Introduction by The Editor:
Donald Trump is a political outsider, starting his political career at the top.  One of President Trump's biggest obstacles is the Washington Establishment, also known as the Deep State.  These are the career bureaucrats, especially those in the Pentagon and the three-letter spy agencies who are quite comfortable with the way Washington works and don't want anyone to rock the boat, to say nothing of draining the swamp.

Related pages:

Obstructionism
The numerous traps and stink bombs Obama left for Trum

Background, overview and recap articles:

(Scroll down for timely news, or click here.)

Gitmo's Unsolved Deaths.  If street thug prosecutors manage to railroad President Trump to prison, could he be Epsteined?  Many Americans would be shocked to know that the government has previously covered up horrible prison deaths with outrageous lies.  One of the most notorious incidents happened at a secret CIA facility located just outside the perimeter of Guantanamo. [...] The incidents at Guantanamo starkly reveal how easy it is for the Deep State to conceal crimes of murder.  Instead of being forthright, they spew out nonsense with impunity.  The big question is whether Trump needs to fear being their next victim.

The Invisible Power Controlling the US Government.  Inverted totalitarianism does not have an authoritarian leader, but instead is run by a non-transparent group of bureaucrats.  This unelected, invisible ruling class runs the country from within.  They are easily influenced by corporate interests due to both the lure of powerful jobs after federal employment and the capture of our legislative bodies by the lobbyists serving concealed corporate interests.  One element of inverted totalitarianism is that the administrative state typically inserts stricter and stricter rules and regulations to control the populace.  Not at the behest of Congress or the President, but rather by and for the interests of the administrative state itself.  Power begets power.  We the people are forced into compliance by an unknown and unknowable invisible ruling class, with no way to even understand who, what, or how they are forcing this compliance upon us.  As if that is not bad enough, in these modern times, the globalist corporations and financial groups have come to play a larger and larger role in controlling this administrative state.

The Silent Coup.  Many historians and folks who just read the newspaper every morning and watch the news at night felt that something quite different and very odd was occurring.  Where were all the leaks coming from?  Why all the Russia Russia Russia talk?  What was all this 25th Amendment talk about?  Why was there immediate talk of impeachment?  What was with the quick firing of Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn by Vice President Mike Pence?  Why did the progressive liberal media obviously show that they had a favorite?  Why the criminality in the 2020 election?  Why the Jan. 6 roundup of citizens who only wanted free and fair elections?  Now it is clear for all to see, the Deep State was running a coup against Donald Trump.  A coup against candidate Trump.  A coup against President-elect Trump.  And a coup against President Trump while in office.  The Deep State, including the Fourth Branch of government (the intelligence apparatus), went after Trump from the moment he came down the escalators.  Not a military coup that we once thought of from a banana republic.  No rifle fire, hand grenades, nor mortar launchers.  But a soft and silent, yet deadly coup done by people with suits and ties and dresses and skirts in law firms and excutive offices.

Trump uncovered a spirit of racketeering running the country.  When I look at the last four years and how our country seemed to get more divided than any time since the Civil War, it's easy to conclude that President Trump is the reason it occurred.  From the moment he declared war on the corruption in D.C., he became a target of all those entrenched power brokers who have been able to hide their venal activities from an unsuspecting public.  Trump became the loudest whistleblower in history when he talked about draining the swamp that had been operating like an organized crime family for generations.  In order for a Mafia-like mob to operate effectively, it must keep its nefarious pursuits from public exposure.  Hence, President Trump had to be destroyed!

The Insect Politicians of the Administrative State.  The United States Civil Service, sometimes called the "administrative state" or "deep state," is supposed to be professional.  It ought to be apolitical, like an ant colony or beehive, serving a queen, the sovereign people, as they express themselves, under law, through their representatives in the elected offices.  Whether the designers of the modern progressive civil service intended it to be apolitical is an open question.  Even if it were so designed, civil servants are not and cannot be ants or bees.  They are people.  Without robust mechanisms — prompt dismissals, firings, and swift and unfeelingly severe sanctions for misconduct — to enforce the political will of the sovereign people, they are bound to express a political will of their own.  They will become insect politicians.

Federalist Co-Founder Notes The Real Reason Behind The Media's Trump-Ukraine Obsession.  Since the 2016 election, the media has just been engulfed with Trump Derangement Syndrome.  They hate Trump.  They hate Republicans.  And this has blinded them to being hit with buckshot on a near-daily basis.  For two years, they peddled the Trump-Russia collusion myth that was a manufactured lie based on the infamous Steele Dossier, aka Trump dossier, that was compiled by ex-MI6 spook Christopher Steele.  It was never fully verified, most of the allegations in it were trash, and even members of British intelligence were skeptical.  The FBI was not, as evidenced by their lack of due diligence in verifying this biased piece of political propaganda.  A Google search could have pointed out the glaring errors within the dossier.  This was a political opposition research project funded by the Clinton campaign and the Democrats.  It was based on second-hand sources, some of which were still active in the Kremlin.  If anything, this proves Clinton-Russia collusion and interference in the 2016 election.  The report by Special Counsel Robert Mueller debunked this entire project.  So, the Democrats had to suffer humiliation, as did their media allies — but impeachment was still the end goal.  It was why they retook the House in 2018.

Lets Call the Russian Collusion "Hoax" What it Really is.  Euphemism, the counterfeit of good manners, is the enemy of truth, which is the only ally worth having.  I have been thinking about this constellation of ideas recently as the news has been full of talk about the "Russian collusion hoax."  Use of the term "hoax" got a big boost in the aftermath of the Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report on the question of whether there was actionable cooperation, coordination, or collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin.  Two years, $34 million, and a wide swath of debilitating rumor, innuendo, and unrelated indictments and prosecutions later and we know that the answer to that question is "No, there was no cooperation, coordination, or collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin." [...] But thinking about it, I conclude that the term "hoax" is wholly inadequate to describe the enormity of the political scandal that was perpetrated against Donald Trump, against the office of the president, and ultimately against the American people.

Sally Yates -vs- Michael Flynn.  After the November 8th, 2016, election everyone within the Obama network associated with the Trump surveillance operation was at risk.  This is the impetus for the "Muh Russia" collusion-conspiracy narrative that was used as a mitigating shield.  Within a few days after the election ODNI James Clapper and CIA Director John Brennan began pushing the Russia election interference narrative in the media.  Without notifying anyone, NSA Director Mike Rogers went to Trump tower on November 18th, 2016.  Despite his compartmentalization it appears Rogers identified the NSA database abuse as the likely underpinning for some form of political surveillance.  By mid-December 2016 the Obama administration was deploying a full-court-press using their media allies to promote the Russia conspiracy.  However, despite their public proclamations Clapper and Brennan were refusing to give any specifics to congress.

USA Today Calls For Investigation Into Obama-Era Deep State Election Manipulation.  Interesting indeed!  Here is the left-leaning USA Today finally calling for an accounting of Obama-era officials, (including Mr. Obama himself) and the roles they played in what became the 2+ year-long, multi-million dollar waste of time known as the Mueller investigation that saw the U.S. intelligence agencies politically weaponized to alter the Election Day outcome.  Treason, sedition, intimidation, corruption, you name it they seemingly did it all.

Real Scandal Of Trump Term Starts To Unravel.  The most immense and dangerous public scandal in American history is finally cracking open like a ripe pomegranate.  The broad swath of the Trump-hating press that has participated in what has amounted to an unconstitutional attempt to overthrow the government are reduced to reporting the events and revelations of the scandal in which they have been complicit, in a po-faced ho-hum manner to impart to the misinformed public that this is as routine as stock market fluctuations or the burning of an American flag in Tehran.  For more than two years, the United States and the world have had two competing narratives:  that an elected president of the United States was a Russian agent whom the Kremlin helped elect; and its rival narrative that senior officials of the Justice Department, FBI, CIA, and other national intelligence organizations had repeatedly lied under oath, misinformed federal officials, and meddled in partisan political matters illegally and unconstitutionally and had effectively tried to influence the outcome of a presidential election, and then undo its result by falsely propagating the first narrative.  It is now obvious and indisputable that the second narrative is the correct one.

The Enemy Within.  What we learned in the wake of the 2016 Presidential election in the United States was the most shocking secret our country has ever had to come to terms with:  the US Government had become a criminal enterprise controlled by a cabal of elite insiders; "The Enemy Within".  This was decades in the making, but we were warned this day would come.  We were told in the founding fathers own words about governments turning on their people, and the people's right to 'throw off the chains of Tyranny', to President Eisenhower's famous speech warning us about the grave danger posed by a large military alliance and partnership with the private sector companies that make up the defense contractor community — what he called the Military Industrial complex.  Decades after President Eisenhower warned of the Military Industrial complex, his nightmare has come to life. [...] America's rise to this National Security State was driven by the cold war, but it has become a permanent fixture for two ever present reasons:  money, and power.

Criminality Of Deep State Investigation Of Trump Confirmed — Has U.S. Become A Banana Republic?  Both the Justice Department and FBI have maintained they didn't really know that Trump Dossier compiler Christopher Steele had any bias at all against Trump.  And, even when they got their hands on Steele's unverified dossier on Trump, they claim they didn't know that Steele's employer, Fusion GPS, had any conflicts of interest.  Moreover, when they appeared before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to get the OK to spy on former Trump aide Carter Page, they didn't tell the court what they knew.  They lied.  Or at the very minimum, concealed the truth.  This is a crime.  How can we be sure that top officials at Justice and the FBI knew all this?  Ohr said so.

Red Handed:  All the Collusion was in the Deep State.  Let's begin with the obvious — if President Trump's foreign policy views warranted an FBI investigation, then why didn't the bureau probe the pro-Russia stances of former American leaders such as Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton?  Many forget that President Obama once told his Russian counterpart at the time, Vladimir Putin lackey Dmitry Medvedev, that he would have "more flexibility" after his re-election in 2012 — an ominous indication that Obama was cutting secret deals with the Russian government behind the scenes.  Remarkably, he then stood by and did nothing as Putin invaded Ukraine.  Likewise, Hillary Clinton was never investigated for her disastrous "Russia reset" in the early years of the Obama administration and received no meaningful scrutiny for the sale of Uranium One to Russia despite receiving $145 million in donations from some of the people involved in that transaction through the Clinton Foundation. [...] Then there's Senator Dianne Feinstein, a member of the "Gang of Eight" and a member of the powerful Senate Intelligence Committee, who employed a Chinese spy for 20 years.  Did the FBI treat her as a Chinese asset?  No, they went directly to her and briefed her on the problem.

Democrats: A plague on the nation.  Our once most revered institutions, the DOJ, the FBI, and the CIA, have been thoroughly corrupted.  Mueller, a willing participant in that corruption, is up to his eyeballs in the cover-up.  Will any of these people at the DOJ, the FBI, and the CIA, ever be held accountable?  To date, they have not been.  The power they have within the Deep State is beyond formidable; it is seemingly absolute.  It appears that America has become a sort of medieval oligarchy.  Trump, as the outsider he is, is a grave threat to all of those who believed they were in control in perpetuity.  They are ready and willing to do anything, no matter how illegal or immoral, to depose him, to expel him from office.

The War On Trump Is All About Keeping Liberals And Their Lackeys In Power.  [T]his year ends with our loser ruling class shedding any pretense of legitimacy in its quest to reclaim the power we took back from it in 2016.  The reaction to Donald Trump by our alleged betters [...] is instructive.  They have abandoned all the principles they once claimed to support — democracy, civil rights, due process, and equality.  None of those principles help them to keep or regain power anymore, so they are expendable.  As are you.  Liberalism was always a lie and a scam, right from its sordid beginnings among the progressives with their creepy messianic fervor, their infatuation with "expertise" (and hence, their embrace of evils like eugenics), and their contempt for the Constitution.  Liberals consider themselves the anointed, divinely entitled to rule over us lesser folk, and they aren't going to let anything get in the way of retaking the throne.

Are the Investigations the Cover-Up?  Those of us who have been paying attention know that serious crimes were committed at the highest levels of government in an attempt to exonerate Hillary Clinton and frame Donald Trump.  There was collusion between government agencies, including collusion with foreign agents, to illegally influence the 2016 Presidential election.  There is enough evidence on the table to be confident of these claims.  And those of us who care about rule of law, who want to see justice done to the criminals in this conspiracy, have been waiting for years to see that happen.  We hear that these serious matters are being investigated.  We hear that there are whistleblowers inside the government who want to come forward and expose the corruption.  We hear that there are many, many more documents which will substantiate our worst fears about one of the greatest scandals in the history of our country.  We have been assured that there are several investigations looking into the various aspect of this abuse of power.  Inspector General Michael Horowitz, prosecutor John Huber, and others are looking into the corruption.  Mueller is supposedly tasked with exposing foreign influence on the Presidential election.  But what if the 'investigations' are really the cover-up?  What if the investigations are carefully structured to protect criminal actions rather than expose them?  What if the investigations are actually being used to hide evidence from the citizenry?

The Democrats Are the Threat to Democracy.  In fact, Trump has spent the last two years having the legitimacy of his unprecedented election to the presidency challenged by unelected and unaccountable members of the U.S. intelligence community — all of whom have partisan axes to grind against Trump.  The president fired FBI Director James Comey; he helped to remove senior FBI officials, like Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, and Lisa Page; Trump revoked the security clearances of former officials, like John Brennan, not because he was hiding something from the world.  Rather, Trump took these actions as a means of self-defense against former Obama officials masquerading as unbiased intelligence officers.  Fact is, the intelligence community — like the rest of the federal government — was weaponized by former President Barack Obama and used to punish political enemies of the Democratic Party.

Fake bombs are not bombs.  Fake news is fake news.  The American left to this day is unable to accept the results of the 2016 election.  So certain that their candidate would prevail, they have suffered a psychotic break from which they have not recovered.  Every sentient being now knows that it was Hillary, the DNC, the FBI, the DOJ, and the NSA that collaborated to prevent Trump from becoming president.  She and they fabricated the "dossier," planted spies in the Trump campaign, falsified FISA warrants, and leaked to the media.  Their plan was a Deep State coup like nothing else in U.S. history.

Spygate: The True Story of Collusion.  The sudden legitimacy of Trump's candidacy was not welcomed by the U.S. political establishment.  Here was a true political outsider who held no traditional allegiances.  He was brash and boastful, he ignored political correctness, he couldn't be bought, and he didn't care what others thought of him — he trusted himself.  Governing bodies in Britain and the European Union were also worried.  Candidate Trump was openly challenging monetary policy, regulations, and the power of special interests.  He challenged Congress.  He challenged the United Nations and the European Union.  He questioned everything.

Yes, The Deep State Is Real — And Working To Undermine Our Nation.  President Trump earlier this week said that he would release a trove of documents related to the Russia investigation and declassify their contents.  Included are 21 pages taken from a June 2017 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) application used to spy on former Trump aide Carter Page.  Along with those pages, Trump also seeks release of unredacted FBI notes made during interviews conducted for the FISA application, along with text messages related to Russia and notes from FBI interviews with Bruce Ohr, the No. 4 official in the Justice Department.  Why is that key?  Ohr had close ties to former British spy Christopher Steele, who authored the so-called Trump dossier for Fusion GPS.  Steele, whose work was funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign and by the Clinton-controlled Democratic National Committee, served as an informant to the FBI until he was let go for leaking to the media.  But Ohr's wife, Nellie, continued to work for Fusion GPS, a fact that Bruce Ohr didn't reveal on his mandatory federal disclosure filings.

Knowing What We Know Now, We Must Remind Ourselves.  As we absorb the corrupt evidence within what the DOJ, FBI, CIA and intelligence community was willing to do to stop the Trump administration; as we absorb the totality of all methods deployed by the professional political establishment to destroy Donald J Trump; as we begin to quantify the scale of corruption within our political institutions, and continue bearing witness to the ongoing war against our the presidency; it is worthwhile revisiting a warning, a call to arms, from two-years-ago.  The lies, the severity of hatred and opposition, now make much more sense.

How Anti-Trump Leakers Moved From Offense to Defense.  RCI has found that the anti-Trump leaks fall into two broad categories, or phases.  Initially the leaking was an offensive operation aimed at disrupting Trump's agenda, especially through leaks alleging connections between his campaign and the Russians.  Its early successes included leaks of highly classified material that led to the firing of National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and the recusal of Attorney General Jeff Sessions from overseeing that probe.  The second phase — which began roughly a year into the Trump administration — has been more defensive, pushing back against congressional oversight committees that had uncovered irregularities in the FBI's investigation of Trump.  This phase has been marked by the willingness of press outlets to run stories backing off earlier reported leaks that proved to be deeply misleading — including the roots of the FBI's investigation of the Trump campaign and the relationship between Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr and the opposition research firm that produced a central document of that probe, the largely discredited "Steele dossier."

The Three Hard Truths of the Trump Era.  [#3] The deep state is real.  Despite the media's obsessive and positive coverage of Robert Mueller's "collusion" investigation, and their willful shooing aside of its numerous shortcomings and inconsistencies, the truth is slowly but surely coming out.  And it appears Trump was right all along.  There can be little doubt that, given what we know now, federal agencies were harnessed to both excuse Hillary Clinton's transgressions and impede Donald Trump's Presidency.  The facts are:  [A] Partisan agents loyal to Hillary were hugely influential in both the investigation into her emails and the investigation into Trump's collusion with Russia.  [B] The FBI relied heavily on the Steele dossier, which has been largely debunked, to justify its collusion investigation.  [C]  There were numerous conflicts of interest in both investigations:  in regards to Hillary's emails, Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe's wife had ties to long-time Clinton ally and former Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe.  In regards to Mueller's "collusion" investigation, the wife of a top DOJ official was hired by FusionGPS, the firm behind the notorious dirty dossier, specifically to investigate the President.

Mueller, Comey, and the Deep State Rescue of Sandy Berger.  [Scroll down]  Republican presidents struggle against a collective of entrenched careerists, soulless opportunists, and left-wing ideologues — the so-called "deep state."  The ideologues are in it for the power, the careerists for the pensions, and the opportunists for the applause.  Working together with their media partners, they follow the path of least resistance, which is almost inevitably to the left.  When a Democrat is president, they have his back.

You're Surrounded Mr. Mueller, Give Yourself Up.  [Scroll down]  Seamus Bruner of The Epoch Times has just put together a list of 25 DOJ and FBI officials who have resigned in the last year. [...] As I look at this list, I know it includes only a fraction of those who have risked their careers and their reputations because they simply couldn't bear to see Donald Trump in the White House.  Before this is over, others will be added to the list.  Perhaps even Rod Rosenstein.  And there will likely be former top-level Obama officials caught in the net as well.  Perjurers John Brennan and James Clapper come to mind.  In addition to the men and women who have been working against Trump in the DOJ and the FBI, there were/are employees in the State Department and the CIA, holdovers from the Obama administration, who are complicit.  The mainstream media has played a huge role in perpetuating this hoax.  They have breathlessly distorted events to influence public opinion.  Instead of reporting the news, they have worked overtime to shape it.  For an example of how the mainstream media has aided and abetted the left's attempt to impeach Trump, we need to look no further than their outrage over the revocation of John Brennan's security clearance.

Why aren't the Democrats horrified by the corruption at the FBI and DOJ?  It is becoming clearer by the day, after over a year of investigations, that the Obama administration did indeed weaponize the DOJ, the FBI, the CIA, the ATF, the IRS and the NSA.  Over those eight years, each of the above agencies was transformed into an arm of the Democratic Party tasked with crippling the opposition and abrogating the Constitution.  Since all of the mainstream media already were arms of the DNC, it is well and truly a miracle that Donald Trump prevailed throughout his campaign to win the election, as the entire DC bureaucracy and media were aligned against him.  Most of them still are.

The Deep State Wears Black Robes.  Freedom Watch Founder Larry Klayman discusses the bad legal advice President Trump is getting about Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Russia-gate probe and urges the president to hire new lawyers to go after Mueller and the Deep State.  He also declares Judge Brett Kavanaugh "uniquely unqualified and unfit" to serve on the Supreme Court because of his controversial decision in favor of Barack Hussein Obama's illegal NSA mass surveillance program, which targeted President Trump!  Klayman is proposing the use of citizen grand juries to go after the Deep State operatives who control the intelligence agencies and have "the ability to gather information to blackmail" people such as Kavanaugh to do their bidding.  [Video clip]

It's Oakland in Muellerville.  Wikipedia defines this autogleipsimous activity as "a self-perpetuating system that has no purpose other than to sustain itself."  The Mueller investigation and its attendant pseudo-pods in the media and "intelligence community" are indeed self-perpetuating.  But they exhibit a purpose that goes far beyond their own self-perpetuation.  No, in this safari, big game is the object, the end, the purpose, to wit the destruction of the president of the United States.  That is the true purpose of this charade:  not the truth about "Russian meddling," not alleged wrong doing by Paul Manafort in 2005, not a lack of candor under FBI questioning by George Papadopoulos (who?) or Michael Flynn.  The one true purpose (in addition to the welcome subsidiary effect of helping out the ratings of the MSM) is to hobble Donald Trump, a prelude to removing him from office.

Just How Far Will the Left Go?  The Obama apparat and the proverbial deep state never imagined Trump could win and thus to ensure that he would not just be defeated but humiliated, vied to use the power of government to destroy the Trump candidacy.  The National Security Council was weaponized and thus unmasked the names of surveilled Americans and leaked their names to the press to undermine the Trump campaign.  The Department of Justice was weaponized to ensure Hillary Clinton was exonerated for her misdeeds concerning her email server and quid pro quo collusion with a variety of foreign and domestic influence peddlers and buyers.  The FBI and CIA were weaponized to subvert the Trump campaign, by peddling an unverified smear dossier, paid for by Hillary Clinton, by implanting informants into the Trump campaign, and by undermining a FISA court through dishonest presentations of evidence for warrants to spy on American citizens.  All such behavior was assumed to ensure the landslide Clinton victory and thus would be seen as sacrifice beyond the call of duty to be rewarded by a President Clinton not as illegal behavior to be punished during a Trump administration.  And as a result, the more culpability that was exposed, the more the culpable went on the offensive — on the theory that constant attack is the best defense against their own criminal liability.  T

The Real Threat to American Democracy.  We know that the FBI and DOJ swept under the rug Hillary's gross negligence in handling classified information and that Bill Clinton arranged a secret meeting with Loretta Lynch while the investigation was ongoing.  The only reason we know that the meeting occurred was due to the efforts of one brave local investigative reporter.  To this day, the FBI and DOJ are waging a war on the president — nothing less than an attempt to nullify the people's vote in 2016.  Clearly, the FBI's and DOJ's malicious attacks on the president indicate that they think power belongs to the ruling elites, not the people.

Obama single-handedly ruined the FBI and the DOJ.  While the devious machinations of the Deep State are not new, it was the Obama administration, most likely Obama himself, who brought us to this low point, the wholesale corruption of the FBI and the DOJ leadership.  Obama surrounded himself with like-minded globalist elites who thought no laws applied to them:  Susan Rice, Samantha Power, Valerie Jarrett, the Podestas, Ben Rhodes, Jonathan Gruber, and more.  Eric Holder was the most unprincipled attorney general, more even than John Mitchell, who served time in federal prison.  We learned from the I.G. report that Obama lied when he said he learned of HRC's private server from the media.  He knew because he, too, corresponded with her from a private email, just as Comey used a non-FBI email account.  None of these people, not one, respected our Constitution or the laws meant to govern their agencies.  This is what Obama did to America.  He virtually destroyed the FBI, the CIA, and the DOJ by turning them into weapons with which to destroy his opponents.

The Deep State Is an Organism, Not a Conspiracy.  The FBI folks like Strzok, Page, McCabe, Attorney #2 and so on appear to have been an actual conspiracy (definition: a secret plan by a group to do something unlawful or harmful) but they alone certainly aren't sufficient to justify people talking about a "Deep State."  But that's beside the point.  From the point of view of the Administrative State, which survives on a diet of fresh government programs and mutual backscratching, Trump's unexpected election was like a wound.  It was a danger to the organism, and the organism responded using its immune system — which is composed of "incompetence, idiocy, bureaucratic self-aggrandizement, and partisan hackery."

From 9/11 to Spygate:  The National Security Deep State.  [Scroll down]  We know some of what Mueller was doing.  The same official who paved the way for raiding the president's lawyer, who illegally seized material from the Trump transition team and whose case is based in no small part on illegal eavesdropping, fought alongside Comey against surveilling terrorists.  Materials involving the Muslim Brotherhood were purged.  Toward the dawn of the second Obama term, Mueller met with CAIR and other Islamist groups and a green curtain fell over national security.  But the surveillance wasn't going anywhere.  Instead it was being redirected to new targets.  Those targets were not, despite the wave of hysterical conspiracy theories convulsing the media, the Russians.  Mueller's boss was still quite fond of them.  Barack Obama did have foreign enemies that he wanted to spy on.  And there were plenty of domestic enemies who could be caught up in that trap.

Spygate:  The Coming Storm.  A growing segment of the American public now knows that the country's intelligence community was spying on the Trump campaign, and then attempting to sabotage the Trump Administration with false allegations of "Russian collusion."  That's #Spygate in a sentence.  A long and tawdry web composed of lies, obstruction, and leaking has slowly been unraveled until the falsehoods of the FBI, the CIA, the Justice Department, and other assorted deep state actors were revealed.  FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe has been fired, and is counting his GoFundMe cash in preparation for large legal bills.  Former FBI Director James Comey publicly set fire to his reputation during his recent book tour.  James Clapper was hired recently on CNN to analyze all the nefarious stuff he did as the former director of national intelligence.  Last, but certainly not least, former CIA head John Brennan has had to settle for pompous raging on Twitter — which is just about the most amateur thing that an ex-spymaster can possibly do.  The erstwhile leaders of our "intelligence community" have proven to be not very intelligent at all.

Why the Mueller probe is really five scandals, not one.  [Scandal #3]  The calculated effort to undermine and discredit then-candidate and now-President Donald Trump is actually a continuation of a deep anti-Republican bias in the Justice Department.  This Justice Department tradition is well catalogued in Sidney Powell's stunning book, "Licensed to Lie:  Exposing Corruption in the Department of Justice."  If you have any illusions about the Justice Department's objectivity, keep in mind that employees of this department gave 97 percent of their 2016 campaign donations to Hillary Clinton — while the department was supposedly investigating her for illegally using a private email server to send and receive classified information as secretary of state.

An Unparalleled Scandal.  The Deep State is clearly out of control.  Back when we uncovered the Clinton email scandal, Judicial Watch fought tooth and nail with the State Department, the Justice Department and the FBI for documents.  Little did we know that, even as they were protecting Hillary Clinton, these agencies were also targeting her political opponent, Donald Trump.  And, since then, we've uncovered a scandal unparalleled in American history in terms of abuse by government officials, offices, and agencies for political purposes.  The Obama administration used the Justice Department, the FBI, and other agencies to spy on its political opposition; and worked with Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee, to launder suspect intelligence from foreign nationals and use that as a pretext to spy on Donald Trump and his associates.  It's an incredible story, one that begins with the Obama White House and continues in the Deep State today.

A Conspiracy of Dunces.  Imagine, if you will, a cabal of government employees expecting one person to easily win the presidential election, and then the other candidate, the one they couldn't fathom leading the country, actually wins.  Now imagine those government employees aren't slogging away in the mailrooms of various departments, but they are the upper-echelon of the nation's intelligence agencies and they resolve to cripple the newly-elected president anyway they can.  You don't have to imagine it, it happened.  And we appear to be living in the aftermath of that effort.

Attacking Trump's Attorney:  Calling All Tea Partiers.  Raiding the office of the personal attorney of the president of the United States is the most outrageous of the Deep State's unprecedented, unhinged, and relentless attempts to overturn the 2016 election.  This raid should tell everyone that the Deep State will twist and bend the law to get rid of Trump.  As stated by President Trump, the Deep State truly is engaged in a disgraceful witch hunt.  Obama and Bill and Hillary Clinton are loyal Deep State operatives.  They have been stealthily transforming America into a socialist-progressive nation in which the federal government controls every aspect of our lives.  Trump is the new sheriff in town determined to crush the Washington, D.C. cartel by draining the swamp.  The Deep State is determined to block and destroy Trump at any and all cost.

The left at work:  Let's hope Trump survives.  The country is at present enduring the dire consequences of the depth and breadth of the Obama administration's many illegal activities.  Former CIA chief John Brennan surveilled American citizens, some of them senators, as Obama was pushing the horrific Iran deal, and he's never been charged with that crime.  In collusion with the Clinton campaign and the DNC, these Obama operatives used a fictional dossier to obtain FISA warrants to spy on Trump campaign officials.  They seriously meant to prevent him from getting close to a victory.  They conspired to clear Hillary Clinton of her many crimes so she could continue her bid for the presidency.  Who are the culprits?  All upper-echelon bureaucrats who considered themselves above the law:  Comey, Holder, Lynch, Clapper, Brennan, McCabe, Rice, and Power are well known names, the public faces of Obama's administration.  Now we know there was a host of lesser known operatives working behind the scenes, as Lois Lerner did, to manipulate facts and events in order to ensure Clinton's win.  Without question, this bunch of white-collar criminals has orchestrated the biggest, most serious campaign of political corruption in American history.  One would think every member of both parties in Congress would be outraged, that every American would be equally angry.  But no.  The Democrats have all lined up to defend these felons, and the Democrats are absolutely without shame in doing so.

America Is In Utter Jeopardy.  The vicious hatred of President Donald J. Trump by people ranging from republican party statists like Paul Ryan or the retiring Jeff Flake and democrats like Chuckie Schumer is not because Mr. Trump is the most horrible person to set foot in the Oval Office.  The hatred of Trump stems from his mission to reverse the curse of putting the interests of foreign nations and illegal border-crossers over the interests of you and I, Americans born and raised.  The simple yet powerful mission to make America great again immediately became a dividing line between those of us who love this republic and appreciate her many good attributes and the others who wish for her demise.  As horrific as the situation is politically with the swamp dwelling statists who are seeking to kill, steal and destroy our unalienable rights, especially the right to bear arms and protect ourselves, family and property.  That struggle pales in comparison to the awful drumbeat of government school indoctrination that has literally caused the creation of legions of young Americans who are literally seeking to destroy the republic from within.

This trap was set well before Trump won.  So this is the new standard for electing a president here in America, the greatest living experiment in self-governance.  A man can run the gauntlet against more than 20 professional politicians and come out victorious.  He can win more than 40 Republican primary contests and beat every professional political campaigner out there, earning the votes of more than 14 million Republicans.  He can then turn his attention to beating the most powerful, entrenched political machine America has seen in nearly a half-century.  (That corrupt machine had just pulled off its most devious and dishonest scam ever — rigging a presidential primary to snatch the party's preferred Socialist candidate away from Democrat voters.)  In the end, President Trump won the presidency fair and square, earning the votes of more than 60 million Americans and — crucially — winning the 30 states he needed to take the White House.

Timely news and commentary:

The subsection about General Mark Milley is now at the bottom of this page.)

The horrible NY ruling against Trump and the horrible judge who issued it.  It was a given when a judge ruled against Donald Trump on the suit that New York State Attorney General Letitia James filed, alleging that Trump defrauded banks to obtain loans.  The ruling revealed two interesting and important things about how leftists and their fellow travelers use the legal system and about the ideological corruption of leftist judges.  It goes without saying that the verdict was a joke.  The claim was that Trump lied to lenders to get better loan terms.  Interestingly, none of the lenders complained, and Trump paid back every penny.  More than that, commercial lenders have a due diligence responsibility, meaning they're supposed to do their own valuations before lending millions of dollars.  At Trump's level, lying is virtually impossible.  Still, it should have been a big story:  A judge claims Trump committed fraud and banned him from conducting business in New York, the state where most of the properties Trump developed exist.  You'd think that this would have been news fodder for days.

Trump Fraud Case:  Democrat Judge, Democrat Prosecutor, Democrat City.  Former President Donald Trump, two of his sons, and two of his employees were found liable for fraud Tuesday in a case brought by an elected Democrat prosecutor before an elected Democrat judge in a staunchly Democratic city.  Arthur Engoron, an elected civil Justice of the New York County Supreme Court, issued a rare summary judgment that concluded that New York Attorney General Letitia James proved her case before the defense mounted its own.  He went further, sanctioning Trump's attorneys and fining them $7500 each for filing repeated motions to dismiss that Judge Engoron decided were frivolous, disregarding the expert opinion of a former judge, filed with the court.

Real estate insiders bewildered by judge's $18M valuation of Trump's Mar-a-Lago: 'Would list at $300M'.  A New York judge's Tuesday [9/26/2023] ruling valuing Donald Trump's sprawling, headline-making Florida estate at $18 million has left industry experts perplexed.  In his verdict, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron delivered a bombshell ruling that the former president committed fraud by inflating the value of his wealth, with details including the monetary value associated with Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach.  This decision, which came down without a jury, has sent shockwaves through political — and real estate — circles, especially that $18 million base value for the property.  One prominent Palm Beach real estate broker, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told The [New York] Post, "It's utterly delusional to think that property is only worth $18 million."  The insider added, "If that property were on the market today, I would list it at around $300 million, minimum ... at least.  He also has the separate golf course minutes away."

New York Judge Rules Without Trial, Jury or Verdict, That President Trump Must Dissolve All Business Interests in State.  This is John Galt level government targeting.  A New York State judge has arbitrarily ruled, no trial — no jury, that President Trump overvalued his real estate holdings in New York, which means he paid too much in taxes, in order to secure financing and loans.  All the banks and lenders did their own due diligence on the financing.  All operational loans and business loans were paid back.  There were no defaults or banking interests adversely impacted.  There are no victims of what the State calls "fraud," yet the judge is ruling the Trump organization must dissolve all business interests in the state and exit within 10 days.  New York Attorney General Latisha James campaigned for office with promises to target the Trump Organization and Donald Trump himself.  This is malicious lawfare in the extreme.

Judge In Fulton County Trump Case Reveals How Dangerous This Prosecution Is To Our Country.  Did former President Donald Trump ask then-Assistant Attorney General Jeff Clark's legal opinion concerning Department of Justice options for addressing voting irregularities in Georgia, or did Clark volunteer his legal analysis on the question without the president's prompting?  The federal judge presiding over Clark's removal case, who will decide whether Clark must defend himself in the Democrat stronghold of Fulton County or in a Georgia federal court, focused on that question during last week's hearing.  In doing so, the judge revealed just how crazy — and dangerous — this political prosecution is to the future of our constitutional republic.

Former Trump Campaign Attorney Says Fulton County Case Based on Illegal Evidence.  Kenneth Chesebro, who served as an attorney for the Trump Campaign during the then-president's challenge of the 2020 elections, is arguing that the Fulton County District Attorney's office is violating attorney-client privilege in its pursuit of a case against him, former President Donald Trump, and 17 other defendants.  In Thursday filings, Mr. Chesebro moved to quash the charges against him in Fulton County, arguing that they were based on emails covered by attorney-client privilege, and have any such illegally obtained evidence thrown out.  The 19 co-defendants were charged with violating Georgia's Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, as well as 40 other charges, for their actions in the contesting of the 2020 election results.

Jack Smith Adds Radical Left-Wing Democrat Donor to Special Counsel Team Persecuting Trump.  Jack Smith added Alex Whiting, a 'war crimes prosecutor' to his special counsel team of nearly two dozen rabid prosecutors gunning for Trump.  Whiting is a radical left-wing Trump hater who previously praised Mueller's inquisition against the former president.  Former special counsel Robert Mueller's 'Trump-Russia collusion' investigation ended in a whimper and completely crumbled.  "Whiting has been a frequent commentator on the previous special counsel to investigate Trump:  Robert Mueller, who investigated links between Russia and Trump's 2016 campaign.  Whiting wrote numerous articles and gave interviews assessing the strength of Mueller's case against Trump, often siding with those who saw extreme legal peril for Trump over his efforts to curb the investigation." Politico reported.

Jack Smith Was Hired as Hitman to Take Trump Out.  Don't be fooled.  Special Counsel Jack Smith was not hired to argue a brilliant case against President Donald Trump in a court of law.  Jack Smith was not hired to bring legitimate charges against President Trump.  Jack Smith was hired as a DOJ hitman to take out Trump.  Period.  Jack Smith has always been a hitman.  He was hired as a hitman before.  He was hired as a hitman to destroy Trump.  Jack Smith is not a genius in legal theory.  That's not his job.  When Attorney General Merrick Garland, top DOJ officials, and Joe Biden's handlers met to plan their next assault on the former president they all agreed on one thing.  They needed to destroy President Trump completely and ensure that he never makes it to Election Day.

Special Counsel Jack Smith calls for 'narrowly tailored' gag order against Donald Trump in January 6 case.  Special Counsel Jack Smith has asked for a 'narrowly tailored' gag order against Donald Trump, to stop him from making 'inflammatory' and 'intimidating' comments to the judge and witnesses in the federal January 6 case.  Smith's team has accused Trump of engaging in a campaign of 'disinformation' and harassment intended to intimidate witnesses, prosecutors and others involved in the trial.  The extraordinary filing says Trump's efforts to weaken faith in the court system mirror his attacks on the 2020 election and the results.

Fulton County DA Accused of Burying Evidence That Could Derail Trump RICO Case.  Sidney Powell's defense attorney in the Fulton County, Georgia, RICO case regarding an alleged effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election results in the state accused county prosecutors Thursday of withholding exculpatory evidence in violation of the law.  Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee also made a key ruling in the case severing Powell's and pro-Trump attorney Kenneth Chesebro's cases from those of former President Donald Trump and the 16 other defendants, CNN reported.  Both Powell, a former Trump campaign attorney, and Chesebro sought a speedy trial, consistent with their Sixth Amendment right, while Trump and the other defendants want the case slowed down to better prepare their defenses.

The Mathematics of Democrat 'Justice'.  Judge Tanya Chutkan of the D.C. Federal District Court has ruled that the trial there against Trump will begin March 4, 2024.  Many have already commented on how badly that will impact candidate Trump subjectively, given the electoral calendar's Super Tuesday primaries the next day.  Attention should also be directed to how Democrat "justice" is being imposed on defendant Trump in objective terms.

Weaponizing the Fourteenth Amendment.  By now, it is clear that the concerted effort to paint Donald Trump as a criminal has backfired.  After four indictments, including the most recent 13-count indictment in Fulton County, Georgia, Pres.  Trump holds a commanding lead among prospective Republican primary voters in Iowa and elsewhere.  Evidence indicates that Trump's criminal indictments strengthen, rather than shrink, his poll numbers.  Enraged by Trump's rising popularity, his political opponents are now looking to keep his name off the ballot entirely.  Already, this effort has gained momentum in Michigan, New Hampshire, and Arizona.  These states, egged on by elite law professors, have turned the 14th Amendment, which was previously used to prevent ex-Confederates from seeking office after the Civil War, into an improvised legal weapon designed to bar the former president from reclaiming office after his actions in the weeks following the 2020 presidential election.

California Attorney Files Lawsuit to Bar Donald Trump from 2024 Ballot.  An attorney in Venice, California, filed a federal lawsuit on Saturday to bar former President Donald Trump from California's 2024 presidential primary election, arguing that he is disqualified due to his alleged role in the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot, according to a report.  The lawsuit argues that the Fourteenth Amendment states that no one can hold office who has previously taken an oath of office to support the Constitution and then "engaged in insurrection or rebellion" or gave aid to those who did, according to a Los Angeles Times report.

Trumpophobes Seek to Keep Him Off '24 Ballot for Crimes He Never Committed.  As if the four previous prosecutorial cow pies that surround Donald Trump were not fetid enough, the U.S. Supreme Court soon will step into efforts to bar him from state ballots.  Assorted Trumpophobes are using the Bill of Rights to deny Americans the right to vote for or against Trump for president.  Specifically, Section 3 of the 14th Amendment disqualifies from high office certain individuals who "shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the [U.S. Constitution], or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof."  This legal theory might make sense if Trump had been imprisoned for insurrection or rebellion.  It might hold water if he had been convicted of insurrection or rebellion.  This boomlet even might boast a thimble full of steam, if the Justice Department, a state attorney general, or some county prosecutor had indicted him for insurrection or rebellion.  Unfortunately for Trump haters, that never happened.

They Are Removing Trump From The Board.  What Are You Going To Do About It?  Regardless of any delusions you, I, or anyone else may harbor on this issue, the odds that Donald Trump will be saddled with at least one FELONY conviction out of the dozens he is currently charged with are exceedingly high.  It doesn't even matter whether the charges are with or without merit.  If a firing squad is pointing 91 rounds at someone, at least one of them is gonna hit the target.  This means that this time next year, instead of campaigning or even accepting the GOP nomination in person, the former president could either be in prison or on house arrest, playing golf with an ankle bracelet.  Make no mistake.  They are removing Trump from the board. [...] It seems evident that the powers that be want to secure a GOP nomination for Trump while making it impossible for him to win or even compete in the general election.  A win was already going to be an uphill climb, but now it's absolutely impossible, and they know it.

If President Trump Is Not an 'Officer of the United States,' Section 3 Should Not Apply.  As President Donald J. Trump continues to dominate the field, some are looking to disqualify him from the ballot in different states pursuant to Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment, [...] The gist of the argument is that Trump allegedly engaged in an insurrection against the United States and is, therefore, prohibited from holding office.  There are many reasons why this interpretation or argument should fail.  [#1] There was no insurrection.  To begin, there is no evidence that Trump engaged in an insurrection nor proof that an insurrection occurred.  As a matter of fact, the Senate acquitted Trump of such ridiculous charges during the second impeachment.

Six Republicans File Lawsuit to Remove Trump from 2024 Ballot in Colorado.  A coalition of six Republicans and unaffiliated Colorado voters, including former state and federal officials, filed a lawsuit Wednesday seeking to disqualify former President Donald Trump from appearing on the state's 2024 presidential ballot.  The plaintiffs are represented by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), a nonprofit and "nonpartisan" watchdog organization, alongside law firms Tierney Lawrence Stiles LLC, KBN Law, LLC, and Olson Grimsley Kawanabe Hinchcliff & Murray LLC.  The plaintiffs are Norma Anderson, Michelle Priola, Claudine Cmarada, Krista Kafer, Kathi Wright, and Christopher Castilian.

Trump suffers big loss in E. Jean Carroll defamation case, judge says he's liable.  A federal judge on Wednesday ruled that Donald Trump is civilly liable for defamatory statements he made about writer E. Jean Carroll in 2019 when she went public with claims he had raped her decades earlier.  Judge Lewis Kaplan, as part of that ruling, said the upcoming trial for Carroll's lawsuit against Trump will only deal with the question of how much the former president should pay her in monetary damages for defaming her.  Normally, a jury would determine at trial whether a defendant is liable for civil damages claimed by a plaintiff.

Democrat Disconnect in D.C..  It should come as no surprise to anyone that a recent poll found that a majority of residents of the District of Columbia would convict Donald Trump over his challenge of the 2020 election results.  Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) once told me during an interview that the people in D.C., particularly those inside the Beltway, have absolutely no clue about what the rest of America is thinking, feeling, or experiencing.  Granted, not everyone or perhaps anyone who responded to the survey is a member of the Marble Mafia, but the response reflects the attitudes of the coastal elites and those who faithfully adhere to the accepted narratives as opposed to, say, anyone else.  The poll, conducted by Emerson College Polling, showed that 64% of Washington residents stated that if it were up to them, they would find Trump guilty of trying to undermine the election results.  Twenty-eight percent were unsure, while 8% said that they would find Trump innocent.

We're all witnesses to an attempted political murder.  Never before has the American people been subjected to the obnoxious spectacle of a former president being relentlessly pursued by craven partisans using government (read: taxpayer-funded) resources.  One explanation involves Mr. Trump's unique ability to bring out the worst in his enemies.  Actually, it may also be caused by a common character weakness among his opponents.  One would need an enormous score card to keep track of all the indictments and other litigations being heaped upon Mr. Trump.  He has thus employed an army of attorneys in order to resist the onslaught.  Being a billionaire has certainly come in handy for this effort — but a few billion dollars can go only so far.  The stubborn continuation of his candidacy for re-election allows him to raise campaign contributions, some of which can be applied to his legal defense — because they are an appropriate campaign expense, much like media advertisements, mailers and travel.  The prevailing countermeasure has been for the Deep State thugs to add Trump's lawyers to their target list.

MAGA vs. the DoJ.  Along with all its other efforts to hamstring Donald Trump's legal defense in the D.C. case, the DoJ has dumped 12.8 million documents on Trump's defense team, leaving them without adequate time to prepare before the March court date.  This is unlikely to earn them much consideration from Judge Tanya Chutkan, who has exhibited open hostility to Donald Trump.  This appears to be a new tactic developed by prosecutors to cripple defense efforts while remaining within the letter of the law.  On August 25, prosecutors dumped over 4 million documents on the defense team of accused cryptocurrency fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried while at the same time making it next to impossible for him to actually view them.  (Bankman-Fried is being held at Brooklyn's Metropolitan Detention Center, which has no facilities for accessing the documents.)  The solution for Trump's team is simple:  utilize his vast personal following as a crowdsourcing resource to analyze and sort out the documents.

Law and Order:  The Post-Constitutional Episode.  When Donald Trump was inaugurated, the city erupted in flames, store windows were smashed, cars were hammered, and protestors attempted to tear down the fence around the White House.  When George Floyd, a man with serious health problems, a long criminal record, and a history of drug abuse, died in custody, Black Lives Matter protests roiled cities with massive destructive protests.  In D.C., without authorization, on her own, the mayor painted a major thoroughfare with a giant "Black Lives Matter" message.  One District Judge was offended by the disparate treatment given these rioters and the draconian measures against the J6 protestors, almost all of whom had only engaged in peacefully seeking contested election results be sent back to the respective states for investigation before the results were certified. [...] She is the judge in the pending case here against Donald Trump.  Julie Kelly, almost singularly, has been covering the preliminary proceedings in this case and it is evident that Judge Chutkan has no interest in conducting a fair trial.  The judge has set a March 4 trial date (the day before Super Tuesday).  This is a time frame that will be impossible for the defense to meet.  For one thing, they've just been handed 12.8 million discovery documents by the prosecution, an amount of material to review and prepare a response to in a time frame which is grossly inadequate.  "DOJ could not name a single case in DC District that went from indictment to trial in 5 months," In fact, numerous J6 defendants have been confined to the DC jail without trial for over two years.  "Chutkan keeps saying case won't go to trial in 2026 and grasping for reasons why.  She continues to hammer Trump's lawyer for not reviewing possible evidence related to an indictment that didn't even exist."

Anti-Trump RINOS and the 14th Amendment.  The 14th Amendment, one of three post-Civil War amendments passed in 1866, contains several important legal provisions, including the Due Process Clause, the Equal Protection Clause, and the Citizenship Clause.  But a lesser-known provision in Section 3 of the Amendment — the "Insurrection Clause," targeting individuals who have engaged in rebellion or insurrection against the United States, has gotten the RINOs excited.  Under the Insurrection Clause, no person shall hold certain federal or state offices if they previously took an oath to support the Constitution of the United States and then engaged in rebellion or insurrection against it.  Historically, this applied to Confederate officers who first swore allegiance to the United States, but then launched massive armed attacks upon the United States complete with guns, cannons, and bayonets, and actually spilled oceans of American blood. [...] To get Trump, RINOS and Democrats join together to twist the Insurrection Clause into something opposite of its original meaning.

Federal Judge Dismisses Case Trying to Keep Trump Off 2024 Ballot.  A federal judge on Friday dismissed a lawsuit filed by a Florida lawyer who claimed Trump should be banned from the 2024 ballot for inciting an insurrection.  The legal theory is based on Section 3 of the US Constitution's 14th Amendment which states public officials who have "engaged in insurrection or rebellion against" the US may be disqualified from public office.  Trump has not been charged with engaging in insurrection or rebellion against the United States.  Judge Robin Rosenberg a US District Judge for the Southern District of Florida ruled the attorney, Lawrence Caplan, lacked standing to bring the lawsuit.

Fani Willis Threatens to Violate Rights of Defendants in Trump RICO Case Because She's Not Prepared For Trial.  Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is now threatening defendants in Trump's RICO case because she is not prepared for trial.  Earlier this month Fani Willis hit President Trump and 18 others with RICO and conspiracy charges for daring to challenge the 2020 election.  A Fulton County grand jury returned a 41-count indictment which included RICO and conspiracy charges against Trump.  There are 30 unidentified unindicted co-conspirators.

Trump Co-Defendant Eastman:  If We Don't Fight Back, We Will Never Have a Fair Election Again.  Wednesday on FNC's "The Ingraham Angle," Trump co-defendant John Eastman argued efforts to focus on alleged wrongdoing during the 2020 election were justified.  Eastman told host Laura Ingraham those aligned with former President Donald Trump had to fight back or face the possibility of never having a "fair election" again.  "The answer is not to just, you know, take a powder and concede because then it will get worse on the next go around," he said.  "The answer is to fight it with everything we've got because what's at stake here is too important. [...]"

Yuscil Taveras, the Mar-a-Lago IT director who flipped on Donald Trump, is a registered Democrat with a history of money troubles.  The Mar-a-Lago IT director who flipped on Donald Trump in the classified documents case is a part-time DJ and registered Democrat with a history of money troubles, DailyMail.com can exclusively reveal.  Yuscil Taveras, 45, managed to rack up debts of nearly $750,000 despite holding down a string of well-paid tech jobs and moonlighting as 'DJ Juicy.'  The dad-of-two battled back from bankruptcy but now finds himself a pivotal figure in Special Counsel Jack Smith's efforts to convict Trump of mishandling top secret government material.

The True Big Lie.  The entire case against Trump and his fellow defendants in the 2020 election-interference prosecutions can't even get off the ground unless it is more or less evidently true that the election was not stolen.  The fact of the matter is that it's not unreasonable to believe that the election was stolen, and consequently it isn't possible for it to be (more or less) evidently true that the election was not stolen.  That is why the case against Trump and his collaborators necessarily collapses, whether or not a corrupted legal system recognizes this.  There is no case against Trump and his confreres insofar as it's reasonable to believe that the 2020 election was stolen.  Trying to stop an apparently stolen election is what everyone should do.

New York AG Seeks Immediate Partial Judgment, No Trial, in $250 Million Fraud Lawsuit Against Trump.  New York Attorney General Letitia James is seeking an immediate partial summary judgment in her multimillion-dollar civil lawsuit against former President Donald Trump, court documents show.  Documents dated Aug. 30 show that Ms. James urged Judge Arthur Engoron to issue a summary judgment on one of seven claims in her 200-page civil lawsuit filed against President Trump, The Trump Organization, and three of his adult children in 2022, alleging "years of financial fraud to obtain a host of economic benefits."  In her lawsuit, Ms. James claimed that over a 10-year period, from 2011 through 2021, President Trump and the other defendants had "engaged in numerous acts of fraud and misrepresentation in the preparation of Mr. Trump's annual statements of financial condition," which included deceiving insurers, tax officials, and lenders by allegedly inflating the value of his properties, including his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.

Dave Smith on Rogan:  The Deep State vs. Trump.  If you've been following this blog for a a while, very little in this Joe Rogan interview with Dave Smith will be new to you.  But this is a nice explanation of how the early part of the Russiagate hoax developed if you weren't paying attention to the blow-by-blow revelations at the time.  [Video clip]

The criminalization of politics to get Trump is endangering everyone's rights.  The U.S. Constitution is clear:  Political speech is protected by the First Amendment.  Also, battles over the acceptance of electors to validate a presidential election are wholly within the political realm and should not be subject to criminal sanctions.  Yet our nation is very close to setting a dangerous precedent by criminalizing speech and politics, and one political faction is rushing into this folly headlong.  If the Biden administration is allowed to criminalize speech and politics, we will become a nation where the losers of presidential elections are arrested instead of being sent into retirement with book tours and libraries.  The criminalization of politics is a dangerous game that Democrats used to decry, when they thought the shoe might end up on the other foot.  No matter how you feel about former President Donald Trump's activities after the 2020 election, the reaction of putting Trump in jail for his speech and activities to organize opposition to Congress counting Electoral College votes would degrade our political system and set the precedent that one party can criminalize the political activities of the other.

Mark Levin Says Trump's Fulton County Indictment Is 'A Perfect Case For Grand Jury Abuse'.  Fox News host Mark Levin called the handling of the indictment of former President Donald Trump in Fulton County, Georgia, "a perfect case" of "grand jury abuse," citing the leak of a document.  Trump turned himself in at the Fulton County jail to be booked after a grand jury handed down indictments the night of Aug. 14, charging Trump and other associates, including former Republican Mayor Rudy Giuliani of New York City and attorneys Jenna Ellis, John Eastman and Sidney Powell.  A document listing charges against Trump was posted on the website of the Fulton County courts the afternoon of Aug. 14 before being deleted.

Georgia Officials Didn't Follow Ethical, Legal Rules in Trump Indictment.  A judge in Fulton County, Georgia, failed to properly follow the precedent set by the state Supreme Court in allowing the county's top prosecutor to go forward with a grand jury investigation of former President Donald Trump after disquaifying the prosecutor from part of the probe for misbehavior.  In a legal analysis Aug. 15 in The Daily Signal, I pointed out the problems with the spurious indictment of Trump and 18 codefendants orchestrated by Fani Wills, the politically ambitious district attorney in Fulton County.  This combination of factors has resulted in an unprecedented attack on the First Amendment and the structure of the American legal system.  So what is the ethical problem above and beyond the constitutional and legal problems with Willis' indictment of Trump?  On July 25, 2022, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney disqualified Willis from continuing to target then-state Sen. Burt Jones as part of her grand jury investigation.

Trump [is the] Victim of a Radically Transformed Federal Judiciary.  The judicial persecution of Donald Trump has exposed the blatant political bias that animates many Federal District Court judges.  Packing the Federal Judiciary at all levels with left-wing judges is the cornerstone of the Marxist Democrat Party strategy to permanently transform America.  If they win the presidency in 2024, they will have succeeded in packing the Federal Judiciary by the end of the term on January 20, 2029.  This process began in earnest with Barack Obama.  He came into office determined to fill the judiciary with left-wing judges, and he succeeded, as virtually every one of his appointments has revealed their bias and leftist ideology while serving on the various courts.  Joe Biden has followed in Obama's footsteps by nominating equally if not more ideologically bound left-wing judges.  The following federal judges are not animated by upholding the law or the Constitution but instead are motivated by political considerations and their allegiance to statist ideology.

U.S. Attorney Weiss Colluded With DOJ To Thwart Congressional Questioning, Emails Show.  Emails obtained by the Heritage Foundation following a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit and shared exclusively with The Federalist establish that on multiple occasions, the Department of Justice intervened on behalf of Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss to respond to congressional inquiries related to the Hunter Biden investigation.  This revelation raises more questions about the June 7, 2023, letter dispatched to House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan under Weiss's signature line, in which the Delaware U.S. attorney claimed he had "ultimate authority" over charging decisions related to Hunter Biden.  It also suggests Weiss and the DOJ may have conspired to mislead Congress.

The Left is 'willfully blind' to President Trump's rights.  A senior law professor at New York University Law, Professor Burt Neuborne, who is also the founding director of NYU's Brennan Center, and perhaps ironically a former national legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, penned a Guest Essay ("There's a Good Chance Trump Will Be Found 'Willfully Blind'), which is a fascinating example of falsification and post hoc fallacy:  he aggressively advances with astonishing mistruths that President Trump is already guilty based solely on accusations; makes from that particular false assumption, a false conclusion that the former president has limited legal remedies, and finally tries to sell the general reader on a legal theory that serves the Plaintiff (the "government") in its case against the Defendant: that President Trump will be found "willfully blind" by using false statements (questioning an election) to create an unlawful benefit (overturning it).

Democrats Aren't 'Interfering' In 2024 Election With Trump Trial, They're Blatantly Rigging It.  News broke Monday that U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, the judge overseeing the Jan. 6-related case against Donald Trump in Washington, D.C., set a March 4, 2024, trial date for the former president.  It just so happens that March 4 is the day before Super Tuesday, when more than a dozen states, from California to Texas to Virginia, will hold Republican primary elections.  What a coincidence!  What this means is that Trump, the Republican front-runner by a wide margin, will not be able to campaign ahead of the most important date on the GOP primary calendar.  It also means he'll likely be tied up in court a week later on March 12, when four more states hold primary elections.  But this isn't merely election "interference," it's a naked attempt to rig the 2024 election.  The timing here is important, because not only will Trump be pulled off the campaign trail at a crucial time, he will almost certainly be convicted over the summer.  After all, the jury in this case will be drawn from a pool that voted 92 percent for Joe Biden.  No matter how outlandish and unconstitutional the charges are, no matter how utterly politicized the process is, a D.C. jury is going to convict Trump.

Authoritarian Ruling Class Mulls Post-Civil War Measures To Bar Trump From The Presidency.  Anti-Trump legal scholars have been arguing that the third clause of the 14th Amendment, a post-Civil War measure barring Confederates from holding public office after participating in an insurrection, can be used against Donald Trump.  Attaching a broken boxcar to the back of this moving train, an Aug. 25 essay at Politico casually compares the case for 14th Amendment disqualification from the presidency to the disqualification of southern congressmen during the Civil War.  You may have already spotted a problem in that last sentence because the story Joshua Zeitz writes about Trump and the 14th Amendment has nothing to do with the 14th Amendment:  It's a story about the refusal of the House of Representatives to take notice of southern congressman in 1864, well before the Reconstruction amendments were ratified.

The statistical fraud of multiple counts and courts.  If "no reasonable prosecutor" would bring a criminal case unless the odds of conviction were well above a mere coin toss, then what are we to make of 91 counts, 34 in New York, 40 in Florida, 4 in D.C., and now 13 more in Georgia?  After all, it only takes one conviction for the Democrats to chortle: "See!  See!  He's a criminal!  Lock him up!"  And even if each count against Trump had only, say, a sixty percent chance of a guilty verdict, it would only take six counts for the overall statistical odds of obtaining at least one conviction to be above a confidence level of 99 percent.  So what can not six but 91 counts mean?  It means the Left can bring counts it knows are weak, yet still gain "success" from a statistical trick.  Even if each count has only a ten percent chance of "sticking" — and any prosecutor bringing such a poor case should be dismissed — with 91 such counts, then the odds of at least one "success" among them would still be over 99.99 percent.

Here's Proof That Trump's Trials Are Election Interference.  Earlier this month, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis proposed a March 4 trial date for her case against Donald Trump.  March 4 also just happens to be the day before Super Tuesday, on which 15 states hold their primaries.  However, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp threw cold water on that idea.  So naturally, Obama-appointed U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan went ahead and scheduled a start date for Trump's federal charges (for his alleged crimes between the 2020 election and January 6, 2021) for the exact same day.  Coincidence?  Please, don't make me laugh.  "Setting a trial date does not depend and should not depend on the defendant's personal and professional obligations," Judge Chutkan insisted during the hearing. "Mr. Trump, like any defendant, will have to make the trial date work regardless of his schedule."

New Hampshire Secretary of State Backs Down, 'Not Seeking' to Remove Trump from Ballot.  New Hampshire Secretary of State David Scanlan told NBC News on Monday he is "not seeking to remove any names" from the Republican primary ballot after Turning Point USA Founder Charlie Kirk urged his supporters to call Scanlan's office following reports Scanlan was weighing using the Fourteenth Amendment to keep former President Donald Trump off the ballot.  On Friday, Scanlan met with New Hampshire attorney Bryant "Corky" Messner to discuss Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment, which says public officials are not eligible to hold office if they "engaged in insurrection or rebellion against" the United States.

Save the Rule of Law By Destroying It?  Three leftwing prosecutors are criminalizing politics with more than 90 simultaneous indictments of Donald Trump, the ex-president and currently the leading Republican primary candidate.  While New York prosecutor Letitia James is hounding Trump with a $250 million state lawsuit against the Trump organization and family, on the pretense of supposedly Trump overvaluing his real estate and filing inaccurate financial statements.  Is there any Mafia don, mass murderer, or terrorist who has faced so many indictments or suits in so many jurisdictions at almost the same time? [...] Americans ask themselves questions whose answers are never given.  Why are all these Trump prosecutors leftwing or with Democratic connections?  Would any of the 90 something indictments for "crimes" of years past have been lodged against a citizen Trump who had retired from politics?

The Establishment's 'Gallipoli Campaign' against the American People.  Of all the politicians in America, why did toads such as David Plouffe, Bill Kristol, and communist CIA chief John Brennan eventually see Donald Trump as such a threat?  First, because Donald Trump has always been his own man — unowned and unbowed by the cabal of corporate oligarchs, Intelligence Community shadow dictators, and institutional Marxist globalists that are now correctly understood as the permanent Deep State.  For all the ruling class's talk of "democracy," it abhors anything independent enough to exist beyond the managed control of its secretive clique.  Second, because Donald Trump articulates a vision of economic nationalism that threatens the interests of multinational corporations and one-world-government enthusiasts.  Enriching and protecting Americans, abiding by the limits of the U.S. Constitution, and defending individual liberty and national sovereignty — these straightforward goals are all antithetical to the Marxist collectivism and technocratic despotism of the World Economic Forum's planned new world order.

Georgia indictment of Trump is the same flawed product in a different package.  The processing of former President Donald Trump in the Fulton County jail followed a familiar pattern.  First came the mugshot, then the merchandise.  Both the left and the right immediately started selling mugs and t-shirts featuring the scowling image of Inmate P01135809.  Snap, scowl, sell and spin.  Our legal and political dialogue has now been reduced to the substance of a Benetton catalogue.  Politicians and pundits continue to assure the public that this indictment is not just the criminalization of political speech or election challenges.  Much of that spin returns to a familiar point of reference:  Trump's call to Georgia officials.  Indeed, I have been criticized for even suggesting that "the call" is not evidence of a crime, even though I continue to support the actions of the Georgia officials who resisted Trump's requests, including Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.

Trump and the Tower of Lies.  Donald Trump is never going to prison.  He is never going to be sentenced.  It's likely that at least some of the legal proceedings are never going to come to fruition, simply because the end result would be too embarrassing to the powers-that-be.  If in fact Trump is ever convicted at all, it will last only until it reaches an unbiased appeals court, at which point each count will be thrown out, one after the other. [...] The entire purpose of these exercises is to see to it that he doesn't run again — that there is no Trump '24 campaign — with the secondary intention of terrorizing anyone that may run in his stead or otherwise inconvenience the Democrats.  In this, they have failed miserably.  Despite this full-bore attack on all levels of the legal system from county to national, despite a legacy media completely in the pocket of the elites, despite the full cooperation of law enforcement and intelligence communities, despite last-ditch opposition from the GOP establishment, Donald Trump is not only maintaining his status as a candidate, he is prevailing.  Recent polls put him up to 46 points ahead of all rivals, a lead unparalleled in previous campaigns in which the frontrunners suffered none of Trump's problems.  Furthermore, Trump is running even with, and in some polls actually beating the incumbent.  This is an incredible achievement, and one for which Trump has received absolutely no credit — itself a sign of cognitive dissonance.

Steve Bannon Outlines National American Destiny as Attached to Trump Destiny.  Steve Bannon did an excellent monologue today [8/25/2023] outlining how President Donald Trump is one of only three people who have the destiny of the nation attached to their own destiny.  Together with President Abraham Lincoln and President George Washington, the destiny of our constitutional Republic as intrinsically tied to President Donald Trump.  [Video clip]

The election doubts of the DA prosecuting Trump for election doubts.  The DA in Georgia prosecuting President Donald Trump for his election doubts, and his statements about those, has been revealed as having her own doubts about elections, and making public statements about those.  Trump was booked Thursday on counts in an indictment created by Fani Willis, who is a hard-left activist who is fundraising on her agenda against Trump.  It's one of four indictments pending against Trump, and has been described as possibly the most political of the four, as it appears to make criminal the act of making a phone call or having a meeting.

Can the Trump-Hating Psycho Prosecutors Be Stopped?  Most respected legal analyses of the various charges against Trump agree that the law has been twisted into something unrecognizable in order to "get" him.  From a layperson's viewpoint, the Fulton County charges seem to be particularly awful, as does its district attorney, Fani Willis.

Trump Names 2 Democrats He Suggests Should Get Indicted on the Charges He Faces.  Former President Donald Trump suggested that under the standard by which he faces racketeering charges in Fulton County, Georgia, for contesting the 2020 presidential election, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams should also be indicted for contesting elections they lost.  "Hillary called me up and conceded," Trump told Tucker Carlson in the interview released Wednesday night on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, just before the first Republican 2024 presidential debate.  "Now the word is that [President Barack] Obama said, 'You have to do that.'  But she called up and totally conceded," Trump added.  "But now, every time you see her on television she's saying ... she's challenging the election."  Although Clinton, then the Democratic nominee for president, publicly conceded to Trump in 2016, she later referred to her former opponent as an "illegitimate president."

Justice Requires Fair Procedures.  The late US Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter once observed that the history of liberty is largely a history of procedural fairness.  Our constitution embodies that history by reading "the due process of law.  Lately, however, many so-called progressives have been willing to ignore procedural safeguards and due process in their campaign to get former President Donald Trump — to misuse the law in an effort to prevent the leading Republican candidate from running against the incumbent candidate for president.  In doing so, they are violating the second principle of justice: "Do not recognize faces."  That commandment is the basis for the blindfolded statute of justice.  Some progressives who would ignore procedural safeguards to get Trump acknowledge that this is because they regard him as especially dangerous and therefore undeserving of due process.  Special injustice for an unjust man!  But in our system of law, which is based on precedent, there is no such thing as special injustice.  Injustice, once practiced against an unjust person, will serve as precedent for deploying it against just persons.

Professor Turley:  Effort to Bar Trump From Ballot is 'Single Most Dangerous Constitutional Theory' Ever.  George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley recently called the effort by Democrats to keep Trump off the ballot "dangerous."  Of course, the left doesn't care.  They believe the ends justifies the means.  Democrats would burn the country down to keep Trump from being reelected.

5 Things You Can Do Right Now to Help Dismantle the Federal Bureaucracy.  In America, we're supposed to have three branches of government and a robust system of checks and balances.  What we're not supposed to have is an unaccountable fourth branch of government that is impervious to the changes promised by winning presidential candidates.  Yet, thanks to the idea that government should be run by supposedly nonpartisan, apolitical experts, we have that fourth branch.  Some call it the administrative state; some call it the managerial state; some call it the Deep State.  For the sake of our constitutional republic, conservatives must dismantle much of the bureaucracy and return the power to those who are elected by — and accountable to — the American people.

Can Democrats Constitutionally End Trump's Campaign?  As the number of inane indictments of Trump demonstrates, the Democrats will do virtually anything to keep Donald Trump from ever again occupying the White House and threatening the Swamp's grip on the throats of the American people.  However, I don't think a traditional October Surprise is much of a danger in the 2024 election.  Why would Democrats wait until the last minute to release some exquisite horror that will send Trump packing?  They wouldn't.  The fact that they haven't released such a campaign-killing bit of information already means that they simply don't have one.  As such, the Democrats are in trouble.  Between having a guy who electrifies crowds like no one in American history, on the one hand, and on the other hand, having as their presumptive nominee a doddering Alzheimer's patient, means that Democrats really have two problems to solve, not one.

The disqualification of Donald Trump and other legal urban legends.  The popularity of urban legends is a testament to the will to believe.  The desire of people to keep Elvis alive or prove that a Sasquatch could exist furtively in our backyards shows the resilience of fables.  Constitutional urban legends often have an even more immediate appeal and tend to arise out of the desperation of divided times.  One of the most popular today is that former President Donald Trump can be barred from office, even if he is not convicted in any of the four indictments he faces, under a long-dormant clause of the 14th Amendment.  This 14th Amendment theory is something that good liberals will read to their children at night.  It goes something like this:  Donald Trump can never be president again, because the 14th Amendment bars those who previously took federal oaths from assuming office if they engaged in insurrection or rebellion.  With that, and a kiss on the forehead, a progressive's child can sleep peacefully through the night.  But don't look under the bed.  For as scary as it might sound to some, Trump can indeed take office if he is elected, even if he is convicted.  Indeed, he can serve as president even in the unlikely scenario that he is sentenced to jail.

The Corrupt DoJ has Charged Trump with a Fake Crime.  First, the legal basics: a standard criminal conspiracy comprises two parts: (1) an agreement among conspirators (2) to accomplish a criminal object.  For any conspirator to be liable for a criminal conspiracy, at least one must also (3) commit an "overt act" — that is, do something — for the purpose of accomplishing the criminal end.  The overt act need not be a crime in itself, and the criminal object need not ever have been accomplished.  You can't be indicted without specific facts alleged.  You can't be sent to trial on an indictment that just says "you violated such and such federal law."  The indictment must say how.  So a conspiracy indictment must do more than merely list a provision of a criminal statute as the object of a conspiracy.  It must identify a specific result intended by the conspirators that is a crime.

Trump Isn't Just the Target, He's the Pretext.  Emulating the Biden administration's Department of Justice's special counsel, Jack Smith, once again a partisan local Democratic prosecutor in a one-party jurisdiction has stretched state laws to indict a former president from their opposing party who is also the leading candidate for its 2024 nomination.  As previously demonstrated by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, Georgia's Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis will receive the plaudits and votes of her partisans for her indictment of Mr. Trump and 18 of his 2020 campaign associates.  Given the electoral insularity of her position in a Democratically controlled county, the enmity of Republicans and/or MAGA supporters is impotent to unseat her; and, in fact, it is politically beneficial to her, as it burnishes her credentials with Democratic primary voters.  (Ironically, this is akin to how these political indictments boost Mr. Trump's standing in the GOP primary).  The Fulton County, Manhattan, and the federal special counsel's indictments are politically motivated, even if juries agree in the heavily Democratic jurisdictions of Atlanta, New York City, and Washington, D.C.

CIA Sued for working with the Biden campaign to produce 'Dirty 51' intel letter calling Hunter's laptop disinformation.  The CIA has been sued for its role in helping to craft a letter from 51 intelligence officials discrediting Hunter Biden's laptop as Russian disinformation.  The letter that was signed by 51 intel officials in 2020 immediately before the presidential election falsely claimed that Hunter Biden's laptop had all the 'classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.'  A Republican report released in May showed that the CIA was actively involved in getting signatures for the letter which 'was a political operation to help elect' Joe Biden in November 2020.

Trump Can Prove It.  Establishment politicians and mainstream media have fought harder than on any other issue to convince the public that voter fraud is a conspiracy theory.  But unconstitutional changes to state election laws, unsupervised ballot drop boxes, voting machine errors, mathematically improbable voter turnout, and other examples of outright voter fraud that were denied a chance to be presented in court between the 2020 election and Biden's inauguration can't simply be chalked up as coincidental.  All those things occurring simultaneously make the fraud seem coordinated.  In response to the most recent indictments, Trump's attorneys indicated they finally have a platform to "fully re-litigate every single issue that occurred during the 2020 election," of which there were many.  The most important issue in America may finally get its due.

Prosecutorial Bolshevism.  In the United States of America, there are roughly 3,150 counties.  Most of them have prosecutors or district attorneys.  Each one of these can usually empanel a grand jury.  These grand juries can, with rare exceptions, meet in secret to consider indicting anyone at all.  There need be no publicity at all, but there usually is.  These grand juries can call witnesses and even require Americans to testify for days or even weeks on end on matters that took place years before.  The "defendants" in these matters are not allowed to have lawyers, although sometimes they do.  They are sometimes kept from their families and colleagues for long periods.  At any point the prosecutors can issue indictments for crimes, real or imagined, felonies or misdemeanors based on the proceedings of the grand juries.  In many jurisdictions, but not all, the mere fact of being indicted bars an American from holding public office or even running for public office.

Pollak on Savage:  Trump Could Take Oath of Office in Prison and Walk Free.  Breitbart News Senior Editor-at-Large Joel B. Pollak told Dr. Michael Savage on his podcast Friday that it was possible Donald Trump could be railroaded by a D.C jury — but could take the oath of office in prison, pardon himself, and walk out a free man.

Mehdi Hasan Worries That World's Most Recognizable Man May Try To Sneak Out Of Country.  MSNBC's Mehdi Hasan worried Thursday that former President Donald Trump could pose a flight risk as the trial dates for his various indictments approach.  A grand jury indicted Trump late Monday night for his alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election in Georgia.  Eighteen others, including Trump allies Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Sidney Powell, Jeffrey Clark and Kenneth Chesebro were indicted alongside the former president.  "He's afraid of the law," Hasan told "Morning Joe" host Joe Scarborough, referring to the former president.  "I genuinely think we need to start having a discussion about whether this guy is a flight risk.  And I don't say that lightly."

Georgia State Senator Takes First Step to Impeach Trump's Fulton County Prosecutor.  Georgia state Sen. Colton Moore (R) took the first step on Thursday towards impeaching Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis for her actions against former President Donald Trump, a memo exclusively obtained by Breitbart News shows.  In a letter to Gov. Brian Kemp (R), Moore announced an initiative to begin an emergency session to conduct a thorough investigation into the actions undertaken by Willis.  On Tuesday [8/15/2023], a Georgia grand jury indicted Trump on 13 counts.  The lawmaker's investigation could lead to defunding Willis's investigation of Trump and/or ultimately impeaching the district attorney.  "We must strip all funding and, if appropriate, impeach Fani Willis," Moore said in a statement.

How Jack Smith Is Twisting Our Election Process.  If Special Counsel Jack Smith has his way, election integrity as we know it will be a thing of the past, and all election results in the future will be suspect.  I've got a particular interest in election integrity.  As the leader of Tea Party Patriots Action, I've spent the better part of the last two and a half years traveling the country, training tens of thousands of citizens for work as election officials and poll workers.  Our work has been necessitated by the doubts raised about election integrity in recent election cycles.  Poll after poll demonstrates Americans' distrust of our elections.  Our hope is that we can help reestablish the public confidence in elections necessary for them to function as they must — to allow the electorate to exercise its right to choose our leaders.

Fani's Fifteen Minutes of Fame.  Poor Fani.  Her moment of glory will be a short one.  Lawyers tell us that Fani's case against President Trump is likely to be moved to a federal court — because it is directed at federal officials and because the accusations are very similar to those made by Jack Smith in the January 6th indictments.  In the end, however, Fani may be happy to let the feds conduct the trial because some of the 161 "Acts of Racketeering" (ACTs) in the indictment involve dangerous criminals doing dangerous things.  For example, here is ACT 6 (in its entirety):  ["]On or about the 21st day of November 2020, MARK RANDALL MEADOWS sent a text message to United States Representative Scott Perry from Pennsylvania and stated, "Can you send me the number for the speaker and the leader of PA legislature.  POTUS wants to chat with them."  This was an overt act in furtherance of the conspiracy.["]  Exchanging telephone numbers:  That is pretty scary stuff.

GA State Senator Demands Emergency Session to Investigate Fulton County DA Fani Willis.  Georgia State Sen. Colton Moore (R) wants Gov. Brian Kemp to declare an emergency session to investigate Fulton County DA Fani Willis.  Willis is the one who brought charges against President Donald Trump, including a RICO charge.  A grand jury indicted him this week. [...] Moore has been asking people to sign a petition to investigate Willis:  ["]Corrupt District Attorney Fani Willis is potentially abusing her position of power by pursuing former President Donald J. Trump, and I am calling on my colleagues in the Georgia legislature to join me in calling for an emergency session to investigate and review her actions and determine if they warrant impeachment.  The politically-motivated weaponization of our justice system at the expense of taxpayers will not be tolerated. [... "]

Criminalizing Politics In The Trump Indictments.  I've made the point repeatedly that both the D.C. and Georgia indictments of Donald Trump start from a premise that isn't true — that an attempt to "overturn" an election in and of itself is criminal.  The means by which an election is overturned may be criminal, but the end goal is not.  With regard to the D.C. indictment, I questioned Where is the crime?

The Purpose Of The Trump Indictments Is To Demonstrate The Left's Power.  The latest indictment of former President Donald Trump is even more outlandish than Jack Smith's blatant attempt to criminalize free speech.  The indictment Monday out of Fulton County, Georgia, criminalizes mundane activities like asking for a phone number, texting, encouraging people to watch a televised hearing, and reserving a room at the Georgia capitol.  These activities, according to Georgia prosecutor Fani Willis, run afoul of the state's Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) statute.  As far as Willis is concerned, Trump's legal efforts to challenge the election results in Georgia amounted to a criminal conspiracy, with Trump as the criminal mastermind.  What that means, outlandishly, is that every phone call or tweet related to those legal efforts, every step Trump and his team took to press their legal case, counts as "an overt act in furtherance of the conspiracy."

Fulton County clerk responds to publishing Trump indictment ahead of grand jury decision: 'I am human'.  The Fulton County clerk who released an indictment document displaying charges against former President Donald Trump before the grand jury voted said she inadvertently hit "send" instead of "save" in an interview with WSB-TV Tuesday.  The court briefly posted a document on its website Monday afternoon listing 13 charges against the former president, Reuters first reported, which ultimately matched the charges released after the grand jury made its decision.  The Office of the Fulton County Clerk of Superior and Magistrate Courts initially responded to media reports by claiming the document was "fictitious," which Clerk Ché Alexander told WSB-TV was "the best word I could come up with."  "It was fictitious," she told the outlet. "It wasn't real.  It didn't have a stamp on it."  "I am human," Alexander said.  [Tweet]

To Understand The Latest Crazy Trump Indictment, Check Out The 6 Types Of Charges.  Late Monday [8/14/2023], Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis charged former President Donald Trump and 18 other defendants in a 98-page indictment that included a total of 41 different counts.  The defendants are already fighting back, with Trump's former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, seeking to remove the case to federal court based on a statute that protects federal officials from state court prosecution for official conduct.  More counteroffensives will likely follow, with other former federal officials, including Trump, presumably also seeking removal to federal court, while the remaining defendants will probably expeditiously move to dismiss the indictment on a variety of grounds.

Dershowitz slams GA indictment, says Trump used same tactics as Al Gore in 2000: not a 'crime'.  The former legal counsel for Al Gore who challenged — and lost — the presidential election results in 2000 says Gore's team did "the same thing" as what a Georgia prosecutor is claiming Trump committed as a crime.  Donald Trump is facing a fourth indictment, this time from Fulton County, Georgia district attorney Fani Willis, involving allegations that Trump sought to overturn the 2020 presidential election results in Georgia.  Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz, speaking to Fox News Digital, criticized the pending indictment, calling Trump's actions "very similar" to that of Al Gore's legal strategy in the Bush v.  Gore case that decided the 2000 presidential election.

Trump Is Not Guilty Of Racketeering; The Deep State Is.  Fani Willis, the district attorney in Fulton County, Ga, charged former President Donald Trump and 18 colleagues with racketeering under Georgia's RICO law.  The charge is that he conspired with them to overturn the 2020 Georgia presidential election results.  Experienced lawyers, such as those at Bochetto & Lentz, a law firm that says it specializes in "messy, complicated, high-pressure, and high-stakes cases," highlight the benefits of using RICO statutes, which enable prosecutors to tie numerous crimes into one case, even if they have covered an extensive period.  The person who didn't "pull the trigger, set a fire, or commit a burglary" can be charged under RICO laws.  It is little wonder that RICO has been traditionally used against the Mob.

Destruction of Rule of Law in Fani Willis' Georgia Star Chamber.  The attack on the First Amendment and the very structure of the American legal system by the Star Chamber of Fulton County, Georgia, District Attorney Fani Willis is a profound assault on our democratic republic and the rule of law.  There's no other way to characterize the politically partisan indictment of former President Donald Trump and 18 other defendants (along with 30 unindicted coconspirators) for legally questioning the legitimacy of the outcome of the 2020 election in Georgia.  Willis is trying to criminalize free speech and have a chilling effect on anyone in the future who might dare to question the results of an election.  Willis manufactured this egregious "case" with seeming unforgivable ignorance of the freedom to speak, to engage in political activity, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances that is protected by the First Amendment.

Mark Meadows Seeks to Remove Georgia Indictment to Federal Court.  Former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows filed a motion on Tuesday to remove the Fulton County, Georgia, indictment against him to federal court.  Meadows was charged with two counts in a 41-count indictment that named himself, former President Donald Trump, and 17 others.  Meadows is being charged under Georgia's RICO statute and faces charges for soliciting an official to violate their oath of office.

Georgia Indictment Says Trump Telling People to Watch TV Is Proof of Racketeering Activity.  In their ongoing crusade to criminalize dissent, former President Donald Trump's persecutors might have sunk to a new low.  Trump's latest criminal indictment, handed up Monday by a grand jury in Fulton County, Georgia, claimed the leading GOP 2024 presidential contender and his associates "constituted a criminal organization whose members and associates engaged in various related criminal activities."  It included one assertion that defies belief.  In a section that detailed the supposed acts of racketeering, "Act 22" accused Trump of encouraging his Twitter followers to turn on the television.

The Level of Pretending Needed to Believe This is Jaw Dropping.  The Fulton County clerk of courts is putting out the third public statement trying to explain and justify why they posted the grand jury indictment of Donald Trump before the grand jury had even met to vote on the indictment.  This latest explanation is so incredulous it's almost impossible to believe they are making this public:  [Document]  According to the story above, the original indictment before the jury met, was a trial run upload, made of a totally fictious construct, with totally random charges, that just happened to line up with the exact same charges, in the exact same sequence, as the indictment after the jury voted.

Radical Georgia D.A. Fani Willis Launched Reelection Fundraising Site Days Before Trump Indictment.  Fulton County, Georgia, District Attorney Fani Willis launched her reelection fundraising website days before a grand jury returned a 98-page, 41-count indictment against former President Donald Trump and 18 co-defendants, per Atlanta First News.  The outlet reported that Willis's campaign emailed supporters on Thursday, notifying them that the website was up and running.

Democrats Denied Election Results 150+ Times Before Trump Was Indicted for Challenging Election.  Although a Georgia grand jury indicted former President Donald Trump on Monday for challenging the 2020 election result, Democrats have refused to accept the results of elections they lost for decades.  As Breitbart News reported, more than 150 examples show Democrats denying election results, including President Joe Biden; two-time failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton; House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY); Reps.  Barbara Lee (D-CA), Maxine Waters (D-CA), and Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX); and failed Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams.  [Tweet with video clip]

The Democrats are Certain They Will Never be Held Accountable for the Trump Indictments and Biden Cover-Up.  Never in the 235 years since the ratification of the Constitution has an administration premeditatively and blatantly prosecuted, on specious and conjecturable charges, the titular leader of the opposition party and leading candidate for president.  And doing so while overtly flaunting their egregious actions to protect and cover-up for the incumbent president who has been exposed as potentially complicit in massive bribery and fraud.  In any previous election cycle, these overt and unabashed actions would have been the death knell for the incumbent president's campaign and his party.  Yet the Democrats are blatantly unconcerned, supremely confident that they will prevail in 2024 regardless of who they nominate.

