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In a series of Pennsylvania stops letting Joe be Joe backfires
BY SALENA ZITO
PENNSYLVANIA — President Joe Biden commenced the first of four trips to Pennsylvania in the next couple of days with a complete turnaround from his party's "defund the police" mantra to a "fund the police" one, along with a pledge to ban assault-style weapons in the country. He also doubled down on denigrating people who vote Trump as being far-right.
Then he went really off script.
"He used to go down in the East Side, what they call the bucket. Highest crime rate in the country. There's a place where I was the only white guy that worked as a lifeguard down in that area, on the East side. And, you know, you could always tell where the best basketball in the state is, where the best basketball in the city is. It's where everybody shows up,” said Biden to a somewhat uncomfortable but supportive crowd in Wilkes-Barre.
Then he started talking about gun ownership, saying, “You know what the Mexicans, Mexico, which has real problems causing us real problems? You know what their biggest complaint is? Can't we stop the gun trafficking across the southern border, into Mexico?"
Biden — who will go on to do three more appearances in Pennsylvania, concluding with the Labor Day parade in Pittsburgh on Monday — also offered his support for his party’s Senate candidate, John Fetterman. Fetterman, though, did not even attend the event, and Biden seemed confused about what offices he and gubernatorial nominee Josh Shapiro were running for.
“Please, please elect [Shapiro, the sitting attorney general] to the Senate. Elect that big ol' boy [Fetterman, the sitting lieutenant governor] to be senator,” said Biden as he concluded his speech.
Some Democrats in the state, who admit they would rather dance on hot coals than vote Republican, say Biden can get away with his verbal stumbles because he has been that way all of his career. Still, one can only imagine Fetterman wishes he’d just be anywhere but here.
Currently, Fetterman leads Republican Dr. Mehmet Oz in the polls, with the RealClearPolitics average having the race at plus 7 for Fetterman and the latest poll by Emerson having Fetterman now down to plus 5 over the heart surgeon. The averaged RealClearPolitics polling began in June when Oz had just emerged from a bruising primary contest with businessman David McCormick that had deeply, negatively harmed his approval ratings.
Fetterman suffered a stroke days before the May primary; since then, he has not resumed his duties in Harrisburg and took most of the summer off to recover from the effects of the stroke.
Fetterman has not taken any questions from the press outside of a closed caption phone conversation with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and a text exchange with me. He has given three speeches in the past two weeks: an 11-minute speech in Erie, a four-minute one in Pittsburgh, and a seven-minute speech in Venango County.
Each appearance shows that the lieutenant governor's speech is halting and that he struggles with finding his words. Nonetheless, no update from his doctor has been given since June, when his cardiologist issued a statement that Fetterman’s health problems were a direct result of him not following his orders several years ago.
Also, the political editor at CBS affiliate KDKA News, Jon Delano, in Pittsburgh, told the Oz campaign Tuesday evening that Fetterman informed him he would not be participating in the Sept. 6 debate in Pittsburgh.
Still, Fetterman has garnered a significant amount of news coverage from national news organizations — who often skip over a biography that includes his parents paying his salary for 13 years until he took his current job in 2019, that the town he served as mayor isn't actually doing very well, or that he pulled a shotgun on a black jogger when he heard gunshots in his neighborhood.
On social media, he has also become a very effective human meme machine, at least for his progressive following and the reporters who cover him, who tweets endlessly about vegetables, New Jersey, a doctored Oz sign, and the legalization of marijuana, all while using numerous profanities.
On the latter of all of the issues important in the race, Fetterman chose the decriminalization of marijuana as the one thing he called on Biden to change through executive action when he is in the state next week.
It is unclear where Fetterman stands on issues that are top of mind for voters: inflation, gas prices, and crime. He has, though, been vocal about abortion access, which has emerged as a concern after the Supreme Court Dobbs decision came out this summer. This, even though the Dobbs decision has no impact on the legality of abortion in Pennsylvania. Abortions are still legal here through the 23rd week of pregnancy and after that if the life or health of the mother is in danger.
Oz, for his part, started campaigning Tuesday in Allegheny County, after a large town hall the evening before in the eastern suburbs, then went to events in Blair, Lycoming, and Carbon counties, with the evening ending at midnight; he will be back on the road Wednesday morning beginning in Lancaster County.
