Tag: Mueller

Need to Know 7/31/18

Republican candidate Austin Petersen had his Twitter account suspended for 12 hours after thousands of antifa communist Democrats are triggered by a Stalin gif he posted.  No, this isn’t the Babylon Bee.  Petersen posted the gif in response to one pundit’s ridiculous assertion that Petersen had paid the Russians off to hack Claire McCaskill’s email account.  Petersen is in an uphill battle in the Republican primary to take on McCaskill for her tenuously held Senate seat in Missouri.  He has caused a splash with his AR-15 and 3D gun printer giveaways through the campaign.

Communists triggered by Stalin gif

Is North Korea building new ballistic missiles?  That’s the claim by Washington Post citing unnamed US spies who decided to share classified intelligence with the news agency on the condition of anonymity.  Of course, we’ve seen so much fake news coming from unnamed sources through WaPo and others that there really can’t be too much stock put in this.  It would absolutely benefit Democrats in November to blunt the progress Trump has made with North Korea.  And it seems like a very big risk for people in our spy agencies to tell the Washington Post something so sensitive.  So for now, we’ll stick with the official story.

WaPo publishes classified intel on North Korea, claims anonymous sources

There was no collusion, and even if there was it’s not a crime.  That’s the latest from Trump attorney Rudy Guiliani.  Guiliani made the claim Monday on Fox & Friends.  Depending on the facts and circumstances, he’s correct.  If Trump didn’t commission hackers to break into the DNC’s servers or somehow cause them to break the law, then any other sort of collusion is meaningless.  Even if Trump arranged and met with the Russian attorney in Trump Tower, which he didn’t, it still wouldn’t be a violation of the law.  In fact, compared to hiring a British spy get paid dirt from Russian operatives and then giving that phony info to the FBI to start an investigation, even the worst allegations against Trump are trivial.

Considering Trump has never been the target of a criminal investigation having to do with Russia and considering Hillary Clinton colluded more than even the most wild allegations against Trump, I think it’s time to stop beating this dead horse and move on.

Trump didn’t collude, and even if he had it wasn’t a crime

Need to Know 7/27/18

It’s all about the GDP.  Markets are anxiously awaiting this morning’s GDP report, hoping for 4.2% quarterly growth.  If it happens, it’ll be a good indicator that the economy continues to rise at a rapid rate, even after the rapid growth from last year. It would also make the argument against Trump’s tax reform even weaker.

Wall Street awaits GDP report

Speaking of tax reform, Elizabeth Warren bumbled through an interview when she was asked what tax rate is too high.  The poor CNBC journalist tried to help her out.  “Do you feel…that it’s wrong for more than half of somebody’s marginal income to be taken?” “Is 50 percent obviously too high?” Finally, as Warren continued to indicate that 50 percent may actually be too low, John Harwood went for the moon. “…obviously ‘no, 90 percent, that’s ridiculous'”.  Warren finally capitulated.

Warren has the blessing of many Democrats to be the top 2020 DNC Presidential contender.  But they will have to figure out how to deal with her ignorance about what taxes do to families and how the economy works.  When Ocasio-Cortez ignorantly claimed that unemployment was low because people were working two jobs, Warren doubled down on the erroneous claim by saying it was actually because people were working as many as four jobs.  Hopefully she can get some help on the economic front.  When it comes to the economy, Trump is definitely winning.

Warren suggests hypothetical 50% tax rate is too low

On the legal side for Trump, it’s a mixed bag.  While rumors from unnamed sources about the Mueller investigation have turned out to be mostly blowing smoke, there’s a new one out today saying Mueller is going to be looking at Trump’s tweets to see if he obstructed justice.  That would be a stretch.  As Guiliani pointed out, people don’t generally obstruct justice in public for millions to see.  This appears to be grasping for straws.  They would have to prove that Trump was somehow giving instructions to witnesses or intimidating people through Twitter.  That would also mean Mueller would have to take Trump’s 3am Twitter persona more seriously than Peter Strzok’s texts to his mistress.

Even if Trump did try to obstruct justice on Twitter, the Bill Clinton precedent on obstruction would make it very hard to successfully argue for consequences.  Clinton secretly intimidated witnesses, instructed them to lie, matched up stories, then committed perjury himself.  The Senate failed to reach a two thirds majority and ended up acquitting him.

Mueller looking at Trump’s tweets?

Impeachment!

Representatives Meadows and Jordan in the House of Representatives have just introduced a resolution to impeach Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein for high crimes and misdemeanors. There are five articles written against Rosenstein.

