Former FBI General Counsel James Baker originally believed Hillary
Clinton’s mishandling of highly classified information was “alarming”
and “appalling.” At the time, he believed her use of a private server to
send the classified emails was sufficient enough to secure an
indictment to possibly charge her for violations under the Espionage
Act, for mishandling sensitive government documents.
Baker held onto that belief until shortly before his former boss FBI Director James Comey
made the public announcement not to charge Clinton on July 5, 2017. He
said he changed his position only after arguing and discussing the
situation over a period of time with senior colleagues at the bureau, to
include Comey. Comey, however, had already written an early draft in
May, exonerating Clinton and changing “grossly negligent,” a legal term for mishandling classified information to “extremely careless,” according to drafts obtained by the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2017.
Baker “argued with others about why they thought she shouldn’t be charged.”
Ratcliffe Questions Baker
Under questioning by Rep. John Ratcliffe, R-Texas, Baker spoke
extensively about the back and forth arguments. Baker is currently under a DOJ investigation for allegedly leaking information to the media and he steered clear of answering any questions regarding leaks.
“As the FBI general counsel, you originally believed it was
appropriate, it was appropriate to charge Hillary Clinton with violation
of the law for mishandling classified information,” asked Ratcliff, who
is with the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Baker answered.
He described reviewing a classified “binder” containing material
related to Clinton’s investigation that contained sensitive and highly
classified emails she was transmitting over her semi-secured server.
“My original belief after, well, after having
conducted the investigation and towards the end of it, then sitting
down and reading a binder of her materials,” said Baker.
“I thought that it was alarming, appalling, whatever words I said,”
he said. “And argued with others about why they thought she shouldn’t be
charged.”
The lawmakers and committee investigators then questioned Baker as to what legal standard he based his original opinion on.
“Well,
it was the statutes that we were considering at the time,” said Baker.
“It was the nature and scope of the classified information that, to me,
initially, when I looked at it, I thought these folks should know that
this stuff is classified, that it was alarming what they were talking
about, especially some of the most highly classified stuff.”
Baker Tells DOJ IG The Same
Baker also discussed an interview he had with Department of Justice
Inspector General Michael Horowitz, who is currently investigating the
FBI’s handling of Russia probe and alleged collusion with President
Trump’s campaign.
“You told the Inspector Gen. that the conduct of Hillary Clinton and
her associates was appalling with respect to the handling of classified
information, right,” Ratcliffe asks Baker.
“I believe that’s correct,” Baker answers.
Stunningly, Ratcliff asks Baker if he still believes Clinton’s mishandling of the classified information is appalling.
Baker answers with one powerful word “yes.”
But what made Baker change his mind by July, 2017. In another back
and forth questioning with Ratcliff, Baker states that Comey, along with
others, eventually convinced him that they couldn’t prove Clinton’s
intentions in mishandling the classified information.
“I
had that belief initially after reviewing, you know, a large binder of
her emails that had classified information in them. And I discussed it
internally with a number of different folks and eventually became
persuaded that charging her was not appropriate because we could not
establish beyond a reasonable doubt — we, the government, could not
establish beyond a reasonable doubt that she had the intent necessary to
violate (the law)….
He said he changed his mind “pretty late in the process” because he
had been arguing with those opposed to charging Clinton until the very
end.
Here’s part of that discussion:
Ratcliffe: All right. Are you a reasonable prosecutor? Baker: Not anymore. I’m not a prosecutor anymore. Then there is a quick exchange of questions and answers. Ratcliff
pivots back to Baker’s decision to change his mind regarding Clinton. Ratcliffe: You were persuaded, and stated as a
basis, that ultimately you were persuaded there was a lack of evidence
establishing knowledge or criminal intent, correct? Baker: Yes Ratcliffe: When were you persuaded? Baker: Sorry. Pretty late in the process, because we were arguing about it, I think, up until the end. Ratcliffe: Yeah, So Jim Comey had reached the opposite conclusion as early as – or I guess as late as May the 2ndof 2017, as reflected in the memo that he created, correct? Baker: I know there’s been a lot of public
discussion about that – this way I experienced that interaction and
other interactions with Jim Comey is he would throw things out like that
to get people to start talking and thinking about it and test his
conclusions against others and get them to push back. And so, it was – I
believe it was in that process that I read these emails and we had
these discussions and arguments.
byWorldTribuneStaff, February 21, 2019
In his “Theses on Feuerbach,” the young Karl Marx proclaimed, “[P]hilosophers have only hitherto interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it” (emphasis in original).