Biden Junta Goes Full-on Stalinist Against Trump.  The Biden DOJ keeps hitting Donald Trump with new indictments, including one that could possibly draw the draw the death penalty.  These mounting attacks on the former president have drawn comparisons to a banana republic or third world dictatorship.  A new development suggests a different dynamic is in play.  Former U.S. Attorney General William Barr was recently asked if he would be willing to testify against Trump.  "Of course," Barr responded.  Special Counsel Jack Smith's case was "challenging," but Barr does not think it "runs afoul of the First Amendment."  That runs afoul of Bruce Thornton, who makes a strong case that quashing free speech is what Smith's inquisition is all about.  As Robert Spencer contends, "we're racing past" the banana republic stage and America is "heading toward becoming a new Stalinist regime in which critics of those in power are arrested by the regime itself, tried on false and fabricated charges, and executed."

Trump's Georgia Indictment is the Final Proof the 2020 Election Was Stolen.  The 2020 election was stolen.  The debate is over.  How do I know?  Because both the feds and Georgia just indicted our President for talking about, questioning, and trying to investigate a stolen election.  When the communist thugs, bullies and tyrants make it a crime to question a stolen election, in a country built around free speech, it's 100% proof they stole the election.  There is a perfect precedent.  In the NFL.  The game was called "The Miracle in the Meadowlands."  Everything about that fixed game reminds me of the 2020 stolen election.  It's a perfect match.

Justice Shrugged:  The Persecution of Donald Trump.  Here's what I dream of Donald Trump saying when he stands trial on bogus charges proffered by his political opponents:  "I do not recognize this court's right to try me ... I do not recognize my action as a crime."  Those are the fighting words of industrialist Hank Rearden when he was put on trial for ignoring an unjust law in Ayn Rand's novel "Atlas Shrugged."  Although the circumstances of the cases differ, Rearden is a perfect avatar of Donald Trump, as both larger-than-life men are persecuted by the justice system for seeking to pursue their own self-interest and for refusing to surrender to government oppression.  Self-interest is central to the Objectivist philosophy of Rand, who grew up in Russia and witnessed first-hand the oppression of free thought and free enterprise following the 1917 Communist revolution.  Her masterpiece, "Atlas Shrugged," is the ultimate roadmap to how American democracy can be subverted by leftist bureaucrats and a corrupt media to destroy some individuals and intimidate the rest.

What the Fulton County judge could do.  Currently, there are more than 400,000 to 500,000 people — the number varies, depending on the source — charged with crimes who are being detained pre-trial, even while they are still "legally" innocent.  Many are jailed because they can't afford the bail.  There are hundreds of thousand cases where the judge set an exceptionally high bail just to ensure they cannot flee the jurisdiction.  However, pre-trial detention also applies to those charged who are deemed a flight risk, regardless of how high — or low — bail is set.  There are even no-bail situations — where prisoners are held just to make sure they don't disappear into the woodwork of our jammed-up legal system.  Former President Donald Trump is not a resident of Georgia.  His primary residence is in Palm Beach Florida, at Mar-A-Lago, while his secondary residence is in Trump Tower in Manhattan.  This makes Trump a "flight risk," at least in the narrow definition of someone who might flee the jurisdiction of Fulton County, Georgia.

Trump is now facing Ninety One criminal charges in four criminal cases.  Donald Trump has now been indicted in a fourth case, with the former president being charged Monday in Georgia over his efforts to overturn his 2020 general election defeat in the state.  The probe by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis began shortly after the release of a recording of a Jan. 2, 2021, phone call between Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in which the then-president suggested that Raffensperger could "find 11,780 votes" -- just enough to overtake Joe Biden.  Trump, a Republican, has described his phone call to Raffensperger as "perfect" and has portrayed the prosecution by the Democratic district attorney as politically motivated.

Trump Attorneys:  Georgia Indictment 'as Flawed and Unconstitutional as This Entire Process'.  Lawyers for former President Donald Trump responded after midnight Tuesday morning to the late-night indictment in Fulton County, Georgia, by District Attorney Fani Willis, calling it "as flawed and unconstitutional as this entire process." [...] Critics noted that the 41-count indictment (which include 13 counts against Trump) accuses the defendants of crimes for simply arguing that the 2020 presidential election was flawed.  That, in turn implicates the First Amendment right to free speech and the Sixth Amendment right to counsel.  The indictment also attempts to use a county court in Georgia to charge the defendants for crimes allegedly committed on a national scale and in violation of a federal election, which typically fall under federal jurisdiction.

Fulton County Georgia Briefly Publishes Then Removes Trump Indictment Document.  Primed for immediate nullification.  The indictment was briefly unsealed before the grand jury voted.  This is clear and demonstrable evidence of a prejudicial and malicious prosecution.  Divine providence.  The Fulton County DA Fani Willis has been preparing a malicious prosecution against Donald Trump for over a year.  The novel theories around the prosecutorial approach have been widely discussed and the grand jury foreperson previously gave rather odd public statements during gleeful interviews about the evidence the jury had received.  It is and was ridiculous in the extreme; however, that's how lawfare works.  Today Reuters and other media noticed the court filings against Donald Trump were briefly uploaded and then deleted from the website.  Again, more suspect and odd behavior from Fulton County, Georgia, a county widely known as the epicenter of Southern fraud.

Trump and 18 Others Indicted in Georgia; Charges Include Violation of RICO Act.  A grand jury in Georgia voted to indict Donald Trump on Monday over his efforts to expose the 2020 election fraud in the state and reverse his loss.  The 41-count indictment levied by Fani Willis, the District Attorney for Georgia's Fulton County, includes: violating the Georgia RICO Act; Solicitation of Violation of Oath by a Public Officer; Conspiracy to Commit Impersonating a Public Officer; Conspiracy to Commit Forgery in the First Degree; Conspiracy to Commit False Statements and Writings; Conspiracy to Commit Filing False Documents; Conspiracy to Commit Forgery in the First Degree; Filing False Documents; and Solicitation of Violation of Oath by a Public Officer.  The D.A. also charged 18 others, including former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, attorneys Rudy Giuliani, Jenna Ellis, Kenneth Chesebro, Jeff Clark, John Eastman.

Donald Trump, Mark Meadows, John Eastman, Rudy Giuliani, Jenna Ellis Indictment in Fulton County.  Indictments were returned by a Fulton County, Georgia grand jury Monday evening, against Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, former North Carolina Sen. Mark Meadows, and John Eastman.  The 41-count indictment includes charges of racketeering, solicitation of violation of an oath by a public officer, conspiracy, and filing a false statement.

New evidence shows just how biased Trump judge is in Jack Smith's case.  Judge Tanya Chutkan, the D.C. federal district court's hanging-ist judge when it comes to the January 6 cases, was (quite coincidentally, I'm sure) assigned to Donald Trump's case after Jack Smith essentially indicted him for believing that the November 2020 election was rife with fraud.  (A belief, apparently, available only to Democrats following elections.)  The fact that Chutkan hates January 6 defendants, of course, doesn't mean she's anti-Trump.  However, Julie Kelly has revealed a trial transcript in which Chutkan openly states her belief that Trump should be in jail.

Jack's Schizophrenic Indictment.  According to Jack Smith, the Electoral Count Act (ECA) gave Mike Pence and the members of Congress only one job to perform on January 6, 2021:  collect, count, and certify.  Smith calls it the "federal government function," and he claims Trump and his six co-conspirators took actions aimed at violating that "bedrock" function of our federal government.  That is how the Special Counsel starts the Trump indictment, and believe me, he lays it on thick.  There are numerous references to the three C's and to federal government function.  However, the Special Counsel's supporting arguments seem strangely incongruous.  Starting around paragraph 12 and proceeding for dozens and dozens of paragraphs, the Special Counsel supports the indictment by trying to prove there was no fraud in the various swing states.  Why would he spend so much ink on fraud in the states if the ECA only involves the simple federal function of collecting, counting, and certifying?

Moderate Republicans Sound the Alarm on David Weiss's Special Counsel Appointment.  House Republicans are seemingly unified in condemning U.S. prosecutor David Weiss's appointment as a special counsel in the Hunter Biden investigation, including several moderate members of the GOP conference.  Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Weiss as special counsel in the "ongoing investigation" into Hunter Biden, "as well as for any other matters that arose or may arise from that investigation."  Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) said he hopes Weiss "gets to the truth," but expressed concern with his appointment. [...]

The Weaponization of Justice.  Jack Smith, with a long history of partisan conduct, is the prosecuting attorney in the case in the District of Columbia charging Trump with disinformation regarding the 2020 election, a confection of dubious legal basis.  This week, the parties argued before District Court judge Tanya Chutkin the prosecution's right to muzzle Trump during his campaign as he and his team poison public opinion and a potential jury pool with leaks and accusations of wrongdoing.  Judge Chutkin has a history of sentencing J6 defendants to longer sentences than even the prosecution requested.  She warned counsel for Trump that politics had no place in her courtroom, but in at least one transcribed exchange with one of those defendants she tipped her hand, expressing her view that it was wrong that Trump was not yet jailed:  [Transcript]

A Sham Special Counsel.  Just when you thought the Justice Department's handling of the Hunter Biden case couldn't appear more corrupt, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced Friday that he was appointing Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss as "special counsel" in the case.  Not only is Weiss the same controversial federal prosecutor who has botched the investigation of President Joe Biden's son so far, but the written rules governing special counsels call for the attorney general to appoint "an outside Special Counsel."  (Emphasis added.)  In other words, someone who doesn't have the inherent conflict of interest that any employee of the Justice Department has — such as when the department is investigating the son of federal prosecutors' ultimate boss, the president of the United States.  Yet what does Garland do?  Appoint the same U.S. attorney for Delaware who, through either incompetence or intentional action, already has compromised this investigation.

Obama-Appointed Judge Tanya Chutkan's Former Law Firm Represented Huma Abedin in Clinton Email Server Investigation.  Following the recent indictment against President Donald Trump, spearheaded by Joe Biden, Merrick Garland, and Jack Smith, it has been revealed that the case was assigned to an Obama-appointee judge, Tanya S. Chutkan.  The Gateway Pundit previously reported that Trump had requested an immediate recusal of far-left and anti-Trump U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, to preside over his ongoing "January 6th" case in Washington D.C. Trump characterizes the judge as a "biased" judge.

Obama Judge Tanya Chutkan Signals She will Gag Trump in Middle of Presidential Campaign.  Judge Chutkan is going to gag Trump in the middle of a presidential campaign!  Trump's lawyer appeared before Obama-appointed Judge Tanya Chutkan Friday morning for a hearing on a proposed gag order.  Judge Chutkan gave Trump only ONE DAY to respond to a motion for protective order (gag order) filed by dirty Jack Smith rather than give him the standard 14 days.  Chutkan signaled she will gag Trump in the middle of a presidential campaign.

Jack Smith isn't even trying to hide it.  Special Counsel Jack Smith has set court dates for his various charges against President Trump — and what a coincidence — they all coincide with key dates during the U.S. election. [...] But this is not about fairness to the defendant.  This is about swinging the election.  He tried earlier to get this so-called "speedy trial" done through his presidential records charges, where he sought a December trial date, and was granted a May 20 one, well into the election season.  So now he's gotten even by moving his January 6 charges even more strategically through the court dockets, even though legal experts have noted that they are pretty flimsy, meaning, he could theoretically present a stronger case if he made time to build the case.

Don't Be Surprised if Some Republicans Help Jack Smith Put Trump in Prison.  Many conservative patriots are gleeful today based on their belief that Jack Smith's most recent indictment of President Donald Trump is going to afford the MAGA movement its first real opportunity to litigate all the irregularities of the 2020 election and the events of Jan. 6 in a court of law.  This is the evidence they think will be needed for the president to rebut Smith's allegations that he is a fraudster because he knew all the time that the 2020 elections were legitimate.  But, before Trump's supporters pop the proverbial champagne bottle to celebrate, they probably would do well to consider the implications of the following language extracted directly from the first count of Smith's indictment: [...] Boiled down to the basics, Smith has alleged that Trump knew his claims of election fraud were false and used them to try to defraud the United States.  Some have asked how Smith even hopes to carry his burden of having to prove such knowledge ever existed in the president's mind beyond a reasonable doubt.

The Latest Trump Indictment Looks Like It's Backfiring.  If Joe Biden thought siccing his Department of Justice on Donald Trump would keep him from returning to the White House, that strategy appears to be backfiring.  A new poll conducted Aug. 2-7, which is entirely after the latest indictment by Special Counsel Jack Smith, shows that Trump now leads Biden in a 2024 rematch.  The survey by Premise found that Trump garners the support of 42% of registered voters, while Joe Biden gets 38%, giving Trump a 4-point advantage.  If you're a Democrat seeing this poll, it has to make you nervous.  Trump was indicted earlier this month, and Democrats have been accusing him of crimes from the moment he decided to run for president.  To them, the indictment not only represents Trump getting justice, but it's the key to keeping him out of the White House.

What Will Happen If Trump Goes to Trial for January 6 Charges?  Each week I resolve to try to write about some subject that does not include a reference to President Trump, but on most weeks some subject involving him is the most newsworthy story in the world.  The indictment of him and others over the intrusion on January 6, 2021 at the U.S. Capitol exposes several new perspectives.  It was no surprise, as it had been telegraphed months in advance.  The Democratic political strategists must have inspired themselves with Russian army tactics in mobilizing many weeks in advance ten divisions on the Ukrainian border under the direct gaze of NATO aerial reconnaissance which was shared with the whole world:  Democratic strategists had been announcing a quadruple indictment of the former president by their drone-like marionettes in the Justice Department for a long time.  What was surprising was the vacuous legal argument, yet it was received as plausible by some people who should have known better.  The former attorney general, William Barr, a man capable of profound reflection on the law and justice, and Vice President Pence, who never would have been heard of outside of Indiana were it not for Mr. Trump, have disclosed themselves as stage-four sufferers of inoperable Trumpphobia.

Special counsel got a search warrant for Twitter to turn over info on Trump's account, documents say.  Special counsel Jack Smith's team obtained a search warrant in January for records related to former President Donald Trump's Twitter account, and a judge levied a $350,000 fine on the company for missing the deadline to comply, according to court documents released Wednesday.  The new details were included in a ruling from the federal appeals court in Washington over a legal battle surrounding the warrant that has played out under seal for months.  The court rejected Twitter's claim that it should not have been held in contempt or sanctioned.  Smith's team repeatedly mentioned Trump's tweets in an indictment unsealed last week that charges the former president with conspiring to subvert the will of voters and cling to power after he lost the 2020 election to Democrat Joe Biden.

Why Wouldn't Americans See Politics in Trump Indictments?  It is sometimes said that the prosecutions of former President Donald Trump are "backfiring" on Democrats.  That is, instead of lowering Trump's political support, they are raising it.  That is indeed happening among Republicans and some independents.  But many Democrats still hope the cumulative weight of multiple indictments — there will soon be four, when the Georgia case is added to the New York case and the two federal cases — will make it impossible for Trump to win the general election.  That is why there seemed to be a mini panic recently when a number of political observers pointed out that, in spite of everything that has happened, Trump not only has a very good chance of winning the Republican nomination — he also has a reasonable chance of winning the presidency again.

Political Prosecution:  A Constitutional Crisis In The Making.  We tend to think of election interference as a fraudulent or nefarious activity directly connected to the election itself, whether by manipulating voting machines, ballot harvesting, paying for votes, registering votes from incompetent or non-existent people, voter intimidation, vote-count manipulation, etc.  But in the United States, we overlook the most obvious form of election interference that's common throughout the world and throughout history:  political prosecution.  Imagine you are the president of the United States, and you want to remain in power (or keep your party in power). Now imagine that you control the Department of Justice, the FBI, and a host of other intelligence agencies.  What would stop you from bringing multiple criminal cases against your main political rival?  And if you are being investigated by Congress for bribery and other crimes, what would stop you from bringing criminal indictments against those in Congress who pose a threat?  Political prosecution is the nuclear weapon of election interference.  In the hands of a corrupt politician, anything is possible.

New York Times Op-ed Warns of 'Terrible Consequences' of Prosecuting Trump.  Harvard Law School professor Jack Goldsmith, a noted critic of former President Donald Trump, published a "guest essay" in the New York Times on Tuesday warning of "terrible consequences" for the country in the ongoing prosecutions of Trump.  Goldsmith, who served in the George W. Bush administration, warned Times readers that while they might enjoy the idea of Trump being indicted and possibly imprisoned, the other half of the country did not see it that way, and would seek revenge: [...]

Federal Indictment of Donald Trump Is Weaponization of American Political System.  The indictment of former President Donald Trump by special counsel Jack Smith — with the full approval of Attorney General Merrick Garland — is an attack on the American political system and fundamental rights protected by the First Amendment to freely discuss, debate, and contest serious election and political issues.  It represents the ultimate weaponization of the Justice Department, a transformation started by President Barack Obama's attorney general, Eric Holder, and completed by Garland, to take out a viable political opponent of Garland's boss and political patron, President Joe Biden.  Nothing more, nothing less.  Trump is charged with four felony counts under three federal statutes — 18 U.S.C. §§ 371, 1512, and 241 — for supposedly conspiring to defraud the U.S., obstruct an official proceeding, and suppress the right of Americans to vote.  Why?  Because he "spread lies" questioning the outcome of the 2020 election by claiming "that he had actually won," according to the indictment, thus creating a "national atmosphere of mistrust and anger" and "erod[ing] public faith in the administration of the election."  That's the kind of language you would normally see in an editorial from The New York Times, not in a criminal indictment.  It is an opinion, not an actual rendition of facts.

Trump Indictment Is a Mockery of Common Sense.  Politics arise from disagreements.  People disagree about their values and opinions, about who should rule and how, and sometimes they disagree about facts, particularly complex ones.  What caused a recession?  Who started a war?  What is the best way to reduce crime?  These are factual questions of a sort, but beliefs about these kinds of facts are inseparable from one's values and loyalties.  For Special Counsel Jack Smith, who has now brought a second indictment against former President Trump, the world is much simpler:  There is only truth and fraud.  There are no honest disagreements, misunderstandings or debates.  Thus, most of the indictment consists of ridiculous constructs:  The election was not stolen, and we know because Jack Smith told us so.  Someone told Trump this, but Trump disagreed.  Because Trump didn't embrace the conventional wisdom, he is now a liar committing criminal fraud.

A Florida Trial and a D.C. Grand Jury for Trump.  The elites may have to hold one of their show trials in Florida, but the grand jury had to be in D.C.  ["]Judge Aileen Cannon on Monday asked the Justice Department to explain its use of an out-of-state grand jury in the Mar-a-Lago case.  While the Mar-a-Lago case is being handled out of her Fort Pierce, Fla., courtroom, much of the grand jury work ahead of the indictment was conducted through a Washington, D.C., grand jury.["]  A D.C. grand jury is an obvious rubber stamp for political prosecutors.  A D.C. grand jury would indict a ham sandwich, as long as it was a Republican.  That's why the real show is in Washington D.C.  Going down to Florida is a bit inconvenient because it's one of those provinces of the empire.

Prosecutor Working With Jack Smith Donated Thousands to Biden, Cory Booker, the Democratic National Committee.  David Rody, a prosecutor working with special counsel Jack Smith on the Trump indictment, is also a donor to Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, and the Democratic National Committee.  Rody is not a grassroots donor who gave $10 or $25 here and there, he donated thousands of dollars, meaning that he is obviously a partisan.  These people are abusing our legal system for political reasons and it's so obvious.

The Trump Indictment and 2024.  What is happening to Trump will not be limited to the Democrat's political opposition, but it will be directed at virtually everyone who oppose the dictates and policies of a de facto one-party socialist state.  The desperate and preposterous indictments of Donald Trump must be a wake-up call to the American people, in particular Republican and Independent voters.  These unconscionable actions underscore the reality that is no longer hyperbole to say that the 2024 election is the most important since 1860.  As in 1860, in 2024 the future of this nation hangs in the balance.  If the judiciary is captive to the Marxists, there is no turning back.

The Weaponization of Justice.  [Scroll down]  Administrations and their efforts to stock the justice department with supporters come and go.  But in the last decade the Left has viewed the Department of Justice as a political extension of the party — whose unchecked power must properly be directed to hurt enemies and help friends.  No wonder Eric Holder described himself as Obama's "wingman" and became the first Attorney General to be held in contempt for ignoring a congressional subpoena.  Never in U.S. history have the Department of Justice and sympathetic state and local prosecutors indicted a leading opposition candidate and likely nominee of one of the two major parties, and at the beginning of a presidential campaign.  Donald Trump is currently charged with nearly 100 felonies by at least two prosecutors.  He likely eventually will be hit with more than 500 indictments, from four prosecutors, every one of the latter with a long record of either leftwing associations or Democratic service.  The mass murderer Charles Manson faced less legal exposure.  No one believes Trump would have been indicted on such counts — most of them involving allegations from years past — were he not running for President.

The Three Politically Motivated Phony Indictments of Trump so Far.  There are three pending criminal cases against Donald Trump so far, with another one likely to arise in Georgia.  Biden-appointed Special Counsel Jack Smith is prosecuting Trump in Florida over allegedly taking classified documents from the White House to Mar-a-Lago.  He's charging him over J6 in D.C., and Georgia prosecutors may follow with a similar suit.  State prosecutors in New York have charged Trump with fraud over an alleged payment to porn star Stormy Daniels. No one actually believes the formerly most powerful man in the world, who had the top attorneys and advisors surrounding him, would blatantly commit felonies.  Everyone knows it's a fishing expedition by politically motivated prosecutors to exploit the left-leaning justice system and take lawfare to a new level — prosecution.  In the latest indictment, regarding J6, Trump has been charged with four felony counts: conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, conspiracy against rights and witness tampering.  It essentially repeats the DNC talking points the MSM repeats ad nauseam; that he stoked violence and pretended the election was stolen.

Can Trump Get an "Impartial Jury" in DC?  What the Law Requires.  The Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution guarantees the accused the right to "an impartial jury."  But it also states that the trial should take place in "the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed."  What should happen, therefore, when it is virtually impossible for the defendant to get an impartial jury in that state or district?  In federal cases, the law provides for a change of venue under appropriate circumstances.  The prosecution of Donald Trump for the events around January 6, 2021 would seem to call for a change of venue.  The District of Columbia is the most extreme Democratic district in the country.  Approximately 95% of the potential jurors register and vote Democrat.  Whereas approximately 5% voted for Trump.  Furthermore, the anger against Trump is understandable in light of the fact that the events of January 6th directly involved many citizens of the district.  Moreover, the judge randomly selected to preside over this case has a long history of bias against Trump and his supporters, and her law firm has a long history of conflicts and corruption.

Why Trump Wasn't Charged With Insurrection.  For 31 months, the Democrats and their allies in the corporate media have characterized the Capitol Hill chaos that erupted on Jan. 6, 2021 as an "insurrection." The House of Representatives reinforced this version of events by impeaching then-President Trump for "incitement of insurrection."  The Senate acquitted him, of course.  Nonetheless, the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th attack referred the case to the Justice Department for further investigation.  Consequently, it was something of a surprise that the formal indictment unsealed last Tuesday by Special Counsel Jack Smith failed to charge Trump with fomenting insurrection.  This must have been particularly frustrating for those who have long insisted that the 14th Amendment prohibits Trump from serving a second presidential term.

Will the Biden Administration (sic) Let Trump — Or Any Republican — Take Office in 2025?  As if there is not enough going on out there to trouble your mind already, have you considered distinct possibility that the current PINO — the president-in-name-only — and his crypto-fascist clique would not allow Donald Trump to take office again if the Bad Orange Man somehow won the nomination and then defied the odds (I give him 15%) to somehow go Full Grover Cleveland?  Because there is a real chance they would not.  Crazy talk?  Yeah, but the crazy talk came from the lying piehole of our dust puppet alleged chief executive.  He shamelessly told us — like he shamelessly told us he fired that Ukrainian prosecutor as part of the Delaware Corleone crime club's corruptorama — that he absolutely would not let Trump take office again.  Sure, he qualified it by claiming, in his own grammatically challenged way, that he would only employ "legitimate efforts of the Constitution," but we have seen that, among other things, his idea of the "legitimate efforts of the Constitution" includes using his DOJ to frame the ex-president/his chief political rival.

Bartiromo: The DOJ Is Waiting for More Evidence of Things to Come Out on Joe Biden — Then They Will Give Georgia the Go Ahead to Release Another Indictment.  Maria Bartiromo went on FOX and Friends Weekend to discuss her upcoming show this morning.  Bartiromo announced her guests and then made a prediction on upcoming indictments against President Trump.  Maria Bartiromo:  I will also tell you that all of the lawmakers I spoke with over the weekend, and many of them are on board they want an impeachment inquiry started.  They believe that a Georgia indictment is coming in two weeks.  So I assume the DOJ is waiting for more evidence of things to come out on Joe Biden and the Biden Family taking money in and then they will give Georgia the go ahead to release another indictment on President Trump.

The Machinery of Government is Coated with Gunk.  The charges depend on Trump's state of mind and "proving the requisite intent on the part of Trump and his alleged co-conspirators on all of these charges is likely impossible, at least in front of a fair jury in a fair courtroom."  More troubling is that "Jack Smith's theory of the case necessarily requires criminalizing political speech," a core protection of the First Amendment.  Trump is surely not the first candidate to claim elections were stolen from them:  In 1824 Andrew Jackson claimed John Quincy Adams cheated him out of the election.  More recently Hillary Clinton and Stacey Abrams, to name but two, made that claim. [...] Of course, whatever infirmities there are in this case, the most obvious is that the facts in this case were known in 2020, and timing it now while demanding a speedy trial has "all the appearances" of Smith arrogating to himself the right to pick the next president.

Trump plans to ask for recusal of federal judge overseeing 2020 election case and for venue change.  Former President Donald Trump says he plans on asking the judge overseeing his federal charges related to the 2020 election to recuse herself and he wants to have the venue moved out of Washington, D.C., in order to get a fair trial. [...] D.C. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, an Obama appointee assigned to oversee Trump's federal election case, donated thousands of dollars to elect Barack Obama as president.  Additionally, she ruled against Trump in another case related to the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.  Chutkan is well known for dealing out the toughest sentences on Jan. 6 defendants, giving longer prison sentences than requested by prosecutors in more than 60% of those cases before her.  Trump had said last week that he hoped to be tried in an "impartial" venue such as a court located in nearby West Virginia, rather than in Washington, D.C., where the district's citizens voted overwhelmingly against him.

Here's the 'Democrat Dream Scenario' for the Trump Trial Ted Cruz Warns to Be Mindful Of.  [Scroll down]  The senator not only brought up concerns about election interference in how the Biden administration is trying to jail his most likely opponent.  It's also "an assault on democracy," Cruz explained, "because they don't trust the voters."  He again spoke about Biden's record in that "they don't want the voters to vote on Biden's record.  Because if we vote on Biden's record, Biden loses.  Instead, they want to use the Department of Justice to steal the election," also speaking once more to news coverage in that "they're trying to steal it by dominating the headlines by bringing the full force of the federal government to bring case after case after case."

Jonathan Turley spells out how foul the Trump indictment really is.  Every American's speech is entitled to First Amendment protection.  However, if the Biden administration has its way, that protection does not extend to Donald Trump.  With his usual clarity and insight, law professor Jonathan Turley spells out just how foul the Trump indictment really is.  As always, when it comes to the latest Democrat "gotcha" against Trump, this one is stink and dangerous, explains Turley.  Hidden behind the legal language and statutory citations is a straightforward effort to punish Trump for daring to speak his mind about the chicanery he (and half of the American voters) perceived in the 2020 election:  ["]Trump was not charged with conspiracy to incite violence or insurrection.  Rather, he was charged because he 'spread lies that there had been outcome-determinative fraud in the election and that he had actually won.'["]  In other words, Trump is being accused of challenging the Democrat establishment's insistence that it won the election fair and square.  Any dissenting views must not only be silenced but must be punished, both to keep Trump off the ballot and as a warning to others.

Trump demands Washington DC federal judge Tanya Chutkan recuse herself from case.  Former President Donald Trump claimed 'there is no way' he can get a fair trial in his alleged election interference case, as he called for the judge in the case to be recused and for the trial to be moved out of liberal Washington, DC.  The 2024 GOP frontrunner announced on his Truth Social platform on Sunday that his lawyers will be asking for a recusal of federal court judge Tanya Chutkan on unspecified 'very powerful grounds.'

The Editor says...
As much as I like Donald J. Trump, I still think he needs to stay off of all social media and let his attorneys do all the talking.

Secretary Blinken is appalled at reports that a president jailed his political opponent.  [A] hallmark of narcissism is that you're never wrong.  No matter what happens, it's only bad if the other guy does it.  That's why I can't even pretend shock at the fact that Biden's Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, took to Twitter to announce that the Biden regime condemns Putin for convicting Aleksey Navalny, Putin's political opponent.  Navalny has been a burr in Putin's side for some time now.  In 2011, after a contested election based on claims of election fraud (sound familiar?), the Putin regime jailed him for 15 days "for defying a government official."  Navalny instantly became a leading voice in opposing Putin.  He's been pushing back against Putin ever since — except that Putin has been pushing a whole lot harder. [...] Despite the Deep State's and Biden administration's conduct since 2016, Antony Blinken, Biden's Secretary of State, officially tweeted out that the Biden administration thinks it's a very bad thing when a sitting president jails his political opponent:  [Tweet]

DOJ Prosecutor Working on Special Counsel Jack Smith's Team Is a Biden Donor.  One of the veteran attorneys advising special counsel Jack Smith in his prosecution of former President Donald Trump has donated thousands of dollars to Democrat politicians, including President Joe Biden.  David Rody left his role as a partner at the Sidley Austin law firm in 2022 to join the Department of Justice (DOJ) as a senior counsel in the criminal division.  Now, he is helping advise Smith, who has indicted Trump twice for his alleged efforts to challenge the 2020 election and his handling of White House documents.

MSNBC's Joy Reid savors the 'demographic reality' that Trump's J6 judges are women of color.  Joy Reid just can't help herself when it comes to inserting race into absolutely everything and the upcoming trial of former President Donald J. Trump in a Wahington, D.C. courtroom presided over by a hostile Obama-appointed judge is no exception.  During MSNBC's coverage of Trump's traveling to the nation's capital for his arraignment on Thursday, the "race lady" took great pleasure in pointing out that both of the judges who the former president faced would be women of color, seeming to suggest that their ethnicity could have an effect on how the trial will play out.  Reid was clearly savoring the "demographic reality" of the D.C. courts and suggested that the Trump team's desire for a change of venues was rooted in racism rather than the reality that there is no way that he will get a fair trial in an area where the overwhelming majority of the jury pool hates his guts.

The Stunning Lack of Self-Awareness of Biden's Secretary of State, Antony Blinken.  On Friday, Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was sentenced to 19 years in prison on charges of supporting "extremism."  This is actually his fifth criminal conviction, and, according to a report from USA Today, "Navalny and his supporters have repeatedly criticized his criminal convictions as politically motivated and described them as attempts by Russian President Vladimir Putin to silence his archenemy."  Navalny has been incarcerated since January 2021. He has reportedly been an outspoken critic of the Kremlin and Vladimir Putin and was found guilty of multiple charges, including creating and participating in an extremist community, financing extremist activities, organizing such a community, making public calls for extremist actions, and involving minors in dangerous activities.  Additionally, Daniel Kholodny, the former technical director of Navalny's YouTube channel, was also convicted of similar offenses, receiving a lesser sentence of eight years in a penal colony.

Turley Raises Questions About Case Against Trump:  Jack Smith 'Would Need To Bulldoze' First Amendment To Convict.  Attorney and law professor Jonathan Turley raised serious legal questions about Special Counsel Jack Smith's path to convicting former President Donald Trump.  In an op-ed published Saturday by The Hill, Turley warned that the latest indictment of Trump relating to the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot threatens the First Amendment by giving the government an unprecedented power to criminalize false statements.  Trump was indicted earlier this week on four charges, including conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights.  He pleaded not guilty to all charges.

Bill Barr Refuses to Say if He Assisted the Jack Smith Targeting of Donald Trump.  [Scroll down]  Through research and eventually a stroke of luck, I was able to trace the people Attorney General Barr assigned to review the Trump-Russia collusion nonsense.  I found the people working for Durham and questioned the lead investigator.  Again, I immediately told everyone there was nothing being done to confront the corrupt entities who fabricated the nonsense.  After those events I also outlined the institutional silo corruption, a process Benny Johnson recently described as "the ghost in the machine".  While Johnson has the big picture accurate, these entities are not some unnamed random institutional bureaucrats.  They are people, they know exactly what they are doing, and they understand exactly how to control the mechanics.  These "ghosts" are the people AG Bill Barr was/is protecting.

Seriously Sketchy — Judge Boasberg Sits in Back of DC District Court During President Trump Appearance.  In March, when I wrote the outline about Judge Boasberg being the corrupt DC judge who broke the constitutional restrictions on executive privilege, which technically forced Mike Pence to turn over his notes and testify to James Smith and the DC grand jury, I said at the time, "The entire judicial system is corrupt, soup to nuts, all of it."  I was not using hyperbole.  For Judge Boasberg (who is on vacation) to show up in court and sit in the back row of the courtroom is a stunning visible display of judicial ideology and targeting.  In reality, Boasberg is bearing witness to the outcome he created by forcing a Vice President to give testimony against the Chief Executive, thereby establishing the basis for the fraudulent allegations Special Counsel Jack Smith was utilizing to target that same executive, President Donald Trump.  This is the same Judge Boasberg who sat as presiding judge on the FISA court.  The same Judge Boasberg who gave FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith a slap on the wrist for manufacturing evidence used in the Carter Page FISA application that defrauded the court.  The same Judge Boasberg who appointed former DOJ-NSD head Mary McCord as amicus curiae advisor to the court, after she knowingly and fraudulently submitted the FISA application to the court.

A Country Descending into Madness.  This is what it looks like when a country descends into madness.  Two standards of "justice" preclude any justice at all.  Hillary Clinton kept top-secret information on a home-brew private server that was infiltrated by malicious foreign actors, and she suffered no legal consequence — even after having destroyed Blackberry devices and other subpoenaed evidence of criminal culpability.  President Trump keeps personally declassified documents in his home, and the FBI sends a SWAT team into Mar-a-Lago so that Merrick Garland's goons can throw Trump in prison.  Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama conspired with the Intelligence Community to frame Donald Trump as a Russian spy and remove him from office, and not a single perpetrator involved in that incendiary plot has been indicted.  Trump correctly points out that mail-in ballot fraud irreparably marred the 2020 election, and the violent thugs in control of D.C. level criminal charges against him that could lead to his execution.

The Latest ABC News Poll Is a Disaster for Everyone Involved.  We'll start with Donald Trump, as there are several ancillary questions asked about his recent indictment to discuss. [...] Specifically, the indictments of Trump are boosting his primary support while at the same time harming him in regard to the general election.  You have to remember that most people are never going to read the various indictments.  They are never going to see that the most recent January 6th-related charges are, legally speaking, extremely weak.  All they are going to hear is political rhetoric, and Democrats will presumably own the airwaves in 2024 given the former president's fundraising woes.  We saw a preview of that when special counsel Jack Smith gave his presser on Trump's latest indictment.  Instead of speaking to the law and what evidence existed, he gave an exposition on the events of January 6th.  That despite the fact that Trump is not charged with inciting January 6th.  But again, all that most people will hear is the rhetoric, not the legal realities.

Dershowitz: Jack Smith Could be Indicted for Fraud for Omitting Trump's 'Peaceful' Statement.  Harvard Law School professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz says that under his own "fraud" standard, Special Counsel Jack Smith could be indicted for omitting a key portion of then-President Donald Trump's speech in Washington, D.C. on January 6, 2021.  The indictment charges Trump with four counts, including "conspiracy to defraud the United States."  But in a portion recounting Trump's speech at the "Stop the Steal" rally, Smith repeats the errors made by House Democrats in Trump's second impeachment trial:  he focuses on Trump's use of the phrase "fight like hell," and omits a sentence highlighted by Trump's defense team:  "I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard."

Vince Coglianese Lays Out DOJ's 'Massive Credibility Crisis'.  WMAL Talk radio host and Daily Caller Editorial Director Vince Coglianese ripped the new indictment against former President Donald Trump on the Wednesday edition of "Special Report with Bret Baier."  Coglianese questioned the credibility of the Justice Department and argued that Americans "fundamentally do not trust this institution."  "This is the prosecution and persecution of the leading candidate for president against Joe Biden," Coglianese said.  "I think we have a Justice Department with a massive credibility crisis on its hands.  Voters fundamentally do not trust this institution.  They have routinely gone after Trump through the years in the form of the FBI-Russia collusion hoax and, of course now all of these prosecutions."

Trump DC Indictment — Where is the crime?  The indictment may make out a persuasive case that Trump lied in the post-election period about election fraud, and disregarded the warnings of his most trusted and most loyal confidants that what he was saying was not true, but that doesn't equate to a crime.  The core of the alleged crime is disruption of the electoral count, but that took place because of the riot, and Trump has not been indicted (yet) for inciting the riot.  What the indictment purports to prove may be a reason not to vote for Trump, but it's far from clear it's a reason to criminally charge him.

6 Ways Jack Smith's Latest Indictment Is Legally Flawed And Politically Shady.  Special Counsel Jack Smith's latest indictment against President Trump seeks to criminalize political speech and taking incorrect legal advice.  Americans of all political stripes should be furious and deeply concerned by the course Smith has set this country on.  I have reviewed the new Trump indictment closely, and sadly, it is exactly what we have come to expect from Smith's team — a highly political document, riddled with legal and factual infirmities.  This indictment should have never been brought to a grand jury in the first place.  Moreover, its timing, particularly in light of Smith's statements and actions in the Trump documents case, is so highly suspect that it casts a political pall over the whole case.

Herridge: Attorney Points to Big Problem With Trump Indictment — Allegedly Exculpatory Evidence.  Looks like there are more problems with that indictment from Special Counsel Jack Smith, even as it just getting started with the arraignment of former President Donald Trump on Thursday.  Trump entered a not guilty plea to the four counts, which included conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights.  According to a report from CBS News' Catherine Herridge, Tim Parlatore, who is the attorney for former NYPD Police Commissioner Bernie Kerik, provided records to Jack Smith on July 23.  Parlatore thinks the Special Counsel may not have reviewed records before indicting Trump because he thinks those materials are exculpatory.

Joe Rogan:  Biden DOJ's Trump Indictments Are the 'Actions of a Banana Republic'.  Podcast host Joe Rogan said the U.S. Department of Justice's multiple indictments against former President Donald Trump are the "actions of a banana republic."  Rogan spoke about how the indictments against Trump galvanized his supporters.  "Yeah, and the people that love Trump, they feel like this is a witch hunt.  And they feel like all the things he's getting indicted for are [unfounded] anyway," Rogan said.  "Not only does it not work, but it kind of hardens their position that he's being targeted.  And these are like the the actions of a banana republic."

Lawyer:  Jack Smith 'has the entire law wrong'.  An attorney for former President Donald Trump said Thursday that Trump's defense will use a "very simple" strategy should charges over the 2020 election be brought to trial.  Trump pleaded not guilty to all charges during his Thursday arraignment after Special Counsel Jack Smith secured a four-count indictment of Trump relating to his efforts to contest the results of the 2020 election.  Smith previously secured a 37-count indictment against Trump in June based on an investigation into allegations surrounding classified documents.  "The legal strategy in this case I think is very simple:  You attack the facts that Jack Smith put out that are wrong for instance, Jack Smith claiming, as you already pointed out, that Donald Trump did anything other than call for peace and patriotism on January 6th is wrong," attorney Jesse Binnall told Fox News host Jesse Watters Thursday evening.  "And then you attack the law, because Jack Smith has the entire law in this case wrong, and more importantly, he is ignoring the Constitution of the United States."

Jack Smith Admits Making False Claim to Court in Trump Case.  Special counsel Jack Smith's team made a startling admission in its case against former President Donald Trump, acknowledging in a new court filing that it failed to turn over all evidence to Mr. Trump's legal team as required by law and falsely claimed that it had.  Mr. Smith's team said in a July 31 court filing (pdf) in its classified documents case against the former president that it had incorrectly claimed during a July 18 court hearing that it had provided all Mar-a-Lago surveillance footage to Mr. Trump's defense attorneys, as required by law.  "On July 27, as part of the preparation for the superseding indictment coming later that day and the discovery production for Defendant De Oliveira, the Government learned that this footage had not been processed and uploaded to the platform established for the defense to view the subpoenaed footage," Mr. Smith's team wrote in the July 31 filing.

DOJ Indictment Of Trump Is A Declaration Of War Against American Voters.  On Tuesday, President Joe Biden's Justice Department took the unprecedented step of indicting former President Donald Trump — Biden's chief rival in the upcoming 2024 election — for repeatedly expressing his opinion that the last election was stolen, rigged, and unfair.  It's an opinion millions of Americans share, and to which they are unquestionably entitled thanks to the First Amendment.  That includes Trump, who has said repeatedly (and recently) that the 2020 election was stolen.  He'll probably keep saying it until his dying day, and he has every right to do so.  The idea that our Justice Department can indict someone, especially the sitting president's main political rival, over speech that's protected by the First Amendment is simply insane.  It puts us firmly into banana republic territory, where tinpot dictators jail their political opponents ahead of election day to ensure their "reelection."  Simply put, this indictment is nothing more than a declaration of war against American voters and their constitutional right to free speech.

At this point, why not bypass the legal niceties and just put Trump in jail?  The Biden Administration has clearly given up on the idea that the federal government exists to do anything but satisfy Joe Biden's whims.  So why not get it over with?  Throw Donald Trump in jail without due process, construct reeducation camps, and rename the FBI the Stasi? [...] If we lived in a free country with a working press there would at least be some outcry.  Stories about the corruption would be printed and crusading journalists would be ringing alarm bells about the destruction of democracy.  Actually, on that latter point, they are doing precisely that, only they are blaming the Republicans for not buckling to the inevitable.  The current definition of "democracy" is simply complying with anything the Left wants to impose on us.

The State Farm Late Night Ballot Stuffing Video Was NOT Debunked.  Once again, President Trump was indicted on Tuesday — the DAY AFTER Hunter Biden's best friend and business associate Devon Archer testified that the Joe Biden was included on 20 calls when his son was sitting with foreign officials arranging influence peddling deals for the family.  Archer also testified that Joe Biden met with Russia's Yelena Baturina who invested $40 million into Hunter Biden's real estate ventures.  And she also paid Hunter Biden $3.5 million in consulting fees.  Joe Biden later excluded Baturina from his Russian sanctions list.  So what happened next?  President Trump was indicted by Special Counsel Jack Smith.  For those paying attention, this is not the first time this has happened.  There have been at least six times now where new evidence was released implicating the Biden Crime Family and then President Trump is indicted by the Biden regime the very next day.

The Judge Assigned to Trump's January 6th Indictment Is Going to Be a Nightmare.  Once again, the political world has been engulfed by another indictment of Donald Trump, this time surrounding his alleged actions involving January 6th.  The details include four different counts, including two counts of conspiracy and two counts of obstruction.  Those four counts break down specifically to Trump allegedly attempting to obstruct an official proceeding, which has to do with January 6th, while the conspiracy charges appear to center on the supposed alternate electors scheme.  Obviously, arguments about selective prosecution and weaponization of the DOJ will be at the forefront for political circles, but even on legal grounds, this indictment appears to be far weaker than the one charging that Trump mishandled classified documents and conspired to obstruct the investigation into the matter.  Specifically, counts two and three sure seem like "disinformation" is being criminalized.  Regardless, putting even the legal arguments aside, one thing is certain:  The judge assigned to this case is going to be a nightmare.

Trump Could Have Spent Jan. 6 Talking About The Weather And Still Would Have Been Indicted.  Former President Donald Trump was indicted for the third time on Tuesday when Special Counsel Jack Smith unveiled charges ostensibly related to the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021.  According to Smith, Trump is guilty of conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy against rights, obstruction of an official proceeding, and conspiracy to obstruct a proceeding, all for raising electoral objections that Democrats have made for decades.  As protesters breached the first police barriers at the Capitol, Trump was still speaking at the White House, with explicit directions for demonstrators to "peacefully and patriotically make [their] voices heard."  That timeline itself undermines the left-wing narrative that Trump alone incited a deadly insurrection.

Jonathan Turley and Andy McCarthy Rip Apart Flawed Nature of New Trump Indictment.  As we reported earlier, Special Counsel Jack Smith dropped another indictment on former President Donald Trump, charging him with three counts of conspiracy and one count of obstruction on Tuesday.  At this point, it's getting a little ridiculous and frankly, transparent, as to how hard the Biden administration seems to be working to try to take Trump out of the race with lawfare and indictments.  Fox News' Bret Baier shared how Republicans are describing the indictment for what it is:  Democrats looking at a box of chocolates, trying to figure out what was the best box of chocolates to "prevent him from becoming president again."  That's hitting the nail on the head; that's what it's all about.

Special Counsel Jack Smith Unseals Criminal Indictment of President Trump for Protesting Results of 2020 Election.  Interestingly, nowhere in the indictment is anything criminally alleged relating to the January 6, 2021, events at the U.S. Capitol building in Washington DC.  However, you will notice in the Lawfare delivery of the remarks, Special Counsel Jack Smith factually speaks almost exclusively of the January 6th events.  The absence of a criminal charge (ie. seditious conspiracy or insurrection) when contrast against the extreme verbal emphasis of the event as outlined by Smith in the presser, will be missed by most.  Speaking of the non-criminal event as the context for a fabricated/stretched criminal allegation, is Lawfare in action.  Why emphasize but not charge?  Because the DOJ/FBI does not want the risk of litigated discovery and evidence of coordinated government activity therein, that's why.  Jack Smith knows he is out on a limb with his Lawfare effort to criminalize the legal and constitutional challenge to an election outcome.

Trump Jan 6 Case [is] Assigned to Judge Tanya Chutkan, an Obama Appointee.  The DC grand jury indicted Trump in the January 6 investigation.  "Trump indicted in federal probe over effort to undo election loss and subvert transfer of power in run-up to Jan. 6 riot" AP reported.  Trump was hit with 4 counts:  Conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights.

Indictment 3.0: Jack Smith Indicts Trump Day After Hunter, Joe Biden Implicated.  Special Counsel Jack Smith announced Tuesday evening that a grand jury in Washington, D.C., had indicted former President Donald Trump on charges relating to the January 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.  The indictment was announced the day after President Joe Biden had been implicated in a long-running influence peddling-scheme by his son Hunter's former business partner, Devon Archer, in testimony before the House Oversight Committee.

Donald Trump Indicted For Third Time.  Former President Donald Trump has been indicted for a third time.  Officials announced Tuesday that Trump has been indicted in relation to his alleged attempt to interfere in the 2020 election and alleged involvement in Jan. 6. Trump was charged with "Conspiracy to defraud the United States," "Conspiracy to corruptly obstruct and impede the January 6 proceedings" and "A conspiracy against the right to vote and to have one's vote counted."  "This is nothing more than the latest corrupt chapter in the continued pathetic attempt by the Biden Crime Family and their weaponized Department of Justice to interfere with the 2024 Presidential Election, in which President Trump is the undisputed frontrunner, and leading by substantial margins," the Trump campaign said in a statement.

Trump has been indicted again.  A grand jury has filed an indictment connected to the 2020 election.  At the moment the indictment is sealed and no official statement has been made about who has been indicted or why but the Washington Post is reporting the target is former president Trump.

Republican Party Elites Want to Change Primary Rules to [Deprive] Trump of Delegates.  A poll released earlier this month projected President Trump would win in a massive blowout in the Republican Primary. [...] This terrifies the GOP elites.  They hate Trump and hate the fact that they cannot sway Republican voters away from President Trump.  Massachusetts is the latest state where Republicans are playing with the rules to thwart President Trump in the upcoming primary.

They are rubbing our noses in their filth.  The false investigations, and fake indictments of Donald Trump are ridiculous and aimed at showing his supporters and his distractors alike that no one can escape them. [...] President Trump never really was in charge.  Obama led the resistance — an act of sedition — that thwarted Trump at every turn.  McConnell and the rest of the gullible guinea pigs in DC who call themselves conservatives aided and abetted Obama.  Trump's inability to govern properly is one of the reasons some commentators want to abandon him.  It is like telling a rape victim she should have fought harder.

It's time to prosecute the prosecutors.  With their lies about masks, vaccines, and lockdowns all exposed, another pandemic won't work, because nobody's buying that trick again.  So now, it's banana republic prosecutions against the Republican frontrunner, on multiple, coordinated fronts.  Note the timing here — not two years ago, but right before the election.  What a coincidence!  By bringing these prosecutions, Smith and Garland are breaking federal law by violating the Hatch Act, which states that a federal "employee may not ... use his official authority or influence for the purpose of interfering with or affecting the result of an election." But the unfortunate fact remains that few legal tools or weapons exist to hold rogue prosecutors accountable for these wild shenanigans.  Violators of the Hatch Act, for example, face a maximum $1,000 fine and debarment from working for the government for a maximum of five years.  But does anybody think a thousand-dollar fine will deter Smith and Garland from their rabid anti-Trump fixation?

Hemingway: DOJ Playing With Fire Trying To "Literally Imprison" The President's Top Political Rival.  "The Federalist" senior editor Mollie Hemingway, during an appearance Sunday on FNC's "Media Buzz, drives home the point that with the indictment of Donald Trump on federal charges over the January 6 riot, the Department of Justice is "working to literally imprison the top political opponent of the current president" over an issue of political speech.  She said Trump not being allowed to "do what everybody else was always allowed to do, which is protest election results and challenge election results" is "very dangerous."  "To criminalize that act, something the Democrats have done every single election since Reagan... The Department of Justice is acting in a very reckless fashion, and a competent media would be accurately talking about that, what a problem it poses to the very existence of our republic."

Trump attorneys: Fulton DA is raising political cash off her investigation.  Former President Donald Trump's Atlanta attorneys are making yet another attempt to disqualify Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis from further investigations into his alleged 2020 election meddling in Georgia.  On Thursday, Trump's attorneys filed a motion in Fulton County Superior Court, arguing Willis should be disqualified from her investigation because she allegedly is using the case to raise re-election funds.

Is there a judge anywhere in the US with the courage to say that the Emperor has no Clothes?  [Scroll down]  Again, is there an AG or a judge or justice with the moral core and the principles to do what is right anywhere in this country, who remembers we don't have emperors?  We all know that all these legal actions that have been filed against Trump — the NY nonsensical stuff, the documents case, the absurd Jean Carroll case, the numerous cases accusing him of election interference or inciting the fedsusrrection of January 6, 2021 — are all, shall we say, trumped up.  There must be an AG in some state — Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan - states we know the Democrats cheated in 2020 — who is brave enough to stand up against this Stalinist offensive against the best President since Reagan?

Endless Trump Indictments And Jail Threats Means Republicans Can't Quit The Weaponization Fight.  The deep state's incessant attempts to undermine the 2024 presidential election by throwing President Joe Biden's number one political enemy in jail is getting old.  It seems like every day, Biden bureaucrats and Democrats manufacture new justifications for why former President Donald Trump deserves to be behind bars.  "Deranged Jack Smith, the prosecutor with Joe Biden's DOJ, sent a letter ... stating that I am a TARGET of the January 6th Grand Jury investigation, and giving me a very short 4 days to report to the Grand Jury, which almost always means an Arrest and an Indictment," Trump announced in a Truth on Tuesday.

Mark Levin: Trump Attorneys Must File Motion to Investigate the Biden DOJ and Jack Smith.  Mark Levin called on the Trump attorneys to immediately file motion for order the Office of Professional Responsibility to investigate the series of illegal leaks by Joe Biden's corrupt Department of Justice and Special Counsel Jack Smith used to interfere in the 2024 presidential election. [...] ["]This Department of Justice is destroying America.  It's destroying the 2024 election.  It's violating every norm, every tradition, everything it inherited to ensure that that department could be trustworthy and could be reliable.  It has criminalized politics.This Department of Justice is destroying America.  It's destroying the 2024 election.  It's violating every norm, every tradition, everything it inherited to ensure that that department could be trustworthy and could be reliable.  It has criminalized politics.["]

The push to disqualify Trump from 2024 using the 14th Amendment.  An effort to disqualify former President Donald Trump's White House bid is being undertaken by two civil rights groups that say the Jan. 6 Capitol riot could prevent Trump from holding office under the 14th Amendment.  Mi Familia Vota, a nonprofit organization to unite the Latino community, and Free Speech For People, an advocacy group pushing for political equality, have joined forces to create the "Trump is Disqualified" campaign.  The campaign aims to inform voters and state officials of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.  This section bars people from holding certain offices who have previously taken an oath to uphold the Constitution and have "engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof."  The groups are pushing efforts across the nation to bar Trump from appearing on the 2024 ballot next November, urging secretaries of state and chief election officials through letters to use what is known as the insurrectionist disqualification clause of the 14th Amendment to block Trump from "any future ballot," according to Free Speech For People.

Enough!  I could tell you that you will never get Donald Trump through the Republican Convention, that all of the money is for DeSantis and the rules are being re-written at the state GOPs to get rid of Trump during the primary for DeSantis, but most of you will not hear what I am saying.  Should he somehow manage that and it is still possible, I could tell you that there is no way Donald Trump wins in 2024; that despite the cheating that is now a part of American Democracy (yes, the capitalization was intended) as much as any Soviet-style election, except on a much grander and more physically exhausting scale, having to overcome actual people voting opposite of the preferred candidate rather than having but one name on the ballot.[...] Trump is a pipe dream.  The GOP won't even let him have the nomination.

217 Pages Reveal Obama Admin's Building of Trump-Russia Narrative.  Heavily redacted documents from the National Security Agency tell at least part of the story of a final-month rush by the outgoing Obama administration to torpedo the incoming presidency of Donald Trump.  The Daily Signal obtained 217 pages of documents from the NSA through a Freedom of Information Act request.  The documents reveal that Obama administration officials, from Vice President Joe Biden down to several ambassadors and many officials in the Treasury and Energy departments, gained access to secret information about President-elect Trump's incoming national security adviser, Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn.

If Alleged DOJ Misconduct Is True, A Judge Could Dismiss The Whole Case Against Trump.  Lost in the breathless headlines over the indictment of President Trump for alleged violations of the Espionage Act is a story that deserves much more attention than it has received thus far: the allegation that a senior official at the Department of Justice attempted to shake down Trump's co-defendant's lawyer.  It is a scandal in the making that could result in the investigation of senior DOJ officials, which should lead to public congressional hearings, and that might even result in the entire case against Trump being dismissed.

In Defense of Donald Trump.  Fulton County District Attorney, Fani Willis has some formidable hurdles to clear in her quest to convict Donald Trump for interfering in Georgia's 2020 election. [...] Trump's "big lie" is fundamental to her case.  To support her premise, she may cite the dozens of judges who have tossed the Trump legal team's lawsuits from their courts, seeing no evidence of fraud in the 2020 election.  She is not so likely to draw the court's attention to the fact that millions of Americans, who are not judges, have seen a plethora of evidence that amounts to nothing short of a calculated coup d'état, coordinated across several states.  Such evidence ranges from expert analysis to published graphs showing impossible spikes in Biden votes in three battleground states: Wisconsin, Michigan and Georgia.  These fantastic vote spikes were logged in the wee hours of election night when, according to reports, no observers were present, as would be required by law.  As J.R. Dunn has stated, "The prosecution is going to have a very hard time stating a case without allowing in evidence that they desperately don't want anyone to hear."

Koch Network Plans to Spend $70 Million Exclusively to Block President Trump from GOP Nomination.  As if on cue, here comes another billionaire group by well-established political control agents in yet another multimillion effort to block President Trump.  This time it's Koch and his Americans for Prosperity network.  The Koch groups are planning to spend $70 million in their effort to eliminate the support of Donald Trump in 2024.  However, [it will be interesting] to watch how the downstream media networks attack Trump in order to get a piece of the spending allotment.  That's where knowing where the Koch money flows comes in handy.

America's justice system has been corrupted by political bias.  Three very different indictments — but one [bad] conclusion:  America's blatantly politicized justice system is broken.  Daniel Penny.  Hunter Biden.  Donald Trump.  'Isn't it amazing,' Trump is heard declaring on a bombshell audio recording leaked to CNN on Monday of a now infamous 2021 meeting at the center of a case against the former president over the mishandling of classified information.  'These are the papers,' Trump says as he reportedly flaunts 'secret' military plans detailing an attack on Iran.  Yes, isn't it amazing?  It's astonishing, in fact, that explosive details of perhaps one of the most important and unprecedented legal cases in America's history, against our most hated Republican president, keep leaking out as if from a broken water main.

CBS Report, Mysterious DoD Iran Attack Memo Does Not Exist and Is Not Part of Jack Smith Case Against Trump.  After a full media cycle of apoplexy and pearl-clutching, which included Andrew Weissmann appearing on MSNBC to declare "It's the end of Trump," CBS is now reporting there is no Defense Department memo about attacking Iran — the foundation of the media claims surrounding the leaked audio tapes from Special Counsel Jack Smith.  Worse still, and exactly as CTH previously outlined, despite the claims by CNN about how this audio would be used as the "central element" by the prosecution of Trump, the audio and mysterious memo are not part of the Special Counsel case.

Four Ways the Deep State Betrays Americans.  Do you think it is an accident that the Deep State has worked so hard to protect the Biden family from prosecution when the Chinese bought Joe long ago?  Do you think it is a coincidence that the Deep State is trying to put President Trump in prison for the rest of his days, when he has been the lone voice on the national stage calling for American independence from reliance upon foreign dictators?  Could the Deep State make it any more obvious that it works against Americans' interests and for the interests of World Economic Forum scum such as Klaus Schwab, George Soros, Bill Gates, and all the other anti-American, Marxist globalists?  For all intents and purposes, the Uniparty occupying D.C. is a wholly owned and operated corporate subsidiary of the communist Chinese.

Why is the Clinton Special Counsel Delaying Start of Trump Trial?  Usually trying to delay a trial is done to give your side more time to prepare.  Jack Smith, the Clinton-linked special counsel targeting Trump, is strangely asking for a significant delay on behalf of Trump's people. [...] Why is Smith filing motions on behalf of the defense?  If Trump's legal team wants to delay the case, they're capable of asking to do so.  And Smith's arguments perhaps provide them with grounds for doing so.  What's strange is the red team asking for a delay on behalf of the blue team.  It's a safe bet that Smith's concerns that Trump's lawyers have the time they need are not the real story.  Smith rushed to indict Trump, but now he wants to slow down.  Pushing the trial to December will, along with inevitable further delays, will take the trial into the primary season[,] as it's intended to do.  This isn't about winning the case, it's about, much as with Russiagate, keeping the case in the public eye.

Donald Trump's 2020 election loss was an inside job.  There are numerous bombshells in the congressional testimony of two IRS whistleblowers, but the most significant is that members of Trump's Department of Justice helped to tip the 2020 election to his opponent by slow-walking the investigation into Hunter Biden.  The interference with the probe began as soon as it looked like Joe Biden was going to win the Democrats' nomination.  That's the allegation made by supervising agent Gary Shapley, who detailed steps he and other IRS investigators wanted to take to gather evidence against Hunter for massive tax fraud and other crimes.  They planned to execute search warrants in New York, California, Arkansas and Washington, DC.  They also wanted to search Joe Biden's Delaware guest house because Hunter spent a lot of time there.  The probers laid out their plan in a probable cause memo, but it was inexplicably rejected by DOJ lawyers.

Who is lying?  Merrick Garland or the whistleblowers?  "I'm not the deciding official."  Those five words, allegedly from Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss, shocked IRS and FBI investigators in a meeting on October 22, 2022.  This is because, in refusing to appoint a special counsel, Attorney Garland Merrick Garland had repeatedly assured the public and Congress that Weiss had total authority over his investigation.  IRS supervisory agent Gary A. Shapley Jr. told Congress he was so dismayed by Weiss's statement and other admissions that he memorialized them in a communication to other team members.  Shapley and another whistleblower detail what they describe as a pattern of interference with their investigation of Hunter Biden, including the denial of searches, lines of questioning, and even attempted indictments.  The only thing abundantly clear is that someone is lying.  Either these whistleblowers are lying to Congress, or these Justice Department officials (including Garland) are lying.

DOJ Request For Delay Of Trump Florida Trial Has Nothing To Do With Strength Or Weakness Of The Case.  When Judge Aileen Cannon scheduled the trial of Donald Trump in the Mar-a-Lago documents case for August 14, 2023, no one who knew the slightest thing about court procedure expected that to hold.  Among other things, Trump doesn't even have a full defense team (his prior team quit), his new lawyers will need to get security clearances to view classified documents, and procedures for the handling and control of classified material would have to be worked out.  An August trial never was going to happen. [...] It's really not difficult to understand.  Please ignore the people who are claiming that it reflects that the government is afraid to present its case, or that it thinks the case is imploding.  And most of all, please ignore the conspiracy theorists who construct elaborate arguments and theories around it and so many other things.  These people are misleading — most of all — Trump supporters.

'Someone's got to go to prison'.  [Scroll down]  Now, in Biden's America it is the good guys who go to prison, as in the hundreds of J6 peaceful protesters who, in some cases, were merely present in DC that day.  The real bad guys, the Biden crime family, all those who invented and perpetrated the Russia collusion hoax on the American people for nearly three years, did not go to prison; not one of them: not Hillary Clinton, James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, and the long list of their co-criminals at the FBI and DOJ and in the media.  They were all complicit in what was effectively a coup, the calculated overthrow of the President of the US.  Trump did serve out his term, but the same crowd made damn sure he wouldn't serve another no matter what; even if he won, which he did!  All of these people knew the collusion story was a hoax but relished in its success at hog-tying the Trump administration.  Despite their traitorous crimes, Trump was the best president since Reagan!

Hearing Highlights of the Plot to Take Down Donald Trump in 2016.  On Wednesday, John Durham explained the findings of his investigation into the FBI handling of the Russia-Trump hoax to the House Judiciary Committee.  In the opening statement, Rep. Jordan explained what John Durham found.  There was no predicate for the Beria-style probe.  There was not one single substantive allegation in the dossier, but it was used just the same to enable spying on innocent Americans.  Durham also found that the FBI failed in its mission to follow the rule of law.  [Tweet with video clip]  After 40 years in the FBI, John Durham and his fellow investigators called the findings sobering.  Sobering is very euphemistic.  [Tweet with video clip]  He answered questions on a purported plan by one of Mrs. Clinton's foreign policy advisors to create a scandal tying Donald Trump to the Russians.  This plan was shared with then-CIA director Brennan, then-President Barack Obama, and his Vice President Joe Biden, and James Comey of the FBI, and the DNI on August 3, 2016.  No one stopped it.  In fact, they went along as if it were legitimate.  Why does Hillary and her advisor skate?  [Tweet with video clip]

The DOJ treats Donald Trump one way, Hillary and Biden another.  The Espionage Act of 1917 has never been used against a former president, vice president, or even a cabinet secretary — until last week.  According to Mark Levin, the 106-year-old law was never intended to be used the way it suddenly has been: to criminalize document cases.  "Whether the documents are classified or not, it doesn't matter who created them.  They're in the possession of the White House, the president, his staff," Levin says.  "The Presidential Records Acts, which was passed in 1978 and instituted effectively in 1981," Levin continues, "has no criminal penalty.  So, you can't start with a Presidential Records Act and all of a sudden say, 'Okay, let's move to the Espionage Act.'"  Levin notes that the Espionage Act wasn't even used against Lyndon B. Johnson, who had directed his staff to remove top secret information involving the Vietnam War and illegally tapped Nixon's phone.  "Nobody even thought about charging anybody with the Espionage Act," he says.

This kind of lawfare is evil.  In today's United States, a lawyer can become a celebrity for representing O.J. Simpson, but if you represent a former President of the United States be prepared to be attacked by your fellow lawyers and be driven out of the profession.  That is the mission of The 65 Project, which is managed by former Perkins Coie attorney Michael Teter.  Perkins Coie is the Democrat Mega law firm that represents everybody who is anybody in Democrat politics: the Democratic National Committee, Democratic Leadership Council, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.  Other political clients include most Democratic members of the United States Congress.  It has also represented several presidential campaigns, including those of John Kerry, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton.  The group's political law practice was founded by Robert Bauer who recruited Marc Elias and made him chair of the group in 2009.  Basically, Perkins Coie IS the legal arm of the Democrat Party.  This basically implies that for all intents and purposes, so is the 65 Project.

Were They Spying on Trump All Along?  Secrets are only for the bureaucrats to leak as they please with no consequences, like the Flynn/Kislyak phone call, or to simply ignore when it involves their friends, such as Hillary's email scandal.  Neither James Comey nor the guy, John Huber, finally appointed by Jeff Sessions to look into the Hillary emails, even bothered to convene a grand jury.  The whole fake Huber investigation is particularly galling.  After Trump demanded action for years, all his DoJ did was appoint a guy who stayed in Utah and reviewed a few files.  But Donald Trump, no secrets for him.  As soon as he left office, Joe Biden cancelled the usual classified briefings all former Presidents get.  Then the hunt was on to nail him for having classified/declassified documents; something all former Presidents routinely possess.  Biden's DoJ had no trouble getting a grand jury for Trump, barely a year after he left office, and it was in the wrong venue, risking a dismissal of the whole case right away.

Washington Post helps those who are intimidating lawyers into not working for Trump.  The right to counsel for defendants is sacred to our democratic republic.  Preventing defendants from obtaining counsel clearly adds to the darkness that the Washington Post endlessly tells us is fatal to democracy.  A highly organized group of people is attempting to deny Donald Trump the right to legal counsel of his choosing by organizing a campaign of intimidation of lawyers who might be asked to serve his defense in the criminal matter he now faces.

Our Broken System Needs Disruption, And Trump Is The Disruptor.  Andrew Jackson was an irascible war hero known for his blunt manner, explosive temper, and inclined to physical violence.  He was elected President in 1828, his second attempt, as a reformer who promised to clean out the "deep state" corruption of his day.  By that time, our country's founders had passed on, and power had been inherited by a motley group of inheritors and cronies (Hunter?  Is that you?) who established a cozy kleptocracy to ensure their continued access to the public trough.  Unsurprisingly, ordinary citizens were very unhappy to the point where southern states, led by Sen. John Calhoun (S.C.), Jackson's future vice president, threatened to secede via federal "nullification," while northeastern elites, represented by Daniel Webster, worked assiduously to enhance federal control over the United States and its riff-raff citizenry.  Despite much howling, unceasing personal attacks, and violent opposition from the deep state of his time, Andrew Jackson persevered, fixed it... and was re-elected in 1832.  Andrew Jackson, in other words, was a disruptor.

Beyond a Banana Republic.  As radio personality Jesse Kelly remarks on Twitter, there are two ways to view what is happening with Donald Trump right now:  ["]Either you see what's happening to Trump as being about Trump or you see it being about a weaponized government planning to make any opposition a crime.  Only one of those views is correct.  You don't have to be a Trump fan to see it's the latter.["]  For most Americans who've paid the slightest bit of attention these past years, that's an obvious statement.  But as George Orwell said of his own time, we've "sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men."  That particular phrase derives from a 1939 review of the book Power: A Social Analysis (1938), by Bertrand Russell.  What makes his observations interesting, and why it serves as another example of Orwell's prescience, is how precisely his commentary reflects what we are witnessing at this moment.

Trump Lawyers Targeted by Dark Money Group.  mong the unusual features of last week's arraignment of former President Trump in Miami involved the difficulty he had finding a qualified attorney to represent him in the classified documents case brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith.  The corporate media inevitably made much of this issue.  The Washington Post, for example, quoted various anonymous sources who claimed that Trump's reputation as a "challenging client" caused several prominent lawyers to turn him down.  In reality, the problem resulted from an intimidation campaign by a radical pressure group called the 65 Project, whose explicit mission is to ruin any lawyer willing to represent Trump.

There Is No 'Moving On' From Corruption.  A common sentiment expressed by some voters on social media these days is the need to "move on."  This viewpoint seems to be particularly popular with those deeply desirous of a Republican candidate for president of the United States who is not Donald Trump.  They readily admit that Trump's policies were far better for the economy and view Biden's administration as disastrous.  Some even acknowledge that social media censorship and changes to election procedures — many unlawful — cost Trump the 2020 presidential election.  Even so, they say, "It's time to move on.["]  It's easy to chalk this up to "Trump fatigue" — weariness of Trump's ego and combative personality.  But an argument can also be made that this is the latest example of the public's reluctance to confront corruption and the erosion of standards in American governance.  What we're watching transpire in U.S. politics right now should be galvanizing the country.  But it doesn't seem to be, and we need to ask ourselves why.

Carpetbagger!
Dem in Congress said the quiet part out loud on MSNBC, that Trump 'needs to be shot'.  Call it a "Freudian slip," where a person accidentally says what she really is thinking.  Stacey Plaskett is a nonvoting member of Congress, a delegate representing the US Virgin Islands in the House of Representatives.  She was born and grew up in New York City, and graduated from the elite and expensive Choate Rosemary Hall prep school in Connecticut before going on the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown and law school at American University.  She says that she and her family frequently visited St. Croix, where her parents are from, in her childhood, and that apparently was good enough for the voters to choose her to represent them in Congress.  She's no loudmouth dummy, and instantaneously recognized what she said and corrected herself to say "stopped" in place of "shot," but that bell can't be unrung.  The word was there in her mind and slipped out before her superego could intervene and stop it, to use Freudian terminology.

Trump Indictment Timeline Reeks Of Deep State Information Operation.  Former President Donald Trump was indicted on the same day FBI Director Christopher Wray caved to House Republicans and allowed members of the Oversight Committee to view an agency document demanded by the GOP.  The document, an unclassified FD-1023 form, is said to implicate President Joe Biden in a criminal bribery scheme from his time as vice president.  According to Republican lawmakers who viewed the document in a secure room on Capitol Hill, the document from a credible confidential informant contains evidence President Biden took a $5 million-dollar bribe from a "foreign national."  That foreign national, Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley says, is an executive at Burisma, the Ukrainian energy company that showered Hunter Biden on the board in excess compensation.  "According to the 1023, the foreign national possesses 15 audio recordings of phone calls between him and Hunter Biden," Grassley said on the Senate floor Monday, with 17 recordings in "total."  Grassley's bombshell floor speech brought the Biden bribery scandal back into the news cycle after FBI officials sought to suppress coverage of the scheme with Trump's second indictment.

6 Reasons DOJ's 'Get Trump' Documents Case Is Seriously Flawed.  [#5] Why are they bringing this case now?  They know Trump is the leading candidate for president.  They know he is beating Biden in the polls.  They must know how bad it looks for a sitting president's DOJ to indict that president's primary political opponent.  DOJ has long had policies in place to prevent new indictments from being brought, or overt investigative acts being committed, in the months preceding an election in order to avoid the appearance of political timing.  The same reasoning clearly applies here.  The special counsel's team did not have a statute of limitations issue, they could have easily just announced the facts as they saw them after the search warrant was executed and all the documents were recovered, and then held off on further investigative acts and the indictment until after November 2024.  The fact that they did not follow that course is strong evidence to me that a big part of this is the burning desire among many on the left to "get Trump."  They don't care about the law.  They don't care about the facts.  They don't care about norms or propriety or anything else.  They just want Trump in cuffs.

The Trump Indictment: Irresponsibility Squared.  [Scroll down]  That said, the indictment charges Trump with multiple counts of what is essentially the same offense.  This aids headline writers who want to write that the former president, who turned 77 on Wednesday, faces hundreds of years (310, to be exact) of imprisonment, but is at odds with Justice Department guidelines.  [Jack] Smith seems to be needlessly piling on here.  And do indictments usually include photographs of evidence, like the widely circulated view of the boxes in a Mar-a-Lago bathroom?  In addition, the indictment includes multiple quotations of Trump's assertions that classified material should remain secret.  Perhaps their inclusion can be justified as showing intent — that Trump knew that what he was doing was wrong.  But intent is not required by the Espionage Act, and the material recited looks like the sort of thing you see in negative political ads.

Trump Indictment a Violation of Federal Law.  The Presidential Records Act, the big red elephant in the room ignored by [Jack] Smith, at 44 USC § 2205 (3), gives a former president unrestrained access to the presidential records which he declares to be his and gives his designated agents also access to such records.  Yes, the National Archives can take control of those records, after consultation with the former President, and any disagreement on the designation of a record is to be resolved by a United States District Court in a civil proceeding, not a criminal prosecution.  But the Presidential Records Act simply does not create an exception prohibiting the former President's access to records marked as secret, classified, or confidential.  Under the Presidential Records Act, Trump, even as a former president, has all the access he wants to all his presidential records, even those which may have been classified, and may give such access to his designated agents.  End of story.

Trump is Charged Under a Law Meant to Suppress Political Opposition.  A year after the start of WWI, President Woodrow Wilson addressed his message to Congress and warned that the "gravest threats against our national peace and safety" did not come from "other governments", but from "within our own borders".  "Citizens of the United States," Wilson continued, "born under other flags but welcomed under our generous naturalization laws to the full freedom and opportunity of America, who have poured the poison of disloyalty into the very arteries of our national life."  Wilson, a notorious racist and a supporter of the KKK who had contempt for a wide variety of other peoples, likely had German immigrants, but not just them, in mind when he called for what would become the Espionage Act so that "we may be purged of their corrupt distempers."  "I need not suggest the terms in which they may be dealt with," Wilson concluded.  While there were indeed pro-German terrorist conspiracies in those days, including the Black Tom bombing which damaged the Statue of Liberty and a plot to infect the country's horses, the Espionage Act of 1917 went far beyond prosecuting criminal activities.  Wilson had sought, but not received, the power to censor the press, he did get the power to censor the mail.

Former Asst. US Attorney Takes Apart Trump Case and Raises Some Important Questions.  [Will] Scharf is a former Assistant U.S. Attorney who worked on two Supreme Court confirmations and clerked for two federal appellate judges.  He's also running for Missouri Attorney General.  Like many, he thinks the prosecution against the former president is "outrageous." [...] Scharf notes that Article 3 Project's Mike Davis and Judicial Watch's Michael Bekesha's argument:  ["] ...distills down to the idea that the President's authority to retain Personal Records, as well as his rights to access his Presidential Records, make it impossible to prosecute him under the Espionage Act section at issue here, § 793(e), because the government cannot prove 'unauthorized possession,' as required under the statute.["]

When are enough Americans going to realize our government is a criminal enterprise?  How corrupt is our Department of Justice?  In order to take Trump off the board, they have indicted President Trump on a long list of made-up, fabricated crimes regarding the documents confiscated in that misguided, illegitimate raid on Mar-A-Lago.  These charges are ludicrous, and a decent judge would and may well toss them.  The thoroughly corrupt Jack Smith has chosen to ignore all the precedents that should apply.  Tapes stored in Clinton's sock drawer?  Legal.  Sandy Berger stole docs from the National Archives?  Slap on the wrist.  Biden's many hundreds of documents and Pence's possession of "classified" docs?  Ignored by the DOJ.  Comey's disingenuous decision to give Hillary a pass for her oh-so-many and far more serious crimes got a pass.  So terrified of the most pro-America president since Reagan, the left has gone to extreme and illegal lengths to destroy the best President since Reagan. Biden's two years in office have brought the US to the brink of an abyss.  This indictment of Trump only proves the unfairness of our two-tiered system of justice.

The Lilliputians are All in Conspiracy Against Trump.  The framing of Donald Trump continues.  Fear and loathing are motivators, but, most importantly, the hope is to lash Trump to the ground so that he can't rise to the presidency in 2024.  Multiple indictments are the ropes.  Convicting Trump would be icing on the cake, but keeping him sidelined is critical.  Trump has now run afoul of the Espionage Act, say federal persecutors.  It might as well be the Escargot Act.  Does it matter, finally?  As establishment mouthpiece Rachel Maddow suggests, federal charges can disappear if Trump scrams from the presidential contest.  Fat chance, knowing Trump. [...] Grasps the establishment: A Trump presidency would be all-out war on their power and prerogatives, a war they worry they'd lose.  More and more Americans are against them.  That's where the fear and loathing of Trump comes in because they know that Trump 47 has every incentive to carry the fight to them.

Donald Trump's Arraignment.  First, the politics.  The early indications are that predictions that Trump supporters would rally around him in the event of an indictment appear to be true.  A poll by CBS News and YouGov found that 76% of likely Republican primary voters said that the indictment was politically motivated.  When asked if the indictment would change their view of Trump, 61% said it would not change their view at all, while 14% said it would change their view of Trump for the better.  Just seven percent said it would change their view of Trump for the worse, and 18% said it depends, meaning they weren't really sure.  In a Reuters-Ipsos poll, 81% of Republicans said "politics was driving the case."  "The indictment did not appear to dent Trump's standing in the Republican nominating contest for the 2024 presidential election," Reuters reported.  So the answer, at least for now, to the question of whether the indictment would hurt Trump among Republicans is no.

Biden's Banana Republic.  It was amazing to see Attorney General Merrick Garland's appointed special counsel, Jack Smith, step in front of the cameras and say of the indictment of former President Donald Trump: "No one is above the law."  Which is to say, Jack Smith looked the American people in the eye and straight up lied.  It was the stuff of a banana republic.  Fact?  Joe Biden, who did the same thing with classified documents as Donald Trump — and four times over — is not being indicted.  He is above the law.  Fact?  As Rep. James Comer's House Oversight Committee is revealing, Joe Biden now stands accused of routinely accepting bribes from China to enrich his family.  No indictment forthcoming.  Because Joe Biden is above the law.

Ill-advised indictments weaponize federal government against Trump.  The indictment of former President Donald Trump amid allegation of "mishandling national secrets" is the natural next phase of the left-wing establishment's arrogance and corruption.  The left has been desperately trying to stop Mr. Trump since he announced his candidacy in 2015.  (Recall the made-up Trump Tower-Moscow scandal, the phony Russia-Trump collusion scandal, the made-for-TV impeachment effort, etc.)  The constant attacks have eroded Americans' trust in government institutions, a far bigger problem than the left's hatred of Mr. Trump.  There are several other indictments that should have been announced to reestablish the rule of law.

Flashback: Biden Promised to Use His Power to Prevent Trump From Returning to White House.  As Donald Trump faces charges from the Biden administration over his possession of classified documents, many of his supporters and advocates have pointed out how the administration's actions parallel corruption long associated with third-world dictatorships.  And yet, during a press conference last November, Joe Biden actually promised he would do exactly that when asked about Trump's possible return to the White House.  "So the entire genesis of that G7 conversation was tied to your predecessor, who is about to launch another campaign.  So how do you reassure them, if that is the reason for their questioning, that the former president will not return or that his political movement, which is still very strong, will not... once again take power in the United States?" a reporter asked Biden.  "Well, we just have to demonstrate that he will not take power by — if we — if he does run," Biden said.  "I'm making sure he, under legitimate efforts of our Constitution, does not become the next president again."  [Tweet with video clip]

The National Security "Nuclear" Documents Outlined by Jack Smith Are Pure Lawfare Manipulation.  Devin Nunes was previously the Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.  In that very specific role, Nunes was a member of the Gang of Eight who are briefed on all intelligence issues at the same level as the President, the chief executive.  The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman, is the #2 ranking intelligence oversight member within the national security oversight apparatus, exceeded in rank amid the Gang of Eight group only by the House Speaker.  As the HPSCI chairman, Nunes has a very granular understanding of intelligence language and the way the intelligence apparatus uses words within national security documents.  When Nunes talks about national security documents, he is a subject matter expert on the administration side of the process.  Why is that important right now?  Because Nunes knows how to contrast the wording in the Jack Smith indictment against wording used to describe national security documents.  [Video clip]

Is the Trump Indictment Part of Biden's 2024 Strategy?  Any discussion of Joe Biden's 2024 election strategy would be incomplete without examining the context of Biden's threat to stop Donald Trump from "taking power" after the 2024 election.  Just what did he mean by that?  Recall that on November 9, 2022, shortly after the Democrats' surprising showing in the midterm elections, Biden was speaking at a press conference in the state dining room at the White House.  There he made the infamous pledge to stop Trump in response to a sympathetic journalist asking about the concerns of foreign leaders over a second Trump term.

Our justice system is being weaponized to prevent Trump from becoming president again.  In case you didn't see it over the weekend, a Wall Street Journal editorial makes the point that the long and complicated indictment of former President Trump never once mentioned the Presidential Records Act that allows a president access to documents, both classified and unclassified, once he leaves the office.  And everybody should read that editorial.  The Journal goes on to say the indictment assumes Trump had no right to take any classified documents.  This assumption is completely false.  The whole point of this discussion, going all the way back to the insane invasion of Mar-a-Lago last summer, was about discussions and disagreements between Mr. Trump on the one hand and the National Archives on the other.

Tulsi Gabbard: Trump Indictment May Be 'Final Nail' in U.S. Democracy's 'Coffin'.  Former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard slammed the recent indictment of former President Donald Trump, claiming the move is "not something that should happen" in the U.S., while warning it may be the "final nail in the coffin of our democracy."  Speaking this weekend at the 14th annual Western Conservative Summit in Denver, Colorado — one of the largest annual gatherings of conservatives outside Washington, DC — former congresswoman and presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard began by noting her love for the United States, her military service, and her later role in congress.

Three ways the indictment of Donald Trump hurts America.  Former President Donald Trump has been indicted for illegally storing and hiding classified documents.  As conservative radio host Steve Gruber describes it, the "bananafication" of our republic continues apace.  There are three reasons every American — even those of us not supporting Trump's 2024 campaign — should find this further assault on the former president repugnant.  First, it reinforces the view, shared by many conservatives, that our government delivers a two-tiered system of justice — one for people on the right and another for those on the left.  Donald Trump, after all, is not the only public official found to have mishandled secret documents.  Special Counsel Jack Smith claimed, as he brought the indictment: "We have one set of laws in this country, and they apply to everyone."  History suggests otherwise.

Republicans react to Trump indictment; suggest it is an attempt to 'preemptively steal the 2024 election'.  Former President Donald Trump revealed Thursday he had been indicted on seven counts in connection with his handling of allegedly classified documents.  Trump's attorney, Jim Trusty, called the charges — which reportedly include false statements, conspiracy to obstruct and a charge under the Espionage Act — "ludicrous."  Trusty confirmed to CNN that the Department of Justice sent a summons letter to the Republican presidential candidate's legal team via email listing the counts and scheduling a Miami federal court appearance for Tuesday afternoon.

Former DNI John Ratcliffe Accuses Special Counsel Team of Improper Actions in Effort to Get Trump.  Former DNI John Ratcliffe appeared with Fox Business's Maria Bartiromo on "Sunday Morning Futures," and he ripped into the indictment of former President Donald Trump, calling it a "travesty."  Ratcliffe reminded everyone of the past abuses that have gone on in the effort to get Trump and have been detailed in things like the Inspectors General reports and the Durham report.  He noted how the FBI lawyer made a false claim to the FISA court to get a warrant to surveil a Trump team member.  Ratcliffe said the same kind of thing was happening in this indictment.  He highlighted something that many reports are missing — that they were allegedly "committing crimes to prosecute crimes." Ratcliffe alleged that a member of Jack Smith's special counsel team had threatened "a lawyer representing President Trump's personal valet," Walt Nauta, and that the lawyer had to "flip" Nauta.  Otherwise, the lawyer might not get the position as a judge he was aiming for.