G. Terry Madonna, political science professor at Millersville University, says Biden’s visits here, along with former President Donald Trump’s rally in Wilkes-Barre on Sept. 3, show how important Pennsylvania has become to both parties in winning this election, even if neither candidate wants their party's top leader (Biden or Trump) muddying the waters.
“These visits tell you Pennsylvania is a pivotal battleground state for control of the United States Senate; there are a handful of states that are being watched very carefully, but it looks like Pennsylvania has become the state, the battleground state,” said Madonna.
Madonna said, while Fetterman enjoys a healthy lead, “That could certainly change as voters really start to pay attention to the issues that impact them like inflation, crime, immigration and even the student loan forgiveness executive order.”
While the abortion issue has energized some Democrats, Madonna said people generally vote based on their pocketbook and the impact on their community.
What neither man wants is the gaffes Biden committed today or the possible flame-throwing Trump will do next week in his first appearance since the FBI executed a search at Mar-a-Lago.
Fetterman is set to see Biden at the Labor Day parade in Pittsburgh this weekend. The two have not seen each other since a brief encounter when Biden was in the city the day a bridge collapsed.
AND:
FINALLY:
Opinion MAGA Republicans are out of touch with the real America
By Max Boot
PROVINCETOWN, Mass. — I’ve been feeling very blue this summer. Oh, I don’t mean I’m depressed — I’ve been having a ball. But I’ve been spending time in some of the most liberal enclaves in America: first Martha’s Vineyard (where former President Barack Obama has a house), then Provincetown, Mass., an LGBTQ mecca where pride flags are ubiquitous. I even took my step-kids to a drag show. (Don’t tell Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis!)
I have to admit that even this reformed ex-Republican did a slight eyeroll at the car next door to our rented beach house in P-town. It sports bumper stickers proclaiming “Biden-Harris,” “Coexist” (with Christian, Jewish, Muslim and peace symbols), “Resist” and “Bye Don” under a shock of yellow hair. Naturally, it’s a Subaru station wagon with a bike rack. How cliche can you get?
It is easy in such environs to imagine that you’re not in the “real America.” In fact, a friend who lives, as I do, in New York City — yet another Democratic bastion — made precisely that observation in a half-joking manner. “I’m happy not to be in America,” he told me, meaning, presumably, he was happy to be in a place where drag queens are considered normal and Trumpkins are not.
But you know what? Provincetown is the real America. So is Martha’s Vineyard. These communities are undoubtedly on the left and prone to excesses of political correctness that make for easy punch lines. But, in many ways, they might be more representative of 2022 America than the Rust Belt diners where reporters love to take the pulse of Trumplandia.
Yet it is White, Christian, rural, conservative voters who are now in the minority. Indeed, much of the reason that MAGA Republicans sound so hysterical so much of the time is that they know that the tides of economic and demographic change are leaving them behind. The White share of the population has declined from 80 percent in 1980 to just 60.1 percent in 2019. By the 2040s, America is projected to become “majority minority."
Accompanying this demographic shift is an economic shift that puts a premium on brains over brawn: In 1970, 31.2 percent of non-farm workers were employed in blue-collar jobs. By 2016, the blue-collar share of the workforce had fallen to just 13.6 percent. There is even a religious shift: Atheists and agnostics are the fastest-growing religious group in the country, while the percentage of Christians declined by 15 points between 2007 and 2021.
Demography is not necessarily destiny, and Latinos, in particular, are not as Democratic as they used to be. But these trends are hardly favorable for a Trumpified Republican Party whose base increasingly consists of White, evangelical Christians who haven’t graduated from college.
A more diverse, better-educated country is more liberal, particularly on cultural issues. In other words, more like P-town and the Vineyard. Just look at the massive shift on same-sex marriage. Even Obama came out against marriage equality in 2008 when it had the support of only 40 percent of Americans. Now same-sex marriage is supported by 71 percent of the public — and even by 55 percent of Republicans. It has become a nonissue.
The hardcore MAGA base might thrill to the kind of cultural warfare practiced by Trump and DeSantis, but it repels most of the electorate — which is why so many Republicans who touted their opposition to abortion during the primaries are now soft-pedaling an unpopular stance.
Our political system has a sharp minoritarian bias, but there is little doubt that Democratic positions are way more popular than Republican ones. Sixty-seven million more Americans live in counties won by Joe Biden than by Trump in 2020 — and the Biden counties produce 71 percent of U.S. gross domestic product.