The mission statements of several preeminent colleges and universities in the United States follow suit, an analyst noted. “Consider
Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, three of the best-known names in higher
education. Their undergraduates disproportionately ascend to the top
ranks of the professions, media, and government. Their graduate students
fan out to teach in colleges and universities throughout the country.
What is learned at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton does not – and is not
intended to – stay at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton,” wrote Peter
Berkowitz, senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution.
According to the formal pronouncements of those Ivy League schools,
Berkowtiz wrote, “the primary purpose of liberal education is not to
understand the world but to remake it.”
Berkowitz contends that “for a wholehearted embrace of liberal
education these days, one must turn to avowedly Christian universities.
Schools such as Liberty University (evangelical), the University of
Dallas (Catholic), and Hillsdale College (nonsectarian Christian)
explicitly place at the center of their missions the pursuit of wisdom
through the many-sided study of Western civilization and of the
principles and institutions that gave birth to constitutional government
in America.”
Harvard’s mission statement states that through “exposure to new
ideas, new ways of understanding, and new ways of knowing, students
embark on a journey of intellectual transformation.” By means of “a
diverse living environment, where students live with people who are
studying different topics, who come from different walks of life and
have evolving identities, intellectual transformation is deepened and
conditions for social transformation are created.”
Berkowitz, who is a member of the U.S. State Department’s policy
planning staff, noted that, for Harvard, “gauzy change counts for nearly
everything; safeguarding and transmitting what is best in the nation
and the civilization in which it is rooted count for little.”
Yale’s mission statement declares that it “is committed to improving
the world today and for future generations through outstanding research
and scholarship, education, preservation, and practice.” To accomplish
this, Yale emphasizes, it maintains a community dedicated to free speech
and diversity.
Berkowitz wrote of Yale’s statement: “Absent is any assurance that
the university community also dedicates itself to the study of the
history and ideas – literary, political, economic, scientific,
philosophical, and religious – out of which liberal education and the
culture that nourished it emerged.”
Princeton buries its mission statement in a 2016 PDF titled
“Princeton University Strategic Framework.” In it, the university
proclaims its “pervasive commitment to serve the nation and the world.”
It seeks to further this noble aim through a liberal arts education
marked by “a commitment to innovation, free inquiry, and the discovery
of new knowledge and new ideas, coupled with a commitment to preserve
and transmit the intellectual, artistic, and cultural heritage of the
past.”
That statement is “laudable,” Berkowitz wrote. “But the university
provides scant content or elaboration. It certainly does not connect
preserving and transmitting the ‘heritage of the past’ to examining and
carrying forward the tradition of freedom that undergirds the nation in
which Princeton has flourished.”
The mission statements of outstanding small liberal arts colleges
such as Williams, Amherst, and Swarthmore, Berkowitz noted, “offer
similarly fuzzy endorsements of liberal education for its contribution
to a morally rich and publicly spirited life. And a number of our
leading public research universities – including UCLA, University of
Texas, University of Virginia, University of Wisconsin – affirm their
devotion to examining, preserving, expanding, and transmitting knowledge
as a preparation for serving the common good. But they do not specify
the core of that knowledge nor the qualities of mind and character that
liberal education aims to cultivate.”
But it is Harvard, Yale, and Princeton – which Berkowitz referred to
as “the paragons of progressive faith” – that “dominate the academy and
set the tone for elite culture and national politics.”
“Their conversion of liberal education into social justice
consciousness-raising and vocational training for political activism
subverts colleges’ mission and distorts civic life. It polarizes the
electorate by teaching that one partisan set of views about political
society is redeeming and incontestably correct and the other is
deplorable and indisputably false. It deprives students of historical
knowledge and comparative frameworks, leaving them unable to assess
accurately the nation’s shortcomings and appreciate its virtues. By
marginalizing study of the American constitutional tradition, it impedes
the formation of workable policies and viable compromises for a divided
nation,” Berkowitz wrote.
“To cultivate a generation of thoughtful reformers – and preservers –
it is necessary to restore a proper liberal education, one whose point
is not to remake the world, but to understand it.”
Special to WorldTribune.com, February 17, 2019 ByJohn T. McNabb
If you read this title and wonder what I am talking about, then
respectfully, you aren’t paying attention to what is going on in
America. Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez, left, and Ilhan Omar: ‘The unchallenged mainstream media
allow leftists to say anything they wish.’ / Saul Loeb / AFP / Getty
If you think Ocasio-Cortez’ rants are mindless and silly, of course
they are. But she has an approximate 90 percent approval with Blacks and
Hispanics and about a 70 percent approval with Millennials in her small
district. Can that grow nationally? Most likely not due to her lack of
knowledge and the continuing blather that she emits.
