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:

.@TGowdySC tells Chris there will be action on the floor of the House if DOJ and FBI do not comply with subpoena request.
Watch the full interview 2PM & 7PM ET @FoxNews pic.twitter.com/N74dEVWxg0

— FoxNewsSunday (@FoxNewsSunday) June 17, 2018

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.”
“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: 

.@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

“I don’t want the drama, I want the documents,” Gowdy concluded.
 Follow Amber on Twitter
Tags : doj fbi paul ryan trey gowdy

Thank You Ms Athey and the DC.

Not So Honorable: Docs Show Mueller's FBI Denied Justice To Four Innocent Men

The flip side of  'Social Justice'. 

dailycaller
4:18 AM 06/05/2018 Howie Carr | Host, 'The Howie Carr Show'

As FBI director in 2002, Special Counsel Robert Mueller directed his agents to oppose the pardons of four wrongfully imprisoned men because exculpatory evidence was merely “fodder for cross-examination,” newly revealed FBI documents show.

Four years later, the four men, or their estates, were awarded $102 million by a federal judge in Boston for their wrongful decades-long imprisonment due to FBI misconduct.

Mueller ordered the Boston FBI office to answer a request to him from the Massachusetts Advisory Board of Pardons for an “official version” of the imprisonment of the four men for a gangland murder in Chelsea MA in March 1965.

The four men – Louie Greco, Henry Tameleo, Peter Limone and Joe Salvati – were convicted in state court in Boston of murdering Edward “Teddy” Deegan, a small-time hoodlum, in an alley during a bank burglary.
 
Teddy Deegan’s murder scene (courtesy of Howie Carr)

Within days of the murder, Boston FBI agents knew the identities of the actual murderers, and reported the information to J. Edgar Hoover in Washington. But they allowed a Mob hitman they had flipped, Joseph Barboza, to settle some old scores by falsely testifying that the four men had taken part in the gangland murder he had helped arrange with others.

In 2002, lawyers for one of the innocent men, Louie Greco, were seeking a posthumous pardon for him from the state of Massachusetts. Greco, a decorated World War II veteran, had been living in Florida at the time of the murder, but was nevertheless convicted on Barboza’s perjured testimony. 

Lou Greco in uniform (courtesy of Howie Carr)

Greco died in 1995 after serving 28 years in prison for a crime he did not commit.

Another Boston gangster later testified to a Congressional committee that after the 1967 trial, one of the FBI agents bragged about framing Greco and said, “How does Louie Greco like going from Miami to Death Row? He wasn’t even there!”

For 35 years, the FBI refused to release the evidence exonerating the wrongfully imprisoned men on the grounds of “national security.” It was finally released in 2000 as part of an investigation into corruption in the Boston office of the FBI.

After the state pardons board asked Mueller for the Bureau’s version of its actions, a Boston FBI agent, Charles Prouty, wrote back on May 9, 2002 that “FBI Headquarters in Washington, D.C. has directed the office to respond.”

Mueller directs response to Greco’s posthumous pardon

While conceding that the damning FBI reports contained “impeachment material,” Mueller’s FBI still contended that the innocent men might in fact be guilty, despite the FBI’s own reports to the contrary.

“This does not necessarily mean, however, that Limone or any of the other defendants is innocent – it merely means that they are entitled to a new trial.”

Deegan was murdered on March 12, and the FBI office sent memos to Bureau headquarters in Washington on March 15 and March 19 identifying the real killers – and with no mention of the four men who later won the $102 million judgment.

Mueller, however, tried to convince the Massachusetts authorities that his own Bureau’s documents did not mean that the four men had been railroaded.

“Much of the FBI confidential source information relates to the individuals who were involved in the Deegan murder as principals,” Mueller’s deputy said, underlining the word. “This information is not necessarily inconsistent with the crimes for which the defendants were convicted.”

Prouty did not mention the fact that Greco had moved from Boston to Florida before the murder. Mueller’s agent also did not point out that the siblings of victim Deegan, who had grown up in Boston’s West End with Limone, had earlier written the state parole board in support of Limone’s release. The Deegan siblings told the Parole Board that Limone had warned his childhood friend Deegan to be careful because of the murder contract out on him.

Michael Albano, a former member of the MA parole board and one-time mayor of Springfield, worked for years to free the innocent men.

“Even after the facts of the FBI cover up were revealed,” he said last week on “The Howie Carr Show” after reading the letter, “the FBI continued the cover up with the approval and authorization of Director Robert Mueller III.”

This newly rediscovered letter is the latest indication of Mueller’s role in what may have been the FBI’s greatest scandal ever, at least until the current Spygate controversy which has led to Mueller’s ongoing “investigation” of President Trump.