Article I deals with Rosenstein’s refusal to recuse himself from the Russia investigation or appoint a second special counsel to investigate the conflict of interest and misconduct by the FBI.  Rosenstein was in charge of the FISA application to spy on Carter Page that was based in part on paid opposition research from the Clinton campaign.

Article II covers Rosenstein’s obstruction of justice in refusing to turn over subpoena’d documents and refusal to notify witnesses that Congress was seeking their testimony.  Interestingly, this article also hits Mueller for instructing material witnesses to refuse to provide testimony to Congress.  Congress has oversight over the Justice Department and refusing to comply with their requests amounts to obstruction of justice.

Article III accuses Rosenstein of obstruction of justice by using redaction to hide material evidence from Congress.  These redactions include hiding potentially embarrassing information about the cost of Andrew McCabe’s $70,000 conference table, hiding the relationship between Peter Strzok and FISC Judge Rudolph Contreras, hiding the names of high ranking FBI and Obama administration officials, and other redactions used to hide information from Congress.  Rosenstein’s decision to redact the relationship between Strzok and Contreras is especially important given Strzok’s promise to “stop Trump” and the FISC’s decision to issue a secret warrant based on Clinton’s paid opposition research.

Article IV suggests that Rosenstein used an improper basis to appoint Robert Mueller as special counsel and hid the basis through improper use of redaction.  Rosenstein still refuses to provide Congress with a less redacted version of his scope memo for Robert Mueller.

Article V deals more directly with Rosenstein’s supervisory role in the authorization of FISA searches.  Rosenstein is accused of failing to vet Christopher Steele’s phony dossier and failing to fully notify the FISC of the circumstances surrounding the creation of the dossier.  Article V also hits Rosenstein again for his refusal to appoint a second independent Special Counsel to review wrong doing by the Obama Justice Department and FBI in these matters.

A couple important things to note in the impeachment articles: Robert Mueller is mentioned for compelling witnesses not to testify to Congress.  This could be an issue for the Mueller investigation in the near future.  Strzok’s relationship with Judge Rudolph Contreras could lead to a call for an investigation into the secretive workings of the FISC itself.

You can read the articles of impeachment here.

 

Need to know 7/20/18

Fact checking the factcheckers: Politifact had an article out yesterday giving Kamala Harris a “True” rating for her statement that “nearly 2,600 children who are separated from their parents” on June 17th.  Harris also said “these children are in prison”, a completely false statement that wasn’t fact checked by Politifact.  In fact, the very reason children are separated from their parents at the border is the Flores decision which says you can’t put kids in jail.  Obama ran afoul of this ruling and we ended up with the now infamous photos of kids in cages from the Obama era.

Back to Politifact.  The first problem with with their analysis is that this number is a moving target.  The number Harris is using is from July 13th testimony, but since family reunification has been ordered by Trump and the courts, that process continues.  That number was very likely inaccurate when she said it and far less accurate now.

But the bigger problem is that many of the children held by the state didn’t come with their parents or won’t be reunified with their parents because their parents are criminals.  According to Politifact’s own article, nearly 50% of children under 5 were not reunified because they were brought here by traffickers or because their parents were violent criminals.  If you extrapolate that out over Kamala Harris’s figure, we are looking at about 1,250 children who hadn’t been reunified days before she made her statement.  We rate Politifact’s analysis to be 75% biased.

Politifact gives True rating to inaccurate statement about family separation

Rumor has it: Tony Podesta is being offered immunity to testify against Paul Manafort.  If you remember, Manafort is in trouble for laundering Russian money to two US lobbying groups.  One of them was run by Democrat and Clinton ally Tony Podesta.  Podesta and Manafort worked together to lobby for the Ukraine in the United States.  Isn’t it interesting that Robert Mueller and his team of Clinton supporting lawyers would offer immunity to Tony Podesta in order to bring down Paul Manafort for the same crime?

Tony Podesta offered immunity to testify against Paul Manafort

Gallup has a new poll out.  Apparently no one cares about Russia.  The biggest issues on the minds of Americans are the economy, dissatisfaction with government, illegal immigration, and race relations.  Russia garnered less than 1% as a concern in the poll.  Seems like Schumer should consider this since the DNC seems to be running on obstruction, economy crushing tax hikes, open borders, racial division, and Russia.