But the unchallenged mainstream media allow leftists to say anything
they wish, and this is doing a disservice to our citizenry, many of whom
can’t identify truth from fiction.
The sad state of American journalism is allowing Ocasio-Cortez, Beto
O’Rourke, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib and Maxine Waters to inspire hatred
with impunity against American conservatives, the State of Israel and
Jews in general. The Left gets a pass for advocating horrific human
rights violations including the murder of term babies and advocating
attacks on all with whom they disagree.
Look at the three top Democratic leaders in Virginia. If these are
the folks that Americans are voting for then we have a terrible problem.
Wake up America. The Threat of Socialism
If socialism and or the green energy agenda becomes the norm then the
cash you have hidden under a rock or inside your mattress will still be
there but won’t be worth much.
The Democrats and their financiers’ designs for the financial
equalization of all Americans is part of a socialist agenda soon to be
supplanted by communism in America. It’s hard to believe I am saying
this from what Ronald Reagan called the “shining city upon a hill.”
Should they succeed, you will see a dumbed down, impoverished America
and easy pickings for our Chinese, Russian, Iranian and North Korean
“friends”. The only ones thriving in socialist/communist scenarios are
the political class which in Washington has already begun to separate
itself from the citizen taxpayer class. Average Americans who are paying
attention have already noticed.
There are no counters to this trend in Congress, Democrat or
Republican. If we Americans had effective congressional leadership, we
would have a balanced budget requirement and a southern border wall
guaranteeing the safety and security of all Americans.
Our slow-motion Congress is costing the taxpayers millions of
dollars. What happened to efficiency and cost savings? I do that every
day in my business ventures. Term limits anyone? The Anti-Trump ‘Investigations’
The Senate Intelligence Committee after two long years has come to
the conclusion that there was no Russian Collusion in the 2016
Presidential Election. I look forward to a full disclosure of the cost
of the Committee’s investigation.
Then consider the never-ending saga of Robert Mueller and his band of
little politicized elves most of whom contributed to Hillary Clinton’s
campaign. The mission was to investigate Russian collusion, but we know
now from fired and disgraced Andrew McCabe that he had no evidence of
Russian collusion or election interference when he recommended the
naming of a special counsel.
The special council’s shenanigans included the recent and pathetic
attack by the FBI on an elderly couple in Florida with CNN conveniently
in place outside their home. Heavily-armed FBI agents stormed inside,
dragging the hearing-impaired wife out of her bed barefooted.
Congratulations to the FBI on this incredible and despicable display.
When you have pencil-pushing, narcissistic and partisan lawyers
running the FBI instead of field personnel you reduce a legendary agency
to this frankly un-American spectacle.
Look at the pathetic James Comey, McCabe and the smirking and smarmy
Peter Strzok. And don’t forget Strzok’s other half, not his wife but his
FBI girlfriend Lisa Page. And then, not far away in the Department of
Justice, we find the happy couple: Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr and
his wife Nellie, she a Fusion GPS contractor. You will recall that
Fusion GPS was the progenitor of the totally unsubstantiated Steele
Dossier paid for by Hillary Clinton through her minions. If Mueller had
anything of substance on Russian collusion, we would have heard about it
more than a year ago.
The quiet coup d’état against a brand new and duly-elected sitting
president was attempted by Comey, McCabe, Rosenstein, Brennan and
apparently authored by Obama, Hillary Clinton and the “Lore Hero”, not
war hero John Kerry. Anyone for returning the FBI to the people and
having as its leaders, field operatives who know the score and who
operate strictly independent of political agendas?
What has happened since late 2016 is without precedent in our nation’s history. Attack on America
America is under attack. We must wake up and speak out.
My friends know me as someone who is a lot of fun until I’m not. And
currently I’m not, due to the direction of the United States of America,
my great love. American patriots and patriotism itself are under attack
from the unhinged Democratic Left and its water carriers in the
mainstream media.
The State of the Union address is a case in point. The CBS poll gave
President Trump’s address a 76 percent approval rating and the approval
of America’s Independent voters was 82 percent. I saw the SOTU and had a
hard time not noticing Nancy Pelosi shuffling through papers in an
arrogant and distracting manner. What initially came to mind was that
her staff had written two coherent sentences for her to memorize and
repeat after Trump’s winning speech, but now she couldn’t find them. In
real time she seems unable to voice two coherent sentences in
succession. Anyone for term limits? Charlie McCarthy, left, with Edgar Bergen: ‘After Chuck Schumer’s post SOTU performance I can see a distinct resemblance.’
