Another Sedona scene.
Omar dodges: (See 1 and 1a below.)
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Where's the fire? You will never know until you stand in his boots. (See 2 below.)
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As our traditional values and morals disappear can we survive? https://fxn.ws/2ZBhLwq
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IG Horowitz releases report just on Comey. (See 3, 3a, 3b and 3c below.)
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Tensions increase in Middle East. (See 4 and 4a below.)
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Off to wedding in Alexander City, Alabama. Returning Monday.
Have a great and safe Labor Day and hope Dorian misses Savannah.
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Newt writes about the massmedia.
Dick
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1) Ilhan Omar dodges questions from The Post about alleged affair-------WHY THE FEC CAN'T PROBE OMAR ANYTIME SOON
MINNEAPOLIS — Rep. Ilhan Omar dodged questions on Thursday about her alleged affair with a DC political consultant who’s on her payroll.
The freshman Democratic congresswoman appeared ahead of a scheduled event at the University of Minnesota when a Post reporter asked her about claims she broke up the marriage of Tim and Beth Mynett.
But instead of answering, Omar nervously made a beeline to make small talk with a police officer who was standing outside the campus’ Mayo Memorial Auditorium.
She then headed inside for the packed event about “Black Maternal Health” with Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.).
In a divorce filing this week, Beth Mynett, 55, claimed her marriage crumbled in April after her cheating husband told her “he was in love with another woman, Ilhan Omar.”
The jilted spouse said Tim Mynett, 38, and Omar, 37, met when he began working for the Minnesota legislator as part of her political consulting team.
It’s unclear when the alleged extramarital affair began.
Omar has paid Tim Mynett’s E Street Group consulting firm $230,000 since 2018 — raising concerns of potential ethics violations.
1a) WASHINGTON — The federal agency charged with probing the campaign finance complaint against Rep. Ilhan Omar won’t be able to act on it anytime soon.
The Federal Election Commission will no longer have a quorum to conduct business when Commissioner Matthew Petersen resigns at the end of the week.
The six-person body needs at least four members to vote on complaints, and Petersen’s departure means there are just three.
“The commission cannot meet, provide formal advice, investigate complaints or enforce the law without a quorum,” said Craig Holman, government affairs lobbyist at the watchdog group Public Citizen.
On Wednesday, the conservative National Legal and Policy Center filed an FEC complaint against Omar seeking a probe into whether the Minnesota Democrat used campaign funds to rendezvous with her alleged lover.
Tim Mynett and his E. Street Group received about $230,000 from Omar’s campaign for travel expenses, fundraising consulting, communications and more.
Under normal circumstances, the FEC’s general counsel could recommend the agency investigate whether Omar’s payments to Mynett were for personal reasons.
Then the agency could subpoena the participants involved in the alleged affair and payments to testify under oath about what happened, Holman said.
“Unfortunately, the one entity that could conduct a proper investigation and make such determination has closed its doors, so no investigation will soon be forthcoming,” Holman said.
Petersen, a Republican member of the FEC since 2008, didn’t give a reason when he announced his resignation Monday.
FEC chair Ellen Weintraub urged President Trump to nominate new commissioners immediately and for the Senate to confirm them.
The last time the FEC was without a quorum was during the 2008 campaign season. The six-member body is equally split between Republicans and Democrats.
Trump in January nominated a Republican, James “Trey” Trainor III of Texas, to the FEC. But his nomination hasn’t moved in the Senate as leadership works out a plan to fill the slots.
"There is an ongoing effort to fill all six FEC commissioner seats,” a senior Senate GOP aide said. ”To do that, though, Sen. Schumer and Senate Democrats must replace the two longtime Democratic holdovers. A clean slate of members will go a long way toward fixing some of the perceived dysfunction at the commission.”
Charlie Spies, a prominent DC campaign finance attorney who has worked for various GOP campaigns and organizations, said Omar’s un-itemized expenses are problematic and should warrant FEC investigation.
“The large amount of reimbursements to Representative Omar’s boyfriend’s firm for un-itemized travel expenses raises serious questions regarding whether the expenses were for personal use,” said Spies, former election law counsel for the Republican National Committee.
