This from a very good friend and fellow memo reader. Members of his family are from Massachusetts and served this country well in various past administrations.
"Representative Joseph Kennedy III has just delivered the most pathetic opposition response to a
State of the Union Address in American history from Fall River, Massachusetts. A city I know
very well…one that has been in the dumps for decades due to its control by Democrats.
This heir to the Kennedy Dynasty, the one Howie Carr artfully describes in his recent book,
“Kennedy Babylon”* has never worked a day in life, never met a payroll, never experienced
the fear of unemployment, never served one day in the military. In financial terms, he’s worth
millions from trust funds. As a productive member of Congress he’s worth very little.
Yet, he is brought forth as a rising star of the Democrat Party. They must be in bigger
trouble that I thought.
Trump out gunned them tonight.
* Kennedy Babylon is a great read
L----"
I e mailed back I did not catch the Democrat response because if they could not get off their asses and applaud Trump's effort to offer a reasonable olive branch and a road to compromise nothing they have to say is worth listening to and particularly from the person you aptly described. Camelot was anything but. Just more mass media cover up!
And talk about clever.
This from a good friend, fellow memo reader: "Dick - Demos still think clap is a venereal disease. J---"
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Go after the head of the snake and not the tail. (See 2 below.)
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"Coming to America?" Hell, they are already here. (See 3 below.)
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My friend and fellow memo reader, Allen West, reveals something interesting regarding the Democrat's adherence to the rule of law. (See 4 below.)
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I posted this in a different format before but I believe it is worth re-posting. (See 5 below.)
And
Victor Hanson explains. (See 5a below.)
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Trump offers to meet half way and negotiate a compromise. (See 6 below.)
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Dick
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1) The House Memo, the FBI and FISA
By The Editorial Board
And talk about clever.
This from a good friend, fellow memo reader: "Dick - Demos still think clap is a venereal disease. J---"
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Selective adherence to the law driven solely by politics and power. The Russian Collusion Boomerang seems to have found a home on The Democrat's doorstep. (See 1 below.)+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Go after the head of the snake and not the tail. (See 2 below.)
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
"Coming to America?" Hell, they are already here. (See 3 below.)
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
My friend and fellow memo reader, Allen West, reveals something interesting regarding the Democrat's adherence to the rule of law. (See 4 below.)
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
I posted this in a different format before but I believe it is worth re-posting. (See 5 below.)
And
Victor Hanson explains. (See 5a below.)
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Trump offers to meet half way and negotiate a compromise. (See 6 below.)
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Dick
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
1) The House Memo, the FBI and FISA
Progressives suddenly don’t care about wiretap applications.
By The Editorial Board
The House Intelligence Committee voted Monday night to release a Republican memo that by most accounts reveals how the FBI handled, or mishandled, federal wiretap requests during the 2016 presidential campaign. The White House should now approve its public disclosure as the first of several to help the country understand what really happened.
Democrats are objecting to the release, claiming partisanship and violations of national security. None of this is persuasive. Republican Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes has followed a long and deliberative process that follows House protocol.
When the FBI finally agreed after months of resisting to answer a committee subpoena for documents, Mr. Nunes deputized former prosecutor and South Carolina Rep. Trey Gowdy to investigate. The subsequent memo was vetted for security concerns, provided to the entire House committee, then made available to the entire House, then shown to the director of the FBI, and is now undergoing White House review. This is hardly a Chelsea Manning-to-WikiLeaks-to-New York Times leak.
Another false claim is that Republicans are “censoring” a rival Democratic memo. The same Democrats howling about national security wanted the committee on Monday instantly to approve the public disclosure of their counter-memo that hasn’t gone through the equivalent reviews that the majority memo has. Committee Republicans voted to start that process by making the Democratic memo available to the full House, and by all means let’s see that memo too.
The House memo is not about “attacking the FBI” or “our law enforcement professionals,” as Democrat Adam Schiff insists. This is about restoring confidence in a law enforcement agency that played an unprecedented role in a U.S. presidential election regarding both the Trump and Clinton campaigns.
Americans deserve to know whether accusations that the Kremlin infiltrated the Trump campaign have any basis, and prosecutors and Congressional committees are investigating. The FBI might well have had cause to believe Russians were targeting the Trump campaign when they sought a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court warrant. But Washington also should be able to investigate if and how law enforcement agencies exceeded their remit in seeking wiretaps.
