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October 2017

Judicial Watch says State Department sits on a ‘motherlode’ of Clinton documents

In a bombshell announcement, Judicial Watch announced that the State Department has not even searched the majority of Hillary Clinton emails that it obtained from the FBI during the criminal investigation into Clinton’s conduct as Secretary of State. In a statement on Monday, the transparency advocacy group declared that the State Department told a federal court that it has yet to process 40,000 of 72,000 pages of Clinton records that the FBI recovered last year. The revelation came during a federal court hearing in Judicial Watch Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit seeking the former top diplomat’s emails that were sent or received during her tenure from February 2009 to January 31, 2013 (Judicial Watch, Inc. v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:15-cv-00687)).

The hearing before Judge James E. Boasberg, focused on the State Department’s processing of the tens of thousands of emails Clinton failed to disclose when she served as Secretary of State under Barack Obama. Some were sent by her top aide, Huma Abedin, and found by investigators on the laptop of her estranged husband Anthony Weiner. Thus far, the State Department has processed 32,000 pages of emails and released a small number. However, another 40,000 pages remain to be processed.

According to Judicial Watch, Judge Boasberg ordered the State Department on October 19 to “explain how its anticipated increase in resources will affect processing of records in this case and when the processing of each disk is likely to be completed.” The State Department under Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and the Justice Department under Attorney General Jeff Sessions have previously argued before the court that there was diminished public interest in the Clinton emails.

In November 2016, the State Department was ordered to produce no less than 500 pages of records a month to Judicial Watch, emails of which the FBI found in its investigation into Clinton’s non-government email system. The State Department has produced 23 batches of documents so far. At the current pace, said a statement from Judicial Watch, the Clinton emails and other records won’t be fully available for possible release until at least 2020. Clinton attempted to delete 33,000 emails from her non-government server. The FBI investigation recovered or found a number of these missing emails, many of which were government documents.

The lawsuit was originally filed in May 2015.

SYDNEY WILLIAMS: A POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

“The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than generally understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else.” John Maynard Keynes The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, 1936

In universities, we were exposed – at times through the lens of prejudicial teachers, but ones with less bias than today – to the writings of political philosophers, from Socrates to Locke to Marx. We glimpsed the ancient Greeks and Romans. We read history and surveyed the Bible. We grazed on the works of economists, like Adam Smith, Jeremy Bentham, John Maynard Keynes and Friedrich Hayek. While most of us did not study these philosophers and economists in detail, they were, at least, unmasked for our inspection. We were taught to think – to reason for ourselves – to determine what principles would help guide us past the Scyllas and the Charybdis’ we were bound to encounter. Today, too much focus in our universities is on issue-specific, special studies that pass as education.

It is the ability to think independently that is critical for democracy. Today, that is at risk. STEM programs help with jobs, but a vibrant democracy depends on a broadly educated electorate. For most older American, the concepts of personal liberty and economic freedom, along with a legacy of democracy and respect for institutions, are deeply ingrained. These beliefs have kept us free and democratic. Yet, youth today seems less critical, less challenging of their teachers. They believe what they hear and read in the mainstream media and on social media. The threat to democracy comes not from coarse, loud-mouthed people like Mr. Trump, but from subtle, cavalier politicians who surreptitiously insinuate themselves into our minds under the guise of doing good. To me, the biggest risk to our country is from within – elitists on both coasts, in the media, academia and in Washington, who use the threat of populism as justification for plutocracy.

Politics is an empirical process. Ours has changed over the past two hundred plus years, adapting to differing conditions and mores. The President is more isolated and more powerful. Congress has not expanded in line with the population growth, and has ceded responsibility to the Executive. Today, the judiciary (at least, those who are not activists) and local government most closely resemble what the Founders envisioned. Politicians, regardless of Party, exude an arrogance that sets them above those they represent. Many are hypocrites, spouting promises, with no intention of upholding them; passing laws, while exempting themselves; beholden to lobbyists and special interests, rather than the people; pledging prudence, but practicing profligacy. They use identity politics, which are counter-productive to assimilation and unity, leading, as they do, toward pluralism – a salad bowl instead of a melting pot.