Spies points to a statement Weintraub issued on Aug. 14 that blasts former Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.) for violating the law and using campaign funds for personal travel and payments to his wife.
"The legal issue is the same,” Spies said. “And the point is that you are not allowed to spend money on anything that would exist irrespective of your candidacy. If — and I don’t have proof that she was — but if Omar was using money to pay for her boyfriend to travel to be with her or funneling personal expenses through his firm, then that would violate the law.”
The commission already takes more than 15 months on average to close an enforcement case and now its lack of a quorum could slow the process down even more.
“For something like the Omar complaint, this means that there may be no resolution for years, but that’s not totally unusual since the commission is still considering activity from the 2016 cycle,” Spies said.
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A Texas Rancher Describes The Issues:
The urgency to have a wall built at the border may not seem like a crisis for some, but for those living close to the border the crisis is all too real....
One such person is Kari Wade, who, with her family, owns a ranch just 50 miles from the U.S.-Mexico border. The border rancher recently responded to a Facebook comment when someone asked, "Where's the fire" in regard to the urgency of President Trump to build the wall at the U.S.-Mexican border.
She just read a comment on another friend's post and the comment said, "Where's the fire?"... in reference to building the wall and more technology along the border states. Mrs. Wade explains:
Let me tell you where the fire is: The "fire" is finding dead human bodies on your ranch, the "fire" is finding domestic pig ears in your stock tanks when there isn't a domestic pig for 25 miles, the "fire" is waking up to unknown people talking in your attic, the "fire" is dogs barking all night when your closest neighbor is 7 to 25 miles away depending on the direction... to suddenly realize there are people just outside your barn. The "fire" is having to come home after dark and needing to carry a rifle to go feed your livestock after Border Patrol tells you they only caught 9 of the 15 they were looking for.
The "fire" is making a choice... do I take my child with me to a dark barn to feed the stock and hold the flashlight, or lock him in the house, so you decide to lock him in the house and call a friend to let them know he's home alone and if they don't hear back from you in a certain amount of time to please come check on us.
The "fire" is you don't feel comfortable letting your children play outside without being with them or within eyeshot of them. The "fire" is having large drug busts on your ranch. The "fire" is feeling sick to your stomach every time the helicopter swirls your house because you know they are chasing people... because you can hear them on the loudspeaker talking to them.
The "fire" is seeing the Border Patrol camera set-up 1/2 mile from your house. The "fire" is coming home after dark... your children are driving in front of you (one is of age to drive), and there are officers on your road watching illegals 1/4 to 1/2 mile from your house and you have to call your children and tell them to keep driving, don't stop at the house.
The "fire" is coming home to your backdoor wide open... and wondering if they found the guns... and should you go inside? The "fire" is real for me, my family, and my community.
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3)
BREAKING: DOJ Inspector General Report Rips James Comey For Leaking Memos For Personal and Political Gain
By Katie Pavlich
Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz released an 83-page long report Thursday morning about misconduct by fired FBI Director James Comey. It thoroughly berates Comey for leaking memos about conversations with President Trump for personal and political gain. Most importantly, the report concludes Comey improperly released FBI material in order to launch the Special Counsel investigation into the 2016 presidential election. This report is separate from the highly anticipated IG report about the origins of the Russia investigation and FISA abuse.
Comey admitted during sworn congressional testimony in 2017 that he purposely leaked the confidential memos to a friend, who then gave them to the New York Times.
Here is the IG conclusion and details about his leaking. It holds Comey accountable for setting a "dangerous precedent" by providing confidential FBI material to the media for personal and political gain:
However, after his removal as FBI Director two months later, Comey provided a copy of Memo 4, which Comey had kept without authorization, to Richman with instructions to share the contents with a reporter for The New York Times. Memo 4 included information that was related to both the FBI's ongoing investigation of Flynn and, by Comey’s own account, information that he believed and alleged constituted evidence of an attempt to obstruct the ongoing Flynn investigation; later that same day, The New York Times published an article about Memo 4 entitled, “Comey Memo Says Trump Asked Him to End Flynn Investigation.”