The memo also concerns the integrity of the FISA process. Democrats created FISA in the 1970s to protect against wiretap abuses during the Cold War. We opposed it on grounds that it would dilute political accountability, and what do you know here we are. FISA is supposed to provide a measure of legal assurance against abuse, and FBI and Justice officials appear ex parte before the FISA judges with no competing claimants.
The public should know if as part of its warrant application the FBI used the Christopher Steele dossier that we now know was financed by the Hillary Clinton campaign. The House intelligence memo may answer that question, as well as whether the FBI made other misrepresentations or omissions in its FISA application. In June 2017 former FBI director Jim Comey referred in Senate testimony to the dossier as containing “salacious and unverified” material. Is that what the FBI told the FISA court in 2016?
If the FISA judges weren’t told about the partisan provenance and doubts about the veracity of the memo in the middle of a presidential election campaign, then what is FISA for? To serve as a potted plant so the FBI can get whatever warrants it wants? Are they genuine Article III judges with an independent writ or merely another arm of the executive branch that can be rolled like some deputy assistant secretary of State?
The same progressives who demanded accountability for FISA courts after Edward Snowden exposed federal snooping now want President Trump to shut down the House’s limited attempt at transparency. Don’t buy it, Mr. President. Let it all out—the two House Intelligence memos, Senator Chuck Grassley’s referral letter for a criminal investigation of Mr. Steele, and all other relevant FBI or Justice documents that won’t undermine U.S. security. Our democracy can take the transparency, and after the 2016 fiasco it deserves it.
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2)
|
Israel must immediately change its strategy and hold Iran responsible for attacks
from Hezbollah and Syria, security cabinet minister Naftali Bennett (Bayit Yehudi) said Wednesday at the Institute for National Security Studies conference in Tel Aviv. Bennett said that for 30 years, Israel has made the mistake of targeting what he called "mosquitoes" and not "the swamp" and what he called "tentacles" and not "the octopus." "Our message to Iran: the era of your immunity while you send others and use your national resources to hurt Israel is over," Bennett said. "A rocket from Lebanon will be treated like an Iranian rocket. We will not waste our resources and energy fighting in Lebanese towns while you recline your chair and watch. We will also not sit idly and watch the accumulation of accurate missiles in Lebanon. Between 2006 and 2012, Hezbollah made a massive leap in the quantities of its rockets, and now has over 130,000. We will not allow it to make a qualitative leap. This strategy means Iran, the Quds Force and the host countries will pay a price." Bennett said he was not necessarily referring to armed conflict with Iran and its Quds Force but a "war via diplomacy, intelligence, preemptive efforts, technological means, economic sanctions, and – if needed – other means." He also called for different strategies with Lebanon and Iranian militias in Syria, He said that unlike in the past, Hezbollah attacking Israel from Lebanon must be seen as a declaration of war by Lebanon against Israel and that "Assad will bear responsibility for actions taking place in and from his territory." Bennett said Israel must make use of regional opportunities created over the past few years. He said the US and pragmatic Arab countries understand that the center of world terror is Iran, and based on this, Israel can create a regional coalition, if Israel makes drastic changes regarding its policy, the building and training of its armed forces, and regional alliances. "I believe adopting the Octopus Doctrine, the core of which is acting against the Quds Forces and Iran, while weakening Iran's hold on Lebanon, Syria and Gaza, has the highest chances of preventing war, or shortening it if it breaks out," Bennett said. Earlier, Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan (Likud), who is also in the security cabinet, said now was the time to persuade the US and other countries to recognize that Israel will permanently control the Golan Heights. "In the Trump era, Israel needs to speak and do not what is politically correct, but what is correct," Erdan said.
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3) Exclusive: FBI Confirms Jihadi Training Camps in AmericaNewly-released FBI documents obtained by Clarion Project confirm Clarion’s reports that Jamaat ul-Fuqra is training members in isolated communes across America and Canada.
The group’s “Islamberg” headquarters in upstate New York is its most well-known
“Islamic village.”
Fuqra, which now goes by the name of the Muslims of the Americas (MOA) among
other titles, is a cultish Islamist group with a history of crime and terrorism. The group is led by Sheikh Mubarak Ali Gilani in Pakistan.
Gilani’s name appeared in headlines in 2002 when Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel
Pearl was abducted and beheaded on his way to interview Gilani, though the radical
cleric was never accused of an involvement in those crimes.