How the Left Learned to Love the Espionage Act.  For a century after the Espionage Act was passed by Congress and signed into law by Democrat President Woodrow Wilson, our friends on the left have consistently denounced it as antithetical to democracy.  They objected when it was used to jail socialist Eugene Debs in 1918 and continued to condemn the statute 55 years later when the Nixon administration deployed it against Daniel Ellsberg pursuant to the Pentagon Papers.  As recently as 2013, the Guardian accused the Obama administration of McCarthyism for using this law to "persecute" whistleblower Edward Snowden.  Yet, now that Special Counsel Jack Smith has included 31 violations of the Espionage Act in his indictment of former President Trump, the left has had a "road to Damascus" experience concerning the once-reviled statute.

Can Trump Clean The Augean Stables on the Potomac?  I ask again, what was Trump's crime?  I think it was a dual manifestation of one crime.  His original sin, his unforgivable or eternal sin, was being elected president in 2016. The regime endeavored to expiate that sin by hampering Trump, then by impeaching him.  But here he is, persisting in his folly, seeking to commit the same tort again.  Conclusion: he must be destroyed.  Hence the treason trial masquerading as a legitimate judicial proceeding.  Reflecting on the latest chapter in the tale we might call "The Persecution of Donald Trump," the Wall Street Journal noted that this is "a fraught moment for American democracy.  For the first time in U.S. history, the prosecutorial power of the federal government has been used against a former President who is also running against the sitting President."  Donald Trump is currently, and by a large margin, the front runner of the opposition party in the 2024 presidential campaign.  The party in power is attempting to silence him, to take him out of the running, by mobilizing the police power of the state against him.  This is the sort of thing one expects from banana-republic regimes in Africa and Central America.

Former Federal Prosecutors Identify Several Flaws In Trump DOJ Indictment.  A pair of former federal prosecutors have identified a number of flaws in the 49-page indictment against former President Donald Trump they suggest will work in his favor if the case goes to trial.  Former DOJ Deputy Assistant Attorney General Victoria Toensing and former U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Joe diGenova noted that all the allegations are problematic for Trump if they are true, but that doesn't mean the case is rock-solid.  As reported by Newsmax, "Trump on Thursday was indicted, accused, among other things, of mishandling classified documents at his Florida estate.  The prosecution marks the first time in U.S. history that a former president faces criminal charges by the federal government he once oversaw.  He faces the possibility of prison if convicted."

Mark Levin Reacts to Trump Indictment — Frivolous Documents Charges.  I am deep in the weeds and assembling notes for outlines to be delivered in the next several articles.  However, that said, perhaps the only time Mark Levin's shouting was tolerable was last night as he responded to the indictment of President Trump.  [Video clip]

Marjorie Taylor Greene Outlines the FBI Document She Reviewed Highlighting Bribes to Joe Biden and Family — Video and Transcript.  Amid all the furor of the corrupt and political indictment against President Trump, Congress was permitted to read the witness statement from a Confidential Human Source who outlined allegations of bribery in testimony to FBI agents.  The FD-1023 report was written by FBI investigators in July of 2020.  It became an issue after the FBI seemingly took no action, and then recently claimed to be "investigating" the claims of the "highly credible" FBI source.  Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) reviewed the report and then gave her impression to the media.  [Video clip]

Trump Is Charged But Nobody Has Time To Investigate The Possibility That We Have A Spy In The White House.  Donald Trump is apparently being charged with seven counts of mishandling classified documents.  All of this is related, it appears, to boxes of documents allegedly found in the former President's home in Florida after he left office. [...] I will note for the record that the widely quoted claim that "nuclear launch codes" were amongst these documents is obviously false.  Outside of Hollywood's imagination, those codes don't exist in the way the public has been told they do.  The broader issue here is this.  How is it that DOJ and the FBI have found time to run this "crime" to the ground but apparently have dedicated no resources of any kind to pursuing the massive trove of evidence suggesting strongly that Joe Biden is fully compromised by the Communist Chinese and has taken literally tens of millions of dollars from individuals directly connected to Chinese intelligence?  If Trump was sloppy with classified documents — a claim as yet unproven — we can probably agree that is less than ideal.  If the guy sitting in the Oval Office is in the pay of our number one foreign enemy that seems like it would be a much bigger deal.

Jeff Clark Gives Solid Take on DOJ Trump Indictment Scheme.  First, it is important to always remember why this indictment is taking place.  The DOJ, specifically Lisa Monaco, are continuing the offensive against Trump in large part to cover for the actions of the Obama administration in the originating targeting of their political opposition.  Originating Spygate operations ('15-'16), Russiagate ('16-'17), Mueller ('17-'19), Impeachment #1 ('19-'20), Durham ('19-'23) and Jack Smith '22-present, are all part of one long continuum of weaponized DOJ and FBI operations.  The entirety of the effort is to protect the actions taken by the Obama administration.  In this interview Jeff Clark gives his opinion of the statutory weaknesses that exist in the case as outlined in the indictment.  The first two defense approaches will likely be:  (1) the Presidential Records Act supersedes the issues of document holding as noted in the use of the Espionage Act.  (2) However, if the Espionage Act [Statute 793(e)] has to be defended, the originating issue of "unauthorized possession" will be the second approach heading to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.  [Video clip]

Latest Trump Indictment Proves Deep State Is Trying To Rig Yet Another Election.  The same institutions that tormented former President Donald Trump for years with false accusations of collusion with Russia are making yet another brazen attempt to rig the next presidential election against the wishes of the American people.  Democrats and their cronies in the Department of Justice and the FBI have a history of election meddling to achieve their political goals.  The raid on Trump's Mar-a-Lago home and subsequent persecution of the former president by Special Counsel Jack Smith, sanctioned by the same corrupt players who have targeted Americans for wrongthink for years now, prove to be no exception.  There's nothing the deep state isn't willing to try to do to keep their biggest threat — Trump and his voters — from regaining power.  Democrats and corporate media are so committed to this goal that they didn't even try to keep their desire to change election outcomes a secret.

Legal Opinions On Trump Indictment Incoming.  CTH has been hammering away on the Espionage Act angle — 793(e).  And with good reason.  Obviously CTH is getting some good legal advice.  Here CTH highlights a common misunderstanding.  Violations of the Espionage Act need not involve "classified" documents.  In fact, the entire classification system is a post WW2 innovation: [...] CTH is absolutely correct that the Trump situation is NOT what the Espionage Act purports to be about.  The use of the Espionage Act has regularly been prone to abuse, and it has always had its critics because of the very broad and vague language, such as "relating to".  Hopefully Trump's lawyers will attack from this angle in pre-trial motions.

The Trump Indictment Is Much More Than An Interesting Coincidence.  The very day that the Oversight Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives canceled a Contempt of Congress vote against FBI Director Christopher Wray after the latter agreed to turn over a witness file containing bribery allegations against President Joe Biden stemming back to his days as vice president of the United States, Donald Trump — former president and current poll leader among prospective 2024 GOP presidential candidates — informed the public that he has been indicted for mishandling presidential documents.  This extraordinary coincidence illustrates an important, baneful trend in American life: the use of criminal prosecutions and civil lawsuits as a political weapon.  With a gross profusion of federal, state, and local laws in place, many of them hundreds of pages in length and larded with ambiguities and internal and external contradictions, it is easy to find some legal breach with which to charge someone whose policies you oppose or whom you simply dislike.  This costs your enemy time, effort, and money.

How to commit the perfect coup against a president and his supporters.  Everything from here on out is a theory, but it's a theory based upon readily available facts.  If you look at them in a particular way, those readily available facts show a sustained pattern of subverting the will of the people to obtain total political power, something that culminated in the recently announced indictment against Donald Trump.  If I were trying to overthrow a duly elected president, I'd start by saying he conspired with a foreign power to cheat in the election. [...] When it became apparent that the president was hugely effective at governing on those things that matter to ordinary people, such as the economy, national security, immigration, energy policy, etc., and that the false charges of treason and cheating weren't sticking, I'd look ahead to throwing the next election.  What I would need is a way to prevent the president from campaigning and a way to institutionalize election fraud.  Thankfully, I would have gamed out long before the election what a government can do if faced with a pandemic infection.  COVID's appearance was providential.

The Editor says...
Covid was, in my opinion, intentionally released as a biological weapon.  Its appearance was not providential, except in the sense of being fortuitously well-timed.  Disease is not a gift from God.

Biden's DOJ Tried to Bribe Attorney for Trump's Valet in Exchange for Testimony Against Trump.  On Thursday The Guardian reported that Joe Biden's DOJ attempted to bribe the attorney for Trump valet driver in exchange for testimony against Donald Trump.  Clearly, this is an illegal act and it should threaten the case against President Trump.  The only criminal act in this entire case is the actions by the Biden DOJ!

Trump Impeachment Lawyer David Schoen Destroys Case Against Trump.  [Video clip only.]

Biden's DOJ attempts to take out the GOP frontrunner.  The inevitability has finally been realized (if reports are true): Donald Trump has been indicted by the Biden DOJ. [...] After years and years of prosecutorial and investigative abuses and crimes, the Department of Justice has finally indicted Trump.  In doing so, the DOJ has inserted itself into the 2024 presidential election, again disenfranchising millions of voters.  It's a sad day for the country and a sobering day for those who wish for the equal administration of justice.  This story is still developing.  The New York Times states there are seven counts; we expect these to concern various provisions of the Espionage Act (18 USC 793), such as the dissemination of national security information and the unauthorized retention of national security documents.  We understand that the indictment has been filed in the Federal District Court in Miami.  Quick analysis: this is a comparatively good venue for Trump, given the support he has in Florida and in the Miami community.  It is much better than DC, where Trump would face unfavorable judges and a Democrat jury pool.

Who is Really Conducting the Jack Smith Prosecution of Trump?  On June 2nd former Mueller special counsel and impeachment operative, Andrew Weissmann and Norm Eisen respectively, published their current Trump prosecution memo using a novel and arcane interpretation of US Code 793.  Four days later media began reporting from leaks within the Jack Smith special counsel of the main legal approach they were going to use against President Trump.  What approach is Jack Smith taking, US Code 793!  This is not coincidental.

7 reasons to be highly skeptical of the legitimacy of the indictments of Trump. 
[#3] As Julie Kelly put it, "The indictment represents the first time in U.S. history a former president will face criminal charges."
[#4] The indictments are the product of an unprecedented raid on the residence of a president, at Mar-a-Lago
[#5] The seizure that resulted from the raid was overly broad, otherwise known as a fishing expedition: [...]
[#6] The media circus was immediate and intense, part of the joint effort of the deep state.  The legacy media, and the Democrats to weaken President Trump's candidacy in the general election, while solidifying his support among Republicans, so as to nominate a weaker (in the eyes of his opponents) candidate.

Report: Trump's Legal Team Informed He Is a 'Target' of Classified Documents Probe.  Federal prosecutors have told the legal team for former President Donald Trump that he is a "target of their investigation" into his handling of classified documents after leaving office, according to a report.  The New York Times reported Wednesday [6/8/2023] that the notification from Special Counsel Jack Smith was the "clearest signal yet that the former president is likely to face charges in the investigation."

Feds inform Trump he is target likely to be indicted as DOJ rebuffs prosecutorial misconduct claim.  Federal prosecutors have notified Donald Trump that he is a criminal target and likely to be indicted imminently in a probe into alleged classified documents — even as the Justice Department declined to delay charges to give time to investigate allegations of witness tampering submitted by the former president's legal team, according to multiple people on Wednesday familiar with the case.  The sources directly familiar with the case told Just the News that DOJ declined to delay the planned indictment of Trump to investigate allegations that a senior prosecutor working on the case tried to influence a key witness by discussing a federal judgeship with the witness' lawyer.  That allegation is still pending in a secret case before Chief U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg, the jurist who oversees the federal court in Washington, D.C., and the grand juries that convene in that courthouse, the sources said.

Indicting a Former President over Nonsense Is Playing with Fire.  Reports are circulating that federal prosecutors are about to ask a grand jury to indict former President Donald Trump over his handling of classified documents after leaving office.  If those reports are true, and prosecutors do move against Trump, it would be the first time in American history that the government had prosecuted the leading opposition candidate.  It would also destroy public faith in the rule of law and voters' trust in democracy.  The documents charges are incredibly weak, from what has been reported publicly thus far.  The president has full declassification authority, and there is no formal procedure for declassifying documents.  Breathless claims of "national security" secrets, even nuclear codes, being brought to Trump's estate at Mar-a-Lago turned out to be fantasies.  Prosecutors may fall back on charges of obstruction of justice, which seem to be just as speculative.

Leading GOP Election Officials: Feds' 'Treasonous' Interference Is A 'Direct Attack' On U.S. Elections.  Several leading Republican election officials are sounding the alarm about the federal government's persistent interference in U.S. elections.  Jay Ashcroft and Mac Warner, the secretaries of state of Missouri and West Virginia, respectively, recently told The Federalist they are increasingly worried about the mounting evidence documenting federal agencies' interference in prior elections to the benefit of the Democrat Party.  Ashcroft pointed to the long-awaited report from U.S. Attorney John Durham that confirmed what The Federalist has been reporting for years:  The FBI possessed no real evidence that then-candidate Donald Trump colluded with Russian government officials when it launched its investigation into the Trump campaign leading up to the 2016 election.  The political investigation — which was "based on raw, unanalyzed, and uncorroborated intelligence" — would continue throughout the 2016 election and well into Trump's presidency.

Durham reports shows Biden and Obama knew truth of Trump collusion hoax but kept silent.  A silence kept in order to hide the truth is a lie.  By that maxim, there are plenty of liars among prominent Democrats who knew that the damning Trump-Russia collusion narrative was all a hoax.  But they chose to remain mum, preferring instead to watch contentedly as an American president was vilified nonstop by a media-driven orgy of lies.  It consumed the nation for years and inflicted untold harm.  None of them had the decency to volunteer the truth.  This is one of the key findings in the 306-page Durham report that the special counsel filled to the brim with documented acts of deviousness, dishonesty and malice by high officials in government whom we are supposed to trust but should not.

After Covid: Twelve Challenges for a Shattered World.  [Scroll down]  Americans had become vaguely aware of this thing called the deep state before the pandemic response but the experience itself proved it.  Democracy did not exist.  We were at the mercy of bureaucrats and their decisions.  Courts did not step up.  When they finally did, the bureaucrats pushed back and said that no one has the right to control them.  There are hundreds of agencies and millions of deep-state employees who are accountable to no one and yet exercise massive power over our lives.  There is nothing about these institutions in the Constitution.  The bureaucratic state is a fourth branch of government when there are supposed to be only three.  The tentacles from Washington extend not only to every state and city but all over the world.

Durham reports shows Biden and Obama knew truth of Trump collusion hoax but kept silent.  A silence kept in order to hide the truth is a lie.  By that maxim, there are plenty of liars among prominent Democrats who knew that the damning Trump-Russia collusion narrative was all a hoax.  But they chose to remain mum, preferring instead to watch contentedly as an American president was vilified nonstop by a media-driven orgy of lies.  It consumed the nation for years and inflicted untold harm.  None of them had the decency to volunteer the truth.  This is one of the key findings in the 306-page Durham report that the special counsel filled to the brim with documented acts of deviousness, dishonesty and malice by high officials in government whom we are supposed to trust but should not.

[The] Deep State [is] Quietly Starting to Fear the Worst: The Return of the Trump Wrecking Ball.  Worried about too much systemic rigging and fraud for a Republican ever to win office again?  Good news!  The riggers themselves are quietly starting to worry it may happen.  Politico ran a story on Friday, and I must say, the title quickened my pulse.  Tellingly titled, "Hurricane Trump Is Coming — And Washington Hasn't Bothered to Prepare," the story ran with the subhead, "After 2020, reformers vowed to erect guardrails against a rogue chief executive.  They ran into a wall of complacency, partisanship and distraction."  As if Leftists would have done a single thing to curtail executive overreach while they held office.  Puh-lease.  The article fretted that the complacent deep state has done nothing to rein in a president who is on the wrong team.

51 People Who Should Never Have Clearances Again.  The 51 Intelligence Community professionals who signed a letter claiming the Hunter Biden laptop showed "signs of Russian disinformation" should have their clearances immediately revoked and their access to classified information severed and never again restored.  Their blatant disregard for the proper process through which an intelligence investigation is conducted, as well as for national security matters in general, is ground to terminate their clearances immediately.

The Trump-Russia Collusion Conspiracy Was a Coup D'état.  The bottom line is that everything the Obama justice department, IC and FBI did, to include support from Republicans in congress during the 2016 election and aftermath, was a coup d'état against U.S. President Donald Trump and his administration.  This is the truth of the thing.  The U.S. media participation and subsequent denial of their culpability looks increasingly pathetic in the aftermath of the report outlined by Special Counsel John Durham.  However, it doesn't take a media admission of the coup effort for the demonstrable actions and evidence of the coup to be factual.  Read the report, all the evidence is there.  The truth stands alone, regardless of the discomfort it creates.

[During the 2020 election, the] CIA had 'no evidence' Biden laptop was Russian disinformation, says top intel officer.  A former top intelligence officer with oversight of threats ahead of the 2020 election said the Central Intelligence Agency had "no evidence" at the time that Hunter Biden's laptop had anything to do with a Russian disinformation campaign, despite claims from then-candidate Joe Biden's allies.  Just before the election, 51 former national security officials wrote a public letter claiming the Hunter Biden laptop had "all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation."  It was signed by former President Obama CIA Director John Brennan, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and former CIA director and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, among others.  However, in an interview with Fox News Digital, former National Intelligence Officer for Cyber Chris Porter said that claims from Biden's supporters "did not reflect" the actual intelligence.

Pomerantz Pleads Fifth in Deposition, Claims GOP's Trump Indictment Probe Is 'Political Theater'.  Mark Pomerantz, a former prosecutor in Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's office, refused to answer any questions relevant to former President Donald Trump's indictment during much of a deposition before Congress on Friday.  Pomerantz warned in an opening statement he would do as much, according to a copy of the opening statement leaked to CNN and other legacy media outlets.  "It gives me no joy to invoke my legal rights, but I am glad that the law allows me not to cooperate with this performance of political theater," Pomerantz said, per his statement.  The deposition ran for roughly five hours.  A source with direct knowledge of the matter told Breitbart News that Pomerantz had invoked the Fifth Amendment for "most of his deposition."

John Brennan's closed-door hearing 'confirmed' Hunter laptop letter was 'all political': Jim Jordan.  House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, told Fox News the testimony his panel heard in private from Obama-era CIA Director John Brennan "confirmed" the letter signed by 51 current and former intel officials was not on-the-level.  "[Brennan] sat for a four-hour interview and he further confirmed that this thing was all political," Jordan said on "Jesse Watters Primetime."  Jordan recounted his allegation that then-Biden campaign adviser Antony Blinken was the "impetus" behind the letter, which he said was organized in-part by former CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell, who testified before the Judiciary Committee earlier in May.

The Staggering Flaws of the Biden Family.  Good government should be non-partisan, competent, and trustworthy.  (It hasn't been for a long time.)  Democrat partisans overwhelmingly populate the vast majority of government departments, and no Republican administration has been able to put a dent in that political slant.  Constant leaks have become the story instead of relaying the accomplishments of Republican presidents.  Democrats don't have to use overt bias to enforce a progressive liberal bureaucracy to do their bidding; instead, they step aside and watch a parade of bias and salacious leaks flow endlessly to a media too willing to use unnamed sources.  President Trump faced an average of two leaks a day in his first 100 days, and to this day, virtually no one was punished in any government agency, including agency heads, for any leaks to reporters.

CIA Solicited Signatures For Hunter Biden Laptop Letter, Congressional Testimony Shows.  The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) both solicited signatures for and eventually approved the infamous 2020 letter claiming that the Hunter Biden laptop story was a Russian disinformation plot, recent congressional testimony suggests.  According to a report to be released Wednesday by the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, multiple former U.S. intelligence officials testified under oath about the CIA's involvement in the distribution of the letter, which was eventually signed by more than 50 former senior U.S. intelligence officials.  "One signer of the statement, former CIA analyst David Cariens, disclosed to the Committees that a CIA employee affiliated with the agency's Prepublication Classification Review Board ('PCRB') informed him of the existence of the statement and asked if he would sign it," the House investigative report notes.  "The Committees have requested additional material from the CIA, which has ignored the request to date."

The next step in the plan to remove Trump.  Just last week the Proud Boys trial around the events of January 6, 2021 concluded.  Four leaders of the Proud Boys were convicted of "seditious conspiracy" in a heavily biased DC court for their activities related to the mostly peaceful demonstrations of that date. [...] To my mind, there are some dangerous precedents that have been set for subsequent attacks on Donald Trump and on the GOP presidential campaign.  The first of these is having a court identify the J6 events as "sedition", meaning an attempt to overthrow the legitimate government.  Prior to this time, despite the J6 committee attempts to label the events as insurrection, there has been no successful effort to classify them as more than a riot.  Being able to apply a label of "sedition" is a huge legal step, bringing into play the 14th Amendment to the Constitution that prohibits anyone guilty of insurrection from holding the office of President.

Is Trump's Campaign and Reelection a Fool's Errand?  [Scroll down]  Can he even win the nomination?  Expect an endless stream of lawsuits and indictments tying up Trump in depositions and a barrage of negative press from Big Tech and the corporate media.  Expect far left judges to rule that Trump is ineligible to appear on the ballot, with Soros-funded state secretaries of state eager to keep his name off their state ballots.  These trials will all be timed to begin next year when primary season heats up.  How can Trump run a campaign and hold rallies when he is tied up in depositions and court?  There will be Fulton County, Alvin Bragg, and Special Counsel Jack Smith all planning their big trials for campaign season next year.  Expect scores of women to accuse Trump of rape, even if they have no recollection of when or where it happened.  Trials will be held in Trump-hating NYC or other deep blue jurisdictions before leftist judges that will ensure that the trial is stacked against Trump.  That will be enough for lawfare to ensnarl Trump as the Lilliputians tied down Gulliver.  Expect the weaponized judicial and intelligence agencies to manufacture scandals against Trump, as they did with "Russian collusion" and hide or ignore scandals of his opponents, as with Hunter Biden's laptop.  If Trump somehow prevails and wins the nomination, his troubles are far from over.

Savor Trump's Electoral Landslide — Until the Phantoms Vote.  RINOs, psyops, controlled opposition like Breitbart and Fox and the grifter consultant class are selling the narrative that Trump wins the nomination bigly — then takes the Electoral College.  Joe Biden is on wobbly knees, at the edge of the actuarial life chart, leaving America with the most ridiculous replacement president.  His own party doesn't want him to run — but the party owners are stuck with him.  That too favors Trump.  Blissfully count the new Senate majority, the expanding House majority, and the keys to a White House that will finally drain the swamp.  Then, have a coffee, sit down and remember 2022.  That felt great too — until the day after the election.  To become president, Trump must win a bunch of swing states.  To win each state he needs more ballots in his pile than the other guy.  It's baked into the data — which we look at every day — that Trump is not going to win those swing states.  None of them.  It's not his fault.  He will probably get more votes, just not more ballots.

Judge in Trump's 'hush money' trial engages in blatant dissimulation.  My assessment of the probability of Donald Trump receiving a fair trial on the highly questionable charges (falsifying business records) brought against him by Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg just plummeted to subterranean levels.  The judge in the case [...] issued a gag order and specified that he was not issuing a gag order and violated Trump's First Amendment rights while claiming he didn't violate his First Amendment rights.  The technical name [...] is dissimulation. [...] I don't pretend to be an expert on the law, but Justice Merchan has destroyed my confidence in his ability to conduct a fair trial.

Uncovered Recruitment Email Confirms Infamous 'Intel Letter' Was Meant to Interfere in the 2020 Election.  Former Obama-era CIA Director Mike Morell and current Secretary of State Antony Blinken were recently exposed as being behind the infamous "intel letter" that sought to dismiss Hunter Biden's laptop as Russian disinformation.  Now, a new report is providing unassailable evidence of exactly what the motive behind the gambit was.  According to The Washington Examiner, Morell sent a recruitment email to gather signatories for the letter.  Notably, in the email, he admitted that the entire purpose was to give Joe Biden a rebuttal to Donald Trump's attacks during the presidential debates. [...] Morell sent the email with an admission that the entire purpose was to provide a "talking point" for Biden to use.  Sure enough, that's exactly how it played out.  Trump brought up Hunter Biden's laptop at the debate in question, and Biden responded by claiming it was Russian disinformation, a claim that was bolstered by the supposed authority of all the intelligence officials who signed the letter.

"A full-blown Color Revolution-style attack on the US Supreme Court as an institution is now in its early stages".  "Color Revolution" is a term that has been around for a while and doesn't have a single clear definition.  But the term most famously was used as to the "Orange" Ukraine 2004 civil unrest that allegedly was manipulated by western intelligence agencies to topple a pro-Russia regime.  A color revolution then, is a form of manipulated mass civil disobedience meant to accomplish regime change.  We saw it used against Trump after the 2016 election, where manipulated and hysterical claims of Russia collusion were used to attempt to paralyze the Trump administration under the umbrella of "The Resistance" — and it worked well in stymying many of Trump's planned initiatives.  It all was highly organized and manipulated.

The Russia Hoax Orbiting Hunter Biden's Laptop Is So Much Bigger Than Blinken.  Antony Blinken represents neither the beginning nor the end of the info ops run to convince voters the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation.  Revisiting the contemporaneous coverage of the laptop story in light of last week's revelations about Blinken reveals the scandal extends far beyond the Biden campaign and involves government agents.  Last week, news broke that a former top CIA official, Michael Morell, testified as part of a House Judiciary Committee investigation that Blinken, now-secretary of state and then-Biden campaign senior adviser, had contacted Morell to discuss the New York Post's Hunter Biden laptop story.  Blinken and Morell reportedly "discussed possible Russian involvement in the spreading of information related to Hunter Biden."  According to Morell, Blinken's outreach "set in motion" what led to the public statement signed by 51 former intelligence agents that falsely framed the laptop as Russian disinformation.  This revelation is huge — but it's only a start to understanding the scope of the plot to interfere in the 2020 election by framing the laptop exposing Biden family corruption as foreign disinformation.

Dominion vs. 'Russian Collusion' and 'Disinformation'.  Compare Dominion's writ with the twin "Russian collusion" and "Russian disinformation" hoaxes.  Lots of journalists and guests on network news, cable, public broadcasting, and internet news sites ran daily with the utter lie that the concocted Christopher Steele dossier was accurate.  Four years later, they were still claiming that Donald Trump had won the 2016 election only by enlisting the aid of the Russians — as an "asset" and puppet of Vladimir Putin.  All that was demonstrably untrue.  No one on these news shows ever produced any information validating the dossier, much less offered apologies to those whose lives they ruined, as in the case of Lt.  General Michael Flynn and Trump campaign volunteer Carter Page.  The steady two-year drumbeat of media and DNC-fabricated untruths neutered the first two years of the Trump Administration.  Robert Mueller's $40 million, 22-month special counsel "investigation" leaked wild and lurid rumors of Trump indictments to come, and yet ultimately found no proof of collusion.  No matter.  The agendas of the Democratic Party's collaboration with the media were fulfilled.  The Trump Administration was wounded, forced on defense to reply to countless new fabrications, and smeared to the point of caricature.

Former Clinton Labor Secretary Says States 'Must Refuse To Place' Trump's Name On 2024 Ballot.  Former Labor Secretary for Bill Clinton Robert Reich said states should refuse to place Trump's name on the 2024 presidential ballot due to his alleged "treason."  Reich made the comments in an op-ed published Monday [4/24/2023] in The Guardian.  Reich argues that Trump is guilty of treason under the 14th amendment because of his claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him.  The 14th amendment prohibits anyone guilty of insurrection against the United States from serving in public office.

To put it another way...
Bill Clinton's Commie Secretary of Labor Says Trump Must Be Barred From Running Again.  Robert B. Reich was Bill Clinton's labor secretary; since then he has been keeping busy teaching at Berkeley and gracing us all with his punditry on Twitter, where he has a million and a half followers.  Reich has become notorious for his unhinged far-Left rants; on Monday, he showed yet again why he has gained a reputation as an upscale Keith Olbermann.  In the UK's neo-Stalinist Guardian, Reich called for Donald Trump to be barred from running for president again — to preserve what Leftists love to call "our democracy," by which they mean their hegemony.

Bragg Drops Case Against Jordan, Allowing House GOP to Depose Ex-Manhattan Prosecutor.  Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has dropped his effort to quash a congressional subpoena to a former prosecutor who worked in his office, a congressional aide told The Epoch Times in a statement on Friday.  "This evening, the Manhattan District Attorney's Office withdrew its appeal in Bragg v. Jordan.  Mr. Pomerantz's deposition will go forward on May 12, and we look forward to his appearance," Russel Dye, spokesperson for Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), chair of the House Judiciary Committee, wrote to The Epoch Times in a statement.  "Bragg caved.  Jim Jordan won," the House Judiciary Committee wrote in a statement on Twitter Friday.  The development wrapped up a legal clash between Bragg and House Judiciary Republicans, whereby Bragg had attempted to stop the lawmakers from requesting testimony from Mark Pomerantz, a former prosecutor who investigated former President Donald Trump's finances.  Pomerantz left Bragg's office in February 2022 in protest of Bragg's initial unwillingness to bring an indictment against Trump.

Ex-acting CIA director reveals he had 50 spies sign a letter saying Hunter Biden laptop scandal was Russian disinformation.  A retired CIA leader coordinated a letter from former intelligence chiefs claiming that Hunter Biden's laptop was Russian disinformation because he wanted to help Joe Biden's presidential campaign.  Mike Morell told the House Judiciary Committee that he was asked by Antony Blinken, the Secretary of State — who at the time was a senior member of the Biden campaign — to help discredit the laptop reporting.  Morell was a former acting CIA director, serving for two months in 2011 and four months from 2012 to 2013.  He retired from the CIA in September 2013.

Testimony Reveals Blinken — As Adviser to Biden Campaign — Spurred Letter from 51 Intel Officials Discrediting Hunter Laptop Story.  An author of the now-debunked public statement from 51 intelligence officials casting doubt on the bombshell Hunter Biden laptop story revealed this month to Congress that Antony Blinken, then a senior adviser to the Biden campaign, was the impetus for the statement.  Former CIA Acting Director Michael Morell testified to the House Judiciary Committee on April 4 that now-Secretary of State Blinken called him about the laptop story just days after the New York Post published it and that the call "triggered" Morell to draft the statement.

Ex-top spy admits Hunter Biden laptop letter designed to influence 2020 election, Blinken involved.  A former acting CIA director has admitted to Congress that he organized the letter that falsely portrayed Hunter Biden's laptop as Russian disinformation in an effort to influence the 2020 election in favor of Joe Biden and that he did so at the direction of current Secretary of State Antony Blinken, according to a letter released Thursday by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan.  The extraordinary admission by career intelligence officer Michael J. Morell provides stunning evidence that the now-infamous letter from 51 security officials in October 2020 was not an organic intelligence community initiative but rather a political dirty trick originating with Blinken and the Biden campaign.  Jordan sent a letter demanding Blinken answer a series of questions about Morell's stunning testimony, as lawmakers weighed the enormity of America's top diplomat being willing to accuse a nuclear-armed superpower of interfering in the 2020 election without evidence.  That letter included major snippets of Morell's testimony.

Donald Trump's NYC case may be headed in only one direction, former prosecutors reveal.  Donald Trump was indicted recently on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records — but New York City prosecutor Alvin Bragg's case against the former president faces significant legal hurdles, experts told Fox News Digital.  The 2024 Republican presidential candidate pleaded not guilty to the raft of accusations against him and has characterized the legal offensive as a politically motivated witch hunt.  "If it wasn't Donald Trump, no prosecutor in the world would have touched this," said former assistant district attorney Daniel Bibb, who spent more than two decades trying murder cases in Manhattan.  "If you and I did what Trump did, we never would have been charged."  Trump is the first former or current U.S. president to be indicted for a crime, but the case is more half-court heave than slam dunk, experts say.

Trump at the Gates.  Perhaps brilliant Democrat strategists pulled the strings of the clearly vacuous Manhattan DA, but to what avail?  Bragg is merely the latest to advance a "Get Trump" ploy.  Democrats have tried to waylay Trump since he announced for the presidency in the autumn of 2015.  Anyone with eyes can see that there was no overarching strategy other than nailing the Donald in the moment.  The Mueller special counsel investigation ate clock and spent $32 million of taxpayer money, only to report that no there was there.  Two goofy Pelosi-driven impeachments made impeachment a toothless, highly politicized gesture.  The January 6 "insurrection" is, with every new revelation, being laid bare as a political hit job by Democrats and by two  Republicans  pawns, venal and dumb Liz Cheney and equally spiteful and idiotic Adam Kinzinger.  The Democrats' machinations were piecemeal.  Everyone of their nefarious gambits were thwarted by a wily street fighter, Trump himself.

Mike Davis, Jim Jordan Slam Alvin Bragg's Lawsuit Against Jordan.  "Bragg is now trying to cover up his brazen violations of civil rights and his obvious election interference, through today's frivolous lawsuit to obstruct a congressional investigation."  Mike Davis, the founder and president of the Article III Project (A3P) and an advocate for a constitutionalist judiciary, ripped apart the lawsuit from Soros-tied Manhattan District Attorney (DA) Alvin Bragg against Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio).  Bragg last week revealed a legally laughable 34-count indictment of Donald Trump.  Bragg charged Trump based on Trump's supposed hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels through lawyer Michael Cohen.  Cohen's lawyer previously said Cohen privately paid Daniels without a refund from Trump, but Bragg won't let up.  Now, ultimately in pursuit of Trump, Bragg is also taking aim at House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan.

The world's newest dictatorship.  The United States can now join the ignoble list of authoritarian regimes where the party in power is the government, and they decide who can oppose them.  In the U.S., become a threat to the ruling party or get too popular and you'll be arrested and thrown in jail.  You disagree?  What do you call having President Trump arrested for a non-crime?  The NYC DA who arrested Trump didn't even bother to state a crime that Trump committed.  Oh, he listed 34 counts but no crime.  Even anti-Trump Politico questioned the legal basis for charging him.  Trump's crime is he opposes the Dems and Biden's authoritarian regime.  Hey, Alvin Bragg, 75% of rural Georgia opposes Biden and his regime, you gonna arrest us all?

Is 2024 Only A Mirage?  [T]he elitists know that the indictment of President Trump last week not only motivated him to want to hold them accountable for the witch hunts they have plagued him with over the last six years, but has also opened for him the precedent he needed to be able to indict them for their crimes.  Moreover, all of President Trump's persecutors no doubt have a very real fear of being held accountable should he regain power because they know in their hearts such retribution is something they would do if they were him.  Thus, whether or not President Trump would actually follow through with such a purge of these corrupt elitist criminals does not matter.  What does matter today is that they think he would, and they will therefore do anything they can between now and the next election to stop him.

Alvin Bragg's Insane Clown Circus Adds a Kangaroo to the Court.  We've been using the term "banana republic" to describe what has been going on, and it's been fitting.  At this rate, however, the United States may find itself getting sued by other banana republics for being an embarrassment to the team.  If you've been reading various assessments of the 34 charges, you know that even the left media is having difficulty finding a legal expert who will say that any of it is legally sound.  Someone just coming out of a coma and attempting to get up to speed on this story might wonder if Alvin Bragg ever really went to law school.

Alvin Bragg Might Be in Serious Trouble Following Trump Indictment.  Alvin Bragg might fancy himself a hero of the radical left for indicting Trump, but his desperate efforts, which included charging Trump 34 times for the same alleged crime, may have serious consequences for him.  A source familiar with the matter told Fox News Digital that the House Judiciary Committee is contemplating summoning Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and two prosecutors who quit his team last year to testify before Congress.  House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) have been pressuring Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and his office for answers since last week, just days before the extraordinary indictment and arrest of a former U.S. President.  Jordan and Comer have requested that Bragg testify before Congress.

Jail Him, Or They Lose.  They've tried literally everything short of ordering a hit on him, and he still stands.  They have exhausted every avenue, option, and possibility, and they are left with a bag of nothing.  They tried a fake dossier, a made-up narrative that the media put on repeat.  They accused him of a high crime for a transcript of a phone call.  They accused him of advocating violence when his words said precisely the opposite.  Now they are trying to say he obstructed justice when he, in fact, followed the request of the FBI to the letter.  Now they are trying to say that another phone call is evidence of a felony when again, his exact words prove otherwise.  Now they have indicted him for something that if a crime is even evident (and clearly it is not), the statute of limitations ran out years ago.  They tried to argue he avoided paying taxes, only for the record to show he followed the tax code with precision.  They want to argue now that he intends to defraud the government of what he owes in taxes, even though during his four years in public office, he refused his $400k salary and returned it in full to the government coffers.  No elected leader has been more maligned, lied about, and attempted to be neutralized as they have with former President Trump.

If The Left Can Come After The President Of The United States, No One Is Safe.  "In reality, they're not after me, they're after you.  I'm just in their way."  Who can forget that meme President Trump posted to Twitter after his first impeachment?  In any event, it stands as a reminder of just how hostile the left is to the American people in its desperate attempt to maintain political rule.  Now, as President Donald Trump has been arrested and arraigned in New York City, we must consider the implications of his indictment, and what it means for the United States and the 2024 presidential election.  For all the criticisms of Donald Trump and his defects, one thing is certain:  liberals fear him.  No other man has posed such a threat to America's ruling liberal ideology.  Whether it was calling to impose tariffs, rebuild American manufacturing and industry, or reclaim any semblance of American political rights, Trump upset challenged Washington's bipartisan orthodoxy.  As for the indictment, there is no case against the former president.

Trump is not being treated normally and never has been.  Earlier this week, former President Donald Trump surrendered to the New York City courts to face an indictment on 34 felony charges.  The case arose from his accounting records of payments to a former paramour, Stormy Daniels.  The indictment itself is garbage, the product of an extremely ideological prosecutor.  Elevating these charges to a felony required that the bookkeeping errors furthered some other crime, but the indictment does not even identify the other crime. Indictments are usually bare bones, but the New York rule requires that an indictment "asserts facts supporting every element of the offense charged ... with sufficient precision to clearly apprise the defendant or defendants of the conduct which is the subject of the accusation."  Why did Trump surrender at all?

Bragg violated Trump's 6th Amendment rights in refusing to disclose underlying crime:  legal expert.  Former President Donald Trump's Sixth Amendment rights may have been violated when New York County District Attorney Alvin Bragg refused to disclose the underlying crime the defendant intended to conceal through his alleged falsification of business records, legal experts opined Wednesday.  The Sixth Amendment provides in part for the right of a criminal defendant to "be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor..."  When questioned by a reporter as to what the underlying crime the indictment fails to name is, Bragg replied in New York State, he does not have to.

Fresh proof Bragg's Trump case is a reach, and nakedly political.  The numbers don't lie: Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg's case against Trump is a massive outlier, not the "bread and butter" move the crime-lover claimed it was.  Turns out, his office almost never prosecutes cases on charges like the ones he's mounted against the ex-prez — i.e., first-degree falsifying business records with the "intent to commit another crime or to aid or conceal the commission thereof."  State crime data crunched by the Times-Union show that Bragg's office has gone after people for this as a top charge only eight times in the past few years.  Statewide, there have been fewer than 300 such cases since 2019.  This alone debunks Bragg's claim that the Trump case represents just another day in the office.

America Needs a New Normal.  Casting aside the "norms" that the Left loudly pined for just a few short years ago, far-Left Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg compelled the former president to appear in a Manhattan court to enter a plea in response to an indictment containing 34 counts of "falsifying business records," which is normally a minor misdemeanor charge.  The facts surrounding the case haven't changed in the years since multiple agencies of the federal government evaluated the merits and declined to take legal action against Donald Trump.  The allegations surrounding payments made to sad little cuck Michael Cohen, supposedly to reimburse him for paying an adult film star to keep quiet about her past alleged dalliances with Trump, aren't new and nothing in the indictment indicates there is any new evidence.  From all the legal analyses I've read about it, the case is pretty weak, especially the justification for trumping the charges up to felonies.

FEC Commissioner Undermines Entire Manhattan Prosecution, The Trump-Daniels NDA Is Not an Election Campaign Violation.  If the other substantive weaknesses in the politically constructed Manhattan case against Donald Trump do not lead to a pre-trial dismissal, this one should collapse it.  The Commissioner of the Federal Election Commission (FEC) explicitly states the payments by President Trump to Stormy Daniels are not an election campaign violation.

FEC Already Investigated Trump-Stormy Payoff and Concluded No Crime Took Place.  The case against Donald Trump brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is melting faster than the Wicked Witch of the West.  The DA is keeping everyone in the dark about exactly what individual crime Bragg will try Trump on.  This is sort of important because, without a predicate crime, there's nothing to convict Trump of doing anything illegal.  Bragg has taken that crime and sliced it into 34 parts — a prosecutorial trick designed to make sure the jury convicts Trump of something — anything — to justify charging a former president with felonies.  And if Bragg wants to try Trump for violating federal campaign finance laws by trying to cover up the payment to Stormy Daniels, there's only one itsy-bitsy problem with that.  The Federal Election Commission already investigated the hush money payment and found nothing illegal about it.

Trump Pushes Legal Envelope Post-Indictment.  Trump is now the first former president in history to face criminal charges.  According to the charging documents read in court earlier that day and released by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, he had "repeatedly and fraudulently falsified New York business records to conceal criminal conduct that hid damaging information from the voting public during the 2016 presidential election."

The Editor says...
The news media, with the exception of the New York Post, covered up the story of Hunter Biden's abandoned laptop, and the dirt it held, so one could rightly say that the news media also "hid damaging information from the voting public during the 2016 presidential election."  Hiding damaging information is nothing new.

Jim Jordan Subpoenas Manhattan Prosecutor Who Resigned over Suspended Trump Probe.  House Judiciary Committee chairman Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) escalated Republicans' investigation into the Manhattan district attorney's indictment of former President Donald Trump by subpoenaing a prosecutor on Thursday who resigned from the office last year over the district attorney's initial reluctance to pursue Trump's case.  Jordan's subpoena, reviewed by Breitbart News, directs Mark Pomerantz, who resigned from Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's office in February 2022, to appear before the committee for a deposition on April 20.  In a cover letter accompanying the subpoena, Jordan said his committee had legislative reasons to demand Pomerantz's testimony.

12 Anti-Trump Pundits And Lawmakers Who Think Bragg's Case Is Terrible.  For weeks now, former President Donald Trump and legal experts on the right predicted that the prosecution Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg brought against Trump was pathetic and partisan.  Not long after Trump pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records during his arraignment on Tuesday, some of his most outspoken political enemies also began casting doubt on Bragg's attempts to send the former president to jail.  Here are the notorious anti-Trumpers who willingly admitted that Bragg's case against the leader of the Republican Party is a weak attempt to keep him from winning the White House in 2024. [...]

Why All The Other 'Get Trump' Cases Are Just As Weak As The Manhattan DA's.  The grand jury indictment against former president and 2024 contender Donald Trump hasn't even been unsealed yet.  But the corporate press has already moved on, redirecting the public's focus to the other pending investigations — a subtle acknowledgment that the forthcoming charges by the Manhattan district attorney will be both weak and properly perceived as political persecution.  But the Fulton County, Georgia investigation and Special Counsel Jack Smith's probes of Trump are equally weak.  Later today [4/4/2023], Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg will unseal the indictment returned last week by a grand jury against Trump.  Selective leaks suggest the former president will be charged with more than 30 criminal counts of business fraud related to hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels.

Report: Alvin Bragg Wants Trump Trial in January 2024, During Republican Primary.  Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg reportedly asked Judge Juan Marchan to hold the trial of former President Donald Trump in January 2024, which happens to be the middle of the presidential primary season.  Fox News reporter Jake Gibson, who was in the courtroom, said that prosecutors had asked for the January 2024 trial date.  The Iowa caucuses — the first contest in the Republican primary — will be on February 5, 2024.  That means prosecutors want a trial that would undoubtedly affect the race for the Republican nomination, both by distracting the current frontrunner, and by tarnishing him relative to other candidates in the race.

The Judge Overseeing Trump's Case Might Have a Major Conflict of Interest.  Meet the judge presiding over President Donald Trump's criminal case: Acting New York County Supreme Court Justice Juan Manuel Merchan, an apparent 2020 Biden donor whose daughter once worked for Vice President Kamala Harris's presidential campaign.  According to Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings, Merchan donated three times to ActBlue in the summer of 2020, once on July 26, 2020, when the judge's donation was — according to the FEC — earmarked for President Joe Biden's 2020 presidential campaign.  The other two of Merchan's contributions were pledged to the Progressive Turnout Project (PTP), a left-wing PAC that rallies voter turnout for Democrat candidates, and Stop Republicans, a PTP sub-project that's dedicated to "resisting" Trump and the Republican Party.  [Tweet]

Is that really all there is to the Trump indictment?  How pathetic.  Is that all there is?  Yes, that's all there is.  The charges against Donald Trump are almost exactly as predicted.  They are weak and, most important, political.  As such, they are shockingly blatant punishment for Trump daring to become president.  In this sordid case, the letters DA stand for Democrat Attorney.  The charges are the crime.  Shame on Bragg for abusing his authority and turning his office into a partisan outpost.  The prosecutor who thinks most violent criminals are simply misunderstood youths just made history on a legal move that is breathtakingly flimsy.

Legal Experts Across the Political Spectrum Are Laughing at Alvin Bragg's Indictment of Donald Trump.  RedState's Nick Arama has had Alvin Bragg's number for quite some time, predicting that the 34-count indictment would amount to charge stacking and that there could be nothing a serious lawyer would put their name to in it.  I wrote earlier that once we saw the indictment we knew why Alvin Bragg wanted it to be sealed as long as possible, and that according to one reporter who was in the courtroom Trump's attorneys laughed when they read it.  Trump's attorney Joseph Tacopino seemed to confirm this with an answer during a press conference after the indictment:  [Tweet]

Trump Indictment: As Bad As We Thought.  You can read Alvin Bragg's indictment of Donald Trump and a supporting statement of facts [elsew]here.  The indictment is what we expected.  It all has to do with paying $130,000 to Stormy Daniels for a non-disclosure agreement, which was legal.  The payment was made by "Lawyer A," Michael Cohen.  Trump reimbursed Cohen using Trump's own money, which was legal.  The "34 counts" arise out of the fact that by agreement, Cohen got reimbursed by sending monthly invoices to Trump or his revocable trust.  So for each monthly bill from Cohen, we get three counts of falsifying documents: one for the invoice, one for the ledger entry, and one for the check stub.  Pathetic. [...] Bragg's statement of facts includes a long narrative about the National Enquirer and a woman other than Ms. Daniels ("Woman No. 1"), but that appears to be solely for lurid context, as no count of the indictment relates to that alleged woman.

Manhattan DA Bragg Reveals the 'Crime' Trump Tried to Cover-Up — And It's an Absolute Farce.  Donald Trump's arraignment in a Manhattan court on Tuesday was carried out with the minimum amount of fanfare — considering that this was a historic first grand jury indictment of a former president.  However, the court proceedings in the wake of ostensible felony leaks to the press about the sealed indictment did produce a curiosity:  How was radical activist Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg able to elevate charges that are misdemeanors past the statute of limitations and stack them into 34 felony charges, when the facts of the case did not show there was a cover up a more serious crime?  As the eagle-eyed legal commentator Techno Fog noted, there was a critical thing that the Trump indictment and statement of facts omitted.  [Tweet]

Trump's Indictment Is a Blunder of Historic Proportions.  There is little doubt that news of former President Donald Trump's indictment and pending arraignment will be met with jubilation on the Left.  The reality, however, is that the Left and the Right — the United States as a whole — will suffer the consequences of this blunder of historic proportions.  New York County District Attorney Alvin Bragg's decision to bring charges will be a moment that historians, and society more broadly, will look back upon as a societal turning point.  The immediate reaction to the first criminal indictment of a former U.S. president has largely focused on the legalities, with charges related to the hush money allegedly paid to former porn star Stormy Daniels.  If this is true — and with the indictment still under seal, we don't yet know — it makes the situation worse not merely for Alvin Bragg, but for the entire country.

Daughter of Judge Overseeing Trump's Case Worked For 'Kamala Harris Campaign'.  The Gateway Pundit previously reported New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan is presiding over President Trump's Stormy Daniels 'hush payment' case.  Judge Merchan previously oversaw the tax fraud cases of the Trump's Org and the Trump Org's former CFO Allen Weisselberg.  Trump is not a fan of Merchan and took to Truth Social last week and wrote "Juan Manuel Merchan, was hand picked by Bragg & the Prosecutors, & is the same person who "railroaded" my 75 year old former CFO, Allen Weisselberg."  Merchan has been described as a life long Democrat and a bombshell discovery of his daughter's LinkedIn account reveals his daughter is not just a Democrat but a Democrat who previously worked on Kamala Harris' Presidential campaign.

Destroying the Rule of Law.  I could not care less if Donald Trump gave "hush" money to a porn star back in 2016.  What concerns me is why a misdemeanor is being upgraded to a felony offense by a New York City District Attorney.  The same DA who downgraded felony offenses to misdemeanors and released violent criminals back onto the streets to continue assaulting innocent citizens.  Why does this same DA prosecute something that has gone past the statute of limitations?  Something his predecessor refused to pursue, along with the Federal Election Commission and the Department of Justice. [...] We have entered a new era in America.  The progressive socialist left has no regard for the rule of law.  They only care about the right to rule.  The Constitution does not bindthem, they only adhere to Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals."  They do not want unity, they demand abject conformity, subjugation, and subservience.  Leftists do not want political opposition, they want no obstacles to their rule, and those ends justify their means.

Proof of Political Persecution Emerges, DA Bragg's Chief of Staff Wanted Trump Banned From Office.  Jordan Stockdale, the Chief of Staff for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, has been caught endorsing tweets calling for the impeachment, removal from office, and future prevention of Trump from holding public office again.  As Chief of Staff for Bragg, Stockdale's obvious bias against former President Trump should raise questions about both his and Bragg's ability to perform their duties impartially.  Many Republicans have voiced their concern about the partisanship and lack of objectivity from the Left during Trump's witch hunt indictment.  Screenshots revealed that Stockdale was liking comments from Bernie Sanders, Hilary Clinton, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and many other left-winged members that were bashing Trump on Twitter.  Stockdale has since deleted his Twitter account.

Donald Trump: Civil Rights Hero.  The persecution of Donald Trump continues.  It seems no accident that within the same twenty-four-hour window, anti-American prosecutors both confirmed their intent to lock up a president for exposing the Deep State's vise-grip over government power and celebrated the conviction of an American meme-maker who had used his First Amendment rights to mock Hillary Clinton's voters before the 2016 election.  Highlighting both events as further proof of the country's two-tiered application of "justice," Tucker Carlson correctly noted that the in-your-face double-standard is precisely the point: leftist authoritarians want Americans to fear their power and meekly submit or respond unwisely and be crushed.  Just as with the government's outrageous persecution of J6 political prisoners for exercising inviolable freedoms once constitutionally secured by the Bill of Rights, perverting the criminal justice system into nothing more than an illegitimate vehicle for stomping on both Trump and his supporters is now official government policy.  As Carlson soberly concluded, "there is no coming back" from this moment.

Even If You Hate Trump, You Should Be Standing With Him Now.  Now that Donald Trump has been indicted, everyone who loves America as a free society, no matter where you may be on the political spectrum, should be standing with him.  There are many reasons why this simple fact has been obscured today, not least of them being Donald Trump himself. [...] Now that he has been indicted, however, all those considerations must take a back seat to the fact that Donald Trump is the man whom the authoritarian Left hates and fears more than anyone else, and is determined to destroy.  The Leftist establishment is so avid to destroy Trump that it has not hesitated to take the wrecking ball to Americans' trust in our most respected institutions.

The Final Fight Begins Now.  The truly unprecedented indictment, and now possible arrest, of a popular former president — not to mention current presidential candidate and possible future president — goes far beyond any semblance of traditional party politics.  Other past presidents who had their own shares of legal troubles, from Andrew Johnson and Richard Nixon to Bill Clinton, never faced nearly as much scrutiny, vitriol, and endless resistance as President Donald J. Trump.  The implications for this uniquely horrifying development are not limited to the upcoming 2024 presidential election, although that is certainly at the top of mind for many in the elite who desperately want to see President Trump shut out of public office for the rest of his life.  As the 45th president himself has said on several occasions, in perhaps the single most powerful statement of his entire political career: "They're not after me.  They're after you.  I'm just in the way."

There's No Coming Back From This.  Corrupt Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg has decided to abuse the nation's justice and legal system to persecute the Democrats' top political opponent.  This corrupt, Soros-backed DA, who was hell-bent on indicting President Trump over some made-up "charges," used their usual strategy...pick a target, then find a "crime."  Is America officially a banana republic?  Americans are seeing the weaponization of the legal system before their very eyes.  This is what happens in third-world countries, not here.  The party in power, for the first time in the nation's history, has indicted a former president of the opposition party who is actively campaigning to take back the White House.  This is unprecedented and despicable.  There's no coming back from this.  If the leftist radicals can come for Donald Trump, they can come for you — and those like us who want to bring you the truth.

Tacopina: If Trump Were Not Running for Presidency 'He Would Not Have Been Indicted'.  Trump attorney Joe Tacopina said Sunday on CNN's "State of the Union" that if former President Donald Trump were not running for 2024, he would not be facing an indictment in Manhattan.  Anchor Dana Bash said, "I'm going to speak to Michael Cohen's attorney next.  He says that there is actual evidence that your client, the former president, participated in falsifying business records.  Have you seen any such evidence?"  Tacopina said, "Yeah.  I know there's no such evidence.  I mean, look, Michael Cohen's lawyers spitting Michael Cohen's side.  Michael Cohen is a pathological convicted liar."

Trump's indictment creates a new era for the GOP.  Swamp Republicans hardest hit.  The indictment and pending arraignment of Donald Trump signals a new era for the Republican Party.  The move by Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, not coincidentally timed to push aside discussion of documentary proof of bribes funneled by China to Biden family members, has clarified the nature of the actual political system we live under today. [...] But there is no going back now to the pre-banana republic days when the norms of American politics made it unthinkable to trump up highly questionable charges to take the leader of the opposition out of contention in the next election. [...] Either the GOP contests the rule of Democrats by using all the tools that they use, or else the GOP loses viability by sticking with the "rule of law" norm that is nothing but an illusion at this moment.

Republicans Risk Running Headlong Into The "Rally-Around" Trap.  If Donald Trump becomes the Republican nominee, he has Alvin Bragg to thank for single-handedly making Trump a martyr, causing a substantial rally-around effect.  It's understandable and predictable.  We've rallied-around Trump as a target, as has DeSantis.  There is truth to the claim that Trump serves as a proxy for the way many of us are abused by institutional rot.

Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg Admits He Used Federal Dollars in Trump Investigation — Who Approved This?  Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg confirmed he used federal funds in his investigation into Trump's so-called 'hush payment' to porn star Stormy Daniels.  House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer and House Administration Committee Chair Bryan Steil last week launched an investigation into DA Alvin Bragg, accusing him of abusing his power.  Last Monday the three House GOP lawmakers sent Bragg a letter demanding testimony and documents related to his investigation into the 'hush payment' after Trump said his arrest was imminent.

Trump's Legal Team Makes Major Decision Regarding Indictment.  Former President Trump's legal team makes a significant announcement against Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg's "politically motivated" indictment against him.  On Sunday [4/2/2023], Trump's attorney Joe Tacopina expects to make a motion to dismiss any charges against the former president.  "We will take the indictment.  We will dissect it.  The team will look at every potential issue that we will be able to challenge and will challenge.  And, of course, I very much anticipate a motion to dismiss coming because there's no law that fits this," Tacopina said during an interview on CNN.  The Trump lawyer said his team would not do anything at the arraignment because that would be "showmanship."  The indictment of Trump will be sealed until he appears at an arrangement hearing, which is currently scheduled for Tuesday.

Trump Spy Chief John Ratcliffe Flips Script, Says Indictment Leak Is A Crime.  Leaked details about Donald Trump's indictment are grounds for criminal charges, a top official from the former president's administration said on Sunday [4/2/2023].  John Ratcliffe, a former U.S. congressman and federal prosecutor who served as Trump's final director of national intelligence, reacted to reports that Trump faces around 30 counts related to business fraud as part of the investigation led by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.  "The only felony of which we can be certain to come out of this Alvin Bragg prosecution in New York is the felony committed either by DA Bragg himself or someone on the grand jury that he's using for this perversion of our justice system," Ratcliffe told "Sunday Morning Futures" anchor Maria Bartiromo.  "The accused, Donald Trump, and his lawyers, don't know what's in this sealed indictment.  But for the past, what?  Seventy-two hours, the American public has been discussing supposedly 30 or 34 felony counts," he added.  "Leaking grand jury information is a felony.  And so the only people capable of that would be Alvin Bragg's team or members of the grand jury itself."

Former AG Barr slams 'pathetically weak' legal theory behind Trump indictment: 'An abomination'.  Former Attorney General Bill Barr reacted to the indictment of former President Trump over his alleged 2016 hush money scandal on Friday, calling it "an abomination."  Trump was indicted by a grand jury on Thursday.  He is the first ex-president in U.S. history to be indicted.  Barr appeared on Fox Business to discuss the indictment with host Larry Kudlow.  "Obviously, we don't have the indictment, so there's a little bit of speculation involved," Barr began.  "But based on the news reports, if they're accurate, this is an abomination."

"First Year Law Students Could Get This Dismissed" — Alan Dershowitz on Alvin Bragg's Indictment Against President Trump.  Esteemed Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz joined Steve Bannon on The War Room on Saturday to discuss Alvin Brigg's indictment against President Trump.  The Soros-funded New York City DA announced charges against Trump last week two days after bank statements were released showing the Biden Crime Family were being paid by China for selling their influence. [...] Dershowitz is correct.  The case should be tossed out and Alvin Bragg should be disbarred.  Americans better wake up to what the Communist-left is doing to this country.

Yes, we Have Gone Bananas.  New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg, Jr. has indicted former President Trump.  Arraignment is scheduled on Tuesday.  Sometime before then we are likely to see the charges against him, which reportedly — as is the normal order of weak cases — run to over 20 counts.  Charging so many counts is a prosecutorial trick based on experience:  Some jurors may think the more counts there are the greater the likelihood of a pony hiding in the manure pile; others may just want to get out of the deliberations and agree to one or two to get out of there.  Almost universal criticism of this move, by even the editors of the Washington Post, suggests there is ample reason to believe this is a meritless, politically motivated prosecution. [...] Bragg's office (a New York state operation) received federal funds to investigate Trump, and if you think Attorney General Merrick Garland was not in some way involved in this matter, you and I are in disagreement.

Will You Be Next?  It finally happened.  On Thursday, Soros-funded Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg got the indictment that so many on the political left have been pining for ever since Donald Trump ran for president in 2016.  Since then, Trump has had a target on his back, with unhinged leftists desperately trying to find a crime to pin on him.  The best they were able to get was a misdemeanor campaign finance violation.  This indictment is unprecedented in virtually every way, and should scare you to the core.  It is true that just because Trump is a former president, he is not above the law, but he's not exempt from equal justice under the law either.  But the offense he's been accused of is so minor that it normally merits a fine — just ask Hillary.

Pelosi's Tweet Reveals the Real Intentions Behind Trump's Indictment.  [Scroll down]  Back to Pelosi's tweet.  Pelosi wrote:  "No one is above the law, and everyone has the right to a trial to prove innocence."  This is nothing short of a shocking statement, especially from a lawmaker with many decades of experience.  The presumption of innocence is the standard in any civilized democracy — anyone accused of any crime is considered innocent until proven guilty.  The legal burden of proof lies on the prosecution, which must present compelling face-based evidence to before a judge or a jury.  The prosecution must prove that the accused is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.  If reasonable doubt remains, the accused must be acquitted. [...] This remains the goal behind the exercise, to make the process the punishment.  To drag the trial along, and to drain all their resources and spirits of the accused.  To sully reputations permanently.  To make the accused feel worse than the worst of criminals in the U.S.  They know that these stories spread like wildfire and most people seeking a life of peace for themselves and their families choose to refrain from challenging the Democrats merely to avoid hardships.

The Trump indictment shifts American political tectonics.  The day before yesterday, Donald J. Trump was indicted on phony political charges.  It may prove to be the day the real America will be resurrected, for two reasons:  One, the Left are petrified of MAGA politics, politics that loves America as founded, that loves its military as originally constituted before Woke happened, and whose capitalism is the greatest economic engine on the planet.  MAGA is for patriots and the Left are not patriots; they hate America.  The second reason Trump was indicted is because of the larger Soros & Co. plan to communize America, turn her into an oligarchy with Soros at the helm, to use "climate change" as the Trojan horse for the terrifying Great Reset, so Trump cannot stand in the way of that happening.  Alvin Bragg and his Soros backers, including Joe Biden, has just declared open warfare on half the American public.  Except now it's more than half, with this indictment.  Americans have always loved an underdog, the come-from-behind hero who battles evil against all odds and wins.  Donald Trump is that hero now and the Democrats have created him so.

Even the Washington Post Admits the Case Against Trump Is Probably [Specious].  When you're a far-leftist district attorney prosecuting the man the left hates the most, and you have lost the Washington Post, you might want to rethink your position.  This is the situation in which New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg finds himself as he continues functioning as the head of the progressive spear to be used to kill former President Donald Trump's chances of occupying the White House once again.  The Post's editorial board published an op-ed titled "The Trump indictment is a poor test case for prosecuting a former president," in which the authors cast doubt on the chances that Bragg will be able to carry out a successful prosecution of the former president based on the Stormy Daniels matter.

After Trump indictment, Manhattan DA accuses House GOP of 'unlawful political interference'.  Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's office has fired back at House Republicans who are demanding documents and testimony about their case against former President Donald Trump, calling the GOP lawmakers' demands "unlawful political interference" in an ongoing criminal case.  In a letter sent Friday to three top House Republican chairmen, Leslie B. Dubeck, the general counsel for Bragg's office, slammed their "baseless and inflammatory allegations that our investigation is politically motivated."  Trump is the first American president to be indicted on criminal charges.  "The Committees' attempted interference with an ongoing state criminal investigation — and now prosecution — is an unprecedented and illegal incursion on New York's sovereign interests," Dubeck wrote.

Trump's lawyer says was 'initially shocked' by Manhattan indictment but is now feeling 'combative'.  Former President Donald Trump has launched a social media assault on Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, the Democratic prosecutor going after him for alleged fraud, and even took aim at his wife in the most recent round of complaints since he was indicted last night.  Trump, 76, will be arraigned in Manhattan at 2.15 pm on Tuesday on an array of business fraud charges relating to 2016 hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels.  He has denied any personal wrongdoing, and says he is the victim of a politically-motivated witch hunt led by the famously Democratic Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.  The charges are not yet known — only once he is formally charged in person will the indictment become unsealed.

The martyrdom of Donald J. Trump.  Meanwhile, Bragg's office is trying desperately to stuff this toothpaste back into the tube.  The problem is that everybody's watching from front row seats — while all of these rodents scurry around.  And many already know that there's overwhelming evidence that Trump never even came close to committing a crime.  Leaked information confirms that Trump has been indicted.  Apparently, yesterday's earlier announcement that the Manhattan grand jury was taking a month's hiatus was intended to lull the Trump camp into complacency.  But is Trump really being damaged?  Or is this furthering the compelling drama of his martyrdom?  It is fortunate for America's destiny that Mr. Trump is pretty good at taking a punch.  It is problematic, however, as to whether he may respond with sufficient elegance.  But then again, he didn't rise to the top of the food chain by bungling opportunities.

Justice Department 'is irritated by Manhattan DA's indictment of Donald Trump.  Justice Department officials are said to be annoyed by the Manhattan District Attorney's decision to indict Trump, as they believe it is a weak case which could undermine more serious legal probes Trump is facing.  Alvin Bragg's intention to criminally charge the former president for his payment of hush money to porn star Stormy Daniels was revealed on Thursday, sparking consternation and anger in Mar-a-Lago, and, according to The New York Times, in Washington DC.  The paper reported that 'senior officials' at the Justice Department had concerns about the strength of Bragg's case.

Soros family helped push Manhattan DA Bragg into power.  The Manhattan grand jury indictment Thursday night of former President Donald Trump is sparking new scrutiny of the George Soros-supported district attorney who led the investigation into Trump's alleged violations of state campaign finance laws.  The former president is expected to surrender to District Attorney Alvin Bragg's office early next week, following his indictment stemming from Bragg's investigation into Trump's alleged hush money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels in 2016.  Fox News Digital previously reported that in May 2021, financier George Soros pushed $1 million to the Color of Change PAC, which turned around and spent big, backing Bragg's candidacy.

Steve Scalise: Indictment of Donald Trump 'Clearest Example' of Democrats Weaponizing Government Against Their Opponents.  House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) said in a statement on Thursday [3/30/2023] that the indictment of former President Donald Trump was the "clearest example" of Democrats using the government to target their political opponents.  Scalise, the number two Republican in the House, said in a written statement, "The sham New York indictment of President Donald Trump is one of the clearest examples of extremist Democrats weaponizing government to attack their political opponents.  Outrageous."

Trump indicted by N.Y. grand jury, first ex-president charged with crime.  A Manhattan grand jury has voted to indict former president Donald Trump, making him the first person in U.S. history to serve as commander in chief and then be charged with a crime — and setting the stage for a 2024 presidential contest unlike any other.  The indictment was sealed, which means the specific charge or charges are not publicly known.  But the grand jury had been hearing evidence about hush money paid to adult film actress Stormy Daniels during Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, allegedly to keep her from saying she'd had a sexual encounter with Trump years earlier.  It comes after weeks of speculation about whether and when Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg might take such a step, setting the stage for a courthouse showdown between one of the most combative politicians in modern American history and local prosecutors who have pursued him for years.

A Rubicon Is Crossed.  So the Democrats decided to indict Donald Trump after all.  (I assume that Alvin Bragg would not have proceeded without a green light from higher-ups in the party.)  Here, as in so many other areas, we are in uncharted waters.  The Democrats have launched a sort of blitzkrieg against our traditions, our Constitution, our culture (at least, our culture as it was), and every form of restraint that makes civil society possible.  They have unleashed a wind, and seem serenely confident that they will never face a whirlwind.  I don't know, maybe they are right.  I do know that after today, our country will never be the same again. [...] The Democrats are behaving like a party from a pre-Enlightenment, pre-constitutional era.  Seeing themselves in the driver's seat, they are making a naked grab for totalitarian power across a broad range of issues and institutions.  Indicting a former president on frivolous grounds is shocking, but it is of a piece with the strategies Democrats are following in Washington and across the country.

Chuck Schumer Claims Trump 'is subject to the same laws as every American'.  In response to the Trump indictment, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is saying that Trump is subject to the same laws as everyone else.  This has become a Democrat talking point.  How many times have you heard Democrats say no one is above the law?  It's a total lie.  If it was true, Pelosi, Hillary, Biden and countless other Democrats would already be in jail.

Donald Trump Officially Indicted.  In a shocking twist, Donald Trump has been officially indicted by a Manhattan-based grand jury.  In the weeks prior, the situation had appeared to deteriorate for District Attorney Alvin Bragg.  On Wednesday, it was announced that the grand jury was being sent home for a month.  The assumption, a fair one at the time, was that Bragg needed more time to rescue his case.  That was apparently wrong, though, as the grand jury voted to indict on Thursday [3/30/2023].

A Guide to Understanding the Hoax of the Century.  For more than half a century, McCarthyism stood as a defining chapter in the worldview of American liberals:  a warning about the dangerous allure of blacklists, witch hunts, and demagogues.  Until 2017, that is, when another list of alleged Russian agents roiled the American press and political class.  A new outfit called Hamilton 68 claimed to have discovered hundreds of Russian-affiliated accounts that had infiltrated Twitter to sow chaos and help Donald Trump win the election.  Russia stood accused of hacking social media platforms, the new centers of power, and using them to covertly direct events inside the United States.  None of it was true.  After reviewing Hamilton 68's secret list, Twitter's safety officer, Yoel Roth, privately admitted that his company was allowing "real people" to be "unilaterally labeled Russian stooges without evidence or recourse."  The Hamilton 68 episode played out as a nearly shot-for-shot remake of the McCarthy affair, with one important difference: McCarthy faced some resistance from leading journalists as well as from the U.S. intelligence agencies and his fellow members of Congress.  In our time, those same groups lined up to support the new secret lists and attack anyone who questioned them.

Time to End the Veil of Secrecy Inside D.C. Kangaroo Court.  Judge Beryl Howell [...], appointed to the D.C. District Court by Barack Obama in 2010 and elevated to the court's highest post in 2016 — just in time to oversee numerous criminal investigations into Donald Trump — finished up her seven-year stint as chief judge earlier this month.  Colleagues and staff assembled in her courtroom as the proverbial torch was passed to Judge James Boasberg, another Obama appointee.  But according to Politico, the retirement celebration turned into a "roast" of sorts as one judge after another chided Howell for her closed-doors dealings.  "Howell seemed to freeze in her seat as the most senior jurist on the court, Judge Paul Friedman, publicly described her still-secret rulings in grand jury-related matters," reporters Josh Gerstein and Kyle Cheney wrote on March 17.  "[Her] fellow judges made clear they were as tantalized as the rest of the political world by Howell's secret work presiding over grand juries that could lead to charges against former President Donald Trump."

President Trump Kicking Off His 2024 Campaign in Waco Sends the Right Message to the Right People.  The Trump 2024 presidential campaign will officially kick off Saturday afternoon in Waco, Texas.  The symbolism of former President Trump, beset by potential political indictments at the state and federal level, starting his presidential campaign at the site of the most egregious and unprovoked act of violence perpetrated upon US citizens by the federal government in the history of the Republic can't go unnoticed by even the dimmest bulbs in the ranks of NeverTrump.

Why Alvin Bragg's case against Trump is falling apart.  While an indictment was expected this week, the grand jury looking into former President Donald Trump will go another week amid reports of opposition in the grand jury over what is viewed as a "weak" case.  The problem is that Bragg has long been searching for a crime in the criminal code to fulfill his pitch during his campaign that he was the man for voters who wanted to bag Trump.  The falsification of business records in reference to the $130,000 payment to porn star Stormy Daniels might have been a possibility, but it lacked two things.  First, it expired as a chargeable misdemeanor after two years — and that was roughly five years ago.  Second, it was a mere misdemeanor that could be brushed off by Trump even if they succeeded.

New Evidence Further Devastates Case Against Trump.  A letter written by porn star Stormy Daniels, which was shared by former President Donald Trump on his Truth Social account on Thursday, has further undermined the case against him by Soros-funded Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.  The letter, dated 2018, refutes any claims of an affair between the two.

Trump could be in more danger than you think.  One of the things I often have to remind people about, including lawyers who should know better, is that each state has its own unique laws and procedures.  What is no big deal in most places may be a fiasco in another.  For Donald Trump, the upcoming New York "falsifying business records" charge he may be facing would be laughed out of court almost everywhere, as no money was stolen and no harm to anyone seems to have been done.  Unfortunately for him, he is stuck in the Empire State.  And as unfair as it sounds, I think Mr. Trump is in some real trouble.  The plan the Manhattan D.A. has is to convict him on a trivial offense, then hope a vindictive judge will throw the book at him.  This happens all the time to suspected mafiosi in New York courts, and it may be what's going on here.

Memos from 2018-19 shake up Trump case: Cohen denied having incriminating evidence on hush money.  An attorney who advised disgraced Trump organization lawyer Michael Cohen provided Manhattan prosecutors with voluminous documentation, including contemporaneous emails and memos, purporting to show that in 2018 Cohen wanted Donald Trump to help cover his legal bills and repeatedly claimed he had no evidence incriminating the former president in a hush money deal with porn actress Stormy Daniels.  "Cohen said he had no information against Trump," one memo summarizing attorney Robert Costello's interactions with Cohen stated.  That memo, dated April 2019, recounted Costello's interview with federal prosecutors about conversations he and colleagues had with Cohen a year earlier.  Costello, a former federal prosecutor who has represented famous clients like George Steinbrenner, Leona Hemsley, Rudy Giuliani and Steve Bannon, told Just the News on Tuesday he provided Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's office with more than 300 pages of emails, memos and texts chronicling his dealings with Cohen.

'Game-Changer' Costello Testimony May Have Sunk Manhattan DA's Case Against Trump, Dershowitz Says.  Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's possible criminal case against former President Donald Trump may have derailed this week, according to Harvard Law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz.  On Monday, former federal prosecutor Robert Costello testified in front of a Manhattan grand jury over matters related to a $130,000 hush money payment to a porn star in 2016. Costello told the jury that former Trump attorney Michael Cohen, expected to be Bragg's main witness in any case against Trump, "couldn't tell the truth if you put a gun to his head."  Dershowitz appeared on Fox News on Tuesday night and told host Sean Hannity that "Bob Costello has changed this case dramatically."

Trump Responds to Latest Illegal Leak to ABC News on Special Counsel Probe.  President Trump responded to the latest illegal leak to ABC News.  Judge Beryl Howell last Friday wrote that special counsel Jack Smith's prosecutors have evidence Trump 'committed criminal violations' in the classified documents case, according to a leak to ABC News.  Trump lawfully stored presidential records at his Mar-a-Lago residence but the Deep State is going after him anyway.

Memos from 2018-19 shake up Trump case: Cohen denied having incriminating evidence on hush money.  An attorney who advised disgraced Trump organization lawyer Michael Cohen provided Manhattan prosecutors with voluminous documentation, including contemporaneous emails and memos, purporting to show that in 2018 Cohen wanted Donald Trump to help cover his legal bills and repeatedly claimed he had no evidence incriminating the former president in a hush money deal with porn actress Stormy Daniels.  "Cohen said he had no information against Trump," one memo summarizing attorney Robert Costello's interactions with Cohen stated.  That memo, dated April 2019, recounted Costello's interview with federal prosecutors about conversations he and colleagues had with Cohen a year earlier.  Costello, a former federal prosecutor who has represented famous clients like George Steinbrenner, Leona Hemsley, Rudy Giuliani and Steve Bannon, told Just the News on Tuesday he provided Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's office with more than 300 pages of emails, memos and texts chronicling his dealings with Cohen.

Chuck Schumer Refuses to State Confidence in Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.  Democrat Senate Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) refused to state his confidence in Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who is expected to indict former President Donald Trump.  Schumer's remarks came during a press conference on Wednesday.  "Do you have confidence in Alvin Bragg?" one reporter asked Schumer.  Schumer refused to answer, instead insisting that it is "premature to comment" on the situation.  "Look, the bottom line is, as I said, it's premature to comment on what's happening, and we'll have to wait and see what he does," Schumer responded.

Bombshell 2018 Letter Delivers a Gut Punch to Manhattan DA's Case Against Trump.  How much is Michael Cohen's testimony worth at this point?  I wrote that his legal adviser Robert Costello told the Manhattan grand jury considering the case against Donald Trump that Cohen was a serial liar, "far from solid evidence," and that Cohen had told him that he never told Trump about the payment to Stormy Daniels, the crux of the case against Trump.  Now there's newly-surfaced evidence that also throws a gut punch into District Attorney Alvin Bragg's case.  A February 2018 letter written by Michael Cohen's then-lawyer to the Federal Election Commission claims that Cohen "used his own personal funds to facilitate a payment of $130,000 to Ms. Stephanie Clifford," a/k/a Stormy Daniels, in 2016.  That also matches what Cohen told Costello.  [Tweet]

Will Alvin Bragg be a team player or is he in it for himself?  Alvin Bragg openly admitted during his election campaign that he would make it a priority, if elected, to prosecute Donald Trump, albeit without bothering to select a law that's been broken.  Bragg is only the next batter up to try and make party politics a crime.  He steps to the plate way down in the order following such heavy hitters as the FBI, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Adam Schiff, Leticia James and Merrick Garland.  If he indeed does follow through and charge the former president with a crime that he knows full well will never result in a conviction, he will do it against the express orders of the Democrat party hierarchy.  The power brokers on the left, from Barack Obama all the way down to The Squad, understand that Trump the Martyr is a far more serious and dangerous a candidate than The Donald of spring 2023, who lagged in the polls behind Florida governor Ron DeSantis.  Bragg must be fending off constant phone calls and messages passed on through plenipotentiaries begging him to not file charges.

Prosecutor: Secret Service Won't Allow Trump Handcuffing.  Former President Donald Trump is unlikely to be handcuffed if he's arrested, according to a Florida prosecutor who said the Secret Service wouldn't "allow local law enforcement to put their hands on the former president."  Trump said last week that he expects to be indicted by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.  Trump's attorney, Joseph Tacopina, told Newsmax he expects police to handcuff Trump during an arrest.  "I had this idea in my head that they'd [prosecutors] be dumb enough — if he [Trump] were indicted — to actually try to cuff him and walk him.  And then we can see how far we've really devolved in this country," Tacopina said on "Rob Schmitt Tonight" on Monday.  "I think that's what they're going to try to do."

Fake "Trump Supporters" at Manhattan Protest Are Identified As an Actor And an Anarchist.  President Trump asked his supporters to "Protest!" in advance of his alleged indictment by the radical Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg that was supposed to take place today.  Many Trump supporters believed it was a mistake for President Trump to call on his supporters to protest, as they feared many would be set up by fake Trump supporters who were really undercover FBI agents or informants or even members of Antifa.  The radical Anarchist group Antifa has been known to create violence at protests, making it appear as though the group who organized the event were actually responsible.  In Manhattan, during yesterday's protest in support of President Trump, independent reporter Rebecca Brannon did an incredible job of uncovering the fake "Trump supporters" who were supposed to be there to protest Trump's impending arrest by the radical Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg.  Bragg had barricades placed around the Manhattan courthouse in NYC in an attempt to give the false impression that they needed to protect themselves from Trump supporters.  [Tweet]

Trump wants to appear in handcuffs if he's charged in NYC: report.  Former President Donald Trump has reportedly said he wants to be hauled into court in handcuffs if he's slapped with unprecedented charges in the "hush money" case involving porn star Stormy Daniels.  Trump, 76, told advisers of his plan, saying that if he has to go through the ordeal of getting arrested and arraigned, he'd prefer making it a "spectacle," the Guardian said Wednesday, citing unidentified sources close to him.  The ex-president — who's seeking the Republican nomination for a third White House bid in 2024 — also wants to avoid any special treatment that could make him look weak, the sources reportedly said.  It's unclear how serious Trump is about the plan, which could be stymied by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, the Guardian said.

Tucker Carlson Makes a Chilling Prediction About Possible Trump Indictment.  On Monday night, Fox News host Tucker Carlson made a compelling argument that indicting former President Donald Trump could lead to the permanent destruction of the United States justice system.  Although Carlson acknowledged that former presidents could be indicted if they have committed a crime, the undeniable fact is that Trump is the current frontrunner for the Republican nomination for president, and the abuse of the justice system by partisan prosecutors to take out a political opponent would be unprecedented and dangerous.  In fact, as Carlson pointed out, Alvin Bragg ran for district attorney on the promise that he would indict Trump.  He has spent years trying to find a way to pin several various crimes on him, and he's landed on the so-called "hush money" payment to Stormy Daniels — a payment the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) has already said isn't even a campaign finance violation.

Tucker Carlson Breaks Down the Lawfare Constructed, Banana Republic, Persecution of Donald Trump.  For his opening monologue tonight, Fox News host Tucker Carlson breaks down the Manhattan case against President Trump as constructed by District Attorney Alvin Bragg.  Carlson notes and contrasts recent almost identical situations involving former Democrat presidential candidate John Edwards, and later Hillary Clinton.  The legal merits of the campaign finance case are farcical on their face as admitted by the Federal Election Commission (FEC), previously litigated via legal precedent (John Edwards), and even Supreme Court interpretation (VA Gov Bob McDonnell).  Additionally, even if there was a legal issue, there isn't, the statute of limitations on the claimed infraction has expired.  Furthermore, and seemingly overlooked by most pundits opining on the issue, the legal issue Bragg is attempting to weaponize is a federal campaign finance issue, out of the jurisdiction of the Manhattan district attorney.  So, what gives?

Trump's Lawyers Are Now Targeting the Georgia Grand Jury Probe.  The past few days have made it clear that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is determined to get Donald Trump for something — so much so that his office is trying to turn a hush-money payment to Stormy Daniels into a campaign finance violation.  Bragg isn't the only one hoping to make a name for himself by taking Trump down.  Fulton County, Ga., DA Fani Willis is in the midst of her own anti-Trump crusade.

Trump Unveils Plan To 'Dismantle The Deep State'.  Former President Donald Trump unveiled his new plan Tuesday to "dismantle the deep state" by firing "rogue" bureaucrats and career politicians, according to a new policy agenda video.  Trump released a list of ten items that indicate how he plans to "clean out the deep state," starting with re-instating an executive order that would give the president the authority to fire bureaucrats, according to the video posted on Rumble.  The former president's plan would dismantle the "Washington Swamp," target corruption and ensure that federal bureaucrats and politicians are held accountable.

Soros-Funded DA Alvin Bragg [was] Caught Hiding Nearly 600 Pages of Exculpatory Evidence from NY Grand Jury in Trump Case.  Attorney Robert Costello, the former legal adviser to Michael Cohen, spoke to Tucker Carlson on Monday night after he testified to the Manhattan Grand Jury investigating President Donald Trump.  Costello told the FOX News audience that he testified for two hours in front of Alvin Bragg's Manhattan Grand Jury.  Robert Costello told Tucker Carlson, "I spoke to the jury for two hours... It was clear to me the Manhattan Grand Jury did not want to get to the truth."

Fulton County, Georgia, is also contemplating lawfare to derail Trump's presidential run.  Hot on the heels of news that Manhattan's DA, Alvin Bragg, is planning to charge Donald Trump for using private funds to silence a woman who later admitted that she never had sex with him, the Fulton County prosecutor's office in Atlanta, Georgia, is going ahead with plans to prosecute Trump and his associates under RICO laws for daring to challenge problematic vote counting in Georgia.  Tucker Carlson has warned that, if Democrats get away with using ideological prosecutors to attack our election system, the great American experiment is over. [...] Fulton County, of course, is one of the counties in which vote counting stopped for six hours in the middle of the night after the election.  Going into that six-hour pause, Trump was in the lead.  Coming out of it, Biden was in the lead.  There were other significant irregularities in Fulton County, all of which the political establishment protected from any investigation.  And of course, that's all Trump was asking for:  An investigation.