The Biden strongholds are in major cities and suburban areas — and that is increasingly where most Americans live. Even in red states, major metropolitan areas tend to be pretty blue. The largest city Trump won in 2020 was Oklahoma City, whose entire population (681,054) is less than half that of Manhattan, the New York borough where the former president was once feted and now is a pariah.
The whole country might not be nearly as progressive as Provincetown or Martha’s Vineyard, but those blue havens are closer to an increasingly liberal mainstream than the MAGA redoubts where pickup trucks sport “Let’s Go, Brandon!” bumper stickers. There is a good reason so many MAGA Republicans are embracing “semi-fascism”: Their views are too unpopular to command majority support anymore. They certainly don’t speak for the “real” America — to the extent that such a thing even exists.
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Iran submits response to US comments on nuclear proposal
Iran says it submitted its comments to the US response to EU draft for reviving 2015 nuclear deal.
Nuclear talks in Vienna
Iran on Thursday night submitted its comments to the US response to the European Union’s draft for reviving the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, the spokesperson of the Iranian Foreign Ministry said.
The spokesperson, Nasser Kanaani, said that Iran’s response was prepared based on a constructive approach.
A senior Biden administration official told Politico later on Thursday, “We are studying Iran’s response, but the bottom line is that it is not at all encouraging.”
The official declined to give specifics about what the Iranians had proposed, but added, “based on their answer, we appear to be moving backwards.”
The EU proposal, submitted on July 26 by its foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, has been described by the EU as a “final draft” of the agreement.
Iran’s response comes nine days after it confirmed it had received a response from the United States to its proposals on the EU draft and said it is “carefully reviewing the US opinions”.
On Sunday, White House National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said that an agreement on a return to the Iran nuclear deal is closer, but there are still some issues to be ironed out.
"We are certainly closer today than we were about two weeks ago thanks to Iran being willing to concede on a couple of major issues," Kirby told CNN in an interview, before adding, "There are still gaps that remain between all sides."
Iran has scaled back its compliance with the 2015 deal ever since former US President Donald Trump withdrew from it in 2018.
On Wednesday, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said that Iran has begun enriching uranium with the second of three cascades, or clusters, of advanced IR-6 centrifuges recently installed at its underground plant at Natanz.
Wednesday’s report followed a report released by the IAEA on Monday which indicated that the first cascade had been brought onstream.
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MY VIEW:
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AFRICAN CULTURE DOES NOT EQUATE WITH WESTERN CUTURE. THEN ADD TO THIS FACT SLAVERY, SEGREGATION, POOR GRADE SCHOOL EDUCATION AND UNEQUAL SOCIAL ENVIRONENT ETC, IT IS LITTLE WONDER BLACKS DO NOT DO AS WELL ON COLLEGE ENTRANCE EXAMS AS PROFESSOR AMY WAX CONTENDS.
THIS IS NOT A PUT DOWN OF AFRICAN CULTURE, WHICH WAS WELL SUITED FOR LIFE IN THAT HEMISHERE. INFACT IT WAS VERY HIGHLY DEVELOPED AND WELL SUITED.
THAT SAID, THIS IS NO REASON TO PLACE PROFESSOR WAX IN THE PENALTY BOX FOR STATING FACTS SIMPLY BECAUSE PROGRESSIVES BELIEVE EQUITY SHOULD BE UNSHEATHED SO BLACKS CAN BE AFFIRMATIVELY ADVANCED. THIS IS SIMPLY REVERSE DISCRIMINATION AND, IN THE LONG RUN, WILL NOT SERVE THE INTERESTS OF BLACKS OR OVERALL SOCIETY WELL. IN MANY CASES, THIS IS SIMPLY SETTING BLACKS UP FOR FAILURE DOWN THE ROAD AND THAT IS CRUEL.
LIBERALS NEVER TAKE INTO CONSIDERATION THE DESTRUCTIVE CONSEQUENCES AS LONG AS THE STATISTICS LOOK FAVRABLE. THEIR CRUELTY IS GROUNDED IN HYPOCRISY.
TO EXPRESS THIS IS DEEMED RACIALLY PREJUDICIAL BUT FACTS ARE FACTS AND THAT IS WHY LIBERALS AND THE MASS MEDIA NO LONGER CARE ABOUT FACTS. WHEN FACTS DO NOT SUPPORT ONE'S GOAL SIMPLY DISMISS THEM AS IRRELEVANT AND ATTACK THOSE WHO STILL BELIEVE FACTS COUNT FOR SOMETHING AS RACISTS. INTIMIDATION IS THE LIBERAL'S WEAPON/ANTIDOTE OF CHOICE..