Beware dogmatism born of ignorance. Like all self-respecting pundits, I see things I like and things I don’t. I have beliefs, and I have doubts. I do not believe climate skeptics are deniers, or that extremists come only from the Right, or that Francis Fukuyama was correct in proclaiming that the fall of the Soviet Union represented the end of history. I do not want to be lectured to by a supercilious Al Gore on climate – a man who made millions, while frightening gullible innocents. I do not want to be instructed on morality by cocky, ethically-challenged late-night hosts, like Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert. I do not want to be preached to by Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton on civility in politics, when they look upon conservatives as gun-toting, Bible-thumping “deplorables.” I do not want to listen to anti-Trump rants from sanctimonious Ivy League professors, hiding behind ivory towers. I don’t like duplicity or hypocrisy. I don’t like those who invoke identity politics, and I don’t respect those who use public fame to generate private wealth. I do not believe that any country, government, system or political party is perfect, but I do believe ours comes closest. I do like a sense of humor, civility and respect. I also believe that citizens have the responsibility to be conversant on matters of public policy, or, at least within reason, and that they should always exercise their right to vote. While unions have served a useful purpose, in recent times public sector ones have become more interested in preserving jobs and benefits, regardless of the costs to taxpayers. As well, in impeding progress by delaying or denying innovation, they have become advocates for the status quo.

The Iran-Hamas Plan to Destroy Israel by Khaled Abu Toameh

Iran’s goal in this move? For Hamas to maintain and enhance its preparation for war against Israel.

Iran’s message to Hamas: If you want us to continue providing you with financial and military aid, you must continue to hold on to your weapons and reject demands to disarm.

Iran wants Hamas to retain its security control over the Gaza Strip so that the Iranians can hold onto another power base in the Middle East, as it does with Hezbollah in Lebanon.

In a historic reawakening, Iran is once again meddling in the internal affairs of the Palestinians. This this does not bode well for the future of “reconciliation” between Hamas and Palestinian Authority’s Fatah faction run by President Mahmoud Abbas.The re-emergence of Iran, as it pursues its efforts to increase its political and military presence in the region, does not bode well for the future of stability in the Middle East.

The Iranians are urging Hamas to hold on to its weapons in spite of the recent “reconciliation” agreement signed between Hamas and Fatah under the auspices of Egypt. Iran’s goal in this move? For Hamas to maintain and enhance its preparation for war against Israel.

A high-level Hamas delegation headed by Saleh Arouri, deputy chairman of Hamas’s “political bureau,” traveled to Tehran last week to brief Iranian leaders on the “reconciliation” deal with Fatah. During the visit, Iranian leaders praised Hamas for resisting demands (by Fatah) to disarm and relinquish security control over the Gaza Strip.

“We congratulate you on your refusal to abandon your weapons, an issue that you consider as a red line,” Ali Velayati, a senior Iranian politician and advisor to Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Khamenei, told the visiting Hamas officials. “The Palestinian cause is the most important cause of the Islamic world, and after all this time you remain committed to the principle of resistance against the Zionists despite all the pressure you are facing.”

During the visit of a high-level Hamas delegation to Iran last week, Ali Velayati (pictured above in 2016), a senior Iranian politician and advisor to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, told the visiting Hamas officials: “We congratulate you on your refusal to abandon your weapons…” (Image source: Hamed Malekpour/Wikimdia Commons)

Arouri and his colleagues rushed to Tehran to seek the support of the Iranian regime in the wake of demands by Abbas that Hamas allow the Palestinian Authority to assume security control over the Gaza Strip. The “reconciliation” agreement stipulates nothing about the need for Hamas to disarm, and Hamas officials have stressed during the past two weeks that they have no intention of laying down their weapons or dismantling their security apparatus in the Gaza Strip.

