Daily Caller
Ethan Barton | Senior Editor 1/20/2019
The head of the Justice Department’s criminal division during the George W. Bush administration reportedly opposed pursuing felony charges against pharmaceutical company executives for downplaying OxyContin’s dangers.
Top DOJ officials similarly rejected a prosecutor’s recommendation to file felony charges after they met with executives from Purdue Pharma and their defense team, according to The New York Times.
Members of the Sackler family, who own Purdue Pharma, sought to mislead the public about abuse surrounding OxyContin, a lawsuit alleges, citing company emails and other documents.
The head of the Justice Department’s criminal division under President George W. Bush reportedly opposed levying felony charges against executives of a pharmaceutical company that’s widely blamed for helping start the opioid epidemic.
She has since joined a private law firm and has successfully defended pharmaceutical companies against government investigations.
A federal prosecutor recommended the felony indictments, which could have resulted in jail time if convictions were secured, but the DOJ officials rejected the notion after meeting with the Purdue Pharma executives and their defense team, according to The New York Times. It’s unclear if the criminal division chief attended that meeting.
Over 12 years later, it’s still unknown which senior officials attended that meeting, who rejected the indictment recommendations, and why they were rejected. Local and state governments have since mounted hundred of lawsuits against Purdue alleging the company downplayed the dangers of its blockbuster opioid, OxyContin.
The DOJ declined to comment on this story.
Purdue representatives lobbied top DOJ officials on multiple occasions during the Bush administration, according to news reports and congressional testimony. Future FBI Director James Comey was involved in one instance, and Rudy Giuliani, who now serves as President Donald Trump’s attorney, was tied to another.
The prosecutor who recommended felony indictments against Purdue executives found he was recommended for termination after a third instance that occurred hours before Purdue accepted a plea deal that was offered in lieu of felony charges.
As part of the plea deal, Purdue and three executives conceded they downplayed OxyContin’s addictiveness and collectively paid a historic $635 million in fines in 2007. No one saw jail time.
Meanwhile, more than 200,000 people have died from overdoses involving prescription opioids since OxyContin was launched in 1996, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Purdue is privately owned by the Sackler family, whose wealth skyrocketed after OxyContin sales raked in $35 billion over a 20-year period, giving the family a $13 billion net worth and making them the 19th richest in the U.S. in 2016, according to Forbes. (RELATED: ‘Joy’ And ‘Fury’: Artist And Activist Nan Goldin Reacts To The Met’s Statement About Taking Opioid Money)
Massachusetts was one of the states to file a lawsuit against Purdue in 2018, but it uniquely named eight members of the Sackler family. A recent complaint cites documents indicating the Sacklers headed a campaign to deceive doctors about the dangers of OxyContin and passed blame of negative press onto addicts.
“The launch of OxyContin tablets will be followed by a blizzard of prescriptions that will bury the competition,” Richard Sackler, the son of a Purdue founder and the company’s president from 1999 to 2003, said while celebrating the drug’s entrance to the market, according to a document cited in the complaint. “The prescription blizzard will be so deep, dense, and white.”
Bush’s Justice Department Rejected Felony Charges After A Four-Year Investigation
Then-U.S. Attorney John Brownlee concluded a four-year investigation and recommended indicting the three Purdue executives on felony charges, including conspiracy to defraud the government, in September 2006, the Times reported in May 2018.
But top DOJ officials didn’t support his recommendation after meeting with Purdue executives and their defense team, according to Times reporter Barry Meier.
One defense lawyer for Purdue was Mary Jo White, a former federal prosecutor, and an adviser to the company’s legal team was former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who was also once a U.S. attorney.
The head of DOJ’s criminal division at the time, Alice Fisher, was one of the officials who didn’t support Brownlee’s recommendation, according to the Times. She’s now a partner at the law firm Latham & Watkins.
Her bio page says she recently represented “[g]lobal pharmaceutical companies in [Securities and Exchange Commission] and DOJ [Foreign Corrupt Practices Act] investigations resulting in settlement resolutions and declinations of prosecutions.”
It also says she represented “Several global manufacturing companies about maintaining FCPA compliance and obtaining two declinations of prosecution.”
Fisher did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Brownlee publicly supported the decision not to prosecute the Purdue executives, but, according to Meier, he was privately upset. Brownlee did not respond to The Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment, and he’s previously declined to comment to other publications.
Top DOJ Officials Questioned Purdue Probes After Hearing From Company Representatives
There were additional occasions when top DOJ officials scrutinized Brownlee’s investigation after Purdue representatives contacted them.
After speaking with the company’s defense attorneys in 2005, then-Deputy Attorney General James Comey asked Brownlee why he was pursing Purdue, Brownlee said during a 2007 congressional hearing. Brownlee, who was the federal prosecutor for the western district of Virginia, drove to Washington to explain the situation to Comey, who ultimately gave Brownlee the go-ahead to continue.
Additionally, Brownlee’s name appeared on a list of U.S. prosecutors recommended for termination soon after he ignored a top DOJ aide’s request to delay the plea deal.
Hours before the plea deal was set to expire in October 2006, Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty’s chief of staff, Michael Elston, called Brownlee and asked him to extend Purdue’s deadline, the U.S. attorney testified.
“He told me he received a phone call from the defense lawyers about the case and that that the counsel had once again said that we were moving too quickly, that we had needed more time,” Brownlee said.
“Through his questions of me, I sensed that he was inquiring almost on their behalf,” he continued, noting Elston said he wasn’t calling at McNulty’s request.
Elston’s lawyer later said McNulty, who had replaced Comey, had asked Elston to call Brownlee, according to The Washington Post.
Elston told TheDCNF on Friday he called Brownlee on behalf of McNulty after the deputy attorney general noticed the deadline for the plea agreement was unusually tight. Elston said he was asking the prosecutor for information and not to tell Brownlee to give Purdue more time.
McNulty did not respond to a request for comment.
Regardless, Brownlee stuck with the original deadline and Purdue agreed to it hours later, Brownlee testified.
Eight days later, Brownlee’s name was included on a list Elston compiled of prosecutors recommended for termination, though he ultimately was not fired, the Post reported in 2007.
Elston told TheDCNF he did not recall any connection between Brownlee being included on the list and the Purdue case.
Also during the course of the government’s investigation into Purdue, Giuliani met with Asa Hutchinson in 2005, who was then the Drug Enforcement Administration’s chief, Vanity Fair reported in 2007. The meeting came after the DEA found OxyContin could be responsible for 464 deaths over a two-year period.
Following his meeting with Giuliani, Hutchinson began asking DEA officials why they were still looking into Purdue.
Hutchinson is now the governor of Arkansas. He did not return a request for comment.
Legal Battles Against Purdue And The Sacklers Intensify
Deaths related to opioids have skyrocketed since the 2007 plea agreement, and the Sackler family, Purdue’s owners, largely kept its name separate from the epidemic, until recently.
TheDCNF began its “American Cartel” series in 2017, which tied the Sackler name to Purdue and investigated the family’s charitable givings. The Sacklers, until then, were known for their philanthropy, with famous institutions like New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art naming entire sections after the family.
Meanwhile, lawsuits against Purdue from across the country have racked up. Evidence has trickled out showing the Sacklers knew about OxyContin’s dangers earlier than they said and showing they kept that information from the public. (RELATED: Purdue Pharma Looks To ‘Turnaround Kid’ As Opioid Lawsuits Pile Up)
Federal prosecutors discovered that Purdue Pharma knew OxyContin was being abused soon after the drug’s 1996 launch, a confidential DOJ report shows, the Times reported in May 2018. The report also found members of the Sackler family were aware that OxyContin and its morphine-based predecessor were being abused.
And a Tuesday court filing alleged that the Sacklers knew that Purdue knew OxyContin was being illegally dealt and abused, but failed to report it to authorities.
“This is not too bad,” Richard Sackler said in 2001 while serving as Purdue’s president and after a federal prosecutor reported that there were 59 deaths involving OxyContin in just one state, according to a document cited in the complaint. “It could have been far worse.”
Purdue, at the direction of the Sacklers, pushed for doctors to prescribe higher doses of OxyContin and for longer periods, resulting in massive profits for the company and the family, the lawsuit claims.
The Massachusetts complaint “irresponsibly and counterproductively casts every prescription of OxyContin as dangerous and illegitimate,” Purdue spokesman Bob Josephson said in a statement, calling the allegations “sensational” and “misleading.”
He accused the state of trying to “vilify” the company.
Josephson did not comment on Purdue’s communications with the DOJ.
He also said the Food and Drug Administration has ruled OxyContin continues to be “safe and effective for their intended use” and that the government determined in 2013 Purdue had fulfilled its obligations related to the marketing of its medications.
“The complaint is littered with biased and inaccurate characterizations,” Josephson said.
The only known instance where a Sackler was deposed was sealed as part of a $24 million settlement with Kentucky in December 2015.
Purdue recently lost an appeal to keep Richard Sackler’s deposition secret, but the company is continuing to contest the ruling. The testimony remains sealed while legal battles persist.
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Tags : department of justice oxycontin purdue pharma sackler family
Thank You DC and Mr Barton.
Showing posts with label DOJ. Show all posts
Showing posts with label DOJ. Show all posts
Monday, January 21, 2019
Saturday, September 22, 2018
Hospitals’ Secret Contracts With Insurers Are Keeping Health Care Expensive: Report
dailycaller
Evie Fordham Sept 22/2018
Hospital systems are making secret contracts with insurers that are keeping health care costs high, a Wall Street Journal report revealed, prompting alternative health care advocates to point out the flawed nature of the U.S. health care system.
“Health care is the only industry I can think of where technology is used as an excuse for price to go up and productivity to go down because of these perverse incentives,” The Health Rosetta founder Dave Chase told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “The perverse incentives at a high level are generally, either directly or indirectly, the worse job [the hospitals] do, the more they get paid.”
TheWSJ’s Tuesday report detailed “dozens of contracts with terms that limit how insurers design plans” so they cannot exclude powerful hospital systems, which when included in health plans can drive up costs for employers and employees.
These secret contracts often include clauses that mandate insurers steer consumers away from less costly health care providers or give hospitals the ability to “mask” their prices, according to TheWSJ. If plans did not include these more costly health care systems, they could be up to 10 percent cheaper, the report stated.