The responsibility to protect sensitive law enforcement information falls in large part to the employees of the FBI who have access to it through their daily duties. On occasion, some of these employees may disagree with decisions by prosecutors, judges, or higher ranking FBI and Department officials about the actions to take or not take in criminal and counterintelligence matters. They may even, in some situations, distrust the legitimacy of those supervisory, prosecutorial, or judicial decisions. But even when these employees believe that their most strongly-held personal convictions might be served by an unauthorized disclosure, the FBI depends on them not to disclose sensitive information.
Former Director Comey failed to live up to this responsibility. By not safeguarding sensitive information obtained during the course of his FBI employment, and by using it to create public pressure for official action, Comey set a dangerous example for the over 35,000 current FBI employees—and the many thousands more former FBI employees—who similarly have access to or knowledge of non-public information. Comey said he was compelled to take these actions “if I love this country…and I love the Department of Justice, and I love the FBI.” However, were current or former FBI employees to follow the former Director's example and disclose sensitive information in service of their own strongly held personal convictions, the FBI would be unable to dispatch its law enforcement duties properly, as Comey himself noted in his March 20, 2017 congressional testimony. Comey expressed a similar concern to President Trump, according to Memo 4, in discussing leaks of FBI information, telling Trump that the FBI's ability to conduct its work is compromised “if people run around telling the press what we do.” This is no doubt part of the reason why Comey’s closest advisors used the words “surprised,” “stunned,” “shocked,” and “disappointment” to describe their reactions to learning what Comey had done.
In a country built on the rule of law, it is of utmost importance that all FBI employees adhere to Department and FBI policies, particularly when confronted by what appear to be extraordinary circumstances or compelling personal convictions. Comey had several other lawful options available to him to advocate for the appointment of a Special Counsel, which he told us was his goal in making the disclosure. What was not permitted was the unauthorized disclosure of sensitive investigative information, obtained during the course of FBI employment, in order to achieve a personally desired outcome.
The report specifically addresses a number of claims made by Comey that the memos he leaked were "personal documents." The IG concluded the memos, which were written on an official FBI computer while Comey was working in his official capacity as FBI director, belong to the FBI. Further, after Comey was fired he held onto the memos, which was against FBI protocol.
We conclude that the Memos were official FBI records, rather than Comey's personal documents. Accordingly, after his removal as FBI Director, Comey violated applicable policies and his Employment Agreement by failing to either surrender his copies of Memos 2, 4, 6, and 7 to the FBI or seek authorization to retain them; by releasing official FBI information and records to third parties without authorization; and by failing to immediately alert the FBI about his disclosures to his personal attorneys once he became aware in June 2017 that Memo 2 contained six words (four of which were names of foreign countries mentioned by the President) that the FBI had determined were classified at the “CONFIDENTIAL” level.
Comey told the OIG that he considered Memos 2 through 7 to be his personal documents, rather than official FBI records. He said he viewed these Memos as “a personal aide-mémoire,” “ like [his] diary” or “like [his] notes,” which contained his “recollection[s]” of his conversations with President Trump. Comey further stated that he kept Memos 2, 4, 6, and 7 in a personal safe at home because he believed the documents were personal records rather than FBI records. Comey's characterization of the Memos as personal records finds no support in the law and is wholly incompatible with the plain language of the statutes, regulations, and policies defining Federal records, and the terms of Comey's FBI Employment Agreement.
We conclude that the Memos are official FBI records as defined by statute, regulations, Department and FBI policies, and Comey's FBI Employment Agreement. Because they are official FBI records, Comey was required to handle the Memos in compliance with all applicable Department and FBI policies and the terms of his Employment Agreement. Comey Violated Department and FBI Policies Pertaining to the Retention, Handling, and Dissemination of FBI Records and Information Comey's actions with respect to the Memos violated Department and FBI policies concerning the retention, handling, and dissemination of FBI records and information, and violated the requirements of Comey’s FBI Employment Agreement.