Hamas views the demand to disarm as part of an Israeli-American “conspiracy” designed to eliminate the Palestinian “resistance” and thwart the “reconciliation” accord with Abbas’s Fatah. Hamas’s refusal to disarm is already threatening to spoil the “reconciliation.”

Investigating the Investigators By Victor Davis Hanson

Despite having both an expansive budget and a large legal team, Special Investigator Robert Mueller likely will not find President Trump culpable for any Russian collusion—or at least no court or congressional vote would, even if Mueller recommends an indictment.

That likelihood becomes clearer as the Trump investigators—in Congress, in the Justice Department, and the legions in the media—begin to grow strangely silent about the entire collusion charge, as other scandals mount and crowd out the old empty story. This news boomerang poses the obvious question—was the zeal of the original accusers of felony behavior with the Russian collusion merely an attempt at deflection? Was it designed to protect themselves from being accused of serious crimes?

What Did the FBI Do?
It was bad enough that the original narrative had the authors of the so-called Fusion GPS/Steele dossier leaking their smears to the media. Worse, the FBI, in the earlier fashion of the Clinton campaign, may have paid to obtain the Fusion concoction

Now it appears that some of the leakers who had the file in their possession also may have belonged to the American intelligence community. Did the FBI pass around its purchased smears to other intelligence agencies and the Obama administration in the unspoken hope that, in seeing the file had been so sanctioned and widely read, some intelligence operative or one of the Obama people would wink and nod as they leaked it to the press?

And why did the progenitors of the Steele dossier fraud—the Fusion GPS consortium and former Wall Street Journal reporters (a firm that had a prior history of smearing political enemies with “opposition research”) and working indirectly on behalf of Russian interests—reportedly behind closed doors invoke the Fifth Amendment to avoid testifying about the dossier, its origins, and its funding before the House Intelligence Committee?

Increasingly, James Comey seems to be caught in contradictions of his own making. The former FBI director may well have misled the U.S. Congress in deliberate fashion, both about the timeline of events that led him to recommend not charging Hillary Clinton and about his denials that the FBI had communications about the bizarre “accidental” meeting on an Arizona tarmac between the U.S. Attorney General and Bill Clinton. How does an FBI Director get away with leaking his own notes, ostensibly FBI property, to the media with the expressed intent of leveraging the selection of a special prosecutor, only to succeed in having his friend, former FBI Director Robert Mueller, appointed to that very post—an official who presumably and earlier had been investigating possible Clinton collusion with Russian uranium interests?

So Many Questions, So Few Answers
Apart from noting how strange and surreal it was, no one yet knows the full relationship between former Democratic National Chairman Debbie Wasserman Schultz and her IT “expert,” the now-indicted Imran Awan. Why would Wasserman-Schultz go out of her way to protect him and by extension his network from government investigations—even as Awan’s criminal familial enterprises, as well as his unauthorized and perhaps illegal conduct concerning government communications, were being exposed? Why is Awan apparently eager to talk to prosecutors about his relationships with Wasserman-Schultz and other congressional representatives? Why did an “in-the-know” Wasserman-Schultz apparently allow Awan to act so illegally for so long? In other words, the behavior of the former head of the DNC seems inexplicable.

After initial denials, Susan Rice now admits that she unmasked the names of private U.S. citizens swept up in Obama administration intelligence surveillance and seems to have no regrets about it. Samantha Power, the Obama administration’s former U.N. ambassador, does not deny that she, too, unmasked names—but strangely is reported to have argued that she was not responsible for all the unmaskings that appear under her authorizations on the transcripts. If true, does that astonishing statement mean that she has amnesia or that her own staff or others improperly used her name to access classified documents? Has anyone ever admitted to unmasking American citizens under surveillance, and then claimed that her authorizations were not as numerous as they appear in documents? And what were the connections between those who unmasked and those who illegally leaked information to the press?

Mueller Opens Criminal Investigation Into Clinton Fundraiser Tony Podesta in Russia Probe By Tyler O’Neil

Special Counsel Robert Mueller has broadened his investigation, originally focused on Donald Trump’s ties with Russia, to a major Hillary Clinton bundler who worked for Ukraine’s Party of Regions, a political group backed by Russian President Vladimir Putin. Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, also worked for this party.