The first FBI document is dated November 27, 2009 and labels the Muslims of the
Americas, Inc. as “armed and dangerous.” It begins by summarizing the group’s
consistent history of extremism, terrorism and crime:
and/or violent acts. Use extreme caution when dealing with confirmed members or individuals who are believed to be associated with this group”
The report says that Sheikh Gilani is “thought to be supportive of al-Qaeda,” perhaps
referring to the group’s links to al-Qaeda affiliates like Hizbul Mujahideen, to which
Fuqra has a history of ties and publicly supports even today.
FBI documents from 2003 that Clarion released in December 2016 mentioned Fuqra’s
links to al-Qaeda in Pakistan and use of fronts like security companies in America.
Another newly-released document from December 2010 explicitly refers to “the Muslims of the Americas [aka Fuqra] terrorist organization” and states:
We have posted these declassified reports on FuqraFiles.com, Clarion Project’s
comprehensive website about the group.
Fuqra has a documented history of conducting basic paramilitary training in America
and elsewhere, including more advanced training in Pakistan and Kashmir.
Gilani appeared in a secret video in the early 1990s offering to use Fuqra offices to
provide guerilla training to aspiring jihadists. Clarion Project also released a video from 2001-2002 showing women in military attire getting training at Islamberg.
One of Fuqra’s terrorist-training camps, a 101-acre tract of land in Colorado, was raided in 1992. It was subsequently abandoned by the group, as reported in this recent KRDO news report with Heather Skold. You can see pictures from the investigation into the
Colorado Fuqra camp on the Fuqra File swebsite.
Fuqra fugitives from the training camp were even the subject of an episode of America’s Most Wanted in 1994.
Although these FBI documents from 2009-2011 state that Fuqra has about a dozen
“jamaats” in America, the group itself claims to have 22 “Islamic villages” in America
alone. The locations for these “Islamic villages” are identified as “Islamberg” in New
The group also has operations in Pakistan, Kashmir, Canada, Trinidad, Venezuela and elsewhere (Fuqra has a history of being secretive and deceptive about its locations).FBI reports from a 2003-2007 investigation in Texas warned, “The MOA [Fuqra] is now an autonomous organization which possesses an infrastructure capable of planning and mounting terrorist campaigns overseas and within the U.S.”
That infrastructure can legally operate because Fuqra is not designated as a Foreign
Terrorist Organization by the State Department. The Treasury Department has not
sanctioned the group’s overseas leaders and entities, either.
Over a dozen North American Muslim groups have joined Clarion Project in asking the
U.S. State Department to look at designating Fuqra as a Foreign Terrorist Organization.
The Justice Department’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms recently confirmed
to Clarion Project that it still has Fuqra members under investigation. ATF has
prosecuted Fuqra members on firearms-related charges, including illegal possession of guns.
Clarion Project also recently reported that Fuqra’s General Counsel, Tahirah Amatul-
Wadud, is running for Congress in Massachusetts.
RELATED STORIES
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4) Hours before SOTU, we just
discovered real reason why so many
Dems won’t be attending (and it’s
worse than you think)
By Allen West
-
Before the State of the Union Address, there’s a very key question the Democrats
must answer: do they believe in the rule of law? Let’s stop allowing Democrats to
deflect with the unconstitutional executive action called the Deferred Action for
Childhood Arrivals (DACA). The real issue is whether or not the progressive socialist
left embraces the concept of American sovereignty, our Constitution, or even our
national security. And there’s clear evidence they do not. It’s not just a rejection of
Trump. It’s a rejection of our nation and those they are elected to serve.
As reported by Terence Jeffrey at CNS News, “ Law enforcement agencies in
approximately 675 jurisdictions around the United States declined to comply with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement “detainer” requests and hand over to ICE removable aliens whom those jurisdictions had arrested for violating local laws, according to the Inspector General for the Department of Homeland Security.
According to the IG, this lack of cooperation from local law enforcement agencies has hindered ICE’s efforts to identify known or suspected foreign terrorists, who are inside the United States. On Jan. 5, 2018, the IG issued a report–“ICE Faces Challenges to Screen Aliens Who May Be Known or Suspected Terrorists”—that discussed the issue.
“ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) faces challenges in implementing
the Known or Suspected Terrorist Encounter Protocol (KSTEP) screening process,
which is used to identify aliens who may be known or suspected terrorists,” the
report said. “Some local law enforcement agencies will not honor ICE immigration
detainer requests, which further impacts ERO’s ability to take criminal aliens into its
custody and apply KSTEP to identify possible terrorist connections,” this section said.