Chuck Schumer in his post SOTU interviews rattled off nonsense with
his head constantly turning and bobbing up and down like the old time
“bobble head” dolls.
I was reminded oddly of a round of golf in the late 1970s with a
great friend Les Brown of “Band of Renown” fame who also toured with Bob
Hope. We had finished our round at his Bel-Air Country Club and retired
to the Men’s Grill and Les asked his friend Edgar Bergen if we could
join him. We had a nice lunch and chat. Edgar Bergen mentioned that the
face of his dummy Charlie McCarthy was modeled after a smurf of a
little boy who was selling newspapers on Edgar’s route to school at The
University of Chicago. After Chuck Schumer’s post SOTU performance I can
see a distinct resemblance.
America is in desperate need of congressional term limits and a
benefit package for those in Congress that is no better or worse than
those of the average American citizen. United Socialist States of America?
I can promise that we will never see Socialism in America. As hard as
the Democrats and their media lap dogs push, the public will not buy
in. When Americans see the real cost of Socialism it will be a
nonstarter. The vast majority of Americans work long hours, pay their
taxes and play by the rules. They will quickly understand that
Socialism cannot work without the country falling into ruins.
Simply look at Venezuela today! The country is in shambles,
lawlessness and despair. A once oil-rich and beautiful nation with a
thriving economy and middle class has been ravaged by hyperinflation, a
virtually worthless currency and out of control crime and violence where
very few are safe. Venezuela‘s bread winner, oil and gas production
capability, has been ignored to the point that its energy producing
infrastructure is in question.
Consider Ocasio-Cortez, a second-generation Hispanic who apparently
doesn’t like the United States, and her green energy plan. It will never
be approved. Bank on that. Her plan would bankrupt America. I am very
familiar with energy as to sources, uses and costs.
Currently green energy amounts to about 8 percent of the total
sources of America’s energy needs. And it is that high only because of
our government’s tax breaks for green energy. Green energy can’t stand
on its own without subsidies, the expansion of which would impose a
terrible tax on hard working Americans.
Furthermore, Ocasio-Cortez’ constituents can blame her for Amazon
deciding to not move their second headquarters to Long Island City, thus
depriving of New Yorkers the chance at being hired into one of 25,000
new jobs averaging $150,000 and the loss of $27 billion in additional
tax revenue.
New York is a state with extremely high taxes, and its citizens are
already fleeing to lower tax states and creating serious budget
problems. Ocasio-Cortez continues to open her mouth without thinking,
and the blather that she emits is nonsensical and mind blowing. Another
Democrat disaster.
I do want Ocasio-Cortez to keep talking and hope her mainstream media
brain dead groupies keep her in the spotlight. Her mindless, uneducated
rants will insure a 2020 Republican presidential victory. She and
Pelosi are two peas in a pod. Ocasio-Cortez is the new face of the
Democratic Party. From a bartender to a Democratic rock star in one
short year.
No, America will not go Socialist unless the majority of Americans fail to awaken to that looming threat. Loyal opposition? House Speaker Nancy Pelosi at the 2019 State of the Union address. / Doug Mills / Pool
The Democratic attack on America is in full force. New Democratic
Congress members are openly anti-Israel, the only democracy in the
entire Middle East, and also openly anti-Jewish. I have spent a fair
amount of time in Israel and I am a delegate to the America-Israel
Friendship League. I know what goes on in Israel. One new Democratic
representative appears to tacitly support ISIS, and the majority of
Democrats encourage open borders with people flowing into our country
illegally, creating health and criminal hazards.
Hillary Clinton recently came out of where she hides and told Americans that there was no crisis on our southern border.
Wow, I feel so much better! She still has absolutely no clue — just
like her pathetic, low energy, campaign attempt to win the Presidency.
I had a business in Mexico and have spent much time on the border. We
have a human crisis on our southern border that affects all Americans,
not just those in the Southwest. The killer drug Fentanyl is pouring
into our country and murderous and rapacious thugs posing as displaced
people in need of a safe home are among the hordes walking illegally and
with impunity across our southern border.
The Democrat Party is promoting a future society that true Americans would never accept if properly informed. The Democrat Party Then and Now
I clearly remember walking into my Grandfather’s home on the West
Side of Charleston, West Virginia to see a young banty rooster of a man
wearing suspenders and playing his fiddle on my grandfather’s ottoman. I
was six-years-old and the young man, whom I would get to know
reasonably well, was Robert C Byrd. He was not yet then in Congress but
was soon to be the longest serving U.S. Senator, a staunch Democrat and a
senior member of the Ku Klux Klan.