Recent reports have implicated Mueller in an alleged FBI cover-up. The FBI had been investigating the Russian firm Rosatom for years before the Obama administration approved its acquisition of 20 percent of U.S. uranium in the Uranium One deal. The FBI kept the investigation secret, even when it could have prevented such a monumental purchase.

At the same time, Hillary Clinton (who was on the very board which approved the Uranium One deal) stood to benefit from the deal, as a Russian bank promoting Uranium One stock had paid her husband half a million for a speech (and directed millions to Clinton Foundation-linked companies). At the same time, the FBI acted quickly to bust a Russian spy ring because it got too close to Clinton.

Mueller — who as head of the FBI seems likely to have known about the Rosatom investigation and covered it up, just as the FBI switched into overdrive to protect Hillary Clinton — has broadened his investigation of Trump-Russia into a line of questioning that might finally implicate the other side of the 2016 election, Clinton herself.

On Monday, NBC News reported that Tony Podesta and the Podesta Group are now the subjects of Mueller’s federal investigation. NBC News cited three unnamed sources, who may have leaked the information on Mueller’s orders — in order to suggest impartiality after these recent stories implicated Mueller.

The Podesta probe grew out of Mueller’s inquiry into Manafort’s finances, NBC News reported. Manafort had organized a public relations campaign for the non-profit European Centre for a Modern Ukraine (ECMU). The Podesta Group also worked on that campaign.

According to NBC News’ sources, the Podesta investigation began as a fact-finding mission about Manafort’s role in the ECMU, but later broadened into a criminal inquiry into whether or not the firm violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). [An allegation PJ Media reported last April.] That act requires those who lobby on behalf of foreign governments, leaders, or political parties to file disclosures about spending and activities with the Justice Department. CONTINUE AT SITE

Rep. Maxine Waters: ‘I Will Go and Take Out Trump Tonight’ By Michael van der Galien

Ever since it became clear back in 2015 that Donald Trump would be a serious candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, Democrats have blasted him for supposedly “demonizing” his opponents and using highly aggressive statements to push his message. He wasn’t polite, he was stoking up tensions, and so on. You know the drill.

That kind of criticism coming from Democrats is absolutely fascinating because it’s so incredibly hypocritical. The politicians who demonize their opponents are Democrats. Case in point? Rep. Maxine Waters’ speech at the Ali Forney Center in New York City on October 13 where she said the following:

“I’m sitting here listening, watching, absorbing, thinking about Ali even though I never met him. And with this kind of inspiration, I will go and take Trump out tonight.”

“Take out Trump tonight”? Can you imagine the uproar such a statement would’ve caused if, say, Sen. Ted Cruz had said this about Barack Obama? Waters would’ve been all over TV arguing that Cruz called for Obama’s death, that Republicans are downright dangerous, and that Cruz is guilty of hate speech. But if she says something like this about a Republican president? Ah well, no biggy.

Obviously, statements like this one are incredibly troubling. As conservative radio talker Dana Loesch tweeted earlier today:
Dana Loesch

✔ @DLoesch

Some might say this type of talk from an elected official isn’t helpful. https://twitter.com/foxnews/status/922410086898814976 …

Include me in that “some,” because only a few months ago a leftist activist opened fire on congressional Republicans playing a game of baseball. In that shooting, House Majority Whip Steve Scalise was severely wounded.

Waters and her ilk may defend her by arguing that she was talking about impeachment only, not about actual violence. OK, let’s assume that to be true. Doesn’t she realize that her words can be interpreted completely differently, especially by wackos with serious psychological issues? Or does she just not care?

Senators Develop Selective Amnesia About U.S. Troop Presence in Niger After Combat Deaths By Patrick Poole

Congressional oversight of the executive branch is only as useful as the members of Congress doing the oversight.