Some major health care systems with insurer contract clauses that could be driving up health plan costs reportedly include:
Hospital systems have increased their leverage with insurers through mergers and takeovers, often becoming the only providers in certain areas. There was “the highest number recorded in recent history” in 2017 with 115 of these types of deals, a 13-percent increase from 2016, according to a report by health care forecasting firm Kaufman Hall.
“It’s the insurers that retain the greatest leverage,” Melinda Hatton of the American Hospital Association told TheWSJ.
Many in the hospital industry maintain that insurers have controlled the game for a long time, and these secret contracts are just a way to gain a little bit of control back. But hospitals are already “the largest single component of health-care spending in the U.S.” at over $1 trillion each year, TheWSJ reported.
Because of this dichotomy, some predict major changes in how consumers pay for health care coming down the pike. CNBC columnist Jake Novak predicted a rise in hospital systems offering their own insurance plans in a 2017 article. (RELATED: Big Pharma Making Big Money With Illegal Kickbacks? Drug Companies Face More Scrutiny After News Of Humira Lawsuit)
“The insurance industry gets its justification to exist by selling the idea that only it can help make those mysterious health care costs affordable,” Novak wrote. “If the bean counters figure out a way that hospitals can do better without the private insurers around, it’s hard to see why they wouldn’t simply sweep them away faster than Amazon put an end to your local book store.”
Follow Evie on Twitter @eviefordham.
Send tips to evie@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.
Thank You Ms Fordham and the DC.
Evie Fordham Sept 22/2018
Hospital systems are making secret contracts with insurers that are keeping health care costs high, a Wall Street Journal report revealed, prompting alternative health care advocates to point out the flawed nature of the U.S. health care system.
“Health care is the only industry I can think of where technology is used as an excuse for price to go up and productivity to go down because of these perverse incentives,” The Health Rosetta founder Dave Chase told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “The perverse incentives at a high level are generally, either directly or indirectly, the worse job [the hospitals] do, the more they get paid.”
TheWSJ’s Tuesday report detailed “dozens of contracts with terms that limit how insurers design plans” so they cannot exclude powerful hospital systems, which when included in health plans can drive up costs for employers and employees.
These secret contracts often include clauses that mandate insurers steer consumers away from less costly health care providers or give hospitals the ability to “mask” their prices, according to TheWSJ. If plans did not include these more costly health care systems, they could be up to 10 percent cheaper, the report stated.
Some major health care systems with insurer contract clauses that could be driving up health plan costs reportedly include:
- Johns Hopkins Medicine in Maryland
- Northwell Health in New York
- OhioHealth in Ohio
- Aurora Health Care in Wisconsin
- Atrium Health in North Carolina
- Sutter Health in California
Hospital systems have increased their leverage with insurers through mergers and takeovers, often becoming the only providers in certain areas. There was “the highest number recorded in recent history” in 2017 with 115 of these types of deals, a 13-percent increase from 2016, according to a report by health care forecasting firm Kaufman Hall.
“It’s the insurers that retain the greatest leverage,” Melinda Hatton of the American Hospital Association told TheWSJ.
Many in the hospital industry maintain that insurers have controlled the game for a long time, and these secret contracts are just a way to gain a little bit of control back. But hospitals are already “the largest single component of health-care spending in the U.S.” at over $1 trillion each year, TheWSJ reported.
Because of this dichotomy, some predict major changes in how consumers pay for health care coming down the pike. CNBC columnist Jake Novak predicted a rise in hospital systems offering their own insurance plans in a 2017 article. (RELATED: Big Pharma Making Big Money With Illegal Kickbacks? Drug Companies Face More Scrutiny After News Of Humira Lawsuit)
“The insurance industry gets its justification to exist by selling the idea that only it can help make those mysterious health care costs affordable,” Novak wrote. “If the bean counters figure out a way that hospitals can do better without the private insurers around, it’s hard to see why they wouldn’t simply sweep them away faster than Amazon put an end to your local book store.”
Follow Evie on Twitter @eviefordham.
Send tips to evie@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.
Thank You Ms Fordham and the DC.
Sunday, June 17, 2018
Gowdy: GOP Will Hit DOJ With 'Full Arsenal' If They Ignore Subpoenas
dailycaller
Amber Athey | Media and Breaking News Editor
House Oversight Chairman Trey Gowdy warned the DOJ and the FBI on Sunday that Republicans will come after them if they choose not to comply with subpoena requests.
WATCH:
“Paul Ryan led this meeting. You had Devin Nunes, Bob Goodlatte, myself and everyone you can think of from the FBI and the DOJ, and we went item by item on both of those outstanding subpoenas,” Gowdy explained. “We’re going to get compliance or the House of Representatives is going to use its full arsenal of constitutional weapons to gain compliance.”
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and FBI Director Christopher Wray were present at Ryan’s meeting, according to Gowdy.
WATCH:
Follow Amber on Twitter
Tags : doj fbi paul ryan trey gowdy
Thank You Ms Athey and the DC.
Amber Athey | Media and Breaking News Editor
House Oversight Chairman Trey Gowdy warned the DOJ and the FBI on Sunday that Republicans will come after them if they choose not to comply with subpoena requests.
WATCH:
Gowdy told “Fox News Sunday” that House Speaker Paul Ryan led a meeting with FBI and DOJ officials on Friday night and “made very clear there’s going to be action on the floor of the House this week if FBI and DOJ do not comply with our subpoena request.”.@TGowdySC tells Chris there will be action on the floor of the House if DOJ and FBI do not comply with subpoena request.— FoxNewsSunday (@FoxNewsSunday) June 17, 2018
Watch the full interview 2PM & 7PM ET @FoxNews pic.twitter.com/N74dEVWxg0
“Paul Ryan led this meeting. You had Devin Nunes, Bob Goodlatte, myself and everyone you can think of from the FBI and the DOJ, and we went item by item on both of those outstanding subpoenas,” Gowdy explained. “We’re going to get compliance or the House of Representatives is going to use its full arsenal of constitutional weapons to gain compliance.”
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and FBI Director Christopher Wray were present at Ryan’s meeting, according to Gowdy.
WATCH:
“I don’t want the drama, I want the documents,” Gowdy concluded..@TGowdySC adds “There is no ambiguity, the Speaker of the House was really clear: you’re going to comply or there’s going to be floor action.” Say floor action would include contempt of Congress. pic.twitter.com/LgCxCzhRCM— FoxNewsSunday (@FoxNewsSunday) June 17, 2018
Follow Amber on Twitter
Tags : doj fbi paul ryan trey gowdy
Thank You Ms Athey and the DC.
Sunday, May 27, 2018
Dangerous Times For The Constitution and Freedom
Bruce Thornton May 23 2018
Bruce Thornton is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.
While We the People distract ourselves with porn stars and royal weddings, the cracks in our Constitutional order continue to multiply and widen.
Evidence continues to mount that a sitting president, Barack Obama, colluded in using the nation’s security and surveillance apparatus to subvert the campaign and then presidency of a legitimately elected candidate and president. This effort consisted of numerous illegalities: a mole planted in Donald Trump’s campaign; a FISA warrant granted on the basis of false opposition research paid for by his rival; the outgoing president’s expansion of the number of people allowed to unmask the identity of Americans mentioned in passing during surveillance; a rogue FBI director, James Comey, who illegally usurped prosecutorial powers to exonerate a felonious Hillary Clinton; and other FBI agents colluding in the plot to damage Trump. And don’t forget a Deputy Attorney General appointing the close friend of the fired and disgraced Comey as a special counsel to investigate the non-crime of “collusion,” an investigation that has gone on for a year with nothing to show but a handful of indictments resulting from dubious perjury traps.
To quote Bob Dole, “Where’s the outrage” at these attacks on the Constitution?
Outrage is surely warranted. These assaults on the rule of law and accountability to the people are akin to the catalogue of “repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States,” published in the Declaration of Independence. Yet our “watch-dog” media in the main have become the publicists for this attack on the foundations of our freedom, as they flack for the political party that long has resented the limitation of power enshrined in the Constitution. Only a few Cassandras, notably FOX News’ Sean Hannity, are trying to alert the citizenry to the coming conflagration that if unchecked could leave the architecture of our freedom in smoking ruins.
In fact, what we are witnessing in the deep-state Democrats’ undermining of divided government, check and balances, and government accountability, is the culmination of a process begun over a century ago. Addled by the false knowledge of scientism and secularism in the 19th century, the progressives took aim at what they scorned as the archaic political structures based on the permanence of a flawed human nature’s susceptibility to corruption by power. Divided and balanced power, the progressives argued, is inefficient and incapable of solving the new conditions and problems created by industrialization and modern technology.
Instead, power must be concentrated, centralized, and expanded. The deliberations and votes of citizens in their towns, counties, and states must give way to the technocrats housed in bureaus and agencies, and trained in the latest discoveries and techniques of the “human sciences.” In 1925, Progressive publicist Herbert Croly expressed this hubristic and question-begging optimism for a “better future” that “would derive from the beneficent activities of expert social engineers who would bring to the service of social ideals all the technical resources which research could discover.” All they needed was the power and authority to create and apply the mechanisms of this new knowledge.
First, though, the Constitution’s antique structures must be altered. This “increased amount of centralized actions and responsibility” required, as progressive historian Charles Beard wrote in 1913, the discarding of the “strong, almost dominant, tendency to regard the existing Constitution with superstitious awe, and to shrink with horror from modifying it even in the smallest detail.” And it required discarding as well the notion of “inalienable” rights that precede government and lie beyond its power, a belief that Beard called “obsolete and indefensible.” Rights can be created by government in order to suit its own ideological and political aims, as FDR promised in his 1944 “Second Bill of Rights,” which expanded rights to include health care, recreation, and a good job, to name just a few of the gifts government would bestow on the people.
So given this long history, why are we surprised that today many of us believe we have a right not to have our feelings hurt, our opinions contradicted, or our sensibilities wounded even by statements of fact? Or that calls for weakening the Bill of Rights, particularly the First and Second Amendments, are made openly and taken seriously by substantial numbers of people? Or that agents of the government armed with all its coercive powers can violate our privacy and command our participation in politicized “investigations” that ruin our reputation and drive us to bankruptcy? Or that petty clerks across the land can force their way into our homes, businesses, schools, and churches in order to impose their visions of “social justice”?