“To bring these aliens into custody, ICE files detainers with the applicable law
enforcement agency requesting to detain them upon their release,” it said.
“ Based on source data provided by ERO’s Law Enforcement Systems and Analysis
unit, we determined that approximately 675 jurisdictions nationwide declined to
honor more than 29,269 ICE immigration detainers from January 2014 through May
2017,” the report said.
“When a state or local law enforcement agency declines to transfer custody of a
removable criminal alien to ICE, the released alien may put the public and ERO
personnel at risk and requires significantly more resources to bring the individual into
ICE custody,” the IG report said.
ICE issues a “detainer” to a law enforcement agency only when an alien has been
arrested by that agency and ICE has probable cause to believe the alien is removable from this country.”
This report from the DHS IG is very disconcerting, but also very damning of the leftist policy of “sanctuary” cities and states. It’s not just that these liberal progressive mayors and governors shielding criminal illegal immigrants, but also potential Islamic jihadists who’ve entered our country illegally. In this current debate about illegal immigration, if the left is unwilling to end this insidious and dangerous policy, do they actually believe in the security of these United States of America, or is their ideological agenda more important? I think we can easily answer that question, and their liberal progressive media accomplices are enabling their desired ends. You can be sure this report will NEVER make the headlines of the NY Times, Washington Post, or be featured on ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC, or PBS.
And again, the omission of the news is just as damaging to the future of this nation. President Trump would be well served to point this DHS IG report out during his SOTU address. And he should further name some of these 675 jurisdictions, the top ten major population centers. We cannot exist as a Constitutional Republic with 675 jurisdictions where the rule of law is dismissed over a partisan political ideological agenda.
Maybe folks of the leftist persuasion will read this and say, hey, West, it’s only 29,269 detainers that weren’t adhered to. Let me remind y’all of something — 19 illegal Islamic jihadists executed the attacks of 9-11. Two Islamic jihadists each executed the attacks of San Bernardino and Boston. Only one Islamic jihadist was needed to execute the recent attacks in New York City, Ft. Hood Texas, Chattanooga, Tennessee, and the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando. And in many of these cases, these were folks we knew were here.
You may smirk at or even dismiss the number of 29,269, but how many are out there for which ICE has no idea? And the number of 29,269 equates to almost three U.S. Army light infantry divisions.
Sanctuary states and cities aren’t just illegal, and unconstitutional is harboring dangerous criminal illegal immigrants, but they also harbor, shield, and protect Islamic jihadist terrorists. And that folks — just like the commercial produced by the Trump administration — means that the Democrats, those who’ve instituted the policy of sanctuary states and cities, are complicit in undermining and being an obstacle to the safety and security of our nation.
That isn’t over-the-top hyperbole, it’s a proven fact, based on the ideological agenda of the progressive socialist left, the Democrat Party. It’s why I state there can be no action for DACA recipients unless there is an END to the establishment of sanctuary states and cities!
And if the Democrats reject that premise, it tells us all we need to know about them.
[Learn more about Allen West’s vision for this nation in his book Guardian of the
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5)
Total revenue (line 12) $177,804,612.00
Total grants to charity (line 13) $5,160,385.00 (that's less than 3%)
Total expenses of $91,281,145.00
Expenses include:
Salaries (line 15)
Fund raising fees (line 16a) $850,803.00
Other expenses (line 17) $50,431,851.00
Travel
Meetings
Net assets/fund balances (line 22) $332,471,349.00
It took 486 people who are paid $34.8 million and $91.3 million in fees and expenses,
to give away $5.1 MILLION
5a) Hillary’s ‘Sure’ Victory Explains Most Everything
by Victor Davis Hanson// National Review
What exactly were top officials in the FBI and DOJ doing during the election of 2016?
The Page-Strzok text exchanges might offer a few answers. Or, as Lisa Page warned her paramour as early as
February 2016, at the beginning of the campaign and well before the respective party nominees were even selected:
One more thing: she [Hillary Clinton] might be our next president. The last thing you need us going in there loaded
for bear. You think she’s going to remember or care that it was more doj than FBI?
The traditional way of looking at the developing scandals at the FBI and among holdover Obama appointees in the
DOJ is that the bizarre atmospherics from candidate and President Trump have simply polarized everyone in
Washington, and no one quite knows what is going on.
