Attorney General William Barr has faced considerable criticism over his press conference before the release of the Special Counsel report. Many have objected that his account seemed designed as a prebuttal to the report to support Trump. While I disagree with the extent of the criticism, I can see why there are such objections. Yet, the one person who one would not expect to hear from would be former Attorney General Eric Holder who was viewed as a highly political and intensely loyal member of the President Barack Obama’s cabinet. That reputation was highlighted when Holder proclaimed that he was “I’m still the president’s wingman.” Yet, Holder went public this week to remind Barr that he is “the people’s lawyer, not the president’s lawyer.”
Holder further told Barr “You have a responsibility to run the Justice Department in a way that is not political.” It was crushingly ironic from a nominee who had to promise not to put politics ahead of his oath given his role in the abusive use of pardon powers by Bill Clinton. Clinton not only pardoned his own brother but pardoned Marc Rich, a fugitive from justice who was also a major Democratic donor. Rich remains one of the least worthy pardon recipients in history and Holder had to promise that he would serve as an apolitical Attorney General. Holder was later repeatedly accused of being uncomfortably close to Obama as his self-proclaimed “wingman.”
Holder has a penchant for the ironic. He previously called for the full disclosure of the Mueller report despite the fact that such disclosure would include barred grand jury, or Rule 6(e) material. The call was particularly notable from Holder who was rightfully held in contempt for withholding documents from Congress in the Fast and Furious investigation.
Holder also previously predicted that Mueller would charge Trump with obstruction.
That is a very strange thing to say given Holder’s past and his ‘on the run’ status.
i don’t fault holder for a certain amount of loyalty to Obama nor partisanship. The AG job is inherently a political one because it is a cabinet position. however, justice requires fairness to all regardless of party. But for policy matters and high level calls, make no mistake, every AG is political to a certain point, by design of the Constitution
Holder, that was the guy that wanted a frank conversation on race, where the predetermined scrip was white folks saying sorry and black folks scolding them.
Holder, that was the guy who indicted a handful of mortgage brokers for the subprime debacle, and not a single Wall Street Capo was touched.
VOTE TRUMP 2020
The pot calling the kettle black
CDS. Collusion dillusionn syndrone.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-is-unfit-to-govern-11556146230
Trump is ‘Unfit’ to Govern?
Exactly how fit to become president are Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris or Elizabeth Warren?
Suddenly, like magic, we have a new, nonstop “narrative”: Donald Trump is “unfit to govern” and should be impeached for obstructing justice.
You won’t find a more exact comment on what they’ve done than this line from “The Usual Suspects”: “The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist . . . and like that, poof, he’s gone.” Poof, the “Russian collusion narrative” is gone.
Just to make sure I haven’t lost my mind, let me list for the record from the Mueller report’s table of contents the relevant collusion chapter: “IV. Russian Government Links to and Contacts with the Trump Campaign.”
After that, from “Campaign Period September 2015–November 8, 2016” comes the report’s details of its investigation targets, each the subject of an uncountable number of media reports and cable TV commentaries, all strongly suggesting collusion: Trump Tower Moscow Project, George Papadopoulos, Carter Page, Dimitri Simes and the Center for the National Interest, June 2016 Meeting at Trump Tower, Events at the Republican National Convention, Post-Convention Contacts with Kislyak, Paul Manafort.
Morning, noon and night the media pounded that stuff into America’s consciousness. The Mueller report’s conclusion about the Trump campaign’s criminal complicity with Russia in each of these instances was: none, none, none, none, none, none, none and none.
But now they’ve tossed all that down the memory hole and replaced it with the story line that the second half of the Mueller report proves Mr. Trump “unfit” to be president. He raged. He told lies. He told his people to lie. In short, he’s too odious to be president.
Perhaps. Or perhaps the decision tree most voters work their way through in casting a vote for president is more complex than the Trump opposition’s limitless obsession with his personality.
Wasn’t Mr. Trump widely described as unfit when in 2015 he said tortured Vietnam War prisoner John McCain was no hero? You can’t go much lower than that. Or the awful day the “Access Hollywood” tape surfaced? Still, he somehow defeated 16 other, presumably “fit” Republican primary candidates. And then he won a fitness contest with a former secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, who with perfect absence of irony now says Mr. Trump deserved to be indicted for obstruction of justice.
Character surely counts for something, though the last choirboy the voters elected president was Jimmy Carter, who got tossed out after one term by voters who thought that reversing a stagnant economy with high inflation and Americans held hostage by Iran trumped a president’s personal rectitude. The unemployment rate recently has been at a nearly 50-year low.
Since the subject has been raised, one may ask: How “fit” to govern the U.S. are Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Beto O’Rourke or Pete Buttigieg?
Among them, these presidential candidates have proposed or embraced Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, massive college-debt forgiveness and free public-college tuition—with a fanciful, wholly irresponsible cost in multi-trillions of dollars. By comparison, Donald Trump’s $5.6 billion “wall” looks like fiscal austerity. Still, he’s the one beyond the pale of fitness.
Messrs. O’Rourke and Buttigieg, as far as anyone can tell, stand for pretty much nothing but personality. In their case the argument is that voters may now value celebrity over experience. So much for fitness to govern the U.S.
Governance matters. Success at governance—running a country, state or city—should indeed be a measure of political fitness. If so, fitness to govern looks to be in short supply in potholed New York City, homicidal Chicago, needle-park San Francisco and Baltimore, with its five police chiefs in the past five years.
All these cities, protectorates of Democratic governance, are filled with upscale progressives convinced Donald Trump is morally unfit to govern, even as they step around and over the mentally ill homeless lying abandoned on their sidewalks.
On this matter of morality, one more thing. As we’ve written before, there is a straight-line relationship between the country’s hyperpoliticized culture and why many people voted for Donald Trump no matter what. That is, what the left has done to the culture makes Mr. Trump’s persona largely irrelevant to them.
None of this means Mr. Trump is coasting to re-election. The 2020 campaign is a jump ball. It is true that Republicans lost heavily in the midterm elections because of suburban women grossed out by Mr. Trump, who personifies Lenin’s idea of “one step forward, two steps back.”