Despite the findings, Comey will not be prosecuted. He has responded to the report with a false narrative about its findings:
3a) Sneaky, Leaky James Comey
The inspector general takes apart the former FBI director’s excuses for his actions.
By Kimberley A. Strassel
On August 29, 2019, the Inspector General of the Department of Justice released a report exposing former FBI Director Comey and his handling of government documents.
For more than two years, we’ve heard Mr. Comey’s characterization of his actions, popularized by an adoring media: He felt compelled to memorialize his private discussions with the president, to protect the FBI. He had no choice but to use an intermediary to leak memo contents, to save the nation by forcing the appointment of a special counsel. He was entitled to do so because the memos were his personal papers, and by that time he was a “private citizen.”
The inspector general calmly and coolly dismantles these claims. There’s good reason to suspect Mr. Trump was the focus of the bureau’s counterintelligence probe from the start, since that is the only way to explain the FBI’s outrageous decision to hide the probe from the president. The inspector general reports that Mr. Comey’s first briefing of the president-elect, on Jan. 6, 2017, was partly done in the hope that “Trump might make statements about, or provide information of value to,” that probe. That may be the real reason everyone on the FBI leadership team agreed “ahead of time that Comey should memorialize” what happened.
Mr. Horowitz’s report methodically skewers Mr. Comey’s claim that his memos were “personal” and therefore his to keep and use. It notes that he interacted with Mr. Trump only in his capacity as the FBI director, in official settings. He shared the memos with senior FBI leaders. Some memos touch on official investigations, while others contain classified information, which “is never considered personal property.” The report makes clear Mr. Comey knew his claim that the memos were personal was a sham. That characterization, Mr. Horowitz writes, is “wholly incompatible with the plain language of the statutes, regulations, and policies defining Federal records.”
Mr. Comey’s attempt to dig himself out of his disingenuous characterization heightens its absurdity. Asked by the inspector general how a memo describing an official dinner between the FBI director and the president could be considered a “personal” document, Mr. Comey explains that he was also present in his capacity as a “human being.”
Anyone in Mr. Comey’s position would know that the memos were FBI documents and that he had no right to keep them after Mr. Trump fired him. He nonetheless gave them to his attorneys, and scanned and emailed the sensitive information on unsecure equipment. (This is the man who called Hillary Clinton ’s handling of official secrets “extremely careless.”) The inspector general found it “particularly concerning” that Mr. Comey didn’t tell the FBI he’d retained copies, even when bureau officials came to his home to inventory and remove FBI property.
Mr. Horowitz is equally appalled the former director “made public sensitive investigative information” via a friend, giving it to the media “unilaterally and without authorization.” The report notes that “the civil liberties of every individual”—presumably even the president—depend on the FBI’s safeguarding information. Just as important, the inspector general lambastes Mr. Comey for the purpose of the leak—to achieve a “personally desired outcome,” the appointment of a special counsel. “By not safeguarding sensitive information,” and “by using it to create public pressure for official action, Comey set a dangerous example for the over 35,000 current FBI employees,” Mr. Horowitz writes.
This is the nub of it. Mr. Comey clearly detested Mr. Trump from the start. He abused his power and used leaky, sneaky tricks to undermine the presidency. Mr. Comey told the inspector general he had to do it because it was important to “the Nation,” and “I love this country.” Mr. Horowitz has no time for such self-justification: “Comey’s own, personal conception of what was necessary was not an appropriate basis for ignoring the policies and agreements governing the use of FBI records.” The report points out that if every FBI official acted on “personal convictions,” the bureau “would be unable to dispatch its law enforcement duties properly.”
This is the real merit of the inspector general’s report—its clear, ringing reminder that the rules apply to all. Still, it should disturb Americans that a man who has now been repeatedly admonished for “acting unilaterally”—and who so dishonestly spins his actions and history—held positions of such power for so long.