Back in that time the solid southern Democrats were fiscal
conservatives who also perpetuated “Jim Crow” laws and segregation. We
are talking about the same party today of Sheila Jackson Lee, Maxine
Waters, Kamala Harris and “Spartacus” Booker.
History doesn’t lie. The Democrats’ double standard remains hidden
thanks to Jim Acosta and his little friends. Every member of the White
House Press Corps is a Democrat.
I was a Democrat until my mid 40s and did advance work for the Carter
White House but got so sick of the direction of the party, that I moved
on. The current Democratic Party is barreling to the extreme left.
Their flavor-of-the day platform currently consists of raising taxes,
expanding the national debt and promising free everything to appease
their constituents including illegal aliens, habitual welfare recipients
and other takers (not givers). It has become the party of the handouts
instead of the old working folks party. It has become the party of the
leftist thug protestors.
A Maxine Waters friend and Antifa thug, Joseph Alcoff, and other Antifa punks badly beat up two United States Marines.
The deranged campaign worker for Bernie Sanders, James Hodgkinson,
brought enough automatic weapons and ammunition to a Republican
Congressional baseball practice to kill approximately 20 Republican
Congressmen, a Senator’s child and other staff. He did very critically
injure a great American, Congressman Steve Scalise.
Hello. Those who love America and abide by our Constitution need to take notice.
Fair minded and patriotic Americans of every description must wake up and speak out.
Conservatives have historically been submissive and polite. I am not
suggesting drastic or uncivil action, but we all need take action or we
will lose our country to George Soros and his Antifa, the movie stars,
the elitist wealthy liberal snobs.
Do Chuck Schumer, Maxine Waters, Robert De Niro, John Kerry, Nancy
Pelosi and Louis Farrakhan speak for you, your children and your
grandchildren? I hope not.
Wake up America!
byWorldTribuneStaff, February 21, 2019
Former CBS News foreign correspondent Lara Logan named media leftists
who she said were likely to target her after she slammed the media as
“mostly liberal.” During
a recent Breitbart podcast with host and retired Navy SEAL Mike
Ritland, Logan said: “The media everywhere is mostly liberal. But in
this country, 85 percent of journalists are registered Democrats. So
that’s just a fact, right?”
In Ritland’s podcast, Logan acknowledged that she was committing
career “suicide”. She also blasted reporting based on single, anonymous
government sources.
“That’s not journalism, that’s horseshit,” Logan said.
“Responsibility for fake news begins with us. We bear some
responsibility for that, and we’re not taking ownership of that and
addressing it. We just want to blame it all on somebody else.”
In a Feb. 20 interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity, Logan named names.
“I know they’re going to come after me,” she told Hannity. “Michael
Calderone who is at the Huffington Post. I can give you the script now. I
can tell you who the players are. Joe Hagan. Brian Stelter.”
She added: “They smear you personally. They go after your integrity.
They go after your reputation as a person and a professional. They will
stop at nothing. I am not the only one. And I am just, I am done, right,
I am tired of it. And they do not get to write my story anymore. They
don’t get to speak for me, I want to say loudly and clearly to anybody
who is listening, I am not owned. Nobody owns me, right? I’m not owned
by the left or the right.”
Logan left CBS after her contract with the network ended in 2018.
byWorldTribuneStaff, February 18, 2019
The FBI sent 29 armed agents, 17 vehicles, a helicopter and two
amphibious units to carry out a pre-dawn raid on Roger Stone’s home in
Fort Lauderdale, Florida, according to Stone’s wife, Nydia.
“Every agent was carrying an AK-47 as well as a sidearm. This is a
much larger force than used to capture and kill Bin Laden or arrest El
Chapo. It must have cost U.S. taxpayers a half a million dollars,” Nydia
Stone said in an email which was also a fundraising letter seeking
contributions to her husband’s legal defense fund. Roger and Nydia Stone.
Special counsel Robert Mueller alleges that Roger Stone lied to Congress and obstructed its Russia investigation.
On Feb. 15, the judge in the longtime Trump associate’s case issued a
gag order. The order prohibits Stone from talking about Mueller and the
Russia investigation in and around the Washington, D.C. courthouse
where the case is being heard.
The order put an end to Stone’s courthouse press conferences.
Nydia Stone wrote in the email:
“Because I am hearing impaired and I was sleeping I did not hear the
commotion when an FBI agent pounded on the door demanding my husband
open it and I did not know he had been handcuffed and taken into
custody.