All presidencies have flaws and failures. But with the collusion narrative finally ended, please spare us two years of the unfit-to-govern sequel.
Also, when Trump noted the “extraordinarily smart people serving our country”, maybe he meant Pocahontas, Schiff, Mad Max, Nadler, Tlaib, or any number of people.
Should be 2020, not 2012.
A racket in the chicken house
There’s life in Eric Holder’s ‘Fast and Furious’ gun scheme yet
Some of the chickens of Eric Holder, the former attorney general, and President Obama are fluttering over the chicken house again, looking for the roost. One of those chickens, as persistent as a tough old Dominecker hen, is the Holder scheme called “Fast & Furious.” This was a zany scheme put together by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms to pressure gun shops along the nation’s southern border to sell guns to criminals, who would then smuggle them across the border to the drug cartels wreaking havoc in Mexico. The guns would, in theory, make it easier to track the evil drug runners.
Several gun shops at first refused to sell the guns to known criminals, but were “persuaded” when they were reminded that federal agents could revoke or refuse to renew the federal licenses they had to have to stay in business. Many of the purchasers couldn’t pass a background check, but the government manipulated the National Instant Check System, supervised by the FBI, to clear them.
Before outraged federal whistleblowers whistled word of what their superiors were doing, more than 1,400 guns had made it across the Rio Grande. When a U.S. Border Patrol officer was shot and killed by a cartel gunman with one of Eric Holder’s guns, the Obama White House rushed into the stonewalling mode that has served the president so well in dealing with other outrages over his terms.
Mysterious rogue agents were first blamed for the killing, but when the pressure of the facts became so great the president invoked executive privilege to resist congressional investigators determined to find out what the president knew, and when he knew it. The House of Representatives eventually held Mr. Holder in contempt for lying to Congress.
Time passed, righteous rage subsided and the president relaxed, satisfied that he and his friends had put the controversy behind them. Then, a week ago, a federal court ruled that executive privilege doesn’t apply to the communications between the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms on one hand and the Justice Department and the White House on the other. The court ordered the White House to supply the emails that Mr. Holder and the president tried to keep out of the public eye.
To complicate matters, the Mexican authorities finally captured “El Chapo” and raided his mountain redoubt. They discovered among other things that he and his security team had a .50 caliber rifle, provided by the U.S. government’s “Fast & Furious” scheme, capable of taking down the police helicopters. The Mexican authorities surprised the thugs and the cartel didn’t have a chance to use the gun.
El Chapo is the leader of the Sinaola cartel and, according to Mr. Holder himself, responsible for “the death and destruction of millions.” He was described by the U.S. Treasury Department as “the most powerful drug trafficker in the world” and worth billions of dollars. He got many of the guns that Messrs. Obama and Holder enabled the cartel to obtain from American suppliers.
The realization of what he and Mr. Holder have done ought to be enough to bring Mr. Obama to tears again. But the president is busy at work now on regulations to make it more difficult for the innocent and law-abiding to buy guns of their own for defense and sports. We might be about to learn just why his administration thought it was a good idea to put guns into the hands of the worst of the worst.
Wash Times
Bit Bucket Blockade Test Run
Smith is corrupt.
In Push for 2020 Election Security, Top Official Was Warned: Don’t Tell …
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/24/us/politics/russia-2020-election-trump.html
13 hours ago … As homeland security secretary, Kirstjen Nielsen became … TrumpIn Push for 2020 Election Security, Top Official Was Warned: Don’t Tell Trump … According to one senior administration official, Mr. Mulvaney said it “wasn’t a …
L4D
An excerpt from Page 91 of Volume II (PDF page 303) of The Mueller Report will not post on this blawg. Every other excerpt from The Mueller Report has thus far posted on this blawg. What’s wrong with the excerpt from Page 91 of Volume II (PDF page 303)?
Attorney General Barr did not redact Page 91 of Volume II (PDF page 303) of The Mueller Report. Turley will not even allow a descriptive paraphrase of that page to be posted on Res Ipsa Loquitur. The descriptive paraphrase was not a copied and pasted from the PDF file. It was typed into the “leave-a-reply” text box the same as this comment. So there cannot be any technical glitch in the descriptive paraphrase of Page 91 of Volume II (PDF page 303) of The Mueller Report. It must be being censored for content that Turley will not allow to be posted on Res Ipsa Loquitur.
There are no obscene words in the excerpt, itself, nor was there any foul language in the descriptive paraphrase of Page 91 of Volume II (PDF page 303) of The Mueller Report. There’s no valid reason to censor that content. None whatsoever.
Turley is a Republican.
Republicans can’t win without cheating.
Turley can’t win without cheating.
Go to Page 91 of Volume II (PDF page 303) of The Mueller Report and read all about it.
Republican cheaters cheating is NOT The Rule of Law. It’s merely what Republicans really mean by the phrase–The Rule of Republican Cheaters Cheating.
They’re going to go back, Vlad, and do it again in 2020.
It’s simple. Get your own blog if you don’t like how Jonathan Turley writes his. I’m sure at least one other person posting under six names here would read it.
L4D Project: Excerpted from the article linked above:
Ms. Nielsen left the Department of Homeland Security early this month after a tumultuous 16-month tenure and tensions with the White House. Officials said she had become increasingly concerned about Russia’s continued activity in the United States during and after the 2018 midterm elections — ranging from its search for new techniques to divide Americans using social media, to experiments by hackers, to rerouting internet traffic and infiltrating power grids.
But in a meeting this year, Mick Mulvaney, the White House chief of staff, made it clear that Mr. Trump still equated any public discussion of malign Russian election activity with questions about the legitimacy of his victory. According to one senior administration official, Mr. Mulvaney said it “wasn’t a great subject and should be kept below his level.”
Even though the Department of Homeland Security has primary responsibility for civilian cyberdefense, Ms. Nielsen eventually gave up on her effort to organize a White House meeting of cabinet secretaries to coordinate a strategy to protect next year’s elections.