Final Grand Jury Witness Speaks After Testimony, Says Michael Cohen Is "Far From Solid Evidence".  While discussing Trump's potential indictment on Monday, Robert Costello, former legal advisor to Michael Cohen, referred to Cohen as a "convicted perjurer" and suggested that his testimony may not be reliable in any case.  Recently, a grand jury has been investigating Trump's business practices, including his alleged involvement in hush-money payments made to a woman who claimed to have had an affair with him before the 2016 presidential election.  As part of this investigation, Robert Costello, former legal advisor to Michael Cohen, testified before the grand jury.  Costello stated that he made the decision to testify despite warnings from others that he had nothing to gain.  He wanted to tell the truth to the grand jurors and counter the lies being promoted in the media.  Costello suggested that if there is solid evidence to go after Trump, that's alright — but he believes that Cohen is far from solid evidence.

Avenatti says there's no case against Trump.  Today is supposed to be I-Day — indictment day — in New York City.  For the 7th consecutive year, the loony left is predicting the imminent indictment and arrest of President Trump.  The walls are closing in!  Comey-Mueller-NYC DA have him right where they want him.  He will be frog-marched and perp-walked.  Just like Karl Rove.  Just like Dick Cheney.  The charge is he paid off Stormy Daniels, a hooker — or as the media now calls them, an adult entertainment actress — who claimed she had sex with him.  The case has bounced around in civil court where a judge ruled that her lawsuit was so frivolous that the whore would have to pay him!  As for this I-Day, Republicans know the drill and frankly, the dog-and-pony shows have become boring.  Her lawyer, Michael Avenatti, is a man of his convictions — of which there are three and he will spend the next 20 years in federal prison for being a crook.

Alvin Bragg's End Run Around the Constitution.  We've endured four years of Mueller's failed "Russiagate" hoax, two failed, politically-driven impeachment trials from radical House Democrats in Congress driven by Nancy Pelosi, not to mention the highly-partisan "January 6" Committee that failed to call a single witness adverse to their pre-cooked "it-was-an-insurrection" narrative, and a host of other Trump-related political prosecutions.  But now, this weekend's announcement from President Trump that he expects to be indicted on Tuesday in Manhattan forecasts the most radical tactic yet that the Democrats will use to block Trump's return to power: lawfare with unfounded charges in the criminal courts.  Let's be clear.  The feds have already declined to prosecute anything surrounding Trump's civil settlement with Stormy Daniels.  Perhaps that is because confidentiality clauses are part of millions of civil settlements in lawsuits around the country every day.  I've seen hundreds in my own career as a civil litigator.  In other words, nothing to see here.

House Judiciary Committee Demands Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg Hand Over Documents and Testify Regarding Possible Donald Trump Indictment.  The House Judiciary Committee is ordering far-left Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg to hand over communications, documents, and testimony that Bragg is allegedly planning to use to indict former President Donald Trump.  Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) sent the letter Monday morning demanding Bragg's cooperation.  Rep. James Comer (R-KY) and Bryan Steil (R-WI) also signed the letter.

Manhattan prosecutor's office reportedly 'in chaos'.  When law is tossed out the window, is anybody surprised that chaos follows?  That's apparently what we have in the Manhattan district attorney's office, where Soros-financed District Attorney Alvin Bragg is reportedly presiding over a chaotic shambles in the wake of news that his men intend to indict President Trump on politicized charges. [...] The root of it seems to be in Bragg's stated Trump-hate, which he openly campaigned on when he ran for office in Manhattan.  That's actually illegal, but the matter was ignored by voters.  As a Soros man, Bragg has a positively disordered view of what the role of prosecutor is in the city's legal infrastructure and what rule of law is.  Based on his history, he has a problem with the law.

This article from the Associated Press reeks with bias:
Will Trump be indicted?  What we know about the process.  The decision whether to indict former President Donald Trump over hush-money payments made on his behalf during his 2016 presidential campaign lies with a Manhattan grand jury that has been hearing evidence in secret for weeks.  An indictment of Trump, who is seeking the White House again in 2024, would be an unprecedented moment in American history, the first criminal case against a former U.S. president.  Law enforcement officials are bracing for protests and the possibility of violence after Trump called on his supporters to protest ahead of a possible indictment.

The Editor says...
The AP knows, or should know, that rioting and political violence come from the left.  In the one case where it appeared that Trump supporters got out of hand, it was (as I see it) due to leftist agitators mixed in with the crowd.

Dems will infiltrate Trump street protests to turn them violent.  Donald Trump has characterized his impending arrest this week as a political vendetta, and has urged his supporters to take to the streets in protest.  I agree with him that it's a political vendetta, but disagree about taking to the streets.  It is indeed a nakedly political act by the Manhattan District Attorney.  Numerous other prosecutors including sophisticated federal prosecutors have reviewed this same evidence, and have declined to pursue this case.  Rightly so.  It's a lousy case.  The legal theory is a stretch.  Moreover, the prosecution's fact witnesses are not credible.  One is a former porn star who has been caught numerous times lying and the other is Trump's former lawyer who is willing to say anything he's told to say in order to save his own hide.  Layer on top of that a prosecutor who is not exactly a top-notch trial lawyer and is known to get money from George Soros, and you have, as I said, a lousy case, even in New York where Trump has gone from loved to reviled.  The prosecution will lose.

A potential Trump indictment is a sideshow gift to the Biden family.  If Democrats really wanted Donald Trump to fade away, as they claim, they would stop persecuting him.  Maybe they are so blinded by hatred that they can't see that every time they use the heavy hand of the law against the former president, they just cement his status as a MAGA martyr.  Or maybe they are so terrified of running against Ron DeSantis in 2024 that they actually want to martyr Trump to ensure he wins the Republican presidential primary ready for a repeat contest with Joe Biden. [...] Whether or not Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg really is about to arrest Trump this week, as has been reported, over trumped-up hush-money charges relating to a one-time assignation 17 years ago with porn star Stormy Daniels, Friday's leak from the court could not have come at a better time for President Biden.

Arresting Trump.  On Tuesday, former President Donald Trump will be arrested by the Manhattan District Attorney's Office.  Reportedly, the charges will pertain to alleged hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels which purportedly violated campaign finance laws.  Alvin Bragg, the Soros-funded progressive District Attorney, has yet to explain the legal theory underlying the charges.  But, given his alarming and astounding demolition of Manhattan's criminal justice system, it will no doubt be a counterintuitive and inventive interpretation of the law.  No matter what charges are brought, it is clear that this prosecution will be just one more tawdry political hit job.

Indicting Trump Could Get Him Reelected.  If Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg actually indicts former President Donald Trump this week and prosecutes him in what will inevitably become a show trial, the Democrats will regret it.  This is ironic considering their absurd yet oft-repeated comparison of Trump to Adolf Hitler.  If these people knew anything about the latter's rise to power, they would realize that it was just such a trial that launched his genocidal political career in Germany.  Trump is no aspiring autocrat, but a politicized prosecution and biased coverage by the corporate media will certainly energize his base.  As former UN Ambassador John Bolton told CNN, "Having very much in mind the one rule of law for everybody ... I think historians would look back and say, that's the act that reelected Donald Trump president."  Bolton's allusion to equal treatment under the law was echoed in the New York Sun by Alan Dershowitz, professor emeritus at Harvard Law School: "Mr. Trump should not be indicted for novel and unprecedented technical crimes for which no one else would be prosecuted."  George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley adds in the Hill that Bragg's case would be exceptionally weak at the very best: [...]

Surprise Trump Grand Jury Witness Revealed.  A source with knowledge of the "hush-money" investigation has confirmed to the New York Times that Rudy Giuliani lawyer Robert Costello, a former legal advisor to Michael Cohen, will be appearing before the grand jury on Monday with the sole intention of undermining Cohen's credibility.  Meanwhile, Cohen, the former lawyer for Donald Trump and star prosecution witness, has made himself available on Monday in case prosecutors decide to call him to provide rebuttal testimony against Costello. [...] According to Trump, Costello has "conclusive and irrefutable" evidence that should exonerate him.  What is this evidence?  Who knows?  But experts have already said that the case against Trump is ridiculously weak.  But hey, maybe Costello can provide solid evidence that will make it impossible for even a partisan grand jury and a partisan prosecutor to go forward with bogus charges.

Democrats' Daddy Issues With Trump Aren't Going to Work Out Well for Them.  American Democrats are continuing their descent into a Trump-induced madness from which there obviously won't be any return.  They've escalated their insane war on Donald Trump to a point that has the potential to backfire in grand fashion.  They really didn't think this one through.  Then again, they haven't thought any of their Trump tantrums through.  They're blinded by rage and won't stop until they get some red meat footage for the 14 viewers who still watch MSNBC and CNN. [...] It's not likely that whatever [Robert] Costello has to say will be enough to change New York County District Attorney Alvin Bragg's mind — he's chomping at the bit to get his moment in the media as the guy who finally "got" Trump, no matter how fleeting the victory is.

Former U.S. Attorney Argues Trump Could Be Indicted for Same Thing Clinton Was Fined For.  Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is essentially using the same legal theory to potentially indict former President Donald Trump that Hillary Clinton's campaign was fined for, argued former United States Attorney Brett Tolman.  Tolman asserted Saturday [3/18/2023] that Bragg's legal theory that Trump tried to hide a campaign expenditure by using his then-lawyer to pay porn actress Stormy Daniels $130,000 in alleged hush money before the 2016 presidential elections would have applied to Clinton when her campaign hid a payment for the phony Russian pee dossier against Trump as "legal fees."

Lauren Boebert: Democrats Believe Arresting Donald Trump Is Their 'Only Hope' of Victory in 2024.  Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) argued in a Twitter post that Democrats believe the anticipated arrest of former President Donald Trump is the party's "only hope" of winning the 2024 election.  Boebert, who has closely aligned herself with Trump since she first ran for the House of Representatives in 2020, argued, "Democrats know they won't be able to beat our ideas at the ballot box in 2024 so think this is their only hope."

Arresting Donald Trump.  For much of the last two months the rumors have swirled.  On Saturday the former President acknowledged it.  On Tuesday it may happen. [...] What happens if they put handcuffs on a former President?  If you've watched social media this weekend the reaction has ranged.  Trump supporters have asserted flatly that it insures his re-ascendancy to the White House.  Trump haters are mixed with some gloating "we finally got him!"  Some are accusing him of attempting to start a civil war.  They say this because he merely said "protest" in his post on Truth Social that went viral.  Between the gloating and the accusing there appears to be a good deal of panic on the left about the outcome. [...] The "evidence" is non-existent and they already know in a deep place inside themselves that the American people are fair-minded.  They understand that Americans are watching the next iteration of a witch hunt that has been long in the making and thwarted via self destruction at every point where they were convinced they had stopped him.

Trump and Hillary Have Been Accused of the Same Crime, but Hillary Never Faced Potential Arrest.  The justice system is supposed to be blind to political affiliations and treat all individuals equally under the law.  It's hard to deny that there seems to be a double standard when it comes to the way justice is applied to those on the left versus those on the right.  The mere possibility of Donald Trump facing possible arrest and charges for something that, at most, might result in a minor fine for a Democrat is a prime example of this disparity.  Just look at Hillary Clinton.  Last year, the Federal Election Commission fined Hillary Clinton for misreporting payments made to a law firm during the 2016 campaign to hide spending.  The law firm in question was Perkins Coie, which hired Fusion GPS to conduct research that resulted in the Steele Dossier, which was later used by Congress to impeach Trump.  Clinton classified these expenses as "legal services" and was fined $113,000 for the misrepresentation.

More about Bill and Hillary's accumulated baggage.

Trump Will Likely NOT Be Arrested, at Least on Tuesday.  Donald Trump announced on Saturday morning that he would be arrested on Tuesday, and the nation has been agog at the prospect of the Leftist establishment crossing the rubicon of arresting its principal opponent on flimsy charges and demonstrating before the entire world that the American republic is now the American banana republic, in which foes of the regime can expect the full weight of corrupt government authority pushing back against them for daring to dissent.  But now it turns out that the Manhattan district attorney's office, which has Trump in its sights, just may be stepping back from the brink:  Business Insider reported Saturday night that Trump's indictment is "on hold" until one more witness testifies Monday afternoon.  That's about all that has come to light, as the relevant authorities are being quite closemouthed about this whole thing.  Insider says that "a source with knowledge of the investigation" told them on Saturday night "there is one more witness."  The indictment is apparently not a certainty until this witness testifies.  But who is this witness?

Vivek Ramaswamy Warns Trump Indictment Would Be a 'National Disaster'.  Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, a 2024 candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, decried the prospect of former President Donald Trump being indicted.  "A Trump indictment would be a national disaster.  It is un-American for the ruling party to use police power to arrest its political rivals," Ramaswamy tweeted on Saturday [3/18/2023].  He made a reference to the 2004 presidential election in which Democrat John Kerry lost to George Bush and his running mate Dick Cheney.  "If a Republican prosecutor in 2004 had used a campaign finance technicality to arrest then-candidate John Kerry while Bush & Cheney were in power, liberals would have cried foul — and rightly so," Ramaswamy said. "Principles go beyond partisanship."

The coming Trump arrest is a very dangerous power play.  The Tea Party emerged in 2009.  Even though its rallies were peaceful and always left the rally locations immaculate, Democrats in and out of the media described Tea Partiers as dangerous, racist, wild-eyed activists.  The template was in place.  Trump mulled the idea of running for president, and leftists were initially excited because they foresaw an easy Hillary victory against him.  Trump became the primary candidate, the crowds turning out for him were unprecedented, and Hillary was revealed to have violated multiple national security laws, only to limp into the election thanks to a James Comey "fix."  Trump won, and Democrats had a massive, very public, complete mental breakdown.  Shortly before Trump entered office, high-level Democrats (Hillary?  Obama?) instituted what came to be the Russia collusion hoax.  Despite the Russia collusion hoax, the Ukraine phone call hoax, a failed impeachment, and myriad other faux scandals, Trump looked like a shoo-in for reelection.  The economy was booming, China was being constrained, illegal immigration was diminishing, peace was blossoming in the Middle East, and there were no new wars or concentration camps.  Something needed to be done.  Enter COVID.

Calls Grow on the Left for Trump to Be Held Without Bail — For a Misdemeanor.  The left is salivating at the idea that finally Orange Man Bad will be arrested and perp walked in front of the media next week.  But that is not enough for them.  Calls have gone out on Saturday for President Trump to be held without bail because they say he is a danger to the country over his call for supporters to protest should he be arrested.  The liberals are saying this is an incitement to another January 6 and therefore Trump should be kept behind bars where he could not post calls for protests on social media.  New York has extremely lax bail laws, making bail non-existent for most of those charged.  However, the liberals think an exception should be made for Trump.

Trump now says Manhattan's DA should be investigated for 'interfering' with the election.  Donald Trump is claiming full innocence and isn't buying the narrative from some Republicans defending him by saying the alleged hush-money payments he made to Stormy Daniels are a 'misdemeanor' at best.  The former president said on Sunday that there 'was no crime' and flipped the script on the Manhattan District Attorney's Office, demanding the Democratic prosecutors be investigated for 'interfering' with the presidential election.  Prosecutors argue that he violated a New York law which prohibits falsifying business records when he marked a $130,000 payment to Daniels as 'legal expenses.'

Jonathan Turley Destroys Manhattan DA's Case Against Trump.  The timing of the reported indictment about to drop against President Donald Trump can only be called suspicious, given the Stormy Daniels issue has been lying fallow for years, with President Donald Trump now a declared candidate for the 2024 presidential nomination.  It's about the perp walk and the theatrics.  Just like they tried the Jan. 6 Committee prior to the midterms, this is going to be the continuing thing that they will throw out there to attack Trump and the Republicans in the presidential race.  It's about the optics to move the middle/the independents away from Republicans.  But what about the legal case against Trump?  George Washington law professor Jonathan Turley called it what it is:  "legally pathetic."

Democrats Have Nothing — President Trump Did Nothing Wrong — But They Will Arrest Him Anyway.  The world is in a financial meltdown right now and our economy is on the brink of collapse.  This is due to Biden's actions.  Now the criminals running our government want to arrest a good man who did nothing wrong because he threatens their power.  The GOP RINOs tried to stop candidate Trump from winning the nomination in 2016, they couldn't.  Hillary called Trump and his supporters "deplorable" and he beat her.  Obama spied on Trump, and he got caught.  The Obama gang attempted a coup of the Trump Administration, it failed, Trump did nothing wrong.  The Democrats impeached him for daring to ask about the Bidens' actions in Ukraine, he was doing his duty, the Bidens were taking millions from foreigners in bribes and favors.  The Chinese drop COVID-19 with the Deep State doctors' help, they attempt to cover it up, Fauci and gang got caught.  President Trump won millions more votes than any President in history in the 2020 election so they stole it from him.

Manhattan DA Pursuing Felony Against Trump Has History of Reducing Charges Against Others.  Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is expected to bring felony charges against former President Donald Trump next week related to payments made in 2016 to settle rumors of an extramarital affair.  The charges, which Bragg upgraded from a misdemeanor class, stand in stark contrast to the prosecutor's history of reducing charges against the majority of cases on his watch.  Since taking office last year, DA Bragg has downgraded approximately 52 percent of all cases brought before his office.  A significant portion of these cases involved reducing felony charges to misdemeanors.  Under Bragg's predecessor, less than 40 percent of cases were comprised of similar downgrades.

George Soros Exposed as Major Force Behind Trump's Prosecution and Imminent Arrest.  President Donald Trump reacted to the news of his imminent arrest in New York by pointing out that the Manhattan District Attorney's office's "leader is funded by George Soros."  Manhattan D.A. Alvin Bragg, whom Donald Trump is referring to in his post, was elected in November 2021 with indirect backing from left-wing billionaire George Soros, who gave $1 million to the Color of Change PAC, which spent it to elect Bragg.  The Color of Change PAC is a radical activist group that describes itself as "the nation's largest online racial justice organization."  Fox News reported that Soros has "funneled $40 million dollars into district attorney campaigns nationwide," including Bragg's.  Former New York Police Commissioner Bill Bratton spoke out against the "$1 million donation that Hungarian-born philanthropist Soros gave to the Color of Change political action committee, which supported Bragg," the New York Post reported.

Trump Puts out a Post That Says Everything About His Legal Situation.  As RedState reported, Donald Trump put a statement on Saturday morning confirming that his indictment and arrest are imminent.  According to the former president, he'll be taken into custody on Tuesday after the Manhattan District Attorney's office charges him over a hush money payment made to Stormy Daniels prior to the 2016 election.  The contention is that Trump broke the law by ordering Michael Cohen to make the payment, which was ultimately classified as a legal expense.  New York prosecutors assert that election laws were broken because it was actually a campaign expense meant to affect the election.  As a legal matter, it's incredibly weak, and it relies on a never-before-tried legal theory to upgrade the charge to a felony.  That would bypass the statute of limitations and put jail time in play for the former president.  Now, Trump is speaking out further, and I believe his latest Truth Social post says everything about his legal situation.  [Tweet]

Professor Turley exposes the incredible weakness of the Trump indictment.  Professor Jonathan Turley, one of the few brave honest liberals in academia, is far too nice a person to speak with utter contempt in his voice.  But the substance of what he has to say about the indictment and pending arrest of former President Donald J. Trump exposes contemptible behavior on the part of the New State justice system.  In two brief clips from an interview he did Saturday with Molly Line of Fox News, he exposes the flimsiness of the case against Trump and the illicit origin of the indictment.  First, how Trump could end up convicted even though the charges are likely to get thrown out on appeal: [...]

A Trump arrest will just underline the Deep State's crackdown on freedom.  What does this forthcoming indictment signal if not the establishment's intent on rigging the 2024 presidential election by means of a phony-baloney political indictment?  Consider the reaction of Prof. Alan Dershowitz to a Trump indictment based on the Stormy Daniels matter, long ago buried, but now revived by Manhattan D.A. Bragg.  This is "targeted injustice" according to Dershowitz.  Note that only John Solomon's Just the News website carried Prof. Dershowitz's response.  Generally, the media — as usual — are compliant with a Deep State move against the former president.  What better indication of how utterly unjust the justice system in deep red country when it comes to matters concerning Mr.Trump?  Mr. Trump predicts he will be placed under arrest Tuesday, March 21, and calls on supporters to protest.  Look for "Jan. 6" to be replaced by "Mar. 21" as the date of MAGA "insurrection" by the totalitarian forces in the country.

GOP Presidential Hopeful Responds to Possible Donald Trump Arrest: 'Dark Moment'.  Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy said that rumors and reports claiming former President Donald Trump could be arrested soon are a "dark moment" in U.S. history.  "It is un-American for the ruling party to use police power to arrest its political rivals," Ramaswamy, a tech entrepreneur who recently declared his GOP candidacy, wrote on Twitter Saturday.  "If a Republican prosecutor in 2004 had used a campaign finance technicality to arrest then-candidate John Kerry while Bush & Cheney were in power, liberals would have cried foul — and rightly so."  "This will mark a dark moment in American history and will undermine public trust in our electoral system itself," Ramaswamy also wrote.  "I call on the Manhattan District Attorney to reconsider this action and to put aside partisan politics in service of preserving our Constitutional republic."  Later on Saturday, Ramaswamy called on former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who announced a Republican run for president, and Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — who is also reportedly mulling a presidential bid — to denounce Bragg.

Get ready for Manhattan DA's made-for-TV Trump prosecution: high on ratings, but short on the law.  "The moment that we are waiting for, we made it to the finale together" — those familiar words from "America's Got Talent" — could well be the opening line for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg next week, when he is expected to unveil an indictment of former President Trump.  With Trump's reported announcement that he expects to be arrested on Tuesday, it would be a fitting curtain raiser for a case that has developed more like a television production than a criminal prosecution.  Indeed, this indictment was repeatedly rejected only to be brought back by popular demand.  Trump faces serious legal threats in the ongoing Mar-a-Lago investigation.  But the New York case would be easily dismissed outside of a jurisdiction like New York, where Bragg can count on highly motivated judges and jurors.  Although it may be politically popular, the case is legally pathetic.  Bragg is struggling to twist state laws to effectively prosecute a federal case long ago rejected by the Justice Department against Trump over his payment of "hush money" to former stripper Stormy Daniels.

Government Tyrants Play with Fire.  The communist thugs controlling America's legal system have chosen to cross the Rubicon, it seems.  President Trump says he will be arrested Tuesday now that New York City's corrupt, Soros-funded district attorney has cooked up some cockamamie criminal indictment against him involving Stormy Daniels — the same political pawn who was already ordered to pay the president 300,000 dollars in legal fees as restitution in a prior case.  If anyone needed further evidence that we reside under a post-constitutional Uniparty regime with utter disdain for the rule of law, add this to the long list of government crimes and usurpations committed against the American people.  No doubt the politicians and their State-controlled agents in the press will actually hail President Trump's arrest as shimmering validation that "no one is above the law."  What poppycock!

A Subtle Way for Establishment Republicans to Sabotage Trump.  Having recently re-elected Mitt Romney's niece to the chair of the National Republican Committee, the press is giving Donald Trump the Ron Paul treatment, which is to say pretending he doesn't exist.  Not the least of these media outlets is FOX News, now spearheaded by Rupert Murdoch's liberal son and failed vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan.  Similarly, in the mold of Uncle Mitt and Reince Priebus, Ronna Romney McDaniel is now promoting the National Republican Committee's pursuit of a loyalty pledge, binding campaigns to support whomever the press elevates to the nomination as a prerequisite to participate in debates.  Let's hope this loyalty pledge goes farther than the loyalty of Florida governor Ron DeSantis.  In 2018, DeSantis couldn't slap on another piece of Trump flair fast enough.  Now he treats MAGA like leprosy.

Judge Overseeing Trump Georgia Grand Jury Weighs in on Crazy Forewoman's Media Tour.  The judge overseeing the Georgia special grand jury weighed in on the crazy forewoman who went on a media tour last week.  To be clear, the Georgia special grand jury cannot bring any indictments, they can only recommend indictments and District Attorney Fanni Willis would then have to pursue the case.  Fulton County judge Robert C.  McBurney recently ordered parts of the grand jury report in the garbage Trump 2020 election investigation to be released as the prosecutor considers charges against Trump and his allies.  The grand jury concluded that "one or more witnesses" lied under oath and recommended perjury indictments.

I not a lawyer or a judge, but this is a Bill of Attainder:
Chinese Spy Lover Eric Swalwell Proposes Bill to Ban Trump From U.S.  Capitol.  Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif), who was kicked off the House Select Committee on Intelligence because of his years-long affair with a Chinese spy, is trying to stay in the headlines by proposing a plan to keep former President Trump out of the Capitol.  The bill, introduced by Rep. Nikema Williams (D-GA), would permanently bar Trump and several top aides from the Capitol because of their attempt to "undermine and overturn the 2020 presidential election."  The proposal asks the House and Senate Sergeant at Arms and the U.S.  Capitol Police to take "such actions as may be necessary" to keep Trump from entering the halls of Congress forever.

Why the 2020 Election was Unverifiable.  Joe Biden acquired his job through a legal process.  However, he did not earn enough verifiable votes to justify the certifications in six key swing states.  This issue is addressed in my new book, but here is some of my reasoning.  I have limited myself to one example of unverifiable votes for each of those swing states. [...] Before the 2020 election, the Michigan Secretary of State, Jocelyn Benson, implemented an illegal procedure that seriously undermined the integrity of the election.  Benson announced that all signatures would be presumptively valid — even if they were only slightly similar to registration signatures.  The announcement was, effectively, an invitation to fraudsters to grab all the unused ballot applications they could find or buy; and fill them out and send them in.  Trump opposed Benson's new procedure, and he ended up winning in court — four months after the election.  In March, 2021, State Court of Claims Judge Christopher Murray:  "Nowhere in this state's election law has the Legislature indicated that signatures are to be presumed valid..."  By using an illegal standard for processing of signatures, and by announcing that new standard in advance so that fraudsters could exploit it, Benson effectively invalidated the Michigan election certification.

Atlanta, GA, "Special Grand Jury" Foreperson Speaks to MSNBC About Their Trump Investigation.  Putting aside the rules of grand juries speaking to media that do not apply because the Fulton County, GA, group was not a regular grand jury — but rather a "special grand jury", you might be interested to watch the foreperson of the group speak to MSNBC.  [Video clip] [...] In May of 2022 Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis assembled what is called a "special grand jury" to review claims that President Donald Trump attempted to coerce Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to find votes and assist him in winning the November 2020 election.  The "special grand jury" exists outside the traditional justice system and as an outcome cannot produce indictments.  It was assembled, for all intents and purposes, as a quasi-grand jury with the intent on creating a continual political effort through a process best described as lawfare.

Georgia Grand Jury's Report Is Garbage Because Fulton County D.A. Fed Them Garbage To 'Get Trump'.  "Grand jury says Trump's election team committed perjury."  Without searching for the legacy media's coverage of today's release of a handful of pages from the report compiled by the Fulton County, Ga.  Special Purpose Grand Jury, I tapped out that mock headline.  Sure enough, the corporate press remains predictable.  "Georgia grand jury: 'Perjury may have been committed' in Trump election probe," The Washington Post headed its coverage.  "Georgia Grand Jury in Trump Inquiry Sees Signs of Perjury By Witnesses," The New York Times echoed.  USA Today similarly headlined its reporting, "Georgia Grand Jury Recommends Perjury Charges for Unnamed Witnesses in Trump Investigation."  But color me skeptical that any perjury occurred — because of what the Special Purpose Grand Jury said on page two of its report and because of what the partisan Fulton County D.A., Democrat Fani Willis, said in various court filings related to her "investigation."

Rep. Waltz Says DOD Told Him China Spy Balloons Crossed US During Trump Years But Gen. Mattis Did Not Tell Trump.  Rep. Mike Waltz (R-FL) joined Stuart Varney on Monday morning on FOX Business Network.  Rep Waltz says current Pentagon officials briefed him over the weekend and said Chinese spy balloons crossed over Texas and Florida during the Trump years.  Waltz then dropped this bomb.  Rep. Waltz said that General Mattis was Secretary of Defense at the time and decided not to inform President Trump because the Pentagon thought Trump was "too provocative and aggressive!"  This is a treason if true.  Mattis put the US in danger, offered comfort to the enemy, allowed Chinese spying on US installations, and then hid this from his superiors, including the President of the United States.

The Stench of Fascism Is Suffocating our Democracy.  The Democrats have targeted their chief political opponent Donald Trump, who received 74 million votes in the last election, with the longest, most determined, and most vicious campaign of character assassination in modern history, and possibly ever.  They have warned other potential presidential contenders like Governor Ron DeSantis that they will get the same treatment.  They have smeared Republicans as racists, white supremacists and white nationalists, and has done this in the service of rigged elections in its drive to establish a one-party state.

Who is running our government?  Classified documents, everywhere, and by everyone: Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, Mike Pence... and the list keeps growing.  Now there are questions about Barack Obama, who took 30,000,000 documents to his Presidential library (it's doubtful he even knows what he has) and who has ignored the National Archive's requests for their return.  This is just more evidence of what the American people have learned really exists: The Deep State.  The Deep State successfully ousted Trump with constant leaks and political chicanery against a sitting president, all to foment distrust and dishonor, and to make his life and office a living Hades.  Pelosi's Congress was no slouch either and impeached him a second time, even after he left office (with the first impeachment over a phone call!).

50 ways for experts to lose their expertise.  It turns out that everyone was lying, including those 50 experts who called the laptop Russian misinformation.  Can't wait to see one of the 50 explain it to Representative Jim Jordan now that Hunter Biden admitted the laptop is his.  Wouldn't you love to see the Trump-Biden second debate now that we know that it was his laptop?  As you may remember, President Trump kept bringing up Hunter and Biden the experts.  In other words, the whole Russia-Trump story, from collusion to the laptop to Hamilton 68, was fake.

Another Trump-hating FBI lovebird flies out of the woodwork.  A certain amount of foofaraw came about when FBI bigshots Peter Strzok and Lisa Page were caught sending Trump-hating text-messages while in the throes of an extramarital affair.  And rightly, most of the attention went to the pair's illegal use of government property and underhanded Borgia-style machinations against the incoming U.S. president.  But their openly out there extramarital affair is worth noting, too.  Under FBI regulations, adulterous affairs are a firing offense, given that such behavior puts national security at risk and automatically leads to the loss of one's security clearance.  There's a lot of this going on at that troubled wokester agency now that a new lovebird case has emerged in the bust of FBI counterintelligence chief Charles McGonigal, yet nobody seems to be stopping it.  Sure enough, an angry mistress has emerged in McGonigal's case and she was reportedly instrumental in exposing his influence-peddling on behalf of a sanctioned Russian oligarch.

Classified Documents Are A New Potential Trap For Any Politician Who Crosses The Deep State.  Procedural complaints about classified documents are quickly turning into a catch-all trap that can depose duly elected officials, especially those tasked with oversight of U.S. intelligence agencies.  Last August, an unprecedented classified document complaint provided a pretext for an FBI raid on former President Donald Trump's home, in an eerie echo of the use of police and military resources against opposing politicians typical of banana republics.  That administrative power flex has now been turned into the unprecedented appointment of three special counsels, most recently against the deeply unpopular current Democrat Party figurehead, Joe Biden.  This all reverses the American structure of elected officials maintaining oversight of unelected permanent administrators.  Instead, we now have unelected bureaucrats performing selective "oversight" of elected officials.

Clinton-appointed judge slaps Trump with nearly $1M penalty for 'frivolous' lawsuit against Hillary.  A federal judge has ordered former President Donald J. Trump and his lawyer to pay nearly $1 million in sanctions to cover legal costs for failed Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and other defendants in a failed lawsuit against them for promoting the Russia collusion hoax.  On Thursday night, US District Judge Donald Middlebrooks tore into Trump and attorney Alina Habba in a blistering 46-page filing that, in addition to blasting them for abusing the courts, ordered that the $938,000 financial penalty be paid.  "This case should never have been brought," wrote the Bill Clinton appointee.

Destroying American Democracy — An Inside Job.  Today we know that the "Russia hoax" was a lie.  After a 22-month investigation, no evidence of collusion between any element of the Trump campaign and Russia was uncovered.  The supposedly compromising evidence had never existed; the information in the "Steele dossier" was false — and the FBI had known it was from the start.  The entire fabrication had been an attempt to attack and politically weaken Trump.

Just What Kind Of A Republican Is Mitch McConnell?  Following the November 2022 midterm election fiasco, the evidence pointed even more strongly to an ongoing organized conspiracy among Republicans.  Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Republican National Committee Chair Ronna Romney McDaniel deliberately tanked the midterms by denying funding and support personnel to pro-Trump candidates in many states, including Nevada, Arizona, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania.  McConnell foolishly diverted $9 million to support Lisa Murkowski, a Republican, over Kelly Tshibaka another Republican. [...] Why?  Murkowski voted to impeach President Trump, while Tshibaka supported the former president.  The inescapable conclusion seems to be that Republican leadership only supports candidates that support them, as opposed to those who support America and Americans.

Rebellion Against the People.  While it's important to justify one's position, to provide proof and evidence of crimes, betrayals and treason, I believe we're past the discovery phase and need to move on to the resolution.  What more do we need to know than the CIA has been involved in some of the most treacherous acts committed against the republic, that they've had their hands in the dirtiest of business?  What more do we need to know than the FBI has worked with social media companies to install a worthless, feckless president, perpetrating a treasonous coup in the guise of an election?  All of this, while recently verified, was information we had long since accepted as true.  Such villainous acts were known in 1992 when Vicki Weaver was shot down by a government sniper while holding her infant at Ruby Ridge.  Does that not speak of the inhumanity with which the government views all of us with dissenting views, those who will not simply obey every outrageous law or dictate?  To domestic enemies, patriots are scum.  This is a division between the people and those entrusted with power that cannot be ignored without the absolute destruction of the republic in all but name.  That is the current state of the union and has been, I would venture, since 1963.

The Coming Split.  Trump was the first president since Ronald Reagan (or some would argue, since earlier than that) who seemed to appreciate the dangers of unaccountable, unlimited, deep-state government.  And I'm willing to bet he'd appreciate those dangers a lot more in a second term, having fallen victim to them himself in the 2020 election.  But, despite the obvious differences, we're heading for a 1912-repeat, in which the Republican Party ignores its own voters.  The Republican machine has no intention of letting us choose Trump again: He is not a uniparty team player.  They'd rather lose an election to the Democrats, their brothers in crime, than win with Trump.  That leads us to the inevitable question:  What should we do when a majority of Republicans want Trump, but the Republican Party says we can't have him?  Do we knuckle under and vote for Ron DeSantis because he would be vastly better than any Democrat?

Stewart Rhodes warns Trump is next for politically motivated prosecution.  Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the Oath Keepers militia who has been convicted of seditious conspiracy in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, said his case is a harbinger of what the Justice Department has in store for former President Donald Trump.  The former Army paratrooper and Yale Law School graduate turned militia leader warned that his conviction on the rare Civil War-era charge has set an ominous precedent that should alarm conservatives.  "Their success in my trial is paving the way for them to keep rolling through other people building up to Trump," Rhodes told The Washington Times.  "It was a warmup for what they're going to do.  That's what that was:  a political show trial."

Dems Vote to Release Six Years of Trump Tax Returns in Stunning Invasion of Privacy.  Add yet another government overreach to the "Things You Didn't Think Could Happen in America" file:  Democrats on the lame-duck House and Ways and Means Committee voted Tuesday to release six years of former President Donald Trump's tax returns. [...] But wait, you say to yourself, that's not possible; your tax returns are private by federal law, and therefore protected from release.  The Dems of course found a sleazy way around that.  The tax code allows the committee to look at people's tax returns to provide "oversight" of the Internal Revenue Service, and by writing an official report on their findings, then those returns can legally become public as part of the report.

Washington DC Labels Donald Trump an "Enemy of the State" — [but] "That's Why We Voted for Him".  The entire reason why CTH supported Donald J Trump in 2015 and forward was because he was a disruption to the DC system that few understood as deeply as an assembled bunch of politically homeless people right here on these pages and across America.  Since that original moment, Trump's presence has done exactly what we always knew it would do, EXPOSE THE CORRUPTION.  Trump is the Rosetta Stone, the physical embodiment of a massive unrepresented middle-class assembly that despises Washington DC and the corrupt political establishment they represent.  Republicans and Democrats are two wings of the same vulture feeding on the carcass of the American worker, or what the FBI calls "domestic extremists," people who just want to be left [...] alone.

Alan Dershowitz dismisses Jan. 6 committee's Trump referral: 'Worthless piece of paper'.  Harvard Law School Professor Alan Dershowitz denounced the Jan. 6 committee as a "kangaroo court" that produced a worthless report that should be "thrown in the wastebasket."  In an interview Monday evening on Newsmax TV, the eminent lawyer said that "not only is [the Justice Department] not obligated to do anything, it is obligated not to do anything" in response to the panel's recommendations Monday that former President Donald Trump be prosecuted.  According to Mr. Dershowitz, the panel operated against the spirit of one of only two civil-liberties provisions in the original Constitution, before the Bill of Rights was added — a ban on "bills of attainder."

10 Steps to Save America.  Americans distrust the "swamp," administrative state, or deep state.  Call what you will, the Washington nexus of bureaucracies, media, and lobbyists has created a huge, unelected permanent army of auditors, regulators, investigators, and punishers, all mostly exempt from audit and accountability and without fear of their elected overseers.  The easiest solution is to break up concentrations of power.  Transfer out of Washington, in this age of zoom and telecommunications, major cabinet departments like Health and Human Services, Energy, or Agriculture into the hinterland.  Restore the idea that lying to Congress, feigning amnesia, or pleading ignorance under oath to Congress or federal investigators or in depositions is a prosecutable felony with jail time.

Cleveland: FBI Lied About The Hunter Biden Laptop Story To Steal The Election From Trump.  "Our FBI lied to the media to get them to censor a story that directly impacted the 2020 election.  This is outrageous and you have to continue on to look at the other breadcrumbs we have," Federalist Legal Correspondent Margot Cleveland said on "I'm Right with Jesse Kelly."  [Video clip]

A Corrupt, Evil Regime Intent on Imprisoning Trump.  Gunrunner, never-charged criminal, political hack, and perpetually aggrieved former attorney general Eric Holder is back, bloviating about President Trump being imminently arrested.  Given that we live in post-Republic times and that the Department of (in)Justice has exhibited no shame or remorse in its years-long campaign of political persecution and partisan double-standards, I'll take Obama's contemptible "wingman" at his word just this once.  So Democrats, Establishment Republicans, and the Deep State Leviathan plan on humiliating President Trump by frog-marching him before the world and tossing him in the clink.  So what?  They've been telegraphing this play for months, if not years.  We get it.  The U.S. government is irredeemably corrupt, we've officially entered banana republic territory, and all the worst tyrants in D.C. plan on rounding up and punishing anyone brave enough to fight back or dissent.

Trump Isn't The Nation's Greatest Threat To Democracy.  His Exile Is.  Former President Donald Trump is back as a candidate, but after leaving the White House, he never left the political arena — and therefore, the investigations designed to send him into political exile never let up either.  Trump's bid for a nonconsecutive second term is faced with the same level of resistance that hampered his first, when Beltway actors weaponized the levers of government to politically terminate their public enemy number one, beginning from before day one.  In February last year, Trump became the first and only president to undergo an impeachment trial in the Senate after he had already left office.  One week before Joe Biden took the presidential oath, Trump was hit with a snap impeachment from House Democrats who sought to indict the outgoing president for the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021.

Trump v. Biden, the FBI, and the Deep State.  It's no secret that deeply and thoroughly embedded within our once well-reputed federal agencies, are members of what we colloquially call, the Deep State — perhaps another moniker ought to be "American Stalinists"?  Filed yesterday, the courts handling the Mar-a-Lago raid issued a new ruling.  The per curiam 21-page opinion in Donald J. Trump v. United States of America decision overturns the federal district court's appointment of a special master to review the documents seized by the politicized FBI at the direction of the viciously-partisan attorney general, Merrick Garland.  (Can you believe this man almost became a Supreme Court justice?)  Strangely, I don't find the plaintiff and defendant an accurate reflection of reality; rather it should read something like Trump v. the American Stalinists, or Trump v. Biden, Obama, and Garland.

Democrats Now Have Trump's Tax Returns.  The battle over Donald Trump's tax returns has concluded, and it will either be a bombshell development or a tremendous deafening silence, the latter of which has been the end to many hit pieces and innuendos of impropriety about the former president.  Democrats now have Trump's tax returns — which has been an obsessive topic among members of the media and the Democratic Party.  Liberals are convinced that some felonious activity is hidden within the pages of these financial documents.  Trump has fought tenaciously against legal actions forcing him to release these files, but his last stand — the Supreme Court — was unsuccessful.

The Trump Special Counsel is Another Clinton Payback.  When Bruce Wasserstein, a billionaire backer of the Clintons, provided a $25 million donation to Harvard Law, future Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan, then serving as dean, welcomed it.  The gift built on the Wasserstein Fellows Program already established at Harvard Law which brought "outstanding public interest lawyers" to Harvard and provided them stipends of up to $24,000 to meet with and influence students toward social justice at the prestigious law school.  When Jack Smith became a Wasserstein Fellow, even while, unironically, serving as head of the Department of Justice's Public Integrity Section, seemingly soliciting and accepting a grant funded by a leftist billionaire (but who watches the integrity of the head of the Public Integrity Section) he joined a list of leftist activist lawyers working for the ACLU, Earthjustice, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, Soros' Open Society, Catholic Charities and the UN.

Appointment of Special Counsel Amounts to Election Interference and Sets Dangerous Precedent.  While Republicans kicked off the 2024 presidential race with the announcement that Donald Trump was running for president, in perhaps the ultimate sign of our ignominious times, Democrats, in effect, kicked off their half of the contest three days later by appointing a special counsel to escalate their political prosecution of him.  This is where "our democracy" stands today:  with its purported defenders engaging in the singularly anti-democratic act of siccing a hyper-politicized law enforcement apparatus on a candidate for the highest elected office, on dubious grounds, thereby subverting the political process by which we decide who represents us.  At a minimum, no doubt to an approving President Joe Biden, his law enforcement arm is now engaged in what amounts to election interference against arguably the president's top challenger — ironically probing in part then-President Trump's alleged interference with the transfer of power in 2020, when Trump could make the case the Deep State did the same to him from the inception of Russiagate in 2016 onward.  Worse, with Attorney General Merrick Garland's appointment of Jack Smith as special counsel, the prospect of the former president being charged and convicted of something, anything, is more real than at any time during the perpetual campaign to purge Trump from the body politic.

The coup-attempt party.  A political light bulb went on regarding Adam Schiff's remark on CNN's "State of the Union" as reported by Breitbart's Pam Key.  In the interview, Schiff again mentioned the Russia hoax he has promoted for five years, if not longer.  (Note that Dana Bash did not call Schiff on this huge lie.).  With Schiff continuing to assert this gross falsehood, the Democrat Party has, for years, switched from being a loyal opposition party to priding itself as a party of the permanently-attempted coup.  How dumb of me not to have taken seriously the Democrat cries of "Resistance," as of the Trump inauguration, January 20, 2017 — but I then understood such cries to be figurative and fanciful references of a politically romantic nature.  But where were the Republican political experts like House Speaker Paul Ryan back in early 2017 when the "Resistance" was gearing up?  Alas, the anti-Trump Ryan was silently supporting the Resistance.  How could the Democrats have succeeded with the Mueller probe if Ryan had spoken out forcefully against what was apparently a coup attempt to oust the legitimately-elected president?

There's Something Fishy About the Special Counsel Investigating Trump.  Last week, the Biden administration's Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed special counsel Jack Smith to investigate former President Donald Trump, days after President Joe Biden's top GOP rival declared a third bid for the presidency.  Garland's appointment marks the naming of the third special counsel in five years to examine Trump-related matters.  But this particular pick has had some major misfires, one of which took out a high-profile potential Republican presidential candidate.  More than a decade ago, under President Barack Obama's leadership, Attorney General Eric Holder picked Smith to oversee the Justice Department's public integrity section.  A few years later, Smith's unit convicted former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, a Republican, in 2014 on corruption charges for accepting over $165,000 in gifts and loans from an affluent businessman in exchange for promoting a dietary supplement.  However, two years went by, and the Supreme Court overturned the conviction in a unanimous ruling that found that the jury was given faulty instructions about what constitutes bribery under federal law.

Supreme Court smacks Trump.  Consider, please: the high court ruled, in Dobbs, that a right to abortion, created in Roe v. Wade, is nowhere found in the Constitution of the United States.  On November 22, half a year later, the high court stated, effectively, that a house of Congress has a right, found nowhere in the Constitution, to the tax returns of a president of the country.  To boot, the justices bestow such a right on a viciously partisan panel that was established to probe the four-hour disturbance at the Capitol on January 6, 2021 — and not the tax returns of the former president.  Not only should the justices have dismissed the action against Mr. Trump as the fruit of a poisonous House panel, but the Court should have denounced the subpoena demanding tax records as a bill of attainder — and noted that if tax records for a former president are subject to (unlawful) congressional subpoena, who among the people is protected against a tyrannical Legislature serving a dictatorial administration, with SWAT teams sent forth by a thuggish FBI to enforce totalitarian subpoenas?

It's Trump vs. the Establishment All Over Again.  Since the "red wave" fizzled out, a consensus has quickly emerged in the media that Donald Trump is no longer a viable political force.  The newly anointed prince of the Right, according to the tastemakers, is Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, Trump's more palatable, less chaotic protégé.  But DeSantis and Trump offer two very different things.  DeSantis is a conventional politician with Trump-like qualities, who can, at least according to his fan base, build a popular majority that is beyond Trump's reach.  Trump is a radical outsider to a rigged, illegitimate political system with which he has been at war for seven years, and which his supporters see as an existential threat to their way of life.

Dueling Investigations.  Scott noted earlier that Merrick Garland has appointed a special counsel, Jack Smith, to torment Donald Trump.  Garland said, I assume with a straight face:  ["]It also allows prosecutors and agents to continue their work expeditiously, and to make decisions indisputably guided only by the facts and the law.["]  Indisputably!  Right.  Smith will be returning to Washington from The Hague, where he is "chief prosecutor for the special court."  That will be good training for his role as the Democratic Party's agent in destroying Donald Trump.  The Democrats have been planning on indicting Trump for a long time, and appointing a special counsel is part of their plan.  It allows them to wash their hands of the investigation, pretending that impartial justice is simply taking its course.  For the record, Smith's charge includes both the events of January 6, 2021, and the innocuous documents that Trump stashed in his Mar-a-Lago basement.

Biden Says He's 'Making Sure' Trump Will Not Become President Again.  Old Joe Biden, the ostensible president of the United States, on Wednesday held one of his Potemkin press conferences before the gathering of sycophants and propagandists known as the White House press corps.  When a reporter said that Trump's movement was "still very strong," Biden laughed derisively and said, "Oh yeah?"  He added, "Well, we just have to demonstrate that he will not take power by — if we — if he does run.  I'm making sure he, under legitimate efforts of our Constitution, does not become the next President again."  How can he make sure of that?  He didn't say, and of course the sycophants didn't ask.

What Really Happened in the Midterms and Why.  By every account, this was a strange election.  Having had some time to think about it, I have determined the best explanation for November 8 is that this midterm election was intended to turn out pretty much the way it did.  Who intended it?  The Republican establishment.  Why?  To get rid of Trump. [...] This was a midterm election, so there are no real consequences beyond the control of Congress.  This means that if you can control one house, even by a slim margin, you can stall the agenda of the other side.  How large a majority you have is secondary and, in the long view, not that meaningful.  The establishment Republicans were willing to settle for less than expected numbers in the House to eradicate what they see as by far their biggest problem.  This was their chance to bury Trump and avoid a great deal of damaging unpleasantness at very low to no real cost.

It's been two years since 51 intelligence agents interfered with an election — they still won't apologize.  Exactly two years ago, on October 19, 2020, one of the dirtiest tricks in electoral history was played on the American people by 51 former intelligence officials, who used the false alarm of "Russian interference" to stop Donald Trump winning a second term as president.  Using the institutional weight of their former esteemed roles, they signed a dishonest letter to mislead voters 15 days before the election, claiming that material from Hunter Biden's laptop published by the New York Post "has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation."  In their expert opinion, "the Russians are involved in the Hunter Biden email issue."  Russia was "trying to influence how Americans vote in this election ... Moscow [will] pull out the stops to do anything possible to help Trump win and/or to weaken Biden should he win.  "A 'laptop op' fits the bill, as the publication of the emails are [sic] clearly designed to discredit Biden ... It is high time that Russia stops interfering in our democracy."  It was all a lie.  Their letter was the culprit "interfering with democracy" in broad daylight.  Not one of the 51 had seen any material from the laptop or bothered asking for it, [...]

Why Trump Must Run.  The final take on the disastrous Mar-a-Lago raid and its noxious aftermath — the latest in a series of "killing blows" aimed at Donald Trump and the movement he created — is that Trump must run once again for president and must win.  The logic behind this is simple:  the Deep State, in its slow, dull-witted, and utterly inept way, is making its big move, and Trump is the only visible figure who can stand against this.  The Left is well aware of this, and is terrified.

The Establishment's Response to Trump's Presidency.  In late July 2016, FBI Director James Comey notified certain members of the Obama White House, along with Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, about the FBI's opening of the "Crossfire Hurricane" investigation into the presidential campaign of then-candidate Donald Trump.  CIA Director John Brennan was already aware of the investigation since he was the one who had been providing the FBI with information regarding the Trump campaign. [...] But here's the thing.  The Intelligence Community (IC), the Obama administration, and the political establishment never expected Trump to win.  And when he did win, the IC was suddenly faced with a very real problem: How would they properly cover up their actions?  And how would they hobble the new Trump administration?  As it turns out, the timeline of their actions in the first few months of 2017 tells a story; it's one of an establishment response to the very real threat that the young Trump administration presented to the long-standing — and corrupt — political structure of our nation.

Connecting the 87,000 Dots between Trump and You.  Letitia James, the New York attorney general, has filed a civil lawsuit of $250 million against Donald Trump, his children, and the Trump Organization.  She alleges "Staggering Fraud." [...] There is something deeper going on here.  There is more than James doing this for political reasons.  Put all the pieces of the puzzle together, and we have a clear picture of the ulterior motives of the entire Democrat party.  Going back to the 2020 election, regardless of whether the truth about election fraud is real or not, why are the Democrats so fearful of Donald Trump running again?  If he was beaten as badly as they claim, by seven million popular votes, he should be history.  Apparently, he's not.  There is much truth to his claim that they are after the citizens of the United States and he is in the way.

Letitia James parades her economic and entrepreneurial illiteracy.  For years, most of the media, the federal Justice Department, and other Democrats have waged a vendetta against Donald Trump, perpetuating endless investigations in search of crimes.  So far, their efforts have failed, but that's not stopping another leftwing loon from boarding the Trump Derangement Syndrome train.  Since New York Attorney General Leticia James, could not find a crime, she has promised voters that she would destroy Trump, and now since election is coming soon, she's suing Trump and his family for alleged fraud for supposedly claiming their property was worth more than it is.  If the Trumps committed bank fraud, as James says, they would have sued him and filed a criminal referral on him, but they did not.  The state was not a victim, nor the bank, nor the citizens of New York, so why is she suing?

The Trump Raid — We're Missing the Point.  Seeking to prove that Trump did nothing wrong in possessing these documents is like trying to establish that the victims of Stalin's show trials weren't in fact Trotskyites.  Well, of course they weren't.  But Stalin didn't care if his enemies — perceived or real — were Trotskyites or "counter-revolutionaries."  What mattered to him was that they were his enemies.  And that's why we call their legal proceedings "show trials."  They weren't exercises in justice; they were facades for political suppression.  Did Trump commit a crime?  I doubt it.  Democrats have spent six years and tens of millions of dollars investigating virtually every step he's taken in his life.  So far, they've come up with nothing.  Which means that although Trump seems impetuous, he evidently hires excellent lawyers who ensure he always remains within the bounds of the law.  But at the end of the day, the question of Trump's innocence is irrelevant.  Because what we're witnessing is not a legal investigation but a political crusade — aided by the Justice Department — to crush a man it can't stand.  And if we allow the left to win this battle, we will have allowed it to cross a line from which there may be no turning back.  For this isn't about Trump.  It's about the left doing whatever it takes to retain political and ideological control of this country.  As one political commentator has pointed out, Trump represents everything the left hates, everything they've spent 50 years trying to eradicate.

The FBI Paid For Russian Disinformation To Frame Trump.  The FBI put a contributor to the Hillary Clinton campaign's Donald Trump smear dossier on FBI payroll as a confidential human source after investigating Igor Danchenko for allegedly spying for the Russian government, revealed Special Counsel John Durham in a court filing unsealed by a Virginia federal court yesterday.  The filing contains this bombshell and seven other significant details about the Democrat-led plot to use U.S. intelligence agencies to deny Americans the results of their choice for president in 2016.  The FBI made Danchenko a confidential human source, providing him and the FBI's use of him "national security" cover, in March 2017 and terminated that designation in October 2020, according to the court filing unsealed on Sept. 13.  Danchenko is the originator of the false claim trumpeted all over global media that Donald Trump told prostitutes to pee on beds the Obamas had slept in in a Russian hotel.

The DOJ's opposition to the special master exposes a nefarious motive.  When the federal judge ordered a special master to review the documents seized from Mar-a-Lago to determine whether the FBI possessed documents subject to "attorney-client and/or executive privilege" claims, I considered it a Pyrrhic victory because the DOJ had already reviewed all the documents.  I was more interested in whether the DOJ insisted that the appointed special master have a security clearance to review for classified or top-secret material.  Failing to do so would be a giveaway that the whole "classified information" claim was a scam.  On Thursday, however, the DOJ went one step further and did something that, to my mind, strongly indicates that its raid on Mar-a-Lago was intended to obtain and protect information that would be embarrassing to Obama, Biden, and the Deep State.

Clinton-Appointed Judge Dismisses Trump Lawsuit Against Hillary Clinton and FBI Crooks Who Manufactured Russia Collusion Hoax.  In April President Trump requested the Clinton-appointed judge overseeing his Russiagate case against Hillary Clinton and others be removed from the case due to obvious conflicts of interest.  President Trump earlier had sued a number of individuals and former officials for their actions related to the Russiagate hoax and attempted coup of his administration.  Somehow this case was assigned to Clinton-appointed Judge Donald Middlebrooks and Judge Ryon McCabe.  Judge Donald Middlebrooks was appointed by Bill Clinton to the Southern District of Florida in May 1997.  President Trump urged the courts to replace the Clinton judge with someone who is not biased in the case.  Judge Ryon McCabe later recused himself from the case.

For the Deep State, Trump Was Never President.  There is something peculiar going on with the post facto attempts to justify the search of Donald Trump's home.  At first we were told that he had purloined American nuclear secrets, complete with rank speculation that he sold them to the highest bidder.  Then the magistrate who authorized the search warrant ordered the release of a highly redacted supporting affidavit.  The affidavit said nothing about nuclear secrets and also had no specificity about the documents being sought; rather, it showed that the whole affair arose from a spat with the National Archives, the presidential equivalent of overdue library books.  When the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago, evidently they took everything, including personal effects, passports, and a large number of sensitive documents protected by attorney-client privilege.  In a separate lawsuit brought by Trump, another federal judge appointed a special master to review the seized documents.  This decision implicitly recognized that Trump's claims of executive privilege may have some weight.  After this, the leaks changed.  The leakers dropped the nonsense about American nuclear secrets, and said, instead, that Trump possessed a report about an unnamed nation's nuclear capability.

Special Counsel Must Choose: Risk A Russia Hoaxer's Second Acquittal Or Expose More Deep-State Dirt.  Crossfire Hurricane agents never intended to drop their investigation of Donald Trump, and therefore any lies he told the FBI did not affect their decision-making, Igor Danchenko argued in a motion filed on Friday seeking dismissal of the criminal charges pending against him in a Virginia federal court.  With the trial set to start next month, Special Counsel John Durham must now decide whether to acknowledge the deep state's complicity or risk a second acquittal.  Durham charged Danchenko last year with five counts of making false statements to the FBI related to Danchenko's role as Christopher Steele's primary sub-source in the fake dossier the Hillary Clinton team peddled to the FBI and the media.  According to the indictment, Danchenko lied extensively when he provided Steele with supposed intel, and then later made false representations to the FBI during a series of interviews.

Remember that classifying documents usually protects the government, not you.  The late Angelo Codevilla was a brilliant political observer.  A reader reminded me of one of his articles that is singularly appropriate to the time in which we live.  The article, written in 2018, suggests to Trump that, in addition to firing Robert Mueller, instantly order the declassification of every document related in any way to the 2016 election.  Had Trump taken that advice, I'm certain we would today be living in a thriving America enjoying Trump's second term in office.  Aside from that wishful thinking, what's very clear is that bureaucrats too often classify documents not to protect America and Americans, but to protect themselves. [...] Ultimately, what Trump really did wrong was allowing a manifestly biased government process to take place.  He should have trusted the American people with information showing that the federal government is corrupt, possibly irredeemably so.  That he trusted a corrupt government to have an honest outcome reveals the dangerous naiveté that guided Trump during his first term.

When Must a Good Citizen Become a Dissident?  After Facebook's Zuckerberg recently confessed to censoring the New York Post's explosive Hunter Biden "laptop from Hell" story (evidencing a compromised and most likely criminally culpable Biden family) before the 2020 election in response to FBI pressure that the social media giant treat real news as "Russian disinformation" (thereby corroborating that the national security Deep State helped rig the presidential election), the FBI superciliously responded with the equivalent of a teenaged shoulder shrug and a haughty "so what?"  According to the FBI, our domestic spy agency regularly encourages censorship and secretive control over the free flow of information.  No big deal!  Except it is a very big deal.  Recent polling shows that nearly 80% of Americans believe that President Trump would have won re-election had voters "known the truth about Hunter Biden's laptop."  In other words, the Deep State stole an election.

Never Trump's Pursuit of Donald Trump Takes a Dark Turn.  The pursuit of Donald Trump continues apace by those who fancy themselves as Never Trump.  Per RedState's Sunday prior reporting, Adam Kinzinger recently did the one thing that makes him feel relevant by appearing on Meet the Press.  What followed was a ridiculous diatribe accusing Republicans of hypocrisy for wanting Hillary Clinton charged but not Donald Trump regarding the handling of classified information.  Putting aside that Trump was president and had the power of declassification, do you see how the game works?  The rules get changed in order to protect a Democrat, but instead of abiding by that new standard, Republicans are expected to play under the old rules.  Yeah, that's not how any of this works.  It is not hypocritical to want the law applied evenly, and while Clinton should have been charged, she wasn't and that changed things.  Trump should not be held to some arbitrary, "orange man bad" standard when it comes to enforcement of the law.

The Primary Architect of The Trump Targeting Operation Surfaces on ABC News.  For the past five years Mary McCord has been one of a small and select lawfare group organizing the targeting of President Trump.  Mary McCord led the support team who created the Carter Page FISA warrant using the Steele Dossier to replace the required 'Wood's file'.  McCord was the DOJ-NSD official who traveled with DOJ Deputy AG Sally Yates to talk to former White House counsel Don McGhan which weaponized the Flynn-Kislyak call to remove Trump's National Security Advisor.  Mary McCord was the person who organized Alexander Vindman and Eric Ciaramella to construct the first impeachment effort.  Additionally, it was Mary McCord along with her former legal counsel, turned Intelligence Community Inspector General, Michael Atkinson, who changed the ICIG whistleblower rules allowing an anonymous complaint to underpin the false accusations from Ciaramella against Trump.  It was also Mary McCord who was appointed by FISA court Judge James Boasberg as an amici curia to the court, intercepting issues of false information in filings from the DOJ-NSD to the court as constructed by Kevin Clinesmith.

Mark Zuckerberg Admits On Joe Rogan That Facebook Censored The Hunter Laptop Story At The Request Of The FBI.  Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has revealed that before the New York Post broke the Hunter Biden laptop story, the social media giant received a warning from the FBI which prompted Facebook to limit the story's reach on the platform ahead of the 2020 presidential election.  The billionaire tech mogul said the FBI approached Facebook and warned it "be vigilant" before the New York Post story on the contents in Joe Biden's son's laptop.  [Video clip]

Trump plans to take legal action against the DOJ and FBI.  One of the major causes leading up to the American Revolution was the "general warrant."  This was a search warrant that was completely open-ended, allowing the British government official to search anything, anywhere, at any time.  When they ratified the Bill of Rights, they explicitly banned general warrants, requiring that all search warrants must be specific.  The DOJ and FBI, though, went to Mar-a-Lago with a warrant so broad it allowed them to take anything.  Donald Trump has therefore announced that he will be bringing an action against the government alleging his Fourth Amendment rights were violated.

Dems' war on ex-President Donald Trump is without precedent.  When you cross the Rubicon, there is no going back.  Democrats are getting very close to that fateful moment.  Their dream to indict Donald Trump has turned into determination, putting them on a collision course with history.  No president has ever been prosecuted after leaving office, with even Richard Nixon escaping that infamy after Watergate because of how it would tear America apart.  Yet day by day, the evidence shows Dems have liberated themselves from such concerns and are resolved that this time will be different.  The number and fervor of their army of prosecutors reveal a contagious fever, and it often appears they are competing to be the first to file charges.  Will it be Attorney General Merrick Garland, who approved the raid on Mar-a-Lago and also has a separate investigation of Trump regarding events before and after Jan. 6?  Or will the first shot come from Georgia, where the Fulton County district attorney is using a special-purpose grand jury to investigate "election interference" in the state by Trump and his associates after the 2020 election?

Unconstitutional security state targets Trump.  Former President Donald Trump will soon be indicted by a federal grand jury.  He is the victim of a federal government that knows no bounds and has assumed powers nowhere granted in the Constitution by the sheer force of its own will.  It has created a security state, replete with three lettered acronymic-named agencies — FBI, CIA, DEA, NSA, DIA — that are nowhere recognized in the Constitution, regularly break the written and moral laws, and are themselves far more dangerous to human freedom than the folks they pursue.  How many laws have the feds broken?  Ha.  No one knows how many criminal laws Congress has enacted.  Estimates range from 4,400 to 5,500.  How can this be?  For starters, members of Congress in both parties rarely if ever read the legislation they enact.  House members were given 15 minutes to read the 132-page Patriot Act, which passed overwhelmingly.  And much federal law is so convoluted that a simple reading leaves even an experienced lawyer and judge bewildered as to how many different behaviors were made criminal by the statute in question.

Spygate Docs and Trump's RICO Lawsuit: Exploring the Real Reasons Behind the FBI Raid.  Following the FBI's raid of the residence of former President Donald Trump, there's been much speculation about the Department of Justice's (DOJ) motivation.  Was it done to prevent Trump from running again in 2024, or was the raid related to documents and evidence surrounding the January 6th Commission?  While these factors may have had some bearing on the FBI's raid, some entirely different, and potentially larger, factors may be at play.  It is likely that the FBI's raid on Trump was driven by intelligence community fears over information that was contained within those documents relating to the RussiaGate hoax.  The DOJ's coordinated FBI raid of Trump was likely related to the potential unsealing and public presentation of this information — particularly in relation to Trump's Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) suit against Hillary Clinton, the DNC, and former FBI officials like former Director James Comey, former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, former agent Peter Strzok, and former FBI lawyer Lisa Page — and his amended RICO suit, which added more defendants.

Quit Pretending.  What is the great offense?  Answer:  The people elected someone who was not approved.  There is one permanent, political and administrative deep state running the United States Government.  It does not matter which color flag rests atop the congressional spire, republican or democrat, it does not change the behavior of the participants.

Understanding Why the Deep State Is Terrified of Trump's Documents.  The CIA, with the knowledge of the Director of National Intelligence, worked with British counterparts starting in the summer of 2015 to collect intelligence on Republican and at least one Democrat candidate.  John Brennan was probably hoping that his proactive steps to help the Hillary Clinton campaign would ensure him taking over as DNI in the new Clinton Administration.  Regardless of motives, the CIA enlisted the British intelligence community to start gathering intelligence on most major Republican candidates and on Bernie Sanders.  This initial phase of intelligence gathering goes beyond opposition research.  The information being gathered identified the key personnel in each campaign and identified the people outside the United States receiving their calls, texts and emails.  This information was turned into intelligence reports that then were passed back to the United States intel community as "liaison reporting."  This was not put into normal classified channels.  This intelligence was put into a SAP, i.e. a Special Access Program.

Sources Say Hillary Clinton Operatives Have Been Secretly Working With DOJ Officials For Several Months To Take Down Trump.  The FBI seized boxes containing records covered by attorney-client privilege and potentially executive privilege during its raid of former President Trump's Mar-a-Lago home, sources familiar with the investigation told Fox News, adding that the Justice Department opposed Trump lawyers' request for the appointment of an independent, special master to review the records.  Sources familiar with the investigation told Fox News Saturday that the former president's team was informed that boxes labeled A-14, A-26, A-43, A-13, A-33, and a set of documents — all seen on the final page of the FBI's property receipt — contained information covered by attorney-client privilege.  The FBI seized classified records from Trump's Palm Beach home during its unprecedented Monday morning raid, including some marked as top secret.  But the former president is disputing the classification, saying the records have been declassified.

The Establishment Has Emerged From the Shadows.  They're Betting That You Won't Care.  Our nation is under siege.  But this siege is not the result of some domestic or foreign terrorist threat.  This siege on our great republic comes from within the very institutions for which we have entrusted our nation with.  The establishment, in concert with their allies within the Department of Justice, have conducted an unanticipated, unprecedented raid on the Mar-a-Lago residence of former President Donald Trump.  Our institutions have betrayed us.  They have engaged in conduct that is more becoming of a third-world country where opposition battalions regularly raid the residences of their political adversary and often kill them.  They have proven themselves wolves, but they have not donned sheep's clothing.  This is a clear attempt to indict Trump for political gain; the establishment has shown their cards, and they know that most will not bat an eye.  A federal grand jury need only find probable cause to believe that Trump broke some nebulous federal statute in order to indict him.

Stop Assuming the Legitimacy of the Corrupt Establishment's Actions.  [Scroll down]  This was an atrocity, a disgraceful, disgusting, and dangerous escalation of the War on the Normals by our enemies designed to frame Trump and send a message to his supporters that we are second class citizens.  There's no hidden, secret Trump crime that the garbage FBI and the garbage DOJ are investigating.  They spent the last six years trying to frame Donald Trump, but right — this time it's for realsies!  It would only be too perfect if it really was over possessing classified info, which apparently is illegal again now.  Here's the truth — it's all a lie designed to make sure President Trump can never be elected again and finish what he started.  I know it.  You know it.  They know it.  But some Republicans refuse to accept it.  Instead, they still fall for this nonsense, pretending that there's no way a government agency could be politicized and weaponized.

Their Desperation to Stop Trump Isn't Just About Keeping Power, It's Fear of His Retribution.  The raid on Mar-a-Lago says a lot about where we are as a country but if you look closely it says a lot less about us and a lot more about the Democrats.  As I spent a lot of time explaining during Wednesday's RedState LIVE!, the Democrats have shown just how desperate they are to stop Trump, so much so that they'll cook up one of the worst excuses to raid anyone in the history of ever, and a former president no less.  It's abundantly clear that they fear him running in 2024 and are searching relentlessly for something, anything, that might prohibit him from being a candidate.  But it's not just a loss of power that they fear.  Democrats do value it above all else... well, almost.  The only thing they value above power is self-preservation.  They know that if Trump gets into the White House again, his work won't just be a continuation of his first term.

The Mar-a-Lago Raid is a Preview of a Rigged 2024 Election.  On Thursday, FBI Director Christopher Wray cut short his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee to fly the FBI's private jet to his family's vacation home.  At the hearing, Wray had admitted that disciplinary action against FBI personnel involved in Russiagate abuses had been "slowed down" and refused to call Russiagate a "hoax".  On Monday, President Trump revealed that Mar-a-Lago had been raided by "a large group of FBI agents".  Any warrant for such a raid would have been signed off on by Attorney General Merrick Garland and his associates in the Biden administration which expects to face the former president in the next election.  Wray, who quietly listened to complaints about the politicization of the FBI from Senator Grassley and Cruz, among others, would have known what was coming.

Deep State Burns Its Bridges to Get Trump — and Now It's Fighting for Its Life.  What are we to make of 30 or so FBI agents raiding President Trump's Florida home to collect maybe 35 boxes of records for what is perhaps the Deep State's 7th or 8th impeachment attempt?  First, why no raids on the Democrats who took the jet to Epstein's pedophile island with its readily available sex with underage girls?  Why no raids on Hunter Biden and the apparent crimes documented on the laptop?  Why no raids on Hilary Clinton after she destroyed evidence?  The good news, and I think it is great news, is that at least a third of the country no longer believes they can expect justice from the federal department that bears that name.

The Existential Threat.  President Barack Obama's former campaign manager David Plouffe famously said of Donald Trump's entry into politics:  "It is not enough to simply beat Trump.  He must be destroyed thoroughly.  His kind must not rise again."  What was it that Washington DC and President Obama's team feared so much about Donald J Trump?  The answer to that question is why the FBI, DOJ and CIA targeted Trump in 2016; and why they continued the targeting in 2017 with the Mueller investigation; and why they continued the targeting through two attempts at impeachment in 2019 and 2020; and why they still keep targeting Donald Trump with the J6 committee and a DOJ investigation two years after he is no longer in office.  Donald J Trump is the existential threat.  When your business involves gaining personal wealth by selling out America, Donald Trump is bad for business.

They Can't Let Him Back In.  The people who really run the United States of America have made it clear that they can't, and won't, if they can help it, allow Donald Trump to be president again.  In fact, they made this clear in 2020, in a series of public statements.  Simply for quoting their words in an essay for The American Mind, I was mercilessly mocked and attacked.  But they were quite clear.  Trump won't be president at noon, Jan. 20, 2021, even if we have to use the military to drag him out of there.  If the regime felt that strongly back then, imagine how they feel now.  But you don't have to imagine.  They tell you every day.  Liz Cheney, Trump's personal Javert, has said that the 45th president is literally the greatest threat facing America today — greater than China, than our crashing economy, than our unraveling civil society.

Is The J6 Committee Trying To Get Trump Re-Elected?  Now that anonymous sources are leaking to The Washington Post that the Department of Justice is officially targeting former President Donald Trump with criminal charges, this is a good time to ask:  Just how crazy are the occupants of Washington, D.C.?  Do they really think they will indict, prosecute, convict, and imprison the Republican frontrunner for president in 2024 without creating a massive amount of public backlash?  For half the country, trying to take down Trump for giving a speech over a mile away from the Capitol on Jan. 6 while hardly anybody has been held accountable for the atrocious Russia collusion hoax that nearly destroyed his presidency will be nothing less than total confirmation of a two-tiered and irreparably corrupt justice system and could permanently tear the nation in two.  This may come as a shocker to Washington, but Congress's J6 obsession is not high on Americans' list of critical issues.  Polls show the American people's top concerns are skyrocketing inflation and economic uncertainty, not what happened on Jan. 6.

'US public sphere has been poisoned by FBI, Obama administration'.  The U.S. government under former President Barack Obama employed obscurantist tactics reminiscent of those of Iran to overthrow Donald Trump before he even got started, according to U.S. journalist Lee Smith.  "Half of the country fell prey to an insane story about the president of the United States working on behalf of a foreign power," Smith, author of "The Permanent Coup:  How Enemies Foreign and Domestic Targeted the American President," said this week in an interview with Ellie Cohanim.  "Our entire public sphere has been poisoned by what the FBI did, by what [former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency] John Brennan did, by what Hillary Clinton did, and by what Barack Obama did."  Smith was referring to the Clinton campaign plot in the fall of 2016 to share information with a reporter about Trump being tied to a top Russia bank, and about Russia supposedly helping swing the election for Trump.  Ultimately, no evidence of conspiracy was found.  [Video clip]

Why Donald Trump Should Not Run for President in 2024.  If Trump were to defeat the ruling elites a second time, their nihilist radical left-wing allies and their media sycophants would be consumed with uncontrolled vengeance.  Their determination to destroy Trump on a personal basis would exceed that of his first term.  Thereby, creating incessant and ongoing media-driven national chaos and anxiety and diverting the citizenry's attention from the necessity of utilizing every political tactic available to permanently defeat this malevolent cabal.  Nor should Trump be expected to further erode and further damage his family business ventures that would take significantly greater hits than what he suffered in his first term during which he experienced a loss of over 33% of his net worth (or $1 Billion).

One Way Government.  We are still told that our government operates by the formal dictates outlined in the Constitution — checks and balances carefully designed to limit the power any one side can wield while in office.  But that is no longer the case.  In our desire to remove politics from public policy decisions we have replaced our constitutional republic with governance by technocracy, i.e. governance by the deep state.  And the deep state is a ratchet: it only moves in one direction because that is what it is designed to do.  The deep state ensures that our government, if it moves at all, always moves to the left, especially when it is gaining power.  This is why the Right has a very difficult time establishing lasting change in the permanent machinery of Washington.  By controlling the institutions that credential bureaucrats, the Left controls the ideology that will guide the decisions of the technocracy, no matter who 'officially' controls it.

Proof Former Obama Admin Officials Committed Treason Under Trump.  It's impossible to say that I'm shocked by the latest bombshell courtesy of the American Center for Law & Justice (ACLJ).  According to a memo obtained by ACLJ via a FOIA lawsuit, several Obama administration officials held secret meetings with Iran during Trump's presidency.  [Tweet]  Former Obama Secretary of State John Kerry's efforts to undermine Trump by negotiating with Iran as Trump was working towards pulling out of the nuclear deal have been known for years.  But the memo obtained by the ALCJ is from October 2018, titled "Notes From 'Iran and the US: An Off-the-Record Conversation with Foreign Minister Mohamad Javad Zarif" has never been seen before now, and shows that Kerry wasn't the one working to undermine Trump.

FBI ignored lies to get their hands on Trump.  [Clinton campaign lawyer Michael] Sussmann claimed he was not representing any client when he brought the FBI internet data that he insisted showed that Donald Trump had established a communications back channel with the Kremlin, through servers at Russia's Alfa-Bank.  In reality, Sussmann was representing the presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton.  He wanted an "October surprise" to torpedo Trump's chances, and what better way than to make it look like the FBI was investigating the candidate?  It's clear from text messages and testimony that Sussmann lied about not having any ulterior motives, and simply acting as a concerned citizen.  But his defense presents a problem — both to the FBI's reputation and special counsel John Durham's prosecution of the lawyer.  Sussmann argues that no matter what he said, FBI officials knew he was aligned with the Clintons.

Drain The Swamp.  The bureaucratic mire in DC is full of predatory beasts, noxious insects, and other unseen hazards.  Directives from the White House are apt to be ignored because there is no one translating those directives into marching orders for the lower floors of government-owned buildings.  This leaves the denizens of departments to their own devices, none of whom are the slightest bit concerned with anything beyond the office water cooler. [...] If the Secretary of Department X decides to go full MAGA, little or nothing will actually happen, since most of his underlings frankly don't [care].  They are protected by Civil Service rules and can't be fired short of the next millennium.  In other words, it's hopeless.  Yes, I know, Donald Trump claims to know what he did wrong and will do things differently next time.  It all sounds good, but so do all the claims from every politician.  After all, they're "fighting for you!"  But actually, they're mostly trying to baffle you [...] so you'll vote for them again.

The Swamp Must Be Drained.  Trump ran against the corrupt back-scratching, log-rolling society of the OBushintons — the Clinton pay-to-play schemes, the Biden sales of influence and access, the semi-disguised socialist racism elitism of the Obamas, and the flabby sameness and ineffectuality of the Bush-McCain-Romney-McConnell-Ryan Republicans.  Trump sensed the people were dissatisfied with the bipartisan Swamp, and he ran as strenuously against the Bushes and McCain and Romney in 2016 as he did against the Clintons and Obamas.  The anti-Trumpers of both parties, in the most legally questionable presidential election in U.S. history, eased Trump out in 2020 with the aid of 4.8 million harvested ballots, 95 percent of the national political media, and 70 percent of the campaign money, to bring in (unintentionally, one assumes, although there was plenty of warning) the most incompetent regime in the country's history.  In 2020, the Washington establishment demonstrated the accuracy of Trump's claims of how corrupt and unscrupulous it was, and Biden has demonstrated that it's even more incompetent at government than Trump alleged.

'Deep State' Was Working Against Trump on COVID-19 Response:  Paul Alexander.  According to Paul Alexander, when former President Donald Trump was trying to tackle COVID-19 in 2020, the "swamp" or the "deep state" was working against him, using flawed data to tarnish him, locking down society, and keeping schools closed.  "Can you imagine the president of the United States fighting against the [teachers'] union, fighting against the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)], fighting against his own task force?" Alexander told EpochTV's "Facts Matter" program in an interview that will air on May 3.  "They're working against him.  So you need to be there to understand when he said 'the swamp' — and he talked about deep state — it is real.  I dealt with them.  It is the bureaucracy.  The entrenched bureaucracy is real."  From late March till early September 2020, Alexander served as scientific adviser to Michael Caputo, then-assistant secretary for public affairs at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

Clinton Campaign, DNC Misreported Opposition Research as Legal Services:  FEC.  Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) labeled payments that went to Fusion GPS for opposition research against her rival Donald Trump as going to legal services, the Federal Election Commission (FEC) has determined.  A years-long investigation into the matter, triggered by multiple complaints, led commission lawyers to conclude that payments reported as legal services actually went to Fusion to dig into Trump, documents released on April 28 show.  Invoices "demonstrate that Fusion was providing opposition research services related to Trump and Russia, and there is no evidence that Fusion provided services other than this opposition research," the lawyers wrote in a brief.

The terrible unintended consequences of the Biden presidency (unless they were intended).  From the moment Donald Trump rode down that escalator, the American left began their campaign to destroy the man and prevent him from being elected. [...] For nearly three years, with the aid of the FBI, the DOJ and the CIA, they sought to make absolutely certain he could not be re-elected.  The Clintons, Obamas and their activist worker bees in and out of Congress worked tirelessly to destroy Donald Trump.  For four years, Mark Elias traveled state to state to get election laws changed to facilitate the cheating they planned. [...] But the NeverTrumpers cared not a bit about the American people.  They cared only about removing the outsider from their swamp.  They feared his pledge to drain that swamp, to expose all their personal get-rich arrangements, all of them essentially corrupt.

Newly Obtained Emails Raise Questions About Department Of Defense Involvement In Spygate.  After spending weeks dismissing concerns about its work with Russia hoax-connected researchers, a newly discovered email from The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to a Georgia Tech researcher with the subject line "Mueller case" casts doubt on DARPA's denials.  Last month, The Federalist first reported that an email exchange obtained from Georgia Tech pursuant to a Right-to-Know request indicated that Special Counsel John Durham's office was investigating the Democrat National Committee hack.  Manos Antonakakis, the Georgia Tech researcher branded "Researcher-1" in the special counsel's indictment of former Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann, penned the email shortly after being questioned by one of Durham's top prosecutors.  The special counsel's office charged Sussmann last fall with lying to the FBI's general counsel, James Baker, when Sussmann provided Baker with data and white papers supposedly showing the existence of a secret communications network between the Donald Trump campaign and the Russian-based Alfa Bank.

New Documents Suggest Democrats Sicced The CIA On Their Domestic Enemy, The President.  Newly released CIA memoranda suggest the tech gurus behind the Alfa Bank hoax also tracked Donald Trump's movements to devise another collusion conspiracy theory.  While smaller in scale than other aspects of Spygate, the Yotaphone hoax represents an equally serious scandal because it involved both the mining of proprietary information and sensitive data from the Executive Office of the President (EOP) and the apparent surveillance of Trump's physical movements.  When Special Counsel John Durham charged former Hillary Clinton campaign attorney Michael Sussmann in September 2021, the indictment focused on the Alfa Bank hoax that Sussmann, tech executive Rodney Joffe, and other cybersecurity experts had crafted.  The indictment detailed how Joffe and other tech experts had allegedly mined data and developed "white papers" that deceptively created the impression that Trump had maintained a secret communication network with the Russia-based Alfa Bank.

One Industry Insider Suggests The U.S. Government Plays A HUGE Role In Twitter.  There aren't a lot of new insights I come across where I sit dumbfounded, but this was one of them.  A huge kudos to Sundance over at Conservative Treehouse for shedding some light on the mostly-unknown world of Big Tech.  As bad as Twitter and the entire tech oligarchy is, it would appear that the situation is worse than even imagned.  Shadow banning of conservatives isn't fair — or legal, if Twitter is indeed the new public square — but things are about to really heat up if Sundance's insights and Elon's recent actions prove meaningful.  In short, Musk either intentionally or unintentionally stumbled upon the fact that Twitter's servers might be, or probably are, owned by several world governments and almost assuredly our own.  The next time you consider the fact that the sitting President of the United States was banned, just imagine THOSE ramifications.

News From The Culture War Front.  The GOP-E is notoriously skittish about the Culture War that's been raging in America.  The GOP-E preference, we've been told, based on fairly indisputable evidence, is to manage the devolution of America into a Social Democrat utopia — managers of the Revolution.  And they've been paid well to take on that role, so it's small wonder that so much of the GOP-E were frankly appalled at winning.  It wasn't just Trump — it was all the deplorables coming out, getting involved, voting.  The whole thing.  That's the story behind what investigations of Election 2020 are documenting — the coup against Trump was enabled in no small part not only by DC Establishment GOPers but by the state party apparatus as well.

Durham bombshell:  Prosecutor unveils smoking gun FBI text message, 'joint venture' to smear Trump.  Special Counsel John Durham is revealing new smoking gun evidence, a text message that shows a Clinton campaign lawyer lied to the FBI, while putting the courts on notice he is prepared to show the effort to smear Donald Trump with now-disproven Russia collusion allegations was a "conspiracy."  In a bombshell court filing late Monday night, Durham for the first time suggested Hillary Clinton's campaign, her researchers and others formed a "joint venture or conspiracy" for the purpose of weaving the collusion story to harm Trump's election chances and then the start of his presidency.  "These parties acted as 'joint venturer[s]' and therefore should be 'considered as co-conspirator[s],'" he wrote.

Biden [is] Telling Staffers He Wants the Justice Department to Prosecute Trump.  Joe Biden is telling staffers that he wants the Justice Department to prosecute former President Trump and other political opponents.  In an article about Attorney General Merrick Garland 'facing pressure as the January 6 investigation widens,' The New York Times claimed Biden wants Garland to prosecute Trump.  The New York Times reported:  "As recently as late last year, Mr. Biden confided to his inner circle that he believed former President Donald J. Trump was a threat to democracy and should be prosecuted, according to two people familiar with his comments."