THIS IS WHY CRT AND THE LIKE ARE DISADVANTAGING OUR NATION, OUR FUTURE GENERATIONS AND WHY THOSE WHO HATE AMERICA ARE SUCESSFULLY PRESSING THESE DANGEROUS THEORIES.
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Gov. Abbott Sends Illegal Immigrants to Chicago Where Mayor Lightfoot Can Welcome Them With Open Arms
BY Sarah Arnold ++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 5 Times The Anti-Trump FBI’s ‘Trust Us’ Promise Fell Apart BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND
After the lies exposed during SpyGate, the DOJ and FBI’s current entreat to an angry public to ‘trust them’ will be rightly ignored.
The Biden administration and the corporate media continue to assure Americans that the FBI’s raid on former president Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home was both legally justified and of the utmost necessity. But the deep-state cabal and the leftist media cartel provided similar assurances about Crossfire Hurricane and Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s targeting of Trump, with the assurances later proving worthless.
Here are five times SpyGate taught Americans to distrust and disprove accusations leveled at Donald Trump.
1. Devin Nunes’ Memo Exposing FISA Abuse On February 2, 2018, the House Intelligence Committee, then-chaired by Republican Rep. Devin Nunes, released a four-page memo detailing abuses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act by the FBI.
Before the memo’s release, the FBI publicly opposed the move, claiming in a public statement that the bureau had “grave concerns about material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo’s accuracy.” Justice Department officials likewise opposed releasing the memo, warning that “doing so would be ‘extraordinarily reckless.’”
The then-ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff, also sought to scuttle the release of the memo — or at least preempt the detailed revelations of FISA abuse — by calling the memo a “conspiracy theory” in an op-ed for The Washington Post. In it, Schiff condemned the release, saying the memo was “designed to suggest that ‘a cabal of senior officials within the FBI and the Justice Department were so tainted by bias against President Trump that they irredeemably poisoned the investigation.’”
Nancy Pelosi, who is now speaker of the House, likewise attacked Nunes, demanding in a letter to then-House Speaker Paul Ryan that Nunes be removed as Intelligence Committee chairman. Nunes “disgraced” the committee with his “dishonest” handling of the committee’s review of the Russia collusion problem, Pelosi wrote. Nunes’ committee, Pelosi claimed, had become a “charade” and a “coverup campaign … to hide the truth about the Trump-Russia scandal.”
In response to the Nunes memo, former FBI Director James Comey told the country the memo was “dishonest and misleading.” Comey further claimed it “wrecked the House intel committee, destroyed trust with Intelligence Community, damaged relationship with FISA court, and inexcusably exposed classified investigation of an American citizen.”
Former CIA Director John Brennan also attacked Nunes, calling his exposure of the FISA abuse “appalling” and an abuse of his chairmanship of the House Intelligence Committee.
Of course, years later, Nunes was proven correct, as the inspector general’s report confirmed, establishing that the Republican House Intelligence chair had, if anything, understated the FISA abuse.
For all the assurances the DOJ, FBI, their former leaders, and top politicians provided the American public, they were either lying or wrong — or both because there was “a cabal of senior officials within the FBI and the Justice Department … so tainted by bias against President Trump that they irredeemably poisoned the investigation.”
2. Surveillance Warrants Are Hard to Get In addition to wrongly condemning Nunes’ memo, government officials attempted to calm concerns over the FISA surveillance by assuring the public that the process of obtaining a surveillance warrant was “rigorous” and that to obtain surveillance of American citizens, a court must find “probable cause” that warrants the wiretap.
Adm. Michael Rogers, then a commander of United States Cyber Command, testified about the FISA process during a March 2017 congressional hearing. In response to a question posed to eliminate “confusion in the public” about the collection of personal data, Rogers confirmed that the National Security Agency “would need a court order based on probable cause to conduct electronic surveillance on a U.S. person inside the United States.”
During the same hearing, the then-recently fired former FBI Director Comey expanded on the surveillance process. “There is a statutory framework in the United States under which courts grant permission for electronic surveillance either in a criminal case or the national security case based on the showing of probable cause,” Comey testified before Congress. “It is a rigorous, rigorous process, involving all three branches of government,” the former FBI director stressed, noting it must go through an application process and then to a judge who must approve the order.