[edit]
Ms. Nielsen grew so frustrated with White House reluctance to convene top-level officials to come up with a governmentwide strategy that she twice pulled together her own meetings of cabinet secretaries and agency heads. They included top Justice Department, F.B.I. and intelligence officials to chart a path forward, many of whom later periodically issued public warnings about indicators that Russia was both looking for new ways to interfere and experimenting with techniques in Ukraine and Europe.
[edit]
A second senior administration official said Ms. Nielsen began pushing after the November midterms for the governmentwide efforts to protect the 2020 elections, but only after it became increasingly clear that she had fallen out of Mr. Trump’s favor for not taking a harder line against immigration.
That official said Ms. Nielsen wanted to make election security a top priority at meetings of Mr. Trump’s principal national security aides, who resisted making it a focus of the discussions given that the 2020 vote was, at the time, nearly two years away.
U N RESOLUTION SOUGHT TO END RAPE AS WEAPON OF WAR
BUT TRUMP ADMINISTRATION DIDN’T LIKE LANGUAGE
When Denis Mukwege, a Congolese gynecologist, and Nadia Murad, an Iraqi Yazidi were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last October for their work to stop the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war, there was widespread praise from all parts of the world, including the United States.
But when the Trump administration was asked this month to do its part, and to pass a U.N. resolution to end sexual violence in war, things suddenly looked a bit more complicated.
Until the end, international politicians and celebrities urged the United States to “stand on the right side of history,” as actor George Clooney said, and to “ensure [victims’] voices are at the center of our response,” as German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas and actress Angelina Jolie wrote in an op-ed for The Washington Post.
But to no avail.
On Tuesday, the U.N. Security Council finally passed that resolution, but only in a watered-down version, diluted by the Trump administration.
European allies are furious.
France’s U.N. ambassador, François Delattre, lashed out at the United States for what he called an “intolerable and incomprehensible” stance.
U.S. allies abroad have grown accustomed to a U.S. administration with interests that are often diametrically opposed to theirs, including on trade, Iran and the European Union. But sexual violence in war? Really?
The move to water down Tuesday’s resolution followed weeks of U.S. objections to remove all references in that paper to reproductive and sexual health, which the U.S. delegation feared would be understood as support for abortions. Like prior Republican administrations, the Trump administration has rolled back much of the support granted to nongovernmental organizations for projects that support or facilitate abortions.
In the Security Council, the United States wasn’t alone in its opposition to the original resolution: Potentially encouraged by the U.S. move, China and Russia threatened to join the protest, even though both had previously supported or abstained from similar resolutions in the U.N. General Assembly.
In the Security Council, China and Russia also opposed parts of the resolution that would have made it easier for international organizations to track perpetrators of sexual violence in war.
After the references to reproductive health were removed at U.S. request, both nations abstained on Tuesday, and the resolution passed 13-0.
Edited from: “The U N Wanted To End Sexual Violence. Then The Trump Administration Had Objections”
Today’s WASHINGTON POST
BUT TRUMP ADMINISTRATION DIDN’T LIKE LANGUAGE SUPPORTING NGO PROJECTS THAT FACILITATE ABORTIONS.
There, you dishonest hack, I fixed it for you.
Olly you’re saying that women raped by enemy soldiers should ‘just deal with it’..??
Olly you’re saying that women raped by enemy soldiers should ‘just deal with it’..??
Nope. Those are your words. That is a window into your twisted, narrow mind.
Olly, that’s what the issue is about. You never read it, I’m sure. Just popping off like a typical Trumper. Facts don’t even matter. Not in the Trump era. Not to Trumpers, anyway.
Peter Shill needs a lobotomy… or maybe a brain transplant from Hillary?
Bill Clinton: A Reckoning
Feminists saved the 42nd president of the United States in the 1990s. They were on the wrong side of history; is it finally time to make things right?
The Democratic Party needs to make its own reckoning of the way it protected Bill Clinton. The party needs to come to terms with the fact that it was so enraptured by their brilliant, Big Dog president and his stunning string of progressive accomplishments that it abandoned some of its central principles. The party was on the wrong side of history, and there are consequences for that. Yet expedience is not the only reason to make this public accounting. If it is possible for politics and moral behavior to coexist, then this grave wrong needs to be acknowledged. If Weinstein and Mark Halperin and Louis C. K. and all the rest can be held accountable, so can our former president and so can his party, which so many Americans so desperately need to rise again.
Excerpt from a Vast Right Wing birdcage paper poop catcher called
https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/11/reckoning-with-bill-clintons-sex-crimes/545729/
If you’re certain that’s what the issue was about, then you should have no difficulty providing the evidence to prove it.
I’ll wait.
Olly, it’s right there in the article, you idiot!
Where is the evidence?
Where is the documentation?
If Weinstein and Mark Halperin and Louis C. K. and all the rest can be held accountable, so can our former president and so can his party, which so many Americans so desperately need to rise again.
You are pulling a Bill Clinton maneuver
Nope. I just read the article again and there is no mention that President Trump believes sexual assault victims need to just deal with it.
So, you’re still on the clock.
Trump just doesn’t want survivors of systematic rape to know about abortion. That, in effect, sounds like ‘just deal with it’.
That, in effect, sounds like…
Therein lies your fundamental problem; you seem to believe whatever you can imagine is equivalent to fact. And this little exercise has proven your it’s right there in the article statement to be just another example of your intellectual dishonesty.
Mr. H, they are all Flaming Dipsticks with Broken-Off Tips.
Chief Olly is no exception.
BS That’s the only interpretation of your comment Olly, unless you think your “thoughts and prayers” and adoption counseling in Yemen are options.
BS That’s the only interpretation of your comment Olly
Yeah, pretty much the operational definition of narrow mind.
Why are our trolls so lame?
Send us worthy trolls!!!
RE. ABOVE:
When ISIS overwhelmed the Iraqi Army, capturing vast territory, Iraq’s Yazidi minority was subjected to brutal oppression. ISIS actually made a point of enslaving Yazidi and subjecting them to systematic rape. It was that ‘sexual genocide’ that inspired the U N to craft a resolution addressing the issue of rape as a weapon of war.
But the Trump administration felt language in that resolution allowed for abortions to women raped by invading soldiers. So the Trump administration pressured the U N to water-down the resolution to that no mention is made of ‘reproductive choices’ for women raped. In other words, the Trump Administration would force female victims to carry the babies of enemy soldiers who raped them.