CIA Officer Who Signed Hunter Biden Laptop Letter Claims Credit for Trump Loss.  One of the former CIA officers who signed a letter claiming stories about a laptop allegedly belonging to Hunter Biden were disinformation says he helped swing the 2020 election away from President Donald Trump.  "I take special pride in personally swinging the election away from Trump," John Sipher, who served for decades as a senior operations officer at the CIA, wrote in a recent post on Twitter.  "I lost the election for Trump?  Well then I fell [sic] pretty good about my influence."  Sipher and 50 other former U.S. intelligence officials signed the letter on Oct. 19, 2020, alleging that the effort to distribute the laptop's contents "has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation," despite not knowing whether the laptop was legitimate.

Clinton-Appointed Judge Rules Trump "More Likely Than Not" Committed Crimes When He 'Attempted to Obstruct' Congress on January 6.  A federal judge on Monday ruled former president Trump likely committed crimes when he 'attempted to obstruct' Congress on January 6, 2021.  US District Judge David Carter, a Clinton appointee ruled that Trump "more likely than not" committed felony obstruction.  "Based on the evidence, the Court finds it more likely than not that President Trump corruptly attempted to obstruct the Joint Session of Congress on January 6, 2021," the judge wrote, according to ABC News.  Earlier this month the January 6 Committee said Trump may have engaged in criminal conduct to overturn the 2020 election.

Huh?  Was Trump on trial?  I must have missed it.  This sure sounds like a verdict.
Trump likely committed felony obstruction, federal judge rules.  A federal judge ruled Monday that former President Donald Trump "more likely than not" attempted to illegally obstruct Congress as part of a criminal conspiracy when he tried to subvert the 2020 election on Jan. 6, 2021.  "Based on the evidence, the Court finds it more likely than not that President Trump corruptly attempted to obstruct the Joint Session of Congress on January 6, 2021," U.S. District Court Judge David Carter wrote.

How Bill Barr's Silence Impacted the Outcome of an Election.  On May 18, 2020, then-Attorney General Bill Barr made a statement to the media, declaring that special counsel John Durham's investigation into the origins of the Russiagate hoax wasn't focused on either former President Barack Obama or former Vice President Joe Biden, stating that "I don't expect Mr. Durham's work will lead to a criminal investigation of either man."  In his new book, Barr has revealed that he made that statement in response to a series of tweets by then-President Donald Trump.  A week earlier, Trump had started using the term "Obamagate" on Twitter, alleging that both Obama and Biden had "led the charge" on the FBI's phony Russiagate investigation.  Barr recounts in his book that he felt it was unacceptable for Trump to attempt to drag his presidential election opponent into the Russiagate scandal and that Barr felt that it was incumbent upon him to make a public statement.  The corporate media immediately seized upon Barr's statement, with The Washington Post running a same-day headline that "Barr says he does not expect Obama or Biden will be investigated by prosecutor reviewing 2016 Russia probe."  The New York Times' headline went further, claiming that "Barr Dismisses Trump's Claim That Russia Inquiry Was an Obama Plot."

AG Barr Zeroes in on the Real Interference That Occurred in the Last Presidential Election.  Former Attorney General William Barr has a new book out, so he's making the rounds.  He's rehashing some of the controversies of the 2020 election.  Specifically, he's commenting on the Hunter Biden laptop story that has finally been realized as authentic by the liberal media.  Now, we knew this already back when it was originally reported by The New York Post in October of 2020.  The Post was censored by big tech over this piece of journalism that made Joe Biden look awful.  It wasn't Russian disinformation, though every intelligence official came out of the woodwork to say so without evidence.  They signed a letter.  Joe even lied about his son's laptop during the debates which disturbed Barr immensely.  The former DOJ chief now says this story was weaponized to tilt the election, and it very well could be responsible for Biden's win.

Spies who lie: 51 'intelligence' experts refuse to apologize for discrediting true Hunter Biden story.  They are the supposed nonpartisan group of top spies looking out for the best interest of the nation.  But the 51 former "intelligence" officials who cast doubt on The [New York] Post's Hunter Biden laptop stories in a public letter really were just desperate to get Joe Biden elected president.  And more than a year later, even after their Deep State sabotage has been shown again and again to be a lie, they refuse to own up to how they undermined an election.  The officials, including CNN pundit and professional fabricator James Clapper — a man who was nearly charged for perjury for lying to Congress — signed a letter saying that the laptop "has the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation."  What proof did they have?  By their own admission, none.  "We do not know if the emails ... are genuine or not," the letter said.  They're just "suspicious."  Why?  Because they hurt Biden's campaign, that's evidence enough.  Keep in mind this was written Oct. 19, 2020, five days after The Post published its first story.  Neither Joe Biden nor Hunter Biden had denied the story, they simply deflected questions.  Didn't these security experts think that if this was disinformation, the Biden campaign would have yelled to the heavens that the story was false?

Trump Offers a Proposal to Destroy the Deep State.  Virtually all Americans believed, until the inauguration of Donald Trump as president on January 20, 2017, that when someone became president, he could begin to implement his agenda.  Certainly Old Joe Biden's handlers have done so with a vengeance since they took over; but when Trump became president, he immediately began to encounter resistance from entrenched members of the government bureaucracy who refused to do as he ordered.  Some worked actively against Trump, while the establishment media assured us that these self-appointed "deep state" saboteurs were the courageous guardians of "our democracy."  At his South Carolina rally Saturday night, Trump continued to tease a 2024 run and made a new promise about how he would break the power of the unelected "deep state."

The Unsung White House Official Who Warned President Trump in 2017 that the Deep State Was Trying to Prematurely End his Presidency.  No President of The United States ever before faced anything comparable to the organized effort of officials within his administration to sabotage Donald J. Trump's presidency and drive him from office.  The Memo by Rich Higgins is a first and only book by an American soldier and patriot who exposes the deep state and the anti-Trump coup activities.

Biden's America:  The inmates are running the asylum.  [Scroll down]  The swamp that is D.C. is known for promoting the incompetent.  How else to explain Joe Biden's rise to president?  He was always a failed senator, a grifter who used his position to cheat and enrich himself.  The same goes for the Clintons, the Obamas, and a host of other swamp-dwellers.  They were all sold to us as the "smartest people in the room" but they are actually the most venal people in any room.  So enamored of their own superiority, they think nothing of fabricating a tall tale about the outsider presidential candidate to take him out.  When he won despite the cheating that they thought ensured a Clinton victory, they doubled down on their criminality; they invented the Russia hoax that enveloped and hampered the Trump presidency.  That despicable stunt has possibly led us to the Russia/Ukraine war now dominating the world.  Russia never wanted Trump to win the 2016 election for now obvious reasons: he was a strong, American First leader.  The Russians wanted Hillary as they wanted Biden — thoroughly corruptible pols who would do their bidding.

The Curious Case of Stefan Halper, Longtime 'Zelig' of American Scandals Who 'Crossfired' Trump.  In the late summer of 2016 Stefan A. Halper met with at least three of Donald Trump's associates in England and the United States, bragging about his friendship with Russian spies who "can be very helpful to us at this time."  As they listened to his tales of foreign intrigue and promises of illegal foreign help, what George Papadopoulos, Carter Page and Sam Clovis did not know was that Halper was not who he said he was.  He was, indeed, a spy, but his handler was not the Kremlin — it was the FBI.  Armed with leading questions and on at least two occasions a hidden tape recorder, Halper had been tasked by the bureau with finding dirt on the Trump campaign.  Halper's undercover operation, which was documented in a report by the Department of Justice's Inspector General, would prove largely a bust.  Transcripts between Halper and Trump campaign officials would show that none of them took the bait, or appeared to otherwise be soliciting Russia's help in the 2016 presidential campaign

The Prosecutors Who Resigned Over Trump Criminal Probe Completely Expose Themselves.  No president in history has faced more corrupt lawfare than Donald Trump, and that didn't end once he left office.  Numerous criminal probes are going on in various far-left districts, including New York City and Atlanta, in an attempt to throw Trump in prison for anything they can come up with.  You see, unlike most criminal investigations, these probes didn't start with a clearly defined crime that demanded justice.  Rather, they started with a political target, and everything else has flowed from there.  As you'd expect, those corrupt practices have led to some hiccups, most recently with the probe happening out of the Manhattan DA's office.  In February, RedState reported on the resignation of two lead prosecutors who were upset the newly elected DA (a Democrat) was expressing reservations about their case.

Former AG Bill Barr outs himself as an establishment swamp creature.  When I think of former Attorney General William Barr, I think of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.  Part of him is an upstanding figure who respected constitutional limitations; another part of him is a loyal swamp creature who desperately wanted to serve a milquetoast George W. Bush (or George H.W. Bush) only to find himself working for a vigorous, aggressive Donald J. Trump.  Both those aspects of his personality apparently come through loud and clear in a new 600-page book (and doorstop) in which he narrates his stints as U.S. Attorney General under both George Bush, Sr., and Donald Trump.

If they spied on Trump, they will spy on you.  If the revelation earlier this month that Big Tech executives continued to spy on Donald Trump after the 2016 election and into his presidency was an isolated incident, it would not be a grave concern.  But once you step back and see the pattern of behavior by those in power to spy on and systematically undermine a democratically elected president, every citizen should be concerned.  When the FBI first opened its investigation into allegations that candidate Trump was coordinating with Russia, the FBI inspector general reported that the leadership of the FBI "hand-picked" the team that would conduct "one of the most sensitive FBI investigations" in the agency's history.  These were supposed to be agents of the highest character and professionalism.

Eulogy for a Bureaucrat With a Conscience.  A statesman died last week who did not sacrifice his conscience, and paid a price for it.  His death, so far as I know, had nothing to do with his conscience, but his firing from his public duties had everything to do with it.  And because he was removed instead of rewarded, the nation did edge toward chaos.  In July 2017, Rich Higgins was unceremoniously dismissed from his job at the National Security Council, forced to resign as the result of a seven-page memo he wrote describing an internal and external threat to Donald Trump's presidency.  "This is not politics as usual but rather political warfare at an unprecedented level that is openly engaged in the direct targeting of a seated president through manipulation of the news cycle," he wrote.  "It must be recognized on its own terms so that immediate action can be taken.  At its core, these campaigns run on multiple lines of effort, serve as the non-violent line of effort of a wider movement, and execute political warfare agendas that reflect cultural Marxist outcomes.["]

The Case Against Trump (Predictably) Collapses in Manhattan.  Two prosecutors leading the Manhattan district attorney's probe into former President Donald Trump's business practices threw a temper tantrum and quit on Wednesday.  They'd spent more than a year trying to cobble together fragments of a ludicrously weak case, only to be told by the newly-elected D-A, Alvin Bragg, that there is "no there there."  It's not unusual for an elected D-A to take office and undertake a review of ongoing cases, especially high-profile ones.  And it's not uncommon when the line prosecutors — who have spent months or years trying to build a case — get their knickers in a bunch if the new D-A takes a different point of view by concluding that the case has serious problems with those pesky things called evidence and proof.

We Can't All Be Traitors, Can We?  [Scroll down]  If "subverting democracy" has any meaning at all, the organized and relentless campaign to overthrow Donald Trump takes the cake.  If "treason" meant anything other than "opposition to Democrats or their bureaucratic instruments in permanent control of the federal government," then Hillary Clinton would be in prison, the FBI and CIA would be disbanded, and President Trump would be serving his second term as we speak.  Alas, totalitarianism always brings with it the death of meaning.  And even lauded legal giants such as Laurence Tribe and Merrick Garland prove that ideology alone controls their understanding of what is right and fair.  At the end of the day, anyone who dares disagree with them is likely a traitor and guilty of treason, just as those who dared to stand up to the madmen of the past were demeaned as traitors, too.

'Those Who Make Peaceful Revolution Impossible Will Make Violent Revolution Inevitable'.  Every single American with a functioning brain knows that Donald Trump won the election in 2020 and that everyone from Mark Zuckerberg to the mainstream media to the Democrat party to Never Trumper "conservatives" conspired to steal it.  And they did.  Of course, the theft of the election comes after four years of continuous attacks.  The genesis of most of those attacks was the activity John Durham laid out in his court filing:  Hillary Clinton's funding the fabricated data suggesting Trump was colluding with the Russians in order to steal the election.  The Democrats produced, proffered, and peddled this pure propaganda, and the media parroted and promoted it.  Millions of Americans bought it, hook, line, and sinker, leading to a Special Counsel to investigate ties between the Russians and the Trump campaign.  That Special Counsel and the media's constant promotion of the "Russian collusion" hoax kneecapped Trump's administration.

Vindman and the rest of the Trump-hating Ukraine cabal have much to answer for.  The Russian invasion of eastern Ukraine has finally happened, and now the Trump-haters who tried to impeach President Trump over Ukraine have much to answer for.  Looking at you, Alexander Vindman.  Looking at you, Alexandra and Andrea Chalupa.  Looking at you, Fiona Hill.  These are all the crummy little supposedly pro-Ukraine operatives who did their [utmost] to undermine President Trump during his administration.  After all, the Russia invasion didn't happen on Trump's watch as they plotted and schemed against him instead of doing their jobs.

Byron York catalogs the effort to spy on the Trump campaign.  Chief political correspondent for the Washington Examiner Byron York appeared on Laura Ingraham's show Quake Media to outline all the different attempts to spy on former President Donald Trump's campaign.  York appeared on the program Saturday to debunk the cover-up behind the FBI's investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election.  "We found out that the FBI employed a confidential informant, the professor Stefan Halper, who had conversations and tried to get information out of George Papadopoulos and out of Carter Page," York explained.  Halper's conversations would go on to be cited in the findings of the Department of Justice's inspector general report on FISA abuse.  "Then, we learned that the FBI actually sent an undercover agent with the alias Azra Turk to go and befriend [Papadopoulous], record Papadopoulous secretly in their conversations.  If that's not a spy I don't know what is."

Truth about techies who targeted Trump.  The usual suspects are already circling the wagons around the techie "experts" who spied on Donald Trump.  If their defense feels tired, it's because we've been through it before.  It's Christopher Steele all over again.  Special counsel John Durham destroyed the last shreds of Mr. Steele's credibility last year, proving that the paid-for-hire spook had relied on fabrications for the infamous dossier the Federal Bureau of Investigation used in its Trump probe.  The special counsel is now dismantling that other big claim of Trump-Russia "collusion" — the Alfa Bank narrative.  The wonder is that the press and others are stepping up for another humiliation — when the disturbing actions of the creators of the Alfa narrative are already so easy to document, and in their own words.  The Alfa story came to life in October 2016, when Franklin Foer of Slate was gulled into writing that a largely anonymous "benevolent posse" of "computer scientists," "spurred by a sense of shared idealism," had discovered data showing secret communications between the Trump Organization and Russia-based Alfa Bank.

Six Things Clarified By The Durham Probe.  [#6]  At this point, there is only one question left to answer:  How deep does this go?  Unfortunately, there are so many twists, turns, cover-ups, misdirection, and layers to this we might never get to the bottom.  There's also the fact that Durham might not want to or be allowed to ever get there, either.  This whole thing is a mess, and the more we learn, the messier it simply gets.  All of this means that the lay newsreader can never quite keep up, and even when they do, bits of information are discussed here, obscure and unknown names are dropped over there, and technical aspects are folded in everywhere, ultimately meaning that the Clinton campaign's operation to lie, cheat, and steal will be given cover by the sheer scope of it all.

Those responsible for the 'dirty tricks' against Trump need to face consequences.  "Dirty tricks" was a term used to describe the behavior of operatives within the Nixon administration to smear the reputations of opponents and undermine the appeal of certain politicians. [...] Dirty tricks are not to be confused with negative campaigning, which at least has some component of truth, but a filing by special counsel John Durham that alleges the 2016 presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton paid a technology company to "spy" — the word Donald Trump uses — on his presidential campaign, goes beyond dirty tricks into the illegal.

Deep State and Congress:  Who Controls Who?  Donald Trump warned Americans about the Deep State.  Instead of listening, Democrats (the Party of yore that actually cared about abusive government power) and their cronies in the Mainstream Media mocked him for peddling an "Alt-Right conspiracy."  Not only do we now have more than sufficient proof that the Deep State exists, but clear evidence it has grown stronger, bolder, and more dangerous.  In just the past week, two shocking reports have come to light that detail the extent to which the Deep State has flourished in the shadows.  The first comes from Senators Ron Wyden and Martin Heinrich, who, in a just-declassified letter to the country's top Foreign Intelligence officials, called for full disclosure of a previously classified, April 2021 report by the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB).

Hillary Clinton Spied on Trump Even After the Election — and I Think I Know Why.  As RedState reported, John Durham dropped an absolute bombshell of a filing on Saturday detailing Hillary Clinton's spying against Donald Trump.  Allies of the DNC used a sensitive government arrangement that was started under Barack Obama's tenure to then target the DNS traffic of Trump.  The purpose of that was to try to prove a nefarious connection with Russia, with the information being passed back to the DNC and Clinton.  That scheme bolstered now-debunked tweets like this from the failed 2016 presidential nominee.  [Tweet from 2016]  Yet, one of the most shocking parts of the filing was the fact that the spying continued after Trump was inaugurated — which begs the question of why?  At that point, what would be the purpose?  I think I have a pretty good idea, and to be honest, it doesn't take a genius to figure it out.  She was trying to overturn the election.  Ask yourself why she'd even bother to keep looking into Trump if the goal wasn't to prove he was an illegitimate president?

Swamp Thing:  Who is Colin Kahl?  With revelations from the Durham special counsel's investigation that the Hillary Clinton campaign in 2016 paid tech executives to spy on the Trump campaign, the Trump residence, and then the Trump presidency, many political watchers think significant indictments are probably coming as a result of it.  The tech executive, for one, has fired back at Durham, which, if nothing else, signals how big of trouble he might be in.  John Ratcliffe, President Trump's former director of National Intelligence, thinks "significant" indictments are coming.

John Durham:  Democrats Paid to 'Infiltrate' Trump White House Servers.  Special counsel John Durham's team alleged on Feb. 12 that a tech executive aligned with the Democratic Party was paid to spy on former President Donald Trump's residences and the White House when Trump was president.  Lawyers for the Clinton campaign allegedly paid the technology executive to infiltrate servers at the Trump Tower and the White House, Durham said in court filings, in order to establish an "inference" and "narrative" to tie Trump to the Russian government.  Durham's office made the claim as part of his investigation that had brought charges against Michael Sussmann, a lawyer who had worked on behalf of the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign and who is currently charged with making a false statement to the FBI.  Durham alleged Sussmann "had assembled and conveyed the allegations to the FBI on behalf of at least two specific clients, including a technology executive (Tech Executive 1) at a U.S.-based internet company (Internet Company 1) and the Clinton campaign," according to a section in the court filing, titled "Factual Background."

"I Hope Donald Trump Sues Them All for Everything! ... This is the Biggest Scandal We've Ever Seen!" — Maria Bartiromo.  This weekend we learned that the Durham investigators uncovered evidence that shows Hillary Clinton's team paid operatives to "infiltrate" the Trump Tower and then President Trump's White House servers to link Trump to Russia. [...] On Sunday morning [2/13/2022] Maria Bartiromo exploded on FOX and Friends Weekend over the historic findings in the Durham probe!  Maria said this will go down as one of the greatest political scandals in US history!

Trump accuses Hillary Clinton campaign of treason after Special Counsel John Durham said they paid tech firm to hack into his White House servers.  Donald Trump has furiously accused Hillary Clinton's election campaign of treason after a special counsel said her team had tried to spy on his White House servers in a bid to find ties to Russia to smear him with.  The former president unleashed a furious broadside on Saturday, claiming that Team Clinton's behavior would once have merited execution, after Special Counsel John Durham made a court filing explaining the alleged hack.  Trump said: 'The latest pleading from Special Counsel (John) Durham proves indisputable evidence that my campaign and presidency were spied on by operatives paid by the Hillary Clinton campaign in an effort to develop a completely fabricated connection to Russia.

The Latest Democrat/RINO Plan to Prevent Trump From Running Again in 2024.  Why did Mitch McConnell break ranks with the Republican National Committee and insist, contrary to a growing mountain of evidence, that the Jan. 6 incident was "a violent insurrection for the purpose of trying to prevent a peaceful transfer of power after a legitimately certified election from one administration to the next"? [...] If it was an insurrection, then Trump, who has grown increasingly critical and contemptuous of McConnell, can be barred from running in 2024.  The initiative to do this is gathering steam. [...] The Fourteenth Amendment, Section 3 [...] was designed to keep unrepentant Confederates out of public office after the Civil War (although many did hold office, as more often than not Congress did vote to waive the prohibition).  As PJM's Rick Moran noted Wednesday [2/9/2022], it's already being used against America-First Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.), although he is fighting back hard.  It's likely to be used against others who are associated with the Jan. 6 non-insurrection as well.  But Cawthorn and the rest would just be a dry run.  The great white whale these Captain Ahabs are hunting is Donald Trump, and they hope that in the 14th Amendment, they have found their harpoon.

The United States Government Is "Desperate to Hide the Truth".  How are Americans going to respond when Washington D.C, the Fourth Branch of the security and surveillance state, and all the institutions of the United States government, officially declare that Donald John Trump will not be permitted to run for office? If you have not thought about that question, we had better hurry up and get that conversation front and center.  It's about to happen, and President Trump knows it.

And the Band Played On.  In 2016, surrogates for the Obama administration, operating as a fifth column behind a curtain of national intelligence and federal law enforcement loyalists, plotted for a de facto third term by initiating a corrupt campaign against the candidacy of a populist Republican candidate.  Crazed after the consequent loss to Donald Trump, they commenced a broadside of straw allegations and conspiracies against the new president and his supporters.  More than a dozen Democrat-run subcommittees over two terms of Congress opened fifty probes of the Trump administration, harassed political opponents with subpoenas, alternately withheld and leaked secret testimony without fear of reckoning, and staged two theatrical impeachment proceedings replete with cutaway footage of silly walks between the chambers.  Throughout, the Trump presidency stayed off the ropes, fending off serial indignities while effectively tackling the business of the people, securing the border, reducing unemployment, achieving energy independence, and sending more than 200 judges to the federal bench, including three Supreme Court justices.

Durham vs. Horowitz:  Tension Over Truth and Consequences Grips the FBI's Trump-Russia Reckoning.  As he documents the role of Hillary Clinton's campaign in generating false allegations of Trump-Russia collusion, Special Counsel John Durham has also previewed a challenge to the FBI's claims about how and why its counterintelligence investigation of the Trump campaign began.  At stake is the completeness of the official reckoning within the U.S. government over the Russiagate scandal — and whether there will be an accounting commensurate with the offense:  the abuse of the nation's highest law enforcement and intelligence powers to damage an opposition presidential candidate turned president, at the behest of his opponent from the governing party he defeated.  The drama is playing out against the clashing approaches of the two Justice Department officials tasked with scrutinizing the Russia probe's origins and unearthing any misconduct:  Durham, the Sphinx-like prosecutor with a reputation for toughness whose work continues; and Michael Horowitz, the Department of Justice inspector general, whose December 2019 report faulted the FBI's handling of the Russia probe but nonetheless concluded that it was launched in good faith.

The Democrats Are Attempting A Coup By Lawfare.  As a rule, the Constitution prevents Congress from prohibiting a person who meets the basic requirements of Article I §2 (age, citizenship, residency) from competing in a federal election or being seated in government should they win. [...] The only exception to this power written into our constitutional law came with the passage of the 14th Amendment on the heels of the Civil War after 1,500,000 Americans were killed or wounded and one of John Wilkes's distant relatives assassinated a president.  That limited exception is that people who have committed rebellion or insurrection against the U.S. may be excluded from running for office or excluded from office if they win an election.  The progressive left is going all out to paint conservatives as "domestic terrorists" and to claim that the January 6 riot — a riot of a few hours by people with no weapons and carried out virtually without violence (and that may have been part of an FBI entrapment scheme) — is tantamount to our Civil War of 1861-1865.  This is so far beyond ludicrous it is stunning.  Yet progressives fully embrace this tactic as their only hope to stop a popular vote that promises to be a wave election in 2022 and an Electoral College vote that might return Trump to power in 2024.

The FBI's Broken Relationship with Us.  All large organizations suffer from the occasional presence of bad actors.  The FBI is no exception.  But it managed to retain a good relationship with the public in spite of its flaws, because it was still solving rather than creating crimes.  But something fundamentally changed in the last five years. [...] "Crossfire Hurricane" was the investigation into alleged Trump collusion with Russia to steal an election.  Within a couple of months, the bureau knew that the whole thing was a hoax created by Hillary, yet the investigation continued for three years — eventually transitioning into a special counsel investigation.  Peter Strzok called "Crossfire Hurricane" the bureau's insurance policy — against a Trump presidency.  It was a good way to show off for his mistress, Lisa Page — a rabid anti-Trump FBI lawyer.

Durham's Investigation:  Incriminating Inference in the FBI's Empty Russiagate Predication.  The vaporous predication for the FBI's opening of its "Crossfire Hurricane" investigation of "Russian collusion" is often attributed solely to anti-Trump bias, with no more to learn from its study.  But sustained examination shows it to be not only pretextual but also designed to conceal American history's most insidious governmental treachery since Benedict Arnold.  According to the FBI, the "Crossfire Hurricane" investigation was opened on July 31, 2016, because lowly Trump aide George Papadopoulos had been told by one Professor Joseph Mifsud that Russia had emails harmful to Hillary Clinton.  Two weeks later, Australian (FFG) diplomat, British-connected Alexander Downer, pried from Papadopoulos that Russia had dirt on Hillary, which he repeated in July to an American embassy in London.  Because both Mifsud and Downer were Western intelligence plants, without any knowledge of Russian designs, this was clearly a bootstrapped, circular predication.  That millions of common citizens also suspected Russia had email dirt on Hillary did not seem to dampen FBI ardor.

Biden's Cabinet:  A slew of mediocrity and incompetence.  Most folks who were paying attention during the Obama administration realized he was racializing and weaponizing each and every one of our law enforcement institutions, among others.  The damage done to law enforcement has been catastrophic.  How did he do it?  By appointing people who were loyal to him and not because they were particularly smart or competent.  Like the quote above about the personnel who ran Chernobyl, Obama's people were chosen or kept for their dedication to the Obama agenda, which they assumed Hillary would continue.  By the time President Trump took office, all of these agencies were geared up to do Clinton's bidding but instead set out to destroy Trump and his administration with a series of hoaxes, all of which have been debunked.  From Comey to Holder to Brennan, Clapper, and McCabe, all of them were dedicated to one project, one project only:  Sabotage Trump.  And sabotage him they did, at every turn, right up to blatantly rigging the election and then falsely accusing him of orchestrating the January 6 event.

We Have Very Little Time To Act To Save American Elections.  Communists are very good at the waiting game.  They take the long view and bide their time.  They've been slowly, but efficiently, infiltrating American institutions for more than half a century. [...] The accumulation of power within the deep state has been grindingly weakening the constitutional government for a very long time.  This slow-motion coup was the last remaining objective that needed to be accomplished before any attempt was made to seize permanent control of the country and change America into something that it was never intended to be. [...] The 2016 election of Donald Trump to the presidency was a massive shock and setback to the left.  That victory launched all the leftist hysterics that continue to this day.  Trump's election, however, also provided leftists with an opportunity for a dress rehearsal.  If the deep state could somehow tear down the new administration or at least render it ineffective, it would then be ready to implement the full scope of the left's elitist, authoritarian "revolution."

Russia hoax whitewash era begins (2).  The Clinton presidential campaign's fabrication of the Russia hoax is the dirtiest trick in American political history.  Beginning with Glenn Simpson/Fusion GPS and the Perkins Coie law firm, it enlisted co-conspirators in the Obama Department of Justice, the FBI, and the mainstream media.  The principals are not only still at large, they have achieved high office, wealth, riches, and Pulitzer Prizes.  They will never be brought to justice.  They won't even break a sweat.  We were never meant to be clued in.  As the veil of the fraud was pierced by Rep. Devin Nunes and others including, most recently, John Durham, we now have a good handle on the con.  It is almost unbelievable.  It is also an inexhaustibly rich subject.

Looney Bette Midler Wants Trump Arrested for 'Trying to Kill' Biden.  Liberal activist, washed up entertainer and full time lunatic Bette Midler is calling for former President Donald Trump to be arrested for trying to kill Joe Biden.  Midler claimed to her two million followers that Trump is the devil and attempted to infect Biden with Covid-19 during the presidential campaign in order to beat him.

Bette Midler:  Trump is the Devil, Should Be Arrested for Attempted Murder of Joe Biden.  When did Trump try to kill Old Joe, you ask?  Why, it all goes back to the sensationalistic recent fake news claim that Trump had tested positive for the dreaded killer disease with a 99% survival rate before his first debate with Biden.  As my PJ Media colleague Matt Margolis noted here Thursday [12/2/2021], Trump's test was actually a false positive, followed by two negative tests before the debate, so Old Joe was never actually in any danger.  Midler, however, was unmoved by these facts.

The Editor says...
Not only that, she had a year to get her facts straight, and still didn't.

Here Comes the Limited Hangout.  Whether Hillary Clinton was aware of the crimes committed between 2016 and 2020 to further her political ambitions is a question that may never be answered.  What has been proved beyond any shadow of doubt by the U.S. Justice Department over the past few months is that top operatives in her 2016 campaign used concocted falsehoods to leverage active law enforcement officials who in turn used U.S. government programs and resources to spy on the Trump campaign — a violation of American political norms whose only real parallel is Watergate.  We also know that under the pretext of "investigating collusion," at least 40 Obama officials, including then-Vice President Joe Biden, spied on the Trump team.  There is circumstantial evidence that Barack Obama knew what was going on, but since, miraculously, no one has ever publicly asked him about Russiagate, not even once, he hasn't had the opportunity to either lie or come clean.

Emails Show Researchers Who Alleged Trump Links To Russian Alfa Bank Were Anti-Trump.  [David] Dagon's name first became connected with the Alfa Bank story when Special Counsel John Durham indicted Michael Sussmann two months ago, charging the Hillary Clinton campaign lawyer with lying to FBI General Counsel James Baker.  According to the indictment, when Sussmann met with Baker on September 19, 2016, and provided the top FBI lawyer with "white papers" and data files purporting to establish a secret communications channel between the Trump organization and the now famous Russia-connected Alfa Bank, Sussmann falsely claimed he was not there on behalf of a client.  In truth, though, Sussmann was working both for the Clinton campaign and an unnamed "U.S. technology industry executive," the indictment charged.  The 27-page speaking indictment then detailed the origins of the Alfa Bank story.  In July 2016, a computer researcher, using the moniker "Tea Leaves" and referred to in the Sussmann indictment as "Originator-1," "had assembled purported DNS data reflecting apparent DNS lookups between Russian Bank-1 and an email domain, 'mail1.trump-email.com." "Tea Leaves," a business associate of Tech-Executive 1, shared her information with Tech-Executive 1 and others, with Tech-Executive 1 alerting Sussmann to the data.

We are living in legendary times.  Coupled with the China Plague, we have seen the theft of a presidential election.  I do not doubt that a major effort was undertaken to stop the obvious progress on every level that was being affected by the Donald J. Trump administration.  As bombastic as Trump was and is, he was effective and efficient (when not overtly opposed by Democrats, leftists, FBI/CIA et al, media, and swamp dwellers), the exact formula despised by deep state politicians on both sides of the aisle.  Kicking the can down the road has become the go-to approach to problem solving for Congress and the White House, spending like drunken sailors all the while.  Trump made them look bad.  Very bad.  Considering the rigged election, Molly Ball's Time magazine article did most of the bragging on behalf of the victorious, detailing the depth and the scope of the effort.  I have no doubt that some of the effort was scripted and some of the effort was ad hoc on the part of the faithful.  It was truly a team effort.

Durham And Big Picture Stuff.  [T]he abject failure of the original Russia Hoax, as well as the Mueller Witchhunt and the Ukraine Hoax and the Faux Impeachment Theater probably insured that genuinely strong Dem candidates would not emerge to challenge Trump.  This, in this view, would have cleared the deck for the substitution of a puppet of a candidate who was systematically protected by the establishment. [...] We find ourselves under the thumb of a regime — the word I've been using since Election 2020 — a regime rather than a true administration, with a puppet president to front for the puppet masters behind the scenes.

Iowa Student Asks Turncoat Mike Pence Who Told Him to "Buck Trump" and Certify the 2020 Election Results.  An Iowa student asked Turncoat Vice President Mike Pence why he "bucked Trump" and went ahead and certified the clearly fraudulent election results on January 6th.  Pence did this while President Trump was speaking to over a million supporters at the Ellipse in Washington DC.  The people knew the election was stolen on Jan. 6th.  And today a majority of American voters still believe Democrats cheated to in in 2020.  On Thursday night an Iowa student asked Mike Pence for the name of the person who told him to buck Trump and certify the 2020 election results.  Pence responded, "James Madison."

Yes, Virginia, There is a Deep State.  Six or seven years ago, "Deep State" was a term you would only see in left-leaning media.  Bill Moyers explored the theme on his site from time to time, and when The Nation asked Edward Snowden about it, he said, "There's definitely a deep state.  Trust me, I've been there."  The "deep state" was on the liberal left's front burner then because a spate of horrendously ugly revelations put it there.  We learned via Snowden that the NSA was collecting the communications of people all around the world in secret (Carollo might want to mark down that congress wasn't informed) in a program the U.S. Court of Appeals just last year declared illegal.  We found out top intelligence officials like CIA chief John Brennan and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper lied to congress, among other things about the warrantless surveillance program, and got away without perjury charges despite a furious outcry from legislators (another useful factoid for [Ben] Carollo, on the oversight front).  We learned about the CIA's systematic use of torture techniques, ranging from anal feeding to threatening to rape and murder relatives to induced hypothermia, another fun set of pastimes the agency decided not to burden congress with knowledge of.

Justice Department hasn't released Russia documents Trump ordered declassified on last day.  Two top Republican senators are demanding answers from Attorney General Merrick Garland because the Justice Department has failed to release anything in the "binder" of Crossfire Hurricane documents that former President Donald Trump ordered declassified during his last day in office.  The memo from Trump said he had "determined that the materials in that binder should be declassified to the maximum extent possible."  The FBI said in mid-January that the bureau had "identified the passages that it believed it was most crucial to keep from public disclosure."

The CIA "Continued the Effort to Try to Destroy Trump and They Realized the Only Way They Could Do It Was They Had to Steal the Election".  Former CIA and State Department employee Larry Johnson was on with Joe Hoft and Kell Brazil at Real Talk 93.3 out of St.  Louis this morning.  Larry discussed the beginnings of Obama's Deep State actions against candidate and President Donald Trump this morning.  When Obama's Ethics Czar Norm Eisen was discussed and his efforts and the CIA's efforts using methods against President Trump before the 2016 Election through the 2020 Election, here is part of what Johnson responded:  ["]What we saw was the law enforcement and intelligence assets of the US government, instead of serving to protect the interests of the US people, were turned and used in the most abhorent, partisan ways to attack a Presidential candidate to discredit him.  Despite all their efforts they initially failed in 2016.  But they didn't stop.  They continued the effort to try to destroy Trump and they realized the only way they could do it was they had to steal the election.["]

The Left Got What It Wanted — So Now What?  No sooner had Donald Trump entered office than scores of House Democrats filed motions for impeachment, apparently for thought crimes that he might, some day, in theory, could possibly commit.  Foreign Policy published an article by a liberal Obama Administration lawyer outlining all the ways to remove an elected president as soon as possible — including consideration of a military coup.  The FBI and the entrenched bureaucrats at the Justice Department continued their prior failed efforts during the campaign to seed the lies of the fabricated Steele dossier and Fusion GPS.  A 22-month-long and $40 million hoax ended with the special counsel himself, a doddering Robert Mueller, swearing under oath that he essentially knew nothing about the dossier or Fusion GPS — the twin catalysts that had prompted his very own investigation.  Fired FBI Director James Comey — a lion on Twitter, and a lamb when under oath — on over 240 occasions testified to the Congress that he either did not know or could not remember, when asked details about the collusion fraud that the philosopher G-man had helped perpetuate.

Durham Probes Pentagon Computer Contractors in Anti-Trump Conspiracy.  Cybersecurity experts who held lucrative Pentagon and homeland security contracts and high-level security clearances are under investigation for potentially abusing their government privileges to aid a 2016 Clinton campaign plot to falsely link Donald Trump to Russia and trigger an FBI investigation of him and his campaign, according to several sources familiar with the work of Special Counsel John Durham.  Durham is investigating whether they were involved in a scheme to misuse sensitive, nonpublic Internet data, which they had access to through their government contracts, to dredge up derogatory information on Trump on behalf of the Clinton campaign in 2016 and again in 2017, sources say — political dirt that sent FBI investigators on a wild goose chase.  Prosecutors are also investigating whether some of the data presented to the FBI was faked or forged.

Kash Patel, A Trump Staffer Who Exposed The Russia Hoax, Aiming New Fire At Deep State.  Former Trump official Kashyap "Kash" Patel, who helped dismantle Democrats' Russia collusion hoax, will join the Center for Renewing America as a senior fellow for national security and intelligence.  Patel's primary focus in his new position at CRA, which is headed by Trump alum and former Director of the Office of Management and Budget Russell Vought, will be continuing his work to expose the deep state in the FBI, NSA, and other intelligence organizations, a spokeswoman confirmed to The Federalist.  [Video clip]  Patel first started his work combatting the Russia collusion hoax as senior counsel for Rep. Devin Nunes who, at the beginning of Trump's presidency, chaired the House Intelligence Committee.  During that time, Patel and Nunes criticized the hysteria that arose out of what turned out to be an operation secretly designed and funded by the Clinton campaign to meddle in the 2016 election.

The Symptoms of Our Insanity.  The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, does not deny that:  1) he deliberately aborted the legal chain of operational command — that is, violated the law — by recalibrating established protocols for using nuclear weapons in times of crisis.  And he says his interventions were based on his own diagnoses (after prompting from the opposition leader, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi) that the commander-in-chief was crazy, and thus could be circumvented.  And 2), in freelancing style, Milley, on more than one occasion, called the top figure of the Chinese Communist People's Liberation Army, General Li Zuocheng.  He reportedly announced that his own country was currently in crisis (experiencing "messy" democracy), reassuring the Chinese that if he, Milley, the newfound autokrator, sensed there was any chance of hostile and aggressive action on the part of his own country, then on his own initiative he would tip off the Chinese in advance.  And far from resigning or being fired for his Strangelovian efforts, Milley would then be hailed as a hero by the popular media and progressive civil libertarians.

'Our Kids Carpooled Together': How Old Friends In High Places Assembled The Russia Collusion Hoax.  The indictment of Washington attorney Michael Sussman — accused of lying to the FBI in order to smear Donald Trump during the 2016 campaign — reveals the ace up the sleeve of high-powered Democrats.  It's a card they played time and again to advance the Trump-Russia conspiracy theory: friends in high places.  They used friends in law enforcement to launch secret investigations; they used friends in the federal government to broaden those investigations; and they used friends in the media to spread the word about Trump and his organization being under investigation.  The Russia fiasco metastasized in large part because those involved in advancing the false allegations had important connections.  They used friendships with powerful federal officials to encourage investigations against team Trump.

Russiagate, More Like Watergate.  CNN Chief Media Reporter Brian Stelter hopped on the set of Reliable Sources last weekend, and offered his take on Special Counsel John Durham's recent indictment of former Perkins Coie attorney Michael Sussmann, calling Durham's probe a "total bust."  This was in the context of accusing other networks like Fox and OAN of a pattern of "lie, rinse, repeat." [...] A long list of press figures — from Stelter's own CNN colleague and shameless intelligence community spokesclown Natasha Bertrand, to reporters from The New Yorker, Time, MSNBC, Fortune, the Financial Times, and especially Slate and The Atlantic — were witting or unwitting pawns in a scheme to sell the public on a transparently moronic hoax, i.e. that Donald Trump's campaign was communicating mysterious digital treason to Russia's Alfa Bank via a secret computer server.  The story sounded absurd from the start, and was instantly challenged by experts.

Biden Security Adviser Jake Sullivan Tied to Alleged 2016 Clinton Scheme to Co-Opt the CIA and FBI to Tar Trump.  White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan figures prominently in a grand jury investigation run by Special Counsel John Durham into an alleged 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign scheme to use both the FBI and CIA to tar Donald Trump as a colluder with Russia, according to people familiar with the criminal probe, which they say has broadened into a conspiracy case.  Sullivan is facing scrutiny, sources say, over potentially false statements he made about his involvement in the effort, which continued after the election and into 2017.  As a senior foreign policy adviser to Clinton, Sullivan spearheaded what was known inside her campaign as a "confidential project" to link Trump to the Kremlin through dubious email-server records provided to the agencies, said the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity.  Last week, Michael A. Sussmann, a partner in Perkins Coie, a law firm representing the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee, was indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of making false statements to the FBI about his clients and their motives behind planting the rumor, at the highest levels of the FBI, of a secret Trump-Russia server.

Judge in case of anti-Trump mudslinger is married to attorney for ex-FBI lawyer Lisa Page.  Last week, the special counsel appointed to oversee the probe into the FBI's investigation of former president Donald Trump indicted Michael Sussmann, a lawyer for the 2016 Hillary Clinton presidential campaign.  Republicans and Trump allies are optimistic about the latest development in John Durham's investigation but are still concerned that Attorney General Merrick Garland might halt the investigation to protect allies and even the president himself.  FBI notes appear to suggest that as vice president, Joe Biden played a role in the Democratic Party project to smear Trump as a Russian asset by raising the obscure, disused, 18th century statute the Logan Act as a possible vehicle for prosecuting Michael Flynn for speaking with the Russian ambassador to Washington — even after FBI case agents had cleared Trump's incoming national security adviser of wrongdoing.  And now Republicans are raising concerns that the judge appointed to the Sussmann case has too many conflicts of interest to preside over it fairly.

I See Free Speech Disappearing Before Our Very Eyes.  [Scroll down]  But now we have a new and devilish threat:  To understand it, we must know that the USA's founding document is the Constitution.  It is a uniquely perfect document, allowing for the maximum of self-government and self-discipline in a world of confusing and aggressive men and women who do not always agree, often function with hatred in their hearts, and sometimes do not wish well for our nation.  But the Constitution, especially the Bill of Rights, allows us to function anyway, even with all of these shortcomings and dangers.  If the citizenry can be allowed to self-govern, the nation can work.  If the rights of Americans to speak freely, to worship, to petition for a redress of grievances, can be preserved, the nation will survive and flourish.  It was to demolish that framework towards which Al Qaeda worked.  Again, Al Qaeda did not succeed.  But now we have an alliance between the almighty Big Tech Internet companies of this country and the Democrat regime of this country.  Together, they have done the unthinkable: they have hit the citizens with overwhelmingly potent restrictions on free speech.  They have taken away free speech from a man whom they hate — Donald Trump — and preserved it for the most wicked terrorists on the planet:  Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and their friends.

Ex-CIA analyst:  Anti-Trump officials politicized intelligence, undermined U.S. security.  U.S. intelligence officials waged a politicized campaign to undermine President Trump and his administration, and the politicization undermined American security, according to a former U.S. intelligence analyst.  John A. Gentry, a former CIA analyst, stated in a journal article that former high-ranking intelligence officials were frequently used by sitting intelligence officials, to leak damaging information.  Many "formers" directly or indirectly helped elect current President Biden and defeat Mr. Trump in the 2020 election.

Deconstructing the Fourth Branch of Government.  There is a way to deconstruct the current system of corruption within the U.S. government that follows a path outlined by the framers of our constitution.  In this series of articles we will outline what I believe to be the way forward.  It is a narrow path, and each step is dependent on the American electorate understanding the challenge. [...] There will be ZERO institutional allies in this effort.  Because of the scale of their power, the Senate will not give up control easily; and every institution of society and government will attempt to stop We The People from taking back control of the upper chamber.  Every entity from Wall Street to multinational corporations, big tech, banks, foreign governments and world organizations will be aligned against us.  When you truly understand the epicenter of the corruption, then you are able to see the tentacles extending from it.

Yes, the 2020 election was stolen.  Trump had made the USA energy-independent for the first time in 70 years, created more than 5 million jobs, reduced unemployment to below 4% and brought African-American unemployment to its lowest ever.  He brought America's southern border finally under control including construction of over 450 miles of border wall, cut taxes and burdensome regulations, raised household middleclass incomes and negotiated strong pro-American trade agreements in place of job-killing ones like NAFTA. Early in the COVID pandemic, he marshalled all the forces of government, the military and private business to join together to keep the mysterious new virus from overwhelming America's hospitals, manufacturing needed ventilators, bringing military hospital ships to hard-hit areas, and launching "Operation Warp Speed" to develop a vaccine.  Internationally, he stood up to China — something no other modern president has done — withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal, destroyed the murderous ISIS caliphate, ratcheted down the nuclear threat from North Korea's deranged dictator, moved the U.S. embassy in Israel to the capital Jerusalem, and brokered peace deals between Israel and five different Arab-Muslim countries, for which he was twice nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.  All this while being attacked literally non-stop — including two corrupt impeachment trials — by Democrats, virtually the entire "mainstream media," the powerful tech monopolies and the permanent "deep state," particularly Washington's scandalously weaponized federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies.

Not Incompetence:  Afghanistan and Globalism.  Democrats' actions are motivated by their goals.  If we understand their goals, then their actions should be clear.  Trump was the first serious Republican president who rejected globalism and believes in the nation-state — America First.  That's why Democrats not only hated him, but felt entitled to do anything and everything, legal or illegal, to stop him.  Democrats were laser-focused on removing Trump from office, by waging an unprecedented daily media campaign against him, using our Intelligence Community to spy on him, impeaching him twice, and even fraudulently winning the 2020 elections.  With Trump, globalists and socialists now fear his 75 million supporters.  They have become the new obstacle.  That explains the intense hate campaign to tarnish them as racists, "white supremacists," and dangerous insurrectionists against the state.  Democrats and their media are not looking for the truth or to dialogue with the Trump side over the pros and cons of globalism.  Democrats want to keep their goals covert because if they're open about their plan, the majority of Americans will reject it.

The Deep State Comes for the Big Guy.  Throughout his candidacy, presidency, and reelection campaign, Donald Trump was targeted by the deep state, which undertook to subvert, defeat, and destroy him.  In the 2020 election specifically, we saw leaks, lies, and letters from "experts" and "leaders" attacking Trump with sundry false accusations, all intended to boost the chances of his Democratic opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden.  Unlike so many of Biden's open supporters, such as the National Education Association or the Service Employees International Union or even his billionaire supporters' dark money, it is impossible to quantify how much the deep state contributed to him.  But it is indisputable the deep state is part of Biden's core constituency.

Cutting to the Chase: Why Trump Was Driven from Office.  There were essentially three called strikes against him, all that was needed to count him out.
  [#1]   He was not "presidential."  He was considered crude in speech, rough-hewn in manner, and given over to bluster and hyperbole unbefitting the highest office in the land. For these transgressions, he could not be forgiven.
  [#2]   He was an outsider, the first president in American history with no military or political experience.  He was not a politician, a general, a lawyer, or a holder of public office.  He was never a member of the Beltway club, whether Republicrats or Democrats.  He was not followed by a train of professional lobbyists, owed no political debts, did not accept a salary, and did not enrich himself when in power.  For these transgressions, he could not be forgiven.
  [#3]   He was competent and proudly patriotic.  He put America first, cutting taxes, renegotiating bad trade deals to the nation's advantage, reducing a red-tape regulatory nightmare, making the country energy-independent and a net exporter of energy, rebuilding the military, defending the southern border, re-establishing global prominence, and connecting with the commons.  For such transgressions, he could not be forgiven.

AG Barr Told Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer to Stop Looking Into Truck Driver Jesse Morgan's Testimony That He Moved More Than 200,000 Fraudulent Ballots from NY to PA Before the 2020 Election.  This past week, Lt. Col. and President of the London Center for Policy Research, claimed that former Attorney General Bill Barr told him to stop looking into the transfer of ballots from New York to Pennsylvania he uncovered after the 2020 Election.  LtCol Anthony (Tony) Shaffer (retired), is the President of the London Center for Policy Research, a New York Times bestselling author, and CIA trained intelligence operations officer with 35 years of experience in global and national security.  After the 2020 Election Shaffer was one of many Americans who offered to help investigate the results of the 2020 Election.  Shaffer looked into the events before the election where a truck driver for the US Postal Service reported that he transferred a trailer load of ballots from New York to Pennsylvania before the election.

Dear Republican Trump haters — What did you get for your trade?  A little less than a year ago, a significant number of independent and Republican voters decided to trade bad tweets for bad policy.  Today, your Twitter feed is void of President Trump's tweets.  But the price was high.  Gone are the good policies that drove the Trump economy and made the world a safer place.  In their place are policies antithetical to prosperity, freedom and security.  You traded energy efficiency for dependency on the Middle East.  Whereas a year ago you enjoyed inexpensive gas, high paying energy jobs, and fewer incentives to entangle ourselves in Middle Eastern politics, today President Biden is begging OPEC to produce more oil.  Apparently, his climate agenda can handle more oil production as long as Americans aren't the ones profiting from it.

Remember the Failed Coup Attempt against Trump.  In my December 2017 column for the Providence Journal, I asked, not altogether rhetorically:  "Is Trump the target of a coup attempt?"  To the consternation of many of my friends and colleagues, I answered in the affirmative.  I argued that if military officers had done to President Obama some of the things that members of the intelligence community (IC) had done to President Trump, they would have been denounced as conspirators seeking to undermine the actions of a duly elected president, and thus enemies of civilian control of the military and the Constitution itself.  Commentators would have called their actions what they were: an attempted coup against a duly elected president.

Revenge: Biden Department of Justice Directly Targets Trump, Directs IRS to Give His Tax Returns to Pelosi.  The Biden Department of Justice has ruled that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has to provide Congress with former President Donald Trump's tax records.  The opinion, which was written by the Justice Department's Legal Counsel team, stated that Congress has a "legitimate legislative purpose" to request former President Trump's tax returns.

Trump's Tax Returns Must be Released to Congress:  Department of Justice.  Tax officials must give former President Donald Trump's tax returns to a congressional panel, the Department of Justice said Friday [7/30/2021].  The House Ways and Means Committee has long sought the returns, only to be stymied by federal officials.  Rep. Richard Neal (D-Mass.), chairman of the panel, has said he wanted six years of Trump's tax returns as part of a possible adjustment of federal law concerning tax policies.  The attempt was blocked by the Treasury Department during the Trump administration.  The Department of Justice previously said that refusal did not violate the law, but under a new president is saying officials must hand the returns over to Neal.

Trump calls for Gen. Milley to be court-martialed if reports on what he said are true.  Former President Donald Trump issued a scathing statement against Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley and called for him to be court-martialed if he actually stated that he believed Trump was orchestrating a coup.  Two Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post reporters, Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker made that alarming allegation in their anti-Trump book "I Alone Can Fix It."  In the book, they claim that Milley believed that the former president would attempt to remain in power through a coup conducted in the final days of his presidency.  Trump says it is absolutely untrue.  "Despite the fact that the 2020 Presidential Election was Rigged and Stolen, and while numerous people, including the outside public, were saying we should bring in the Military, I never even gave it a thought.  The writings within these third-rate books are Fake News, and 'General' Milley (who [former Defense Secretary James] Mattis wanted to send to Europe in order to get rid of him), if he said what was reported, perhaps should be impeached, or court-martialed and tried," Trump proclaimed in a statement issued on Friday.

Barr's Mistaken Choice.  Suppose the laptop that made its way into FBI hands had belonged to one of President Trump's sons and proved that the infamous phone conversation with President Zelensky forming the basis of Trump's impeachment was somehow a corrupt attempt to protect the no-show job and salary of that hypothetical son.  In that case, Barr's refusal to hand over to House impeachment managers clearly incriminating evidence against the president would have placed him squarely in John Mitchell territory — as an obstructer of justice, political hack, and possibly even an eventual target for his own prosecution.  So why is withholding exculpatory evidence not judged by the same harsh standard?

A Reminder About Joint Chiefs Chairman General Mark Milley as a Political Operative.  Statements made by Joint Chiefs Chairman General Mark Milley about his belief that President Trump was contemplating a post-election coup should not be viewed in a vacuum. [...] Remember, General Milley did some really odd things as Joint Chiefs Chairman under President Trump:
  [#1]   Milley never removed Lt. Col Alexander Vindman from his White House post after the underling compromised his leadership position.  The pentagon left Vindman on assignment to the NSC even after Vindman attempted to take-down President Trump.
  [#2]   Milley was then slow to react to Navy Secretary Richard Spencer threatening President Trump; attempting to extort him into inaction over the disciplinary plans against the SEAL commando, Chief Petty Officer Edward Gallagher.  And perhaps worst of all...
  [#3]   Joint Chief Chairman Milley, and SoS Mike Pompeo traveled to Mar-a-Lago in December 2019, where they informed President Trump of military strikes in Syria and Iraq *after* they took place.  President Trump made Esper, Milley and Pompeo hold a press conference without Trump supporting them; then President Trump remained silent on the issue for days.

Big Tech are State Actors.  A 'state actor' is a private company that either acts on behalf of the government or has other special relationships with the government, which subject it to constitutional restrictions on government, including the First Amendment.  Google's YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter have been state actors since about 2010.  They claimed to be neutral, non-discriminating in their political and scientific views, and denied any political bias — until about a year ago.  Then they reversed the narrative and said that they are private companies that can discriminate against whomever they want.  I can list half a dozen ways in which they are state actors.  The pressure on them from Democrat officials, asserted by Trump in his lawsuit, is one of them.  Obamanet, or net neutrality, is another one.  But most obviously, they became state actors when federal and state government agencies opened accounts on their platforms and started to use them for interaction with the public.  By accepting (and luring) multiple government accounts, they became public forums and state actors.

Trump Reveals Letter from Pennsylvania U.S Attorney Detailing Bill Barr Blocking Philadelphia Vote Fraud Investigation.  In the middle of his CPAC speech President Donald Trump dropped a bombshell story about a Pennsylvania U.S. Attorney who was intending to investigate voter fraud in Philadelphia and was blocked by Attorney General Bill Barr.  [Video clip] [...] Can you see the structure of the set-up in hindsight?  President Trump was lied to about the motives and intents of Bill Barr and what he was doing with the appointment of John Durham as a special prosecutor.  It is very likely President Trump was frustrated by the DOJ information that was given to him directly or indirectly.  However, likely despite his own gut instincts, the president granted the benefit of doubt to Bill Barr on that October date.  It would be entirely understandable for President Trump to be exceptionally angry in 2021 about how Machiavellian and manipulative the apparatus of the justice department, the FBI and the aggregate intelligence apparatus are.  The Fourth Branch of Government is in control.

A Coup Against The Constitution?  The modern era of direct attacks by bureaucrats based on ideology came into full effect when the IRS targeted Tea Party groups over their tax-exempt status.  This happened during Obama's reign, but really went into overdrive when Trump was elected. [...] The control of the permanent bureaucracy in government by the political left has already been achieved.  Around 90 percent of political donations by government union employees go to Democrats.  The partisanship became evident during the Trump administration as the intelligence community and Justice Department were shown to be increasingly biased.  They spent nearly four years pushing a theory that Donald Trump colluded with the Russians in the 2016 election that was embarrassingly false.  Special Counsel William Mueller spent more than two years and untold millions of dollars yet found zero evidence of any collusion.  But that was never the point, and they knew it before he even began.

Bill Barr re-emerges, spotlights total corruption of the Department of Justice.  Six months after resigning as attorney general, William Barr recently re-entered the spotlight, reportedly telling friendly news correspondent Jonathan Karl that allegations of vote fraud during the 2020 election are bull.  Now that civilian Bill Barr has jumped back into the political fray, it is time to take unflinching stock of the degraded Department of Justice (DOJ) and how it became even further corrupted during Barr's reign.  In reviewing the attorney general's passivity during his tenure, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that Barr's inaction was born of anything other than profound fear of the progressive, hydra-headed agency he ostensibly led.  Indeed, during his nearly two years on the job, the nation's top cop repeatedly gave interviews in which he alluded to criminal wrongdoing on the part of the Obama administration and senior leaders of Obama's intelligence agencies, which spied on the Trump campaign and later sought to remove Trump from office on a variety of increasingly implausible and comically specious pretexts.  Yet, despite all of Barr's talk, there was never any accountability for the malefactors.

Rudy Giuliani's Law License in Washington Suspended.  A U.S. appeals court ruled on July 7 that Rudy Giuliani can't practice law in Washington, a move that follows the suspension of Giuliani's New York law license two weeks ago.  The order from the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals comes after Giuliani, who served as the personal attorney for former President Donald Trump, had his law license revoked for making what the New York Supreme Court described as "false and misleading" statements following the Nov. 3 presidential election.  Giuliani is "suspended from the practice of law in the District of Columbia pending final disposition of this proceeding, effective on the date of entry of this order," the July 7 order states.  The filing cites the suspension of Giuliani's New York law license and says that his Washington license is revoked pending the result of disciplinary proceedings in New York.

Did Pence Intentionally Damage Trump?  While many know that Pence downplayed allegations of voter fraud and certified Biden's presidency, fewer are aware of Pence's actions on and leading up to that fateful day on Jan. 6.  Nor was this the first time that Pence engaged in seemingly specifically timed and crucial actions that impaired Trump's presidency.  Why did Pence make public statements supporting an election challenge before making an abrupt about-face?  What responsibility does Pence bear from heading the coronavirus task force and keeping Fauci in place?  And what responsibility does he bear for the firing of General Michael Flynn and the ensuing Flynn witch hunt?  [Video clip]

Every New Republican Is the Most Evil Republican Ever.  Donald Trump was less a revolutionary than an eccentric with an inability to hide his contempt for his fellow caste members.  He grew up and prospered in elite society, and he enjoyed it — as his myriad amorous adventures splashed across the cover of the NY Post testified.  What made him dangerous is that he didn't participate in the framework of Mutually Assured Discretion that keeps the members of our upper crust from telling the proles just how inept, corrupt, and unaccomplished our elite truly is.  They know that they are a bunch of clowns, posers pretending to be the best and the brightest, and they work together — Democrats and Republicans — to preserve that status by not spilling the beans on how their class has none.  They will tear each other up individually, but to blow the whistle on the establishment as a whole is a no-no.

Trump must be extremely clean if this is all the NY prosecutors came up with.  After years of prosecutors targeting Trump in search of a crime, Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg "surrendered early Thursday to New York authorities for arraignment in the first criminal indictment arising from a two-year investigation into the former president's company," according to the AP.  The charges relate to paying perks for executives without showing those perks on their W-2 forms, and paying income taxes and payroll taxes on those perks. [...] All corporations, including the WaPo and the NYT, should now be investigated to make sure that no executives ever get free stuff, like country club dues or special transportation, without paying income and payroll taxes.

Cy Vance's Trump case is straight from a banana republic — punish your political enemies.  Donald Trump has long claimed that investigations of him are a partisan "witch hunt." Manhattan DA Cy Vance seems determined to make Trump's point for him by indicting the Trump Organization along with its chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg.  The 15-count indictment throws a kitchen sink of charges, including grand larceny, conspiracy, scheme to defraud,and tax fraud.  But the whole thing comes down to paying perks to Weisselberg — such as his parking garage fees, tuition for family members and reimbursement of holiday gratuities — and not reporting them as taxable income, or reporting that the wrong Trump entity paid them.  For this they slapped Weisselberg in handcuffs Thursday and paraded him in front of the media — a stage-managed political show trial.

Outgoing US envoy to Syria says he hid true number of troops from Trump team.  Veteran diplomat James Jeffrey, the outgoing US special representative in Syria, reportedly said he and his team were deliberately ambiguous in communications with senior Trump administration officials about the number of American troops in Syria.  President Donald Trump ordered withdrawals of US troops from northeast Syria, where they partnered with Kurdish forces to oppose the Islamic State, in 2018 and in October 2019, saying that the terror group had been defeated.  The withdrawal of the American soldiers was seen as a major shift in US policy, and a betrayal of the Kurds — longtime, close allies to the US whose territory was invaded by Turkey shortly after the US withdrawal.

Predictably Bondo Barr Covers The Rot.  There has been a lot of discussion today about an Atlantic article containing an outline of former AG Bill Barr's discussion with reporters and the White House in the aftermath of the 2020 election.  In essence the nub of the article is Bill Barr stating to a journalist December 1st:  "To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election," and then the article covers the fallout with the White House from that AP interview.

There's a Small Problem With Barr's Profanity Laced Claim About No Election Fraud.  Yesterday, we reported how former Attorney General Bill Barr left no doubt he was exiting the Trump orbit when he told ABC's Jonathan Karl what he thought about the claims of election fraud.  He sat down with Karl in a series of interviews for a piece in The Atlantic in the spring.  The piece regarding the interviews was published yesterday [6/27/2021].

How American Journalism Became A Mouthpiece Of The Deep State.  Reporters joke that the easiest job in Washington is CIA spokesman.  You need only listen carefully to questions, say, "No comment," and head to happy hour.  The joke, however, is on us.  The reporters pretend to see only one side of the CIA, the passive hiding of information.  They meanwhile profit from the other side of the equation, active information operations designed to influence events in America.  It is 2021 and the CIA is running an op against the American people.  Leon Panetta, once director of CIA, explained bluntly that the agency influenced foreign media outlets ahead of elections in order to "change attitudes within the country."  The method was to "acquire media within a country or within a region that could very well be used for being able to deliver a specific message or work to influence those that may own elements of the media to be able to cooperate, work with you in delivering that message."  The CIA has been running such ops to influence foreign elections continuously since the end of WWII.

Can New York Arrest Donald Trump?  Leftists are fantasizing about Donald Trump being arrested, booked, and put on trial.  Well, they are fantasizing about that... again.  The New York State Attorney General's investigation of the Trump Organization is now "no longer purely civil in nature," Fabien Levy, the spokesperson for New York Attorney General Letitia James, confirmed to Politico by email.  "We are now actively investigating the Trump Organization in a criminal capacity, along with the Manhattan D.A. We have no additional comment at this time."  It is important for political observers, cowardly-lion Republicans, patriots, and activists to know what is happening here.  More ammunition and detail are needed to arm the reader properly for this latest tempest in a teapot being sold as a hurricane.

Trump Celebrates News That Swampy Republican Will Not Seek Re-Election.  Donald Trump is celebrating following news that one of the swampiest Republicans in the country will not be seeking re-election.  On Monday [5/17/2021], Georgia Lt. Governor Geoff Duncan announced that he will not pursue re-election in the 2022 contest.  Trump released a statement on Tuesday saying that it is good for Georgia and the GOP.

On the January 2017 Felony Leaks.  Back on January 5, 2017, who leaked intelligence about Russia's purported efforts to interfere in the 2016 election — and info on the Flynn-Kislyak calls — to the Washington Post?  One high level official at the Office of the Director of National had a guess:  "my bet is either the WH or SCCI Dem source on the Hill."  Those were the words of Brian Hale, the Director of Public Affairs for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, in response to a question of January 5, 2017 leaks to Washington Post reporters Adam Entous and Greg Miller.  James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence at the time, was copied on that email.

Top Mueller Henchman Lays Out New Scheme To Prevent Trump 2024 White House Run.  Former President Donald J. Trump may have been run out of the swamp, but the witch hunt goes on with his enemies fully mobilized to prevent his return.  While Trump continues to mull a 2024 White House run, efforts are underway to use every dirty trick in the book to take him out with extreme prejudice.  Now, a familiar cast of characters have emerged as conspirators.  One of them is Andrew Weissman, the vicious former prosecutor who was fondly referred to as "Mueller's pit bull" for his role on Robert Mueller's sweeping investigation into the Russian collusion hoax.

The Deep State is Back.  ecently, the FBI searched Rudy Giuliani's Manhattan apartment.  The search was made in connection with the prosecution of two Ukrainian Americans for violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).  Giuliani is a respected lawyer, a former federal prosecutor, and was mayor of New York during the 9/11 attacks.  FARA prosecutions are rare and typically are dealt with through fines.  The use of search warrants against a lawyer is also unusual, and the Department of Justice handbook counsels the use of some lesser means, such as subpoenas, to obtain information when possible.  In his dealings with Ukraine, Giuliani says he acted as President Trump's emissary and lawyer.  These "minister without portfolio" employments have been used before, particularly where, as in Ukraine, American government officials may themselves be corrupt, compromised, or resistant to the president's agenda.

The Giuliani warrants.  The Foreign Agents Registration Act is the last refuge of a prosecutorial scoundrel.  That was my reaction to the New York Times story yesterday reporting that Rudy Giuliani is under investigation for an alleged FARA violation. [...] Yesterday's [New York] Times story vaguely reported that the criminal investigation involves Giuliani's dealings in Ukraine.  Today's Times story is ambiguous about Giuliani's status:  "The warrants do not accuse Mr. Giuliani of wrongdoing, but they underscore his legal peril:  They indicate a judge has found that investigators have probable cause to believe that a crime was committed and that the search would turn up evidence of that crime."  So is Giuliani a target, a subject, or a witness in the investigation?

Is the Deep State targeting Trump allies?  Federal agents raided the home and office of Rudy Giuliani at dawn, Wednesday, April 28, seizing computers and cellphones.  While he hasn't been charged with any crime yet, the DOJ has been investigating Giuliani for his dealings in Ukraine while working as President Trump's personal lawyer, and charges could wait in the future.  Giuliani is far from the first Trump associate to face federal investigation for allegedly violating laws that — not that long ago — were rarely actively enforced.  Is the raid about Giuliani's supposed lobbying in Ukraine without registering as a foreign agent?  Or is the Deep State simply targeting Trump allies because they couldn't get to the Donald himself?

John Ratcliffe Discusses Severe Political Compromise Within U.S. Intelligence Community.  Former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe appears with Maria Bartiromo [4/11/2021] to discuss the issues with Hunter Biden's laptop and the severity of political compromise within the U.S. intelligence apparatus.  Ratcliffe notes how politicized the intelligence community and national security have become specifically in defense of lies being perpetrated by those behind the Biden administration.  Misinformation and disinformation is rampant as the Nat Sec community and Intel Community use their political ideology to advance false assertions.  [Video clip]

Prescient Diatribe — As True Today as it was in 1976.  I understand the scope of the enemy, the scale of the war, the financial and economic power of the opposition, and the effort it will take to stop decades of willful blindness amid 97% of the American people.  I also see exactly what they are doing now, even with President Trump forcefully removed from office, to destroy the threat he still represents.  Donald J Trump was/is a walking red-pill; a "touchstone": a visible, empirical test or criterion for determining the quality or genuineness of anything political.  I have been deep enough into the network of the Deep State to understand the scale and scope of this enemy.  To think that President Trump alone could carry the burden of correcting four decades of severe corruption of all things political, without simultaneously considering the scale of the opposition, is naive in the extreme.  POTUS Trump was disrupting the global order of things in order to protect and preserve the shrinking interests of the U.S.  He was fighting, almost single-handed, at the threshold of the abyss.

New York Prosecutors Subpoena the Personal Bank Records of Trump Organization Chief Financial Officer.  Let's be clear about the motives of a fully weaponized DOJ here.  The DOJ is looking for any way to destroy Donald J Trump.  As long as he exists in the sphere of political influence, he represents a risk to their objectives.  Direct targeting of Donald Trump has not succeeded.  Direct attacks against Donald Trump and his organization and personal finances have not succeeded.  The DOJ is not getting the results they need.  So now they need a backdoor, some leverage, from somewhere, anywhere, where they can use that leverage to destroy their enemy.  THAT is what's going on.

No Storm, No Reckoning, No Nothing.  For years we have been hearing about a coming storm.  It was to be biblical and would bring pain to members of the deep state ruling class who, after exposure, would not be able to walk down the streets.  The storm was to begin with spygate, a coordinated effort among top officials in the nation's justice and intelligence agencies, to prevent Donald Trump's election; then after failing, to undermine his transition, cripple his presidency, then stop his reelection, the latter goals achieved.  Then there were crimes against humanity:  child abuse, trafficking, and the like, all to be exposed via the Anthony Weiner laptop or the Jeffrey Epstein cabal.  Both seem distant memories now.  In fact, we are now going in the opposite direction with the Biden administration suspending FBI background checks for migrant children caregivers.  We have lived in the "calm before the storm" for years and to this day it remains calm.  There are no storm clouds building, nothing on the horizon.

Conservatives need to attack the tech monopolies aggressively.  Conservatives need to acknowledge a paradigm shift has occurred:  Big Tech companies are not "free market capitalists," but are, in fact, agents of American socialism.  When Michelle Obama tweets out that Twitter and Facebook should deplatform the sitting President of the United States, and they follow that directive within a day or so, we need to realize there is a new power structure in place.  Keep in mind that Hitler rose to power with the support of German industrialists.  He never needed to have his government pass a decree ordering the Final Solution; his followers knew what was expected.

The 21st Century Ugly Americans.  The current American ruling class is the laughingstock of the planet.  This coterie includes among its number the Democrat party, the media/entertainment complex, Wall Street, tech oligarchs, corporatists and the professoriate.  This gaggle of buffoons are perhaps the most inept, egocentric and oblivious among all ruling classes in democratic and free nations around the globe.  This descent into absurdity began many decades ago but accelerated precipitously over the past five years.  The primary catalyst:  the campaign and election of Donald Trump as the 45th President of the United States.

Putin's Former Chief of Staff Calls Trump a Champion against New World Order.  Sergey Ivanov, Vladimir Putin's former chief of staff, currently on the Russian Federation Security Council, has weighed in on the "historical scale of the personality and achievements of President Donald Trump" in an op-ed for Eurasia Daily.  I have changed not a word of what he has to say.  In his national ideology, Putin warns repeatedly of the dangers from the "Transnationalists" (Proekt Rossiya [Project Russia], EKSMO Press, 2014).  The Russians are joined by the British with their Brexit and the French with their Front National led by populist Marine Le Pen.  Populism actually straddles the Atlantic, and Donald Trump is regarded as its hero.  As Ivanov observes, if Joe Biden, the American Deep State, and the world global elites have called Donald Trump the "worst president in U.S. history," well, it is because they know best who is the worst — for them.

Deep State:  Rod Rosenstein Admits He And Andrew McCabe Discussed Recording President Trump.  During Trump's presidency, whenever he or anyone else discussed the Deep State, Democrats and the media would dismiss it as the stuff of conspiracy theories.  When Trump suggested that the Obama team spied on his campaign, Democrats and the media lost their minds.  Now former Justice Department official Rod Rosenstein is openly admitting that he and the FBI's Andrew McCabe discussed recording conversations with Trump.  Is this still a conspiracy theory?

President Trump Targets the DeceptiCons, Those GOPe Establishment Politicians who Need To Be Removed.  During his CPAC speech President Trump named some of the DeceptiCons in congress who have blocked the MAGA agenda.  President Trump identified some of the politicians by name in both the House and Senate who need to get primaried.  [Video clip]  President Trump has established the Political Action Committee that will fund primary opponents to those [R]epublicans who have failed to support the America First agenda.

Storm? What Storm?  It Was Barely a Breeze.  The only storm is what Trump dove into on day one of his presidency, when calls for impeachment began minutes after his inauguration.  Two unsuccessful attempts were made, with assistance from cranks within his own political party.  His own agencies including the FBI, DOJ, and CIA had their own storm planned, illegally spying on Trump's campaign, transition, and administration.  They spied and wiretapped Trump and his circle, they fraudulently manufactured evidence to obtain FISA warrants, and destroyed real evidence as in phones and emails.  This was all cheered on by print, digital, and social media, political operatives rather than arbiters of truth.  We trusted Barr and Durham.  Barr is retired, playing his bagpipes, serving up only one spygate indictment of a mid-level FBI attorney who received a slap on the wrist.  Barr acknowledged "spying did occur" but like his predecessor, did nothing about it.

The Lies Aren't Secret.  Secrecy is the ultimateentitlement program for the Deep State.  The federal government is creating trillions of pages of new secrets every year.  The more documents bureaucrats classify, the more lies politicians and government officials can tell.  In Washington, deniability is prized far more than truth.  At the end of the Trump era, the Deep State is triumphant at home and abroad.  Trump's epic clashes with federal intelligence and law enforcement agencies helped cripple his administration, and they illustrate the continued danger of Deep State secrecy.  If all of the FBI's shenanigans on Russiagate came to light, it would be far more difficult for the FBI to manipulate American politics and presidents in the future.  If CIA records on Syrian rebels were exposed, the Biden administration would have far more difficulty dragging America back into the Syrian civil war.  But both seem unlikely.  Recent court rulings make clear how badly Trump failed to drain the swamp.

Twenty days of infamy: the January 2017 red flags the FBI blew past on Russia collusion.  From its earliest moments, the FBI's Russia collusion probe was always fraught with warning signs.  Agents were told Christopher Steele provided faulty information, had likely been compromised by Russian intel disinformation, wanted to defeat Donald Trump, had leaked to the media and was being paid by Hillary Clinton, who herself might be carrying out an epic dirty political trick to vilify Trump with false information to distract from her own scandals.  Those intelligence reports alone should have given agents pause.  The fact that Steele had been terminated by the FBI as an informant for leaking also should have weighed heavily.  But if ever there were red lights screaming for the FBI to end the counterintelligence probe, they were flashing during a harrowing 20-day window in January 2017 as Barack Obama was leaving office and Trump was coming in.  Between Jan. 4, 2017 and Jan. 24, 2017, nearly every major assumption of the FBI's Russia collusion theory was gutted, according to recently declassified evidence reviewed by Just the News.

ABC Now Looks to State and Federal Prosecutors to Get Trump in Court.  Only after former President Trump was acquitted for the second time in an impeachment trial did ABC finally give any form of credence to the Republican argument that the Senate was not the right place to hold a former president accountable.  And during Valentine's Day Sunday, Good Morning America was trying to count the ways and charges Trump could face and the federal and state levels to bar him from running for office ever again.  "In his speech after the vote to acquit, after he, in fact, voted to acquit, [Minority Leader] Mitch McConnell [R-KY] said, Trump, and I'm quoting here, 'didn't get away with anything, yet,'" co-anchor Dan Harris noted to legal analyst Dan Abrams.  "So, what legal consequences could Trump still face?  Could there be state charges, federal charges?  What do you think?"  According to Abrams, federal prosecutors would be too intimidated by the "political imagery" to prosecute Trump for inciting the Capitol insurrection.  So, he looked to the states: [...]

There are already two anti-Trump parties.  No need for a third one.
More than 120 former Republican officials hold Zoom meeting to discuss forming breakaway anti-Trump third party.  More than a hundred former Republican officials, who view the party as unwilling to stand up to former President Donald Trump, are in talks to form a center-right breakaway party, four people involved in the discussions told Reuters.  The early stage discussions include former elected Republicans, former officials in the Republican administrations of Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush and Trump, ex-Republican ambassadors and Republican strategists, the people involved say.  More than 120 of them held a Zoom call last Friday to discuss the breakaway group, which would run on a platform of 'principled conservatism,' including adherence to the Constitution and the rule of law — ideas those involved say have been trashed by Trump.

The Editor says...
If this group of RINOs and big-government centrists had any regard for "principled conservatism," they'd support Donald Trump.

Time Magazine Details the 'Shadow Campaign' Against Trump.  In a surprisingly brazen article, "The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election," Time magazine chronicles a myriad of pre- and post-election actions taken by a loose coalition of Democratic operatives, grassroots activists, mainstream media, tech companies, and corporate CEOs before and after the 2020 presidential election.  According to the article, the effort consisted of "a well-funded cabal of powerful people, ranging across industries and ideologies, working together behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information."  In the post-election days, the author refers to this disparate grouping of players as a "conspiracy unfolding behind the scenes, one that both curtailed the protests and coordinated the resistance from CEOs" resulting in an "informal alliance between left-wing activists and business titans."

Trump aide Peter Navarro charges AG Barr worked to help Biden issue blizzard of early executive orders.  Speaking with Maria Bartiromo yesterday on her weekly Fox News Channel program Sunday Morning Futures, Peter Navarro made a startling charge against his former Trump administration colleague, former attorney general William Barr. [...] I confess that I was a defender of Barr, whom I saw as a righteous man aware of the sabotage the Trump administration faced from a politicized bureaucracy seeking to frustrate the elected POTUS. Now it sounds as though he joined the conspirators, although it is possible that the Office of Legal Counsel at the DOJ worked with Biden's handlers on the executive orders behind his back.  Was he always a plant, assuming that Navarro's charges are true?

Navarro: DOJ Slow-Walked Trump's Executive Orders While Fast-Tracking Biden's.  The Department of Justice (DOJ) put up hurdles to executive orders prepared by President Donald Trump while fast-tracking the ones prepared by President-elect Joe Biden during the transition period leading up to Inauguration Day on Jan. 20, according to former Trump senior adviser Peter Navarro.  "Bill Barr, President Trump's attorney general, actually turns out to be Joe Biden's first attorney general," Navarro told Fox News' Maria Bartiromo in an interview aired on Feb. 7.  "We had over 30 executive orders queued after Election Day, ready to go, but we kept running into all these roadblocks and hurdles.  It turns out that Bill Barr's Office of Legal Counsel was fast-tracking all of these Biden EOs [executive orders], and basically, it was a deep-state coup."  Navarro made the remarks when asked to explain how Biden managed to have dozens of executive actions ready to go during his first days in office.

The Leaked Interrogation Of James Clapper Reveals The Dirty Tricks The Deep State Tries To Get Rid Of Trump.  James Clapper Interrogated — and he tells all, and he names names.  The corruption he describes is worse than we ever imagined.  This clip is only a fraction of what Clapper disclosed.  [Video clip]

Conway: Hey, I barely knew the guy with whom I founded The Lincoln Project and co-wrote anti-Trump op-ed.  This certainly could be possible in our online world, but is it credible?  George Conway told Mika Brzezinski on MSNBC's Morning Joe earlier today [2/1/2021] that he barely knew John Weaver, his co-founder of The Lincoln Project.  That group finally began distancing itself from Weaver yesterday after the New York Times reported nearly two dozen men coming forward to accuse Weaver of sexually predatory behavior.  Two weeks earlier, the Lincoln Project had stood behind Weaver, but now everyone appears to be looking to conduct a rapid retreat, including his partner in the anti-Trump effort.

Was Trump Laid Low Just to Satisfy Barack Obama's Ego?  [Scroll down]  [S]ince President Trump took office, it's hard to not smell Obama's obsessive stink all over a calculated effort to destroy a good man.  Of late, those carefully crafted plans include acrimony and suspicious ACORNish activity, not to mention a year-long lockdown and Rules for Radicals-style chaos.  Recently, Americans witnessed a sham inauguration and post-inaugural mischief where every executive order Joe the Automaton signed reeked with the stench of Obama's malicious effort to reinstate himself as all-knowing redeemer.  Lest we forget, Kamala "I'm Speaking" Harris has had a longstanding relationship with former president Obama.  Thus the reason for her meteoric rise from the shadows of Willie Brown's love shack to the vice presidency.  Unfortunately for America, besides having a cackle from hell, "the best-looking" attorney general on the planet also has Barry's slimy fingerprints all over her high tops.  Then there's the return of the posse of familiar co-conspirators who emerged from the political ash heap of history to take up where the Obama era left off.

Trump Fought the Swamp, and the Swamp Won.  Trump's accomplishments are even more impressive, given the unremitting hostility and obstructionism to which he was subjected from the day he took office.  The centerpiece, of course, was the Russia collusion hoax, which was paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign, adopted by the FBI and other government agencies, and institutionalized in the form of a special counsel.  No president has ever been subjected to anything similar, let alone on such a flimsy basis.  But that wasn't all: apart from the Russia hoax — supplemented, one should note, by the Ukraine kerfuffle and the Democrats' comic-opera impeachments — Trump faced not just opposition, but non-stop hate, from the press, Big Tech and big business generally, academia, Hollywood and the rest of the entertainment industry, the public schools, almost all of the federal bureaucracy (including the bureaucrat/"expert" D.C. revolving door), the China Lobby, and — to sum up — the rest of the Swamp.

Fascism is Back.  Today's fascist oligarchs comprise a formidable array:  the deep state of unaccountable bureaucrats, academe, the megalomaniacs of Silicon Valley, Davos elites, Hollywood, Wall Street, big banks, many of the largest corporations, legacy media, some state governors, professional sports, New World Order kleptocrats, some functionaries of both parties.  The oligarchs' front men in legacy media are partisans.  In the US, what on the surface appears to be two party governance is in fact one party, the big state party, with two branches:  the pedal to the metal fascists and the drive 55 fascists, the latter renowned for their complicity in private but now exposed thanks to an American president.  Their allies in academe have been and are doing everything they can to obscure the evidence, cloud the issues with misdirection and propagandize the young against Western liberalism.

FBI, Justice Department knew there was no Russia collusion by spring of 2017.  The top Justice Department official in early 2017 overseeing the FBI's Russia probe testified he was briefed as many as six times on its status and was told there was no evidence of Trump campaign collusion, a newly released transcript shows.  The testimony of Dana J. Boente is significant because during this time the FBI took major steps to expand the probe.  And President Trump in May ended up firing then-FBI Director James Comey, a stunning move that led to the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller and two years of a White House under constant criminal scrutiny.

Senate Releases More Documents Relating To Russia Investigation, All Transcripts.  The Senate Judiciary Committee on Friday [1/15/2021] released 11 transcripts of depositions conducted as part of the committee's investigation into the origins of the FBI's Russia probe.  Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said in a statement that he "decided to release all transcripts of depositions involving the committee's oversight of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation," adding, "We have released as much material as possible, but some classified material has still been withheld."  The 11 transcripts include one from "Case Agent 1," who was identified as Stephen Somma by The New York Times in February 2020.  As The Daily Caller's Chuck Ross reported at that time, Somma was blamed for "some of the most significant problems laid out in the Justice Department's inspector general report on FISA abuse against a Trump campaign."  Somma was singled out by the Department of Justice's Inspector General in a report documenting numerous inaccuracies and omissions included in the FBI's FISA warrants against former Trump campaign aide Carter Page.

What Now?  Trump had denounced the swamp in apocalyptic terms, but it proved to be even deeper and more extensive than he knew. [...] The news media, with very few exceptions, made it their task to thwart his progress and poison his name with a constant flow of disinformation.  They said Trump had told people to drink bleach.  They said he'd called neo-Nazis "good people." They said many other outrageous things that they knew were outright lies.  They relentlessly repeated the charge that he did nothing but lie, lie, lie, when in fact it was they, the media, who were constantly feeding us lies.  Trump thought he could rely on Fox News to report on his presidency with at least a degree of fairness.  But no.

What Now?  In fact I can now see that these people are worse than I ever imagined.  Worse than most of us ever imagined.  Worse, even, than Donald Trump, with all his insight, imagined.  He went into office determined to clean up the swamp.  He was tireless.  But not tireless enough.  No mere mortal could have been tireless enough.  Trump had denounced the swamp in apocalyptic terms, but it proved to be even deeper and more extensive than he knew.  It reached into the upper echelons of the intelligence community and the military, into cabinet departments and the judiciary.  Not only did the Democrats try to derail his campaign and then his presidency.  Even people whom he appointed to White House jobs proved unreliable.  Far from being too suspicious, he'd been too trusting.  He'd appointed two-faced D.C. insiders.  He'd trusted people who turned out to be snakes in the grass.

