Why should the special prosecutor be completely unsupervised and have an open ended investigation?
Wouldn’t it make more sense if the special prosecutor’s role was more narrowly defined and he answered to someone outside the investigation who could keep him on task? So if, after say 10 months, the special prosecutor had brought in a bunch of people to try and get them to rat out others in the organization and failed at that, he could be given a date to wrap up the investigation.
If Robert Mueller is not given some kind of deadline, in 2024, when President Donald Trump is finishing up his second term, Mueller will still be raiding people’s homes in the middle of the night with guns drawn to get evidence that in 2016 a suspected Trump supporter went to see a Russian movie and spilled popcorn all over the seat beside them – sending a clear message to their Russian handlers either that they are really messy or that they had information to pass along.
Mueller’s investigation after 10 months has already gone far afield from his task of finding evidence of illegal collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin.
*****
Now that former FBI Deputy Director Andy McCabe has been fired, it might be a good idea to reveal why.
The inspector general recommended his firing and Attorney General Jeff Sessions followed that recommendation.
One thing we know that McCabe did was alter the notes on the initial FBI interview with Michael Flynn. The agents who interviewed Flynn, including Peter Strzok – now infamous for texting constantly with is mistress FBI attorney Lisa Page – wrote that he did not believe that Flynn lied during the interview.
Flynn reportedly may not have remembered everything exactly as it happened (who does?) but that is not lying.
One avenue when being interviewed is to answer, “I don’t recall” to any touchy question. Hillary Clinton is known for not being able to recall much of anything. It is a safe response. You can’t be charged with lying if you can’t remember anything and it is impossible to prove that you can remember if you say you can’t. This protects the witness from prosecution for lying but is not the least bit helpful to an investigation.
Another way to handle the interview is to be as forthcoming as possible, answering all the questions to the best of your ability. Most people are going to get some things wrong because most people don’t have perfect memories. It appears that Flynn chose the latter course. He answered the questions and didn’t get everything right.
Where were you on the night of Feb. 3, 2016? Do you remember exactly? Can you guess? I have no memory of Feb. 3 myself, but I would guess I was at home in my living room in front of a fire. If I said that to the FBI and they found out that in fact I had been at a political event, would that be lying? I don’t think so.
But the fact is that the agents who interviewed Flynn thought he was being honest but made some mistakes in his testimony. McCabe, who wasn’t at the interview, decided that Flynn was lying and Mueller arrested Flynn and charged him with lying to the FBI based on what McCabe had decided.
If Mueller is as good an investigator as his supporters say that he is (and he isn’t), he certainly did enough of an investigation to discover that Strzok and the agents interviewing Flynn did not think Flynn lied, and it was McCabe – who only had their notes to go by – who decided that Flynn did lie.
This is not good evidence and it wouldn’t hold up in court. It would be an easy case. All the defense attorney would have to do is put Strzok and the other agents on the stand to ask if they reported that Flynn had lied, and they would have to say no because the defense attorney would have their notes. Then when McCabe was on the stand, the defense could ask if he were present during the interview, if he watched a video of the interview or listened to a tape. Since there was no electronic recording of the interview, McCabe would have to say no. If that is not reasonable doubt, then the legal system in this country is so messed up we need to start over.
If Mueller knew that the charges against Flynn were bogus and he leaned on Flynn to get a guilty plea, isn’t he guilty of prosecutorial misconduct?
*****
Mueller reportedly has given up on the Russian collusion charge against Trump and is now concentrating on an obstruction of justice charge for firing FBI Director James Comey.
Trump had every legal right to fire Comey, and his mistake was not doing it sooner. Right after Trump took the oath of office, he should have tweeted, “You’re fired,” to Comey, but he didn’t.
However Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein sent Trump a memo recommending that he fire Comey. If Trump obstructed justice by firing Comey then certainly Rosenstein, the same man who hired Mueller, also obstructed justice by recommending that Comey be fired. This seems like an entirely fanciful investigation.
*****
Let me see if I’ve got this right: According to mainstream media, when the Obama campaign used Facebook data to target voters with information that would appeal to them, it was a brilliant use of modern technology.
Facebook knew the Obama campaign was doing it and was OK with that use of Facebook data.
When the Trump campaign does the same thing, it is unethical, immoral and possibly illegal.
I think there might be a double standard in play here.