Today we live in the world the progressives created, and that too many so-called conservatives have endorsed and enabled. The deep-state technocratic apparatus has encroached ever more deeply into citizen autonomy and freedom. Its millions of faceless, nameless functionaries are insulated from accountability to the citizens. Even when their politicized debasement of their responsibilities become known, they escape accountability and punishment, as have the IRS’s Lois Lerner and her enabling boss John Koskinen, disgraced FBI director James Comey, deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe, and of course most egregiously, quondam Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who endangered classified materials on her rogue server, and turned the State Department into the bait for attracting donations to her private foundation.
The result has been a serious erosion of the bedrock principles of equality under the law, and accountability to the sovereign people––violations whose scope and gravity have become more obvious and numerous.
But we shouldn’t be surprised. Over the decades the preconditions of today’s excesses have multiplied and become more accepted. Few of us question any longer the deep state of unelected bureaucrats, a surveillance regime empowered to run wild through our private lives, the unholy alliance between big government and big business, and government agencies usurping the power to direct and manage our lives and our opinions. We now take for granted that government should expropriate wealth and redistribute it to political favorites, the very activity that political philosophers from Athens to our own Constitutional Convention warned is the modus operandi of the tyrant. We shrug off the abuses of power that currently are manifest in the machinations of the previous administration to empower its chosen successor, and the skullduggery of its minions still infesting agencies like the DOJ and the FBI.
In short, we have accepted the progressive “fundamental transformation” of the government’s role from protecting our freedom to “solving problems” that, with few exceptions like war, a free people are supposed to solve themselves through families, civil society, and city and state governments. We have been seduced by the promise of freedom without that responsibility and the accountability that make our choices potentially tragic. And now we see the federal leviathan rampaging in our most powerful agencies, and we are surprised? As the Founders were wont to say, “power is of an encroaching nature.” No human being or human institution is immune from the temptations of power, or satisfied with whatever power has been obtained. We are witnessing the truth of this wisdom right now, as criminals run free, the innocent are hounded, federal agencies are emboldened to defy the representatives of the sovereign people, and a special counsel is unrestrained by any limits on the scope of his power, even as those like Representative Devin Nunes––who is fighting against this cardinal sin of allowing or even enabling power to burst through its Constitutional restraints––are slandered and demonized.
For a century, progressives have been undermining the Constitution as they seek to expand and concentrate government power at the cost of freedom. Their rage at Donald Trump in part reflects their disappointment at seeing the success of Obama in accelerating their achievement of their goal thwarted by a blunt-talking indecorous outsider. Now they have called on all their deep-state powers to destroy the usurper who has snatched from them the victory Hillary Clinton promised to consummate.
This continuing scandal of government agencies corrupting their Constitutionally delegated powers is one of the most important threats to ordered liberty at least since World War II, one far more dangerous than the farcical cover-up of a two-bit robbery that was the Watergate scandal. If we allow those guilty of abusing the power of the state for partisan gain to get away with it, we will embolden even more enemies of freedom to do the same as soon as they get the opportunity. It is up to we the people to demand that Mueller’s inquisition come to an end, and that the true miscreants who have abused their power be investigated, indicted, tried, and punished. Only then will the fabric of the Constitution begin to be restored, and our freedom rearmored.
Thank You Mr Thornton and FPM.
Wednesday, May 23, 2018
FBI Agents Want Congress To Subpoena Them So They Can Reveal The Bureau's Dirt
dailycaller
Kerry Picket Reporter
10:08 PM 05/22/2018
Sources tell The Daily Caller several FBI agents want congressional subpoenas to testify about the agency’s problems.
The sources claim there is a demand within the agency to prosecute former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe. They also say the bureau has become totally politicized.
The subpoenas are desired by the FBI agents because it requires Congress to pay for their legal fees and protects them from agency retribution.
Many agents in the FBI want Congress to subpoena them so they can reveal problems caused by former FBI Director James Comey and former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe, three people in direct contact with active field agents tell TheDC.
“There are agents all over this country who love the bureau and are sickened by [James] Comey’s behavior and [Andrew] McCabe and [Eric] Holder and [Loretta] Lynch and the thugs like [John] Brennan–who despise the fact that the bureau was used as a tool of political intelligence by the Obama administration thugs,” former federal prosecutor Joe DiGenova told The Daily Caller Tuesday. “They are just waiting for a chance to come forward and testify.”
Ahead of the release of the Department of Justice (DOJ) inspector general report on how the FBI handled the Clinton email investigation, TheDC spoke with DiGenova, a former Trump official who maintained contact with rank and file FBI agents and a counter-intelligence consultant who conducted an interview with an active special agent of the FBI’s Washington Field Office (WFO). (RELATED: Justice Department Watchdog Releases Damning Andrew McCabe Report)
TheDC independently confirmed the veracity of the consultant’s position and access, and reviewed detailed transcripts of his Q&A with the special agent, who requested the arrangement due to internal dragnets and fear of vicious retribution.
These agents prefer to be subpoenaed to becoming an official government whistleblower, since they fear political and professional backlash, the former Trump administration official explained to TheDC.
The subpoena is preferred, he said, “because when you are subpoenaed, Congress then pays…for your legal counsel and the subpoena protects [the agent] from any organizational retaliation…. they are on their own as whistleblowers, they get no legal protection and there will be organizational retaliation against them.”
DiGenova — who along with his wife, Victoria Toensing, has represented government whistleblowers in the past — agreed, telling TheDC, “It’s an intelligent approach to the situation given the vindictive nature of the bureau under Comey and McCabe. I have no idea how to read Chris Wray, who is not a leader and who has disappeared from the public eye during this entire crisis. You know, he may be cleaning house but if he’s doing so, he’s doing it very quietly.”
He added, “I don’t blame them. I don’t blame the agents one bit. I think that the FBI is in a freefall. James Comey has destroyed the institution he claims to love. And it is beyond a doubt that it is going to take a decade to restore public confidence because of Comey and Clapper and Brennan and Obama and Lynch.”
The special agent out of WFO alleged that rank and file FBI agents are fed up and desperately want action from the DOJ, according to the transcripts.
“Every special agent I have spoken to in the Washington Field Office wants to see McCabe prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. They feel the same way about Comey,“ the special agent said, according to transcripts provided to TheDC. (RELATED: Report: FBI Recommends Firing Andrew McCabe)
“The administrations are so politicized that any time a Special Agent comes forward as a whistleblower, they can expect to be thrown under the bus by leadership. Go against the Muslim Brotherhood, you’re crushed. Go against the Clintons, you’re crushed. The FBI has long been politicized to the detriment of national security and law enforcement.”
The special agent added, “Activity that Congress is investigating is being stonewalled by leadership and rank-and-file FBI employees in the periphery are just doing their jobs. All Congress needs to do is subpoena involved personnel and they will tell you what they know. These are honest people. Leadership cannot stop anyone from responding to a subpoena. Those subpoenaed also get legal counsel provided by the government to represent them.”
The former Trump administration official explained the problems at the bureau go beyond just two people.
“They know that it wasn’t just Comey and McCabe in this case. That’s too narrow a net to cast over these guys. There’s a much broader corruption that seeped into the seventh floor at the bureau.” (RELATED: EXCLUSIVE: FBI Agents Say Comey ‘Stood In The Way’ Of Clinton Email Investigation)
“They ruined the credibility of the bureau and the technical ability of the bureau, so systemically, over the past several years, they’re worried about their organizational reputation and their professional careers,” this former Trump administration staffer said, noting the bureau’s difficulty in prosecuting cases these days.
“They go to court and they’re just laughed at.”
According to an analysis in Time Magazine earlier this month, the FBI has struggled with conviction rates for several years now after they send cases to the DOJ for prosecution. In less than half the cases the FBI sent to the Justice Department, the conviction rate was only 47 percent in 2017. This number is far below the mean of the 72 percent average for all other government agencies, according to Time.
In the meantime, DiGenova and the others who spoke to TheDC believe it is time for Congress to issue subpoenas to FBI agents who are willing to talk. According to DiGenova, the House and Senate Judiciary Committees can issue these subpoenas.
“Either one of those [committees] would be fine. I’m sure the committees could hold hearings in a New York minute,” he said.
He added, “I can assure you I’ve been approached by agents who want to be subpoenaed for the same reason the guys in the field,” adding, “All over this country there are agents but the big ones the ones that matter New York–Washington I can assure you I’ve spoken with agents who want to come forward.”
Thank You Ms Picket and the DC.
Kerry Picket Reporter
10:08 PM 05/22/2018
Sources tell The Daily Caller several FBI agents want congressional subpoenas to testify about the agency’s problems.
The sources claim there is a demand within the agency to prosecute former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe. They also say the bureau has become totally politicized.
The subpoenas are desired by the FBI agents because it requires Congress to pay for their legal fees and protects them from agency retribution.
Many agents in the FBI want Congress to subpoena them so they can reveal problems caused by former FBI Director James Comey and former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe, three people in direct contact with active field agents tell TheDC.
“There are agents all over this country who love the bureau and are sickened by [James] Comey’s behavior and [Andrew] McCabe and [Eric] Holder and [Loretta] Lynch and the thugs like [John] Brennan–who despise the fact that the bureau was used as a tool of political intelligence by the Obama administration thugs,” former federal prosecutor Joe DiGenova told The Daily Caller Tuesday. “They are just waiting for a chance to come forward and testify.”
Ahead of the release of the Department of Justice (DOJ) inspector general report on how the FBI handled the Clinton email investigation, TheDC spoke with DiGenova, a former Trump official who maintained contact with rank and file FBI agents and a counter-intelligence consultant who conducted an interview with an active special agent of the FBI’s Washington Field Office (WFO). (RELATED: Justice Department Watchdog Releases Damning Andrew McCabe Report)
TheDC independently confirmed the veracity of the consultant’s position and access, and reviewed detailed transcripts of his Q&A with the special agent, who requested the arrangement due to internal dragnets and fear of vicious retribution.
These agents prefer to be subpoenaed to becoming an official government whistleblower, since they fear political and professional backlash, the former Trump administration official explained to TheDC.