Another, more helpful, exegesis, however, is to understand that if we’d seen a Hillary Clinton victory in November
2016, which was supposed to be a sure thing, there would now be no scandals at all.
That is, the current players probably broke laws and committed ethical violations not just because they were assured there would be no consequences but also because they thought they’d be rewarded for their laxity.
On the eve of the election, the New York Times tracked various pollsters’ models that had assured readers that
Trump’s odds of winning were respectively 15 percent, 8 percent, 2 percent, and less than 1 percent. Liberals howled heresy at fellow progressive poll guru Nate Silver shortly before the vote for daring to suggest that Trump had a 29 percent chance of winning the Electoral College.
Hillary Clinton herself was not worried about even the appearance of scandal caused by transmitting classified documents over a private home-brewed server, or enabling her husband to shake down foreign donations to their shared foundation, or destroying some 30,000 emails. Evidently, she instead reasoned that she was within months of becoming President Hillary Clinton and therefore, in her Clintonesque view of the presidency, exempt from all further criminal exposure. Would a President Clinton have allowed the FBI to reopen their strangely aborted Uranium One investigation; would the FBI have asked her whether she communicated over an unsecure server with the former president of the United States?
Former attorney general Loretta Lynch, in unethical fashion, met on an out-of-the-way Phoenix tarmac with Bill Clinton, in a likely effort to find the most efficacious ways to communicate that the ongoing email scandal and
investigation would not harm Hillary Clinton’s candidacy. When caught, thanks to local-news reporters who happened to be at the airport, Lynch sort of, kind of recused herself. But, in fact, at some point she had ordered James Comey not to use the word “investigation” in his periodic press announcements about the FBI investigation.
How could Lynch in the middle of an election have been so silly as to allow even the appearance of impropriety?
Answer: There would have been no impropriety had Hillary won — an assumption reflected in the Page-Strzok text trove when Page texted, about Lynch, “She knows no charges will be brought.” In fact, after a Clinton victory, Lynch’s obsequiousness in devising such a clandestine meeting with Bill Clinton may well have been rewarded: Clinton allies leaked to the New York Times that Clinton was considering keeping Lynch on as the attorney general.
How could former deputy director of the FBI Andrew McCabe assume an oversight role in the FBI probe of the Clinton email scandal when just months earlier his spouse had run for state office in Virginia and had received a huge $450,000 cash donation from Common Good VA, the political-action committee of long-time Clinton-intimate
Terry McAuliffe?
Again, the answer was clear. McCabe assumed that Clinton would easily win the election. Far from being a scandal,
McCabe’s not “loaded for bear” oversight of the investigation, in the world of beltway maneuvering, would have been a good argument for a promotion in the new Clinton administration. Most elite bureaucrats understood the Clinton way of doing business, in which loyalty, not legality, is what earned career advancement.
Some have wondered why the recently demoted deputy DOJ official Bruce Ohr (who met with the architects of the Fusion GPS file after the election) would have been so stupid as to allow his spouse to work for Fusion — a de facto Clinton-funded purveyor of what turned out to be Russian fantasies, fibs, and obscenities?
Again, those are absolutely the wrong questions. Rather, why wouldn’t a successful member of the Obama administrative aparat make the necessary ethical adjustments to further his career in another two-term progressive regnum? In other words, Ohr rightly assumed that empowering the Clinton-funded dossier would pay career dividends for such a power couple once Hillary was elected. Or, in desperation, the dossier would at least derail Trump after her defeat. Like other members of his byzantine caste, Ohr did everything right except bet on the wrong horse.
What about the recently reassigned FBI lawyer Lisa Page and FBI top investigator Peter Strzok? Their reported
50,000-plus text messages (do the math per hour at work, and it is hard to believe that either had to time to do much of anything else) are providing a Procopian court history of the entire Fusion-Mueller investigation miasma.
So why did Strzok and Page believe that they could conduct without disclosure a romantic affair on FBI-government-owned cellphones? Why would they have been emboldened enough to cite a meeting with Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, in which they apparently discussed the dire consequences of an improbable Trump victory?
I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy’s [probably Andrew McCabe, then deputy director of the FBI] office that there’s no way Trump gets elected — but I’m afraid we can’t take that risk. It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you’re 40.
And why would the two believe that they could so candidly express their contempt for a presidential candidate supposedly then under a secret FBI investigation?