The mainstream media may have to backtrack on this one. Because of the internet, all of that information about how they praised the Obama campaign for its use of Facebook is still out there.
Here’s another one: When Hillary Clinton as secretary of state went to Moscow to “reset” the relationship with Russia, that was wonderful for the US, Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Venus, Jupiter, Mars and the entire Milky Way.
When someone who volunteered to work for the Trump campaign goes to Moscow to give a speech, that is proof that Trump is colluding with Russian President Vladimir Putin to affect the outcome of the 2016 presidential election.
And the mainstream media are baffled as to why people no longer believe everything they say.
*****
It’s great that McCabe was fired. The leftwing media, including and in particular National Public Radio, are blaming this on Trump. But as anyone who doesn’t get their news from NPR knows, Sessions fired McCabe and did so following the recommendation of the inspector general, who is in the process of completing a wide-ranging investigation of what was happening in the FBI under Comey.
No doubt, much of what we have already heard will be documented by the inspector general. For instance, there has been no credible explanation of why there was no grand jury in the investigation of Hillary Clinton, or of why the FBI didn’t go in and seize evidence like they do in every other investigation.
A number of serious crimes were committed by Hillary Clinton and the people on her staff – destroying government property by smashing phones and laptops with a hammer would be one. Regularly sending classified documents on an unsecure server to people with no security clearance would be another. Hillary Clinton giving instructions on how to bypass the secure system set up so that classified information is not on unsecure devices would be another. Destroying government documents – which by law have to be preserved – is another.
It will be shocking if the inspector general doesn’t produce a much longer list of crimes that were committed.
But all of this makes it clear that it is time for Mueller to end his investigation. He can be fired or he can simply admit that he has found no evidence of the Trump campaign colluding with the Russian government to affect the outcome of the election. That is what Mueller is supposed to be investigating.
There is no law against the Trump organization doing business with Russians or in Russia. Even a presidential candidate is allowed to have a business.
But perhaps more importantly, Rosenstein needs to be fired. He should be fired for hiring Mueller – a highly partisan operative who is a close personal friend of Comey, one of the principal players in the investigation.
Rosenstein proved that he didn’t have the best interest of the county, the Justice Department or the president in mind when he appointed Mueller. When Mueller announced his team – made up not simply of people who voted for Hillary Clinton but people who supported her financially and who were involved in her campaign – that was the time when Mueller should have been called into Rosenstein’s office and told he was not going to conduct a highly partisan attack on the president and his supporters. Rosenstein didn’t do that. He made a colossal mistake in appointing Mueller and then doubled down on that by not controlling Mueller.
The best thing for Trump would be to let the investigation continue to fizzle. Let Mueller chase any rabbit that he can find who has any connection to Trump or to Russians until finally even Mueller has to admit that he hasn’t found anything; but it doesn’t seem like that day will ever come. Mueller is supposed to be investigating a very specific charge, but he isn’t. He’s investigating even unpaid volunteers in the Trump campaign.
Sessions needs to step up to the plate again and fire Rosenstein and make certain that the person who replaces Rosenstein is committed to bringing the Mueller investigation to a conclusion.
The Democrats, including those in the news media, will go absolutely ballistic. Let them. The mainstream media don’t have the power that they once did because – with access to information that does not come from the mainstream media – people have discovered how biased they are.
Look at what Rosenstein did. First he advised Trump to fire Comey. Then after Trump took his advice and fired Comey, Rosenstein said that because Trump fired Comey he had to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate why Trump fired Comey, who was looking into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. Comey was investigating this because of the Steele Dossier that the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) had commissioned and funded with money laundered through a law firm.
Rosenstein, knowing that Comey will be a central figure in the investigation, hires Mueller – one of Comey’s colleagues, friends and good buddies – to investigate. If Rosenstein had hired Rudy Giuliani, a former federal prosecutor who happens to be Trump’s good friend, the media and the Democrats would have gone nuts. They would have said that there is no way that Giuliani could conduct a fair investigation of Trump.
But where was the outrage when Mueller was hired or when Mueller hired Clinton campaign contributors to his staff? Where is the staff member on Mueller’s team who supported Trump? The country was divided almost 50/50 in the election, yet Mueller couldn’t find one of the 60 million people who voted for Trump to be on his team. None of them qualified because apparently one of the qualifications was that you had to be a Hillary Clinton supporter.