The subpoena is preferred, he said, “because when you are subpoenaed, Congress then pays…for your legal counsel and the subpoena protects [the agent] from any organizational retaliation…. they are on their own as whistleblowers, they get no legal protection and there will be organizational retaliation against them.”
DiGenova — who along with his wife, Victoria Toensing, has represented government whistleblowers in the past — agreed, telling TheDC, “It’s an intelligent approach to the situation given the vindictive nature of the bureau under Comey and McCabe. I have no idea how to read Chris Wray, who is not a leader and who has disappeared from the public eye during this entire crisis. You know, he may be cleaning house but if he’s doing so, he’s doing it very quietly.”
He added, “I don’t blame them. I don’t blame the agents one bit. I think that the FBI is in a freefall. James Comey has destroyed the institution he claims to love. And it is beyond a doubt that it is going to take a decade to restore public confidence because of Comey and Clapper and Brennan and Obama and Lynch.”
The special agent out of WFO alleged that rank and file FBI agents are fed up and desperately want action from the DOJ, according to the transcripts.
“Every special agent I have spoken to in the Washington Field Office wants to see McCabe prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. They feel the same way about Comey,“ the special agent said, according to transcripts provided to TheDC. (RELATED: Report: FBI Recommends Firing Andrew McCabe)
“The administrations are so politicized that any time a Special Agent comes forward as a whistleblower, they can expect to be thrown under the bus by leadership. Go against the Muslim Brotherhood, you’re crushed. Go against the Clintons, you’re crushed. The FBI has long been politicized to the detriment of national security and law enforcement.”
The special agent added, “Activity that Congress is investigating is being stonewalled by leadership and rank-and-file FBI employees in the periphery are just doing their jobs. All Congress needs to do is subpoena involved personnel and they will tell you what they know. These are honest people. Leadership cannot stop anyone from responding to a subpoena. Those subpoenaed also get legal counsel provided by the government to represent them.”
The former Trump administration official explained the problems at the bureau go beyond just two people.
“They know that it wasn’t just Comey and McCabe in this case. That’s too narrow a net to cast over these guys. There’s a much broader corruption that seeped into the seventh floor at the bureau.” (RELATED: EXCLUSIVE: FBI Agents Say Comey ‘Stood In The Way’ Of Clinton Email Investigation)
“They ruined the credibility of the bureau and the technical ability of the bureau, so systemically, over the past several years, they’re worried about their organizational reputation and their professional careers,” this former Trump administration staffer said, noting the bureau’s difficulty in prosecuting cases these days.
“They go to court and they’re just laughed at.”
According to an analysis in Time Magazine earlier this month, the FBI has struggled with conviction rates for several years now after they send cases to the DOJ for prosecution. In less than half the cases the FBI sent to the Justice Department, the conviction rate was only 47 percent in 2017. This number is far below the mean of the 72 percent average for all other government agencies, according to Time.
In the meantime, DiGenova and the others who spoke to TheDC believe it is time for Congress to issue subpoenas to FBI agents who are willing to talk. According to DiGenova, the House and Senate Judiciary Committees can issue these subpoenas.
“Either one of those [committees] would be fine. I’m sure the committees could hold hearings in a New York minute,” he said.
He added, “I can assure you I’ve been approached by agents who want to be subpoenaed for the same reason the guys in the field,” adding, “All over this country there are agents but the big ones the ones that matter New York–Washington I can assure you I’ve spoken with agents who want to come forward.”
Thank You Ms Picket and the DC.
Thursday, May 10, 2018
The 'Russian Collusion' Trial Is On And Mueller May Be The 1st Casualty
Richard PollockReporter
9:25 PM 05/09/2018
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Lawyers for Russian company Concord Management and Consulting, LLC, formally entered a “not guilty” plea in federal court Monday in a case special counsel Robert Mueller probably never thought would happen.
Mueller, weathering significant criticism that his Russian collusion case was thin, unveiled a grandiose indictment Feb. 16 against 13 Russian nationals and three Russian companies. The 13 Russians in question were charged with waging “information warfare” in the United States, interfering with the 2016 presidential election, and conspiracy to defraud the United States.
Mueller generated headlines with the February indictment, safe in the knowledge the 13 Russians were beyond U.S. jurisdiction. Therefore, there would be no trial — only sensational Russian collusion accusations.
Mueller may now have to try the case, and Concord’s lawyers have put the special counsel on notice. The Russian company’s lawyers intend to invoke “discovery” to obtain U.S. intelligence about what they knew of Russian activities.
“I guess Mueller thought it was a freebie, for sure,” former federal prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy told The Daily Caller News Foundation after the court proceeding.
“He thought it could make this association (of Russian collusion) and it would never be challenged in court,” McCarthy, also a National Review contributing editor, said.
Concord retained the services of two attorneys at mega law firm Reed Smith, and the company is demanding a speedy trial. The lawyers indicated they were going to exercise Concord’s rights under discovery to examine all of Mueller’s “evidence” of the conspiracy.
In starting Wednesday’s trial, Eric A. Dubelier, a Reed Smith law partner, entered a “not guilty” plea in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. He also repeated his client’s interest for a “speedy trial.”
McCarthy called Mueller’s entire indictment an “unforced error.”
“One thing you never want to do is to indict in a case that you’re not prepared to try,” McCarthy said.
Mueller tried to delay Wednesday’s hearing and floated a claim Concord had not been properly served notice.
“Until the Court has an opportunity to determine if Concord was properly served, it would be inadvisable to conduct an initial appearance and arraignment at which important rights will be communicated and a plea entertained,” Mueller’s lawyers filed in federal court.
But Concord opposed the motion. “The Special Counsel is not entitled to special rules and is required like the Attorney General to follow the rules of the Court,” Dubelier stated in his response to Mueller.
U.S. District Court Judge Dabney Friedrich agreed with Concord and rejected Mueller’s request for a delay in the trial without comment, which led to Wednesday’s arraignment.
Concord wants a “speedy trial” as provided by federal law, the company’s lawyers also repeated Wednesday. The case will resume July 9.
It is the second legal headache for Mueller in two weeks. Last week, federal Judge T.S. Ellis, III, a Reagan appointee, threatened to throw out the special counsel’s indictment of Paul Manafort since the charges against President Donald Trump’s former campaign manager did not relate to any charges of Russian collusion. Instead, the charges were tied to banking activities that went as far back as 2005 — more than a decade before Trump announced his intention to run for president.
Thank You Mr Pollock and the DC.
Sunday, May 6, 2018
What If Mueller Questioned Barack Obama?
American Greatness
Victor Davis Hanson| May 4th, 2018
Imagine if a right-wing version of Robert Mueller, backed by a properly pro-Trump legal team, had sent former President Barack Obama the same sort of questions that Mueller allegedly delivered this week to President Trump. The special counsel might dress them up in legalese, innuendo, and with perjury-trap IEDs, thereby casting suspicion with the mere nature of the questions.
What if Mueller Questioned Barack Obama?
By Victor Davis Hanson| May 4th, 2018
Imagine if a right-wing version of Robert Mueller, backed by a properly pro-Trump legal team, had sent former President Barack Obama the same sort of questions that Mueller allegedly delivered this week to President Trump. The special counsel might dress them up in legalese, innuendo, and with perjury-trap IEDs, thereby casting suspicion with the mere nature of the questions.
If so, the interrogatories might run like the following—
President Obama:
What did you mean when you were heard, by accident, on a hot mic, providing the following assurances to outgoing Russian Prime Minister Medvedev: “On all these issues, but particularly missile defense, this, this can be solved, but it’s important for him to give me space . . . This is my last election. After my election, I have more flexibility”?
Did you and the Russian government have any private agreements to readjust Russian-American relations during your own 2012 reelection campaign? Were there other such discussions similar to your comments to Prime Minister Medvedev?
If so, do you believe such Russian collusion had any influence on the outcome of the 2012 election?
Did your subsequent reported suspension of, or reduction in, some planned missile defense programs, especially in Eastern Europe, have anything to do with the assurances that you gave to the Russian Prime Minister?
Did the subsequent Russian quietude during your 2012 reelection campaign have anything to do with your assurances of promised changes in U.S. foreign policy?
Did you adjudicate U.S. responses to Russian behavior on the basis of your own campaign re-election concerns?
More specifically, what exactly did you mean when you asked the Russian Prime Minister for “space”? And further what did you intend by suggesting that after your 2012 election you would have more “flexibility” with the Russian government?
Would you please define “flexibility” in this context?
What do you think Prime Minister Medvedev meant when he replied to your request for space, and your promise for flexibility after the election, with: “Yeah, I understand. I understand your message about space. Space for you . . . I understand . . . I will transmit this information to Vladimir.”
Did you hear subsequently from the Russians that Prime Medvedev had delivered the message that you had intended for Vladimir Putin?
Subsequently, did Vladimir Putin communicate with you about any such understanding that the U.S. government would modulate its foreign policy during your reelection campaign in exchange for “space”?
Did any such arrangement in 2012 have anything to do with the later absence of a strong U.S. response to subsequent cyber-attacks by Russian operatives, or to the later 2014 Russian invasions of both Eastern Ukraine and the Crimea?
During the email controversies over the illegal use of a private email account and server by your secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, you stated publicly that you first became aware of her improper use of a private server through press accounts. Yet records show that you yourself communicated with Secretary Clinton over her unauthorized email account. How do you reconcile your public statements with your private actions?
Did you ever at any time improperly transmit classified information over Secretary of State Clinton’s email server under a pseudonymous email account?
Do you feel that you violated federal law by communicating with your secretary of state over an unsecured email server?
Did you discuss in any fashion with your own Department of Justice the ongoing FBI investigation of Secretary of Clinton’s email server and account? Do you know anything about a September 2016, election-cycle communication in which FBI investigator Lisa Page texted to fellow FBI investigator Peter Strzok that “potus wants to know everything we’re doing?” What did you wish to know from the FBI about the email investigation?
When in August 2016 you declared on Fox News that then candidate Hillary Clinton had not endangered national security by the use of an unsecured email server (“I can tell that you this is not a situation in which America’s national security was endangered . . . she has not jeopardized America’s national security”), on what basis did you offer such a blanket exoneration? Had the FBI confirmed to you such a conclusion?
Do you have any knowledge of the contents of any of the 30,000 emails that were deleted by Secretary Clinton?
