defending the redactions that have now been disclosed. Especially in light of recent history, this powerfully suggests that there is no justification for withholding much else that the Justice Department refuses to reveal. Republican committees can carp all they like about Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein. The buck stops with the president. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 6) George Soros and the ‘Caravan’ Left-wing NGOs circle the wagons around a rogue U.N. commission. By Mary Anastasia O’Grady The “caravan” of Central Americans at the southern U.S. border seeking asylum has some conservatives wringing their hands about a Hispanic invasion. They should instead be asking what’s behind the destabilization of the countries these desperate migrants have fled. Central American corruption, statism and crony capitalism have led to poverty and exclusion. The region’s classical liberals understand this connection and have fought to strengthen the rule of law. But their efforts have been undermined by the drug trade financing criminal networks that overwhelm institutions. Now there is substantial evidence that a U.S.-funded fix for the problem in Guatemala, using a United Nations prosecutor, has itself been corrupted by unscrupulous actors and left-wing U.N. ideology. As I wrote last month, the U.N. body is the International Commission on Impunity in Guatemala, or CICIG by its Spanish initials. It was established in 2006 with the best intentions to investigate the crimes of underworld networks. But the U.S. Helsinki Commission hearing on Capitol Hill last week revealed vile human-rights abuses by CICIG prosecutors in a case involving a family of Russian migrants—the Bitkovs. The case raises questions about whether CICIG has gone rogue. That is unless you are one of many nongovernmental organizations and media operations working in Guatemala that are funded by George Soros’s Open Society Foundations and fellow travelers. In that case your instructions are to circle the wagons to defend CICIG prosecutor Iván Velásquez and destroy those who dare suggest that the case be judged on its merits. This rush to dismiss flagrant violations of the law heightens concerns in Guatemala that CICIG has become a political tool of the NGO left. Americans are rightly asking why the U.S. finances this U.N. operation devoid of accountability and transparency. The Helsinki Commission hearing on April 27 illuminated the case of Igor and Irina Bitkov and their daughter Anastasia. They fled persecution in Vladimir Putin’s Russia and landed in Guatemala where they became victims of a human-trafficking scam. CICIG prosecuted the family as criminals, in cooperation with a Kremlin-owned bank, and put them in jail, flouting a constitutional court ruling. Bitkov lawyer Victoria Sandoval recalled how CICIG and local prosecutors raided the family home with overwhelming force in January 2015. The three were detained in cages in the courthouse basement. Despite a 24-hour legal limit on such confinement, Irina and Anastasia spent five days there; Igor nine. The couple named a guardian for their 3-year-old son, Vladimir. But officials instead sent him to an orphanage where he suffered physical and psychological abuse. Harold Augusto Flores Valenzuela, the government official in charge of child welfare at the time, told Igor later that a CICIG official had instructed him to do whatever necessary to put the child in the orphanage. Mr. Bitkov signed an affidavit swearing to this conversation with Mr. Flores and it was entered into the record at the Helsinki hearing. CICIG, the Guatemalan prosecutor, and the Russian bank VTB took the family to court for using fake documents that the Bitkovs thought were real. Igor was sentenced to 19 years in jail; Irina and Anastasia 14 years each. A month later the same judge reviewing the same offenses by two members of the Salvadoran gang MS-13, handed down five-year suspended sentences and released the defendants. CICIG’s violations of civil liberties and its Russian collusion have been public for weeks. Yet an NGO letter-writing campaign aimed at defending the U.N. body at the Helsinki hearing refused to acknowledge the horror. The letters, posted on the commission’s website—along with the Bitkov lawyers’ testimony—are notable for their similarity and their callousness toward the Russian family, who are still in jail despite a constitutional court ruling 10 day ago to release them. Such contradictions can only be explained by following the dollars spread around to so-called human-rights groups by those who share the politics of the unelected Mr. Velásquez. One goal of these moneyed elites was to end international adoptions, and he has used his authority to influence judicial rulings to do just that. His arbitrary rule with no oversight has put fear into the hearts of law-abiding Guatemalans; he has a reputation for pressuring judges, which has increased investor uncertainty in a country that already has trouble attracting capital. He has even tried to change the constitution. In a statement made to the Helsinki Commission hearing, Sen. Mike Lee (R., Utah) noted that while CICIG was “created to root-out corruption and uphold the rule of law” it “has become an extrajudicial, partial and unfair arbiter.” Its politicization, he wrote, is “unfair to all who seek a free and prosperous Guatemala.” Something to think about as those busloads of refugees arrive at the border. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++