“I woke up only when two FBI agents burst into our bedroom and
demanded that I get out of bed at gunpoint. I was marched out to the
street in front of our house wearing only a night gown and in bare feet.
I was instructed to stand next to my husband who was handcuffed and
also barefooted. I am not charged with any crime.
“My husband has no previous criminal record, not even a speeding
ticket. He is charged and plead not guilty to seven non violent process
crimes. We do not own a gun and my husband’s passport had actually
expired. The idea that he is a danger to anyone or a flight risk was
disproved hours later when a federal magistrate released him on a surety
bond.
“Even more humiliating, for some odd reason, A CNN camera crew had
arrived at our home only fifty minutes before the FBI strike force and
was allowed to film the assault on our home and my husband’s arrest. If
my husband was considered ‘dangerous’ why was a CNN film crew in
position 10 yards from our front door? How convenient that the CNN
producer at our home is a former special assistant to FBI director James
Comey!
“My parents came from Cuba. I can understand how these kind of police
state tactics can happen in a communist country but it is hard to
believe that the FBI Director and acting Attorney General would allow
this kind of brutal assault on a U.S. citizen with no prior criminal
record and charged only with non-violent process crimes here in the
United States.
“After the FBI took my husband away, I was allowed to dress under the
supervision of a woman FBI agent who even had to watch me while I used
the bathroom. I was not allowed to touch my cell phone even though I
could see that my children and grandchildren were calling to see if I
was alright. FBI agents tore through every square inch of our home and
removed my husbands computers and iPads. They also took my computer
which means they got many beautiful pictures of my grandchildren.
“Although you would never know it from the fake news media, my
husband, Roger Stone is not charged with Russian collusion, WikiLeaks
collaboration or any other crime associated with the 2016 election. All
the charges against him have been fabricated in an obvious effort to
pressure him to turn on President Trump who has been our friend for
forty years and who attended our wedding in Washington, D.C. 27 years
ago. I remember how he danced with my mother.
“As my husband has made clear, he simply refuses to make up stories
about the President or bear false witness against him in order to please
Mr. Mueller who wants to undo the results of the 2016 election and
remove our President.
“Two years of constant intense investigation into every aspect of our
family as well as two years of constant leaks from the special councils
office have destroyed our family income.
“In December I canceled our health and life insurance policies
because we could not longer pay the premiums. My husband sold his car
even though it was a 2006 model and we didn’t get much for it. We burned
through a small fund we had put aside from the sale of my husband’s
books that was supposed to pay for the college education of our
grandchildren.
“Now we are facing a two million dollar cost for lawyers In order to
fight the bogus charges against my husband who at 66 years old is facing
a potential 45 year prison sentence for crimes he did not commit.
“Every day brings death threats, late night anonymous phone calls
threatening to kill us and it’s gotten so I can’t even go to the grocery
store without somebody screaming at me and accusing us of being Russian
spies – which is funny because my parents fled Cuba and the brutal
regime of Fidel Castro while my husband’s family members were mowed down
my Russian tanks in Budapest in 1956.
“The same Obama appointed judge who put Paul Manafort in solitary
confinement prior to his being convicted of any crime is now considering
issuing a gag order so that my husband can no longer publicly raise
money for his legal defense.
“P.S. you can see fake news stories online that say my husband and I
are wealthy and worth millions of dollars. This is totally false. Roger
says these stories are planted in order to make it harder for us to
raise money for his legal defense.”
U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson said Stone could keep
talking about the case outside of the courthouse vicinity with the
caveat that she could change her mind and amend her order “if
necessary.”
In a statement, Stone attorney Grant Smith said, “As you can see in
the order, Roger Stone is not in any way ‘gagged’ and the courthouse
steps is a reasonable place for everyone to act with restraint and
decorum.”
The judge also ruled that attorneys for Stone, Mueller and any
witnesses in the case “must refrain from making statements to the media
or in public settings that pose a substantial likelihood of material
prejudice to this case.”
To the dismay of the Colorado voter, National Popular Vote passed the House on a final vote of 34-29.
The bill is on its way to the Governor’s desk, where Polis is expected
to sign it in an effort to pass Colorado’s Electoral College votes on to
whichever candidate wins the popular vote.
All Democrats will support this because the Electoral College has
only burned Democrats in the past. And to them, that means the system
is broken, unfair, and they have to change it so they have a better
chance of winning.
Polis expressed his support for this bill and he clearly has not
gotten the criticism he deserves for supporting a bill that undermines
our Republic, and is blatantly unconstitutional.