Were you aware at any time—before, during, or after—of a clandestine meeting between Attorney General Loretta Lynch and former president Bill Clinton on an airport tarmac in Phoenix, Arizona before their meeting became public?
If so, what immediate actions did you take to ensure the integrity of the ongoing investigation of Secretary Clinton’s email account?
Were you briefed at any time on the contents of the Fusion GPS so-called Steele dossier? If so, when and by whom, and what actions did you take in response to such knowledge?
Were you aware that members of your Justice Department and the FBI had relied on the purchased Steele dossier to obtain FISA warrants to surveille member(s) of the Trump campaign staff during the 2016 election?
Were you aware at any time that FISA court judges were not informed of the fact that the author of the dossier has been hired by the Clinton campaign, or had been fired from a cooperative relationship with the FBI, or that the dossier itself was unverified by the FBI or that news accounts about it that were presented to the court as verification of its contents, were in fact, based on selective leaks of its contents to media sources?
If you were aware of any of the above, what action did you take?
Have you ever discussed the Fusion GPS/Steele dossier with Loretta Lynch, James Comey, Bruce Ohr, Glenn Simpson, Rod Rosenstein, or Hillary Clinton? If so when and under what circumstances?
Were you aware that transcripts of such subsequent FISA surveillance were made available to members of you own staff and administration, including, for example, Samantha Power, Ben Rhodes, and Susan Rice?
At any time during the 2016 campaign were you briefed on the contents of the Steele dossier by either your CIA director John Brennan, or Director of National Intelligence James Clapper?
Did you speak at any time with former Senator Harry Reid about the contents of the Steele dossier?
Were you aware at any time that members of your administration had viewed classified transcripts of such surveillance, requested that redacted names of the surveilled were to be unmasked, and then leaked those names to the press?
Did you ever approve or know of direct surveillance of the Trump campaign or transition?
If so, what actions did you take either to reprimand such actions or to prevent their recurrence?
At what time where you briefed by either FBI Director Robert Mueller, or Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein on the progress of the so-called Uranium One investigation?
Did Attorney General Loretta Lynch discuss with you the nature of that investigation?
Were you at any time worried about the compromised status of U.S. uranium sources, and if so what did you do about such concerns?
Did you at any time talk with members of the Russian government or those with ties with the Russian government about the Uranium One sale?
Were you aware at any time of massive gifting from Russian-related operatives to the Clinton Foundation?
Were you aware that Bill Clinton in June 2010 had received a $500,000 honorarium for a speech in Moscow from business interests with ties to the Russian government?
Did you at any time discuss with Secretary Clinton either President Clinton’s speech or her own violations of supposed promises and agreements with your office—specifically that both the Clinton Foundation and Bill Clinton would not have commercial relations or receive gifts/honoraria from any interests seeking commercial agreements or exemptions from the State Department?
Were you aware that Secretary Clinton’s personal aide, Huma Abedin, was as a private consultant conducting business with foreign entities, while still employed by the Clinton State Department?
How and when did you first become aware of the hacking of the email accounts at the Democratic National Committee?
Did your administration have any discussions with John Podesta, Donna Brazile or any members of the DNC concerning such data breaches?
Were you aware that DNC Chairman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, did not offer DNC computers to FBI investigators for examination after they were compromised?
Were you told by any member of your administration why this was so?
Were you aware at any time, prior to James Clapper’s false testimony in a congressional hearing, that the National Security Agency and other intelligence agencies had illegally surveilled American citizens?
Were you aware at any time, prior to John Brennan’s false testimony in a congressional hearing, that U.S. drone attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan had inadvertently killed noncombatant civilians?
Did you take any action to reprimand John Brennan for lying to Congress on two occasions, concerning his false assertions that drones had not killed civilians, and that the CIA had not monitored U.S. Senate staffers’ computer communications?
Did you take any action to reprimand James Clapper for providing false testimony to the Congress concerning NSA surveillance?
Were you aware of the communications between your Justice Department and any local, state, or federal authorities concerning the jailing of Internet video maker, Nakoula Basseley Nakoula on suddenly discovered probation violations?
When and by whom were you first briefed that the Benghazi attacks were pre-planned terrorist attacks and not, as members of your administration had alleged, spontaneous riots resulting from an Internet video?
When and by whom were you briefed about Lois Lerner’s conduct at the IRS?
Did you discuss with anyone Lois Lerner’s decision to invoke her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination?
On what basis did you assert that neither Lois Lerner nor her associates were guilty of “even a smidgen of corruption”?
Was your public exoneration based on any evidence presented to you by internal IRS or FBI investigators? If so, when and by whom?
Why in the last days of your presidential tenure, did you suddenly vastly expand the number of agencies and intelligence analysts privy to classified NSA intelligence gathering?
On what grounds did you take such action, and did your decision have anything to do with your knowledge of the classified surveillance of Donald Trump, or his campaign, or information in the Steele dossier?
In the past, were you aware of the circumstances under which the sealed divorce records of both your 2004 Illinois primary and general election Senate opponents, Blair Hull and Jack Ryan respectively, were illegally leaked to the press? At any time, did you view such sealed records and, if so, when and by whom were you apprised that such records were leaked to the press?
*****
The point is not to embarrass President Obama, but to demonstrate that any president, past or present, could be forced to answer questions to a special prosecutor, both concerning his original mandate but also far beyond it, including matters of his own personal and business past.
His answers could then be used to collate both with public or even surveilled presidential statements to find evidence of inconsistency, false testimony, obstruction of justice, or collusion with a foreign government.
Give a special counsel the man—including Barack Obama—and his team of partisan investigators could find the necessary crime to charge him.
Content created by the Center for American Greatness, Inc. is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a significant audience. For licensing opportunities for our original content, please contact licensing@centerforamericangreatness.com.
Photo credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Thank You Professor Victor Davis Hanson
and American Greatness
Victor Davis Hanson is an American military historian, columnist, former classics professor, and scholar of ancient warfare. He was a professor of classics at California State University, Fresno, and is currently the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. He has been a visiting professor at Hillsdale College since 2004. Hanson was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2007 by President George W. Bush. Hanson is also a farmer (growing raisin grapes on a family farm in Selma, California) and a critic of social trends related to farming and agrarianism. He is the author most recently of The Second World Wars – How the First Global Conflict was Fought and Won (Basic Books).
Victor Davis Hanson| May 4th, 2018
Imagine if a right-wing version of Robert Mueller, backed by a properly pro-Trump legal team, had sent former President Barack Obama the same sort of questions that Mueller allegedly delivered this week to President Trump. The special counsel might dress them up in legalese, innuendo, and with perjury-trap IEDs, thereby casting suspicion with the mere nature of the questions.
What if Mueller Questioned Barack Obama?
By Victor Davis Hanson| May 4th, 2018
Imagine if a right-wing version of Robert Mueller, backed by a properly pro-Trump legal team, had sent former President Barack Obama the same sort of questions that Mueller allegedly delivered this week to President Trump. The special counsel might dress them up in legalese, innuendo, and with perjury-trap IEDs, thereby casting suspicion with the mere nature of the questions.
If so, the interrogatories might run like the following—
President Obama:
What did you mean when you were heard, by accident, on a hot mic, providing the following assurances to outgoing Russian Prime Minister Medvedev: “On all these issues, but particularly missile defense, this, this can be solved, but it’s important for him to give me space . . . This is my last election. After my election, I have more flexibility”?
Did you and the Russian government have any private agreements to readjust Russian-American relations during your own 2012 reelection campaign? Were there other such discussions similar to your comments to Prime Minister Medvedev?
If so, do you believe such Russian collusion had any influence on the outcome of the 2012 election?
Did your subsequent reported suspension of, or reduction in, some planned missile defense programs, especially in Eastern Europe, have anything to do with the assurances that you gave to the Russian Prime Minister?
Did the subsequent Russian quietude during your 2012 reelection campaign have anything to do with your assurances of promised changes in U.S. foreign policy?
Did you adjudicate U.S. responses to Russian behavior on the basis of your own campaign re-election concerns?
More specifically, what exactly did you mean when you asked the Russian Prime Minister for “space”? And further what did you intend by suggesting that after your 2012 election you would have more “flexibility” with the Russian government?
Would you please define “flexibility” in this context?
What do you think Prime Minister Medvedev meant when he replied to your request for space, and your promise for flexibility after the election, with: “Yeah, I understand. I understand your message about space. Space for you . . . I understand . . . I will transmit this information to Vladimir.”
Did you hear subsequently from the Russians that Prime Medvedev had delivered the message that you had intended for Vladimir Putin?
Subsequently, did Vladimir Putin communicate with you about any such understanding that the U.S. government would modulate its foreign policy during your reelection campaign in exchange for “space”?
Did any such arrangement in 2012 have anything to do with the later absence of a strong U.S. response to subsequent cyber-attacks by Russian operatives, or to the later 2014 Russian invasions of both Eastern Ukraine and the Crimea?
During the email controversies over the illegal use of a private email account and server by your secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, you stated publicly that you first became aware of her improper use of a private server through press accounts. Yet records show that you yourself communicated with Secretary Clinton over her unauthorized email account. How do you reconcile your public statements with your private actions?
Did you ever at any time improperly transmit classified information over Secretary of State Clinton’s email server under a pseudonymous email account?
Do you feel that you violated federal law by communicating with your secretary of state over an unsecured email server?
Did you discuss in any fashion with your own Department of Justice the ongoing FBI investigation of Secretary of Clinton’s email server and account? Do you know anything about a September 2016, election-cycle communication in which FBI investigator Lisa Page texted to fellow FBI investigator Peter Strzok that “potus wants to know everything we’re doing?” What did you wish to know from the FBI about the email investigation?
When in August 2016 you declared on Fox News that then candidate Hillary Clinton had not endangered national security by the use of an unsecured email server (“I can tell that you this is not a situation in which America’s national security was endangered . . . she has not jeopardized America’s national security”), on what basis did you offer such a blanket exoneration? Had the FBI confirmed to you such a conclusion?
Do you have any knowledge of the contents of any of the 30,000 emails that were deleted by Secretary Clinton?
Were you aware at any time—before, during, or after—of a clandestine meeting between Attorney General Loretta Lynch and former president Bill Clinton on an airport tarmac in Phoenix, Arizona before their meeting became public?