*****
I suppose to the mainstream media, anything that they can point to in a derogatory manner about Trump is big news.
I seem to remember other presidents firing or forcing Cabinet secretaries to resign, and it was not a national crisis.
It appears to me, knowing only what I read in the news media, that the way this whole thing with the firing of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson happened was that White House Chief of Staff John Kelly called Tillerson and said something to the effect of: You can resign or be fired, it’s up to you. But why don’t you help the president out and resign? It will be better for everyone.
Tillerson then said something like: If Trump wants me out, he has to be man enough to fire me.
So Trump fired him.
The idea that Kelly, a former general, called Tillerson up and beat around the bush about how the president might want to go in a new direction or something of the sort just doesn’t seem too likely. It would mean that Kelly is far different from most retired generals. People don’t get to be generals by not being able to say what they mean or tell people what is going to happen to them.
I think Tillerson has an ego almost as big as Trump’s and he refused to do things the easy way. So Trump did things his way and fired Tillerson with a tweet.
As far as turnover in the White House, yes, there is a lot right now, and it should not be unexpected. Trump came into office cold. He didn’t have the support of the old guard of the Republican Party. He didn’t have the support of the last Republican president, George W. Bush. Plus, Trump said he had come to clean out the swamp.
Trump didn’t know what type of person he needed in a lot of the positions, and if he did know what he needed, he didn’t know where to find what he needed.
The usual practice is to start off filling the positions with people who served under the last president of the same party. Sometimes these work out but often they are simply placeholders. They know the ropes, know how to keep everything running, but they aren’t going to try to move the ball and aren’t necessarily on the same page with the new president. They know their job is to keep the seat warm until the president finds a suitable replacement.
Gradually, a president replaces these folks with people who are more in line with his thinking.
Trump has hit homerun in his appointment of Nikki Haley as ambassador to the United Nations. She seems to have figured out her role in about an hour and has been kicking butt ever since.
Sarah Sanders wasn’t his first choice as White House press secretary, but she is doing a good job of battling with the White House press every day.
I keep meaning to go back and watch a White House press conference when Barack Obama was president and the White House press secretary practically had to go around the room and shake reporters to wake them up and see if they had a question they wanted to ask. They would respond with something like, “What kind of vegetables is Michelle planting in the White House garden?”
*****
One of the huge problems with the left, and particularly the mainstream media that operates as a wing of the Democratic Party, is that it has no sense of humor.
This creates a huge problem for the mainstream media in covering Trump, who makes a lot of jokes and asides when he speaks. If you take the jokes seriously, as the mainstream media do, there is no doubt that Trump is a madman.
It’s a problem for most politicians who are genuinely funny. When Bob Dole ran for president, evidently his campaign staff convinced him that his brand of humor, which was extremely dry, would not be well received by the American people. As a result, Dole came off as this incredibly boring old man who had to be poked to stay awake during his own speeches. (That last line was a joke. I don’t remember Dole ever falling asleep during his own speeches, but since I usually fell asleep about halfway through, I can’t vouch for that personally.) (That was a joke as well. I sometimes, with a lot of coffee, made it to the three-quarter mark.) (Oops, that too was a joke).
It seems every word out of Trump’s mouth has to be absolutely verifiable.
The mainstream media need to lighten up a little bit. If they would listen to Trump without looking for the “gotcha moment,” they would enjoy life a lot more. Trump, and this is painful for the left to admit, is an excellent public speaker. He didn’t fill stadiums, halls and coliseums all over the country for months during the campaign because he was boring.
Having said that, one reason Hillary Clinton couldn’t attract crowds to see her is that she is boring, angry, strident and doesn’t read her speeches very well. However, she can’t really be blamed for not reading them well. According to accounts by her staff, her speech writers were making changes demanded by Hillary Clinton right up until she walked up to the podium, so when she was reading her speech it was often for the first time.
*****
The response of the left to any shooting is that we need more gun control. It’s worth noting that when the Democrats controlled the House, Senate and White House during the Obama administration, there were no laws restricting gun ownership enacted. During that time, Democrats had 60 votes in the Senate, which meant Republicans couldn’t block anything, but no gun control law was passed.
Looking at the video of Broward County Deputy Scot Peterson outside the school while the shooting was taking place inside is an indication that what is needed is better law enforcement, not fewer guns.