Once more, those are the wrong interrogatories. If we consider the mentality of government elite careerists, we see that the election-cycle machinations and later indiscretions of Strzok and Page were not liabilities at all. They were good investments. They signaled their loyalty to the incoming administration and that they were worthy of
commendation and reward.Hillary Clinton’s sure victory certainly also explains the likely warping of the FISA courts by FBI careerists seeking to use a suspect dossier to surveil Trump associates — and the apparent requests by Samantha Power, Susan Rice,and others to read surveilled transcripts of Trump associates, unmask names, and leak them to pet reporters. Again, all these insiders were playing the careerist odds. What we view as reprehensible behavior, they at the time considered wise investments that would earn rewards with an ascendant President Hillary Clinton.
Did Cheryl Mills, Huma Abedin, or Debbie Wasserman Shultz worry about their fabrications, unethical behavior, and various conspiratorial efforts to ensure that Hillary Clinton would be exempt from criminal liability in her email shenanigans, and that she would win the Democratic nomination and general election? Not when their equally unethical and conspiratorial boss would appreciate her subordinate soul mates. For a deep-state careerist without ethical bearings, one of the advantages of a Clinton sure-thing presidency would be that the Clintons are known to reward loyalty more highly than morality.
Then we arrive at the tragic farce of former FBI director James Comey. It is now easy to deplore Comey’s unethical and unprofessional behavior: In all likelihood, he wrote an exoneration of Hillary Clinton before he even interviewed her and her top aides; then he lied about just that sequence while he was under oath and virtue-signaling before Congress; he feigned concern about Clinton’s felonious behavior but used linguistic gymnastics in his report to ensure his condemnation would be merely rhetorical and without legal consequences.
Had Hillary won, as she was supposed to, Comey would probably have been mildly chastised for his herky-jerky
press conferences, but ultimately praised for making sure the email scandal didn’t derail her. Comey’s later
implosion, recall, occurred only after the improbable election of Donald Trump, as he desperately reversed course a
fourth time and tried to ingratiate himself with Trump while hedging his bets by winking and nodding at the ongoing,
unraveling fantasy of the Steele dossier.
And Barack Obama? We now know that he himself used an alias to communicate at least 20 times with Hillary on
her private, non-secure gmail account. But Obama lied on national TV, saying he learned of Hillary’s illegal server
only when the rest of the nation did, by reading the news. Would he have dared to lie so publicly if he’d assumed
that Trump’s presidency was imminent? Would he ever have allowed his subordinates to use the dossier to obtain
FISA warrants and pass around and unmask the resulting surveillance transcripts if he’d seen Trump as the likely
winner and a potentially angered president with powers to reinvestigate all these illegal acts?
We sometimes forget that Barack Obama, not candidate Hillary Clinton, was president when the FBI conducted the
lax investigation of the email scandal, when Loretta Lynch outsourced her prosecutorial prerogatives to James
Comey, when the FBI trafficked with the Clinton-funded Fusion GPS dossier, when various DOJ and FBI lawyers
requested FISA-approved surveillance largely on the basis of a fraudulent document, and when administration
officials unmasked and leaked the names of American citizens.
Had Hillary Clinton polled ten points behind Donald Trump in early 2016, we’d have none of these scandals — not
because those involved were moral actors (none were), but because Hillary would have been considered yesterday’s
damaged goods and not worth any extra-legal exposure taken on her behalf.
Similarly, if the clear front-runner Hillary Clinton had won the election, we’d now have no scandals. Again, the reason
is not that she and her careerist enablers did not engage in scandalous behavior, but that such foul play would have
been recalibrated as rewardable fealty and absorbed into the folds of the progressive deep state.
The only mystery in these sordid scandals is how a president Hillary Clinton would have rewarded her various
appendages. In short, how would a President Clinton have calibrated the many rewards for any-means-necessary
help? Would Lynch’s tarmac idea have trumped Comey’s phony investigation? Would Glen Simpson now be White
House press secretary, James Comey Clinton’s CIA director; would Andrew McCabe be Comey’s replacement at the
FBI?
In reductionist terms, every single scandal that has so far surfaced at the FBI and DOJ share a common catalyst.
What now appears clearly unethical and probably illegal would have passed as normal in a likely 16-year Obama-
Clinton progressive continuum.
A final paradox: Why did so many federal officials and officeholders act so unethically and likely illegally when they
were convinced of a Clinton landslide? Why the overkill?