Sometimes you drain the swamp & sometimes the swamp drains you.  The Trump Era is over after the incumbent announced in the day after Wednesday's storming of the US Capitol that "My focus now turns to ensuring a smooth, orderly and seamless transition of power", which was widely interpreted by friends and foes alike as the tacit concession that he previously promised never to provide a little more than 24 hours prior during his speech at the Save America Rally.  At that event, he literally said that "We will never give up.  We will never concede, it doesn't happen.  You don't concede when there's theft involved", yet completely changed his tune following the day's tumultuous events and after mysteriously "going dark" for over 24 hours, during which time some speculate that he was forced by his enemies in the permanent military, intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucracies ("deep state") to give up the fight.

US diplomats condemn Trump in State Department 'dissent channel'.  U.S. diplomats issued a scathing rebuke of President Trump's incitement and handling of the Wednesday attack on Capitol Hill in two cables sent via the State Department's "dissent channel."  The dissent channel is a messaging system through which career diplomats can send criticisms of U.S. policymaking or foreign affairs decisions that are circulated to top State Department officials.  In what the Associated Press called a "highly unusual" use of the messaging system, diplomats said that the events from Wednesday undermined U.S. credibility on the international stage and hobbled the country's ability to defend democratic values.

Remarkable Duplicity — Former AG Bill Barr Attacks President Trump For Questioning Same Ballot Fraud Barr Previously Outlined.  During his tenure AG Bill Barr spoke out of both sides of his mouth.  He outlined the abuses of authority within the DOJ/FBI in the targeting of President Trump; and he spoke about the corrupt intent likely behind mail-in ballots in the 2020 election.  However, his actions did nothing to address either issue.  Actions speak louder than words.  Yes, it is true that any corrupt activity that would be exposed would have initially weakened the DOJ and/or FBI, and easily provided ammunition to any defense attorney in courtroom proceedings against those officers; but the corrupt activity exists regardless of whether it is admitted publicly or not.  President Trump has said nothing about the 2020 election outcome that AG Bill Barr did not himself warn about prior to the election.  However, now that President Trump notes the actual results... all of a sudden AG Bill Barr stands in opposition to those same positions and opinions he held only a few months ago.

The Swamp Is Scared of the Next 12 Days.  [Scroll down]  Pelosi has called the military and put 'em on standby in case Trump launches the nuke codes.  Who are we gonna nuke?  The little pot-bellied dictator, Kim Jong-un?  What are they terrified of?  They're terrified that Trump is gonna unleash classified documents.  You know, he's got a bevy of 'em, folks.  He's got classified documents about the hoax, the four-year coup.  The four-year coup, the four-year effort to get the election results of 2016 overturned.  There are all kinds of people who broke the law, all kinds of people who are quaking in their boots.  They're worried silly that Trump is gonna unleash some of these classified documents.  Do you know what else they're worried about?  Do you know what else they're scared of?  They are scared to death — they are terrified — that Trump is gonna pardon people who are dangerous to the establishment.

Intelligence analysts downplayed Chinese election influence to avoid supporting Trump policies, inspector finds.  Politicization problems exist in U.S. spy agency assessments on foreign influence in the 2020 U.S. election, including analysts who appeared to hold back information on Chinese meddling efforts because they disagreed with the Trump administration's policies, according to an intelligence community inspector.  Barry Zulauf, an analytic ombudsman and longtime intelligence official, issued a 14-page report obtained by the Washington Examiner to the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday, revealing his investigation was "conducted in response to IC complaints regarding the election threat issue."  In addition, he lamented the "polarized atmosphere has threatened to undermine the foundations of our Republic, penetrating even into the Intelligence Community."

Yes, it was a Fraudulent Election.  [Scroll down]  Election fraud in a democracy is pretty serious, no?  And yet, apart from a small though intrepid group pushing failed court cases, our fearless leaders and their media propagandists just want to sweep it under the rug.  YouTube will not even allow postings that suggest the election outcome was changed by "widespread fraud or errors."  Which, of course, is exactly what may have happened.  Why the silence and creepy censorship?  The answer leads to a very dark place.  Some of the people who occupy positions of influence and power, including both Republicans and Democrats, saw President Trump as an existential threat to this country, so getting him out by any means necessary was justified in their minds.  That was a sinister, and also very foolish, calculus.  But stealing the election was a scheme that went too far; a scheme which would itself pose an even greater threat to the country.  They may see that now.

Report: Vice President Mike Pence Does 'Not Believe' He Has 'Power to Block Congressional Certification'.  Vice President Mike Pence reportedly told President Trump Tuesday [1/5/2021] that he does not possess the power to block the certification of the election — a remark that followed Trump asserting the vice president, who is presiding over Wednesday's joint session of Congress, has the "power to reject fraudulently chosen electors."  According to a report from the New York Times, Pence reportedly told Trump "he did not believe he had the power to block congressional certification of Joseph R. Biden Jr.'s victory in the presidential election despite Mr. Trump's baseless insistence that he did, people briefed on the conversation said."

How to Steal an Election in Four Steps.  Note the scope of what has happened.  When government agencies fake the lethality of a disease, isolate people, impose lockdowns, and try to cause a recession, when they deceive via unconstitutional laws, fake polls, mail-in-voting, and rigged software, when the fraud enlists the Centers for Disease Control, the FBI and CIA, high-level plants within other agencies, state governors & attorneys general, the broadcast media, & social media — all to take down one man because he's the choice of the people — that's not "voter fraud."  It's an organized coup.  Are the Democrats that you know capable of this?  Could Pelosi, AOC, Swalwell and the rest pull this off?  Or are just politically-aligned order-takers, like our media and social media, from, likely, Soros and China, a pair that often work together because they share a common enemy?  Today's Democrats are controlled by far-left Alinskyites who produce tension & chaos, then blame capitalism, racism, & Trump.  Look what they did to us this year.  How many Americans did they isolate to sell the virus lie?  How much depression and loss of income did they cause?  How many breakups and divorces?  How many elderly people had to die alone to serve the Left's narrative?  They even suppressed the effective covid drug hydroxychloroquine for months — they kept medicine from people who needed it — solely because President Trump had said the drug was effective and they could not allow Trump to seem to be right about anything.  As noted, they suppressed the vaccine as well.  The party is no longer a political opponent; it is a US enemy and the most retrograde force in America.

The Etiology of Executive Order 13848.  The fate of Western Civilization, some three thousand years in the making, now hangs by a slender thread.  That thread is Executive Order 13848.  So what is in that Executive Order? [...] It relies heavily on the Attorney General.  The hapless Jeff Sessions was in that role when Executive Order 13848 was signed.  He was replaced on 14th February, 2019, by Bill Barr.  Barr seemed reliable but achieved nothing.  The reason he slow-walked everything, couldn't see corruption in the Hunter Biden laptop etc. became apparent when he recently referred to President Trump as a "deposed king ranting."  Barr outed himself as a Deep State operative too soon, and leaves his position on 23rd December and so won't be involved in drafting the remedies report in response to the report by the Director of National Intelligence.  The fate of Western Civilization hangs on such small matters.

What an unfortunate Deep State coincidence.
Census Bureau to miss deadline, jeopardizing Trump plan.  The Census Bureau plans to announce it will miss a year-end deadline for handing in numbers used for divvying up congressional seats, a census official said.  That delay could undermine President Donald Trump's efforts to exclude people in the country illegally from the count if the figures aren't turned in before President-elect Joe Biden takes office.  A census official who was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter confirmed the delay to the Associated Press on Wednesday.

Tainted Electors in Post-Legal America.  The American left has been working overtime to obfuscate the real issues at the heart of whether or not the 2020 presidential election is being stolen.  For instance, when Chris Krebs, the former head of the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), announced in a statement on November 12 that the 2020 election was "the most secure election in American history" and President Trump fired him, the Left went berserk and cited the firing as just more evidence that Trump is an illegitimate tyrant or something. [...] It appears that Mr. Krebs is not an information technology professional, an electrical engineer, a computer programmer, or any kind of techie whose opinion on cyber-security matters might carry some weight.  You see, Chris Krebs is a lawyer.  So his previous job at CISA could only be as a manager, and when he says the election was the safest ever, it means nothing.  He's merely repeating what he's been told by his staff.

Trump: The American David.  Trump's enemies also want to take him out because he stands in the way of those who benefit from lucrative political corruption rackets and others who embrace globalism.  Many of those among the internationalist establishment in and out of government and a growing part of the corporate elite have accepted the subordination of the United States to a New World Economic Order.  They embrace a world without borders for access to low-cost labor and offshore manufacturing.  Mainland China has been the number one destination, despite its communist government that now threatens the security of its neighbors and the United States — a threat against which Trump is the first president to push back.  It was Democrats and members of the Deep State who engineered the highest crime and misdemeanor of disenfranchising the American people through fraudulently obtained warrants for surveillance and orchestrating a coup against Donald Trump based on Hillary Clinton's bought-and-paid-for phony Russian dossier of salacious and false charges of Trump being compromised by the Russians.  That led to the Mueller investigation.  Then it was the House Democrats who then attempted to impeach Trump based on another falsehood.

Tracing the Genesis of the Swamp.  Much has been made of the Washington, D.C. "swamp" over the last four years.  The vast apparatus of power that is now consecrated in the federal government is certainly immense and a far cry from what the Founders envisioned.  It contains programs and agencies that work for both domestic and foreign goals.  The question of how the swamp came to be has no one particular answer.  Some can be laid at the feet of the 20th-century Progressives during the Roosevelt-Wilson era.  Other expansions of power originated with the New Deal.  Certainly, the last quarter-century has seen its fair share of new agencies, policies, and expansions of government.  However, one particular moment deserves its own focused attention if we are to truly understand the vast apparatus that is the swamp and the rationale for its creation from a national defense perspective:  the National Security Act of 1947.

The Biggest Political Blunder in American History.  If courts and state legislatures award Joe Biden the presidency, the anti-Trump cabal, driven by a four-year single-minded obsession to defeat President Trump, will have committed the greatest political blunder in American history — the unabashed and overt theft of the 2020 presidential election.  This myopic and oblivious group so misunderstood the depth and breadth of support for Donald Trump that their blatant manipulation of the election would fall monumentally short of the planned for and anticipated landslide defeat of the incumbent.  A landslide they needed in order to dominate the political arena for the foreseeable future and avoid any backlash from the electorate for their duplicity.  Thus, this cabal, which consists of the Democrat party establishment, Tech and Wall Street billionaires, the mainstream media and left-wing elitists, will find itself in a quagmire of being unable to govern.  The Democrat party's dominant and radicalized left-wing base will revolt over failed promises and expectations while the extent of the fraud will inevitably be fully exposed, resulting in nearly half of the citizenry viewing the government as illegitimate.

When does this guy's resignation take effect?
Barr: No need for special counsel to investigate Hunter Biden, election fraud.  Attorney General William Barr on Monday said he saw no reason to tap a special counsel to investigate Hunter Biden's finances or claims of election fraud.  Barr, speaking at a Justice Department press conference about new charges in the Lockerbie bombing case, did not comment extensively on the Hunter Biden investigation but said it was being handled "appropriately."  "I think to the extent that there's an investigation I think that it's being handled responsibly and professionally currently within the department," Barr, who is leaving office this week, told reporters.  "To this point, I have not seen a reason to appoint a special counsel and I have no plan to do so before I leave."

The Editor says...
There are none so blind as those who will not see.

Deep State Pushes to Deep-Six Intelligence Report Demonstrating Chinese Interference in 2020 Election.  Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe is considering not signing an intelligence report to Congress if it does not accurately reflect an ongoing debate among intelligence community career analysts over Chinese attempts to influence American voters in the 2020 election, according to a source familiar with the issue.  The intelligence report on foreign efforts to influence the 2020 election is due to Congress on Friday, but Ratcliffe is concerned it will not accurately reflect the debate among senior intelligence community analysts as to the extent of China's influence operations during the election, according to the source.

Is the whole government in on this fraudulent election?  As soon as Trump was elected president in 2016, the dark state realized that it had blundered.  Its members had underestimated the degree of fraud it would need to defeat him.  This time, they removed all possibility of failure, and even then, they needed vastly more fraud than even they had anticipated.  Stuffing the ballot boxes was not enough; they had to call time out, for a few hours, so they could print yet more ballots.  Indeed, they printed so many more that the sheer number of them made it obvious that they were cheating.  One might think they overplayed their hand, that they had used a sledgehammer to swat a mosquito.  In doing so, they removed all reasonable doubt — the election was clearly rigged.  But the dark state was so desperate that its operatives cared nothing for how it seems to the informed observer.  Nothing.  They just had to make absolutely sure that there would be no way that Donald Trump would be declared the winner.

Mitch McConnell congratulates Biden and lobbies colleagues to oppose a final-stage Republican effort to overturn his victory..  Breaking with President Trump's drive to overturn his election loss, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky on Tuesday congratulated President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. on his victory and began a campaign to keep fellow Republicans from joining a last-ditch effort to reverse the outcome when Congress tallies the results next month.  Although Mr. McConnell's moves came weeks after Mr. Biden was declared the winner, they amounted to clear effort by the majority leader, who is the most powerful Republican in Congress, to put an end to his party's attempts to sow doubt about the election.  They were also a bid to avoid a messy partisan spectacle on the floor of the House that could divide Republicans at the start of the new Congress, pitting those loyal to Mr. Trump against institutionalists.

Curiouser and Curiouser.  [Scroll down]  This has NOTHING to do with electing Biden or heels up Harris.  They're simply puppets for the New World Order folks, the UN folks, the "Great Reset" folks.  This is all about getting Trump out of their sandbox.  Trump's most prescient statement was when he uttered "They're not after me, they're after you, I'm just in the way." And that's exactly right.  Trump has frustrated the globalist elites at every turn.  When they wanted to tax us for "carbon" he got us out of the Paris climate baloney.  When they wanted more wars, he said no, and hasn't started a war in any of his 4 years.  When they wanted open borders to rush in millions of illegal immigrants like they've done with Europe, he said no, and started his wall.  On and on it goes, and the Bilderbergers, the CFR, the Brussels elites, hate his guts.  He's raining on their socialist/communist/globalist parade, and they want him out.  You could have run a banana and a bunny rabbit against him and the bunny would be the "President elect" because it has nothing to do with them wanting Joe Biden specifically.  They just needed a crook they could depend on to advance their agenda's and be a blank check to make it happen.  His dementia in this case is actually a positive for them.

Trump: Bill Barr 'Had An Obligation To Set The Record Straight' On Hunter Biden Investigation During Election.  President Donald Trump said in an interview with "Fox & Friends" that Attorney General Bill Barr "had an obligation" to disclose the ongoing FBI investigation into Hunter Biden before the election.  Speaking with "Fox & Friends" host Brian Kilmeade in an interview that aired Sunday morning, Trump compared Barr's decision to not reveal the investigation to former special counsel Bob Mueller intervening quickly in 2019 to label a BuzzFeed story claiming that Trump had instructed his former attorney Michael Cohen to lie to Congress as "not accurate."  "Joe Biden lied on the debate stage," Trump said.  "He said 'there's nothing happening, nothing happening,' and Bill Barr should have stepped up.  Say what you want about Robert Mueller, when BuzzFeed put out a phony article ... Bob Mueller stepped out and he said that article was a phony and then there was ultimately proven there was no collusion ... Bill Barr should have done the same thing."

Report: Bill Barr Knew of Criminal Investigations into Biden Family in Spring and Worked to Keep It Quiet.  A report within the Wall Street Journal does not necessarily come as a surprise; however, it also does little to provide solace for the lack of action by Attorney General Bill "Bondo" Barr.  According to the article AG Barr has known about at least two investigations related to the Biden family since early spring 2020, and he worked to keep them quiet.

Trump retweets call for Bill Barr to 'be fired by the end of business today' if he knew.  President Donald Trump on Saturday retweeted a post demanding that he fire Attorney General William Barr if a published report earlier this week claiming he knew in the spring about a federal probe into Hunter Biden was accurate.  "If the Wall Street Journal story is true and Attorney General Barr knew in the spring about the Biden investigation and kept it quiet — he should be fired by the end of business today," former Fox News contributor Todd Starnes wrote Friday.

The Honor of the Legal Profession.  [Scroll down]  Anyone who reads the complaint filed by Texas (and rejected by the Supreme Court) must conclude that there are serious reasons to believe that this election was characterized by massive fraud in certain swing states and that this fraud was prepared and executed by partisan party operatives who used litigation to erode mechanisms of ballot security and control of the counting to consummate the win.  Note that I do not claim that the evidence is conclusive, though I personally think it overwhelming.  I use the softer "reason to believe", which means only that it needs investigation.  A legal establishment dedicated to upholding process values would regard itself as honor-bound to demand an investigation of these charges. [...] This is not the reaction of the real legal establishment, which is demanding not just that the charges not be investigated, but that any lawyer who represents the president be damned.

AG William Barr reportedly hid two federal probes into Hunter Biden for months.  Attorney General William Barr knew about two contemporaneous federal investigations into Hunter Biden for months — and worked to keep them from the public ahead of the election, according to a new report.  The nation's top law enforcement official avoided providing information about the probes to Republicans in Congress without explanation, a person familiar with the matter told the Wall Street Journal.  One of the investigations was made public this week, when the 50-year-old son of President-elect Joe Biden disclosed on Wednesday that he was being probed for possible tax fraud.

Congressional Republicans Are Furious With Bill Barr, and They Are Right to Be.  A new report is out detailing just how furious Congressional Republicans are over Bill Barr hiding the Hunter Biden investigation.  According to The Daily Caller, Barr knew about the investigation months ago (which also leaves the question open as to why he didn't know years ago).  Instead of allowing the voters to be made aware of such a monumental development prior to the election, the DOJ paused the investigation and refused to confirm it existed. [...] Barr knew about this in the spring but didn't tell the President, nor any members of Congress that would usually be kept abreast of such a high profile investigation into the son of a presidential candidate.  Further, Barr allowed the investigation to cease during the election season despite the fact that such steps were not taken for the Hillary Clinton, nor Donald Trump investigations during 2016.  Why did Joe Biden deserve this kind of protection?  And how was it fair to the electorate to not give them all the facts?

Confirmed: Barr kept Hunter Biden probe a secret until after Election Day.  Someone on Twitter said last night that this is the most ethical thing Barr has done as Attorney General and he's probably going to get fired for it.  Which would make this administration two for two in dispatching AGs for the crime of behaving ethically.  I'll be a little surprised if he survives the day.  Trump was already thinking of firing him.  Now he has confirmation from the WSJ that Barr could have revealed that Hunter Biden was under federal investigation at any time before the election — and chose not to.

Trump tweets video of Chinese professor claiming that Beijing can swing US policy because it has 'people at the top of America's core inner circle of power'.  President Donald Trump has tweeted video of a Chinese professor suggesting that China has managed to influence U.S. policy for decades thanks to a special network of relationships with people at the upper echelons of American power.  The video, which had originally been posted on Weibo but has since been removed from Chinese social media according to Fox News, depicts Di Dongsheng, a professor and associate dean of the School of International Studies at Renmin University in Beijing.  Tucker Carlson shared a clip at the top of his show on Monday evening [12/7/2020].  In the video Professor Di suggests that China has managed to influence American policies for decades through a special undercover network of 'old friends' who were at the highest levels of the U.S. government and financial institutions.

Justin Amash Says Members Of Congress Have 'No Idea' Who Is Writing Legislation.  Outgoing Michigan Rep. Justin Amash claimed on Sunday evening that members of Congress are not aware of who is writing the legislation that they vote on.  "Legislation used to be crafted by legislators, not 'negotiators,'" he tweeted.  "The public needs to know that members of Congress have no idea who the hell is writing our legislation.  It's certainly not us."

Where's the Kraken?  Where's the Storm?  The deep state mobilized soon after Donald Trump rode down the escalator at Trump Tower in June 2015 and polling showed he was a serious candidate.  They attempted to undermine his campaign, transition, and presidency, with impunity and without fear of punishment.  Attorney General Barr and U.S. Attorney Durham have accomplished little.  One mid-level FBI attorney, Kevin Clinesmith, may or may not serve prison time but the big players, Comey, Clapper, and Brennan, appear free and clear.  Comey was rewarded for his seditious activity with a teaching gig at Columbia Law School and his consigliere Peter Strzok got a similar deal at Georgetown.  That's assuming they have time to teach when not appearing on CNN or writing books. [...] Would the Senate be a bulwark against any of this?  What have their investigations into Benghazi, Clinton emails, Spygate, Burisma, Uranium One, and so on produced, even under Republican jurisdiction, other than hot air?

Trump campaign charges 'not a single' witness interviewed by DOJ.  President Donald Trump's campaign on Dec. 1 fired back at Attorney General William Barr after the nation's top law enforcement official reportedly claimed that officials haven't seen evidence of widespread election fraud.  "With all due respect to the Attorney General, there hasn't been any semblance of a Department of Justice investigation," Rudy Giuliani, a Trump lawyer, and Jenna Ellis, a Trump campaign attorney, said in a joint statement.  "We have gathered ample evidence of illegal voting in at least six states, which they have not examined.  We have many witnesses swearing under oath they saw crimes being committed in connection with voter fraud.  "As far as we know, not a single one has been interviewed by the DOJ.  The Justice Department also hasn't audited any voting machines or used their subpoena powers to determine the truth.

The Supreme Court and the Electoral Coup.  Because Trump was an outsider committed to fighting corruption and changing Washington's ways, multiple coup plots against him were contemplated even before he was inaugurated.  Taking down General Michael Flynn was just the beginning of the siege of President Donald Trump by the Deep State, instigated by the FBI Director James Comey.  Flynn's takedown was immediately followed by two years of the Mueller Commission investigation into Trump's alleged ties to and collusion with Russia.  Try as they might, no substantive evidence could be found.  Then the baton was passed to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi who commenced impeachment hearings.  That too failed for lack of evidence.  Since there were no penalties from the previous coup efforts based on the fraudulently obtained FISA warrants, it's only natural that the Deep State and Democrat Party operatives were emboldened to make a third attempt by seizing on the coronavirus crisis to continue the coup effort in Trump's fourth year — this time putting in the fix on the November 2020 Presidential election.

The Deep State and Democratic Party join hands against America.  Voters who imagine that they control what the government does are mistaken.  Our federal government is really at the mercy of the huge unelected bureaucracy, the Deep State, that represents the "big" in our bloated federal government.  Everybody who lives within 15 miles of Washington is part of it, or so it seems.  Of all the ways in which the Left is attempting to redefine America, its support for an enormous bureaucracy has been the most successful.  The people we elect — the president and Congress — are merely a front for the Deep State.  The federal government has become separated from the American public that it is supposed to serve.  Deep State power has reached the point where it is beyond the reach of constitutional safeguards.  "As the administrative state grows," says Mark Levin in Ameritopia, "the vote is less effective and the individual is increasingly disenfranchised."

Senate holds hearing on FBI's Russia investigation.  The Senate Homeland Security Committee held a hearing on the FBI's 2016 'Russia Investigation.  On Thursday [12/3/2020], the Committee heard from multiple witnesses affiliated with the 'Crossfire Hurricane Investigation.'  Republicans have frequently asserted the FBI's Russia probe was really a Democrat-led means of going after President Trump, which led to a number of security compromises.  During the hearing, senators questioned former FBI Assistant Director of Intelligence Kevin Brock, who argued the partisan investigation violated FBI regulations.

Is the Democrats' Election Heist 'Too Big to Fail'?  President Trump and Fox News enjoyed a mutually beneficial relationship, until, loyalty already fraying, Fox betrayed Trump on election evening by prematurely calling Arizona for Biden.  Only stalwart reporters such as Mark Levin, Judge Jeanine Pirro, Lou Dobbs, and Sean Hannity remain by Trump's side.  Republican elected officials who retained power are mostly mute.  Although the predicted Blue Wave never materialized as Republicans flipped House seats and Senate control is so close it will only be decided after the results of a Georgia runoff election are known, feckless state governors and attorneys general overseeing election preparations stood idly by as Democrats set up the apparatus for the big election steal.  Republicans in the commonwealth of Pennsylvania were the exception.  Resisting the illegal power grab the Democrats had implemented by a massive mail-in-ballot scheme and extending, by three days, the deadline to vote, Republican state officials appealed to the Supreme Court.

Trump says DOJ and FBI are 'missing in action' amid voter fraud allegations during first interview since election.  President Trump said the Department of Justice and the FBI are "missing in action" in investigating potential voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election.  "Where is the DOJ and the FBI in all of this, Mr. President?  You have laid out some serious charges here.  Shouldn't this be something that the FBI is investigating?  Are they?" Fox News's Maria Bartiromo asked Trump on Sunday during his first interview since Election Day.  "Missing in action.  Can't tell you where they are.  I ask, 'Are they looking at it?' Everyone says, 'Yes, they're looking at it,'" Trump responded.  "Where are they with all of this stuff, and what happened to Durham?  Where's Durham? [...]"

Sidney Powell Calls For the Complete Reconstruction of the FBI and Department of Justice.  "It affects the bedrock of our democratic republic," Powell started as she detailed fraud in the 2020 election.  "It can't be allowed to stand and, frankly, I'm about to think the entire FBI and the entire Department of Justice need to be hosed out with Clorox and firehoses."  Powell has been very aggressive in recent weeks as she presents her case of voter fraud to the American people.  Last Wednesday, Powell filed a 104 page bombshell complaint in the state of Georgia relating to alleged voter fraud.

Maria Bartiromo gets an earful after asking Trump, where are the DOJ and FBI?  Appearing on Fox News' "Sunday Morning Futures," [11/29/2020] President Donald Trump took aim at the FBI and even U.S. Attorney John Durham for their apparent refusal to exact justice against wrongdoers, including those allegedly responsible for voter fraud and impropriety in the 2020 race.  "Where are they with Comey, with McCabe, with Brennan, with all these people?  They lied to Congress, they leaked, they spied on our campaign.  I see Carter Page is bringing a lawsuit.  That's good news.  Where are they with all of this stuff, and what happened to Durham?  Where's Durham?" he asked incredulously.  The remark was made in response to host Maria Bartiromo asking him whether the FBI is investigating his campaign's allegations of voter fraud and impropriety.  His point appeared to be that the FBI and Department of Justice, in general, have been missing in action for so long that he doesn't expect them to do anything.

Did President Trump Spring a Trap on Treasonous Democrats on Election Night?  After the November 3 presidential election of 2020, a news story broke reporting the seizure of important computer servers in Frankfurt, Germany.  Though the event is disputed, what occurred, according to the Gateway Pundit, was this:  "[a] unit under the command of USEUCOM (i.e., United States European Command) did in fact conduct an operation to take control of computer servers.  But these servers belong to the CIA. ... Such an operation would have been carried out with US law enforcement present to take custody of the evidence."  The presence of federal agents of the court would guarantee a chain of legal custody for the servers that would render their data admissible before a judge.  Gina Haspel and Christopher Wray were supposedly not informed of the raid in advance, leaving the CIA and FBI heads necessarily blind to this action and, therefore, unable to interfere.  This means that the CIA was certainly the target and that a law enforcement agency unrelated to the FBI, such as the U.S. Marshalls or the Secret Service, was likely used to take control of the evidence.  The timely firing of Mark Esper prior to the raid would mean that the oppositional defense secretary was cut off from foreknowledge of the raid and, therefore, would have been unable to disrupt what was going to transpire.

New reports about election manipulation read like a Tom Clancy novel.  On Friday [11/27/2020], a retired top Air Force intelligence analyst stated with certainty during an interview that special forces had secured a CIA-run facility in Germany that had computers showing election manipulation.  If this report is real, we are witnessing the biggest coup attempt, sabotage, and treason in American history.  No matter what, though, because this report is out there and comes from serious people, it deserves serious investigation.  I have no idea whether this raid happened.  Its having taken place, however, is consistent with my ruminations about Trump's peculiarly-timed shake-up at the Pentagon:  Firing defense secretary Mark Esper and replace him with Christopher Miller, a special forces man; moving special forces into their own command, rather than having them function as subsets of other military branches; and firing potentially disloyal members of the civilian Defense Policy Board.  These actions indicated that Trump was clearing the decks for something big.

'Durham has been looking at 2020 election fraud as well".  [Thread capture]

The Editor says...
The most interesting articles are the ones where the reader can hardly tell if it's fact or fiction.  This is one of those cases.

The coming purge.  In the end, the continuing control by Obama holdovers in this and other intelligence agencies resulted in a fake Russian collusion investigation, spying on the president, and a fake impeachment effort.  All against the duly and legally elected president by a gang of partisan anti-American Democrats acting as a fifth column in the executive branch.  The saddest part of this story however is how so totally typical it is for Republican administrations since the 1980s.  Republican elected officials have routinely been very lax about cleaning house of Democratic appointees, once in power.  They make a few miscellaneous appointments, but in general let the previous Democratic Party operatives hold sway.  The Democrats however have never had any qualms about firing everyone if necessary to get the policies they want enacted.  In fact, both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama were merciless in eliminating as soon as possible any Republican holdovers, so that very quickly their administrations were being run by their supporters, with no dissenting views.  This was Trump's biggest failure.  All he had to do was exercise his due powers and fire a lot of people — like Clinton and Obama — replacing them with those who supported him.  No violence, no illegalities, no brutality was necessary, only the reasonable actions of an executive trying to implement his policies.  Trump, like the Bushes before him, did not do this.

Letting the Democrats Steal This Election Is Real Appeasement.  [Scroll down]  They massively abused their power to cripple and sabotage the presidency itself.  The brilliant political scientist Angelo Codavilla is worth reading here.  He writes that Trump's win threatened to derail America morphing into a permanent oligarchy.  And the oligarchs wouldn't put up with that, which is why they mobilized the Deep State to destroy him and his team, by any means necessary.  And now we see how far they proved themselves willing to go.  Do we really want to find out how much further they'll dare to take things?  People unafraid to annul the last presidential election, if they really tried to steal this one, are coldly and deadly serious about holding onto power.  They're willing to imprison innocent men like General Mike Flynn, and Kyle Rittenhouse, and David Daleiden.  To persecute innocent citizens like Brett Kavanaugh, Nicholas Sandmann, and Mark Judge.  To close all our churches, open our borders, create new farcical states, and pack the Supreme Court with flunkies.  What will they do to us and our cities if we try to resist them now?  I think a lot of Republicans consider this, and cower.

Why the Status Quo Wants Trump Out.  I confess to having been utterly naïve.  I had wondered why on Earth the business community would prefer a frail and corrupt president Biden over a pro-business president Trump.  Trump has a track record of economic growth and stands for lower regulations and taxes, fairer international trade, and a stronger military.  Biden wants to increase taxes and regs and put in place a number of new initiatives like the Green New Deal that might bankrupt the economy.  But Wall Street, the tech industry, and many more backed Biden, while even many GOP congressmen seemed lukewarm to Trump.  The choice for Trump seemed so obvious, what was I missing?  The difference is the status quo.  A lot of people make lots of money the way things are now.  They constitute a powerful force that seeks to get rid of inconvenient obstacles — especially a serial disruptor like President Trump.

Outgoing Syria Envoy Admits Hiding US Troop Numbers; Praises Trump's Mideast Record.  Four years after signing the now-infamous "Never Trump" letter condemning then-presidential candidate Donald Trump as a danger to America, retiring diplomat Jim Jeffrey is recommending that the incoming Biden administration stick with Trump's foreign policy in the Middle East.  But even as he praises the president's support of what he describes as a successful "realpolitik" approach to the region, he acknowledges that his team routinely misled senior leaders about troop levels in Syria.  "We were always playing shell games to not make clear to our leadership how many troops we had there," Jeffrey said in an interview.  The actual number of troops in northeast Syria is "a lot more than" the roughly two hundred troops Trump initially agreed to leave there in 2019.

Senior Administration Officials Lied To Trump About Troop Levels So He Wouldn't Pull Out Of Syria.  Jim Jeffrey, the United States' retiring Special Representative to Syria and the special envoy in the fight against the Islamic State, confirmed Thursday that he and other senior administration officials routinely misled President Donald Trump on troop levels in the Middle East.  Jeffrey, speaking to Defense One, explained how despite Trump's stated promise to withdraw America from endless Middle Eastern engagements, he was able to convince the president to commit to keeping between 200 to 400 troops in the region in 2019 to "secure" oil fields held by U.S. allies and other strategic positions.

Drain the swamp!  One embedded lefty at a time, if necessary.
Top DHS official behind website debunking election misinformation says he is about to be fired — after directly contradicting a Trump tweet.  President Donald Trump's post-election purge is about to pivot to the Department of Homeland Security, where a top cybersecurity predicts his head will roll after he set up a 'rumor control' website to debunk false election claims.  Top U.S. cybersecurity official Christopher Krebs has told associates he expects to be fired by the White House, three sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.  Krebs, who heads the Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), did not return messages seeking comment.  CISA and the White House declined comment.

Deep State Diplomat Lied To Trump About Syria On Behalf Of Military-Industrial Complex.  Senior U.S. Diplomat and special envoy for Syria James Jeffrey repeatedly lied to the Trump administration about how many troops were stationed in Syria over the last four years.  "We were always playing shell games to not make clear to our leadership how many troops we had there," Jeffrey said in an interview.  While President Donald Trump announced late in 2018 that he would be withdrawing troops from Syria following the defeat of the Islamic State, Jeffrey, whose term ended on Sunday, and his team continually found reasons to prevent total removal from the region.

Pay No Attention to the Drama Queen at DOJ who Resigned After AG Barr Authorized Fraud Investigations.  On Monday afternoon [11/9/2020] the Department of Justice put out a statement confirming that Attorney General William Barr had authorized federal prosecutors and investigators to initiate federal criminal investigations into "substantial allegations" of vote fraud in the Presidential election.  The whinging and hand-wringing on the left began immediately, with claims that Barr was again using the Justice Department as a weapon against President Trump's political opponents, and there is no evidence of vote fraud that warrants any federal investigations.  Then, to cap things off, late in the day on Monday the left-wing press — led by the NYT I believe — shrieked that the Director of the DOJ's Election Crimes Branch had resigned in protest following the announcement by AG Barr.  That individual's name is Richard Pilger, who is a "career" official with the Department of Justice.  But let's draw back the curtain a bit more so everyone can understand what is happening here behind the scenes. [...]

The Meaning Of Barr's Action Yesterday.  [Scroll down]  The point is that there's more to see here than just another career DoJ drama queen flouncing off the election fraud stage.  Barr took his action because he became aware that investigations of election fraud were being blocked from within DoJ HQ.  As SWC details, the drama queen, one Richard Pilger, has been in charge of the Election Crimes Branch at DoJ HQ for quite a few years.  During the Obama years he wrote up a manual of procedures for the handling of allegations of election law violations.  That manual specified that the local US Attorneys (USAs) — including their Assistants (AUSAs) and FBI agents — could take no action with regard to allegations of election law violations without DoJ HQ — meaning, without Pilger's — approval.  There's an important distinction here, one that might seem minor but which helps to see events of the last week more clearly — those events leading up to Barr's action.  First of all, that provision in the manual didn't prevent the FBI or local USA offices from receiving allegations of election crime violations.  Now, you'll recall that shortly after the election, Barr had his DAG specifically state that FBI agents could enter election centers armed.  That was a clear sign that the FBI was receiving complaints of election law violations and was responding to them by going to election centers — presumably because the complaints were coming from workers at those centers.  They were being blocked from entering because they were armed, and their complaints about this obstruction got to Barr very quickly.

The real story behind AG Barr authorizing investigations of vote fraud blows away the MSM narrative.  Even some of my most respected conservative correspondents have been taken in by pessimism over Attorney General William Barr's authorization of investigation of vote fraud.  The media cabal seeking to oust President Trump focused on the abrupt purported "resignation" (he is keeping his federal paycheck and transferring to a different post) of Richard Pilger, director of the DOJ Criminal Division's Election Crimes Branch.  The narrative Pilger offers, all but universally adopted by the media, is that Barr is violating established norms and acting out of (corrupt) political motives. [...] But there is LOT more going on here, and despite the frustrated worries of some of my conservative friends and colleagues that nothing will come of this, Barr's order is hugely significant, for it removes the obstacle that has prevented serious investigations of vote fraud up to now.  To explain, I turn to Mark Wauck, an email correspondent and contributor who has written important articles here, often building on his wealth of experience as a retired FBI special agent.  His blog Meaning in History is a daily read for me.

Ex-Mueller Deputy Andrew Weissmann Compares President Trump to Hitler.  Former Special Counsel Robert Mueller's ex-deputy Andrew Weissmann on Tuesday [11/10/2020] compared President Trump to Adolf Hitler in a tweet, amid Democrat calls for Trump supporters to join together with the left and "heal."  Weissman, a former senior Justice Department official until he joined Mueller's team in 2017, tweeted Tuesday morning, "For those people who say we should appease Trump, how did that approach go for Neville Chamberlain":  [Redundant tweet]  Weissmann, despite holding a top position at the DOJ until 2017, was reportedly very partisan.  In December 2017, the Wall Street Journal reported that he attended former 2016 Democrat presidential nominee Hillary Clinton's election-night party.  Election filings also state that Weissmann donated several thousand dollars to the Democratic Party, including a $2,350 contribution to the Obama Victory Fund in 2008 and $2,000 to the DNC in 2006.

Donald Trump Jr:  "Declassify Everything".  I have spent a great deal of time thinking about this since the media began their insufferable onslaught and "president-elect Biden" narrative.  The time has long past for President Trump to fully demand his executive cabinet members declassify the evidence outlining intrusive government surveillance upon not only himself, but all Americans.  CTH has a rather unique perspective on the declassification angle.  This conversation has traveled with me for over two years as I have talked to people inside the machinery.  Ultimately the discussion ends around something like this:  ["]Is the DC political surveillance state, and all of the ramifications within that reality, so fundamentally corrupt and against our nation's interests, that no entity dare expose the scope and depth of it?  And ultimately... is it the preservation of institutions that is causing so many disconnected outcomes from evidence intentionally downplayed?["]  If we assume the scale of unconstitutional conduct has become systemic, that likely answers the questions.  Personally, I believe this is the most likely scenario.

How Trump Survives a Coup.  [Scroll down]  Most serious, however, is the ongoing intimidation of the Supreme Court: only three Senators have publicly declared that the newly elected president should appoint more judges to overturn the moderate majority.  But of the three (Gillibrand, Harris, and Warren), one is now the Democrats' vice-presidential candidate.  That is highly relevant because it is the expressed opinion of the leaders of the Democratic establishment — enunciated by former Secretary of State Hilary Clinton — that Biden should not concede victory to Trump under any circumstances, i.e., regardless of the number of votes that he might win.  Those are words which would have been simply unimaginable in the past; now they do not even arouse much furor when spoken.  If therefore election-night ballot counting, or the belated counting of mailed-in ballots, fails to yield the required number of votes for Biden in the different states, thus requiring an appeal to the courts that would quickly reach the Supreme Court, the latter must do its duty and side with Biden, on penalty of being diluted with new appointments.  Such is the logic of the Democrats' party leaders.

Donald Trump, Counterrevolutionary.  Until Trump's arrival, Big Tech was three-quarters home on the road to Nineteen Eighty-Four.  Five or six companies monopolized most American — and indeed the world's — access and use of the internet.  In cynical fashion, Silicon Valley grandees patronized naïve conservatives that they were the supposed embodiment of Milton Friedman libertarianism and 19th century robber baron daring.  Yet to their leftist kindred, the moguls of Menlo Park simultaneously whispered, "Don't worry about such necessary disinformation:  we will enrich only your candidates, only your agendas, only your foundations, only your universities — in exchange for your exemptions."  Antitrust legislation was as much an anathema to good liberals as rigging searches, institutionalizing the cancel culture, and censoring thoughts and ideas were welcomed.  For now Trump, almost alone, is battling that revolution.

President Trump Opens the Valve to Drain the Swamp With a New Executive Order.  President Trump has signed an executive order that removes civil-service protections from certain positions within federal government agencies.  There has been much whining and gnashing of teeth, but voters should be thrilled.  Making policymakers in the Deep State "at-will" employees, who are easier to dismiss if they attempt to obstruct the duly elected president's agenda, is a good thing.  Not being bound to hire according to a career-progression ladder will also allow agencies to bring in new people with new ideas.  This will be true whether or not Donald Trump is president.  The need to reduce protections within the civil service became apparent when training based on critical race theory was banned from the federal government.  Within two weeks of the order, whistleblowers started to report that their scheduled critical race training would proceed — in direct violation of the order.

Trumpism:  Then, Now — and in the Future?  [Scroll down]  Aside from fundamental changes in foreign and democratic policy, and renewed emphasis on class instead of race, Trumpism changed the political dialectic.  Of course, Trump could be crude, even at times bullying and profane.  But much of his braggadocio and vulgarity were designed as chemotherapy to kill the cancer of the administrative state and the lock-hold on permanent government by the revolving-door, bipartisan coastal elite.  The reasons why Trump just days after his inauguration faced a failed impeachment, or calls for his removal by the 25th Amendment, or even talk of a military coup, or the Steele dossier hoax that led to a $40 million, 22-month effort by progressives to destroy his presidency, his person and his family, were manifold.  But one cause surely was that Trump was orphaned from the hard-Left Democratic Party and the Republican establishment and seemed either to welcome the ostracism or not be fully cognizant of the cost that it entailed.

Why Does Barr Let Wray Lie and Flout the Law?  One is supposed to believe that Attorney General William Barr is in charge of the Department of Justice, and that FBI Director Christopher Wray works for Barr.  Both men purportedly work for President Donald J. Trump.  President Trump has been very clear about his desire and directives to declassify and release all materials related to the "Russia!" hoax.  The President is consistently ignored by his staff.

GSA Gave FBI, Mueller 'Secret Access' To Trump Records.  The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the General Services Administration (GSA) undermined the Trump transition team by violating a memorandum of understanding between the Trump transition team and the GSA — when they complied with requests from the FBI and special counsel Robert Mueller's office to provide private records on members of Trump's team, according to a Senate report released on Friday [10/23/2020].

Senate report:  FBI, GSA undermined Trump 2016 transition by sharing private Trump team records.  A Senate report released today [10/23/2020] claims that the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the General Services Administration undermined the Trump transition team in 2016 by sharing private Trump team records in violation of an agreement between that team and the GSA.  The majority staff report from both the Senate Committee on Finance and the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs claims that officials from both the FBI and Mueller's office "secretly sought and received access to the private records of Donald J. Trump's presidential transition team, Trump for America, Inc."

Mark Meadows Informs Court President Authorized Declassification of Documents [but] Did Not Order It.  Federal Judge Reggie Walton saw an opportunity to give media (Buzzfeed and CNN) their request for all documents from the Weissmann/Mueller investigation when President Trump wrote a tweet on October 6, 2020, re-emphasizing declassification.  Seemingly Judge Walton wanted to interpret the tweets as authority for the declassification of material underlying the Mueller probe.  As a consequence Walton asked for clarification from White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows.  Mr. Meadows responded to the request from the court with a one-page statement: [...]

This Is How the Left's Power Structure Collapses.  The smartest people in the world actually believe they can be successful in spiking one of the biggest stories to pop up in any American election cycle.  Their hubris is so advanced, so viral, so awful, that they can't see what they've done to themselves.  They really believe they are going to keep a cork on this.  The derogatory phrase for the establishment has been "the swamp."  How bad is this, how deep is this, how criminal is this, how horrifying is it to find out the vast amount of corruption and collusion in so many of our institutions and corporations?  It's staggering.  It's infuriating.  These are the most powerful among us.  All rich.  All corrupt.  All once respected by Americans of all stripes.  And here, in one fell swoop, they reveal themselves to the average American.  As arrogant bullies, as deceitful liars, as evil as anything we've seen in our generation.  They have revealed themselves as the cabal of darkness.

Obama, Clinton, Biden, Harris, Brennan, Clapper, Hayden, Rice, Comey, Mueller, Pelosi, Schumer, Schiff et al. must be charged with treason and sedition.  There are countless other co-conspirators in this extremely complex criminal conspiracy to overthrow the Trump administration.  Loretta Lycnch, Rod Rosenstein, Sally Yates, Andrew Weissman, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, Bruce Ohr, Nellie Ohr, Bill Priestap, Stefan Halper, Joseph Mifsud, Christopher Steele are just a few of the many other career criminals who subversively used their offices within the U.S. Federal Government to carry out a soft coup against President Trump.  [Chart]  What else needs to be said: all of these hardcore criminal co-conspirators are guilty of attempting to collapse the government of the United States of America.  After years of in-depth investigation, all of the hard evidence currently points to myriad acts of treason and sedition on the part of the aforementioned coup plotters.

Why Trump Must Never Stop Talking about the Russia Hoax.  [Scroll down]  Barack Obama's and Hillary Clinton's apparent use of the CIA and FBI to frame President Trump as a Russian agent reveals such corruption and treachery at the highest levels of government that no past political scandal compares.  What is worse, supporters of the president have been attacked for four years as delusional for correctly believing that everything from the Steele Dossier to Robert Mueller's special counsel investigation was the product of a political hit job and setup.  Many Americans have been forced to watch a slow-moving coup against the president of the United States, while being told over and over again by nefarious government actors and a complicit press that President Trump is the real villain.  Never have Americans been victimized by gaslighting on such a grand scale, and to downplay the psychological toll that has had on voters outside of the Beltway is to ignore the irreparable damage caused by parties who have, as yet, have been neither fully named nor punished.

Debate Commission Packed With Trump Critics From Both Parties.  The leadership of the Commission on Presidential Debates, which organizes the general election debates, includes many Trump critics from both parties.  While the commission is officially nonpartisan and includes a mix of both Republicans and Democrats, it is overwhelmingly made up of members of the political establishment who are opposed to President Donald Trump.  Majorities of both the commission's chairmen and board members include people who have either taken aim at the president in the past or donated to Democratic political candidates, a Daily Caller News Foundation review found.  Trump has butted heads with the commission over its decision to conduct the second debate virtually, which Trump cited as a reason to boycott the event.

Rigged: The Chairman of the Presidential Debate Commission is Co-Founder of "Color Revolution" Org Linked to Steele Dossier and More.  From the failed Chris Wallace-Biden tag-team attempt against Trump, to biased moderator Susan Page's shrill interruptions of Vice President Pence, to the Presidential Debate Commission's ridiculous and politically motivated effort to force a "virtual debate" on Biden's behalf, patriotic Americans have caught on to the fact that there is something deeply unfair about the presidential debates.  This clear bias has justifiably led many observers to wonder what is wrong with the Presidential Debate Commission.  Just yesterday, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany called out the Commission directly:  [Tweet]  Kayleigh's characterization of the Commission is of course correct.  However, its corruption and bias goes beyond the simple fact that it's in the tank for Joe Biden.  The nominally Republican Chairman of Presidential Debate Commission, Frank Fahrenkopf, is both a co-founder and current board member of the International Republican Institute (IRI), a top "Color Revolution" propaganda outfit.  The IRI was run by Never Trump neoconservative John McCain for decades.  It is closely linked to the thoroughly discredited Steele Dossier at the center of the Russia Hoax.

John Brennan, Hillary's Helper.  It came out this week that John Brennan, the most partisan CIA director ever, briefed Barack Obama on Hillary Clinton's plans to smear Trump as a Putin-besotted collaborator.  Brennan's 2016 briefing notes to Obama refer to "alleged approval by Hillary Clinton on July 28 of a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisers to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by Russian security services."  Did Obama tell his CIA director to steer clear of this partisan mischief?  Clearly not.  Brennan had already joined in it.  Auditioning for a role in the Hillary administration — Brennan had told his colleagues he wanted to remain as CIA director under her — Brennan was pushing the Trump smear as hard as anyone.  CIA interference in elections was once one of the gravest sins in the liberal catechism.  How times had changed.

An American Coup Attempt.  The U.S. is in a constitutional crisis.  It began on the day of President Trump's election, when unelected bureaucrats mobilized against his presidency.  This is a crisis in the executive branch, perpetrated by subordinate officials who don't see themselves as answerable to the president.  They have effectively established a fourth branch of government — a permanent, unaccountable bureaucracy.  [Paywall]

Nunes Suggests Shutting Down Intel Agencies Until They Turn Over 'Smoking Gun' Trump Information.  Rep. Devin Nunes, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, on Sunday suggested shutting down U.S. intelligence agencies if they refuse to turn over information they collected on Donald Trump during the 2016 election.  In an interview on Fox News' "Sunday Morning Futures," Nunes said that he is aware of intelligence he described as "smoking guns" that should be declassified and released to the public.  "Every Republican senator and member of Congress should be saying... we want every [...] bit of evidence that every intelligence agency has or it's maybe time to shut those agencies down," said Nunes.

Why Trump Contracting COVID-19 Will Reelect Him.  [Scroll down]  Nevertheless, if we are to believe the polls (and I don't, really, but arguendo...) Biden enjoys a sizable lead a month off from the election.  This can largely be ascribed to the mainstream media whose hatred for Trump was manifest the moment he rode down the escalator to announce his candidacy.  Almost simultaneously, if you think about it, a cabal of intelligence and FBI agents, evidently with the approval of the previous administration, began a treasonous attempt to prevent Trump's election or, failing that, to discredit him.  Then came the impeachment trial over Ukraine when it was Biden & Son who deserved to be impeached for their activities in that country.  All of this has resulted in an unprecedented level of hate and vengeance in our country that seems unending.  But as with the French Revolution, eventually these things go too far and burn out.  Now we have reached a kind of apotheosis of hate that portends some kind of ending.

Did The CIA, FBI And Hillary Launch A Silent Coup Against Trump?  Former FBI Director James Comey plays dumb in testimony before Congress, while CIA Director Gina Haspel blocks further declassification of documents in the Russia scandal.  That's the obstructionist Deep State in action, hiding the truth about a major scandal from the American people.  Listening to Comey testify this week about the FBI's "Crossfire Hurricane" investigation into supposed collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian officials during the 2016 campaign has been revelatory.  "In the main, it (Crossfire Hurricane) was done by the book, it was appropriate, and it was essential that it be done," Comey said.  Later, under persistent questioning from South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, Comey maintained that "Overall, I'm proud of the work."  When he wasn't being proud, Comey played as if he were ignorant of the things going on around him, including the fraudulent application to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court to spy on the Trump campaign.

Big Tech's Backing of the 'Transition Integrity Project' Lacks Integrity.  During Tuesday night's debate, while fielding yet another softball from moderator Chris Wallace, Joe Biden promised to accept the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.  "I will accept it, and he will too," Biden replied.  "You know why?  Once the winner is declared after all the votes are counted, that will be the end of it."  But Biden, as usual, wasn't telling the whole truth.  The former vice president can publicly assure Americans he will abide by the voters' decision this year because he knows his campaign team is part of a massive operation — cosigned by the most powerful media, business, and political interests in the country — performing Biden's dirty work behind-the-scenes to make sure that he, not Donald Trump, takes the oath of office on January 20, 2021.

The Presidential Debate Commission Tried, And Failed, To Ambush Trump.  Tuesday night's presidential debate was not supposed to go down like that.  Most everyone agrees that the debate, which quickly devolved into a chaotic shouting match between President Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden (with frequent, one-sided interruptions by moderator Chris Wallace), was a disaster.  But for the Commission on Presidential Debates, the body that oversees and runs these things, it was a complete failure.  The debate was supposed to be an orchestrated ambush of Trump, with Wallace playing a key role helping Biden land punches and avoid getting flustered by Trump.

Davis: CIA Director Gina Haspel Is Blocking Declassification Of Remaining Russigate Documents.  CIA Director Gina Haspel is personally blocking the declassification of documents detailing corruption at the highest levels of the intelligence community during the 2016 election, according to The Federalist co-founder Sean Davis.  While new information about wrongdoing at the FBI has recently been declassified, including recent revelations about Hillary Clinton campaign's collusion with Russia, Davis reported on "Tucker Carlson Tonight" Wednesday that Haspel herself is standing in the way of the declassification of other relevant documents.

CIA Director Gina Haspel Blocking Declassifying Critical Documents Related To Russia Investigation, Report Says.  Sean Davis, co-founder of The Federalist, reported on Wednesday night that CIA Director Gina Haspel is reportedly blocking the declassification and release of critical documents related to the FBI's surveillance of the Trump campaign in 2016.  "I can report here tonight that these declassifications that have come out, those weren't easy to get out and there's in fact far more waiting to get out," Davis told Fox News host Tucker Carlson.  "Unfortunately, those releases and declassifications, according to multiple sources I've talked to, are being blocked by CIA Director Gina Haspel, who herself was the main link between Washington and London as the London station chief for John Brennan's CIA during the 2016 election."

The Deep State Wins if Trump Loses.  Donald Trump has done his level best to seek justice in the dank D.C. quagmire.  In addition to House and Senate committees, he's tasked Attorney General William Barr and federal prosecutor John Durham with investigating the numerous ways the intelligence community — aided by the lying media, every elected Democrat and lots of GOP pols — tried to get back at the President.  But the Swamp is deep, wide and treacherous.  Thanks to unelected federal bureaucrats, the Durham investigation has been hindered at every turn.  Getting documents from the FBI, CIA, DoJ and State Department has been harder than pulling teeth on a unsedated lion.  It's become increasingly clear that U.S. voters won't learn the full extent of Deep State treason until after the election.  And should Joe Biden, the Democrats' dead-man-walking candidate, somehow win in November, we won't learn anything.

'Locked safes, lost keys': Richard Grenell details 'crazy' excuses about classified reports.  Former Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell said on Monday that officials make up "crazy" excuses not to release classified reports.  Fox News host Sean Hannity alluded to Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham saying over the weekend that "more damning" information about the Russia investigation will soon be released to the public and asked Grenell if he had any idea what is in store.  "We've heard every excuse in the book about why these reports aren't coming out:  locked safes, lost keys, all sorts of crazy stuff," Grenell said as he called for further transparency.  Critics of such declassifications have also warned about putting sources and methods at risk.

The Head of the FTC Is Yet Another Tyrannical Deep State Swamp Creature.  The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) — is yet another one of those Executive Branch joints the Legislative Branch set up to be "independent." Which is, of course, unconstitutional.  The Constitution establishes three branches of government — Executive, Legislative and Judicial.  You can't create an "independent" fourth branch — unless and until you amend our founding document.  So in Reality, the FTC should be an Executive Branch agency.  As with all the Executive Branch agencies, departments, commissions and boards — the FTC is supposed to execute the policy intentions of the duly elected Chief Executive.  THIS duly elected Chief Executive — Donald Trump.  Not the PRIOR duly elected Chief Executive — Barack Obama.  Whose nigh entire panoply of policy intentions were diametrically opposed to this one's.  But the FTC just yet again voted to continue doing the bidding of Obama — who hasn't been president for nearly four years.

Seth Rich:  The Murder Washington Doesn't Want Solved.  [Scroll down]  Donald Trump received just 4.1 percent of the District's vote in the 2016 election.  Trump's election disrupted short-term strategies and long-term expectations in every one of the capital's major institutions, local and federal, public and private, the legal community among them.  According to Hersh, Trump was a "circuit breaker," one who made a whole lot of enemies.  Those enemies, as we have seen, would go to great lengths to discredit Trump and anyone associated with him.  The pressure they can bring to bear on even those who want to tell the truth remains formidable.

It WAS a coup attempt.  In the past few days a number of news stories have confirmed, unequivocally, that the effort in the FBI, CIA, and Justice Department to spy on the Trump campaign before the election and then pin the false accusation of Russian collusion on Trump after his election were all an effort to dictate the results of the election, and then overturn it when Trump won.  It was an out-and-out coup attempt by these government officials, apparently aided and abetted by Obama when he was still president.  First we learn that the FBI agents working on the fake prosecution of former National Security were so worried their misconduct would be uncovered by the Trump administration that they bought liability insurance to protect themselves. [...] They all knew there was no evidence against Flynn, and to get his conviction required blackmail against him as well as the faking of evidence, both of which were done.  Those acts by the way are outright crimes.

"Get Trump" was the Dominant Theme of Special Counsel Mueller's Crossfire Hurricane "All-Star Team".  Early on Friday morning, I went through in summary fashion some of the highlights of the FBI 302 Memorandum of Interview of FBI Special Agent William Barnett.  Barnett was interviewed on September 17, 2020, but not for John Durham — it was investigators working with US Attorney Jeffrey Jensen on his review of the Special Counsel Office's investigation and prosecution of Gen. Michael Flynn.  Barnett was the original Case Agent for the investigation dubbed "Crossfire Razor" which was focused on the activities of General Flynn prior to and after he became President Trump's National Security Advisor during the campaign, and later in the White House.  Barnett led the Razor investigation from August 2016 until early January 2017.  As noted in the 302, and as I noted in my first story last night, he was "cut out" of the decision to interview General Flynn on January 24, 2017, not being told about it having taken place until the following day.  Weeks after that he asked to be removed from the Razor investigation.

Stunning revelations expose FBI's Trump probe as dirtiest political trick in US history.  It was always a witch hunt designed to "get Trump."  Collusion was an illusion invented by a suspected Russian spy but zealously embraced by malevolent actors at the FBI and later by scheming prosecutors on Special Counsel Robert Mueller's team of partisans.  These are the stunning revelations contained in two sets of newly declassified documents that pull back the curtain on the Russia Hoax, the dirtiest political trick in American history.  In testimony that is corroborated by records, FBI Special Agent William J. Barnett has exposed how the bureau's collusion investigation of Donald Trump was based on nothing more than "supposition on supposition" and devoid of any credible evidence.

Secret Report:  How CIA's Brennan Overruled Dissenting Analysts Who Concluded Russia Favored Hillary.  Former CIA Director John Brennan personally edited a crucial section of the intelligence report on Russian interference in the 2016 election and assigned a political ally to take a lead role in writing it after career analysts disputed Brennan's take that Russian leader Vladimir Putin intervened in the 2016 election to help Donald Trump clinch the White House, according to two senior U.S. intelligence officials who have seen classified materials detailing Brennan's role in drafting the document.  The explosive conclusion Brennan inserted into the report was used to help justify continuing the Trump-Russia "collusion" investigation, which had been launched by the FBI in 2016.  It was picked up after the election by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who in the end found no proof that Trump or his campaign conspired with Moscow.  The Obama administration publicly released a declassified version of the report — known as the "Intelligence Community Assessment on Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent Elections (ICA)" — just two weeks before Trump took office, casting a cloud of suspicion over his presidency.

D'Souza's New Film 'Trump Card' Slashes the 'Deep State' to Ribbons.  Dinesh D'Souza has become the master of the conservative political documentary film genre, starting with his first offering, "2016: Obama's America," which examined the roots of then-President Barack Obama's desire to fundamentally transform the United States.  Obama, D'Souza argued, saw the U.S. as fundamentally unjust, particularly in matters of race and wealth distribution.  "Trump Card," the fifth of D'Souza's films, picks up in a sense where "Obama's America" ended, but this time the enemy is the "deep state" and the democratic socialists.

Transition Integrity Project founder calls for execution of former National Security Council official, and mocks those who express disgust.  Now, here's a real charmer, wafting in from the Trump-haters — the founder of the "civility"-preaching "Transition Integrity Project," who's now calling for public executions for wrongthink: [...] The Brasillach that Gilman refers to is a French intellectual who was shot by firing squad in 1944 by French resistance forces for his advocacy of Nazi collaboration and anti-Semitism.  It sparked some controversy at the time, given that he didn't actually kill anyone; it was premised solely on his vile ideas.  He isn't exactly missed.  Now Gilman has decided he'd like the same thing to happen to Michael Anton, a former National Security Council official and powerful writer whose "Flight 93 election" article made a huge impact in 2016, and whose more recent essay, "The Coming Coup," warned of plans for a "color revolution" in the U.S. where elections are overridden by mobs, plotted by the very Deep-Staters connected to George Soros, who invented the color revolutions elsewhere.  The target in his piece is the Transition Integrity Project, as it turns out, and rather than argue or defend his project, he called for killing his critics.

Forgetting History and Misrepresenting History is America's Real Pandemic.  [Scroll down]  But here's what has taken me by surprise.  The extent and depth of treason going on within all these government agencies, and throughout every level of government in America by government officials, elected and un-elected, military and civilian.  There's a reason the phrase "The Deep State" has been coined to explain them.  Its been known for years the government of the United States during the Roosevelt years was the most heavily infiltrated government in the history of the world.  Senator Joe McCarthy was contemptible in many ways, accusing innocent people of being communists, but he was right in his contention the federal government was filled with communists, socialists, Stalinist agents and fellow travelers.  All of which was proven by the release of the VENONA intercepts, and by the release of the Soviet Union's files after its collapse.  Information FDR, Truman and Eisenhower all had to know about.

Rage for the Machine.  Donald Trump was an unexpected monkey wrench in their plans.  He is an outsider expressing neither the palatable views of the pro-business GOP, nor the globalist views of the neoliberal establishment.  Thus, the government that Trump ostensibly runs resists him actively or passively at every turn.  In this, it is joined by big business, the media, and pretty much every other established institution.  They all believe in the same myths: that cops are racist, that America is evil, that masks are magic, that the traditional family is oppressive, that nationalism is outmoded, and that America only began to be worth anything starting in the 1960s when the old America began to become undone.  The 1960s counterculture is now just the culture.  The rebels took over the institutions.  What looks like "resistance" in the streets is just the activity of shock troops defending the status quo.  There is little daylight between the black-clad, blue-haired Antifa terrorists, and the well-educated and wealthy leaders of the Google HR department.

NeverTrumpers Unhinged Over Their Growing Irrelevance.  Washington D.C. has always been a club, with decorum and strict membership rules.  Most of us are not in this club and would have no desire to join if offered membership based on our morals, ethics, and a desire to look at ourselves in the mirror every day without being disgusted.  George Carlin said it best, "It's a big club, and you ain't in it."  The club goes by many names — deep state, swamp, uniparty — and the club charter is quite clear, outlined ironically by someone not in the club, blackballed by the membership committee.

Debates Commission Is Part of the Washington Swamp.  It's time to debate.  After months of political posturing, Americans deserve to see President Trump and Joe Biden come face to face, explaining their policy platforms and outlining their visions for the future.  But the Commission on Presidential Debates stands in the way.  Created in 1987 with noble intentions, CPD's purpose was to ensure that general election debates remain a part of the electoral process.  However, as so often happens in Washington, D.C., the nonprofit organization has morphed into something quite different today:  CPD is now an entrenched part of the Washington swamp, leveraging its bureaucratic presence to exert undue influence over presidential elections.

Paul Craig Roberts:  The US & Its Constitution Have 2 Months Left.  When Generals and the CIA say that a president is unfit and dangerous, they mean he is dangerous to their budget.  By "unfit" they mean he is not a reliable cold warrior who will keep hyping America's enemies so that money keeps pouring into the military/security budget.  By serving defense contractors instead of their country, generals end up very wealthy.  Both Kennedy and Trump wanted to normalize relations with Russia and to bring home US troops involved in make-war operations overseas that boost the profits of defense contractors.  To stop Kennedy they assassinated him.  To stop Trump they concocted Russiagate, Impeachgate, and a variety of wild and unsubstantiated accusations.  The presstitutes repeat the various accusations as if they are absolute proven truth.  The presstitutes never investigated a single one of the false accusations.  These efforts to remove Trump did not succeed.  Having pulled off numerous color revolutions in which the US has overthrown foreign governments, the tactics are now being employed against Trump.  The November presidential election will not be an election.  It will be a color revolution.

Investigators May Finally Be Noticing Brennan's Top Secret Probe of Non-Existent Russian Collusion That Started Within Days of Crossfire Hurricane.  In what's hopefully a sign there's more to come, RedState emeritus Stu Cvrk posted a fantastic column today titled, Digging Into the Corpulent Alexander Vindman.  I won't spoil your pleasure and reveal any of the interesting details except to say that I was both shocked and gratified to see this one:  ["]Note that Investigative journalist Paul Sperry reported on Sunday that John Brennan 'ran a secret task force out of Langley with its own separate budget to investigate the Trump campaign and alleged ties to Russia.'["]

Digging Into the Corpulent Alexander Vindman.  The media's continued use of "unnamed sources" for their sensational anti-Trump articles may actually mask something far more sinister.  It is presumed that actual anti-Trump personnel in the White House, National Security Council, CIA, and State Dept are the sources of the classified leaks that served as the basis for many legacy media claims over the past four years.  It is entirely possible that the real sources of the classified information leaks were through electronic eavesdropping of White House communications with other federal agencies and foreign governments.  Thus, "unnamed sources" are misdirection to hide the real sources of the leaks — unauthorized illegal electronic surveillance.  The media stories could have been written and slanted as cover stories to protect the non-human technical surveillance wiretaps.

Tom Fitton:  "There Needs to be A Criminal Investigation of the Special Counsel".  There are a lot of tenuous characters who report on the machinations of the swamp, Lou Dobbs and Tom Fitton are not part of that media system.  In this interview both Dobbs and Fitton deliver brutal honesty, call the baby ugly, and discuss the best approach that President Trump should take to deliver sunlight upon the schemes.  [Video clip]

Trump Barred From Omitting Undocumented Immigrants in Census.  President Donald Trump's policy excluding undocumented immigrants from census data violates the law, a panel of federal judges ruled, blocking it from taking effect.  Three judges in Manhattan on Thursday ruled that Congress hadn't given the president authority for the policy.  The case, brought by several states including New York and advocacy groups, is notable because census results are used to determine representation in the House of Representatives and to allocate federal funds.  "Throughout the nation's history, the figures used to determine the apportionment of Congress — in the language of the current statutes, the 'total population' and the 'whole number of persons' in each state — have included every person residing in the United States at the time of the census, whether citizen or non-citizen and whether living here with legal status or without," the judges said in an 86-page opinion.

There is something very wrong with some in the top ranks of America's military.  It began to be clear last October that the Obama administration (with some help from Bill Clinton's presidency) had seeded the Pentagon with leftist generals whose allegiance was to the Deep State, to cultural leftism, and to the infamous and profitable "military industrial complex" that Eisenhower warned about in 1961.  In only five years, Obama had conducted a major Pentagon purge, firing almost 200 senior officers who held the old-fashioned belief that the military exists to protect America and should not be a social justice institution with limited firepower.  The upper-level officers who remained were hardcore Democrats.  While still in the military, Admirable McRaven gave bin Laden a respectful, private burial.  Once out of the military, he wrote an editorial for the New York Times, strongly suggesting a military coup against Trump.  Barry McCaffrey, a Clinton White House officer, likened Trump to Mussolini because he canceled the White House's newspaper subscriptions.  And Obama's Joint Chiefs Vice Chair, James Winnefeld, was deeply offended on behalf of ISIS terrorist Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi because Trump did the psychologically smart thing of telling al-Baghdadi's followers that he died like a coward.

Yet Another Deep State Swamp Creature Committing Crony Insurrection.  The way things are supposed to work is:  If you don't like what your new bosses are doing — you have two choices.  Do it anyway — or quit.  However, this is not how untold thousands of federal government bureaucrats have reacted.  These untold thousands of bureaucrats — have engaged in a countless, simultaneous, ongoing, rolling insurrections.  Either slow-walking advancement of the agenda — or outright halting it.  And in many, many worse case scenarios — working against it.  And if they can work against it — while simultaneously rewarding Leftist cronies — so much the better.  And there is likely no bigger Leftist government crony industry than monstrously huge Big Tech.

'This Investigation is a Sham': Judicial Watch President Slams John Durham for Going Easy on the Deep State.  Trump supporters are waiting with baited [sic] breath for U.S. Attorney John Durham to come out with his explosive findings in regards to his investigation into the origins of the Russian collusion probe against President Trump.  Fitton said that he is inclined to believe disgraced former CIA Director John Brennan when he says that he is not a person of interest in Durham's investigation.  "I don't see grand juries operating.  I don't see a bunch of witnesses coming in.  I don't see lawyers complaining about their clients being brought in before Durham," Fitton said.  He said that the Mueller investigation was run much more thoroughly than Durham's so-called investigation, the goal of which appears to be protecting the deep state.

'Non-Partisan' Transition Integrity Project Founder Dined With Soros And Biden Campaign Advisers.  While the Transition Integrity Project — which purports to thwart President Trump's refusal to concede the election if Biden wins — claims to not undermine President Trump's candidacy, an email from May 13th 2015 highlights its founder's deep ties to Biden-linked, Democratic party heavyweights.  Brooks emailed Podesta, President Bill Clinton's Deputy Chief of Staff, Counselor to Barack Obama, and Chairman of Hillary Clinton's 2016 Presidential campaign, a message entitled "Following up on conversation at Soros dinner."  Another recipient of the email, also mentioned in the text itself, is Jake Sullivan, a former National Security Advisor to Joe Biden and Deputy Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.  Sullivan has also been dubbed by Foreign Policy as part of the "national security brain trust for a Biden administration" and identified as playing a critical role in the campaign's formation of foreign policy.

The Assassin Who Helped Create the Deep State.  By now it is abundantly clear that President Trump faces furious opposition not just from the Democrats, the establishment Republicans, and the mainstream media, but from a shadowy, determined cabal of unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats who are deeply embedded in the government: the "deep state." Paradoxically, the ability of such a cabal to grow and operate freely can be traced back in American history to well-meaning efforts to end government corruption — as well as to the evil act of one deranged assassin.

It's Trump's Republican Party Now.  Before President Trump, the Republican Party, and the Democrat Party for that matter, were controlled by the ruling elites of their respective parties.  Neither party had any interest in those they claimed to represent, instead bowing to big money donors in exchange for power and position.  Once called the military industrial complex, it is now the globalists, wealthy individuals and families happy to hide behind foundations and corporations, ruling America without the consent of the governed, using coercion and force if necessary.  This is what candidate Trump railed against. [...] He was running against not only the Democrats and their allies in the media, academia, Wall Street, Hollywood, and in the Beltway, but he was also fighting his own party.  Republican elites, feeding off the teat of the uniparty, wanted no part in replacing a political establishment that they controlled and benefited from.

A Tyranny Perpetual and Universal?  Our government in no way functions according to the elevated words on the parchment, and President Trump does not control the executive branch.  I say this not to disparage the president but only to state a plain fact.  No doubt, he has done his best.  I doubt that anyone else could have done better.  But while facing a near-universal rebellion from every power center in our society, emphatically including the agencies he was elected to lead, naturally he has found it very difficult to make the federal bureaucracy do what he tells it to do.  That difficulty has astonished even me. [...] Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that federal intelligence and law enforcement agencies would try to frame the president with a phony "crime," launch a pointless two-year investigation over a fraud, then impeach him over the timing of foreign aid payments, all the while lying daily to the American public.

All The Republicans Who Have Endorsed Joe Biden For President.  Though Trump has largely seized control of the Republican party and the loyalty of GOP officials, a number of prominent former GOP officials, and even some of his ex-staffers, have come out in favor of former Vice President Joe Biden. [...] Numerous Republican media figures, campaign strategists and government officials have even organized PACs dedicated to supporting Biden, such as Republican Voters Against Trump and, most recently, 43 Alumni for Biden.  The most notable among them is the Lincoln Project, whose scathing attack ads on Trump have captured the hearts of anti-Trump resistance-minded Democrats.

The Original Deep State.  Donald Trump is not the first president to face down a deep-state cabal, that is, an unelected oligarchy of shadowy figures who wielded enormous power while being unaccountable to the American public.  The first was President Andrew Jackson, who faced down the Bank of the United States in the 1820s and 1830s; then as now, the deep state has apparently included a significant financial element.

Trump is Not the First President to Face Down a Deep State Cabal.  The far-Left rioters who attempted to topple the statue of Andrew Jackson in Washington, DC's Lafayette Square several weeks almost certainly know nothing whatsoever about him.  What they were told in the Antifa indoctrination camps that are called higher education these days is that he was largely responsible for the forcible exile of Native Americans from the Eastern United States, the Trail of Tears, and is thus to be reviled and hated forever.  What they were not told is something that may have made them hate him even more:  Andrew Jackson was responsible for destroying the first deep state cabal of shadowy, unelected powerbrokers in American history.

Graham says declassified FBI documents show 'double standard' for Clinton and Trump campaigns.  Following the release of recently declassified documents, Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., says he believes the FBI showed a double standard in its investigations into reports of foreign interference at the campaigns of Hillary Clinton and now-President Trump in the lead-up to the 2016 presidential election.  Calling it "the ultimate double standard," Graham said that the documents reveal that leaders at the FBI sought to give the Clinton campaign a defensive briefing before it could pursue a FISA warrant related to a threat posed to the campaign by a foreign government.  But instead of doing the same for the Trump campaign, the FBI opened the Crossfire Hurricane operation and pursued a number of FISA warrants against people working with Trump's campaign.

Why John Brennan, Peter Strzok and DOJ Needed Julian Assange Arrested — And Why UK Officials Obliged.  According to reports in November of 2019, U.S Attorney John Durham and U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr were spending time on a narrowed focus looking carefully at CIA activity in the 2016 presidential election. [...] It is interesting that quote came from a British intelligence official, as there appears to be evidence of an extensive CIA operation that likely involved U.K. intelligence services.  In addition, and as a direct outcome, there is an aspect to the CIA operation that overlaps with both a U.S. and U.K. need to keep Wikileaks founder Julian Assange under tight control.  In this outline we will explain where corrupt U.S. and U.K. interests merge.

State Dept. 'Guts' Donald Trump's Curbs on Fortune 500's Visa Workers.  The State Department is allowing Fortune 500 companies to freely import H-1B visa workers for jobs needed by American voters, despite President Donald Trump's June 22 Executive Order barring nearly all visa workers.  "They have totally eviscerated the requirements" of Trump's E.O., said John Miano, a lawyer with the Immigration Reform Law Institute.  "There is no doubt about it — whoever created this is thumbing their noses at President Trump," he said, adding, "you can bet that the guys who did this are voting for [Joe] Biden."

No Need for a Conspiracy Theory.  In recent days, social media like Twitter and Facebook have taken action to prevent Q-Anon, a shadowy entity that promotes various conspiracy theories, including the "Deep State," from using their platforms.  For those who haven't been following this matter, the "Deep State" is basically also a shadowy conspiracy, within the government, that seeks to undermine the policies of Republicans. [...] I call such people the "permanent government," people who have chosen to make their careers in and off government.  The existence of these people is not open to any serious debate: residents of the Washington area see them morning and evening, commuting in and out of the city; they're why suburban Washington exists, why the Beltway has a near permanent traffic jam, and why it became necessary to build a modern subway system.  Some of these people, mainly at lower levels, are largely unaffected by what policies are being pursued, while for others, those policies have direct consequences.

Would the Military Side with Leftist Tyranny or with America?  [Scroll down]  Here, Trump and his populist movement are agents of rapid and disruptive change.  The military, in which these generals grew up and which gives them their identities, is the least disruptive institution in American society.  The lengthy and laudable tradition of civilian authority over the military, as well as the hierarchical nature of the military itself, makes it instinctively against rapid, disruptive change.  Though the Democrats have moved left, they maintain a headlock on the institutions, and the institutions are what the generals are loyal to even if the leaders of those institutions have morphed into rabidly anti-American aspiring dictators.  To embrace Trump and populism is to repudiate the whole establishment hothouse that grew their power and prestige.  They would be opposing themselves.

Must We Fight Cancel Culture with Cancel Culture?  Peace and stability — under liberty — leads to real progress.  Most of us today are not at all different.  We want matters settled civilly, through discussion and debate and at ballot boxes.  There's no room for intimidation and violence.  The Silent Majority awaits the November elections.  Trump's re-election would provide a critical firebreak.  But a Trump win won't compel Democrats and the left to go quietly into that good night.  They've made it plain that they don't abide election results.  They not only conspired, via the Russia hoax, to derail Candidate Trump, but carried over their intrigues to his presidency.  They worked in concert with Deep State players.  It was a historically unprecedented conspiracy.  The final gasp of their failed offensive, Pelosi-led Democrats impeached the president.

Meet At The Old Mill, We Ride at Midnight.  First, my sincere appreciation for all of your support as we have worked through a complex process of information assembly, travel, and briefings to those who we hope will step forward.  Mid-August was always the most visible date to determine whether or not DC still retained any functional way to self-correct from the severity of corruption that so many people are now familiar with.  That date has stuck with me for almost two years; and so it will remain.  Long gone are the 'hopes' and 'trusts' attached to Jeff Sessions, Rod Rosenstein, Michael Horowitz, John Huber, Matt Whitaker, John Laush, the House of Representatives or Senate; all futile in their efforts, perhaps purposefully so.  That leaves John Durham and AG Bill Barr, and hope is not a strategy as we enter the final stretch.  If no progress is made by Friday 5pm CTH will first share the names of the primary Durham investigator to media previously briefed on the documents we assembled.  From there, and within 24 hrs, we will make that name public and direct inquires can begin.  Barring some unforeseen shift in approach; and based on recent Senate responses to Sally Yates during testimony; there's going to be no help in the delivery of sunlight from anyone on the Senate Judiciary Committee.  Senator Ron Johnson and the Senate Homeland Security Committee is equally useless; and by now every American should know the Senate Intelligence Committee was an active participant; no help there.

The Truth Doesn't Care About Your Feelings.  [Scroll down]  Yes, FISA abuse is a big deal; yes, crossfire hurricane is a big deal; yes, the Carter Page FISA application is a big deal; yes, the Chris Steele aspect is a big deal; but in the final analysis that's only the beginning of the effort.  Look at what the special counsel was doing from May 2017 to April 2019 and the scale of the effort is stunning.  Corrupt Republicans and Democrats worked together; the legislative branch worked in coordination with usurping elements inside the executive branch; the intelligence apparatus and the State Dept worked to assist both the legislative branch and the usurping agents inside the DOJ-NSD and Main Justice.  And, worst of all, none of it could have been carried out if there was not someone very close to President Trump, someone very much participating with the effort, who was whispering in his ear about making appointments that were specifically designed to allow the effort to continue.

Exploring Citizen Trump.  [Scroll down]  As [Robert] Orlando perceives it, Donald Trump's choice of enemies are not without irony, given his background.  Trump comes from the establishment himself.  Nonetheless, the brash, cocky New Yorker has brilliantly pitted himself against the establishment.  He would overcome the political system in 2016.  That first included the Republican establishment.  How could one man, with no political resume, overcome a field of 16 highly credentialed Republicans also vying for the job?  Once he won the GOP Primary, how could he persevere when being out-funded by the Democratic Party establishment, or when out-strategized by one of the most corrupt political machines in the history of the presidency, the Clintons?  Once in the Oval Office, could he survive an unprecedented blitzkrieg of media attacks still going on today?

Former US Attorney Joe diGenova on Today's Democrats.  Former US Attorney Joe diGenova was on the radio earlier today [7/20/2020] with Mornings with the Mall as part of his weekly interview.  At the beginning of interview diGenova discussed the John Durham investigation and how the Durham team is working on guilty pleas with members of the Deep State involved in the failed coup attempt of President Trump.  After this the subject changed to Democrat Represenative Adam Schiff.  Lying Schiff did an interview on a podcast this past week that was shared and discussed.  Schiff was calling AG Bill Barr a criminal for upholding the letter of the law and bringing individuals involved in the attempted coup of President Trump to justice.

Judge orders DACA restart, including new applications, indirect pathway to citizenship.  A federal judge on Friday ordered the government to revive the DACA program as it existed before President Trump tried to phase it out in 2017, which means opening it up to brand new applications.  That's a key issue that had remained in limbo after last month's Supreme Court ruling, which found the Trump phaseout cut too many corners.  U.S. District Judge Paul W. Grimm, sitting in Maryland, issued an order restoring all parts of the program back to where they were, which means not only protecting current recipients but also approving new ones.

FBI Conspires Against Trump.  As we continue uncovering details of the coup against President Trump by top Obama/Deep State officials, we've also noted the FBI and DOJ are still slow-rolling the release of information about the scandal.  So, frustratingly slowly — but surely — we're getting piece after piece of the Obamagate puzzle.  We received another batch of emails, 136 pages, between former FBI official Peter Strzok and former FBI attorney Lisa Page.  They include heavily redacted emails showing Strzok, Page and top bureau officials in the days prior to and following President Donald Trump's inauguration discussing a White House counterintelligence briefing that could "play into" the FBI's "investigative strategy."

Pelosi Says She 'Yearns' for Other Republican Presidents.  House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is so fed up with President Trump that she said she actually "yearns" for other Republican presidents.  "I yearn for other Republican presidents," she said at her press conference on Thursday.  "While we may disagree on many points, at least we had a shared commitment to the governance of our country."

The Editor says...
In other words, Nancy Pelosi would get along quite well with a deep state uni-party "reach across the aisle" centrist RINO in the White House.

Robert Mueller Was Obama's Shield — Graham Open To Mueller Hearing.  Why is it important to understand the duality of purpose for the appointment of the special counsel run by the figure-head (in name only) of Robert Mueller?  Because from the outset the seventeen Lawfare lawyers who formed the resistance unit operation took control over the DOJ.  That was a large purpose of their installation.  The Mueller resistance unit controlled everything, including every impediment to congress.  Despite the fact they should have been aware of this, many individual Senators and congressional representatives now claim they had no idea of this purpose.  Setting aside their willful blindness; all that stuff is in the rear-view and only leads to anger in a debate that needs to look forward; the issue now becomes putting indisputable evidence, an actionable trigger, in front of them and forcing public confrontation.

Where [...] Is John Durham?  In May 2019, Attorney General William Barr made an announcement millions of Americans had been waiting for:  A U.S. attorney outside the Beltway would investigate the corrupt origins of the FBI's probe into Donald Trump's presidential campaign and government efforts to sabotage the incoming president after he was elected.  For the past 14 months, we have been waiting (impatiently, I confess) for news from John Durham, the Connecticut prosecutor Barr tapped to lead the long-delayed inquiry.  After all, by the time the attorney general initiated the targeted probe, there was plenty of evidence of wrongdoing by top officials in the Obama Administration, including James Comey, John Brennan, and Andrew McCabe among others.  Special Counsel Robert Mueller had wrapped up his two-year partisan witch hunt and despite unlimited resources — along with the unflinching support of Republicans on Capitol Hill — Barack Obama's former FBI director could find no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin.  But Mueller did plenty of damage in the interim.

U.S. Army Sends Out Race-Baiting Email Calling 'MAGA' Slogan and More 'White Supremacy'.  The U.S. Army sent an email to its military and civilian members after the Fourth of July that included a graphic that claimed innocuous words and phrases like "colorblind," "all lives matter" and the Trump Campaign slogan "Make America Great Again" are evidence of "white supremacy."  The graphic also listed "Celebration of Columbus Day," the "Denial of White Privilege," "Talking about 'American Exceptionalism,'" and saying "There's Only One Human Race" as behaviors that are indicative of white supremacy.  After Army personnel brought the offensive email to the attention of a U.S. Congressman, the Army said the material was "unapproved" and sent out "in error."