If so, what immediate actions did you take to ensure the integrity of the ongoing investigation of Secretary Clinton’s email account?
Were you briefed at any time on the contents of the Fusion GPS so-called Steele dossier? If so, when and by whom, and what actions did you take in response to such knowledge?
Were you aware that members of your Justice Department and the FBI had relied on the purchased Steele dossier to obtain FISA warrants to surveille member(s) of the Trump campaign staff during the 2016 election?
Were you aware at any time that FISA court judges were not informed of the fact that the author of the dossier has been hired by the Clinton campaign, or had been fired from a cooperative relationship with the FBI, or that the dossier itself was unverified by the FBI or that news accounts about it that were presented to the court as verification of its contents, were in fact, based on selective leaks of its contents to media sources?
If you were aware of any of the above, what action did you take?
Have you ever discussed the Fusion GPS/Steele dossier with Loretta Lynch, James Comey, Bruce Ohr, Glenn Simpson, Rod Rosenstein, or Hillary Clinton? If so when and under what circumstances?
Were you aware that transcripts of such subsequent FISA surveillance were made available to members of you own staff and administration, including, for example, Samantha Power, Ben Rhodes, and Susan Rice?
At any time during the 2016 campaign were you briefed on the contents of the Steele dossier by either your CIA director John Brennan, or Director of National Intelligence James Clapper?
Did you speak at any time with former Senator Harry Reid about the contents of the Steele dossier?
Were you aware at any time that members of your administration had viewed classified transcripts of such surveillance, requested that redacted names of the surveilled were to be unmasked, and then leaked those names to the press?
Did you ever approve or know of direct surveillance of the Trump campaign or transition?
If so, what actions did you take either to reprimand such actions or to prevent their recurrence?
At what time where you briefed by either FBI Director Robert Mueller, or Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein on the progress of the so-called Uranium One investigation?
Did Attorney General Loretta Lynch discuss with you the nature of that investigation?
Were you at any time worried about the compromised status of U.S. uranium sources, and if so what did you do about such concerns?
Did you at any time talk with members of the Russian government or those with ties with the Russian government about the Uranium One sale?
Were you aware at any time of massive gifting from Russian-related operatives to the Clinton Foundation?
Were you aware that Bill Clinton in June 2010 had received a $500,000 honorarium for a speech in Moscow from business interests with ties to the Russian government?
Did you at any time discuss with Secretary Clinton either President Clinton’s speech or her own violations of supposed promises and agreements with your office—specifically that both the Clinton Foundation and Bill Clinton would not have commercial relations or receive gifts/honoraria from any interests seeking commercial agreements or exemptions from the State Department?
Were you aware that Secretary Clinton’s personal aide, Huma Abedin, was as a private consultant conducting business with foreign entities, while still employed by the Clinton State Department?
How and when did you first become aware of the hacking of the email accounts at the Democratic National Committee?
Did your administration have any discussions with John Podesta, Donna Brazile or any members of the DNC concerning such data breaches?
Were you aware that DNC Chairman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, did not offer DNC computers to FBI investigators for examination after they were compromised?
Were you told by any member of your administration why this was so?
Were you aware at any time, prior to James Clapper’s false testimony in a congressional hearing, that the National Security Agency and other intelligence agencies had illegally surveilled American citizens?
Were you aware at any time, prior to John Brennan’s false testimony in a congressional hearing, that U.S. drone attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan had inadvertently killed noncombatant civilians?
Did you take any action to reprimand John Brennan for lying to Congress on two occasions, concerning his false assertions that drones had not killed civilians, and that the CIA had not monitored U.S. Senate staffers’ computer communications?
Did you take any action to reprimand James Clapper for providing false testimony to the Congress concerning NSA surveillance?
Were you aware of the communications between your Justice Department and any local, state, or federal authorities concerning the jailing of Internet video maker, Nakoula Basseley Nakoula on suddenly discovered probation violations?
When and by whom were you first briefed that the Benghazi attacks were pre-planned terrorist attacks and not, as members of your administration had alleged, spontaneous riots resulting from an Internet video?
When and by whom were you briefed about Lois Lerner’s conduct at the IRS?
Did you discuss with anyone Lois Lerner’s decision to invoke her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination?
On what basis did you assert that neither Lois Lerner nor her associates were guilty of “even a smidgen of corruption”?
Was your public exoneration based on any evidence presented to you by internal IRS or FBI investigators? If so, when and by whom?
Why in the last days of your presidential tenure, did you suddenly vastly expand the number of agencies and intelligence analysts privy to classified NSA intelligence gathering?
On what grounds did you take such action, and did your decision have anything to do with your knowledge of the classified surveillance of Donald Trump, or his campaign, or information in the Steele dossier?
In the past, were you aware of the circumstances under which the sealed divorce records of both your 2004 Illinois primary and general election Senate opponents, Blair Hull and Jack Ryan respectively, were illegally leaked to the press? At any time, did you view such sealed records and, if so, when and by whom were you apprised that such records were leaked to the press?
*****
The point is not to embarrass President Obama, but to demonstrate that any president, past or present, could be forced to answer questions to a special prosecutor, both concerning his original mandate but also far beyond it, including matters of his own personal and business past.
His answers could then be used to collate both with public or even surveilled presidential statements to find evidence of inconsistency, false testimony, obstruction of justice, or collusion with a foreign government.
Give a special counsel the man—including Barack Obama—and his team of partisan investigators could find the necessary crime to charge him.
Content created by the Center for American Greatness, Inc. is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a significant audience. For licensing opportunities for our original content, please contact licensing@centerforamericangreatness.com.
Photo credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Thank You Professor Victor Davis Hanson
and American Greatness
Victor Davis Hanson is an American military historian, columnist, former classics professor, and scholar of ancient warfare. He was a professor of classics at California State University, Fresno, and is currently the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. He has been a visiting professor at Hillsdale College since 2004. Hanson was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2007 by President George W. Bush. Hanson is also a farmer (growing raisin grapes on a family farm in Selma, California) and a critic of social trends related to farming and agrarianism. He is the author most recently of The Second World Wars – How the First Global Conflict was Fought and Won (Basic Books).
Sunday, April 29, 2018
An Imminent Counterattack Begins The Fight of Our Lives: A Must Read
American Greatness
D Hawthorne| April 29th, 2018
Unparalleled government abuses of power are about to become public. The question is what we, the people, will do in response to this overt attempt by deep state players to strip us of our freedom.
Unraveling the Deep State Narrative: Third of a Three-Part Series. Read Part One. Read Part Two.
Four recent developments drive home the unsettling nature of our situation:
First, Charles Lipson writes how Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) “is making a deeply troubling allegation: An official investigation was mounted against an American presidential campaign with no official information to support it. If so, then U.S. intelligence and law-enforcement agencies were weaponized for partisan purposes.”
Andrew McCarthy, on the implications for equal justice under the law: “Too many Trump critics have abandoned all pretense of respecting due process.” Byron York adds: “…the generally accepted standard of justice has been turned on its head. Now, the question is: Can the accused prove the charges false? Increasingly, the president’s critics argue that the dossier is legitimate because it has not been proven untrue.”
Second, a redacted version of the House Intelligence Committee’s final report appeared on Friday, clearing Trump’s campaign of colluding with Russia but describing three troubling matters: First, former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn did not lie to FBI special agents. Instead, what Michael Walsh calls the Left’s “Star Chamber of Horrors” apparently forced Flynn to accept a guilty plea to stanch his financial bleeding, which included selling his home.
Also, Sean Davis reports Obama’s Director of National Intelligence James Clapper “leaked details of a [Steele] dossier briefing given to then-President-elect Donald Trump to CNN’s Jake Tapper, lied to Congress about the leak, and was rewarded with a CNN contract a few months later.” The chronology of Clapper’s and CNN’s behaviors is a damning tale of intentional deep state sabotage of a president. Finally, a group of wealthy individuals has funded $50 million for a new effort by Fusion GPS, Christopher Steele, and a former staffer of Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-California) to continue a Russian investigation.
Think about it. The Clinton campaign funded political opposition research that nobody anywhere has proven to be true, but the same players who generated these unverified tales are going to keep trying for more. Call it what it is: yet another attempt to overturn the 2016 election.
Third, this week also saw the unjustified character assassination of White House physician Admiral Ronny Jackson. The Left’s lies worked again. Neverending “lawfare“ is how the Left will make things too costly for anyone to affiliate with Trump, thereby neutering the president’s ability to govern. No end is in sight there, either. Ask Scott Pruitt.
Fourth, there was Obama’s CIA Director John Brennan’s brazen threat to Trump in response to the president’s tweet, saying “A highly partisan, incomplete, and deeply flawed report by a broken House Committee means nothing. The Special Counsel’s work is being carried out by professional investigators—not political staffers. SC’s findings will be comprehensive & authoritative. Stay tuned, Mr. Trump….” Stunning words, but not new behavior.
These recent developments feed into an even more frightening bigger picture, as Victor Davis Hanson writes: “We are entering revolutionary times. The law is no longer equally applied. The media are the ministry of truth. The Democratic party is a revolutionary force. And it is all getting scary.”
Dennis Prager describes the underlying differences: “We’re in a fight over basic values . . . The Left . . . is opposed to every . . . core principle of liberalism,” adding “If the Left is not defeated, American and Western civilization will not survive. But the Left will not be defeated until good liberals understand this and join the fight. Dear liberals: The Left is [your enemy].”
Daniel Greenfield outlines the battle lines: “[The Left] wants to rule. Political conflicts become civil wars when one side refuses to accept the existing authority. The Left has rejected all forms of authority it doesn’t control . . . their first and foremost allegiance is to an ideology, not the Constitution, not our country or our system of government. All of those are only to be used as vehicles for their ideology. That’s why compromise has become impossible . . . This is a primal conflict between a totalitarian system and a democratic system. Its outcome will determine whether we will be a free nation or a nation of slaves.”
So now what?
The Possum Stirs
With some factual basis and no small amount of hope, 2018 will prove to be the year that we discover Attorney General Jeff Sessions played possum and fooled many people. Why would he act that way? With weaponized agencies, few to trust in an often-hostile Justice Department, and most likely only one try possible to take down the well-entrenched deep state rogues who are trying to unseat a president, no missteps can occur. Furthermore, Trump and Sessions have known for months now what everyone is only lately realizing: there is nothing to the Russian collusion charges. So if they knew they were clean, then they could set traps and be patient.