Gallup poll shows no one cares about Russia

Why Democrats Want Mueller Fired

There have been some interesting theories about why Special Investigator Robert Mueller was hired, why he has put together a legal team of Clinton donors, how fair he actually is, etc. I’d like to look at another theory, why Democrats want Mueller fired. While no Democrats have called for Mueller to be fired directly, it seems a little odd to me how the chips have fallen.

Consider this, on July 19 Trump gives an interview where he suggests that if Mueller starts investigating items outside of Russia that would be grounds for firing.  July 20 headline? Mueller expands probe to Trump business transactions. Citing unnamed officials, Bloomberg says Mueller is doing exactly what Trump said would get him fired. That’s a little too convenient for me.

Special prosecutors have a history of stepping out of bounds. Patrick Fitzgerald, already knowing it was Richard Armitage who leaked Valerie Plame’s name, put Scooter Libby in jail on trumped up obstruction charges so he could try to get to Dick Cheney. Kenneth Starr turned an investigation into a shady land deal into an impeachment trial for lying under oath about sex with an intern.  It’s very likely Democrats are hoping the Russia probe will turn into something similar. Or at least a back ally way to get their  white whale: Trump’s tax returns.

There is a lot of pressure on a special prosecutor to find something to justify their paycheck. Mueller’s team of Clinton donors also may have some incentive to find something. But getting fired could be just as good.

Mueller getting fired would still be a win for Democrats. I’m sure we can all imagine the headlines. Trump fired Comey on the recommendations of his Department of Justice. Comey had screwed up a couple investigations, based findings on the phony Russia dossier, been unclear about Trump not being under investigation, and after being fired Comey released classified info to the media to get Mueller hired in the first place.  But that didn’t stop the media from speculating about Comey’s firing being obstruction of justice.

Can you imagine the media field day if Trump fires Mueller? Every tin foil hat conspiracy theory cooked up by CNN and MSNBC over the last six months will be permanently believable even if never verified. Firing Mueller will permanently create the specter of the Nixonian President who got away with it.

For Democrats, that would be a much better result than if Mueller concluded his investigation empty handed.

5 Times Obama Didn’t Appoint a Special Prosecutor
I saw a meme recently mocking the Trump team for lawyering up. There’s a reason Obama and his team never needed to lawyer up. They had Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch as the attorney generals. Neither of them had any interest in looking at wrongdoing by the Obama administration. Even the thought of Obama hiring a special prosecutor to investigate himself is hilarious.
 
Here are five times Obama should have appointed a special prosecutor but didn’t:
 
1. Fast and furious – the gun running scandal where the US sold weapons to Mexican drug lords that were then lost and later used to kill US border agents. The murder of the border agents was initially used by the administration to call for greater gun control, until it was discovered where those guns came from.
 
2. The IRS targeting scandal – the IRS targeted right-leaning political groups by denying their applications and subjecting them to unreasonable questioning. Congress investigated, but no charges were ever filed by the Obama DOJ and the administration did not appoint a special prosecutor. The person responsible, Lois Lerner, never faced legal consequences.  Multiple calls for a special prosecutor were ignored by the Obama DOJ.
 
3. Benghazi – not only did the administration lie to the public, but Hillary Clinton violated the law when she distributed classified information about the Benghazi incident and destroyed classified information regarding the incident.
 
4. Hillary Clinton’s email server – despite the destruction of evidence, and Loretta Lynch completely invalidating the investigation by meeting with Bill Clinton on his private jet, a special prosecutor was not appointed. This is despite evidence that Obama knew about her server and that the Obama DOJ made unethical deals with Clinton attorneys to help destroy and hide evidence in the case.
 
5. The Iran Nuclear Deal payment – This was when Obama negotiated a poorly structured nuclear deal with Iran, and then sealed it with a huge cash payment delivered in the middle of the night. After the payment was discovered, the Obama administration claimed it was an old debt from a couple Iranian governments ago when we cancelled an arms shipment to them during their revolution.
 
Any of these were more salacious than the idea that Trump associates may have sought opposition research from the Russians. But none were investigated by any body with actual authority. None resulted in special counsels.
 
This also doesn’t include the smaller things, like the raid on the Gibson Guitar factory, Solyndra, or NSA spying on reporters.  And it doesn’t include the bigger things that came to light more recently such as Obama spying on Trump associates and unmasking them. I haven’t even touched on the leaks.
Trump fired James Comey.  Obama’s first year in office was a blood bath for Bush administration attorneys and officials.  The difference so far between Trump and Obama is that Obama had more scandals and fewer people in his government that had any interest in noticing.