US Army Meddles in the 2020 Election and Declares 'Make America Great Again' to be a Sign Of Covert White Supremacy.  The US Army has ordered a 'handout' produced by Army's "Project Inclusion," which, according to the Army is supposed to 'improve diversity, equity and inclusion across the force and build cohesive teams.'  Because nothing builds teamwork or inclusion like labeling people who support the Command-in-Chief as racist. [...] It is utterly impossible to believe that this handout was created with no review or oversight by anyone with a brain. [...] It is barely this side of outright mutiny.  The fact that no one will be disciplined over this is all the proof you will ever need that this act was condoned by the highest levels of Army leadership.

Army investigates handout suggesting Trump campaign slogan constitutes 'covert white supremacy'.  The Army Wednesday night announced it has launched an investigation into how a presentation on racism and discrimination included a handout suggesting President Donald Trump's campaign slogan "Make America Great Again" is considered "covert white supremacy."  The investigation was launched after a complaint from an Alabama congressman.  Mo Brooks, a Republican who represents the district where the handout was distributed at the Redstone Arsenal, called the handout a "violation of the Hatch Act" designed to keep the military out of partisan politics.  Brooks sent a letter to Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy, copied to Trump, Attorney General William Barr and others.

Alexander Vindman Is No Martyr — He Tried To Overrule Foreign Policy Chain Of Command.  Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, who testified against President Trump, retired from the Army Wednesday.  Per his attorney, the reason for his retirement was "a campaign of bullying, intimidation and retaliation" for cutting short his military career.  Of course, the mainstream media has been all over his attorney's claim, and cite his testimony as a reason for the supposed bullying.  The liberal media ignored the fact that Alexander Vindman is no martyr.  He was accused by a U.S. Senator of possibly being a leaker who thought he could overrule the President's foreign policy decisions.

Alexander Vindman, Trump impeachment witness, retires from military.  Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, a key impeachment witness against President Trump, retired from the Army Wednesday, with his lawyer citing "a campaign of bullying, intimidation and retaliation" for cutting short his military career.  Vindman marked his retirement by tweeting a picture of himself in a rumpled plaid shirt working on a laptop — a stark contrast to the many photos of him in uniform.

Chuck Grassley:  John Durham will be too late if prosecutions begin after 2020 election.  A top Republican tagged President Trump in a tweet encouraging U.S. Attorney John Durham to initiate any planned prosecutions as part of his inquiry into the Russia investigation before the 2020 election.  Sen. Chuck Grassley, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee and a longtime critic of the Trump-Russia investigations, warned Monday that waiting until after November's contest might be too late.

Don't let the door hit you on the way out.
Lt. Col. Vindman, a key impeachment witness, is retiring from the US military after being 'bullied' by Trump.  Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, an important impeachment witness, is retiring from the military in response to a White House "campaign of bullying, intimidation, and retaliation" led by the president, CNN reported Wednesday [7/8/2020], citing Vindman's lawyer.

Once You See The Strings on the GOP Marionettes.  Those who can see the maneuvers of the GOPe may have noticed the recent positioning of two key players, Nikki Haley and Liz Cheney.  Both Haley and Cheney are part of a decepticon club positioning to undermine President Trump and the America First agenda.  We have previously outlined the agenda of Haley ([elsew]here); so it's time to review Cheney.  When Paul Ryan left congress he exited his role as the primary inside resistance operative; however, he did not stop the agenda.  Knowing President Trump was now officially the head of the formal republican party, prior to departure Ryan positioned Liz Cheney as an influence agent with her role as Republican Conference Chairwoman.  Essentially an explosive anti-MAGA cell with instructions to activate at a time of maximum damage. [...] If we can retake the House of Representatives this fall, Ms. Cheney is going to try and position herself to become "speaker" or "majority leader".  Neither position would be good for the America First agenda.

Heckuva Job, Biden's Bushies!  "Heckuva job Brownie" was a meme before there were memes.  One might have thought that Michael Brown would not be welcomed into a prominent role in a presidential campaign.  One might have thought that he would remain persona non grata forever.  But, of course, one would be wrong.  Brown has reemerged as the most prominent organizer of a presidential campaign committee.  The committee, whose formation has been reported in these pages by Catherine Smith, is called "43 Alumni for Biden."  As Dave Barry used to say, I am not making this up.  Does anyone want to know what sort of Republican intends to vote for Biden in November?  There you have it.

Hundreds of former George W. Bush officials set to endorse Biden: report.  Hundreds of former officials who served under President George W. Bush are gearing up to endorse presumptive Democratic Nominee Joe Biden.  The group of officials — which include members of Mr. Bush's cabinet and other senior officers — has reportedly formed a political action committee dubbed 43 Alumni for Biden.  Mr. Bush was the 43rd president.  "We know what is normal and what is abnormal, and what we are seeing is highly abnormal.  The president is a danger," Jennifer Millikin, one of the 43 Alumni organizers, who worked on Bush's 2004 re-election campaign and later in the General Services Administration, told Reuters.

Devin Nunes: 'We're up to somewhere around 14 criminal referrals' to Justice Department.  House Intelligence Committee Republicans have sent up to 14 criminal referrals to the Justice Department related to the Russia investigation and the 2016 campaign.  Rep. Devin Nunes, the ranking member of the panel, told Fox Business host Lou Dobbs on Monday their inquiry has turned up "many unanswered questions" they hope the Justice Department under Attorney General William Barr can work out.  "We have recommended many criminal referrals now, I think we're up to somewhere around 14 criminal referrals that we have now made to the Department of Justice," the California Republican said.  Nunes has been talking up a new slate of criminal referrals over the past few weeks, which adds to the eight referrals to Barr last spring.

What's Inside Grassley's Letter Demanding More About Deep State Role In Spygate.  Last week, Sen. Chuck Grassley wrote James Baker, the director of the Office of Net Assessments, seeking information concerning ONA's potential involvement in Spygate.  The chair of the Finance Committee had previously asked Baker for all records related to Crossfire Hurricane's go-to informant, Stephan Halper, but as Grassley's follow-up letter made clear, Baker's response was greatly lacking.  In addition to pushing for more answers about Halper, Grassley is now demanding answers about Baker's alleged role in leaking details about Michael Flynn's conversation with the Russian ambassador, Sergey Kislyak, to the press.

House Judiciary Republicans Refute Democratic Narrative On Fired US Attorney.  Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee released their own annotated version of a transcript of lawmakers' interview with fired U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman Monday, refuting claims made by Democrats charging the Attorney General William Barr of unethical and potentially unlawful conduct.  "Chairman Nadler and Committee Democrats remain obsessed with attacking the President and Attorney General for political gain," committee Republicans wrote.  "This singular obsession has clouded their judgement and colored their opinions."  Last month, Berman was fired from his role as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York after he refused to transition to a new role following Barr's attempts to replace him.  Berman and House Democrats allege Barr placed undue pressure on Berman to step aside with an illegally apparent quid quo pro, a seemingly favorite charge among Democrats used to slander their opponents.

Fired US Attorney Berman Mistakenly Believed SDNY Stood for "Sovereign District of New York".  The Wall Street Journal is reporting today that a disagreement between the Justice Department and fired Southern District of New York US Attorney Geoffrey Berman, concerning a letter that would have been critical of New York Mayor Bill de Blasio with regard to NYC's enforcement of "social distancing" rules on religious practices, likely played a role in Attorney General William Barr's decision on Friday evening to announce that Berman would be "stepping down" and Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Jay Clayton would be nominated to be the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York.  Here is a link to the article, which is behind the Journal's paywall.  On Friday and Saturday, I covered what I called the "Rumble in DOJungle" in two parts, with Part One detailing the dispute that broke out after a DOJ press release announcing the changes that would be made effective July 3, 2020, followed later by a statement issued by Berman that he was not "resigning."

Attorney General Bill Barr Removes SDNY Attorney Geoffrey Berman — Berman Refuses to Leave.  Officially it's being called a "resignation" according to the Associated Press.  However, all the right Lawfare "beach friends" are going bananas as the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Geoffrey Berman, is being replaced.  According to the DOJ release Berman is being replaced by the nomination of Jay Clayton, currently the Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission.  Additionally, "Craig Carpenito, currently the United States Attorney for the District of New Jersey, will serve as the Acting United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, while the Senate is considering Jay Clayton's nomination." [...] All of the exit moves and incoming replacements are coming to a head at the same time; early July.  The current SDNY move is effective July 3rd, which is the same time that FBI chief legal counsel Dana Boente is leaving his position.  Both Boente (FBI) and Jeffrey Berman (DOJ-SDNY) appear to be resigning by Bill Barr's request; essentially being told to leave.

Standoff: Manhattan US Attorney Geoffrey Berman won't resign after Barr announces ouster.  The Justice Department announced Friday evening that Geoffrey Berman is leaving his position as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, which the federal prosecutor quickly denied.  Attorney General William Barr said Berman, who has overseen cases against allies of President Trump, is stepping down after two-and-a-half years of service.  "With tenacity and savvy, Geoff has done an excellent job leading one of our nation's most significant U.S. Attorney's Offices, achieving many successes on consequential civil and criminal matters.  I appreciate his service to the Department of Justice and our nation, and I wish him well in the future," Barr said in a statement.  Within a couple of hours, Berman released a statement of his own denying he is going anywhere.

Almost Runaway Prosecutor Bows To Rule of Law.  "What Would Happen If Trump Refused to Leave Office?" That question is bruited in a headline the Atlantic issued a few months back.  It's been echoing around the Democratic press for months.  The answer is that it would be an unsustainable constitutional affront.  And what would happen were a United States federal prosecutor to refuse to leave office?  We came awfully close to finding out this weekend.  The would-be runaway prosecutor was the United States attorney in Manhattan, Geoffrey Berman.  He was appointed in 2018 by the judges of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.  They acted under Section 546 of Title 28 of the United States Code.  In certain circumstances, it allows a federal district court to appoint a U.S. attorney to serve "until the vacancy is filled."  Mr. Berman seemed to think that language meant he could stay in his post until the Senate confirmed a replacement, which could have run past the election.

US Attorney Geoffrey Berman steps down, ends tug of war with AG William Barr.  Geoffrey Berman on Saturday night agreed to step down as one of the nation's most powerful U.S. Attorneys, ending a day-long power tug-of-war that stretched from his Manhattan headquarters to the White House and Justice Department in Washington.  In a statement issued at 6 p.m., Berman said he would leave immediately, and turn control of the office over to his Deputy U.S. Attorney, Audrey Strauss.  Berman credited his decision — which came after a day of refusing to step down — to Attorney General William Barr backtracking on his original demand that his successor be attorney and Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Jay Clayton.

The Left's Premature Revolution.  The nation has been subjected to over three years of government abuse and illegalities in the Establishment's unceasing efforts to destroy, impeach and/or derail Donald Trump.  Almost every day another revelation exposing the corruption of the so-called deep state is exposed in what is without a doubt the most egregious political scandal in the nation's history.  Consequently, an ever-growing percentage of the population is becoming more aware of the pitfalls of the all-powerful central government which the left demands.

Senate Collusion Theater.  Sometimes, it seems Graham is after FISA abuse by the FBI in the Trump — Russia investigation.  Sometimes, it's the decision by then-deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein to appoint Robert Mueller as special counsel to investigate the sitting president under circumstances where there was no basis for such an investigation.  Sometimes, the focus is described as the Mueller investigation itself:  why it went on so long despite the lack of a solid evidentiary predicate, why Rosenstein, in August 2017, defined its scope based on allegations long known to be either groundless or far afield from purportedly suspected Trump-Russia collusion.  Given that Graham has no power to send any good candidates to jail, and the real investigative work either has already been done by the Justice Department's inspector general, or is in the process of being done by prosecutor John Durham, one can't help but ask:  What is the objective of this scattershot production?  This is a pressing question now that Graham, on a party-line vote of his committee, has been authorized to carpet-bomb Obama-world with subpoenas.

Retired generals who denounced Trump could be recalled to active duty and prosecuted, experts say.  Retired four-star military officers who lambasted President Trump could be recalled to active duty and prosecuted for violating the U.S. Code, military law experts told Just the News.  "Retired officers can't make contemptuous remarks of the commander-in-chief," said John Dowd, a former Marine Corps Judge Advocate and former Trump legal advisor.  "They're all subject to recall.  They're subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice until they die."  The pertinent law is Title 10 of the U.S. Code, Section 888, the experts said.

It's Worse Than We Thought — DNI Ratcliffe Declassifies "Annex A" The Supportive Documents For 2017 Intel Community Assessment.  DNI John Ratcliffe has declassified the Appendix to the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA).  The appendix known as "Annex A" was the material the FBI and CIA did not include in the body of the ICA; however, it was used to brief congress.  There was always suspicion that "Annex A" was the ridiculous claims by FBI source Christopher Steele; those suspicions are confirmed today [6/11/2020].  The ICA was written in late December '16 & early January 2017, and the purpose was to politicize intelligence by making outlandish claims of the Trump-Russia conspiracy the official position of the U.S intelligence apparatus (CIA, FBI, DOJ and NSA).

Fired State Department IG Sent Confidential Info to His Personal Email Accounts.  The State Department inspector general whose recent dismissal ignited a political firestorm sent copies detailing a sensitive investigation to his personal email account, according to a probe into his conduct run by the Defense Department's inspector general.  The inquiry report, dated March 17, confirms that fired State Department inspector general Steve Linick was the subject of a broad investigation related to the leaks of politically charged materials to journalists, specifically a draft evaluation report into Brian Hook, the State Department's top Iran official.  The report, which was provided to the House Foreign Affairs Committee, concluded that while Linick was permitted to send information to his personal email account to facilitate access while traveling, he was the only official in that office to have done so.  The disclosure is likely to raise new questions about Linick's suspected role in leaking sensitive information to the press.

Lara Logan:  Retired Generals Waging Information Warfare Campaign Against Trump.  Award-winning journalist and war correspondent Lara Logan discussed how retired generals who are speaking out against President Trump are either "complicit" with or waging an information warfare campaign against him, in an interview [...] on Wednesday [6/10/2020].  Logan reminded listeners of the Russian collusion narrative, and how many officials from the Justice Department, Director of National Intelligence, Central Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency, and other agencies worked together to push the idea that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia during the 2016 election.

Stunning explosion of cheers from Iran and China dissidents over booting of Obama holdovers at Voice of America.  President Trump was happy as heck at the news that Michael Pack, his choice for new director at the Voice of America, finally got confirmed by the Senate.  It came as a sort of miracle, given the dirty, protracted battle from deep state's Obama holdovers to keep him out.  It was so underhanded it involved a last-ditch Kavanaugh-style bid to smear Pack as corrupt if for nothing else to delay his Senate confirmation to eternity.  It was deep state at its worst and it failed.  Now, what's probably the last solid Obama bastion of deep-state government has toppled.

The Rule of Doctors Threatens Trump's Reelection, American Well-Being.  A couple of months ago, President Donald Trump was riding high.  The economy was going gang-busters, and the various Democrat and "resistance" coup attempts, from the Russian collusion hoax through the Ukrainian phone-call impeachment gambit (Does anybody still remember what that was all about?), had fallen short.  Reelection, if not assured, looked very likely.  And then came the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus.  In a stroke, and without a single constitutional shot fired, the country was given over to two unelected doctors named Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx, the Democrats suddenly discovered the virtues of federalism, and the economy slammed into the brick wall of the CCP virus, commonly known as the novel coronavirus, as governors across the country trashed the Constitution and began ordering their residents around like serfs. [...] And so everything from the sacred (churches and synagogues) to the profane (California beaches) was shuttered, the hospitality industry cratered, the airlines found themselves grounded, the Trump economy died, and the president's reelection chances are going up in smoke along with the incinerated jobs of some 30 million American breadwinners.

Democrats Believe More in the Swamp Than in Biden.  Joe Biden's questionable competence demonstrates Democrats' unquestioned faith in the Swamp. [...] If Biden supporters look at him at all, it is as a placeholder, a prop.  They are looking through Biden altogether and ahead to beating Trump.  Their horizon extends only as far as November.  For the rest of America, so shortsighted a view raises the question:  What happens then?  If Biden cannot campaign, how is he to govern?  For Biden supporters, his ability — or rather obvious inability — to govern is the least of their concerns.  The reason is that they are not expecting Biden to govern.  Truth be told, they do not even want him to.

Grenell rips DC swamp, Politico, Democratic leakers.  Richard Grenell, who shook up the intelligence world in just three months as acting director of national intelligence, used his first interview since stepping down to blast Washington's insider culture of protecting itself and ruining outside reformers.  In a 19-minute interview on the Mark Levin Show, the longtime public servant who recently was ambassador to Germany said that the political-media axis in Washington is toxic and geared to thwart reforms that threaten its operation.

Deep State Plotters — Devin Nunes Targets Rod Rosenstein's Corrupt Activity to Initiate Robert Mueller.  When contemplating the malign activity of Rod Rosenstein; and how angered President Trump is with former AG Jeff Sessions; it is worth remembering that Sessions requested Rod Rosenstein as his deputy, and then immediately thereafter Sessions recused himself, effectively positioning Rosenstein to run the operation against President Trump.  That's the background context for a great interview by Gregg Jarrett where Jarrett walks through the timeline of events with former HPSCI Chairman Devin Nunes.  At the 5:30 point of the interview, Nunes identifies Rosenstein as part of the coup attempt and blasts him for how Rosenstein structured the fraudulent scope memos.  Nunes says his investigation is now looking at the part of the effort where Robert Mueller's investigation was used as part of the initiating effort to remove President Trump.

An Open Letter to the D.C. Right.  [Scroll down]  Then Donald Trump came along.  He spoke of liberty and of putting America First.  Your public rage at him — and his supporters — was instantaneous.  It was visceral, full-throated, and constant.  I didn't remember any of you getting that worked up about Barack Obama.  Ever. [...] Trump represented an existential threat to everything you had — your job security, your social status, your sumptuous lives in places like Chevy Chase, Falls Church, and Georgetown.  You knew — somehow all of you could tell instinctively — that when Trump talked about liberty, he meant it. [...] And the economy boomed.  Jobs came back.  Americans began to prosper as never before.  And you hated every minute of it.  You made that clear in your articles and TV appearances and social media posts.  When the Democrats tried to sell the patently phony Russian-collusion narrative and impeachment case, some of you joined in the pile-on.  Some didn't: such matters weren't in your wheelhouse.  Besides, at least some of you had to have realized early on that it was all lies.  But none of you blew the whistle on it.

The Key Reason DC Hates President Trump — It's a Big Club, and He Ain't in It.  Something 99% of American voters do not understand.  Congress doesn't actually write legislation.  The last item of legislation written by congress was sometime around the mid 1990's.  Modern legislation is sub-contracted to a segment of operations in DC known as K-Street.  That's where the lobbyists reside.  Lobbyists write the laws; congress sells the laws; lobbyists then pay congress commissions for passing their laws.  That's the modern legislative business in DC. [...] DC politics is not quite based on the ideas that frame most voter's reference points.

Obamagate: Of Course It Comes Back to Obama's Narcissism.  For three years, the Trump administration attempted to find their sea legs while actively being harassed and harried by Obama holdovers and self-dealing Republicans in the House and Senate.  None of this could have happened so easily had Congress provided oversight.  Why would they want oversight, though?  It would expose themselves.  It wasn't just Joe Biden's crackhead kid in Ukraine, after all.  Sens. John Kerry, John McCain, and, yes, Lindsey Graham, also had strange relationships there, too.  It's like Ukraine was one big money laundering scheme for political insiders.  A lot of pols have a lot to hide, and that's why this fiasco has gone on as long as it has. [...] The American system isn't equipped to handle this level of injustice.  Those who wait on justice likely wait in futility.

The U.S. Senate Is the Heart of the Problem.  This week, the depth, breadth, and scope of the swamp made itself clear.  It started with the unraveling of the case against former national security advisor Michael Flynn.  The FBI initially had accused Flynn of violating the Logan Act — an 18th-century statute that has never successfully been used to prosecute anyone, not in the least because of its dubious constitutionality.  Ultimately, Flynn was charged with lying to federal agents — a process crime but hardly treason.  This week, it was revealed that members of the Obama Administration, many of whom had no real role in counterintelligence operations, repeatedly unmasked (that is, requested their identities and activities from intelligence gathering sources) Trump's incoming staff — including Flynn. [...] This is hardly a one-off for the Obama Administration, whose director of national intelligence lied to Congress about spying on American citizens.  That was before John Brennan, Obama's CIA director, spied on Senate staff and broke into their computer files.  And, of course, Eric Holder, Obama's attorney general, used the Espionage Act to surveil journalists from Fox News and the Associated Press.  And let's not forget the time they eavesdropped on the phone calls of members of Congress.

Federal court revives emoluments lawsuit against Trump over DC hotel.  The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday revived a lawsuit from the Maryland and Washington, D.C. attorneys general that accuses President Trump of violating the Constitution's Foreign and Domestic Emoluments Clauses by benefiting from use of the Trump International Hotel by foreign and U.S. officials.  The case previously had been ordered dismissed by a Fourth Circuit panel.  But the full roster of judges reheard the case and, in a 9-6 decision, determined Trump cannot have the court overrule a lower court's decision to deny him certification to appeal before trial.

Will There Be an Obamagate Reckoning?  You Betcha!.  One can argue over who in the ObamaGate conspiracy wears a black hat or a white hat.  One can also complain about nothing happening, no indictments or perp walks.  The deep state has been the king in Washington DC for decades.  To quote Ralph Waldo Emerson, "When you strike at a king, you must kill him."  Trump and his team have one shot at this and will take the kill shot on their terms and timing. [...] The forces against Trump are huge — the DC establishment, media, Hollywood, academia, and even members of his own party.

Why is Obama Panicking Now? — The Importance of Understanding Political Surveillance In The Era of President Obama.  Why is former President Obama calling forth all his defensive resources now?  Why did former national security advisor Susan Rice write her cya letter?  Why have republicans in congress not been willing to investigate the true origins of political surveillance?  What is the reason for so much anger, desperation and opposition from a variety of interests?  With the release of recent transcripts and the declassification of material from within the IG report, the Carter Page FISA and Flynn documents showing FBI activity, there is a common misconception about why the intelligence apparatus began investigating the Trump campaign in the first place.  Why was Donald Trump considered a threat?

The FBI Did a Hatchet Job in Their 302 Report on Michael Flynn, and Some Familiar Names Were Involved.  The Trump-Russia collusion story was a myth.  It was a manufactured lie peddled by the liberal media that engulfed the nation for over two years.  In many ways, we're not over it.  There are still hordes of liberals so deranged, so mind-broken over the 2016 election, that they think the Russian colluded with Trump to tilt the race.  Not true.  There is no evidence this ever occurred.  None.  That's why every single bombshell was a nothingburger.  The report from the Mueller probe, which needs a review of its own in the wake of the Flynn fallout, said there was no evidence of Trump-Russia collusion.  It also tore the heart out of the document that started this whole circus:  the Trump dossier.  An unverified piece of political opposition research compiled by ex-British spook Christopher Steele and funded by the Democrats and the Hillary Clinton campaign.  The Department of Justice Inspector General's Office also delivered a kill shot to this document in their report about FISA abuses during the Obama administration.

A Key Obama Meeting Was Held to Ensure FBI Russia Collusion Probe Wasn't Discovered by the Trump Administration.  [Michael] Flynn has been vindicated, and more light is being shed on the scope of this whole operation.  The deep state does exist.  They're malicious.  They're ruthless.  Just look at the mindset of Andrew McCabe and James Comey, who were determined to ensnare Flynn, department policy, and constitutional rights [notwithstanding].  It's chilling.  And now we're seeing how Obama was the starting quarterback for how to ensure the incoming Trump administration would be saddled with the Trump-Russia collusion allegations.  It was coordinated chaos.

Beyond Flynn:  Indict Obama, Clinton, Comey, and Brennan.  LTG Flynn was the first victim of what we now know was, arguably, a coup d'é`tat to take down Trump.  As I noted two years ago, DoJ's operation "Crossfire Hurricane" to ensnare Trump by entrapping those connected to his campaign, and then his administration, devolved into a "Backfire Tornado." As former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy noted this week, the conspiracy to entrap Flynn was key to keeping the corrupt Russia-collusion investigation moving forward.  McCarthy notes, "If no way could be found to sideline Flynn, then Flynn was going to find out about Crossfire Hurricane."  On the charges being dropped, McCarthy also makes the case, "There was no basis to believe Flynn, a decorated former US combat commander, would ever be Moscow's mole, much less that he had committed a crime."  The key deep-state operatives in this coup attempt were Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, former FBI Director James Comey, former CIA Director John Brennan, former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, and former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein — who colluded with Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), the current House Intelligence Committee chairman.

Are Russia Collusion Hoax Holdouts Still Operating Within the FBI?  What is it like inside the seventh floor of the FBI's Hoover fortress while revelations of constitutional abuses lash the walls like a never-ending hurricane season of the FBI's own making?  Newly released documents have refocused attention on the FBI's abuses in the Flynn prosecution.  The FBI's dirty tricks in the Flynn prosecution are almost too numerous to inventory.  Does FBI Director Christopher Wray fret over the increasing perception that the FBI has become a rogue police force unbound by constitutional checks and balances?  Is he feverishly working behind the scenes to root out perpetrators of spying abuses that targeted opponents based upon politics and other non-law enforcement purposes?  A new interview with former journalist Carl Bernstein signals that there remains a Russia collusion hoax rearguard within the FBI in spite of the resignations, firings, and departures of Crossfire Hurricane figures, including Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, Bill Preistrap, James Baker, James Comey, and Kevin Kleinsmith.

Fmr CIA operative, Dem voter bluntly says Comey, Brennan should get death penalty for coup against Trump.  Former CIA operative Bryan Dean Wright isn't pussyfooting around when it comes to fired FBI Director James Comey and former CIA Director John Brennan, and their actions in the Russian collusion hoax.  Declaring that Comey and Brennan, who went on to become virulent Trump bashers, decided to "take out" a member of President Trump's administration, Wright said the two are "traitors" and should get the death penalty, if convicted.  His remarks are in response to the bombshell report last week that former National Security Adviser Mike Flynn, a retired three-star U.S. Army general, may have been set up by the FBI.  Wright, who is a Democratic voter, appeared on "Fox & Friends" over the weekend, and he was skeptical that there would be any admission of wrongdoing.

James Comey must be prosecuted.  Andrew McCarthy, writing in the National Review, outlined the case that the FBI, under the direction of James Comey, working through Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, Andrew McCabe, and others, set up General Michael Flynn for a perjury trap.  Comey sent Strzok and another agent to entrap General Flynn on January 24, 2017. The reason was to remove General Flynn as Trump's national security adviser because General Flynn, an experienced military and intelligence officer, would have discovered the FBI's investigation of President Trump, titled "Crossfire Hurricane" but otherwise known as the Russia Hoax.  McCarthy answers the question of why to entrap General Flynn to remove him.  But the next question is, did Comey act on his own or on orders, explicit or implicit, from his superiors to entrap General Flynn to remove him?  In an interview with Nicolle Wallace, Comey bragged that he had sent two FBI agents to question General Flynn.

America Has a Jared Kushner Problem.  If President Donald Trump is serious about draining the swamp, he ought to start with his son-in-law, Jared Kushner.  Kushner raised eyebrows when he strutted into the role of pandemic point man for the White House, alongside his former roommate and a handful of McKinsey & Company management consultants.  As Chris Buskirk wrote in these pages, Team McKinsey has "a history of doing little more than helping failing institutions fail in style while growing rich in the process."  Project Airbridge, Kushner's plan to take the reins of the Federal Emergency Management Agency supply-chain task force and partner with private companies to fly health care supplies to New York City from China, lived up to the McKinsey style.

It Appears John Brennan Pulled a Deep State Move to Benefit Hillary Clinton.  [Scroll down]  Is this part of the dirty laundry that these Obama officials thought would remain buried because Hillary Clinton was a sure thing in 2016? I think we deserve some more answers regarding this allegation, no?

Here's 'Anonymous,' Trump Aides Say.  And Here's How They Outed Her.  Ever since a "senior official in the Trump administration" penned an anonymous 2018 New York Times column attacking President Trump as unfit for office, Washington has been engrossed in a high-stakes whodunit.  After an exhaustive investigation, the White House believes it's cracked the case, identifying Trump's turncoat as his former deputy national security adviser, Victoria Coates, according to people familiar with the internal probe.  Rather than fire Coates, the White House has quietly transferred her to the Department of Energy, where she awaits special assignment in Saudi Arabia — far from the president.

Despite COVID-19, the Trump administration hasn't forgotten the Russia hoax.  While everyone's attention is on COVID-19, things are still happening around the Russia hoax.  No one should ever forget that a weaponized Obama bureaucracy spied on the Republican party's presidential candidate to prevent him from winning the 2016 election.  Then, when that illegal effort failed, the entire Democrat establishment, both inside and outside government, bent all of its energies to claiming that America's duly elected president was a Russian asset who used election fraud to win.  By first acting illegally and then pushing a hoax, the Democrats and the Deep State (but I repeat myself) effectively handicapped Trump's first two years in office. [...] The Trump administration, however, is making loud noises indicating that the Democrats' and the Deep State's flagrant, unethical, unconstitutional, and illegal conduct is neither forgiven nor forgotten.

President Trump Cleans House - Fires Multiple Deep State IGs in One Swoop.  While everyone's focus is on the news and the coronavirus, President Trump isn't letting this distract him from doing the rest of his job.  He promised to drain the swamp.  He's been doing it and is still doing it even to this very moment.  He has rid Washington of many of them, but there are still many that need to be removed.  Rest assured that investigations are still going on in the background and we still have Deep State operatives being fired.

AG William Barr on the Russia investigation: 'There's something far more troubling here'.  The Russia investigation into President Trump's 2016 campaign was "one of the greatest travesties in American history," Attorney General William Barr said Thursday during an appearance on "The Ingraham Angle."  Barr said he has seen troubling signs from U.S. Attorney John Durham's ongoing probe into the origins of the two-year probe, which resulted in no allegations of wrongdoing against the president.  "My own view is that the evidence shows that we're not dealing with just the mistakes or sloppiness," Barr told host Laura Ingraham.  "There was something far more troubling here.  We're going to get to the bottom of it.  And if people broke the law and we can establish that with the evidence, they will be prosecuted."

Adam Schiff Whines About Acting DNI Grenell Clearing Out His Deep State Friends.  Failed impeachment manager Adam Schiff has a new complaint:  Acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell is getting rid of his friends working in the deep state.  In fact, Schiff is so concerned his stream of endless conspiracy theories about President Trump might be coming to an end that he's written an accusatory letter to Grenell, which he leaked first to the press, demanding to know more about what he's doing.

President Trump Removes Coup Plotter ICIG Michael Atkinson — Effective 30 Days From Today.  President Trump has sent a letter to congress giving them 30-days advance notice and informing them of the removal of Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson: [...] The necessary, albeit politically controversial, move comes about two months after President Trump assigned Ric Grenell to lead the Office of the Director of National Intelligence; Grenell is ultimately the acting boss of the overall intelligence community.  It is likely DNI Grenell provided some key insight into the sketchy background activity in/around Atkinson's office, and the overall intelligence apparatus writ large.

What if Hillary had won in 2016?  If Hillary Clinton had won the 2016 election, we would not know about the enormously complex attempted coup she undertook, with a vast cast of characters, to defeat Donald Trump as a candidate and then unseat him once he was elected president.  Only because she lost, do we now know a great deal about all that.  We know Hillary commissioned and paid for the vaunted "dossier," that she hired Fusion GPS to deliver opposition research that would take candidate Trump out of the running.  We know that bad actors in the FBI (James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Pete Strzok, et. al.), at the DOJ (Sally Yates, Rod Rosenstein, Bruce Ohr, et. al.), at the CIA (John Brennan) and James Clapper at the DNI all coordinated with each other to destroy Trump by wholly fraudulent means.  Thanks to the wisdom of the voters, we now know all about their crimes against this country.  Numerous books have been published by intrepid actual journalists that have laid out what happened in tremendous detail.  Hopefully when AG Bill Barr and prosecutor John Durham release their report, we will be privy to all the details of the whole sordid story of the most venal political scandal in American history.

Schiff protects intel 'status quo' power by sinking wide-reaching FISA reform:  Source.  Attempts to rein in the government's ability to spy on Americans fell flat after Rep. Adam B. Schiff intervened to protect the types of powers that the FBI used to go after the Trump campaign in 2016.  Mr. Schiff, California Democrat and chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, ran roughshod over House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, New York Democrat, whose panel had control over the battle to reform the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, said advocates on both sides of the aisle.  The power struggle created an awkward moment in which Mr. Nadler canceled the markup of his own bill just minutes before it was scheduled.

Here's Why the Deep State and Wuhan Virus Are Like White on Rice.  Many people wonder why those working in federal agencies — especially those who were politically-appointed — were involved in the crimes that we have only just begun to see exposed in the DoJ, FBI, IRS, State Department, etc.  What motivated them all to do what they had to at least subconsciously know were criminal acts?  After all, giving one's life towards "service to the country" is supposed to be a noble endeavor — or at least that's what the political elite, legacy media megaphones, and others have been telling us for decades, isn't it?  Except that, in the Age of Trump, we're finding out that many of these people — especially those in the upper echelons of federal law enforcement agencies — aren't as altruistic as we have been led to believe.  In fact, many of them are down-right crooks!  I am still shocked by the DoJ Inspector General's report on FISA abuse and the subsequent revelations/determinations by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that the Obama-era FBI and DoJ defrauded the court.  These were "officers of the court" who willfully committed the crimes!  If they all don't receive harsh justice, then there is no such thing as justice in America anymore.  It's as simple as that.  Why did they commit the crimes?  The Deep State cabal (multi-agency) is in it for fame, fortune, power, and career.

DOJ Political Surveillance — From the IRS in 2011 to the FISA Court in 2016.  An assembly of government reports and public records now indicates a political exploitation of the NSA database, for weaponized intelligence surveillance of politicians, began mid 2012.  After an initial attempt to exploit IRS records, the legal tool used to access the NSA database was the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA.  With research files on the '15, '16 and '17 political surveillance program; including information from the Mueller report and information from the IG Horowitz report; in combination with the Obama-era DOJ "secret research project" (their words, not mine); we are able to overlay the Obama-era domestic IC operations & gain a full understanding of how political surveillance was conducted over a period of four to six years.

Arrest McGahn?  House hints of possibility in court filing on subpoenas.  The House hinted Friday [3/6/2020] that it might have to arrest former White House Counsel Don McGahn and other Trump administration officials to force the federal courts to decide whether congressional subpoenas can be enforced against current and former executive branch officials.  Lawyers for the House Judiciary Committee made the statements in a petition to have the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit rehear its lawsuit to force McGahn to testify as part of a probe into the actions of President Donald Trump.

Obama National Security Officials Susan Rice, James Comey, John Brennan Back Joe Biden.  Former President Barack Obama's national security leaders came out this week right before Super Tuesday to announce their support for former colleague Joe Biden, in apparent hopes to tip the scales against his non-establishment competitor, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT).  Their endorsement signals that the national security establishment that has been excoriated by both President Trump and Bernie Sanders for supporting the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and military intervention elsewhere, will also back Biden.

John Ratcliffe's Interview With Catherine Herridge Has Brennan, Atkinson, and Ciaramella Panicked.  Last week, Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-TX) was nominated as the next Director of National Intelligence by President Trump.  The subsequent firestorm of protests from the Democrat-media complex is an indication that this was an outstanding selection by the President.  In addition to having served as a congressman from Texas (during which time he distinguished himself in cross-examining the Democrats' witnesses during the House impeachment hearings), he is a former federal prosecutor who spent five years at the Dept of Justice involved in matters related to national security and count-terrorism.  He gave an interview to Catherine Herridge, senior investigative correspondent at CBS that must have some members of the coup shaking in their boots.

This should have been done years ago.
Administration Insiders:  Pentagon House Cleaning of Never Trumpers Looms.  President Trump's firing of John Rood, the top policy official at the Pentagon, is a sign the agency is not immune from an effort to purge from influential positions across the administration "snakes" who do not support the president, according to four current and former officials.  Rood had been on the chopping block for months, but his firing just last week amid a spate of other personnel changes shows that the president is finally ready to clean house at a department that has tried to distance itself from politics, they said.

The Counter-Coup Has Begun.  [Scroll down]  The administrative state, the permanent bureaucracy, the deep state, whatever you wish to call it decided 19 minutes after he was sworn in as president, that Donald Trump must not be allowed to continue in that role.  The non-swamp, brusque outsider from Queens had to be sabotaged because he could not be controlled.  From Stormy Daniels to Michael Cohen, from subpoenas for his tax returns and bank accounts to fake "whistleblowers," from subordinate [lieutenant] colonels born in Ukraine, to an impeachment trial in the Senate, the Democrats and their co-conspirators, just like poor marksmen, repeatedly tried to "kill the king" and failed.

Senior US Intel Briefer "Overstated" Assessment of 2020 Russian Interference.  In a leak to the New York Times last week, intel officials warned House lawmakers that Russia was interfering in the 2020 campaign to try to get Trump reelected.  Less than 24 hours later the hoax fell apart.  Catherine Herridge reported on Friday that after pressed for evidence to back up claims Russia was backing Trump in 2020, NOTHING was offered to the DNI.

Rep. Ratcliffe on Russia reportedly trying to interfere with 2020 election:  Dems 'leaked information that's not accurate'.  In an exclusive interview on "Sunday Morning Futures," [2/23/2020] Rep. John Ratcliffe, R-Texas, addressed reports that Russia is allegedly trying to interfere with 2020 election, saying Democrats "leaked information that's not accurate."  Ratcliffe, who serves on the House Judiciary and House Intelligence Committees, made the comment in response to host Maria Bartiromo, who asked him what happened during a meeting he attended earlier this month when House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., brought up the issue of Russia meddling.  "You're asking me about details of a classified briefing that was intended to remain secret, you're asking me about it because it has been reported on by the New York Times," the Texas congressman told Bartiromo.  "It's all too familiar."

The Loser Establishment Is Rightfully Terrified of Ric Grenell.  President Trump continued his unbroken streak of awesomeness by appointing Ric Grenell the acting Director of National Intelligence, thereby threatening the intelligence community's unbroken streak of failure.  None of our media idiot savants — a term which is only half-accurate — thought to ponder the question of exactly how Ric's appointment could possibly make the IC worse.  Its legacy of ashes is a national embarrassment.  But then, the purpose of the currently-constituted intelligence community, the foreign policy community, and every wing of our incompetent, inept, and corrupt establishment is not to serve the people of the United States.  Its purpose is to serve the personal interests of the currently-constituted intelligence community, the foreign policy community, and every wing of our incompetent, inept, and corrupt establishment.  Its denizens fear that this fearless patriot is going to burn down their whole shoddy edifice, and we can only hope they're right.

The case for repealing FISA and reforming the FBI and CIA.  The FBI, in its bungling partisanship, very likely swung the 2016 presidential election away from its preferred candidate, Hillary Clinton.  The sprawling "community" of intelligence agencies (led by the FBI and CIA) covertly used dubious foreign sources to justify monitoring an American political campaign and, later, a U.S. presidential administration.  To do so, it invoked daunting foreign-counterintelligence surveillance powers, based on a fever dream that its bête noire, Donald Trump, was an agent of the Kremlin.  And the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court recently chastised the FBI for feeding it false and unverified information — the secret court apparently calculating that this extraordinary public expression of wrath will divert attention from its own shoddy performance in approving highly intrusive spy warrants based on sensational, blatantly uncorroborated rumor and innuendo.

Deep State snakes slither back after FBI, CIA swamp draining.  [Scroll down]  Soon The Washington Post had its own scoop, a report that "Russia is trying to help Bernie Sanders' campaign."  Whoa, Nellie!  Inquiring minds are confused.  Whose side are the Russians on?  How can it be that Putin is trying to help both the Republican nominee and the likely Democratic nominee at the same time?  Is he stupid?  The better question is this:  Do Deep Staters and their media handmaidens think Americans are stupid?  Yes, they do.  They count on it.  It is troubling that Trump and Sanders were given conflicting information, suggesting that the intel officials don't have their facts right.  More telling about the aim is the fact that both briefings were leaked, demonstrating that nothing has changed and that insiders are still using classified information for political purposes.

Key Intelligence Aide Joins Acting DNI Richard Grenell.  Kash Patel previously worked as Devin Nunes' senior staffer on the House Intelligence Committee (HPSCI).  It was Patel who was the lead author of the Nunes memo exposing corrupt conduct of the FBI and DOJ officials during Crossfire Hurricane.  Patel joined the National Security Council's International Organizations and Alliances directorate last February and was promoted to the senior counterterrorism role at the NSC mid-summer 2019.  According to recent reporting Patel is now joining Acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell as a Senior Advisor and Catherine Herridge is reporting the objective is to 'clean house'.

U.S. Intelligence Analyst Pleads Guilty to Leaking Classified Information to Media.  U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) counterterrorism analyst Henry Kyle Frese pleaded guilty on Thursday [2/20/2020] to leaking information to the press in 2018 and 2019.  According to a DIA press release, Frese faces up to 10 years in prison for leaking sensitive military information from five separate classified documents.  Frese was employed by the DIA as either a contractor or employee from January 2017 to October 2019.

Alexander Vindman Is Not Owed an Apology, He's Owed an Investigation.  Alexander Vindman was one of the more grating characters that tried to make a name for himself during Trump's impeachment.  An Army officer, he shamelessly shouted about his "patriotism" in an attempt insulate himself from all criticism.  Of course, the media (including some in conservative circles) played along, pronouncing it absolutely off limits to question Vindman's reasoning and motives.  You may have noticed, but there's a clown nose on, clown nose off routine when it comes to the military and Trump opponents.  If it's Michael Flynn, you can trash him relentlessly as a Russian asset despite his decorated career of service.  But if a military member speaks against Trump, they immediately gain protective status and it becomes "gross" to suggest they could be political.

Trump says he knows identity of 'Anonymous' author.  President Trump said he knows the identity of "Anonymous."  His statement to reporters on Tuesday indicates a multipronged search within the White House for the author of the tell-all book, A Warning, which spoke of a resistance movement within the Trump administration, has been successful.  "I know who it is," Trump said as he boarded a plane at Joint Base Andrews destined for Los Angeles, adding that he could not divulge a name just yet.  "But I know who it is," he added.  "We won't get into it.  People know it's a fraud.  I know who it is, and I know who some of the leakers are."

Uncovering 'Anonymous' in the White House.  In swamp news, Deputy National Security Advisor Victoria Coates is reportedly being pinned by senior officials in the Trump administration as the so-called "Anonymous," the hideous little operative deep within the Trump administration who claimed to be the anti-Trump "resistance" on the inside, brazenly writing an essay in the New York Times to 'assure' us that the Trump administration was full of such people.

Deep State Revolt:  Federal Judges to Hold Emergency Meeting Over Barr and Trump.  Just weeks after President Donald Trump was acquitted by the Senate of bogus partisan impeachment charges by the House of Representatives, a group of federal judges will hold an 'emergency meeting' on Tuesday regarding the intervention by Attorney General William Barr against the abusive proposed sentence for Roger Stone and the criticism by President Trump of the proposed sentence and the federal judge overseeing the case, Judge Amy Berman Jackson, as well as other actions by Barr and Trump regarding 'politically sensitive' cases before the judiciary.

President Trump Starts to Drain the Swamp, Yanks Liu.  This was the week that President Trump really started to drain the swamp.  It came when he yanked the nomination of Jessie Liu to a Treasury Department post.  The decision was all Trump's and occurred after Trump learned details about what was going on when she was United States Attorney for the District of Columbia.  Though Trump was most aggravated with Liu not clamping down on the outrageous sentencing recommendations of her staff in the Roger Stone case, there was a long list of other concerns that made it clear to the president the extent of ideological weaponization across the Justice Department.  Let's start with Roger Stone for now.  Liu's so-called "career prosecutors" devised a sentencing recommendation of nine years in prison for behavior that became commonplace anytime former Attorney General Eric Holder appeared before Congress under oath.

Army Announces They Will Not Investigate Lt. Col Alexander Vindman.  President Trump mentioned the likelihood the military would take a look at the conduct of Lt. Col Alexander Vindman in the wake of his leaking classified information to construct a fraudulent whistle-blower complaint with CIA ally Eric Ciaramella.  Today [2/14/2020] Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy said Vindman will not be investigated for his role in breaching national security protocol, fabricating claims and breaking chain of command.

It was Obama, not Trump, who weaponized government against political opponents.  The media frequently buries stories that might hurt political candidates or policies they support and will continually run false stories against political candidates and policies they oppose.  How else can it explain the years of fake stories on Russian collusion, seeking to destroy white Christian boys for wearing MAGA hats, trying to destroy Supreme Court Justice nominee Brett Kavanaugh with no evidence, the false "Hands up, don't shoot" narrative?  How else do you explain the burying of stories about all the mental and sexual abuse of women by the Clintons and the burying of stories or the lack of investigation into the clear corruption and kickbacks of the Clintons and Bidens if not pure bias?  How many people are the media willing to destroy in order to get power back for the Democrats?

Has the Deep State beaten Bill Barr?  Willaim Barr assumed the reins of the Department of Justice (DOJ) a year ago, succeeding Jeff Sessions as attorney general (A.G.) of the United States.  By universal consensus, the tenure of Sessions was an epochal shipwreck, disfigured as it was by Sessions, who infamously and needlessly recused himself from the entire Deep State Russia Hoax while simultaneously declining to root out Deep State operatives obsessed with removing Trump from office (to say nothing of maintaining and even extending legal protections afforded the likes of Hillary Clinton and Lois Lerner, among other Democrat-friendly government officials).  Like Pontius Pilate, Sessions washed his hands of the matter and allowed the coup-plotters of the ironically named Justice Department to proceed against Trump unopposed.  Among law-and-order conservatives and defenders of Trump, it was widely hoped that Barr would be an A.G. unintimidated by the Deep State, with the intestinal fortitude to push back against a DOJ corrupted by progressive lawyers and grandiose bureaucrats blinded by their irrational and atavistic hatred for Trump.

The Counterattack Is Underway.  Trump supporters have been impatiently waiting for some real push-back on the Democrats and their Deep State and legacy media allies for over three years now.  Some well-earned Trumpenfreude is long overdue for those involved in the various illegal investigations (e.g., Crossfire Hurricane), abuses of the FISA process, the impeachment farce, and frivolous investigations into President Trump and his family (e.g., the emoluments clause lawsuit).  With his lifetime acquittal by the US Senate of the hyper-partisan impeachment charges brought by the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives, President Trump is now counterattacking on multiple fronts.

Abolish CIA & FISA.  America's Intelligence agencies are the deep state's deepest part, and the most immediate threat to representative government.  They are also not very good at what they are supposed to be doing.  Protecting the Republic from them requires refocusing them on their proper jobs.  Intelligence officials abuse their positions to discredit opposition to the Democratic Party, of which they are part.  Complicit with the media, they leverage the public's mistaken faith in their superior knowledge, competence, and patriotism to vilify their domestic enemies from behind secrecy's shield.  Pretenses of superior knowledge have always tempted the Administrative State's officials to manipulate or override voters.  Hence, as Justice Robert H. Jackson (who served as chief prosecutor of the Nuremberg trials) warned, they often turn their powers against whomever they dislike politically, socially, or personally and try to minimize the public's access to the bases upon which they act.

About Those 70 Obama Holdovers Cut From the NSC.  Twitter and other social media outlets went nuts on Monday over a slightly misleading report issued by the Washington Examiner.  The report itself, filed by Paul Bedard, is accurate, but requires some close reading to understand what is really being communicated.  Unfortunately, as is so often the case, it was the headline that misled most readers and caused the story to go viral on social media, which of course was the goal of the misleading headline. [...] The misleading part of the story itself comes not in what the author said, but in what he left out of the text.  While it is apparently accurate that 70 NSC employees, most of whom were indeed holdovers from the Obama era, have been removed from the NSC staff, nowhere in Bedard's story does he mention that this transition has been a slow and steady process that has taken place since current National Security Advisor Robert O'Brien took over that job last fall.

Trump Is Discussing Firing Corrupt ICIG Michael Atkinson — Whose Impeachment Testimony Is Still Hidden By Liar Schiff.  On Friday anti-Trump Army Lt. Col Alexander Vindman was escorted off the White House grounds and dismissed from the National Security Council.  His twin brother Army Lt. Col. Yevgeny Vindman, who served as a lawyer on the NSC was also fired and left with Alex.  There are unofficial reports that White House staffers stood up and cheered as the twin brothers were escorted form the White House.  But President Trump is not done yet.  There are reports that dozens more may be removed this week.  And there are reports that crooked Intelligence Committee Inspector General Michael Atkinson may be asked to leave.

The Rot Is Deep (Part I).  Last week, Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, an Army Officer temporarily detailed to the National Security Council, was relieved of his duties and escorted out of the White House and off the grounds.  This was ostensibly as part of a normal rotation, but more likely for defying the President and Commander in Chief, of whom he serves at the pleasure. [...] LTC Vindman isn't some 4-Star General who, believing he is professionally bulletproof, allows his staff to badmouth the sitting President to Rolling Stone magazine.  This is a relatively junior officer who believes his judgment is better than personnel 8 levels above him, 9 counting the President.

Being Fired by Trump Does Not Make You a Holocaust Victim.  Lawfare's Benjamin Wittes, one of the media's favorite Donald Trump antagonists, took to Twitter this weekend to pen a transcendently nonsensical thread comparing the firing of a handful of bureaucrats to the rounding up of political undesirables in the lead-up to the Holocaust.  It's wouldn't be a huge deal, except that this kind of hysterical reaction has now been normalized in American discourse, illustrating that once-rational people have either lost all sense of history or are willing to belittle the past for short-term political gain.  My bet is on the latter.

Vindman Twins Removed from NSC Posts, Escorted from White House.  Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, a "star witness" in the impeachment farce against President Trump, and his twin brother Yevgeny were removed from their National Security Council posts and escorted out of the White House on Friday, Politico reported. [...] The president told reporters earlier Friday that he was "not happy" with suspected leaker Alexander Vindman and suggested that he would be dealt with soon.

This should have been done years ago.
Bigger than Vindman:  Trump scrubs 70 Obama holdovers from NSC.  President Trump is making good on his promises to "drain the swamp" and cut Obama-era holdovers from his staffs, especially the critical and recently controversial National Security Council.  Officials confirmed that Trump and national security adviser Robert O'Brien have cut 70 positions inherited from former President Barack Obama, who had fattened the staff to 200.  Many were loaners from other agencies and have been sent back.  Others left government work.

Report: White House Has Identified And Will Cut Ties With 'Anonymous' Official Amid Sweeping Security Council Layoffs.  The White House has identified and will soon part ways with the "anonymous" official behind a recently released book and a "resistance" focused editorial published in the New York Times, former U.S. attorney Joe diGenova claimed Monday morning [2/10/2020].  DiGenova made his claim on WMAL's "Mornings on the Mall," but senior White House officials declined to comment on the topic when asked by the Daily Caller.

The Purge of Colonel Vindman.  What is the official policy — today — of the United States in respect of Ukraine and the Bidens?  Is it that Ukraine should investigate the Burisma energy company's employment of the son of Vice President Biden?  The veep's son was pulling down something like $80,000 a month while his father was vice president.  Is it the policy of the United States that Ukraine's government should look into this?  We pose the question because of the reassignment of Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindmam.  He was an aide on the National Security Council who testified during the Trump impeachment that he was uncomfortable with the President's request that Ukraine undertake such an investigation.  On Friday, the colonel was cashiered from the NSC as part of what the press is calling a "purge." [...] When you help launch a constitutional process (a trial, an impeachment, an election) you're bound to accept the constitutional conclusion — or you risk being purged.

On the removal of Sondland and Vindman.  [Scroll down]  In any event, the bottom line for me is that the president should have NSC staffers he trusts.  He doesn't trust Vindman.  Thus, it made sense to transfer him back to the Pentagon.  Had Trump gone further and taken some extraordinary measure of retaliation — e.g., firing Vindman from the government, demoting him, or slashing his pay — that would be objectionable, in my view.  But Trump didn't.  He simply moved Vindman back to his old posting (albeit unceremoniously), as is commonly done with NSC staffers.

Trump Should Absolutely Fire Witnesses.  President Donald Trump fired Lt. Colonel Alexander Vindman (shown) and Gordon Sondland from their respective positions on the National Security Council and as ambassador to the European Union on Friday.  Despite media howls to the contrary, it was an action he absolutely needed to take.  The only problem is that he did not do so months ago.  During the impeachment hearings in the House of Representatives, Vindman and Sondland gave damaging testimony against Trump.  Two days after being acquitted in the Senate of the impeachment charges leveled by the Democratic Party-controlled House, Trump ousted both individuals.  He also ridded the White House of Vindman's brother, Lt. Colonel Yevgeny Vindman, who was a lawyer in the White House.  Yevgeny Vindman has been reassigned to the Army.

Medal Of Honor Recipient Says LTC Vindman Was A 'Spotlighter' Whose Own Peers Wanted Him Out.  Medal of Honor recipient MSG Leroy Petry defended President Donald Trump's decision to fire LTC Alexander Vindman, saying that Vindman had shown he couldn't be trusted.  Petry made an appearance on Sunday morning's "Fox & Friends" and responded to the news that Vindman had been fired from his post on the National Security Council and escorted from the White House.

Settling All Family Business?  Friday Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman was escorted from the White House where he had served on the National Security Council.  His twin brother, Lt. Col. Yevgeny Vindman, was also dismissed from the NSC.  Alexander had testified against President Trump in the House impeachment proceedings.  He had listened in on the President's telephone call with Ukrainian President Zelensky and testified that Trump had abused his office by withholding aid to the Ukraine until it announced investigations of his political opponents.  Reportedly Alexander is believed to be the primary source of information for alleged whistleblower Eric Ciaramella.

Thread reader:  What Will Democrats Lie About Next?  [H]ad Hillary won in 2016, we would never have learned anything about the Steele dossier and its origins, Crossfire Hurricane and FISA abuse, or Ukraine election meddling and Democrat corruption there.  James Comey would still be sweeping Democrat corruption under the rug with his able assistant-crook Andrew McCabe, Sally Yates would be the attorney general, Victoria Nuland would secretary of state, and Peter Strzok and company would be deep in schemes to take out Hillary's challenger in the 2020 election.  Thanks to President Donald J. Trump, the motives of the Democrats and their Deep State allies (NOT a conspiracy theory, Jeffries) are more transparent to Americans than they have ever been before.

Yevgeny and Alexander Vindman, Brothers in the Impeachment Coup Effort, Escorted Out of White House.  Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman and Lt. Col. Yevgeny Vindman, the twin brothers who work at the NSC & who participated in an attempted coup to remove President Trump, were both escorted from the White House and removed from their position "with no explanation" on Friday [2/7/2020].

Impeachment witness Vindman fired, escorted out of White House after Trump acquittal.  Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, who made waves as a witness during the Trump impeachment proceedings, was fired Friday by the National Security Council and escorted off of the White House grounds, Fox News has confirmed.  Vindman was on detail to the National Security Council from the Department of Defense, and it is expected he will return there.  It comes just two days after President Trump was acquitted in the Senate on the impeachment charges brought by the House last year over his dealings with Ukraine.

Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman Was Suspected of Leaking.  Former National Security Council official Tim Morrison testified during the House Intelligence Committee's closed-door hearings in the impeachment inquiry in October that Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman had been suspected by others of leaking information — apart from the controversy over President Donald Trump's July 25th telephone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.  Vindman was removed from his job at the National Security Council on Friday and escorted from White House grounds.

White House Fires Alexander Vindman.  Lt. Col Alexander Vindman, a key witness in the House Democrats' partisan impeachment inquiry, was fired from the National Security Council and escorted out of the White House on Friday, CNN first reported.  Vindman's attorney, David Pressman, confirmed his client's termination and subsequent removal from the White House.

The Deep State Is Alive and Well and Dedicated to Defeating Trump.  The House trial gave us an up-close portrait of several swamp-dwellers.  They are dedicated to trying to take down Trump and are more than willing to use every instrument at their disposal, no matter how illegal or intrusive. [...] On the witness stand, these Deep Staters revealed themselves to be even more entitled and arrogant than we imagined.  Yovanovitch referred to the U.S. embassy residence in Ukraine as "my house."  When asked who sets U.S. foreign policy, she replied, "We do," correcting herself only after it was pointed out that the president sets foreign policy under our constitution.  A puffed up Vindman wore his uniform to the trial and insisted he be referred to by his full military title — how could anyone get more "entitled" than that?  You can bet there are many more Deep State agents where they came from, all with a fierce loathing of Trump.  Their one saving grace is that they do not appear to be terribly intelligent.

The Vindman Twins Are Creatures of John Bolton.  During his four decades as an accumulator of power in the nation's capital, a holder of high offices in the State Department, and finally a stint as President Trump's national security adviser, John Bolton has been well known for his scrupulous attention to the hiring and firing of his staff.  He always has demanded unwavering personal loyalty as well as fealty to his own — not his president's — policy agenda. [...] The extremes to which Bolton goes to enforce his Bolton-centric scheme of things were exposed dramatically in the episode of his handpicked choice as deputy national security advisor, Mira Ricardel.  The latter had a well-deserved reputation as "Bolton's Bolton" — that is, a screamer, a browbeater, and a toxic boss par excellence.

John Bolton Praised Trump's Ukraine Call Before Getting Fired.  U.S. President Donald Trump's former national security adviser John Bolton changed his tune on how he felt about the commander-in-chief's July 25 call with his Ukrainian counterpart after he was fired from his White House post.  While Bolton claims he resigned in early September 2019, Trump said he fired him.  On August 27, 2019, Bolton described Trump's July 25 phone conversations with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) as "very warm and cordial calls" and acknowledged that corruption poses a significant problem for Ukraine.  However, Bolton's story changed after Trump allegedly fired him.

In 2010 Fox Interview, John Bolton Confessed He Would 'Absolutely' Lie About National Security Matters.  In a 2010 interview with Andrew Napolitano on Fox Business Channel, former White House National Security Adviser John Bolton stated that he would have no problem lying to the public if he thought it was necessary to protect national security.  Bolton, who has written a book for Simon & Shuster based on his time working on national security policy for President Donald Trump that is scheduled to be released in March of 2020, also said during the 2010 interview that government secrecy and protection of classified material was necessary to protect the public

White House told Bolton to remove classified material from manuscript before publication.  The White House has told former national security adviser John Bolton not to publish his upcoming tell-all about his time in the Trump administration until classified material is removed from the manuscript.  "Under federal law and the nondisclosure agreements your client signed as a condition for gaining access to classified information, the manuscript may not be published or otherwise disclosed without the deletion of this classified information," Ellen J. Knight, a National Security Council aide, wrote in a letter to Bolton attorney Charles J. Cooper last week, which was obtained by Fox News.

Levin Unveils Video of John Bolton Describing Trump's Conversations With President of Ukraine.  Rather than wait for his 6 P.M. show to begin, radio host Mark Levin chose Wednesday [1/29/2020] to unveil a video of former U.S. Ambassador John Bolton earlier in the day — because it was too important to the nation that the video be seen while the Senate impeachment trial of President Donald Trump was taking place.  "I am linking to this now, rather than waiting for my radio show this evening, even though I know the backbenchers will gobble it up & claim they're 'breaking news' with their 'exclusive' reports.  So be it.  It needs to get out there to a broad audience," Levin tweeted, introducing the embedded video.

Bolton and the Consequences of the Destruction of Executive Privilege.  Fred Fleitz, a former deputy to John Bolton, the national security advisor President Trump fired in September 2019, over the weekend published an opinion piece explaining the dangers of his former boss's anticipated tell-all book.  "Given the importance of protecting a president's confidential discussions with his senior advisers," Fleitz wrote, "I strongly disagree with Bolton's decision to release the book before the November presidential election and call on him to withdraw it from the publisher immediately."  Bolton is just the latest example of former advisors cravenly monetizing the confidential access to a president.

Codes of Conduct From the Swamp.  [A]pparently our country's intelligence community was out to put the clamps on Mr. Trump even before he was elected.  Slowly we are finding out that, for instance, FISA warrants included warrants that were illegal.  We are finding out that these agencies were eavesdropping on Trump and his aides.  Conservatives always defended the CIA and FBI against career civil libertarians.  Now we are finding out that these agencies were used against President Trump and his people.  What did the Trumpians do to antagonize the intelligence community?  Do the heads of these agencies really think that Donald Trump colluded with Vladimir Putin?  I have not seen the evidence.  A two-year investigation conducted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller could not find the evidence either.  So let us come up with the evidence that will convince Americans that, as John Brennan, formerly of the CIA, has said, Trump's behavior was "treasonous."  Treasonous?  The evidence?

Think there isn't a uniparty ruling class?  Exhibit A: John Bolton.  Whatever the protestations of John Bolton as to who is leaking what to whom, the fact remains that Bolton has written a 'tell-all' book about his experiences as President Trump's National Security Advisor, with the intent to release the book in the year Trump is running for re-election.  It's not easy to engage in behavior that is both petty and despicable at the same time, but Bolton has done it.  He has made himself into the poster child for an off-the-charts arrogant ruling class that an increasingly large portion of Americans (maybe 63 million and counting?) are absolutely seething about.

The Radical Dems:  Masters of Projection.  Trump-haters were waiting breathlessly for the Mueller report so impeachment could finally proceed.  But even after Mueller's impartial team of Hillary-supporters "issued more than 2,800 subpoenas, executed nearly 500 search warrants and interviewed more than 500 witnesses [and] likely compiled thousands, if not millions, of documents and pieces of evidence," Schiff's secret evidence just couldn't be produced.  Agent Strzok's insurance policy did not pay out.  Of course, its premiums had been tendered in fraud.  Amazingly enough, just when the scam of the entire Trump counterintelligence investigation puzzle was coming together, the House Democrats did a breakneck pivot to Ukraine.  If Russia didn't work, maybe the country that interfered in the 2016 elections by outing Paul Manafort's corruption would.  Trump had to be impeached, so the manufactured Ukraine phone call scandal would have to suffice for substantive impeachable crimes.  The U.S. attorney general is investigating James Comey, et al. for misleading the FISA court to spy on the Trump campaign based on unverified opposition research paid for by Hillary Clinton and the DNC.

The Deep State Tapestry of Deceit is Beginning to Unravel.  The plot was simple.  The Obama administration, in 2016 and before, wanted to preordain the 2016 electoral outcome.  What better way to do this than to spy on the rival presidential campaign?  Since spying is illegal, a pretense was needed.  That's where the Steele Dossier came in.  The DNC, the Hillary Clinton campaign, and top Obama administration officials colluded with multiple foreign governments to fabricate opposition research on the Trump campaign alleging treasonous activities.  This allowed the FBI to obtain a FISA warrant to spy on Trump campaign advisor Carter Page, and likely others as well.  The Obama administration colluded with foreign governments to influence an election.  How ironic that this is exactly what President Trump was impeached for, and why he is a "dictator" and an "existential threat to democracy".

Government in the Shadows.  The frenetic opposition to Donald Trump by the Washington establishment, the new progressive, hard-left Democratic party, and in particular the veterans of the Obama administration has led to the ruination of a number of hallowed protocols and customs.  Impeachment has been redefined as a mere vote of no confidence and will become a rank political ploy for years to come once an opposition party gains a majority in the House.  It is taking on the flavor of a preemptory device, a vaccination, rather than a medicine, as if to prevent future hypothetical crimes in the absence of current impeachable offenses.  Whistleblowers are now mere political operatives, who work with the opposition party to disseminate second- and third-hand rumor to prompt impeachment frenzies.

NSC Russia Expert Escorted From White House Under Intelligence Investigation.  CTH held off reporting on this explosive story until we could see if a tell-tale consequence surfaced; perhaps it has.  On Friday the National Security Council senior director for European and Russian affairs, Andrew Peek, was escorted from the White House grounds and is currently under a security investigation.  There are few details about why Peek was physically removed and is under a very serious investigation; however, some of Andrew Peek's professional background details tell a story.  The connection to Gen. John Allen is a massive warning flare.

Fake Investigations — Designed To Fool You.  Many government officials with long entrenched power are unwilling to give up any of that power. [...] Most of the big 'investigations' in the news in recent years have not been at all what they pretended to be.  The sham investigations of Hillary's email, or the Clinton Foundation, or Weiner's laptop, or Uranium One, or Mueller's witch hunt, or Huber's big nothing, or the IG's whitewash, or the Schiff-Pelosi charades, have all been premeditated deceptions.  There are three types of investigations that call for different deceptions by the Deep State.  The first type is the rare honest investigation.  Examples would be the attempt to find the truth about Fast and Furious (Obama's gunrunning operation), or the IRS scandal (Obama's weaponizing of government).  In response to real investigations, the criminals do two things:  lie and hide evidence.  Key evidence, even if it is under subpoena, just disappears.  In the IRS case, Lois Lerner's relevant email and the email of 6 others involved in the scheme was just "lost".  The IRS "worked tirelessly" to find the email, but hard drives had been destroyed and back-up drives were missing, so the subpoenaed evidence could not be provided.  For the Deep State, hiding and destroying evidence of guilt is standard operating procedure.  They simply report a "glitch" that destroyed the key evidence and that's the end of it.  Or, they simply redact the portions of the record that would expose the truth.  To my memory, no one ever suffers any consequences for this.

No Bureaucratic Drainage in the Washington Swamp.  [Scroll down]  With all of these exposures of the deep state bureaucracy, will the swamp be drained?  Don't hold your breath.  None of these happenings reported daily here in the capital (but mostly kept quiet elsewhere) has shaken in the slightest the Washington community's belief in the "scientific administration" supposedly utilized by its centralized bureaucratic career experts to solve all of the nation's problems.  Nobel economist F.A. Hayek called this belief a "superstition" future generations will find impossible to understand in the face of the obvious fact that no matter how secret this is kept from the "deplorables" it simply does not work well.  The people may resent it, the politicians may bark, and the media pontificate, but here in swamp headquarters there is no danger of drainage.  The four richest counties in the U.S. are all right here.

Comments on the GAO Report.  [Scroll down]  The President briefly held up funds to Ukraine while probing accounts of corruption.  In fact, the administration released military aid to Ukraine three weeks early.  Certainly not coincidentally, the GAO issued a report in time to toss it into the impeachment debate, claiming that the president's several week holdup of aid to Ukraine violated the Impoundment Control Act.  As we argue below, it did not violate that Act.  The GAO report was a partisan ploy and if the report's findings were factual, it would violate the Constitution by circumscribing the authority of the chief executive. [...] In any event, the GAO is not the finder of fact in impeachment.  If it were, Obama should have been impeached seven times in which the GAO found the Obama administration had violated federal law.  Any ruling that the President has no right to withhold Ukraine Funds (as GAO claims) would, in any event, violate the Constitution.

Ex-Treasury employee pleads guilty to leaking Trump team info, after dramatic bust with flash drive in hand.  A former top Treasury Department official pleaded guilty Monday to conspiracy for leaking confidential banking reports associated with members of the Trump campaign, following her dramatic arrest in October 2018 as she toted a flash drive full of sensitive documents.  Natalie Edwards, 41, entered the plea in Manhattan federal court, where U.S. District Judge Gregory H. Woods set sentencing for June 9.  Although the conspiracy charge carried a potential penalty of up to five years in prison, Edwards signed a plea deal with prosecutors that recommended a potential prison sentence of zero to six months.

Nunes Reveals: 'Republicans Have an Active Investigation Into Intel Community IG Michael Atkinson.  Ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee Devin Nunes told investigative reporter Sara Carter that Republicans are currently investigating Intel Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson.  GOP lawmakers asked Mr. Atkinson to reveal who changed the whistleblower complaint form to allow for second-hand info and office gossip.  "We've mentioned it, but I think people have just kind of ignored it because, of course, we don't have the subpoena power, so we can't bring Atkinson back in but he's got serious questions to answer for because I believe that he either lied to Congress or he really needs to correct his statements and he's refused to respond," said Nunes, who could not elaborate on Atkinson's testimony.

Deep State Leaks Portion of Intelligence Briefing on Drone Strike That Killed Soleimani to NY Times Reporter in Order to Damage Trump.  The Deep State is once again trying to damage President Trump with selective leaks to the left-wing media.  Two 'sources' who had intelligence briefings (Obama holdovers) about the strike that killed Iranian military officials leaked portions of the briefings to the New York Times in order to push the narrative that President Trump authorized a drone strike that killed top Iran commander Soleimani with "razor thin" evidence that an attack on American targets was imminent.

The Swamp is un-lovely, dark and deep.
Inspector General Report Shows Special Counsel Replicated FBI Abuses.  Shortly after the release of the special counsel report last year, I posited that Robert Mueller's failure to investigate whether Russia interfered with the 2016 presidential election by feeding dossier author Christopher Steele disinformation established that Mueller was either incompetent or a political hack.  Now, with the release of the inspector general's report on FISA abuse, we know the answer:  He was both.  The IG's report on the U.S. Department of Justice and FBI's handling of the Carter Page surveillance applications established 17 significant inaccuracies and omissions in the FISA application and renewals.  (Eighteen if you include the one the IG missed).  The 400-page report also established that the special counsel's office was complicit in the FISA abuse, the probe was a witch hunt, and Mueller's report was a cover-up for systematic government malfeasance.

It's Statistically Impossible For The FBI's Spygate Errors To All Be Mistakes.  [Scroll down]  There's no way the cards can all fall one way, no way every "mistake" can redound in support of the government's "case" against Page.  There's no statistical way every single oversight, clerical error, unchecked box, unread file, misplaced document, unread email, uncorroborated assumption, unverified assertion, omission of exculpatory evidence, and inclusion of false allegations can all fall against Page, and in favor of the FBI's goal of providing probable cause to convince the court to believe he was an agent of a foreign power.  There's no way 17 glaring omissions, mistakes, mischaracterizations, and straight-up lies can make their way, undetected, unquestioned, and uncorrected, through the now-legendary labyrinth of supervisory coordination, from line agents to Woods Procedures to FBI supervisors to DOJ reviewers to FBI counsel, FBI deputy director, FBI director, DOJ general counsel, deputy attorney general, and attorney general certification.

Does William Barr Have the Guts?  The recent I.G. report on FISA abuse was just another in a very long line of disappointing indicators that equal justice may never be restored to our nation. [...] Is this guy Barr for real?  Is he ready to face the hellfire that will be unleashed if he takes real steps to hold coup conspirators accountable?  It's looking increasingly likely that he is for real, but what remains to be seen how far he is willing to go. [...] The first question to be answered is exactly how far Barr needs to take it.  If you ask MAGA country, they're calling for heads up to and including Obama's.  This is doubtful and certainly not prudent because the political and systemic repercussions would be devastating and permanently destabilizing for the USA. [...] Care must be taken to avoid the precedent of high-level political war.  Otherwise, we'll morph into a banana republic in less than a generation.  Ultimately, justice needs to be done, so a compromise must be made.

The Russia Hoax Was Aided by NGOs Peddling Junk Science.  Some of the most vicious anti-Trump voices have come from US government-funded Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), affiliated with the State Department, Big Tech, and Soros afiliates.  Many of these NGOs have existed since the Cold War, with a mandate to promote freedom and democracy abroad.  They are forbidden to operate in the US, especially in partisan fashion.  Apparently, they have disregarded that mandate and have instead positioned themselves as pillars or guardians of the "global civil society."  They found a reliable ally in State Secretary Hillary Clinton.  They have been interfering in US political campaigns and elections since at least 2016, frequently in coordination with their UN/EU counterparts.  One such NGO is the National Democratic Institute, headed by Madeleine Albright.  It receives federal funding, which it mixes with money and influence from the Open Society Foundation (George Soros), UN agencies, the European Commission, multiple foreign governments, Amazon, Google and others.

Former intelligence chiefs fit perfectly into media advocacy culture.  Former FBI Director James Comey and Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, former CIA Director John Brennan and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper have lots of things in common.  One, they ran the nation's key intelligence and investigatory agencies under former President Barack Obama.  They were deeply involved in the "Russian collusion" hoax.  And they participated in the surveillance of the Trump campaign and transition. [...] In the advocacy culture of our new media, ex-government officials such as Brennan, Clapper and McCabe can be paid to appear on news programs to analyze (or vindicate) their own unethical behavior.  As employees of the media, they sell their checkered government service to exonerate themselves while confirming the anti-Trump biases of their paying hosts.

Secretary Hillary Clinton and the Deep State:  A RICO Criminal Conspiracy.  The Deep State needed Hillary Clinton to win the 2016 presidential election, or the dike holding back the truth would burst.  Trump, the disruptor, was an immediate threat to both the Republicans, Democrats, and the Deep State.  If the truth were laid bare, it would expose the Obama Administration, Hillary Clinton, the Senate and House, and many executive departments for these abuses of power, corruption, bribery, frauds, and thefts of public funds.  High-level government officials and the Deep State committed many serious felonies either in furtherance of or to conceal the crimes committed in the pay to play scam.  In exchange for favorable consideration by Secretary Clinton, those who benefited would donate to the Clinton Foundation.  The FBI started and stopped investigations into the Clinton Foundation at least twice as reported by the Washington Post. [...] The collective actions of the Deep State are and were a silent coup to delegitimize a Presidential candidate.

Voters Favor Jail, Firing for Rogue Officials Who Targeted Trump.  Voters are ready to jail or fire senior law enforcement officials who illegally targeted President Trump, but most think they are unlikely to be punished.  The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone and online survey finds that 52% of Likely U.S. Voters consider it likely that senior federal law enforcement officials broke the law in an effort to prevent Trump from winning the presidency.  Thirty-nine percent (39%) say that's unlikely.  This includes 36% who say it's Very Likely they broke the law to get Trump and 24% who say it's Not At All Likely.  These findings are virtually unchanged in surveying since February of last year.

Barr gets the word out about deep state.  Investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson has an excellent rundown at the Epoch Times of all the statements Attorney General William Barr has been making from various media appearances, noticing the patterns in what he's putting out there.  She calls him suddenly "chatty," which of course the guy is not, making the point that he's releasing a lot of information with a hard purpose.  What did she find?  That there are quite a few unpleasant coming attractions for the Deep State as the Russiagate scandal unfolds and more reports are set to come out.

Why Is Our Society Degrading So Badly, So Fast?  In Washington, the Democrats are attempting to subvert the will of the majority of the American people, as expressed by the election results in 2016, by executing and plotting orchestrated campaigns to remove President Trump from office before the next election.  These efforts range from the recently unsuccessfully perpetrated Russia collusion hoax, which is now being followed up by an illegitimate impeachment drive by the House.  These operations also revealed the mostly clandestine activities of a permanent and extensive Deep State, also labeled "the swamp," actively working with the Democrats to subvert President Trump.  A broken environment exists in Washington that contributes to the perception that too many of our elected officials feel free to participate in and to tolerate corruption without being held accountable for their actions.  It is highly discouraging for many Americans that up to this point, there have been no legal consequences or viable restraints in place to curb these types of actions that are so fundamentally dangerous to the very foundations of our country.

Impeachment Is Trump's Punishment for Questioning the Intelligence Community.  The Intelligence Community has largely relied upon Crowdstrike in reaching the conclusion that the Russians hacked the DNC servers in the 2016 election.  The "favor" Trump wanted, had nothing to do with Biden.  It had to do with Crowdstrike.  Is it treason (or bribery, or cattle rustling) to ask Ukraine to look into Crowdstrike?  Yes, according to Democrats.  Because merely asking about Crowdstrike implicitly questions the unquestionable conclusions of the intelligence community and nothing endangers our democracy like an elected president's failure to submit to his spymasters in the CIA.  We can know with near certainty that the Left lacks confidence in their narrative by the effort they put into branding anyone who questions it as "traitors," or collaborators with Putin.  Otherwise, they would use persuasion, not intimidation, to resolve the debate.

Ukraine was the Origin of the Trump-Russia Collusion Hoax.  December 2015 was a pivotal month in many respects.  During the first week of December 2015, Donald Trump began to establish a substantial lead over his Republican primary opponents.  Vice President Joseph Biden traveled to Ukraine to announce, on December 7th, a $190 million program to "fight corruption in law enforcement and reform the justice sector," but behind the scenes explicitly linked a $1 billion loan guarantee to the firing of Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin, who had been investigating the energy company Burisma, which employed Biden's son Hunter.  On December 9, 2015, the reported whistleblower Eric Ciaramella held a meeting in Room 236 of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building with Daria Kaleniuk, executive director of the Ukrainian Anti-Corruption Action Center, which was 59%-funded by Barack Obama's State Department and the International Renaissance Foundation, a George Soros organization.

It's Time for Civilian Control of the State Department.  Everyone has heard about Marie Yovanovitch, the career foreign service officer removed from her post in May as U.S. ambassador to Ukraine.  According to the Constitution, all ambassadors and senior state department officials serve at the pleasure of the president.  Foreign service officers rotate between jobs and seldom stay in one post for more than two or three years.  Yovanovitch, an appointee of President Barack Obama, was overdue for reassignment.  She served longer as ambassador to Ukraine — almost three full years — than she did as ambassador to Armenia as an appointee of President George W. Bush retained in office by President Obama.  Yovanovitch and her supporters allege that some allies of President Trump made malicious remarks about her to hasten her reassignment.  Malicious gossip against anyone is always morally wrong, but its existence is not exactly front-page news.

Trump's Disruptive Energy vs. the Deep State.  Although the president's assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, was a rabid Communist, the murder was almost instantly reframed as an expression of right-wing hatred. [...] There are contemporary lessons to be drawn from the metamorphosis of Kennedy's assassination at the hands of a pro-Soviet Communist into an object lesson in the perils of right-wing animus.  The only Russian collusion on offer in 2016 was between the Hillary Clinton campaign and various Russian and Ukrainian operatives, but somehow we all got saddled with a nearly three-year, multimillion-dollar investigation into Donald Trump's supposed collusion with Russia.

The Vindman Intelligence Operation Against Trump.  [W]hat has been going on in Washington since Election Day 2016 is not American politics as usual, but a sophisticated intelligence operation to destabilize and overthrow the legitimate government of the United States.  Each step along the path to impeachment is exactly what the CIA or the intelligence agency of a foreign power would do to use non-military means to destabilize and eventually replace the leader of an unfriendly government.  So, Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman's actions at the NSC are best understood if one views him as an intelligence operative acting to destabilize the government of the United States.  And the techniques used in the operation are all actions we've seen before in the ongoing operation to remove Donald Trump from power.

Misplaced Patriotism Is Damaging to Our Constitutional Order.  For most of the last three years, Donald Trump's critics have scoffed at supposed "conspiracy theories" that claimed a "deep state" of bureaucrats were aborting the Trump presidency.  We have been told the word "coup" is hyperbole that reveals the paranoid minds of Trump supporters.  Yet oddly, many people brag that they are proud members of a deep state and occasionally boast about the idea of a coup.  Recently, former acting CIA chief John McLaughlin proclaimed in a public forum, "Thank God for the deep state."  Former CIA director John Brennan agreed and praised the "deep state people" for their opposition to Trump.

America's Choice:  Abolish Elections or Disband the National Security Council (NSC).  Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, the latest star of the Democrat effort to undo the 2016 election, is still at work on the National Security Council. [...] The National Security Council has been ground zero in the campaign against President Trump from the beginning.  General Flynn's appointment as National Security Advisor had touched the third rail because the NSC had been used to coordinate anti-Trump operations in the Susan Rice era.  The NSC doesn't answer to Congress.  Its members are meant to advise the president.  (Except when they're actually working for a previous president.)  They command the implements of foreign policy, traditionally the weakest element in domestic politics, but not when they start treating their domestic political opponents as agents of a foreign state.  And the size of the NSC has gotten out of control.  Under Obama, the NSC staff hit 400 people.  That's up from a dozen during its Cold War origins.  And it's the staff that's the problem.

Impeachment Lesson:  Cut Government.  Every Republican president starts day one on the job in charge of a massive disloyal workforce.  Follow the money.  Almost every single dollar, to the tune of 95%, donated by a federal bureaucrat during the 2016 election went to Hillary Clinton.  This is a massive challenge for every Republican president.  One of the easiest jobs in the world is being a Democratic president.  The federal bureaucracy quite literally worships you.  The media, academia, and entertainment industries call in supporting fires to portray every move as a Nobel Prize-worthy gesture.  The corollary to this is that the hardest job in the world is to be a Republican president.  The executive branch workers you oversee despise you and seek to undermine every move.  They are the head of the resistance, the very heart of the deep state snake.

Let None Dare Call It Sedition.  Respectfully, Mr. President, this is not a witch hunt.  This is a coup.  The objective and tactics have been clear from the start.  It is no longer silent.  The evidence grows daily.  The recently released tweets from the attorney for the "whistleblower" confirmed what we have long believed.  "Coup has started," he wrote prophetically.  Indeed it had.  And it continues.  They almost succeeded.  The co-conspirators deserve much worse than to be sent packing in the next election.  Long prison sentences are the only sure deterrent to prevent this from ever happening again.  Calling the "whistleblower" a whistleblower is a misnomer.  He is a partisan second-hand leaker.  He is a coward and a traitor.  He and all those who conspired with him should be treated as such.

What If They Gave an Impeachment and Nobody Came?  Donald Trump's real crime is not deferring to the same D.C. geniuses who were so relentlessly awful that they caused us to elect Donald Trump in the first place.  The meme is going around that "I hired Donald Trump to fire people like you," and boy — is it ever on point.  That the president — yeah, he's our president and he's going to keep being our president for five more long years — refuses to submit to the bureaucrats of the ruling caste on foreign policy is not a bug.  It's a feature — the feature that closed the sale.  See, our ruling class is utter garbage, as the televised circus on the Potomac proved.  But no one goes to circuses anymore.

Senate GOP Leadership Warns Trump:  Any White House Attempt to Dismiss Impeachment Charges Will Fail.  They are called "decepticons" for a reason.  McConnell is king, and Cornyn, Thune and Barasso are his praetorian guards.  Senator John Cornyn (TX), a key member of the Senate GOP leadership; and a member of the Senate Judiciary and Intelligence committees; warns the White House that a vote to immediately dismiss articles of impeachment and avoid a trial won't work.

The Great Gift of the Mueller Russian-Collusion Probe.  [Scroll down]  The president has the right to fire any ambassador who does not support his agenda, so who cares that he fired some anti-Trumper in the Ukraine embassy, Marie Yovanovitch or whatever her name is?  Frankly, we elected him to fire her, whatever her name is.  Was she so deeply embedded in the embassy that she did not catch the chants back in America to "Drain the Swamp"?  That was the whole idea of 2016:  we wanted people like her thrown out of the foreign service and sent off to host an MSNBC show.  If anything, we eagerly await the firings of hundreds more Marie Yovanovitches, or whatever their names are, who comprise the vast unelected Deep State within the State Department, advancing agendas that we did not vote for.