Trump found support from Russia and China on this matter. It seems those powers are not too keen on having soldiers subject to rape charges in international courts. Therefore the U S is now taking a highly dubious stand to appease Evangelicals back in the U.S.
Peter Shill, tell your Führer, George Soros to buy several cases of these fine shirts made in Russia 2 support da cause
_____
Bill Clinton Rape Shirt
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Estovir, if you can’t actually make real arguments, why are you on this thread???
People interacting here like to debate. All you want to do is keep changing the subject with endless “What about Hillary?” posts. What a loser you are!
They probably have your size, Petey. You will look fabulous in it
Gotta pander to all of those Evangelicals, like Hypocrite-in-Chief Mikey Pence.
Any voter in the 2016 election who wants to admit that their mind and their vote was changed by what they now believe may have been an interaction with a Russian disinformation factory is welcome to do so. Don’t be bashful! Stand up and take a bow.
That’s a great point Malcolm. Where are all the voters that have come forward and admitted they would have voted differently if it were not for Russian meddling in our election? How many people voted the way they did because of the email evidence and not because of how that evidence was exposed?
It is a great point, Malcolm and Olly. If American voters are convinced to vote a certain way because of some Facebook posts or other internet garbage, we have bigger problems than foreign troll operations.
Richard Dreyfus and some others have pushed for some standards in schools regarding a basic knowledge of civics, history, etc.
It’s not likely to happen in the short term, but there efforts should be recognized.
In the meantime, as Malcolm suggests, we can find out which voters were swayed🤔, in which states, and by which Russian Facebook comments.
Tom, Russian Military Intelligence Units were assigned to the interference campaign. And Putin directed numerous operatives to contact members of Trump’s campaign. But here on this thread we have an aggressive effort by Trumper’s to minimize the whole threat as ‘just a few Facebook ads’.
And it’s funny, Tom, because you’re always denying the Fox News influence. Yet we can see it right here.
https://www.npr.org/2019/04/19/714890832/mueller-report-raises-new-questions-about-russias-hacking-targets-in-2016?utm_campaign=storyshare&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&fbclid=IwAR0U9DbDNSJ7Ds129s9jI3xh2t0ADTfcsjvEk1V8Y0EbnxZfr9FYnWieV-M
Peter, you cannot even specify the content of the ‘interference’. You’re also taking the Mueller crew’s contentions at face value, contentions they knew they’d never have to prove. No non-fatuous person does that.
Absurd,
I think they said “bad things” about Hillary. Betcha they were the only ones.
Tabby, you’re just aggressively denying the Mueller Report. If the findings were only a ‘few Facebook ads’ the Barr summary would have said that.
It would see you did everything to avoid reading anything about the report. And now you expect me to review the whole report here. What a phony!!
Peter Shill sez
<emTabby, you’re just aggressively denying the Mueller Report.
Nope, you are.
Your trolling days are behind you, Missy.
Memo to George Soros: your trolls on here are spent. Send them back to Russia
😉
______
Democrat Jerry Nadler’s No Collusion Denial Even Stuns CNN Anchor
Democrat Rep. Jerry Nadler had a mental breakdown on CNN’s flagship Sunday talk show telling himself that what the facts say is not true.
His first appearance was on the CNN show “State of the Union” which was hosted by Dana Bash, who was filling in for Jake Tapper.
“Our reporting is that there will be no further indictments in the Mueller probe. That means in the end, no member of the Trump campaign was charged with conspiring with the Russian government to influence the election,” Bash said.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3QFhqyGrtc
“Do you accept that no member of the Trump team engaged in that kind of criminal conspiracy with Russia?” she said.
“Well, I don’t know. First of all, we don’t know what indictments are forthcoming from other investigations that have been spun out by the special prosecutor to the Southern District of New York or the Eastern District of Virginia,” Rep. Nadler said, moving the goalposts.
“But his main mission was about Russia. Do you think he, Mueller would send that to other parts of the Justice Department?” Bash said incredulously.
“I don’t know. That’s one of the things we’ll have to see when we read the report and that’s one of the reason yes it’s so crucial the entire report and the evidence underlying it be released to the public,” he said.
Does Nadler need mental help?
“Transparency is key here. I mean, obviously, we know there — we know there was some collusion,” he said ignoring the evidence that there was not.
“We know the president’s son and campaign manager involved in a meet with the Russians to receive stolen — what they thought was to receive stolen information — information stolen from the Russians by the Democratic National Committee as part of the Russian government attempt to help Trump in the election. That’s the way the e-mail inviting them to the meeting put it,” he said.
“But none of what you just said has risen to the level of criminal indictment by the special counsel,” Bash shot back.
Advertisement – story continues below
“No, it hasn’t. As far as we know. But we know there was collusion. Why there’s been no indictments, we don’t know,” he said.
Why has there been no indictments? It could be because there was no collusion you clown.
“Let me say further. We know a number of things. We know that the president pressured the FBI to go easy, to stop investigating Flynn and various other people,” he said.
“We know that he fired the FBI director as he put it to NBC to take care of the Russian thing in order to stop the investigation of various people associated with him,” he said.
“We know that he concocted the lie about the purpose of that Russian meeting. We know that he — that a lot of his top associates have been indicted and convicted, and we know that he has engaged in relentless two-year attack against the FBI and various law enforcement agencies,” he said.
This is a special level of derangement and denial. To look at the evidence, know that there is no collusion, and still say there was.
It really looked like he was having a mental breakdown on national television, live for everyone in America to see.
It even stunned Bash.
“What you are describing is evidence to back up what you said before that you believe the president has obstructed justice. You still believe that?” Bash said in disbelief.
“Well, there have been obstructions of justice, whether they are — clearly, whether they are criminal obstruction is another question. But we have — the special prosecutor is limited in scope. His job was limited in scope and limited to crimes. What Congress has to do is look at a broader picture. We are in charge — we have the responsibility of protecting the rule of law, of looking at obstructions of justice, abuses of power, at corruption, in order to protect the rule of law so that our democratic institutions are not greatly damaged by this president,” he said.