The IG report on FISA abuse proved the promised rigor didn’t exist. And the later conviction of Kevin Clinesmith for “falsifying a document that was the basis for a surveillance warrant against former Trump campaign official Carter Page,” punctuated that reality. The facts revealed in the IG report further established that Americans’ faith in the FISA Court to serve as a check on the government was misplaced, with the judges serving as but a rubberstamp of the DOJ’s surveillance applications. So much for those assurances.
3. Don’t Worry, ’Merica, No Spying on Trump Took Place A third assurance Americans received from the powers-that-be was that no spying on the Trump campaign occurred. The inspector general’s report on FISA abuse disproved those reassurances as well, revealing that the “Obama Administration Spied on the Trump Campaign Big Time.”
This reality pushed Russia-collusion hoaxers into esoteric discussions on the true meaning of “spying.” Even the United States Senate played the “it depends what the meaning of spying is” game, with New Hampshire Democrat Sen. Jeanne Shaheen quizzing FBI Director Christopher Wray on whether he would agree with then-Attorney General William Barr’s use of the word “spying.”
“I was very concerned by his use of the word spying, which I think is a loaded word,” Shaheen bemoaned. “When FBI agents conduct investigations against alleged mobsters, suspected terrorists, other criminals, do you believe they’re engaging in spying when they’re following FBI investigative policies and procedures?” the senator asked Wray.
“That’s not the term I would use,” Wray replied, before noting that different people use different colloquialisms.
The discussion did not end there, however, with Shaheen pushing Wray on whether he had seen “any evidence that any illegal surveillance into the campaigns or the individuals associated with the campaigns by the FBI occurred.”
“I don’t think I personally have any evidence of that sort,” Wray replied.
But even sidestepping the silly debate over what “spying” means, the guarantee Shaheen provided the American public — that no illegal surveillance into the Trump campaign or individuals associated with the Trump campaign had occurred — proved worthless.
The Department of Justice has since admitted that it illegally surveilled former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page and that such surveillance reached Trump campaign documents. So, yes, our federal government illegally surveilled the campaign of a presidential candidate.
4. Redactions Are Necessary to Protect Sources and Methods A fourth key commitment conveyed to Americans throughout the multi-year unraveling of the Russia collusion hoax concerned the need to redact details in the publicly released documents. Such redactions were necessary to protect sources and methods, our overlords assured us.
For instance, in a December 9, 2019 press release Wray issued in conjunction with the DOJ’s inspector general’s report on FISA abuse, Wray “emphasized that the FBI’s participation in this process was undertaken with my express direction to be as transparent as possible, while honoring our duty to protect sources and methods that, if disclosed, might make Americans less safe.” Wray further promised that the FISA abuse report presented all material facts, “with redactions carefully limited and narrowly tailored to specific national security and operational concerns.”
Republican Sens. Ron Johnson and Chuck Grassley challenged that portrayal of the redactions, suggesting in a letter to then-Attorney General William Barr that several footnotes “were classified in the IG report only because they contradict certain claims made in the public version of the inspector general’s report on FISA warrants documenting misconduct in the FBI’s spying operation of the Trump campaign.”
“We are concerned that certain sections of the public version of the report are misleading because they are contradicted by relevant and probative classified information redacted in four footnotes,” Grassley and Johnson wrote. “This classified information is significant not only because it contradicts key statements in a section of the report, but also because it provides insight essential for an accurate evaluation of the entire investigation.”
The Republican senators then asked for the four footnotes to be declassified, stressing that “the American people have a right to know what is contained within these four footnotes and, without that knowledge, they will not have a full picture as to what happened during the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.”
In April of 2020, Acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell declassified the footnotes. And, as Grassley and Johnson had represented, the redactions weren’t necessary to protect “sources and methods.” Rather, the blacked-out lines were essential to distorting portions of the FISA report and to keeping the public in the dark about the full scope of the Spygate scandal.
Another document declassified by Grenell exposed that Mueller’s team falsely represented to a federal judge (and the American public) the substance of Michael Flynn’s December 2016 telephone conversation with then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
As I reported following Grenell’s declassification of the transcript of the call between Flynn, Trump’s then-incoming national security adviser, and Kislyak, Mueller’s office deceived the country and a federal court when prosecutors claimed Flynn had discussed U.S. sanctions with his Russian counterpart. The transcripts established that, contrary to court filings, Flynn never raised the issue of sanctions with the Russian ambassador.