The Deep State Cabal Against Trump Is Very Real.  [Scroll down]  Donald Trump's exposed it.  Whatever you want to call it, the deep state, the elites, the Washington establishment, there's no question that it exists.  And there's no question that they are ticked off.  And there's no question that maybe the center of it is the national security apparatus, the National Security Council, because within that group is every other group we're talking about.  Director of national intelligence, CIA, military has people in there, State Department, diplomacy.  It's all in the National Security Council or apparatus.  The whistleblower was on the National Security Council.  McMaster, who we now know had ties to the whistleblower, he was the national security adviser for Trump.  And that seems to be the nexus.

The DC Game Is Rigged to Favor the Deep State.  The Trump-Russia witch hunt is an egregious example of the power of the state being abused for partisan political purposes.  That failed to deliver the goal of deposing the president, and may even backfire as the investigations into it complete and there is a possibility of indictments for some of the conspirators.  Having come at the president and missed, they decided to redouble their efforts, so we come to the impeachment inquiry currently operating in full kangaroo court fashion.

How the Deep State Media Operate.  The targeted, coordinated and swarming feeding-freezing journalism for political ends appears to be, not just the product of individuals, but a collaborative effort between media outlets and the Deep State, which is transnational and may have been and may still be an intimate element in the perpetration of the anti-Trump narrative.  In many ways similar to Journolist, the British Integrity Initiative describes itself as an organizer of an international "network of networks" of "experts, opinion formers and policy makers" to "counter Russian disinformation."

Sunday Talks:  Kevin McCarthy vs Maria Bartiromo.  House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy appears on Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo to discuss the ongoing details within the legislative impeachment process.  As part of his remarks Leader McCarthy states:  "this is a calculated coup orchestrated by Adam Schiff" ...  [Video clip]

Praetorianism and the 'Deep State'.  Defenders of President Trump have long railed against the "deep state," a name given to the entrenched bureaucracy working from within to bring down the Trump Administration. [...] They point to the machinations of high ranking members of the Intelligence Community (IC), including former CIA Director John Brennan, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, and fired FBI Director James Comey, who have worked assiduously to undermine the president at every turn, and indeed even to mid-level drones such as the still-anonymous (officially) "whistleblower" who touched off the investigation of President Trump and his dealings with Ukraine, as well as Army Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, who expressed similar concerns.

The Justice Department is fishing for details about the anonymous 'resistance' op-ed writer.  The Justice Department is looking for identifying details about the anonymous Trump administration official who excoriated the president's "amorality" in an unsigned New York Times opinion column last year, according to a letter the agency sent Monday [11/4/2019].  The author of the column, whose identity has remained a secret for more than a year, has also written a tell-all book that will publish this month — and Assistant Attorney General Joseph H. Hunt wants proof that the writer is not bound by a government nondisclosure agreement.  Either that, Hunt wrote in the letter, or the book's publisher and the author's agents should turn over the official's employment information: where in the government the person worked, and when he or she worked there.  If the official had access to classified information, Hunt warned, the book should be "submitted for pre-publication review."

Lee Smith's Book Will Make Patriots' Blood Boil.  Lee Smith's The Plot against the President is an invaluable contribution to the history of America in the Trump era. [...] Every congressman and senator, and every American voter, ought to read Smith's book.  Americans who detest President Trump's personality and decorum will remain free to continue, but if they are honest, they will be absolutely repelled by the behavior of the higher-ups in just about every so-called American "institution" — the CIA, FBI, DOJ, State Department, and mainstream media, and yes, the Obama White House.  Concocting lies and leaks to the media, fabricating evidence, running "humint" scams to develop further lies and leaks, manipulating courts by withholding evidence and declaring half-truths, carrying out orchestrated personal threats against Nunes and anyone else who dared to expose the truth — these are nothing short of organized crime activities, with each and every one of these institutions directly and knowingly involved.

Former Czech Ambassador Bašta:  CIA, FBI and Democrats Are Working Behind the Scenes to Remove President Trump, "It's a Thing of Dictatorships".  Former Czech Ambassador to Russia and then Ukraine Jaroslav Bašta spoke to iDNES.cz news last week.  The discussion centered around the 2016 US presidential election and the current political situation in the United States.  Bašta, who is familiar with the politics in Ukraine, accused the FBI, CIA and US Democrats, along with the former Ukrainian government, of colluding in the interest of Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election.  Bašta added, "And it is not just some conjecture, everything is well documented by the Ukrainian authorities and now also based on the first court decision."

The Military-Intelligence Complex.  Donald Trump had been in office less than a month when the Wall Street Journal reported that U.S. intelligence agencies had decided on their own to withhold information from the recently inaugurated president of the United States:  "In some of these cases of withheld information, officials have decided not to show Mr. Trump the sources and methods that the intelligence agencies use to collect information, the current and former officials said."  What would one call that?  Obstruction?  A coup?  A conspiracy?  Most of the major intelligence heads in the Obama Administration — James Comey, John Brennan, and James Clapper — either leaked classified information aimed at harming candidate and then President Trump, later declared him a veritable traitor and Russian asset, or earlier took measures to monitor his campaign or administration's communications.

Why Schiff.  The assignment of the impeachment to Adam Schiff and not the House Judiciary Committee shows what the real aim is.  Democrats assigned the House Intelligence chairman this task to protect the intelligence agencies who tried to overthrow President Donald John Trump.  America's spies and the FBI tried to frame him.  They made false accusations of treasonous collusion with foreigners to rig the election.  3 days before the inauguration, Chuck Schumer bragged that the intelligence agencies can get you six ways to Sunday.  That's possible.  After all, Watergate was a coup run by Mark Felt after Nixon passed him over for FBI director after J. Edgar Hoover died.  Adam Schiff is a tool of those politicized intelligence agencies that Schumer bragged about.  Schiff is their spokesman.

Court-martial the spy Vindman.  Army Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman ignored a direct order from the commander-in-chief.  A court made decide whether Vindman broke the military code of justice.  President Donald John Trump ordered him not to appear before a House committee.  The Military Times played down Vindman's insubordination. [...] But was he a whistle blower or a spy?  He did not report any wrongdoing.  He did not follow the chain-of-command with his reporting.  The story said he may get an Article 15 for his Seven Days in May defiance of the president.  Article 15 is a step below court-martial.  But he spied on the president.  He was not part of the telephone call the president made.  He had no reason to access the record of the phone call.  Indeed, he tried to alter the transcript.  Also, there is evidence he worked for the Ukrainian government, at least as a lobbyist.

How the Army officer who testified against Trump could end up in a court-martial.  When Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman appeared before members of Congress on Tuesday [10/29/2019] to discuss what he knew about President Trump's conversations with Ukraine's president, he was violating an order from his commander in chief not to cooperate with the House's impeachment inquiry.  He is likely protected from legal ramifications from showing up to testify, a former Army judge advocate told Military Times on Thursday.  But it remains to be seen whether what he told legislators could get him charged with a crime — and, of course, how his choice to rebel against his White House chain-of-command will affect his career.

The First Four-Star Flag Officer in US History Joins the Effort to Void the Election of the US President.  From time to time, I like to promote the Combat Veterans for Congress Political Action Committee, as their cause is righteous.  I agree whole-heartedly with almost all of their stances on issues.  Here is one of those opinion pieces that I'm certain will resonate with you, too.  In fact, the topic makes me furious!

Media-Democrat Tantrum [is] a Fear Response.  In 1776, 56 men signed the Declaration of Independence, knowing that their actions would be viewed as treason by the prevailing power. [...] Fast-forward a mere 240 years.  A group of corrupt and craven people gathered in secret to once again consider radical actions.  But, unlike the Declaration's signers, they were the prevailing power and intended to remain so, fully confident in their complete control of government, the media, the Judiciary, academia, entertainment, and nearly every form of cultural power.  They feared no consequences.  It was simply inconceivable to them that with so many hands on the scales, they could possibly lose an election.  And then they did.  All of their treasonous misdeeds that were supposed to not only be covered up, but rewarded by the queen of corruption were suddenly a real vulnerability.  They weren't just shattered by the election loss.  They were genuinely afraid.

A stunning confession from a Deep State member subverting the constitutional republic.  The arrogance and lack of self-awareness among the mandarins that inhabit the top levels of our government bureaucracies has led to a smoking gun-level confession. [...] A confession from a man who formerly ran the CIA came Wednesday at an event sponsored by a friendly organization, the Michael V. Hayden Center and Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University.  Former CIA Acting Director John McLaughlin was among friends who share the same seditious outlook, speaking on a panel discussion, with CIA Director John Brennan, former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, and former CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell.  With everyone sharing the same assumptions, McLaughlin apparently let down his guard and committed a "Kinsley gaffe" — accidentally telling the incriminating truth.

Anti-Trump Collusion by Media.  According to a June 11, 2017, FBI write-up:  ["]The purpose of the meeting, as it was explained to SSA [supervisory special agent, redacted] was to obtain documents from the AP reporters that were related to their investigative reports on Paul Manafort.["]  No such documents were included in the documents released to us.  During the meeting, the AP reporters provided the FBI information about a storage locker of Manafort (the Mueller special counsel operation raided the locker on May 26, 2017):  ["]The AP reporters advised that they had located a storage facility in Virginia that belonged to Manafort... The code to the lock on the locker is 40944859.  The reporters were aware of the Unit number and address, but they declined to share that information.["]  The reporters shared the information that "payments for the locker were made from the DM Partners account that received money from the [Ukraine] Party of Regions."  The notes suggest the AP pushed for criminal prosecution of Manafort[.]

Haley Recalls Serving With Some Who Tried to Undermine Trump; 'What's At Stake is the Constitution'.  Officials serving in the administration are not free to push their "personal agenda" if they do not like President Trump, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said this week, arguing that "we have one president at a time, and that president attained his office by the choice of the American people."  Speaking at an American Enterprise Institute event in Washington, where she received the conservative think tank's Irving Kristol Award, Haley recalled serving in the Trump administration "alongside colleagues who believed that the best thing to do for America was to undermine and obstruct the president."

Trump Admin Launches Investigation Into 'Deep State' Targeting Top Trump Iran Official.  The State Department has opened an investigation into a campaign of leaks targeting the Trump administration's top Iran official, including leaks of a non-public inspector general report, according to multiple sources inside the Trump administration and on Capitol Hill who have been briefed on the investigation and the report.  Brian Hook, the special representative for Iran and one of the longest-serving Trump appointees in the administration, has been a focus of an inspector general investigation alleging he engaged in politically motivated staffing decisions involving a career State Department official who worked closely on the Obama administration's landmark nuclear deal with Iran and other diplomacy with the Islamic Republic.

Trump Asks, Was Today's Never-Trumper Witness 'On the Same Call I Was?'.  As people inside his own administration rise up against him, President Trump is fuming about it on Twitter. [...] Trump also retweeted Fox News's Laura Ingraham, who noted that when he took office, Trump had "zero idea" how many career staffers working inside his administration "would be working 24/7 to undermine his agenda." [...] At the beginning of that call, President Zelensky told Trump, "[W]e are trying to work hard because we wanted to drain the swamp here in our country.  We brought in many many new people.  Not the old politicians, not the typical politicians, because we want to have a new format and a new type of government .. You are a great teacher for us and in that."  The "swamp" that Trump supposedly drained is now rising up against him, with the full support of Democrats and the liberal media.

The Editor says...
Mr. Trump is at least trying to drain the swamp, which nobody else has even attempted.  Personally, I don't think the swamp can ever be drained.  The swamp is deep and wide.  The swamp is all plugged up by a big wad of money that has been taken out of our pockets and scattered around Washington, DC, to be spent on all sorts of things that nobody asked for.  The swamp is lined with the offices of hundreds of bureaucrats who live quite comfortably and don't like changes.  The swamp is good for the TV news business, so you know what the news readers will say if any part of the swamp is threatened.  And unfortunately, too many voters are blissfully pacified by their monthly government handouts, so they don't like changes, either.

Speaker Pelosi Wasn't Informed.  So What?  Saturday was a great day for America.  U.S. Special Forces killed one of the most vile human beings on the planet, terrorist leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.  The leader of ISIS was dead.  The mass murdering terrorist was chased down a tunnel by dogs and blew himself up.  But true justice being dealt out was not enough for Democrats in Washington.  Nancy Pelosi is upset, again.  This time, the Speaker of the House is upset because she was not informed of the raid to kill al-Baghdadi ahead of time.  Well, President Trump was right not to tell her, or any of the Gang of Eight, ahead of time.  The Gang of Eight, a collection of top Congressional leaders, are typically briefed ahead of such significant missions.  But we are not living in normal, typical times.  We are living in a time when certain Congressional leaders would seemingly like the president to be open with them, all the while trying to destroy his presidency.  Military operations are not a game.  National security is not a game.

The Walls are Closing In — but Not on Trump.  Democrats and their media propaganda arm have been telling us since President Trump took office that "The walls are closing in." [...] News this week suggests that the walls are indeed closing in, but not on President Trump.  Instead it's officials in the Obama administration, up to and including President Obama himself, who notice the size of their rooms beginning to shrink.  As many of us hoped, Attorney General William Barr's investigation into the origins of the Russian collusion hoax is now a criminal investigation rather than simply an administrative inquiry.  For those patiently, or impatiently, sitting through the calm before the storm, the storm has finally arrived.

Fear strikes deep into the woke.  It's not often we get a clear picture of how leftists actually think. [...] So "Is William Barr the Head of DOJ or QAnon?" by Rick Wilson is an interesting surprise — for once, we're getting the true gem of what a leftist thinks. [...] Wilson is truly terrified as to what is going to come out of Barr's and Durham's efforts.  What is he afraid of?  It's hard to say.  It's all amorphous and vague — nothing concrete to it. [...] The obsessive secrecy of the "impeachment" process, Schiff running off to hide when confronted by GOP congressmen, McCabe suddenly dropping his lawsuit, the visible nervousness of Brennan and Clapper over the past week.  These people are afraid.

Multitasking the Intelligence Community Roundup.  [Scroll down]  Big takeaway:  it is "disconcerting" now to be "investigated for doing our duty, what we were told to do by the president."  And exactly what were they doing?  Investigating a candidate, President-elect Trump, with the end, said Clapper, of preparing a big, comprehensive report for Congress and "the next administration."  You see that James Clapper, despite appearances to the contrary, does have a wry sense of humor.  He can say with a straight face that the covert investigation aimed at destroying Donald Trump was actually an investigation intended at least in part for the incoming Trump administration.  Yuck, yuck, yuck.  What a card!  But note that Clapper, funny though he was, was not himself laughing.  I don't blame him.  The spook-turned-media-lap-dog is as much in the crosshairs as anyone, except perhaps another spook-turned-media-lap-dog, former CIA director and Gus Hall voter John Brennan, who now lends his authoritative anti-Trump commentary to MSNBC.

How the Democrats are like mushrooms.  Adam Schiff is learning more about the high price of his impeachment posturing every day, it seems.  Schiff was one of a number of congressmen who were not notified of the impending raid against ISIS that resulted in the death of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.  This despite the fact that Schiff, as chair of the House Intelligence Committee, would be automatically in the loop regarding any such effort.  President Trump announced that Schiff, among others, had been left out during questions following his Sunday speech announcing he successful mission.  He made no bones as to the reason why:  "We were going to notify them last night but we decided not to do that because Washington leaks like I've never seen before," Trump said.  "There is no country in the world that leaks like we do and Washington is a leaking machine."  As befits a president, Trump was most concerned about the troops at the tip of the spear:  "A leak could have caused the death of all of them."

Bureaucratic Rule: By What Right?  The New York Times long has tried to school us in the rightfulness of the bureaucracy's attempt to rule America contrary to the results of elections.  Last year, the editorial board published an anonymous piece, in an unprecedented move, purporting to be written by a "high official" arguing that mandarins like himself serve the country by subverting the Trump administration. [...] That, in turn, means that the bureaucrats, whom we pay but may not fire, are the rightful deciders and any notion of a sovereign people ruling themselves through representatives whom they elect and fire is a quaint and outmoded one to be discarded by those of superior understanding, like themselves.  Their superior right supposedly comes from superior knowledge and morality.  In short, they should rule us because they are better than we.

Deep State Hates America First Policy.  After the longest war in the history of our country, it is time for our troops to return home.  In 2001, the United States responded to the horrific terrorist attacks of 9/11 by sending our military to Afghanistan on a mission to destroy Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda.  We were successful in destroying their terrorist camps, killing and capturing Al-Qaeda leaders, and forcing Bin Laden out of the country.  Amazingly, our military is still in Afghanistan, although the Taliban control over half of the country.  Of course, President Trump and his supporters want to bring these troops home, but he is facing enormous resistance within the government, including the Defense Department.

Inside Trump's White House:  Deep State treason or conspiracy theory?  Democrats and never-Trump Republicans have waged a relentless campaign against Trump, accusing the president of being an intelligence asset of Vladimir Putin's Russia — a treasonous act.  But what began as a political dirty tricks campaign by the Democratic National Committee, the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, and Obama's Deep State, morphed into a coup plot intended to remove Trump from office.  A matter of deep concern for the Deep State plotters is US Attorney John Durham's expanded criminal investigation into the origins of their Trump/Russia counterintelligence operation.

The Deep State Does Not Truly Understand the Peril They Now Face.  I do not believe in coincidence.  I do not believe that it is a mere coincidence that these three events occurred late last night [10/24/2019]:  [#1] The investigation of the roots of the plot to destroy Donald Trump and his Presidency is now a criminal matter.  [#2] A letter from Inspector General Horowitz announcing that his report on the FISA fraud would be out shortly with no major redactions.  [#3] The Government caved to Honey Badger Sidney Powell and allowed her to fully expose criminal conduct by Michael Flynn's prosecutors.  What is going on?  Two words.  Bill Barr.  The Attorney General has pulled the trigger and altered the landscape in the Russiagate saga.

The State Department's War on Trump.  House Democrats are grilling a stream of disgruntled career diplomats in a basement hearing room of the Capitol.  The hearings are supposed to be secret, but — no surprise — Democrats leak snippets of the testimony daily.  They're hoping it will add up to a case for impeaching President Donald Trump.  So far, all the testimony actually proves is that these State Department diplomats think they — not President Trump — ought to be running the nation's foreign policy.

The Deep State Is in Deep Trouble.  On Thursday evening, the New York Times reported that U.S. Attorney John Durham's administrative review of the origins of the Trump/Russia investigation has shifted into a criminal inquiry.  This major development grants Durham the power to subpoena witnesses and documents and to impanel a grand jury.  Speculation has increased in the wake of reports that Attorney General William Barr and Durham had twice traveled to Rome and London to meet with intelligence officials recently and the news that Durham was interested in questioning both former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and former CIA Director John Brennan.  My colleague, Bonchie, posted on this story last night (here), writing that the mainstream media is portraying this as a political move.  The following excerpt from the Times will give you an idea of how they plan to spin it.

Mittens, the Deep State, and the Ongoing Coup Against POTUS.  Recently, one of my email pals sent me an incredible opinion piece from Howell Woltz at The International Centre for Justice, in Warsaw, Poland.  He is the author of "Justice Denied:  The United States vs. the People," a very interesting book about the US justice system and federal prisons and the need for some serious reform.  Occasionally, an opinion piece is so profound that it simply MUST be disseminated to a much wider audience than a simple blog post.  This is one of such article.  In this commentary, he opines on the DoJ/FBI cabal's ongoing coup against POTUS while explaining some key connections among John Brennan, Mitt Romney, Cofer Black, Burisma Holdings (Ukraine), Bararck Obama, Hillary Clinton, and all the rest.  It fills in a lot of gaps and explains much about what is going on with respect to the Ukraine kerfuffle.  While I can't vouch for the veracity of all the claims here, this just rings true to me and connects a lot of very interesting dots.  As usual, I caution you to "trust but verify."

The Case for Indicting John Brennan.  Former CIA director John Brennan calls the Justice Department's widening probe into Spygate's origins "bizarre."  It has no "legal basis," he bleats.  What's bizarre is that the expanding inquiry didn't happen earlier.  Brennan's responsibility for criminal leaks during the Obama administration's investigation of Trump has been obvious for at least two years.  Even Trump hater Peter Strzok, the FBI liaison to John Brennan, couldn't believe the leaks coming out of his shop.  Referring to Brennan's agents as "sisters," Strzok said to his mistress Lisa Page, "our sisters have begun leaking like mad.  Scorned and worried and political, they're kicking in to overdrive."  The "leaking like mad" began in the thick of the 2016 campaign, as the feverishly partisan John Brennan sought to sabotage Donald Trump before Election Day.

Rand Paul:  There Are GOP Senators 'Whose Allegiance Is More to the Deep State' Than Trump.  Monday [10/21/2019] on Fox News Channel's "Tucker Carlson Tonight," host Tucker Carlson questioned Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) as to why Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) had not been aggressive employing his subpoena power as the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee against various central figures involved with the effort to derail Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign and his presidency.  Paul explained he had urged Graham to act.  However, he said there were other Republican members of the U.S. Senate that had more of an "allegiance" to the so-called Deep State than Trump.

Report: CIA Deep State Actors Linked to Origin of Russia Hoax Lawyer Up.  The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) review into the origins of the Russian collusion hoax probe has reportedly prompted some CIA analysts in the crosshairs of investigators to lawyer up.  NBC News made the revelation on Monday [10/21/2019], adding that DOJ "has found something significant" and expanded the review.

The Deep State Comes Out Of The Shadows.  Two news stories published over the weekend had the same message.  The State Department was out to get President Donald Trump after suffering years of "frustration."  At least these denizens of the deep state are being honest.  Politico's 2,000-word story — titled "The Revenge of the State Department" — begins by reporting on the fact that "current and former Foreign Service officers have defied Trump administration orders and trudged to Capitol Hill to testify before House committees investigating whether to impeach the president."  These officials, the story says, are "furious," "terrified," "incredulous," "disappointed," "fed up," "livid," with a "deep well of resentment," in an "unbearable" situation.  Some of them, Politico reports, are using the hearings as a "platform to air long-held grievances over Trump."  And their colleagues are "hailing them as heroes."  What, exactly, are these career State Department bureaucrats angry about?

When Does It Count as a Coup?  Not only are we living in the most divisive time in the republic's history since the Civil War, but we are also right now witnesses to an ongoing plot to subvert the duly elected President of the United States.

John Durham Questioning CIA Officials About Intelligence Community Assessment.  Against the backdrop of the DOJ admitting FBI investigators never had access to the DNC servers to verify a Russian hack; and with new information about the FBI receiving partial and redacted analysis from Crowdstrike; the review by U.S. Attorney John Durham toward the downstream assessment/claims of the CIA takes on new meaning.  CTH has previously outlined how the December 29th, 2016, Joint Analysis Report (JAR) on Russia Cyber Activity was a quickly compiled bunch of nonsense about Russian hacking.  The JAR was followed a week later by the January 7th, 2017, Intelligence Community Assessment.  The ICA took the ridiculous construct of the JAR and then overlaid a political narrative that Russia was trying to help Donald Trump.

Licensed to Lie: 2014 book exposes start of Deep State DOJ corruption.  In the corruption trial of former Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens, a key witness was intimidated into presenting false testimony.  As in the Merrill Lynch case, the prosecutors concealed exculpatory evidence from the defense, a violation of due process under the Supreme court's Brady v. Maryland 373 U.S. 83 (1963) decision.  In Senator Stevens' conviction, which led to a narrow loss in his 2008 re-election campaign and impacted the majority makeup of the Senate, the presiding judge appointed a special prosecutor to investigate abuses.  Confronted with the need to clean house as he came into office, writes Powell, Attorney General Eric Holder failed to take action.  Powell's book provides an expose of federal prosecutorial misconduct and introduces us to some of the worst federal prosecutors who still reside at the top levels of our government.

NY Times columnist admits there's an anti-Trump Deep State — But claims members are the good guys.  "There is no Deep State!"  That's been the anti-Trump media argument ever since President Trump took office and his administration started leaking like a cheese grater.  Lots of major news organizations made the claim, interviewing supposed insiders — from CNN to The New Yorker and The Nation.  New Yorker Editor David Remnick rationalized the pushback against Trump in 2017:  "The problem in Washington is not a Deep State; the problem is a shallow man — an untruthful, vain, vindictive, alarmingly erratic President."  Now there's no attempt at hiding it.  In one of the more blatant impeachment stories of the week, New York Times columnist James B. Stewart went on NBC's "Today" show to tell everyone that Trump is right.  Stewart was pushing a new book, "Deep State," only he sees the Deep Staters as heroes — the same way the rest of his media buddies do.

Trump Issues Executive Orders Designed To Deconstruct The Deep State While Dems Focus On Impeachment.  President Donald Trump signed executive orders Wednesday afternoon that are designed to take much of the sting out of what conservatives believe is an out-of-control administrative state.  The orders will limit the use of a tool the Trump administration believes short-circuits the rule-making process.  They take aim at federal guidance, which agencies can use to explain how they intend to implement policy.  The Wall Street Journal reported on the orders Tuesday [10/8/2019].  The orders are expected to dramatically reduce the impact a key element of the country's regulatory infrastructure has on businesses and Americans, according to White House spokesman Judd Deere.

Meet Kyle Frese:  Trump Hater, Federal Employee, Arrested for Leaking National Security Secrets.  Federal employee Henry Kyle Frese was arrested today for allegedly leaking national security secrets to reporters at CNBC and NBC. One of the reporters was his girlfriend. [...] Frese was a federal employee at the Defense Intelligence Agency.  It comes as no surprise that Frese — like so many other federal employees in Washington, D.C. — is full of hatred toward Donald Trump and willing to use his personal power and government job to attack the president and conservatives.  Let's peruse his Twitter feed before it disappears.

John Durham Expands His Investigation:  Timeline to Include 2016 Election Spying on Trump to Spring of 2017.  US Attorney John Durham has recently expanded his probe into the Obama administration's spying on candidate Donald Trump.  Durham is now looking at evidence up to the launch of the Mueller Special Counsel.

Intelligence agent arrested for spilling secrets to journalists.  The feds busted a Defense Intelligence Agency worker Wednesday for leaking classified national defense information to two journalists in 2018 and 2019 — one of whom he was shacking up with.  Henry Kyle Frese, 30, a counterintelligence analyst from Alexandria, Virginia, who had a Top Secret security clearance, was indicted Tuesday [10/8/2019] on two counts of willful transmission of national defense information to persons not entitled to receive it.  "Frese was caught red-handed disclosing sensitive national security information for personal gain," said John C. Demers, assistant attorney general for national security, who cited ex-Attorney General Jeff Sessions' vow to pursue leakers as the motivation for the probe.

Sex, Leaks, Lies and Spies:  Trump Takes Down Intelligence Community Leakers.  Amidst a battle between the President of the United States and the Intelligence Community that has sparked formal impeachment proceedings against the president by Democrats in Congress, federal law enforcement officials have formally charged one intelligence community official with leaking highly classified information to the media.  This comes in the wake of a top-ranking congressional intelligence committee staffer facing similar charges of leaking last year and sets the stage for a larger fight between Trump and intelligence community leakers.

Democrats' Fear of Durham [is] About to Reach [the] Panic Level.  The important news of the day — far beyond the inevitable tedious impeachment jousting — is that John Durham's investigation of the provenance of the FBI's counterintelligence investigation of possible Trump-Russia collusion has expanded, according to several administration officials. [...] In Churchill's words, "A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on." Eventually, however, it does.  And when it does, in this case, if the Democrats have already impeached a president — if it turns out there was a coup plot or something close involving the CIA, the previous administration and others — there will be [consequences] in this country like we haven't seen since the 1860s, maybe worse.

Activity and Background of Sketchy IC IG Michael Atkinson Now Under Investigative Spotlight.  Last week the Intelligence Community Inspector General, Michael Atkinson, testified behind closed doors to congress.  Atkinson testified about his role in bringing the 'whistle-blower' complaint forward.  The details of that testimony are now starting to surface and thankfully congress is taking a closer look at the sketchy background of Michael Atkinson.

Stephen Miller Exposes the Deep State: 'A Collection of Permanent Bureaucrats Enmeshed Inside the Federal Government'.  Stephen Miller, a senior adviser to President Donald Trump, joined Breitbart News Sunday [10/6/2019] [...] to expose the deep state:  forces he said are driving the effort by Democrats to proceed with impeachment against the president.  "The attempt at impeachment is best understood as a legislative coup against a democratically elected president, and the radical leftists in Congress are working arm-in-arm with the deep state saboteurs and their allies in the media in order to try to effectuate this illegal coup," Miller said.

The Coup against Trump:  Is John Brennan a Russian Agent?  In the coming weeks, former CIA director John Brennan will be meeting with Attorney John Durham about the origins of the Russia Hoax.  There can be no question that Brennan is at the center of the Obama White House campaign to use unconstitutional and extra-judicial means to target and destroy Donald Trump.  There is little doubt that Brennan and his compatriots in the Deep State have done more damage to America than the Russians could ever do in 100 years.  Obama, Clinton, and Brennan have much to answer for.

Trump Orders Cut to National Security Staff After Whistle-Blower.  President Donald Trump has ordered a substantial reduction in the staff of the National Security Council, according to five people familiar with the plans, as the White House confronts an impeachment inquiry touched off by a whistle-blower complaint related to the agency's work.  Some of the people described the staff cuts as part of a White House effort to make its foreign policy arm leaner under new National Security Adviser Robert O'Brien.

The Real CIA.  The CIA is far from being the murderous threat of a KGB or Gestapo, and its tactics so far have been weasely, assaulting our democratically elected leadership with sneakiness and innuendo.  Nevertheless, its attacks on President Trump have been the most significant attacks our president has faced.  CIA employees have no intention of assassinating Donald Trump, but they do seek to assassinate his presidency.  The CIA's founders would be horrified.  They insisted as a condition of the CIA's founding in 1947 that it was not to be a KGB or a Gestapo that preyed upon its own citizens.

Whistlegate Reveals Some Very Chatty Minders of State Secrets.  As Democrats in Congress assess a CIA analyst's "whistleblower" allegations against President Trump regarding Ukraine, one thing already seems clear:  There has been a breakdown within the government of traditional restrictions against sharing intelligence beyond those with a need to know it.  Unlike most whistleblowers, the CIA analyst was not a witness to events.  Instead, he functioned as a kind of investigative reporter who worked sources to develop the information detailed in the complaint.  While some have praised the informer for unearthing questionable behavior by the president, some experts in national security law say that the whistleblower and his sources may have violated regulations aimed at preserving state secrets.

One dares call it treason.  The Constitution, in Section 3 of Article III, says those who give aid and comfort to the enemies of this country are traitors to it.  President Trump is an existential threat to the entrenched ruling class.  The Deep State is a part of that class, and it attacks the president on their behalf.  Any and all means are justified in attacking him and in defending their power.  Their power is the center of the existence of the ruling class, their most precious possession.  Trump threatens it all, and all of them.  So when Adam Schiff mockingly impersonates the president's call to Ukraine, making it seem like a threatening call from a mob boss, he is giving aid and comfort to the Deep State, the enemy of the people and the enemy of the United States.

Deep State insurance policies, the press and Intelligence Community coups.  When President Donald Trump told Americans that the left-wing media are "the enemy of the people," he was only partially right.  His presidential candidacy and later election as the nation's 45th president triggered an unprecedented opposition campaign.  A campaign by Deep State infested US intelligence community (IC) services at home and abroad.  That campaign against a duly elected government official has been consistently advanced by the so-called independent press.  It amounts to an ongoing intelligence community coup against the president.

Inspector General Identifies DC U.S. Attorney Leaking Grand Jury Evidence.  The Department of Justice Inspector General has released a notification stating that a former U.S. Attorney within the DC Circuit was caught leaking grand jury information to an "unauthorized individual[.]"

Clapper: Whistleblower Fueling the 'Conspiratorial Fire' of the 'Deep State' Trying to Overthrow Trump.  Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said that there isn't a "deep state" effort to undermine President Donald Trump but the whistleblower complaint about his call with the Ukraine president from someone in the intelligence community "fuels that conspiratorial fire."  "Well, I never heard of the term deep state, maybe I was, you know, ignorant or bliss or something, but I never heard of that until the campaign and afterwards.  Allegedly this is a conspiracy of career government public servants who somehow organize themselves into a conspiracy to undermine or overthrow the president, which on its face is ridiculous," Clapper said during the Washington Post's Cybersecurity Summit on Wednesday [10/2/2019].

Stephen Miller:  "The Deep State is Terrified of Being Exposed".  White House Senior Policy Adviser, Stephan Miller, appears on Fox Business with Lou Dobbs to explain the apoplexy coming from DC's administrative state.  Miller outlines the deep fear held by many in the professional political class in/around DC toward ongoing investigations by U.S. AG Bill Barr and U.S. Attorney John Durham.  In framing the opposition to the Trump administration, Mr. Miller identifies the Marxist roots that bind governmental ideologues in united resistance.  Impeachment is their best hope of defense.  [Video clip]

Carl Bernstein Warns Deep State Allies:  Bill Barr is on to us.  Carl Bernstein is an insufferable propagandist for the political left; but sometimes you can get a sense of where things stand by listening to his partisan protestations.  Additionally, Bernstein was at the center of the media effort to engineer the Russia narrative by pushing disinformation from the intelligence apparatus in January 2017.  Bernstein was one of the key media figures constructing and pushing the vast Russian election interference narrative.  He also worked closely with Jake Tapper, Jim Sciutto, and Evan Perez to promote the Steele Dossier as a valid intelligence product.  In essence Bernstein is a part of the 'resistance' agenda writ large; he travels DC circles accordingly.

Dan Bongino calls the Russia investigation the biggest political scandal of our time.  [Scroll down]  [Quoting Mark Levin]:  You had spies inserted into the Trump campaign by the FBI You had lies fed to the FISA Court, a Federal Court.  Federal district court judges run the FISA Courts, by the highest levels of the FBI and the Department of Justice.  You had the unmasking of American citizens, including from people at the White House, as well as from the U.N. and others on a scale we've never seen in modern times.  You've had the leaking, the felonious leaking of information, so-called investigative information, trying to push the ball with the public against candidate Trump, and now President Trump.  You had leaking by the head of the FBI, he denied it.  He is a liar.  And he also wrote self-serving memos that belong to the government.  And he leaked some of those.  The number two at the FBI, McCabe, a leaker and then lied about it, and is now potentially facing criminal charges.  The General Counsel the FBI, forced to resign.  The top level the FBI wiped out.  [Video clip]

Intel Community Secretly Gutted Requirement Of First-Hand Whistleblower Knowledge.  Between May 2018 and August 2019, the intelligence community secretly eliminated a requirement that whistleblowers provide direct, first-hand knowledge of alleged wrongdoings. [...] The brand new version of the whistleblower complaint form, which was not made public until after the transcript of Trump's July 25 phone call with the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky and the complaint addressed to Congress were made public, eliminates the first-hand knowledge requirement and allows employees to file whistleblower complaints even if they have zero direct knowledge of underlying evidence and only "heard about [wrongdoing] from others."

Key Whistleblower Requirement Was Removed, Allowing IC Complaints Based on Hearsay.  A key requirement for whistleblowers to lodge a "Disclosure of Urgent Concern" complaint was secretly eliminated at some point in the past year to allow submissions of second-hand material, it has been revealed.  This allowed the August submission of an error-ridden whistleblower complaint against President Donald Trump to proceed, as the whistleblower — who is believed to be a member of the intelligence committee assigned to the National Security Counsel — has admitted to having no direct knowledge of wrongdoing on the part of the president.  A previous version of the form only allowed first-hand whistleblower complaints — not hearsay, rumor, or gossip about presidential diplomacy with a foreign leader.

Limbaugh: Turns Out Ukraine 'Whistleblower' Was 'Deep State Plant From The CIA'.  On his radio show Thursday, Rush Limbaugh addressed the revelations from The New York Times about the identity of the "whistleblower" who sparked the controversy of President Trump's July 25 phone call with Ukraine's president that has given the Democrats a rationale to move forward on their impeachment campaign.  According to the Times, the whistleblower is "a CIA officer detailed to the White House," and, according to Paul Sperry, former D.C. bureau chief for Investor's Business Daily, rumors are "swirling" that the whistleblower was one of former CIA Director and current NBC analyst John Brennan's "old CIA humps detailed over to — planted inside — the White House to spy on Trump and help thwart the investigation of #Spygate which also involves Obama DOS/FBI/CIA skullduggery in Ukraine."

Who is responsible for the impeachment circus?  [Scroll down]  Paul Ryan was Speaker of the House from October 2015 to January 2019. He was also the 2012 vice presidential nominee for the Republican Party running with the hapless Mitt Romney.  When Donald Trump became president, this gave the Republicans control of the presidency, the House, and the Senate.  This was a golden opportunity to move the Trump agenda forward.  And it would have been accomplished — except for Ryan.  As leader of the GOP in the House of Representatives, he engaged in ankle-biting the president and dragging his feet otherwise.  Trump has thundered that Ryan was "weak, ineffective, and stupid" as House speaker.  Ryan was all that only if one assumes he was on the same team supporting the president and the American middle class.  But if Ryan was instead serving big moneyed globalists and Wall Street, then he was smart and highly effective — as a saboteur.

New York Times identifies Trump whistleblower as CIA officer.  The New York Times is claiming the whistleblower behind a complaint made about a phone conversation between President Trump and his Ukrainian counterpart is a male CIA officer who at one point had been detailed to the White House.  The report, which the Times says was corroborated by three sources, paints the most detailed portrait of the insider to this point, though he has yet to be named publicly.  The Times also reports that, based on the wording of his complaint, the whistleblower likely has extensive knowledge of Ukrainian politics.

White House hunt for identity of whistleblower and 'spy' who helped him.  President Trump and his advisers are frantically searching for the identity of the whistleblower who exposed Trump's phone call with Ukraine's president and those in the White House who spoke to him.  Trump demanded the identities of the sources as Democrats clamored for Trump's impeachment for allegedly inducing Ukraine to investigate Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden.  "I want to know who's the person who gave the whistleblower the information because that's close to a spy," Trump said.  "You know what we used to do in the old days when we were smart with spies and treason, right?"

$50K reward offered to out Trump whistleblower.  Two Trump supporters are offering a $50,000 reward for information about the national security whistleblower at the center of the Ukraine phone affair.  Controversial conservatives Jack Burkman and Jacob Wohl said they would pay the money for "information relating to the identity of the 'Trump Whistleblower.'"  The New York Times on Thursday [9/26/2019] reported that the whistleblower works at the CIA and was stationed in the White House when the call was made.  The duo have said their goal is to provide full transparency on the issue in which the administration has already released the transcript of the July 25 call and the inspector general's report on it.

It's Not About Biden — Deep State Response to Ukraine Call [is because] Trump Questioned Crowdstrike.  The completely over-the-top response by a Deep State embed whistleblower and his/her political allies withing the administrative state now makes sense; it had nothing to do with Joe Biden.  President Trump asked President Zelenskyy about "Crowdstrike." [...] According to the original FBI statements made by James Comey:  Crowdstrike did the captured imaging of the DNC network (servers/cloud), then conducted analysis, then provided a report to the DNC with their findings; and that report was given to the FBI.  At least that was the original 2017 claim.  However, during court filings in the case against Roger Stone, the DOJ/FBI later admitted they never even saw the Crowstrike final report.

Further Evidence Intelligence Community Inspector General is Part of Lawfare Alliance.  [Scroll down]  The center of the Lawfare Alliance influence was/is the Department of Justice National Security Division, DOJ-NSD.  It was the DOJ-NSD running the Main Justice side of the 2016 operations to support Operation Crossfire Hurricane and FBI agent Peter Strzok.  It was also the DOJ-NSD where the sketchy legal theories around FARA violations (Sec. 901) originated.  The Intelligence Community Inspector General (ICIG) is Michael K Atkinson.  ICIG Atkinson is the official who accepted the ridiculous premise of a hearsay 'whistle-blower' complaint; an intelligence whistleblower who was "blowing-the-whistle" based on second hand information of a phone call without any direct personal knowledge, ie 'hearsay'.  Michael K Atkinson was previously the Senior Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General of the National Security Division of the Department of Justice (DOJ-NSD) in 2016.

Dobbs on whistleblower fiasco:  Intel community insanely 'hostile' to Trump.  Fox Business host Lou Dobbs slammed the media for fomenting yet another "contrived, left-wing-inspired political firestorm" concerning whether President Donald Trump had pressured Ukraine's president to investigate former vice president Joe Biden.  As BizPac Review reported, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Vadym Prystaiko flatly denied unsubstantiated reports by the Washington Post and the New York Times making this claim.

Let's get real:  Democrats were first to enlist Ukraine in US elections.  [Scroll down]  Nellie Ohr testified to Congress that some of the dirt she found on Trump during her 2016 election opposition research came from a Ukrainian parliament member.  She also said that she eventually took the information to the FBI through her husband — another way Ukraine got inserted into the 2016 election.  Politics.  Pressure.  Opposition research.  All were part of the Democrats' playbook on Ukraine long before Trump ever called Zelensky this summer.  And as Sen. Murphy's foray earlier this month shows, it hasn't stopped.  The evidence is so expansive as to strain the credulity of the Democrats' current outrage at Trump's behavior with Ukraine.

He'll have more flexibility after 2020 — and he's going to need it.  The swamp is bottomless.  Truly undrainable.  Unlike blood-sucking vampires that can be tamed with garlic necklaces, holy water and a stake driven through the heart, this THING cannot be stopped.  The Leviathan has become a glioblastomic tumor with roots so deep beneath the Potomac that they can never be wrenched out.  Its gnarly fingers of government intrusion slither into every thin cranny of American life.

Trump, Kavanaugh, Lewandowski and our malignant Left.  Most Americans are by now familiar with the fact that higher-ups in the FBI, DOJ, CIA and the Obama administration attempted to destroy the Republican candidate for the presidency.  Once Donald Trump won, they doubled down on their despicable collusion of fakery to see the man not only driven from office but rendered guilty of treason.  They did all of this knowing full well that none of it was true.  It was all part of a plan, their "insurance policy" to ensure Hillary Clinton's ascension to the White House despite her many crimes, which they all worked to conceal.  Much of this was likely done to ensure their own job security.

McCarthy promises accountability as Barr reviews IG's FISA report: 'The closest we've ever seen to a coup'.  House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., promised that guilty parties will be held accountable after Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz releases his report on the FBI's alleged abuse of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) in the Russia investigation, and predicted that former bureau leaders James Comey and Andrew McCabe will face criminal charges after what he described as an attempted "coup" to take down President Trump.  The report will address concerns with whether or not the FBI acted improperly in obtaining a FISA warrant to monitor former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page in the early stages of their investigation of Russian election interference and possible Trump campaign connections.

The Intelligence Community Works for the President.  It's simply hard to know where to begin to respond to the staggering chutzpah of Jennifer Rubin's recent Washington Post opinion column accusing the president of undermining our intelligence community.  Rubin used the recent leak regarding the exfiltration (a fancy word for "removal") of an undercover "asset" in Russia as a hook to make the case that the president is somehow responsible for outing this source and therefore harming U.S. interests.  Her column is an example of the backward view elite leftists have towards democracy and the Constitution.  These elites, in desperate need of a remedial civics class, have convinced themselves that our elected president must learn to take orders from the intelligence community.

New State Department Documents Reveal Last-Minute Efforts By Obama State Department To Undermine President Trump.  Judicial Watch today [9/9/2019] released 90 pages of heavily redacted U.S. Department of State documents showing Obama State Department officials' efforts to disseminate classified information to multiple U.S. Senators immediately prior to President Donald Trump's inauguration.  The information, which included raw intelligence, purported to show "malign" Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

New docs reveal frantic Obama State Department efforts to undercut Trump.  On Monday [9/9/2019], conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch released 90 pages of U.S. State Department documents revealing frantic efforts before President Trump's inauguration by Democrats and their supporters to share classified intelligence information with various senators.  The documents, obtained through a June 2018 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, are heavily redacted but they still provide stunning evidence of intent to bring down the newly elected president by any means necessary.

Trump-Russia and Clinton-Libya:  A Story of 2 Probes and the FBI.  Records recently posted online by the FBI indicate that it did little to investigate allegations from private sources connected to Republicans about a scheme in which associates of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton tried to exploit their connection to her to profit from the turmoil in Libya in 2011.  The FBI received the documents in June 2016, around the same time it launched an exhaustive, three-year investigation of the Trump campaign's ties to Russia based, in part, on information from private sources connected to Democrats that in the main would prove to be false — the Steele dossier.  The bureau's different responses to these documents also came during the same period when FBI Director James B. Comey controversially cleared Clinton, in his first of two exonerations, of criminal wrongdoing in the bureau's probe of her unauthorized and insecure email setup.

Trump vs.  Clinton 2020: Is the Deep State coming for the Oval?  With Congress returning this week, the 2020 election, and impeachment quest ramps up.  Numerous pundits and opinion writers have predicted that Hillary Clinton will be Democrat savior.  Including the artist, Ben Garrison, behind the lead cartoon.  Is Hillary the one that, this time, will beat Donald Trump?  Can the mistress of the Deep State deny him of his second term?  Will Hungarian Billionaire and Deep State God Father, George Soros be willing to support another Clinton — Deep State run?  Because out of all the DNC contenders, Hillary Clinton alone reigns as the Queen of the Deep State globalist agenda.

Comey Tickles the Wire.  [Scroll down]  In other words, when Comey met with Trump, the FISA surveillance had been underway for three months and was ongoing.  Given that no charges have ever been brought against Carter Page, it would appear that by the time of Comey's approach to Trump, the FISA surveillance had been a dry hole.  So it was that Comey resorted to the time-tested technique of "tickling the wire" by meeting with Trump and trying to scare him with tales of Moscow hookers and compromising tapes.  And CNN's reporting on the subject only increased the desired level of agitation.  Even if, as indeed turned out to be the case, Trump did not blurt out anything incriminating during the meeting, the possibility remained that he or his associates would be spurred to make damaging statements and admissions in their wire or oral communications.  And, if that happened, the FBI would be intercepting and recording every word.  In short, although the OIG does not address the possibility, the convergence of the FBI's previously unproductive FISA surveillance with Comey's reptilian and manipulative approach to the president-elect leads to the inevitable conclusion that Trump was absolutely correct when — despite the mockery of the mainstream media — he insisted that he was being wiretapped by the FBI.

Federal Reserve Bank's 'myth of political neutrality' now is dead and gone.  Donald Trump is only the most recent POTUS to discover that the Fed wields enormous political power, able to speed up or slow down the economy via its manipulation of interest rates and the money supply.  He is far from the first president to complain about the Fed when he perceives it as hampering his growth agenda.  What is different is that one of the top officials of the Fed in recent years has fought back and urged the Fed to operate so as to exert political influence against Trump.

Trump Admin to Create Special "Office of Transparency" to Expedite Release of DOJ Documents Stalled by Deep State.  Investigate journalist John Solomon of The Hill released another breaking report in his appearance on Hannity on Wednesday night [8/28/2019].  According to Solomon the Trump Administration is creating an "Office of Transparency" to expedite the release of DOJ documents that have been stalled by Deep State operatives.  This comes after months of waiting for subpoenaed documents from the FBI and Director Christopher Wray who has done all he can to stall and protect Hillary Clinton and the Deep State cabal.  [Video clip]

Details Behind Patrick Byrne Allegations of FBI "Political Espionage".  Former CEO Patrick Byrne has given four primary interviews where he outlines his knowledge of a 2015 and 2016 political espionage operation being run by the FBI.  After a review of the interviews, and extracting specific points therein, here's an overview.  The substance of Mr. Byrne claims does seem to align with what we already know about the DOJ and FBI activity during the 2016 election cycle, including the FBI operations.

Patrick Byrne Describes Maria Butina as a Walking FISA Virus.  After appearing on Fox Business, former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne appeared on Fox TV with Martha MacCallum.  In this interview Byrne explained his impetus for contacting the FBI in 2015, about Russian national Maria Butina, surrounded a low-level security clearance he held and a responsibility to report suspicious contacts.  Mr. Byrne then names Peter Strzok, Bill Priestap, Andrew McCabe and James Comey as the top of an operation where Byrne was instructed to guide Butina into the contact circle of republican presidential candidates in 2015, and then back away.

Ex-Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne says he got 'fishy' orders from Peter Strzok; former acting AG unsure of claims.  Overstock founder and CEO Patrick Byrne, who resigned Thursday amid ties to a government probe related to the 2016 election, claimed he received "fishy" orders from former FBI official Peter Strzok.  Byrne said Thursday [8/22/2019] on "The Story" he'd helped the federal government with investigations twice in the past, including to "help them take down people on Wall Street."  Several years after Byrne's last contact with the government, he said FBI officials reached out to him in 2016.  "I was given some fishy orders and I carried them out in 2015-2016, thinking I was conducting law enforcement," he said.

Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne resigns amid Russian spy link, 'deep state' comments.  Overstock founder and CEO Patrick Byrne resigned Thursday [8/22/2019] after 20 years at the company amid his ties to a government investigation related to the 2016 election.  "In July I came forward to a small set of journalists regarding my involvement in certain government matters," Byrne said in a letter to shareholders.  "While I believe that I did what was necessary for the good of the country, for the good of the firm, I am in the sad position of having to sever ties with Overstock, both as CEO and board member, effective Thursday, August 22."

Founder of Overstock.com resigns, goes public about his role in FBI surveillance of presidential campaigns.  In a pair of jaw-dropping interviews yesterday [8/22/2019] following his resignation from the company that he founded twenty years ago, Patrick Byrne revealed his collaboration with the FBI as an informant, including involvement in surveillance of the presidential campaigns including multiple Republicans... and of the Hillary Clinton campaign, too.  In both interviews he fingered Peter Strzok as the person responsible for sending the "men in black" from the FBI who visited him, but in the second, he stated that higher ups, whom he would only identify as "X, Y, and X" — people whose names you would know, directed the program.

John Solomon: 10 Declassified Russia Collusion Revelations.  Investigative journalist John Solomon joined Sean Hannity to discuss his latest revelations in the ongoing Trump-Russia Spygate scandal. [...] John Solomon in his list suggests that the FBI may have been giving Christopher Steele information on the Crossfire Hurricane investigation on Donald Trump and his campaign.  Solomon says the deep state also had exculpatory statements that would have cleared George Papadopolous that they withheld from the FISA Court.

AG Bill Barr's Other Problem — The 2018 DOJ and FBI Coverup To Protect The Senate Intelligence Committee.  In the first part of this research into the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) we outlined how the committee was engaged in the 2017 effort — with specific evidence of communication — to support Robert Mueller and the 'soft coup' team.  When you understand what the group was doing in early 2017, you understand why the FBI had to use DOJ official Bruce Ohr as a go-between to contact with Chris Steele.

Lindsey Graham:  There Is Proof Of Systematic Corruption At Highest Level of DOJ and FBI.  "Here's what we're looking at:  Systematic corruption at the highest level of the Department of Justice and the FBI against President Trump and in favor of Hillary Clinton," Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said on an interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News.  Host Sean Hannity then asked Graham whether officials "lied purposefully" on a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant application to surveil former Trump campaign aide Carter Page.

Trey Gowdy Calls Secret Document 'Game-Changer'.  [Scroll down]  Gowdy, who was chairman of the House Oversight Committee, said he was "clueless" as to why the documents have not been made public, because there is no information that could damage U.S. relationships with allies.  "It goes to a fundamental precept we have in this country.  When there is exculpatory information, information that tends to show that a person did not commit a crime, that information is every bit as important" as any evidence that would suggest a crime," he said.  "Show us the transcripts.  Show us the questions you coached the informants or the cooperating witnesses to ask of the Trump campaign officials.  If it's not about the campaign, then you're right.  But if you're veering over into the campaign or questions are not solely about Russia, then you've been misleading us for two years," said Gowdy.

Deep State Center Holds — John Ratcliffe Nomination Withdrawn.  Donald Trump was an outside candidate; a disruption in the global way of things.  He questioned NATO, he challenged "globalism", he challenged the perpetual war machine.  In essence he was a risk.  Hence the SSCI aligned against candidate Trump and continued that opposition into the "insurance policy" phase to remove President Trump.  The pre-election operations of the SSCI is why the 2016 Vice-Chairman of the committee, Dianne Feinstein, abdicated her position as soon as Trump won the election.  She knew eventually the SSCI would be in direct confrontation with President Trump; and Feinstein knew what actions they had taken.  She didn't want to stick around for the bloodbath.

Transcripts Obtained of Former FBI Chief of Staff James Rybicki Testifying Russia Conspiracy Came from Obama's White House.  Transcripts obtained from the FBI in a request for information show that James Rybicki, the former FBI Chief of Staff under James Comey, testified that the Russia Conspiracy sham came from Obama's White House in October 2016.  We reported last week that businessman Ed Butowsky filed a lawsuit where he outed reporter Ellen Ratner as his source for information that Seth Rich and his brother provided WikiLeaks the DNC emails before the 2016 election, not Russia.  This totally destroys the FBI and Mueller's claims that Russians hacked the DNC to obtain these emails.

The Deep State [is] apoplectic over the appointment of John Ratcliffe as DNI, for good reason.  The testimony of Robert Mueller signaled the end of Act One of the Russia Hoax story arc.  The appointment of Rep. (and former US Attorney) John Ratcliffe as the new Director of National Intelligence launches Act Two, where the events of the first act begin to be understood in a new light.  The miscreants and their friends understand very well what is ahead, and they are acting accordingly.

Professor Joseph Mifsud: a spy to be dragged in from the cold.  Republican Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio would like an answer to a simple question:  Who is Joseph Mifsud?  He's the man the New York Times describes as "an otherwise obscure Maltese professor with sketchy academic credentials who has stayed out of public view for more than a year and a half."  That may be so, but Professor Mifsud, along with British spy Christopher Steele' of Trump dossier fame, provided the impetus for the US counterintelligence operation relentlessly waged against Donald Trump's 2016 Republican presidential campaign.

Who has the most egg on his face after the Mueller hearings?  Adam Schiff.  From the beginning of the Left's attempt to destroy the Trump candidacy, then presidency, it was Adam Schiff who was the most consumed by the fabricated hoax that Trump had colluded with Russia to win the election.  He believed every morsel of disinformation that was carefully leaked by the collaborators at the FBI, DOJ, CIA, DNC and the Clinton gang.  Once their fake news was leaked, they could and did use those articles as evidence against the President.  They used those columns of fabricated tales of Trump's collusion to get FISA warrants to spy on every person who was part of the campaign.  They spied, they set-up innocent persons like Papadopoulos in service of constructing a complex but false narrative that would round out their coup.

Ex-FBI, CIA Officials Draw Withering Fire on Russiagate.  As Congress arrives back into town and the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees prepare to question ex-Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller on July 17, partisan lines are being drawn even more sharply, as Russias-gate blossoms into Deep-State-gate.  On Sunday [7/7/2019], a top Republican legislator, Rep. Peter King (R-NY) took the gloves off in an unusually acerbic public attack on former leaders of the FBI and CIA.  King told a radio audience:  "There is no doubt to me there was severe, serious abuses that were carried out in the FBI and, I believe, top levels of the CIA against the President of the United States or, at that time, presidential candidate Donald Trump," according to The Hill.

When Does the Deep State Morph into the Police State in Our Country?  What makes the Democrats especially dangerous these days is that they are highly united in their attempt to impose in an increasingly totalitarian fashion their progressive and socialist agenda by any means possible.  They often use the tactics of overtly attempting to silence and eliminate conservative opposition and practicing the policy of personal destruction of their opponents.  It reached a point where, seemingly, an alliance of "Deep State" federal bureaucracy players, including high-ranking members of the Obama administration consisting of the DOJ, the FBI, and the CIA, united with Hillary Clinton to participate in a comprehensive campaign to rig the outcome of the 2016 election in her favor.  Gone are the days of Democrats attempting to win voters in the court of public opinion with a free, open, and honest debate of ideas and policies.

This only means that the swamp hasn't been drained.
Amash: Republicans, High-Level Officials Thanked Me for Saying Trump Should Be Impeached.  Sunday [7/7/2019] on CNN's "State of the Union," Rep. Justin Amash (I-MI), who left the Republican Party earlier this week, said when he came out in favor of impeachment, other "Republicans, high-level officials" contacted him "saying thank you for what you are doing."

Trump hasn't drained the swamp.  Here's how to do it.  Donald Trump ran for president promising to "drain the swamp," but even his sometimes valiant efforts amount to no more than removing marsh water one tin cup at a time.  Three Supreme Court decisions at the end of its term last week remind us that the federal administrative state, not the elective offices, is the frustrating, sometimes abusive entity through which most citizens encounter their government.  The next president should make it a priority to radically restructure and reduce the administrative leviathan.  The virtual GOP campaign against President Trump must make massive administrative reform a galvanizing issue.

The Left's Endgame Is Not Chaos.  It's Worse.  First, at present, leftists want to create a state of political cultural chaos in the U.S. for a specific reason.  They need chaos as a smokescreen to defend their current leaders — that is to say, Obama, Hillary & Co. — from prosecution.  Make no mistake:  Obama, Hillary, and their cohorts committed some serious crimes of an unprecedented nature for people at their level.  We executed Julius and Ethel Rosenberg for far less. [...] That is what the Left is doing with all this "chaos." For if Trump gets enough political breathing space to lock on for the kill and hold them accountable, they are through.  Their whole program is derailed, and many principals will indeed wind up in jail.

Why Ash Carter, Clapper and Brennan tried to get NSA's Mike Rogers fired.  According to a November 19, 2016 Washington Post report, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper tried to get NSA director Admiral Mike Rogers fired.  In a deliberately leaked memo, "senior officials" attacked Rogers' abilities, questioned his leadership, and otherwise tainted his record.

Multiple fingers pointing at alleged leaker of plans for ICE raids today.  The chronic problem of sabotage by bureaucrats hostile to the outsider president shaking up the Deep State will never be solved until unmasking and punishment become the order of the day.  That's why it is so heartening that with unusual swiftness, accusations are pointing to the alleged identity of a leaker who successfully delayed implementation of a key Trump policy initiative, the planned ICE raids on illegal alien scofflaws who have defied court orders for theior deportation.  This exercise will — if the allegations are sustained by evidence — help establish a norm of exposing the rat finks that could discourage future saboteurs.

Tom Homan Identifies Acting DHS Secretary Kevin McAleenan as Deep State Leaker, Trying to Undermine President Trump.  Today [6/22/2019], Mr. Homan seemed to clearly identify Acting DHS Secretary Kevin McAleenan as the person working against the interests of the President; leaking information to impede the immigration policy of President Trump; and likely the reason why Homan would only consider entering back into the administration if the process was changed to allow him to work around a corrupt Acting DHS Secretary, McAleenan.  Suffice to day, after this interview Tom Homan and Acting DHS Secretary Kevin McAleenan will likely never work together.

Fired up Tom Homan accuses DHS chief of 'resisting' ICE, leaking raids to media.  Former Acting ICE Director Thomas Homan unleashed a blistering attack against a government official he believes leaked information about impending mass raids to the media.  The Fox News contributor blasted Acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan during an appearance on "Fox & Friends" Saturday [6/22/2019], accusing him of "resisting" ICE and slamming the leaks that put the lives of agents at risk.

Emails Show Obama State Department's Role in Anti-Trump Coup Cabal.  John Kerry, President Obama's secretary of state, seems to be having trouble staying within the legal bounds of the Logan Act, so it's not surprising that his State Department lieutenants were getting their hands dirty in the conspiracy to bring down Donald Trump.  Judicial Watch now has received more evidence of this anti-Trump conspiracy.  With The Daily Caller News Foundation, they just released 16 pages of documents revealing senior State Obama officials — Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and Special Coordinator for Libya Jonathan Winer — coordinated with incoming House Majority Whip Steny Hoyer's (D-MD) national security advisor, Daniel Silverberg, to work on Russia dossier information provided by Christopher Steele.

Get ready for the biggest 'skating' event of all time.  No, it's not the traditional ice skating performed by elite athletes on Olympic and NHL ice; it's the political skating performed by seasoned Deep State operatives on the thin ice of lawless criminal corruption.  Whether you're aware of it or not the big event has already begun.  It's the "spygate" investigation into how Donald Trump, a legitimate presidential candidate and duly elected president, was targeted by deep state political operatives in an attempt to sabotage his candidacy and then over-turn his election as President of the United States.  The participants in the big event will include numerous elite skaters from within the Deep State; headlined by top-seeded entrants from the elected and appointed political arena to the intelligence and law enforcement communities.

Only with Real Transparency Will the FBI Ever Be Trusted Again.  When Donald Trump told George Stephanopoulos he (Donald) might listen to "oppo" research coming from a foreign source and that he might not tell the FBI about it, the mainstream media, as is so often the case, deliberately missed or misstated what he meant, went into one of their usual hissy fits, and attacked the president, even calling him treasonous.  Besides the obvious hypocrisy, pointed out with characteristic aplomb by Andrew McCarthy, something else, likely more important, was at play.  The media (and the Democrats, of course) deliberately missed the point because you would have to be seriously intellectually challenged not to get why Trump might have been hesitant or ambivalent about going to the FBI.

The CIA Is Running Scared.  Last Wednesday [6/12/2019] the intelligence community launched its first attack on Attorney General William Barr's investigation into its illegal acts and abuses of power during the 2016 election.  In a New York Times article entitled "Justice Department Seeks to Question CIA in its Own Russia Investigation," the IC makes clear its fear of the results of Barr's investigation of their spy operation on candidate Trump in 2016 that continued through his early presidency.  The article, obviously written at the behest of its intelligence community sources — "current and former American officials" — is the first of many concerted attacks on Attorney General William Barr's investigation of the joint CIA/FBI spy operation.  Many other articles, based on carefully crafted leaks to the media and Congress, are sure to follow because current and former high-ranking officials of those agencies (and probably the NSA as well) have a lot to lose.

Rand Paul:  Deep State Ignored Order to Pull John Brennan's Security Clearance.  Appearing Tuesday [6/4/2019] on CNN, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) slammed the intelligence community over a recent report claiming it defied an order from President Donald Trump to revoke the security clearance of former CIA Director John Brennan.

Deep State:  First, the attempted coup.  Now, the political prisoner.  What we are all looking at is how criminal Deep State is, demonstrating how it can use the levers of power to turn a first-world country into a banana republic.  We aren't seeing normal things from these people, we are seeing some incredible abuses of power.  Manafort was convicted earlier and is doing time in Pennsylvania for white collar crimes around taxable income and foreign agent registration.  These are crimes few are ever prosecuted for, but they were real enough.  Now he's a wedge player in a new and very dirty deep-state political game.

Deep State and Democrats Are Terrified of Doddering "Figurehead" Mueller Testifying — He's Unable to Answer Material Questions.  Mueller cannot get in front of a Congressional panel to address questions about his Mueller report.  Deep State won't let him.  It would be devastating to their coup.  "Placeholder" Mueller does not know all that happened under his watch.  For two years the Mueller special counsel was investigating the President of the United States.  The Democrats and their Deep State cheered him on.  Numerous corrupt and criminal events took place.  The last thing that the Democrats now want is for him to testify in public about his bogus, dishonest and one-sided report.

Lawsuit Exposes How the Media and Deep State Hatched the Russiagate Hoax.  [Scroll down]  If the media repeats the false narrative often enough, it becomes the conventional wisdom — it becomes the media's truth — whether it is the press pushing the Russia collusion conspiracy with reports of the Steele's dossier, Carter Page's supposed spying-inducing behavior, George Papadopoulos' purported inside knowledge of the WikiLeaks hack, the Trump Tower meeting, or stories that Trump's team softened the Republican National Convention's platform on Russia.  The stories began with innuendo wrapped in unrelated facts, leaks from unnamed sources seemingly verified elements of the tale, and a complicit media then wove the strands into a growing Russia collusion narrative.  Unraveling that truth, though, is time consuming and requires a depth of details that few Americans care to have.

Deep State:  The collusion between the FBI and Mainstream Media that everyone stopped talking about.  The Office of Inspector General's report on the FBI and Justice Department's handling and mishandling of the investigation of former secretary of state Hillary Clinton's use of an unauthorized, non-secure email server to conduct secret government business as Secretary of State revealed real and damning information on the mainstream media and their tight relationship with the deepest members of the deep state.  But for some reason this story has just disappeared into the ether.  And with all this talk of collusion you'd think this would be a hot topic.  While the FBI was leaking classified information, reporters were funneling bribes back to the leakers in the form of tickets to sporting events, golf outings, dinners, drinks, invites to private exclusive parties and more.

Caught! Ex-FBI official leaked 'sensitive' info, improperly accepted gift from media.  In yet another example of how corrupt the Obama-era Deep State had become, a high-ranking FBI official has outed by the Inspector General for accepting bribes in exchange for "sensitive materials" leaks to the media.

Two-Tiered Justice and Professional Escape Artists.  First, if you remember when the 568 page IG report on FBI/DOJ conduct was delivered in June 2018, you might remember how the 'executive summary and conclusions' were disconnected from the main body of evidence within the report.  In 2018 CTH warned this "disconnect" was by design; essentially the corrupt officials were laying down a defense for any conduct, later outlined, that is connected to the body of the IG review.  When IG Horowitz announced last year he could find no evidence of actions taken as a result of political bias by FBI and DOJ officials; he also stated he could not rule out bias within their investigation.

OIG Finds Preponderance of Evidence Against FBI Deputy Asst. Director — DOJ Refuses to Prosecute.  Citing the ongoing internal investigation of FBI leaks to media, from the 2018 OIG report on FBI conduct, today [5/29/2019] the Office of Inspector General outlined a preponderance of evidence against a corrupt FBI Deputy Asst. Director.  However, the DOJ is refusing to prosecute. [...] The most alarming aspect is the OIG finding of the Deputy Asst.  Director leaking grand jury information to the media, and yet the DOJ is declining to prosecute.  Incredibly, the inspector general (IG) indicated, without explanation, that "prosecution of the DAD [deputy assistant director] was declined."  Instead, the investigation's findings will be referred to the FBI for "appropriate action".

When Barack Obama declared war on Donald Trump.  The latest round of navel-gazing is the effort to name what has happened to President Donald Trump.  It is a hoax or is it a coup, and when did it start?  I am a 2003 graduate of the Naval War College.  We studied "war."  What happened to Donald Trump was an act of war. [...] President Barack Obama marshaled secret government resources across the intelligence and law enforcement communities and declared war on the civilian Donald Trump.  "Hoax" suggests a humorous or malicious deception.  "Coup" suggests a sudden, violent, and illegal seizure of power from a government.  President Obama's actions were neither humorous nor malicious but were an egregious abuse of power of the Executive.  To say that what happened to President Trump was a coup d'état, an overthrow or a type of revolution, or an illegal and overt seizure by the military or other elites within the state apparatus, isn't adequate, either.  President Trump's enemies declared war on him for one reason and one reason only:  vindictiveness.  Vengeance.

Mike Morrell, the CIA and the international house of Trump Russia collusion.  President Donald Trump telegraphed to the American people that Attorney General William Barr's investigation into the origins of the Russia collusion hoax is going international.  The first hint that something of an alliance existed between former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the international reach of the Deep State was provided by Michael Morell.  Morell has served as both acting and deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency (2010-2013).

The Deep State Wants Joe Biden to Win in 2020.  Call it a hunch, but it looks like the intel agencies won't be targeting Biden's 2020 campaign for surveillance and sabotage like they did to Donald Trump in 2016.

'A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall' on Obama's Bad Cops and Spies.  The skies are growing dark and increasingly ominous for dirty officials at the top of Obama-era law enforcement and intelligence agencies.  Leading the "I'm really worried" list are James Comey, John Brennan, James Clapper, Loretta Lynch, and their senior aides, all political appointees.  They expected Hillary Clinton to win in 2016 and bury any traces of malfeasance, just as they had buried hers.  It didn't work out that way.  Now they need protection themselves.  House Democrats and anonymous leakers are busy providing it.

Congressman Adam Schiff Is Getting Very Nervous These Days.  He spent nearly two years claiming he had "irrefutable evidence" of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.  He then went on to make calls for impeachment (without any evidence to support such a thing) and take money from voters who believed his increasingly wild promises of "taking down Trump."  These days Congressman Schiff is sounding a bit different, though, and a LOT more nervous.

Donald Trump makes good on a promise but Dems cry 'coverup'.  The president is going nuclear.  Democrats who thought control of the House gave them control of the agenda now will face stiff competition.  Their expressions of outrage will seem tired next to the sensational revelations about the actions of Jim Comey, John Brennan and others.  Based on what we already know, it is highly likely those revelations will prove the [Obama] White House, FBI and CIA engineered the greatest scandal in American political history by unjustified spying on Trump and by trying to tip the election to Hillary Clinton.  Predictably, Dems are furious at Trump's decision, with many on the left launching personal attacks on Barr.  He's not getting Brett Kavanaugh-level smears yet, but give them time.

The Declassification Directive Gives Pelosi, Schumer and Small Group Few Options.  When President Trump announced the futility of attempting an infrastructure bill with Pelosi and Schumer as they simultaneously tried to impeach him, the president certainly knew he was going to issue a declassification memo within hours.  The declassification directive to AG Bill Barr creates a dynamic ensuring Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer will align with the former intelligence officials and further attack the offices of the President and Attorney General; they have few options.  Those who participated in the creation of Russia-Gate or Spy-Gate have few options except to manufacture a narrative shield and accuse the President of unethical, immoral and criminal conduct.

Trump-Russia: The Knives Are Out.  Now that the Russia collusion allegations have evaporated, the long knives are out and President Trump's antagonists are watching their backs.  They have moved from accusing him of treason to pushing revisionist narratives that try to shift the blame for the debunked probe onto others.  This effort is expected to accelerate following Trump's decision Thursday to empower Attorney General William Barr to declassify CIA, Pentagon, and Director of National Intelligence documents as necessary to access "information or intelligence that relates to the attorney general's review" of the Russia probe.  In other words, he's gaining the authority needed to investigate the investigators.

Declassification and Cognitive Dissonance in the Media.  When Nancy Pelosi decided to appease the impeachment hawks in her caucus by accusing President Trump of engaging in a cover-up, the media responded with undisguised glee.  The New York Times, for example, ran a story that essentially congratulated the House Speaker for publicly goading the man.  Trump responded by giving them transparency good and hard.  He not only instructed the various intelligence agencies to assist Attorney General William Barr with his inquiry into the inception of the Russia investigation, but gave Barr authority to declassify related intelligence material.  Oddly, the media have suddenly lost their enthusiasm for transparency.

John Brennan's prized Russia informant abruptly said to be imperiled by Barr's new power.  The need for secrecy was so great that CIA Director John Brennan hand-delivered information from a critical informant close to Russian President Vladimir Putin in an envelope to President Barack Obama in August 2016.  Now, one day after President Trump gave Attorney General William Barr "full and complete authority to declassify information" related to the origins of the federal investigation into possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russia, the New York Times reports this source is in jeopardy.

Sara Carter discusses declassified docs, what she believes will be most damaging, and who should be worried.  Shortly after President Donald Trump granted Attorney General Bill "full and complete authority" Thursday evening [5/23/2019] to declassify any and all documents tied to the Russia probe, investigative reporter Sara Carter provided a handy list of what all the public should expect to soon see.  Speaking on FNC's "Hannity" with guest host Dan Bongino, she specifically listed what she believes will be the most damaging pieces of information to be unveiled in the declassified documents.

No, Nancy.  It's the Dems Who Are Engaged in a 'Cover-Up'.  At this moment, since we know there was no Russia collusion, the big "cover-up" is the provenance of the Mueller investigation itself.  And some of that, at least, is about to be revealed, as the Democrats are no doubt aware.  [President] Trump called this investigation a "witch hunt," but that appears to have been an understatement.  It was a "treasonous coup plot" — unprecedented in American history — with many of the secret conspirators beginning to be known to those interested (Stefan Halper, Joseph Mifsud, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Kathleen Kavalec).  Doubtless, additional names are to come, adding to the more public ones already fired or conveniently laid off by the FBI and DOJ.  (Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, Andrew McCabe, James Baker, James Comey, etc.  As of August 2018, 25 were fired or "resigned."  Not sure of the number now.)

Will the Deep State Conspirators Ever Be Held Accountable?  Democrats and their complicit media wildly overpromised on how damaging the Mueller report would be to President Trump.  They paid a huge price when Mueller did not deliver.  Collusion diehards like Adam Schiff and Jerrold Nadler look delusional with their ongoing search for something that never existed.  The Deep State coup attempt stands busted cold, its perpetrators caught red-handed in unbelievable and un-American actions aimed at covering up Hillary Clinton's inarguable illegalities and overturning an election whose result they could not abide.  For Trumpservatives the schadenfreude was sweet.  But now, those vindicated supporters of the president must caution against being overpromised to themselves.  To what extent, if any, will Russia-Gate actors like Lynch, Simpson, Brennan, Clapper, Comey, Strzok, Page and the rest be held accountable for their alleged criminality?

Patriot Act enabled Russia collusion hoax and further Deep State treachery.  In October of 2001, and following 9/11, President George W. Bush told the nation that the Patriot Act would "give intelligence and law enforcement officials important new tools to fight a present danger."  It was assumed — foolishly — that the threat was from terrorism.  But when and as reauthorized, the Patriot Act during the administration of President Barack Obama, Obama claimed that tweaks to the act would allow US law enforcement to better target homegrown "lone wolves."  Again, the assumption — a foolish one — assumed that the targets would largely be self-motivated terrorists.  Terrorists like Boston Marathon bombers Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev.  But leave it to official Washington to stretch any legal definitions beyond their original, intended scope.

Louie Gohmert: 'This Came Very Close to Being the First Successful Coup' in U.S. History.  Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) warned that America "came very close" to suffering its "first successful coup," describing Robert Mueller's operation — marketed as an "investigation" by authorities — as an attempt to usurp a duly elected president.

MAGA vs. the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.  The general public typically equates the Chamber of Commerce with local Mom and Pop businesses in their area which meet for networking and mutual support in local chapters across the country.  This is erroneous.  According to the Hill:  ["]While local chambers cater to the needs of car dealers and restaurant owners, the national Chamber operates as the lobbying arm of large corporations that have never met a big government program they did not like.  They are weapons dealers pushing billion-dollar battleships and telecommunication lobbyists protecting slow Internet at the world's highest prices.  They are lobbyists for pharmaceutical companies, big banks, and Wall street traders who treat the American people as gullibles to be fleeced without mercy.["]

Mueller's Copperhead Bill of Attainder.  On the one hand, the second part of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report reads like a brief opposing presidential powers in a separation of powers dispute.  But even more, it reads like a justification for a bill of attainder or an ex post facto law — two forbidden forms of legislation in the Constitution (Article I, Section 9, clause 3; and Section 10, clause 1).  Such constitutionally prohibited laws are designed and targeted to punish individuals (in this case President Donald J. Trump) and are not general statements about the rule of law.  A Congress devoted to identity politics, or politics about personal traits, can only fashion laws that make personal attacks on people.  Thus, as a defender of the Constitution, Attorney General Bill Barr should dismiss part two of Mueller's report like dicta (unsupported viewpoints) in a Supreme Court opinion, or a bizarre brief concocted in a stupor — as Barr evidently has done.

Trump, Pareto, and the Fall of the Elites.  Under the old elite, universities have become overfinanced monsters, exploiting students whose futures are mortgaged by student debt.  This outrage is allowed to continue because the universities brainwash youth to support the old ruling class and because the universities provide intellectual support for the policies of the old ruling class.  Under the old ruling class, the government has become heavily populated by time-servers whose continued employment would become unnecessary under a Trump-inspired reorganization of the government.  Change is a clear and present danger to those in charge.  That is what is behind the fierce and illegal attacks against Trump.

FBI refuses to reveal if Daniel Jones' research on Trump exists.  The FBI has turned down a request from The Washington Times to disclose whether it has received any opposition research from Daniel J. Jones, the former Senate Democratic staffer who raised $50 million to investigate President Trump.  Mr. Jones has spread the discredited Alfa Bank server conspiracy, which says Russia's largest commercial bank supposedly had a direct link to the Trump campaign via a computer network.  The FBI said The Times' request under the Freedom of Information Act has been closed.  The action should not be construed as acknowledging that the material does or doesn't exist, the bureau said in an April 25 letter.

Mueller prosecutor:  FBI began obstruction case before special counsel appointment.  The FBI began its obstruction of justice case against President Trump before the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller, newly unsealed court documents show.  In a January 2018 hearing, a prosecutor on Mueller's team revealed the obstruction inquiry was prompted by memos written by former FBI Director James Comey that contained notes from his one-on-one meetings with Trump.

Gohmert sounds the alarm: 'Attempted coup' culprits must be held accountable, or we won't 'last much longer'.  Rep. Louie Gohmert ripped the "attempted coup" against President Donald Trump and warned that "we're not going to last much longer" if those behind it don't go to jail.  The fiery Texas Republican blasted the Robert Mueller report and doubled down on previous criticisms he has leveled against the special counsel's investigation of now-disproved Russian collusion with the Trump campaign in the 2016 election, telling Fox Business News host Lou Dobbs it "goes beyond the pale."

Was Sergey Kislyak Part of the Russian Collusion Hoax?  If the Trump-Russia election collusion hoax was a movie, Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak would have a starring role.  From Attorney General Jeff Sessions' fateful recusal to National Security Advisor Michael Flynn's resignation to the aftermath of FBI Director James Comey's firing, the former Russian diplomat made more than just a few consequential appearances.  The question is, were these incidental cameos or was Kislyak following a script written for him by the collusion fraudsters?  As Senate Republicans threaten to excavate the origins of the corrupt investigation into Donald Trump's presidential campaign, they might want to take a closer look at how Kislyak helped shape the bogus Russian collusion plotline.

Is A Major Real Scandal About To Break Soon?  The whole "Trump directed Cohen to lie to Congress" was essentially a sub-hoax perpetuated by Buzzfeed.  Despite Cohen's sensational testimony before Congress in an effort to ingratiate himself to prosecutors, we found out that even this "bombshell" was nothing.  Taken altogether, what we know is that the entire Russian collusion story was nothing but a huge hoax foisted upon the American public, but one we should all be worried about.  What has become increasingly clear is that there was a story developed by a strange incestuous group involving the media, the Clinton campaign, deep state Obama bureaucrats and the DNC to derail the Trump administration.

How The George Papadopoulos Story Was Manufactured To Justify A Hoax Investigation.  As I never tire of saying, I think the entire story that a conversation over wine between Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos and former Australian diplomat and alleged British intelligence asset Alexander Downer is such transparent [nonsense] that it shows just how stupid the FBI and Mueller thinks the nation is.  The story is wildly implausible on its face and the fact that nothing in the story turned out to be true makes it, and the motives of the FBI, even more suspect.  Today [5/6/2019], NRO's Andy McCarthy goes through the Papadopoulos story with a fine-toothed comb and what he finds makes the whole premise of the Papadopoulos story looked [...] silly.

When Will Trump Finally Drop the Hammer on the Deep State?  This country needs to get to the bottom of how this nightmare all started.  We have to find out who was responsible for putting these corrupt wheels of injustice into full motion.  If it leads all the way to the top and Barack Obama, so be it.  What did Obama know and when did President Obama know it?  And if he did know, to what extent was he involved?  All those who participated in this malfeasance must now be held fully accountable.  If these deep state actors are found guilty, then all of these people must be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.  This is no game; President Trump has basically been robbed of the first two years of his presidency by the corrupt people in Washington and their leftist pawns in the media.  This must not stand; these corrupt politicians must not be allowed to run out the clock.

Former Top CIA Official:  Coup Against Trump "Biggest Violation Of Constitution In History".  Former CIA official and whistleblower, Kevin Shipp, isn't holding back when it comes to his views on what took place via the Deep State's attempt to overthrow a duly elected U.S. president.  "Biggest violation of Constitution in history."

Shipp: Coup Against Trump Is "Biggest Violation Of Constitution In History".  President Trump says the Deep State tried and failed to remove him from office in a coup.  Former CIA Officer and whistleblower Kevin Shipp says the attempted coup on Trump was a global conspiracy.  Shipp explains, "Yes, this is a coup.  This is the most shocking violation of the Constitution and criminal activity in the history, not just of America, but of a western government..."  [Video clip]

Listen to Joe diGenova.  If diGenova's track record holds, a legal rain of ruin is about to befall the deep state operatives who tried to steal the 2016 election and, failing that, to unwind the result.  And if, in fact, the enormous surveillance powers of our intelligence agencies were usurped by the Obama administration to spy for years before the election on the opposing political party, then the implications go far beyond just one election and one presidential candidate.  If that happened, then there can be no doubt that, when candidate Obama promised to "fundamentally transform America," he really meant it.  If Obama's "fundamental transformation" involved not only the atrocious harassment and intimidation of the Tea Party patriots by his Internal Revenue Service, but also included surveillance state spying on the Republican Party generally, there must be no question about whether the deep state actors should be punished for their actions.

Listen Carefully — Senator Lindsey Graham Outlines Deep State Exit.  Pay close attention to this interview and note how Senator Graham supports that narrative saying: "the Russians hacked into John Podesta's e-mails, the campaign manager for the Democratic candidate for President.  The Russians hacked into Hillary Clinton's e-mails, the candidate for the Democratic Party."  This 'Russia-hacking narrative' is the DC 'chaff and countermeasures'; when combined with their 'by-the-book' justifications, it becomes their unified defense.  Once you accept their baseline, it becomes much more difficult to expose their unlawful conduct.  [Video clip]

Trump Opponents Never Tire of Losing.  For well over three years, Donald Trump has been under attack.  He has been subjected to unprecedented slander by the media, dirty tricks by the Democrats, legally dubious investigations, and sabotage by the deep state.  Yet he is not only still standing, he has a record of accomplishments that any president would be happy to claim after two years in office.  One would think his opponents would be able to divine a message from this.  To wit, their time might be better spent working on behalf of the voters rather than launching further futile attempts to bring Trump down.

John Podesta 2015 Email Reveals Plot to "Slaughter Trump" by Linking Him to Putin and Russia.  Of course, there was never anything there between Trump and Russia.  Russia was the furthest thing from the Trump campaign.  But, as Jimmy Dore explains, Hillary Clinton knew her biggest vulnerability was the fact that she sold off one-fifth of US uranium to the Russians for a few hundred million and a half-million dollar speech to Bill Clinton from Putin.  So John Podesta devised the lie to project on Trump that he was the candidate colluding with Russia.  It was all initiated by the Clinton inner circle.

Joe di Genova explains where the Russia Hoax is headed.  Throughout the unfolding of the Russia hoax, nobody has topped the clarity provided by DC superlawyer and former US Attorney for the District of Columbia, Joseph DiGenova.  In his television and radio appearances, he has not minced words about the nature of the illegal coup underway, and has not hesitated to name names.  Undoubtedly, he has sources within the DC legal community that, combined with his experience as the top federal prosecutor among US Attorneys, give him a bird's eye view