John Cavicchi, the Greco attorney who found Mueller’s FBI letter in his case files last week, said it had “outraged” him all over again.

“After all those years,” Cavicchi said Sunday, “the feds still couldn’t admit that they had engineered this gross miscarriage of justice. Why couldn’t Mueller, who was in Boston while this frame up was going on, admit the Bureau’s culpability, then apologize and just settle the civil suit?”

In Boston, the four men were always widely known to be innocent. As early as 1973, a Mafia turncoat wrote in a local best-selling book how they were framed by the FBI and its star Mob informant, hitman Joe “the Animal” Barboza, one of the actual killers of Deegan. 

Joe “The Animal” Barbazo through the years (Massachusetts State Prison)

Barboza had turned against the local Mafia, and decided to put several of their members and associates into the Deegan murder plot, while protecting a friend of his, another serial killer named Jimmy “the Bear” Flemmi.

One of the men Barboza fingered, Joe Salvati, had drawn the wrath of the Animal by refusing to contribute $300 to his bail fund. So Barboza testified that Salvati was in the front seat of the car the killers used on the hit.

The problem was, witnesses had seen the man in the front seat – he was bald, like Jimmy Flemmi. So Barboza said that Salvati had been wearing a “bald wig” that night.

Mueller was an assistant US attorney in Boston in the 1980’s as the imprisoned men futilely tried to get their convictions overturned. Greco passed a lie detector test on live national TV.

But the FBI was adamant that they should remain behind bars. Mueller served briefly as US attorney in Boston in 1986-87. Both his predecessor and his successor as US attorney wrote letters to state authorities demanding that the innocent men not be released.

Albano, the former parole board member, has said that he has seen a similar letter written by Mueller during his brief stint as US attorney. But that letter, if it ever existed, appears to have disappeared from state files.

Still, Alan Dershowitz, the retired Harvard Law School professor, recently described Mueller as “the guy who kept four innocent people in prison for many years… right at the center of it.” (RELATED: Dershowitz Dukes It Out On MSNBC Over Mueller)

Nancy Gertner, the now-retired federal judge who presided over the civil case for damages that ended with the $102 million award, then wrote an op-ed piece in The New York Times accusing Dershowitz and Fox News host Sean Hannity, among others, of “smearing” Mueller.

Gertner, who was appointed to the bench by her Yale Law School classmate Bill Clinton, claimed Mueller “had no involvement in that case.”

However, in December 2006, during the civil trial, Judge Gertner wrote a show-cause order accusing Mueller of stonewalling production of exculpatory evidence – “a serious problem,” she wrote.

Gertner Mueller Order to FBI show cause

“This is a case about, inter alia, informant abuse, about the failure to disclose exculpatory evidence bearing on the innocence of the four plaintiffs, about FBI agents allegedly ‘hiding the ball,’ not disclosing critical information that would have exonerated the plaintiff… and not doing so for nearly 40 years.”

She continued, “Given those accusations, the position the FBI is taking is chilling… This Court is not remotely satisfied.”

Gertner said she had been asked by the innocent men to hold the FBI in contempt of court and that she had taken their motion “under advisement.”

“In order to make that decision,” she wrote, “the Court ORDERS that this matter be brought to the personal attention of the Director of the FBI.”

In other words, Robert Mueller III.

Six days later, attorneys for the Justice Department filed a notice of compliance, saying, “This matter has been brought to the personal attention of the Director of the FBI; counsel for the United States have been provided with unredacted copies of the FBI documents on plaintiffs’ trial exhibit list….”

And so Mueller avoided being cited for contempt for court.

During the 1980’s, in addition to the annual letters from the US attorney in Boston, local FBI agents lobbied state authorities to keep the innocent men behind bars. According to Albano and others, two local G-men would go directly to the State House to lobby members of the Governor’s Council, which considered commutations and pardons.

Another former member of the Governor’s Council recalled how the two agents liked to speak directly to the politicians, rather than leave behind a paper trail.

The two FBI agents were John Morris and John “Zip” Connolly. Morris has since admitted taking $7,000 in payoffs from gangster Whitey Bulger and his partner Stevie Flemmi, the younger brother of “the Bear,” who actually murdered Deegan in 1965.

Both Flemmi and Bulger, whose brother was the Democrat president of the Massachusetts state Senate, were longtime “top-echelon” informants of the FBI. Flemmi has testified to the Drug Enforcement Administration that he and Bulger at one time had six Boston G-men on their underworld payroll. Both Flemmi and Bulger are serving life sentences in federal prison; Bulger was convicted of 11 murders and Flemmi of five.

At Bulger’s 2013 trial, Morris admitted telling Connolly about a gangster who was about to flip and testify against Bulger in 1981. Connolly, despite being a mid-life student at Harvard at the time, got the message to Bulger, and the gangland chieftain gunned down the informant and another man in South Boston.