3b) Judicial Watch Vows to Hold Comey Accountable After DOJ Declines Prosecution
3b) Judicial Watch Vows to Hold Comey Accountable After DOJ Declines Prosecution
Katie Pavlich
| READ MORE |
Democrat and Republican Legal Experts Destroy James Comey for Demanding an Apology
Katie Pavlich
| READ MORE |
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4) As tensions spike in north, IDF cancels leave for combat brigades
After Hezbollah threat of reprisal for Israeli strikes, Northern Command chief warns, ‘If an IDF soldier is so much as scratched, our response will be harsh’
The army’s Northern Command said Thursday it had canceled all leave for combat brigades on Israel’s northern border, just hours after the military’s commander in the north warned Israel would offer a “harsh” response to any Hezbollah attack.
Israeli troops on the Lebanese and Syrian borders have been on high alert this week over fears of a reprisal attack from Hezbollah following an alleged Israeli strike on the terror group in Beirut on Sunday and confirmed airstrikes on an Iranian position in Syria that killed two Hezbollah members on Saturday night.
The Israel Defense Forces believes Hezbollah intends to attack IDF soldiers or a military installation on the border, and not civilians.
The freeze on soldiers’ leave in the north will be in effect until further notice, the army said.
Earlier Thursday, Northern Command chief Maj. Gen. Amir Baram, who ordered the move, met with mayors of northern communities in a bid to calm jitters over the escalating tensions.
Several mayors asked, IDF Northern Command chief Maj. Gen. Amir Baram, if they should open municipal bomb shelters in anticipation of possible conflict with Lebanon.
Baram replied that such a step was not yet necessary.
He then seemed to threaten Hezbollah with war.
“You should be preparing not for Hezbollah’s response against the IDF, but for their response to our response” to such an attack, he quipped.
He vowed that “if an IDF soldier is so much as scratched, our response will be harsh.”
Baram said the army was not hampered by the upcoming elections in September.
“The decisions surrounding the latest strikes don’t depend on the elections or on political decisions. The chief of staff has blanket approval to act to disrupt the Iranian entrenchment, and all actions [directed to that end] don’t require the decisions of the political echelon,” Baram told the mayors.
The Lebanese frontier was especially tense Thursday, following an incident the night before Lebanese troops fired on Israeli drones, claiming they had entered Lebanon’s airspace.
The army on Tuesday restricted the movement of military vehicles along roads close to the Lebanese border. Those limitations were not imposed on civilians in border communities.
Baram’s comments follow similar messages delivered by Israeli officials this week, both against Hezbollah and against Lebanon, which Jerusalem sees as complicit in the terrorist militia’s activities.
“The Israeli response to an attack will be disproportionate,” an unnamed senior officer told Israel’s Channel 12 news on Monday night.
4a)
US secretary of state says he has "every confidence" that President Trump, "who moved our embassy and who made clear Israel’s rights in the Golan Heights will do all that is necessary to ensure that our great partner, Israel, will be protected."
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo stated on Thursday that Israel can rely on diplomatic, legal and military assistance from Washington in the event of a war with Iran, however long.
In an interview with syndicated radio host Hugh Hewitt, Pompeo pledged that Israel can rely on the United States for aid if the growing tensions with the Islamic republic escalate into a full-fledged war.
Pompeo stressed that the Trump administration has been “incredibly supportive each time Israel has been forced to take actions to defend itself.”
"We’ve been very clear about a couple of things. First, with respect to Iran, we flipped the US policy there. The previous administration guaranteed Iran a path to nuclear weapons systems, allowed them to foment terror, and allowed their missile system to run amok. President Trump has directed that we do just the opposite – to deny them the resources to create risks not only for the United States and its citizens but for Israel as well. And we’ve been successful with that."
"We’ve also been incredibly supportive each time Israel has been forced to take actions to defend itself – the United States has made it very clear that that country has not only the right but the duty to protect its own people. And we are always supportive of their efforts to do that. So with respect to ensuring that Israel is treated fairly at the United Nations, Israel can certainly count on the United States of America," Pompeo said.
When asked whether, in the event of war with Iran, Israel will "get the ammunition resupply that happened when Nixon sent it on the [1973] Yom Kippur war? Do you think the president would resupply the ammunition they need?"