What if a ban is placed on selling assault weapons, as it was during the Clinton administration? There are already 300 million guns in this country. Does it seem likely that someone who wants a gun to shoot people will be unable to get one?
Drugs have been illegal for over a century. I remember reading about the war on drugs over 50 years ago. Yet you can go anywhere in this country and buy any illegal drug you want. If guns were made illegal, law-abiding citizens won’t own guns – but they aren’t the problem.
Is someone with the intention of murdering people going to be stopped because possession of a gun is a crime? It sounds farfetched. Convicted drug dealers and other criminals convicted of felonies don’t walk around unarmed because possession of a gun by a felon is illegal.
*****
A student walkout organized and supported by the administration is no more a walkout than a field trip is a walkout.
A walkout implies that the students are protesting in a fashion that the administration doesn’t support.
A walkout from work is when workers leave their jobs during the shift in protest. It’s not when workers leave their jobs to go to a company meeting or clock out at the end of their shifts.
What these student walkouts actually are is the administration using students to further their own political beliefs. It’s wrong and the teachers and administrators who are behind it should have their pay docked for the time they weren’t working but were using the students as political pawns.
*****
Because of the win by Democratic congressional candidate Conor Lamb in Pennsylvania, the Democrats, including their mainstream media comrades, are predicting a Democratic sweep in November.
When the Republicans have won these special elections, it didn’t mean anything according to the mainstream media; but when the Democrats win it means that the Trump administration is done.
If you look at the race in Pennsylvania, if that is how the Democrats want to run, they may be able to win some seats in November – because Lamb ran against Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, and he may not have actually moved to the right of Rick Saccone, but he was so far right you had to wonder why he was a member of the Democratic Party.
The Democrats, without manipulation by Hillary Clinton, would have nominated proud socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders for president. That is strong evidence that the Democratic voters have moved further left. But Lamb, their successful candidate, ran hard to the right. He is also a handsome young man, a veteran of the Marine Corps and was running against a dumpy, old guy with a silly mustache. Appearances count in elections, and in this one the Republican candidate rated about a 2 and he was running against an 8.
*****
Now that Obama has been out of office for over a year, it is becoming more evident how close he came to destroying the country. If Hillary Clinton had won and continued Obama’s policies, the country might be in such sad shape now that it would never recover.
The IRS under Obama not only targeted conservative organizations for special treatment, it also allowed millions of illegal immigrants to file fraudulent tax returns and did nothing about it. The fact that it is a felony to use someone else’s Social Security number didn’t bother the IRS under Obama.
If Hillary Clinton had won, the Democrats would have figured out a way by now to at least grant amnesty to the Dreamers and probably have given them a direct path to citizenship. That would take care of most of the illegal immigrants in the country by chain migration. At that point, when something in the neighborhood of 10 million new Democratic voters had been added to the roles, the Democrats would have a permanent majority in Washington.
*****
Trump says that he’s in favor of raising the age limit on buying assault weapons. Trump has a habit of speaking before checking things out.
Possession of firearms is a constitutional right. The Second Amendment, which guarantees American citizens the right to own firearms, has no mention of any age restrictions.
How can the federal government deny citizens between the ages of 18 and 21 the right to own firearms? It appears this is based on the shooting in Parkland, Florida, where the shooter was 19. So if people his age are going to be denied the right to own the type of rifle he used, shouldn’t 64-year-olds also be denied that right, because the Las Vegas shooter who killed 48 people was 64 at the time of the shooting?
This is a nonsense proposal. But besides the obvious contradiction in the proposal and the constitutional issues, another problem is that “assault weapon” is a term that was invented by the Clinton administration. If refers to guns that look like, but don’t operate like, military weapons. The idea of banning law-abiding citizens from buying a gun because of the way it looks makes no sense. It is akin to passing a law that 18- to 21-year-olds can’t drive cars with stickers all over them because NASCAR cars have stickers all over them and they have top speeds of over 200 mph.
One gun ban proponent put a photo of a gun tricked out to look like a military weapon on Twitter and said that type of gun needed to be banned. This military style gun was actually a bolt-action .22 caliber rifle.
For those in favor of banning guns who, like this person, know nothing about guns, a .22 caliber rifle fires one of the smallest bullets available. None of the mass shooters have used .22 caliber weapons because of the small caliber. It is far more difficult to kill someone with a .22 than with a larger caliber.