– The Federalist
Damn. The only thing the Russians need to do is to protect our power grid so these idiots can communicate with the American people.
Manafort breached his cooperation agreement with the Special Counsel’s Office. That meant that none of Manafort’s testimony was admissible in a court of law. And that meant that Mueller could not show “willfulness” on the part of the Trump campaign with “admissible” evidence. And that meant that Mueller could not return an indictment against the Trump campaign for Conspiracy to Defraud the United States.
That does not mean that there was no Conspiracy to Defraud the United States. It only means that there was insufficient “admissible” evidence to show willfulness on the part of the Trump campaign. There may be evidence to show that Trump abused the pardon power to tamper with Manafort as a witness. If so, then that evidence might not be admissible in a court of law, either. But it could be admissible at an Impeachment hearing in The House or an Impeachment trial in The Senate.
There WAS a conspiracy to defraud the Government of the United States of America. Nellie Ohr and Bruce Ohr were central to it, conveying an “opposition research” document compiled by Hillary Clinton’s campaign from Mrs. Ohr to Mr. Ohr, who then made it available as the foundation of a falsified application to a FISA court for surveillance on US citizens that has been shown by the Mueller report not to be legally warranted.
The L4D Project marches on. Shadows on a wall.
The section of The Mueller Report discussing the Internet Research Agency remains one of the most heavily redacted portions of the Special Counsel’s investigation due Harm To An Ongoing Matter–namely the trial of Concord Management. Here is a brief excerpt from Page 23 of The Mueller Report that is both preceded and followed by more redactions than what is publicly disclosed:
Instagram accounts had hundreds of thousands of US. participants. IRA-controlled Twitter accounts separately had tens of thousands of followers, including multiple US. political figures who retweeted IRA-created content. In November 2017, a Facebook representative testified that Facebook had identified 470 IRA-controlled Facebook accounts that collectively made 80,000 posts between January 2015 and August 2017. Facebook estimated the IRA reached as many as 126 million persons through its Facebook accounts.6 In January 2018, Twitter announced that it had identified 3,814 IRA-controlled Twitter accounts and notified approximately 1.4 million people Twitter believed may have been in contact with an IRA-controlled account?’
BTW, Page 23 is the PDF file page number. It is also Page 19 in The Mueller Report. The next ten pages of The Report feature many times more redacted sentences than publicly disclosed sentences. Some of those pages are entirely redacted. Guess who is most interested in reading the evidence behind those redactions? That’s right. Vladimir Putin of The Russian Federation is especially keen on reading whatever is behind those many redactions. Gee. I wonder why?
Absurd,
Without people like our Hollywood Patriot endlessly defending America from FOX NEWS😮, Russians😳,and Trumpers🤪 what would become of the U.S.?
( The Brock-Boy left out “right-wing media”, that other standard part of his inventory of Phases To Be Repeated Ad Nauseum. But I’m confident he’ll get back to that one)
You forgot to mention the NYTs. The Russians aren’t getting their money’s worth
I’ve used the New York times as sources, with links to their articles.
I also used the LA Times, NBC, ABC, C-Span , the WaPo and others on the same way.
None seem to be acceptable to to The One Who Robotically Recites “Fox News, Right Wing Media”, etc, etc.
Uh, the number of posters here who regularly denounce the NYTs far outnumber those noting Fox News as the primary source for Trumpsters and I don’t see you mockingtheir posts, even though the NYTs is a far superior news source.
Uh, the number of those. Spouting Fox news far outnumbers anyone citing Fox News. It’s a blanket, chicken**** stunt commong used by several here on this blog.
And it doesn’t even matter if the person watches Fox….it is just thrown out there as a gimmick. I can’t proofread this die to no way to see it, so there may be a bunch of typos
Richard Dreyfus and some others have pushed for some standards in schools regarding a basic knowledge of civics, history, etc.
Exactly. The push for civics literacy is thwarted by cries of disenfranchisement, which is patently absurd. How can anyone legitimately decry foreign (or domestic) interference in our election process and also be opposed to efforts to increase civics literacy?
Easy. If you make civics literacy a condition for exercising the right to vote, then you will be disenfranchising citizens. If you don’t make civics literacy a condition for exercising the right to vote, then you will not be disenfranchising people. Either way, civics literacy has nothing whatsoever to do with foreign interference in U.S. elections.
It does, actually. An electorate who aren’t ignorant of their legal rights and what is required of their public servants can’t be lied to as easily through “opposition research”. A less ignorant electorate wouldn’t have voted Bill Clinton into the highest office in the land twice, and wouldn’t nearly have voted his wife into that same office.
It’s unlikely that we’ll ever be able to stop foreign ( or domestic) propagandists trolls from doing there thing on the internet.
As Jean F. noted, civics literacy makes it less likely that the propaganda will influence a person’s vote.
And I mentioned earlier that if the influence of propagandists is that strong, we have a bigger problem than propagantists trolling the internet.
In spite of L4B’s claim to the contrary, civics literacy is important if the goal is to neutralize propagandists.
You both are correct. There is no logic in opposing civics education and increasing civics literacy if you’re concerned with preventing the influence of foreign interference in our election process. The same goes for opposition to voter ID laws. What logic is there in opposing laws that ensure only eligible voters are voting while at the same time opposing the foreign interference in our elections? If any laws actually disenfranchise otherwise eligible voters, then the law needs to address the flaw that creates the disenfranchisement, while retaining the core of the law.
If you make civics literacy a condition for exercising the right to vote, then you will be disenfranchising citizens. If you don’t make civics literacy a condition for exercising the right to vote, then you will not be disenfranchising people.
Millions of our citizens are not granted the privilege of entering the franchise or have been barred from it. Why is that?
But universal suffrage — using the word in its strictest sense — is not one of those sacred dogmas which it is a crime to examine or doubt. In fact, serious objections may be made to universal suffrage.
In the first place the word universal conceals a gross fallacy. For example, there are 36 million people in France. Thus, to make the right of suffrage universal, there should be 36 million voters. But the most extended system permits only 9 million people to vote. Three persons out of four are excluded. And more than this, they are excluded by the fourth. This fourth person advances the principle of incapacity as his reason for excluding the others.