The answer to that paradox lies in human nature and can be explored through the hubris and nemesis of Greek tragedy — or the 1972 petty burgling of a Watergate complex apartment when Richard Nixon really was on his way to a landslide victory.
Needlessly weaponizing the Obama FBI and the DOJ was akin to Hillary Clinton’s insanely campaigning in the last days of the 2016 campaign in red-state Arizona, the supposed “cherry atop a pleasing electoral map.”
In short, such hubris was not just what Peter Strzok in August 2016 termed an “insurance policy” against an unlikely Trump victory. Instead, the Clinton and Obama officials believed that it was within the administrative state’s grasp and their perceived political interest not just to beat but to destroy and humiliate Donald Trump — and by extension all the distasteful deplorables and irredeemables he supposedly had galvanized.
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6)
By The Editorial Board
Donald Trump is a recent Republican convert and he’s hardly a traditional conservative, so
we’ve expected that sooner or later he’d turn to deal-making with Democrats. The question is
whether his call to deal in Tuesday’s State of the Union address will produce some bipartisan
progress this year in a polarized Congress.
“So tonight I am extending an open hand to work with members of both parties, Democrats and
Republicans, to protect our citizens, of every background, color, and creed,” Mr. Trump declared in one of several pitches for cooperation across the aisle.
This is a rhetorical turn, and could be productive. Presidents usually do this in the first year,
starting in the Inaugural, but Mr. Trump cast that speech as a dirge about “American carnage.”
He followed with his ill-prepared travel ban, and he was off to the polarizing races of the Steve
Bannon phase of his Presidency.
That start made it easier for Democrats to oppose him at every turn, and Mr. Trump was forced to pass his legislative agenda with Republican votes. His approval rating is low, especially considering the strong economy, and many Democrats can’t wait to impeach him after what they expect will be a takeover of the House and Senate in November.
In that context Mr. Trump’s Tuesday speech played against type by seeking what he called common ground.” The Twitter attack specialist called for Congress to strike bipartisan deals even on an issue such as immigration that is as polarizing as American politics gets.Some of this is making a virtue of necessity in that the GOP Senate majority is too small at 51 to achieve much without Democrats. Mr. Trump needs 60 votes to get anything done on immigration, public works or prison reform. Yet all three are issues on which Democrats also want progress.
Democrats want to legalize the young adult Dreamer immigrants, spend money on roads and bridges, and give ex-cons a second chance at a better life. More dangerously for the economy, more Democrats than Republicans share Mr. Trump’s protectionist views on trade, which we were glad to see him play down on Tuesday night.
Mr. Trump’s immigration message was a mix of rhetorical edginess with policy compromise. He spent far too much time flogging immigration as an issue of crime rather than highlighting the many contributions that newcomers make. He also included a gratuitous gibe that “Americans are Dreamers too,” which will insult more people than it persuades. This rhetoric may have been intended to placate supporters who are nervous about Mr. Trump’s willingness to negotiate with Democrats, but he missed a chance to seem more big-hearted.
On the other hand, Mr. Trump’s legislative offer last week is a bid for compromise between left and right that includes a path to citizenship for 1.8 million Dreamers who were brought to the U.S. as children. That’s far more than the 700,000 or so that applied for work permits under Barack Obama’s illegal order—and far more than GOP restrictionists want.
He also offered to clear up the immigrant application backlog that includes several million family members waiting for green cards. He wouldn’t have offered those concessions if he doesn’t want a deal, and we heard no red lines that would preclude bargaining.
Will Democrats be willing to deal? It isn’t obvious that they want to, or that their political base will let them. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer dismissed Mr. Trump’s speech for stoking “the fires of division” and he’s already rejected Mr. Trump’s immigration framework.
Yet GOP restrictionists are also denouncing Mr. Trump’s offer. If Mr. Schumer really wants to do something for the Dreamers, there is room to compromise.
Even if Democrats want to resist Mr. Trump from here to November, it doesn’t hurt for him to seek bipartisan deals. His unpopularity beyond his base is due in large part to his divisive persona and 90-proof narcissism. Even admirers who like his bluntness want him to behave more like a normal President. The economy is gaining speed as he promised, and as wages rise the public mood has a chance to improve and he’ll get some credit.
The recurring evidence of the last year is that a disciplined performance like Mr. Trump’s on Tuesday’s is no guarantee of future comportment, but his Presidency and country will be better off if it is.
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