The good news? This will undoubtedly be challenged in the courts,
and may even find its way to the Supreme Court.
byWorldTribuneStaff, February 20, 2019
The first “coup” in U.S. history in which government bureaucrats
sought to overturn an election and to remove a sitting U.S. president
has failed, a columnist noted.
“Not thugs in sunglasses and epaulettes, not oligarchs in private
jets, not shaggy would-be Marxists, but sanctimonious arrogant
bureaucrats in suits and ties used their government agencies to seek to
overturn the 2016 election, abort a presidency, and subvert the U.S.
Constitution,” Victor Davis Hanson wrote on Feb. 17 in an op-ed titled
‘Autopsy of a Dead Coup’ for the Center for American Greatness. ‘A
host of the Washington hierarchy lied under oath, obstructed justice,
illegally leaked to the press, unmasked and leaked names of surveilled
Americans, and misled federal courts under the guise of a ‘higher
loyalty’ to the cause of destroying Donald J. Trump.’ / Getty Images
“And they did all that and more on the premise that they were our
moral superiors and had uniquely divine rights to destroy a presidency
that they loathed,” Hanson wrote.
The effort by the Hillary Clinton campaign “to create, disseminate
among court media, and then salt among high Obama administration
officials, a fabricated, opposition smear dossier failed,” Hanson noted.
“So has the second special prosecutor phase of the coup to abort the
Trump presidency failed. There are many elements to what in time likely
will become recognized as the greatest scandal in American political
history.”
Hanson continued: “The deep state is by nature cowardly. It does not
move unless it feels it can disguise its subterranean efforts or that,
if revealed, those efforts will be seen as popular and necessary – as
expressed in tell-all book titles such as fired FBI Directors James
Comey’s Higher Loyalty or in disgraced Deputy FBI Director Andrew
McCabe’s psychodramatic The Threat.
“In candidate and President Trump’s case that prepping of the
battlefield translated into a coordinated effort among the media,
political progressives and celebrities to so demonize Trump that his
imminent removal likely would appear a relief to the people. Anything
was justified that led to that end.”
Hanson noted that “Journalists themselves consulted with the Clinton
campaign to coordinate attacks. From the WikiLeaks trove, journalistic
grandees such as John Harwood, Mark Leibovich, Dana Milbank, and Glenn
Thrush often communicated (and even post factum were unapologetic about
doing so) with John Podesta’s staff to construct various anti-Trump
themes and have the Clinton campaign review or even audit them in
advance.
“Some contract ‘journalists’ apparently were paid directly by Fusion
GPS – created by former reporters Glen Simpson of the Wall Street
Journal and Susan Schmidt of the Washington Post – to spread lurid
stories from the dossier. Others more refined like Christiane Amanpour
and James Rutenberg had argued for a new journalistic ethos that
partisan coverage was certainly justified in the age of Trump, given his
assumed existential threat to The Truth.”
Or as Rutenberg put it in 2016: “If you view a Trump presidency as
something that’s potentially dangerous, then your reporting is going to
reflect that. You would move closer than you’ve ever been to being
oppositional. That’s uncomfortable and uncharted territory for every
mainstream, non-opinion journalist I’ve ever known, and by normal
standards, untenable. But the question that everyone is grappling with
is: Do normal standards apply? And if they don’t, what should take their
place?”
Hanson wrote: “I suppose Rutenberg never considered that half the
country might have considered the Hillary Clinton presidency
‘potentially dangerous,’ and yet did not expect the evening news, in 90
percent of its coverage, to reflect such suspicions.”
CNN “soon proved that it is no longer a news organization at all – as
reporters like Gloria Borger, Chris Cuomo, Eric Lichtblau, Manu Raju,
Brian Rokus, Jake Tapper, Jeff Zeleny, and teams such as Jim Sciutto,
Carl Bernstein, and Marshall Cohen as well as Thomas Frank, and Lex
Harris all trafficked in false rumors and unproven gossip detrimental to
Trump, while hosts and guest hosts such as Reza Aslan, the late Anthony
Bourdain, and Anderson Cooper stooped to obscenity and grossness to
attack Trump,” Hanson wrote.
“Both politicos and celebrities tried to drive Trump’s numbers down
to facilitate some sort of popular ratification for his removal.
Hollywood and the coastal corridor punditry exhausted public expressions
of assassinating or injuring the president, as the likes of Jim Carrey,
Johnny Depp, Robert de Niro, Peter Fonda, Kathy Griffin, Madonna, Snoop
Dogg, and a host of others vied rhetorically to slice apart, shoot,
beat up, cage, behead, and blow up the president.