"We’re constantly in conversations about that, making sure that we collectively have defense systems capabilities that are appropriate for their needs. I have every confidence in this president who moved our embassy and who made clear Israel’s rights in the Golan Heights will do all that is necessary to ensure that our great partner, Israel, will be protected."
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By Newt Gingrich
The most amazing thing about Theodore White’s The Making of the President 1972 is his explanation of the emerging hostility of the elite news media and its evolution into an adversarial anti-president propaganda system for left-wing values.
Everything we are used to seeing in what President Trump calls “Fake News” existed by 1972. The parallels are amazing – and are part of why I decided to spend so much time analyzing 1972 and 2020 as similar patterns of conflict.
The current New York Times overt shift from smearing President Trump with Russian collusion (which collapsed) to smearing President Trump with allegations of racism were all foreshadowed by the universal elite media hostility to President Nixon a half century ago. The lockstep hostility of the Times, The Washington Post, and the left-wing TV systems were simply proof that in President Trump they had encountered a leader bent on changing their world and confronting their values.
White combines his extraordinary analysis of the New York Times-Boston Globe-Washington Post system (and the three networks they shaped) with an explanation of the mutation from what he calls “the liberal idea” into “the liberal theology” – and the “movement” which grew out of it. (I will deal with the movement in my next column and its devastatingly destructive impact on cities in part four of this series.) This piece focuses on the adversarial news media and its impact on 1972 and on 2020.
The real opposition to Nixon was not the Democratic Party nor its nominee Senator George McGovern. In White’s analysis, the real opposition to Nixon was the elite news media.
The elite news media hated Nixon more than any major politician before Trump. Despite the rise of talk radio, Twitter, Facebook, and cable news, nothing in White’s core analysis has changed. He draws a sharp distinction between the lesser news media, many of which were for Nixon, and the elite media – which was monolithic-ally, bitterly hostile to President Nixon.
White emphasizes that it was the culture of the New York literati which defined The New York Times and the three networks. It was a generational change from reporters of facts to advocates of ideology which compounded the bitterness and hostility.
Here is White’s analysis:
"The power of the press in America is a primordial one. It sets the agenda of public discussion; and this sweeping political power is unrestrained by any law. It determines what people will talk and think about—an authority that in other nations is reserved for tyrants, priests, parties and mandarins. No major act of the American Congress, no foreign adventure, no act of diplomacy, no great social reform can succeed in the United States unless the press prepares the public mind. And when the press seizes a great issue to thrust onto the agenda of talk, it moves action on its own—the cause of the environment, the cause of civil rights, the liquidation of the war in Vietnam, and, as climax, the Watergate affair were all set on the agenda, in first instance, by the press.”
The power of the Left grows from the media. Since Nixon, the media has sought to attack presidents it did not deem worthy. As White explained:
“These were the adversary press. Its luminaries not only questioned his exercise of power, as all great American journalists have done when examining a President. They questioned his own understanding of America; they questioned not only his actions but the quality of his mind, and his honor as a man. It was a question of who was closest in contact with the mood of the American people—the President or his adversary press? Neither would yield anything of respect to the other—and in Richard Nixon’s first term the traditional bitterness on both sides approached paranoia.”
Much like President Trump a generation later Nixon was not intimidated and did not flinch from the fight. Nixon understood that his primary adversary was the press – not his Democratic opponent.
It is vital to understand that the news media and its academic and Hollywood allies are the defenders and imposers of an alternative culture which hates conservatism and particularly hates effective conservatives.
The elite media had its final victory over President Nixon in the Watergate scandal, which drove him from office. The elite media tried this with President Trump in the “Russian collusion” lie and failed.
The Left wants to forget that when the American people weighed the values of President Nixon and the values of The New York Times, Nixon got 61 percent of the vote. The same would happen 12 years later when President Reagan won with 58 percent of the vote.
Do not be shocked if in the 2020 result, President Trump wins by a margin unimaginable today (no one in September 1971 or September 1983 would have predicted gigantic landslides against the Left).
Your Friend,
Newt
Newt
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