Sessions’ recusal from the Russia probe drove many people on the Right crazy. But the timing was essential. It followed the start of the inspector general’s investigation prior to Trump’s inauguration, and so has given Sessions “plausible deniability” for partisan maneuvering until the first IG report comes out in May. Then Sessions will have the credibility in the months ahead of the November midterm elections to root out the deep state with the same intensity he pursued and destroyed the Alabama KKK. It is even possible that Trump’s repeated public criticisms of Sessions have been meant to further enhance Sessions’ perceived independence.
Sessions won’t be beginning from a standing start when the inspector general’s final email investigation report (the first of several remaining reports) appears next month. He greatly ramped up leak investigations throughout 2017, personnel changes have already occurred, and some remaining staff may be cooperating witnesses. In December, Sessions made three important decisions:
He re-opened an investigation into Obama’s squashing of the DEA’s Hezbollah drug-dealing investigation in order to keep his Iran deal on track.
Ordered a new look into the Clinton Uranium One collusion deal, which has real Russian players and a Mueller connection.
Launched a new inquiry into the Clinton Foundation’s pay-to-play corruption.
The fact patterns behind these various scandals are generally known; it is only a matter of when to pounce.
Sessions recently directed Inspector General Michael Horowitz to expand his investigation into FISA abuses, building on a March 15 Senate request and the January 18 House Intelligence Committee report which cited sources not interviewed by the committee. That suggests prior coordination of efforts and information-sharing.
The inspector general also just began a probe into whether the leak of Comey’s memos disclosed classified information.
We have also learned Sessions appointed two key people:
U.S. Attorney John Huber was appointed some time ago to work closely with Horowitz, operating from his home base of Utah. This appointment creates a potentially powerful tag-team able to move rapidly from the inspector general referrals identifying evidence of bad behaviors to criminal indictments.
U.S. Attorney John Lausch was appointed to work closely with congressional oversight committees on document production, a longstanding problem in prior times and one that can better be addressed as the inspector general’s work is nearing completion. Lausch’s work will help keep Huber focused on his job and allow indictment-related documents to remain secret until legal referrals and indictments actions are prepared.
If you think Trump is a piece of work now, wait until he has public ammunition about an ongoing soft coup attempt against a legitimately elected president. Part of his power comes from reacting at just the right time and making other people look foolish or worse.
An Action Plan for the Fight of our Lives
Wretchard T. Cat tweets: “The fight for the control of Washington, after a ton of preliminaries and battlespace preparation, is now truly underway.”
First, recognize that we are already in a war for America’s future and, so far, we are losing. The Left’s ongoing refusal to accept the results of the 2016 election and live according to the rule of law, along with their willingness to destroy people’s lives, are irreconcilable with a constitutional republic of self-governing people. There can be no negotiated settlement over such fundamental differences. We must boldly reclaim the righteousness of liberty and equal justice under the law on behalf of all Americans.
Second, winning the war will require unprecedented courage. It is highly likely that the deep state is already engaged in blackmail and bribery to neutralize opponents. We should expect such efforts only to increase and those efforts should be called out. Yet, we know that only a small number of Americans—acting like NSA Director Mike Rogers, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, and Inspector General Michael Horowitz—can change the momentum and get the liberty flywheel turning.
Winning will also require more people to adopt Trump’s “honey badger” mindset, a fearlessness which will be crucial as the fighting becomes more intense.
Third, frame the 2018 election as an existential moment in our country’s history, as a choice between being a free people who rule themselves versus life as subjects ruled by and dependent upon a rogue ruling class. Openly call the latter out for the evil they are doing—a slow-motion coup d’etat. Reclaiming the promise of self-government will be a multi-generation war.
The definition of winning the short-term 2018 battle is to swing election outcomes by holding the 2016 Trump base and persuading at least 7 percent (1 in 14) of the non-Trump 2016 voters (like Alan Dershowitz and even President Clinton’s pollster Mark Penn) who, regardless of specific policy preferences, place a high value on retaining traditional liberal values such as civil liberties and equal justice under the law.
Fourth, let the American people learn the jarring truth by rapidly declassifying every relevant Obama Administration document that highlights abuses of power by Obama, Clinton, Brennan, Clapper, Mueller, Comey, McCabe, Holder, Lynch, Yates, Rice, Power, Jarrett, Podesta, Wasserman-Schultz, and various other Justice Department and FBI personnel. Take the public debate beyond “he said, she said” talk. Promote the inevitable black hat infighting as they increasingly turn on each other once the spotlight is on their wrongdoing.
Fifth, indict and punish every one of the rogues based on those facts. This, with no plea bargains for any higher-level people, is a crucial step toward rebuilding the confidence of the American people that equal justice under the law can be recovered. Then radically restructure the Justice Department, FBI, and intelligence community.
Sixth, after the IG reports come out, pardon those who have been subjected to prosecutorial abuses. Insist Congress impeach Rosenstein—assuming he doesn’t resign first. All of this will neuter Robert Mueller, eliminating the need to fire him.
Seventh, make a clear case to the American people every week of every month, trusting they will recognize the choice before us is a stark one and rise to the occasion. Trust in their desire to see all Americans treated equally under the law and to live as a free people.
Reinhold Niebuhr described what we face: “There are historic situations in which refusal to defend the inheritance of a civilization, however imperfect, against tyranny and aggression may result in consequences even worse than war.”
Victory over this powerful enemy is uncertain. But we learned from our fight with Communism that evil’s Achilles’ heel is hubris and history teaches us they are vulnerable to the weapons of truth and courage. In these dark times, how can we be anything but Americans, and accept the character call to rise to the challenge and be a heroic people?
Image credit: James Montgomery Flagg
Thank You American Greatness and Very Well Put, Mr Hawthorn.
D Hawthorne| April 29th, 2018
Unparalleled government abuses of power are about to become public. The question is what we, the people, will do in response to this overt attempt by deep state players to strip us of our freedom.
Unraveling the Deep State Narrative: Third of a Three-Part Series. Read Part One. Read Part Two.
Four recent developments drive home the unsettling nature of our situation:
First, Charles Lipson writes how Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) “is making a deeply troubling allegation: An official investigation was mounted against an American presidential campaign with no official information to support it. If so, then U.S. intelligence and law-enforcement agencies were weaponized for partisan purposes.”
Andrew McCarthy, on the implications for equal justice under the law: “Too many Trump critics have abandoned all pretense of respecting due process.” Byron York adds: “…the generally accepted standard of justice has been turned on its head. Now, the question is: Can the accused prove the charges false? Increasingly, the president’s critics argue that the dossier is legitimate because it has not been proven untrue.”
Second, a redacted version of the House Intelligence Committee’s final report appeared on Friday, clearing Trump’s campaign of colluding with Russia but describing three troubling matters: First, former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn did not lie to FBI special agents. Instead, what Michael Walsh calls the Left’s “Star Chamber of Horrors” apparently forced Flynn to accept a guilty plea to stanch his financial bleeding, which included selling his home.
Also, Sean Davis reports Obama’s Director of National Intelligence James Clapper “leaked details of a [Steele] dossier briefing given to then-President-elect Donald Trump to CNN’s Jake Tapper, lied to Congress about the leak, and was rewarded with a CNN contract a few months later.” The chronology of Clapper’s and CNN’s behaviors is a damning tale of intentional deep state sabotage of a president. Finally, a group of wealthy individuals has funded $50 million for a new effort by Fusion GPS, Christopher Steele, and a former staffer of Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-California) to continue a Russian investigation.
Think about it. The Clinton campaign funded political opposition research that nobody anywhere has proven to be true, but the same players who generated these unverified tales are going to keep trying for more. Call it what it is: yet another attempt to overturn the 2016 election.
Third, this week also saw the unjustified character assassination of White House physician Admiral Ronny Jackson. The Left’s lies worked again. Neverending “lawfare“ is how the Left will make things too costly for anyone to affiliate with Trump, thereby neutering the president’s ability to govern. No end is in sight there, either. Ask Scott Pruitt.
Fourth, there was Obama’s CIA Director John Brennan’s brazen threat to Trump in response to the president’s tweet, saying “A highly partisan, incomplete, and deeply flawed report by a broken House Committee means nothing. The Special Counsel’s work is being carried out by professional investigators—not political staffers. SC’s findings will be comprehensive & authoritative. Stay tuned, Mr. Trump….” Stunning words, but not new behavior.
These recent developments feed into an even more frightening bigger picture, as Victor Davis Hanson writes: “We are entering revolutionary times. The law is no longer equally applied. The media are the ministry of truth. The Democratic party is a revolutionary force. And it is all getting scary.”
Dennis Prager describes the underlying differences: “We’re in a fight over basic values . . . The Left . . . is opposed to every . . . core principle of liberalism,” adding “If the Left is not defeated, American and Western civilization will not survive. But the Left will not be defeated until good liberals understand this and join the fight. Dear liberals: The Left is [your enemy].”
Daniel Greenfield outlines the battle lines: “[The Left] wants to rule. Political conflicts become civil wars when one side refuses to accept the existing authority. The Left has rejected all forms of authority it doesn’t control . . . their first and foremost allegiance is to an ideology, not the Constitution, not our country or our system of government. All of those are only to be used as vehicles for their ideology. That’s why compromise has become impossible . . . This is a primal conflict between a totalitarian system and a democratic system. Its outcome will determine whether we will be a free nation or a nation of slaves.”
So now what?
The Possum Stirs
With some factual basis and no small amount of hope, 2018 will prove to be the year that we discover Attorney General Jeff Sessions played possum and fooled many people. Why would he act that way? With weaponized agencies, few to trust in an often-hostile Justice Department, and most likely only one try possible to take down the well-entrenched deep state rogues who are trying to unseat a president, no missteps can occur. Furthermore, Trump and Sessions have known for months now what everyone is only lately realizing: there is nothing to the Russian collusion charges. So if they knew they were clean, then they could set traps and be patient.