Universal suffrage means, then, universal suffrage for those who are capable. But there remains this question of fact: Who is capable? Are minors, females, insane persons, and persons who have committed certain major crimes the only ones to be determined incapable?
The Reason Why Voting Is Restricted
A closer examination of the subject shows us the motive which causes the right of suffrage to be based upon the supposition of incapacity. The motive is that the elector or voter does not exercise this right for himself alone, but for everybody. The most extended elective system and the most restricted elective system are alike in this respect. They differ only in respect to what constitutes incapacity. It is not a difference of principle, but merely a difference of degree. If, as the republicans of our present-day Greek and Roman schools of thought pretend, the right of suffrage arrives with one’s birth, it would be an injustice for adults to prevent women and children from voting. Why are they prevented? Because they are presumed to be incapable. And why is incapacity a motive for exclusion? Because it is not the voter alone who suffers the consequences of his vote; because each vote touches and affects everyone in the entire community; because the people in the community have a right to demand some safeguards concerning the acts upon which their welfare and existence depend.
The Answer Is to Restrict the Law
In fact, if law were restricted to protecting all persons, all liberties, and all properties; if law were nothing more than the organized combination of the individual’s right to self defense; if law were the obstacle, the check, the punisher of all oppression and plunder — is it likely that we citizens would then argue much about the extent of the franchise?
Under these circumstances, is it likely that the extent of the right to vote would endanger that supreme good, the public peace? Is it likely that the excluded classes would refuse to peaceably await the coming of their right to vote? Is it likely that those who had the right to vote would jealously defend their privilege? If the law were confined to its proper functions, everyone’s interest in the law would be the same. Is it not clear that, under these circumstances, those who voted could not inconvenience those who did not vote?
The Law; Frederic Bastiat
Advocating for civics education is not the same as requirng civics literacy to vote.
Trump loses the vote either way and did in 2016. This guy has never won a plurality, never will and has never even broken 50% approval – a lower bar than a vote – in a poll.
This guy has never won a plurality,
He did in the only tally that mattered; and by a wide margin. 🙂
How many previous elections were there where Trump didn’t get a plurality? The comment that he’d “never won a plurality’ omplies that he was a political candidate in more than one election.
I have no idea. Even if he’s never had a plurality in any election, he’s still the POTUS due to his plurality in the Electoral College. 🙂
Brave question, Malcolm. Explain how researchers could possibly determine who was influenced and how many votes were changed.
I can tell you this: During 2016 the Bernie Bros on my Facebook stream were constantly posting memes from Russian trolls. It was a daily thing for months.
Best way would be to appoint another Special Counsel with a staff of researchers, socialogists, etc. and screw around for another few years answering that question.
Russian Twitter Trolls Shift Strategy For 2020 Election | HillReporter.com
https://hillreporter.com/russian-twitter-trolls-shift-strategy-for-2020-election-27003
Mar 9, 2019 … Russian Twitter Trolls Shift Strategy For 2020 Election … In 2016 and then again in 2018, cybersecurity experts say that Russian trolls infiltrated social media websites … Some trolls have been caught hacking into computers which are not linked to Russia, and then creating multiple accounts on social media …
All obvious, but it’s clear that sometimes people need the obvious to be pointed out. Holder is either clueless or shameless. Not sure it matters which, but it’s amazing anybody even on the left puts any weight on a single word he ever says. Or said.
Yeah, BUT Holder is no longer in office. Barr is, so Barr’s conduct is relevant. Barr absolutely does not act like the people’s AG. Bar acts against the interests of the American people by doing damage control for someone who cheated to get into the White House, who is no patriot, who met with Russians and supplied key polling information to assist Russians in interfering with the 2016 election to his advantage, who was working a deal with Russian oligarchs while a candidate and then lied about it, who was approached by Russians to get dirt on his opponent and then failed to report this to the FBI, and all of the other “corrupt” things spelled out in the Mueller Report. All of the bad conduct by Team Trump has implications for national security and the integrity of our elections. None of Turley’s criticism of Holder and Clinton is remotely comparable.
Jon, this is just another Kellyanne Pivot.
this is just another Kellyanne Pivot.
Plato was talking about your ilk when he wrote the Allegory of the Cave.”
Plato knew nothing about television nor the cinema. That’s just another urban legend.
You entirely missed Olly’s point, either wittingly, or unwittingly..
“Yeah, BUT Holder is no longer in office”
We got the rope, we got the tree, not we need Obama’s Daddy “Wingman”
The fact both Holder and Clinton decided to dangle their highly ironic statements this past week is interesting. Either they have absolutely no sense of their own hypocrisy or they are the safe (no political risk) voices floating these statements to see whether they’ll positively resonate with voters. It could very likely be both.
Olly,
While both have said they won’t run in 2012, think of the appeal😏 of a Hillary- Holder ticket.
I think both should go for the nomination. Also, Avenatti is probably still eligible to run, and a campaign might be just the thing to take his mind off of other matters.
A Holder-Avenatti ticket would pack the punch of having two of our country’s better-known lawyers on the same ticket.
The Obama Coup D’etat in America is the most egregious abuse of power and the most prodigious scandal in American political history.
The co-conspirators are:
Rosenstein, Mueller/Team, Comey, McCabe, Strozk, Page, Kadzic, Yates, Baker,
Bruce Ohr, Nellie Ohr, Priestap, Kortan, Campbell, Sir Richard Dearlove, Steele,
Simpson, Joseph Mifsud, Alexander Downer, Stefan “The Walrus” Halper, Kerry,
Hillary, Huma, Mills, Brennan, Clapper, Lerner, Farkas, Power, Lynch, Rice, Jarrett,
Holder, Brazile, Sessions, Obama et al.
Investigations are closing in on the perpetrators of the Obama Coup D’etat in America. The Coup leadership is attempting a defense. Fox News broadcast the “fake news” of the absolutely corrupt Donna Brazile. Now, liberal outlets like the Turley blog are propagating the “fake news” of Eric Holder, the found-in-contempt, disgraced and loyal Obama AG – keeping in mind that democrats criticized President Trump for expecting loyalty from his AG.