Connolly, the Harvard man, is currently serving a 40-year sentence in a Florida prison after being convicted of orchestrating a different gangland hit in Miami, to cover up still another organized-crime murder, at a golf course in Tulsa OK.

That Oklahoma murder was set up by a third corrupt Boston FBI agent, H. Paul Rico, who was one of the two agents who engineered the frame up of the four innocent men back in 1965. Rico died in a prison hospital in Tulsa in 2003 after being arrested in Florida and brought back to the Sooner state to stand trial on murder charges.

Asked for a statement about the 2002 letter Mueller authorized to be sent to the Advisory Board of Pardons, Mueller’s office on Friday declined comment.

In the Greco family’s 2002 plea for a posthumous pardon, their lawyer wrote:

“Louie Greco died an innocent man, despite numerous unheeded pleas of innocence. His innocence was known prior to trial, yet he was tried, convicted and sentenced to death. Now, the truth is being revealed and those responsible are facing a Congressional and Justice Department investigation. It is time for Massachusetts to officially acknowledge the wrong done to Mr. Greco and his family and remove this blot from his name.”

But after receiving the letter from Mueller, the Board rejected the family’s petition in July 2003.

Finally, in the waning days of his administration in December 2014, Gov. Deval Patrick issued a proclamation laying out the facts of the corrupt frame up by the FBI and Greco’s innocence.

“Any stigma and disgrace,” the governor wrote, “is hereby removed.”

Globe-Walker-Proclamation

Greco had been dead 19 years. He spent the last 28 years of his life in prison for a crime he did not commit – a fact Robert Mueller knew but adamantly refused to acknowledge even after Greco’s death behind bars.

“Even the dead,” Michael Albano said, “can’t rest in peace with this FBI memo.” 

Tags : fbi howie carr robert mueller

Thank You Mr Carr and the DC. 

Dangerous Times For The Constitution and Freedom

frontpagemag
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.

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.

Obama's Spy Within The Trump Campaign ID'd By Internet Sleuths

constitution dot com
Andrew West May 12, 2018

There are very few reasons for anyone to believe that Barack Obama was some sort of saintly, atypical political operative.  In fact, in his absence from Washington, we are just now getting a good look at the democrat’s slimy trail.

Well, to be fair, he really isn’t absent from Washington, having bought a home in the suburbs and hired a team of politicos to “keep tabs” on the Trump team…but that’s for another time.
Earlier this week, we heard one of the most disheartening stories of American insurrection that we have heard in a long time.  According to new reports, the Obama administration had planted a spy within the Trump 2016 campaign, through the FBI, in order to launch a covert war against the conservative candidate.  Now, thanks to a number of highly motivated internet detectives, it looks as though we may have found our mole.

HUGE! Federal Records reveal that Obama, Clapper and Brennan Paid Stefan Halper $282,295 to SPY ON THE TRUMP CAMPAIGN! pic.twitter.com/GoCeIMYCOW

Latest: Obama's Spy Within The Trump Campaign ID'd By Internet Sleuths!

— Jacob Wohl (@JacobAWohl) May 11, 2018

Now, this is a long and confusing story, so I will attempt to break it down into bite-sized pieces for us.
With Peter Strzok’s text messages available to the public due to his outing as an anti-Trump instigator within the Special Counsel’s #RussiaGate hoax, we can determine that Strzok and his adulterous lover Carter Page were both connected to Stefan Halper and George Papadapolous – two men intrinsic to the Obama team’s offensive against Trump.  Then, evidence of a secret meeting between Halper and Obama cronies was uncovered.

On September 13, 2016 Papadopoulos accepted a meeting with Stefan Halper.

Halper approached Papadopoulos unbidden. Papadopoulos had no prior contact with Halper.

Halper, who has connections to CIA & UK Intelligence, asked Papadopoulos: “George, you know about hacking the emails from Russia, right?”

Stefan Halper is a Cambridge Fellow. He was a Senior Policy Advisor to Presidents Nixon, Ford & Reagan (bio here).
Halper has a close association with former MI6 Head Richard Dearlove.

Of course, we can’t ignore that MI6 connection either.

Here is a nice, succinct little timeline of what we’re looking at:

Late February or early March 2016 – Papadopoulos lands a prestigious sounding job that immediately pads his resume.
Early March 2016 – Papadopoulos learns he will become a foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign.

March 14, 2016 – Papadopoulos first meets Mifsud in Italy – approximately one week after officially joining the Trump team.

March 24, 2016 – Papadopoulos, Mifsud, Olga Polonskaya and unknown fourth party met in a London cafe.

April 18, 2016 – Mifsud introduced Papadopoulos to Ivan Timofeev, an official at a state-sponsored think tank called Russian International Affairs Council.