“Left wing social media and mainstream journalism spread sensational
lies about supposed maniacal Trump supporters in MAGA hats. They
constructed fantasies that veritable white racists were now liberated to
run amuck insulting and beating up people of color as they taunted the
poor and victimized minorities with vicious Trump sloganeering – even as
the Covington farce and now the even more embarrassing Jussie Smollett
charade evaporated without apologies from the media and progressive
merchants of such hate.”
During the 2016 election, “the Obama Department of Justice warped the
Clinton email scandal investigation, from Bill Clinton’s secret meeting
on an airport tarmac with Attorney General Loretta Lynch, to unethical
immunity given to the unveracious Clinton aides Huma Abedin and Cheryl
Mills, to James Comey’s convoluted predetermined treatment of “likely
winner” Clinton, and to DOJ’s Bruce Ohr’s flagrant conflict of interests
in relation to Fusion GPS,” Hanson wrote.
“About a dozen FBI and DOJ grandees have now resigned, retired, been
fired, or reassigned for unethical and likely illegal behavior – and yet
have not faced criminal indictments. The reputation of the FBI as
venerable agency is all but wrecked. Its administrators variously have
libeled the Trump voters, expressed hatred for Trump, talked of
“insurance policies” in ending the Trump candidacy, and inserted
informants into the Trump campaign.
“The former Obama directors of the CIA and National Intelligence,
with security clearances intact, hit the television airways as paid
‘consultants’ and almost daily accused the sitting president of Russian
collusion and treason – without cross-examination or notice that both
previously had lied under oath to Congress (and did so without
subsequent legal exposure), and both were likely knee-deep in the
dissemination of the Steele dossier among Obama administration
officials.”
Hanson continued: “John Brennan’s CIA likely helped to spread the
Fusion GPS dossier among elected and administrative state officials.
Some in the NSC in massive and unprecedented fashion requested the
unmasking of surveilled names of Trump subordinates, and then illegally
leaked them to the press.
“The FISA courts, fairly or not, are now mostly discredited, given
they either were willingly or naively hoodwinked by FBI and DOJ
officials who submitted as chief evidence for surveillance on American
citizens, an unverified dossier – without disclosure that the bought
campaign hit-piece was paid for by Hillary Clinton, authored by a
discredited has-been British agent, relied on murky purchased Russian
sources, and used in circular fashion to seed news accounts of supposed
Trump misbehavior.”
The “Crown Jewel” of the coup, Hanson noted, “was the appointment of
special counsel Robert Muller to discover supposed 2016 Trump-Russian
election collusion. Never has any special investigation been so
ill-starred from its conception.”
Mueller’s team “soon discovered there was no Trump-Russian 2016
election collusion – and yet went ahead to leverage Trump campaign
subordinates on process crimes in hopes of finding some culpability in
Trump’s past 50-year business, legal, and tax records.”
While it has failed to prove “collusion,” the Mueller probe “succeeded brilliantly in two ways,” Hanson wrote.
“The ‘counterintelligence’ investigation subverted two years of the
Trump presidency by constant leaks that Trump soon would be indicted,
jailed, disgraced, or impeached. As a result, Trump’s stellar economic
and foreign policy record would never earn fifty percent of public
support.
“Second, Mueller’s pre-emptive attacks offered an effective offensive
defense for the likely felonious behavior of John Brennan, James
Clapper, James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Bruce Ohr, Peter Strzok, and a host
of others. While the Mueller lawyers threatened to destroy the lives of
bit players like Jerome Corsi, George Papadopoulos, and Roger Stone,
they de facto provided exemption to a host of the Washington hierarchy
who had lied under oath, obstructed justice, illegally leaked to the
press, unmasked and leaked names of surveilled Americans, and misled
federal courts under the guise of a ‘higher loyalty’ to the cause of
destroying Donald J. Trump.”
Hanson concluded: “Shame on all these failed conspirators and their
abettors, and may these immoral people finally earn a long deserved
legal and moral reckoning.”
“Consider
Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, three of the best-known names in higher
education. Their undergraduates disproportionately ascend to the top
ranks of the professions, media, and government. Their graduate students
fan out to teach in colleges and universities throughout the country.
What is learned at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton does not – and is not
intended to – stay at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton,” wrote Peter
Berkowitz, senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution.
During
a recent Breitbart podcast with host and retired Navy SEAL Mike
Ritland, Logan said: “The media everywhere is mostly liberal. But in
this country, 85 percent of journalists are registered Democrats. So
that’s just a fact, right?”