________________________________
“Fox News is continuing its globalist shift by allowing disgraced former Democratic National Committee chairwoman Donna Brazile to spread propaganda on behalf of Barack Obama on their airwaves.
“I think they did everything they could without sounding all of the alarm bells,” Brazile said during an appearance on “The Daily Briefing” with Dana Perino.
Brazile claims that the Obama administration did everything in their power but were ultimately hamstrung about public perception. She maintains that he didn’t have a handle on his Justice Department because he was afraid it would look like he was helping Crooked Hillary’s presidential ambitions.
“He was in a box,” Brazile said about Obama.”
– Big League Politics
_________________
“We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.”
– William Casey, CIA Director 1981-1987
The current progressive effort to demonize attorney general William Barr is creepy, but then
again not so strange. He came into the office with singular experience and an excellent
reputation from past service. As attorney general, he has followed the law to the letter in
handling the release, redactions, and dissemination of the Mueller report. His summaries of the
report proved factual. They were not contested by Robert Mueller or his team. His decision not
to pursue “obstruction” was not just his own, but logically followed from the Mueller report that
did not find enough evidence to make such a positive recommendation. His congressional
testimony that there was “spying” during the 2016 campaign is, of course, factually undeniable,
and Barr added the qualifier of being interested in finding whether such surveillance was
warranted or not.
As for the charge that Barr, a former Bush appointee, is Trump’s “hand-picked” choice –how odd, given that all attorney generals are presidents’ hand-picked selections. How could they not be?
It is not as if Barr has referenced himself, in Eric Holder’s partisan fashion, as Trump’s “wing-
man.” Nor has he ordered surveillance on, for example, a Fox News reporter, or had the
communication records of 20 Associated Press journalists seized, as happened during the
Obama administration in efforts to stop leaks of unwelcome news stories. Nor has he been held
in contempt of Congress for failure to turn over subpoenaed documents under the cover of a
presidential order of executive privilege. There is no suggestion that Barr has abused the
perquisites of the office, for example, by using a government jet to go to the horse races with his family. He has avoided controversial value judgements about the nature of the American people and polarizing rhetoric.
So, more likely, the effort to delegitimize the professional Barr is the opening, preemptory salvo
in the second and quite different round of investigations. Soon Mr. Barr will be tasked with collating and adjudicating criminal referrals and arguments for indictments coming variously from Inspector General Michael Horowitz, possibly special counsel John Huber, Devin Nunes the ranking Republican and former chair of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and perhaps later even from Lindsey Graham, Chair of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, along with any conclusions arising from federal attorneys within the Justice Department itself.
In toto, these sources variously may present evidence to Barr on matters of lying to federal
investigators, perjury, obstruction of justice, conspiracy, and abuse of government surveillance
— and the charges could, in ironic fashion, involve top-ranking former administrative state
investigators during the Obama administration, who for the last two years have been quite
prominent as cable news analysts and, in their memoirs at least, as self-described ethicists. Add that there will be a completely different sort of news cycle as it intensifies in approach of the 2020 election. In such investigations, no one has any idea what possible defendants may do or say to federal prosecutors in efforts to lessen their own criminal exposure.
In sum, the progressives’ preventative efforts to destroy Barr’s reputation take on a certain sort
of sick partisan logic, especially as he is neither the sort to recuse himself during cycles of
journalistic hysteria nor to appoint a special counsel, after the ill-starred odyssey of the Mueller
all-stars and dream team. Given his age, past tenures, reputation, and professional demeanor,
Barr does not seem to be much worried over transient unpopularity, partisan criticism, political
pressure, or making tough decisions that might adversely affect his future career.
So the fear is not that Barr broke or will ever break the law, but rather just the opposite: He
seems the sort who will follow the law wherever it leads him and without worry over the
consequences — and that reality is now apparently seen by some as quite scary indeed.
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/progressive-effort-delegitimize-william-barr/
From Eric Holder, who once referred to himself as Obama Hussein’s wingman.
TRUMP HAS NO INTENTION OF STOPPING..
RUSSIAN INTERFERENCE IN 2020 ELECTION
In the months before Kirstjen Nielsen was forced to resign, she tried to focus the White House on one of her highest priorities as homeland security secretary: preparing for new and different Russian forms of interference in the 2020 election.
President Trump’s chief of staff told her not to bring it up in front of the president.
Ms. Nielsen left the Department of Homeland Security early this month after a tumultuous 16-month tenure and tensions with the White House. Officials said she had become increasingly concerned about Russia’s continued activity in the United States during and after the 2018 midterm elections — ranging from its search for new techniques to divide Americans using social media, to experiments by hackers, to rerouting internet traffic and infiltrating power grids.
But in a meeting this year, Mick Mulvaney, the White House chief of staff, made it clear that Mr. Trump still equated any public discussion of malign Russian election activity with questions about the legitimacy of his victory. According to one senior administration official, Mr. Mulvaney said it “wasn’t a great subject and should be kept below his level.”
Even though the Department of Homeland Security has primary responsibility for civilian cyberdefense, Ms. Nielsen eventually gave up on her effort to organize a White House meeting of cabinet secretaries to coordinate a strategy to protect next year’s elections.
As a result, the issue did not gain the urgency or widespread attention that a president can command. And it meant that many Americans remain unaware of the latest versions of Russian interference.
Edited from: “In Push For 2020 Election Security, Top Official Was Warned, Don’t Tell Trump”
Today’s NEW YORK TIMES
Was this an opinion piece, or objective ‘reporting’ by the New York Times?
TBob, just yesterday Jared Kushner totally dismissed Russian meddling as a ‘few ads on Facebook”. Does it sound like Trump cares?
just yesterday Jared Kushner totally dismissed Russian meddling as a ‘few ads on Facebook”.
Totally? Read any number of articles posted on the subject and the full context exposes you as a liar.
Does it sound like Trump cares?
It’s Kushner’s statement; not Trump’s, you dolt.
I was gonna do this, but you already did. Too easy.