April 26, 2016  – Mifsud claims to have met with high-level Russian government officials who have “dirt” on Clinton. Papadopoulos told the FBI that Mifsud said “the Russians had emails of Clinton” and “they have thousands of emails.”

May 4, 2016 – Papadopoulos gives his interview to the London Times. It is not well-received in London.

May 10, 2016 – Papadopoulos meets with Australian Diplomat Alexander Downer. It is Downer who seeks out the meeting.

May/June 2016 – Halper invites Carter Page to July 2016 Cambridge symposiumregarding the upcoming election.

July 11, 2016 – Carter Page attends symposium with Halper just four days after his July 2016 Moscow trip.

July 31, 2016 – FBI opens Counterintelligence Investigation into Trump-Russia connections.

August 2-3, 2016 – Strzok travels to London to meet unknown party at Australian Embassy.

September 13, 2016 – Papadopoulos accepts a meeting with Stefan Halper. Halper, who has connections to CIA & UK Intelligence, asked Papadopoulos: “George, you know about hacking the emails from Russia, right?”

And while there is little hope that we’ll ever know the full scope of the Obama administration’s infiltration of the Trump campaign, this is a good start.  Now wouldn’t it be nice if the so-called “journalists” of the mainstream media would do their jobs as well as the American people do?

Thank You Mr West and Constitution dot com

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).

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.

The 'Resistance' "Spectacle of Roaring Dishonesty" Is A Disgrace

zerohedge
Tyler Durden

Mon, 02/26/2018 - 15:20

Authored by James Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com,

And Now The Schiff Memo...

The excruciating quandary President Trump presents to the nation is dragging the sad remnant of the thinking class ever-deeper into a netherworld of desperation, paranoia, and mendacity that may exceed even their own official fantasies about the enemy in the White House.

Everything about the lumbering, blundering occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue drives his Dem/Prog opponents - or #Resistance, if you will - plumb batshit: his previous incarnations as a shady NYC real estate schmeikler, as a TV clown, as a business deadbeat, as a self-described pussy-grabber… his vulgar casinos, his mystifying hair-do, his baggy suits and dangling neckties, his arrant, childish, needless lying about trivialities, his intemperate tweets, his unappetizing associates, his loutish behavior in foreign lands, his fractured, tortured syntax, his obvious insincerity, his sneery facial contortions… and lots lots more — and of course that doesn’t even touch the actual policy positions he struggles to articulate.

In sum, Trump represents such a monumentally grotesque embarrassment to the permanent Washington establishment that they will pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the removal of this odious caitiff.

And in the process abandon all reason and decency.

To complicate matters, there really are policy differences that, despite Mr. Trump’s oafish profferings, must somehow be faced for the sake of the country’s future — two of the clearest, just for example, being whether we will have coherent, enforceable immigration laws and whether we will continue to allow the sale of tactical military rifles to the general public.

These are matters, by the way, which people of sound mind and honorable intentions could actually resolve through open legislative debate. And beyond these two examples stand an array of even deeper, urgent, thorny questions as to how this political economy might navigate through a bottleneck of hardships rushing toward us, namely, the systemic failures of finance, income inequality, health care, education, energy, agriculture and the global competition for dwindling resources.

But the activities of the #Resistance appear determined instead to drive the country needlessly toward war with Russia, the arch-hobgoblin they have conjured up like some Hollywood computer graphical alien monster of slavering insectile malice. Having created the monster, and the story-board to go with it, they have filled their own minds with a horror of their own creation, orders of magnitude worse than the rather pathetic figure of Donald J. Trump, the con-man who surprised himself by getting elected president at an anxious moment in history.

And in creating this horror movie, the #Resistance is dangerously perverting institutions that may not recover from being written into the script. For instance, the Department of Justice, its subsidiary, the FBI, and sundry intel outfits whose highest officers have been enlisted as cast members. Can I be alone in wondering how these agencies can mount massive prosecutions of nobodies like George Papadopoulos and Rick Gates while ignoring the much better documented intrigues of officials such as Bruce Ohr, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, Sally Yates, James Comey, Loretta Lynch, John Brennan, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, Hillary Clinton, and possibly even the sainted Barack Obama? Or how they can retain any credibility if these figures just slide off into the gloaming with get-out-of-jail-free cards.

In case you’d like to know, I am personally uncomfortable about Donald Trump as President. I can imagine scenarios in which he might have to be removed from office by constitutional means, in particular, the 25th amendment. But the spectacle of roaring dishonesty mounted by his adversaries from even before the election of 2016 disgraces the very class citizens who we used to depend on to think clearly about the fate of the nation.

Thank You Mr Kunstler, Mr Durden and Zerohedge.