Sessions’ recusal from the Russia probe drove many people on the Right crazy. But the timing was essential. It followed the start of the inspector general’s investigation prior to Trump’s inauguration, and so has given Sessions “plausible deniability” for partisan maneuvering until the first IG report comes out in May. Then Sessions will have the credibility in the months ahead of the November midterm elections to root out the deep state with the same intensity he pursued and destroyed the Alabama KKK. It is even possible that Trump’s repeated public criticisms of Sessions have been meant to further enhance Sessions’ perceived independence.
Sessions won’t be beginning from a standing start when the inspector general’s final email investigation report (the first of several remaining reports) appears next month. He greatly ramped up leak investigations throughout 2017, personnel changes have already occurred, and some remaining staff may be cooperating witnesses. In December, Sessions made three important decisions:
He re-opened an investigation into Obama’s squashing of the DEA’s Hezbollah drug-dealing investigation in order to keep his Iran deal on track.
Ordered a new look into the Clinton Uranium One collusion deal, which has real Russian players and a Mueller connection.
Launched a new inquiry into the Clinton Foundation’s pay-to-play corruption.
The fact patterns behind these various scandals are generally known; it is only a matter of when to pounce.
Sessions recently directed Inspector General Michael Horowitz to expand his investigation into FISA abuses, building on a March 15 Senate request and the January 18 House Intelligence Committee report which cited sources not interviewed by the committee. That suggests prior coordination of efforts and information-sharing.
The inspector general also just began a probe into whether the leak of Comey’s memos disclosed classified information.
We have also learned Sessions appointed two key people:
U.S. Attorney John Huber was appointed some time ago to work closely with Horowitz, operating from his home base of Utah. This appointment creates a potentially powerful tag-team able to move rapidly from the inspector general referrals identifying evidence of bad behaviors to criminal indictments.
U.S. Attorney John Lausch was appointed to work closely with congressional oversight committees on document production, a longstanding problem in prior times and one that can better be addressed as the inspector general’s work is nearing completion. Lausch’s work will help keep Huber focused on his job and allow indictment-related documents to remain secret until legal referrals and indictments actions are prepared.
If you think Trump is a piece of work now, wait until he has public ammunition about an ongoing soft coup attempt against a legitimately elected president. Part of his power comes from reacting at just the right time and making other people look foolish or worse.
An Action Plan for the Fight of our Lives
Wretchard T. Cat tweets: “The fight for the control of Washington, after a ton of preliminaries and battlespace preparation, is now truly underway.”
First, recognize that we are already in a war for America’s future and, so far, we are losing. The Left’s ongoing refusal to accept the results of the 2016 election and live according to the rule of law, along with their willingness to destroy people’s lives, are irreconcilable with a constitutional republic of self-governing people. There can be no negotiated settlement over such fundamental differences. We must boldly reclaim the righteousness of liberty and equal justice under the law on behalf of all Americans.
Second, winning the war will require unprecedented courage. It is highly likely that the deep state is already engaged in blackmail and bribery to neutralize opponents. We should expect such efforts only to increase and those efforts should be called out. Yet, we know that only a small number of Americans—acting like NSA Director Mike Rogers, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, and Inspector General Michael Horowitz—can change the momentum and get the liberty flywheel turning.
Winning will also require more people to adopt Trump’s “honey badger” mindset, a fearlessness which will be crucial as the fighting becomes more intense.
Third, frame the 2018 election as an existential moment in our country’s history, as a choice between being a free people who rule themselves versus life as subjects ruled by and dependent upon a rogue ruling class. Openly call the latter out for the evil they are doing—a slow-motion coup d’etat. Reclaiming the promise of self-government will be a multi-generation war.
The definition of winning the short-term 2018 battle is to swing election outcomes by holding the 2016 Trump base and persuading at least 7 percent (1 in 14) of the non-Trump 2016 voters (like Alan Dershowitz and even President Clinton’s pollster Mark Penn) who, regardless of specific policy preferences, place a high value on retaining traditional liberal values such as civil liberties and equal justice under the law.
Fourth, let the American people learn the jarring truth by rapidly declassifying every relevant Obama Administration document that highlights abuses of power by Obama, Clinton, Brennan, Clapper, Mueller, Comey, McCabe, Holder, Lynch, Yates, Rice, Power, Jarrett, Podesta, Wasserman-Schultz, and various other Justice Department and FBI personnel. Take the public debate beyond “he said, she said” talk. Promote the inevitable black hat infighting as they increasingly turn on each other once the spotlight is on their wrongdoing.
Fifth, indict and punish every one of the rogues based on those facts. This, with no plea bargains for any higher-level people, is a crucial step toward rebuilding the confidence of the American people that equal justice under the law can be recovered. Then radically restructure the Justice Department, FBI, and intelligence community.
Sixth, after the IG reports come out, pardon those who have been subjected to prosecutorial abuses. Insist Congress impeach Rosenstein—assuming he doesn’t resign first. All of this will neuter Robert Mueller, eliminating the need to fire him.
Seventh, make a clear case to the American people every week of every month, trusting they will recognize the choice before us is a stark one and rise to the occasion. Trust in their desire to see all Americans treated equally under the law and to live as a free people.
Reinhold Niebuhr described what we face: “There are historic situations in which refusal to defend the inheritance of a civilization, however imperfect, against tyranny and aggression may result in consequences even worse than war.”
Victory over this powerful enemy is uncertain. But we learned from our fight with Communism that evil’s Achilles’ heel is hubris and history teaches us they are vulnerable to the weapons of truth and courage. In these dark times, how can we be anything but Americans, and accept the character call to rise to the challenge and be a heroic people?
Image credit: James Montgomery Flagg
Thank You American Greatness and Very Well Put, Mr Hawthorn.
Thursday, March 1, 2018
Justice Dept Backs States Suing Opioid Makers Over 'Illegal Activity'
dailycaller
Steve Birr Vice Reporter
7:35 PM 02/28/2018
The Department of Justice is creating a new task force to investigate opioid manufacturers and distributors, it will weigh in on state lawsuits against the pharmaceutical industry.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced Tuesday he has directed the task force to “examine existing state and local government lawsuits against opioid manufacturers to determine if we can be of assistance.”
Officials across the country are currently suing the largest opioid manufacturers for their alleged “false, deceptive, and unfair” marketing schemes the Justice Department claims ignited the addiction epidemic, CNBC reported.
Sessions also said officials with the Justice Department will file a statement of interests in a multi-district legal action involving hundreds of lawsuits pinning blame on drugmakers for the opioid crisis.
“The federal government has borne substantial costs as a result of the opioid crisis,” Sessions said in remarks Tuesday. “The hard-working taxpayers of this country deserve to be compensated by those whose illegal activity contributed to those costs. And we will go to court to ensure that the American people receive the compensation they deserve.”
Much of the Justice Department’s opioid crisis response has focused on drug traffickers, overprescribing doctors and people committing opioid-related insurance fraud. Officials announced Jan. 1 they were making new resources available to the Opioid Fraud and Abuse Detection Unit that draws on data from Medicaid, Medicare and local coroner reports to root out doctors profiting off the national opioid epidemic.
Sessions announced Aug. 2 the appointment of 12 veteran prosecutors to “focus solely” on targeting doctors and other medical providers taking advantage of widespread addiction to opioids in the U.S. The Opioid Fraud and Abuse Detection Unit is operating in 12 regions the opioid epidemic hit the hardest, including Kentucky, West Virginia and Ohio.
Drug overdose deaths surged in 2016 by 21 percent, claiming more than 64,000 lives nationwide, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The primary drive for the increase is opioids, which claimed 42,249 lives in 2016 — a 28 percent increase over the roughly 33,000 lives lost to opioids in 2015.
Deaths from synthetic opioids like fentanyl, a synthetic painkiller roughly 50-to-100 times more powerful than morphine, experienced a particularly dramatic increase — more than doubling from 9,580 lives in 2015 to 19,413 lives in 2016.
The epidemic is contributing to declining life expectancy in the U.S., officials say. Said span dropped for the second consecutive year in 2016 for the first time since the 1962 and 1963 influenza outbreaks.
Thank You Mr Birr and the DC.
Steve Birr Vice Reporter
7:35 PM 02/28/2018
The Department of Justice is creating a new task force to investigate opioid manufacturers and distributors, it will weigh in on state lawsuits against the pharmaceutical industry.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced Tuesday he has directed the task force to “examine existing state and local government lawsuits against opioid manufacturers to determine if we can be of assistance.”
Officials across the country are currently suing the largest opioid manufacturers for their alleged “false, deceptive, and unfair” marketing schemes the Justice Department claims ignited the addiction epidemic, CNBC reported.
Sessions also said officials with the Justice Department will file a statement of interests in a multi-district legal action involving hundreds of lawsuits pinning blame on drugmakers for the opioid crisis.
“The federal government has borne substantial costs as a result of the opioid crisis,” Sessions said in remarks Tuesday. “The hard-working taxpayers of this country deserve to be compensated by those whose illegal activity contributed to those costs. And we will go to court to ensure that the American people receive the compensation they deserve.”
Much of the Justice Department’s opioid crisis response has focused on drug traffickers, overprescribing doctors and people committing opioid-related insurance fraud. Officials announced Jan. 1 they were making new resources available to the Opioid Fraud and Abuse Detection Unit that draws on data from Medicaid, Medicare and local coroner reports to root out doctors profiting off the national opioid epidemic.
Sessions announced Aug. 2 the appointment of 12 veteran prosecutors to “focus solely” on targeting doctors and other medical providers taking advantage of widespread addiction to opioids in the U.S. The Opioid Fraud and Abuse Detection Unit is operating in 12 regions the opioid epidemic hit the hardest, including Kentucky, West Virginia and Ohio.
Drug overdose deaths surged in 2016 by 21 percent, claiming more than 64,000 lives nationwide, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The primary drive for the increase is opioids, which claimed 42,249 lives in 2016 — a 28 percent increase over the roughly 33,000 lives lost to opioids in 2015.
Deaths from synthetic opioids like fentanyl, a synthetic painkiller roughly 50-to-100 times more powerful than morphine, experienced a particularly dramatic increase — more than doubling from 9,580 lives in 2015 to 19,413 lives in 2016.
The epidemic is contributing to declining life expectancy in the U.S., officials say. Said span dropped for the second consecutive year in 2016 for the first time since the 1962 and 1963 influenza outbreaks.
Thank You Mr Birr and the DC.
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