Olly, right after Jared made that statement, Trump sent this tweet:
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
Donald J. TrumpVerified account @realDonaldTrump Apr 23
Great interview by Jared. Nice to have extraordinarily smart people serving our Country!Donald J. Trump added,
TIMEVerified account @TIME
LIVE: Jared Kushner interviewed at the #TIME100 Summit https://twitter.com/i/broadcasts/1ypKdvzYqNqJW …
14,477 replies 13,328 retweets 57,291 likes
Reply 14K Retweet 13K Like 57K
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
So here we have Trump praising Jared for an interview in which the latter dismissed Russian interference as just a ‘few Facebook ads’.
Because that’s what it amounted to, Peter.
Tabby, Hillary was the first candidate in history to be stalked by foreign trolls.
Now of course in Trumpworld, Hillary is a bona fide witch. So the Russian-directed hacking campaign was somehow ‘heroic’. But had it been the other way around, and Trump was stalked by foreign hackers, this discussion would be very different today.
Tabby, Hillary was the first candidate in history to be stalked by foreign trolls.
LOL. David Brock’s not getting his money’s worth from you.
Actually, Peter, no one has delineated in plain terms just what the content of these ads was, much less proved the Internet Research Agency was up to anything nefarious.
ACCORDING TO MUELLER REPORT
RUSSIAN MILITARY INTELLIGENCE UNITS WERE INVOLVED IN INTERFERENCE CAMPAIGN
https://www.npr.org/2019/04/19/714890832/mueller-report-raises-new-questions-about-russias-hacking-targets-in-2016?utm_campaign=storyshare&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&fbclid=IwAR0U9DbDNSJ7Ds129s9jI3xh2t0ADTfcsjvEk1V8Y0EbnxZfr9FYnWieV-M
But had it been the other way around, and Trump was stalked by foreign hackers, this discussion would be very different today.
The discussion should be very different because Trump was the target of domestic interference in his campaign and beyond. That is a fact you Lefties will never acknowledge despite the overwhelming evidence.
What interference was that?
Bwahahahahahahahaha! Exactly!
Anon, it’s there in the Mueller Report, Putin directed numerous operatives to contact members of the Trump campaign. Russian Military Intelligence units were also used.
But Absurd and Olly never bothered to read mainstream summaries of the Mueller Report. All they saw were Fox News stories echoing Trump spin that is was ‘just a few Facebook ads’.
Putin directed numerous operatives to contact members of the Trump campaign
Even were that true, it is a matter of scant interest. Did it ever occur to you that foreign governments of all types might be ‘making contact’?
My comment was directed to Olly who claims Trumps campaign was a victim of domestic interference. Olly, can you elaborate?
Peter Shill sez: Hillary was the first candidate in history to be stalked by foreign trolls.
Had she not burned all of her broom sticks and bridges with the Lesbians,Trannies, FTM, MTF, horses, cows and dogs in America, she might had been stalked by domestic trolls, so that is on her, missy. Don’t cry to us that Hillary couldn’t get laid by a domestic.
Eeeuuuwwwww
This is absurd x 4 says: April 24, 2019 at 3:35 PM
“Because that’s what it [‘a few Facebook ads’] amounted to, Peter.”
3,500 Facebook ads according to Facebook. The Facebook ads were pushing the fake Instagram accounts and the fake Twitter accounts. Those fake social media accounts had very large numbers of followers measured in the hundreds of thousands reaching very large numbers of viewers measured in the tens of millions.
Without those American keyboard propagantists like LLB writting millions of words under various usernames on different sites, we’d be totally under the spell of Russian trolls.
The extraordinary influence of those like L4B “converts” all who are impressed by her non-stop propganda. And that can be literally
0000001% of the audience that she reaches that don’t scroll every most of her comments, or nod off😴 after reading a few of them.
Should be L4B, not LLB.
You just like to double-down on your own misinformation campaign, as if no one is going to call you on it. Taking out the word totally hasn’t helped your dishonesty. The entire interview needs to be read to get the context of what he was saying. And in context, his statement was accurate.
Where’s the misinformation, Olly?? Did Trump ever express genuine concern for Russian interference?? I never heard that speech. Show me documentation that Trump honestly cares.
Did Trump ever express genuine concern for Russian interference??
What in your world would be recognized as genuine concern? Sanctions? A speech?Nuclear War? What?
Has anyone among the Democrat leadership ever expressed any concern (fake or genuine) for the domestic interference in the 2016 election?
“In the most sweeping retaliation against Russia in decades, President Obama slapped the country with new penalties Thursday for meddling in the U.S. presidential election, kicking out dozens of suspected spies and imposing banking restrictions on five people and four organizations the administration says were involved….”
https://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/trailguide/la-na-trailguide-updates-obama-slaps-russia-with-sanctions-for-1483042184-htmlstory.html
Before taking office Trump flacks like Flynn contacted the Russians to tell them to not respond, the fix was in. That evidence of a quid pro quo is in the Mueller Report.
Olly,
It may be none of the above. Maybe the Hillary/ Obama tact is what they’d prefer to see in combating Russian trolls.
The ol’ “Mubarek must go, Gaddafi must go, Assad must go” demands could be taken up by Trump and he could start spouting “Putin must go!”.
All of these other “must go” demands turned out so well, why not apply it to Putin?
“Trump must go!”
The IC was directed in December 2016 to provide an assessment of Russia’s activities during the 2016 election cycle. Magically, they were able to provide a detailed report by January 6th 2017. Think about that for a moment. This report details activities going back to 2014 through the November 2016. How is it the IC was able to prepare such a detailed report in such a short period of time after the election, but they did nothing of substance about Russian interference before the election?
That’s right, Clinton lost what was supposed to be a lock and they needed to get this report out before January 20th, 2017.
https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf
TBob,
That part about in the NY Times piece about Russians causing divided factions in the U.S. short-changes Americans.
We don’t need any outside help to divide ourselves.
Now while Putin may find a great deal of humor and satisfaction that we’ve been chasing our own tails for c.2 1/2 years now ( and for at least another year and a half), we did that all on our own.
We don’t need any outside help to divide ourselves…we did that all on our own.
Hmm? Are you saying the political parties and MSM haven’t been trying to unite this country?
This is breaking news!
Yeah, that’s probably accurate. Such a track record, and such an unbiased source.