The release of the Flynn transcript did reveal, however, the FBI’s secret “sources and methods” — but the sources and methods were those of deep-state actors seeking to rid themselves of the president’s chosen national security adviser by launching a perjury trap and then lying about what Flynn said.
5. Crossfire Hurricane Was Properly Predicated To this day, both DOJ’s Inspector General Michael Horowitz and Wray maintain that the FBI’s launch of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation was properly predicated. Publicly released FBI documents say otherwise.
Former FBI agent Peter Strzok explained the supposed predicate for launching Crossfire Hurricane on July 31, 2016, in the opening “Electronic Communication” that he both prepared and approved. According to Strzok, the FBI opened the umbrella investigation into the Trump campaign after the government had “received information” “related to the hacking of the Democratic National Committee’s website/server.”
But Strzok’s summary of the information received made no mention of any intel obtained by the FBI related to the DNC hacking. Rather, the supposed intel “consisted of information received from an unnamed representative, now publicly known to be Alexander Downer, a then-Australian diplomat” stationed in London. The opening memorandum explained that Downer had relayed “statements Mr. [George] Papadopoulos made about suggestions from the Russians that they (the Russians) could assist the Trump campaign with the anonymous release of information during the campaign that would be damaging to Hillary Clinton.”
The opening document then asserted that Papadopoulos “also suggested the Trump team had received some kind of suggestion from Russia that it could assist this process with the anonymous release of information during the campaign that would be damaging to Mrs. Clinton (and President Obama.).” The electronic communication added a caveat, though, noting that it was unclear whether Papadopoulos “or the Russians were referring to material acquired publicly of [sic] through other means. It was also unclear how Mr. Trump’s team reacted to the offer.”
Thus, while Strzok framed the information received by the FBI as evidence “related to the hacking of the Democratic National Committee’s website/server,” the remainder of the Electronic Communication contradicted that claim and in fact acknowledged that the material might refer to “publicly acquired” information.
What the FBI did — or rather didn’t do — after the launch of Crossfire Hurricane further confirms the sham predicate set forth by Strzok in the Electronic Communication.
While Papadopoulos’s statements to Downer supposedly prompted the FBI to open the Crossfire Hurricane investigation, agents failed to question Papadopoulos for six months. The FBI also put little (or no) effort into determining who purportedly told Papadopoulos that the Russians had dirt on Hillary. The supposed source of that statement, Joseph Mifsud, could have been easily located soon after the launch of Crossfire Hurricane if the FBI genuinely believed Russia had conspired with the Trump campaign to hack and release the DNC emails.
Agents pursuing a legitimate investigation “would have immediately scoured Papadopoulos’s London-based connections and discovered he was associated with the London Centre of International Law Practice around the time he met with Downer. From there, the FBI could have easily fingered Mifsud as a possible source for the information, since he was listed as a board advisor and public source searches would show Mifsud had connections to Russia. (The intelligence community would have also hit on Mifsud’s many connections to Western intelligence agencies.)”
But the FBI did none of this, waiting instead until late January 2017 to quiz Papadopoulos on the source of the supposed inside information coming from Russia. Yet, Wray and the DOJ’s inspector general want Americans to trust them when they say that agents launched Crossfire Hurricane based on Papadopoulos’s London chat with Downer over drinks.
Special Counsel John Durham, however, says otherwise, having released a statement following the DOJ’s report on FISA abuse that informed the public that, “based on the evidence collected to date,” his team had “advised the Inspector General that we do not agree with some of the report’s conclusions as to predication and how the FBI case was opened.”
The special counsel’s public statements prove significant for two reasons. First, Durham’s comments refute the inspector general’s conclusions regarding the predication of Crossfire Hurricane. But beyond that, the fact that Durham needed to correct the record shows the lack of trust due the DOJ and even the inspector general’s office — something further confirmed during the special counsel’s prosecution of former Clinton campaign attorney Michael Sussmann.
Each of these five falsehoods peddled by the government to the public during the Russia collusion hoax has a clear corollary in the current scandal involving the FBI’s raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home. And after the lies, pretext, and political warfare exposed during the unraveling of SpyGate, the DOJ and FBI’s current entreat to an angry public to “trust them” will be ignored — as it should
Margot Cleveland is The Federalist's senior legal correspondent. She is also a contributor to National Review Online, the Washington Examiner, Aleteia, and Townhall.com, and has been published in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prize—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. As a stay-at-home homeschooling mom of a young son with cystic fibrosis, Cleveland frequently writes on cultural issues related to parenting and special-needs children. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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