Secondly, this is bolt action, not a semi-automatic. Every time it is fired the shooter has to twist and pull the bolt back, put in another round and then twist and push the bolt back into place before the gun can be fired again. It is not a semi-automatic as has been used in mass shootings.
But the rifle does look mean. It has a metal and plastic stock like a military weapon, and a flash suppressor. None of these make the gun fire any faster or make the gun more deadly than any other bolt-action .22.
*****
It’s taken a long time, but finally the Democrats are tired of Hillary Clinton. She lost the presidential election over 18 months ago and she still hasn’t come to terms with the fact that she lost because she was outworked and outsmarted.
According to Hillary Clinton, the people who didn’t vote for her are racists, misogynists, stupid and want to live in the past. That’s a pretty big insult for 60 million Americans.
One problem is that Hillary Clinton has no self-awareness. She talks about how white women who voted for Trump did so because some man in their life told them to. It’s one of the most insulting statements she could make about any group of people – that they lack the ability to think and act for themselves – and she said it about women.
But what makes it ever so rich is that Hillary Clinton owes her success to her husband. Bill Clinton arranged for Hillary Clinton to become the senator from New York. The Clintons didn’t live in New York and had never lived in New York, but the president of the United States has a lot of power and even more power in the Democratic Party. Bill Clinton gave that seat to Hillary to make up for the whole Monica Lewinsky affair and scandal. It was actually a small price for him to pay.
Obama made Hillary Clinton secretary of state, not because of any expertise she had in foreign affairs – even Hillary Clinton can’t name one major success during her four years as secretary of state. Obama wanted her out of the country because he knows how vindictive she is and he didn’t want a tough primary when he was running for his second term.
Hillary Clinton lost both her presidential bids to extremely unlikely opponents for the same reason: She thought people would vote for her because it was her turn and she deserved it. Obama outworked her in Iowa and proved that she could be beaten. It’s all Obama needed.
Trump beat Hillary Clinton because she didn’t think there was any way he could win. Trump also outsmarted the smartest woman in the world by being able to count. Hillary Clinton won the popular vote but didn’t even come close on the vote that matters – the Electoral College vote.
As even the Democrats are now saying, it’s time for Hillary Clinton to go home and find something else to do for the rest of her life. It’s also long past time for Hillary Clinton to come clean and admit to whatever health problems she has. Healthy people can walk up or down a few steps and don’t fall all the time, injuring themselves. On her most recent trip she broke a toe and sprained her wrist in falls. That isn’t normal.
*****
There are a couple of things about McCabe that may have led to his firing that seemed to be overlooked in all the hoopla. One is that he used his FBI email account to communicate with and aid in the state Senate campaign of his his wife, Jill McCabe.
In one email he directs someone to his wife’s campaign Facebook page; that is and should never be official FBI business. He also communicates with his wife’s campaign through his FBI email account. There is no way the FBI has any business using FBI facilities to support the campaign of any candidate.
If McCabe were honest he would have been scrupulous in avoiding any connection between his job at the FBI and his wife’s campaign.
McCabe’s wife received more than $1 million in campaign donations from friends and close associates of Hillary Clinton, and Hillary Clinton was the headliner at a campaign fundraising event that benefitted Jill McCabe.
One of those factors alone should have caused McCabe to recuse himself from any investigation involving Hillary Clinton, and he would have except that at the time the FBI was being run by Comey.
Why – one week before the presidential election – did McCabe suddenly recuse himself from the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s home brew email server? If he had a conflict, didn’t he have a conflict earlier? Was there anything that happened in the final week that suddenly created a conflict of interest for McCabe? Could it have been that one week before the election McCabe realized that there was a chance that Trump, not Hillary Clinton, would be the next president and he made the move to protect himself?
If that is the case then it almost worked. McCabe got within two days of retiring with his pension benefits untouched. Fortunately, it appears that although the leadership at the FBI is corrupt, the inspector general may not be. The inspector general’s full report is supposed to be released in the next couple of months and that should reveal the level of corruption at the FBI.
One more note: Comey, McCabe and Strzok all worked for Mueller. How can he, at this point in his investigation – when it has been revealed that he is investigating, or should be investigating, long time colleagues and friends – not recuse himself from the investigation.