That’s the lesson to be learned from media reports filed yesterday and today in which U.S. senators claimed they had no idea the U.S. military had about 1,000 soldiers in Niger. The reports followed the combat deaths of four U.S. Special Forces soldiers after an ambush in Niger near the border with Mali earlier this month:

CNN reported today:

“I did not,” Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pennsylvania, responded to CNN’s Chris Cuomo on “New Day” Monday whether he knew there were troops in Niger. “When you consider what happened here, the four sergeants lost their lives, I think there’s a lot of work that both parties and both branches of government need to do. Not only to stay more informed but to focus on why we’re there and what happened to get to the bottom of this.”

Several other leading senators also said they were in the dark about the operation in the western Africa nation.

“I didn’t know there was 1,000 troops in Niger,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, told NBC’s Chuck Todd on “Meet the Press” Sunday. “They are going to brief us next week as to why they were there and what they were doing.”

There seems to be a case of selective amnesia spreading through the halls of the U.S. Senate.

U.S. Africa Command officials have repeatedly briefed Congress on the troop presence in Niger in recent years:

Also, both former President Obama and President Trump had formally notified Congress in writing about the U.S. military actions in Niger.

What are U.S. troops doing there? ABC News explains:

How many U.S. troops are there in Niger?

About 800, but the vast majority of them are construction crews working to build up a second drone base in Niger’s northern desert. The rest run a surveillance drone mission from Niger’s capital of Niamey that helps out the French in Mali and other regional countries in the fight against Al Qaeda, Boko Haram and now ISIS. A smaller component, less than a hundred, are Army Green Beret units advising and assisting Niger’s military to build up their fighting capability to counter Al Qaeda and ISIS. There are an additional 300 U.S. military personnel in neighboring Burkina Faso and Cameroon doing the same thing. They are there as part of what’s known as the mission in the Lake Chad Basin.

Slinging Mud over Fallen Soldiers

The tragic and still-murky story of how four U.S. soldiers were killed in Niger, what they were doing there, and whether their sacrifice was properly honored, has descended into a case study of America’s cancerous politics and tendentious media.

The story has several distinct elements, which have been compressed and distorted by partisans. Those elements need to be disentangled and clarified.

The first point is how little we actually know about the deadly mission. As citizens, we need to understand the essentials without spilling any operational secrets. There’s no excuse for another bodyguard of lies, like those surrounding the deaths in Benghazi.

The military chain-of-command needs to know what happened in Niger so they can learn from the tactical failures. Their civilian bosses need to know so they can hold the military accountable and provide the necessary resources. Why was the pre-mission intelligence so bad? Why wasn’t backup firepower available? How can we avoid a repetition?

But tactical failures are only half the story. The other half is U.S. strategy. What the hell is it?

As citizens, we need political leaders to state clearly how we are threatened by the spread of radical Islamist groups to ungoverned spaces across Africa and Asia. Why is it worth risking the lives of our soldiers? We already know the terrorists’ bases in the Middle East are shrinking and that they are seeking new footholds. But how, exactly, do their efforts threaten us? What can we do about it and at what cost? The trade-offs are crucial here since we have limited resources and other profound security challenges, from North Korea and the South China Sea to Russia and Ukraine.

Iran poses another of those challenges, one that bears directly on the Niger firefight. The surprise attack involved radical Sunnis, seeking to build bases in new terrain. Radical Shiites face no such pressures. They can expand close to home, and they are doing just that. Their militias are thriving from Baghdad to Damascus to southern Lebanon, thanks to American errors and Iran’s aggressive moves to exploit them. Led by its Revolutionary Guard, Iran has built a crescent of Shiite terror from Teheran to southern Lebanon. Now that Raqqa has fallen, they will move quickly to add that link to the chain. The Russians, too, have exploited American weakness, backing Iran’s mullahs and Syria’s Assad and reaping the rewards, including the first permanent Russian base on the Mediterranean.

This nasty outcome followed America’s catastrophic strategic failure in Iraq. George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, and their generals had no plan to stabilize the country after overthrowing Saddam Hussein. After a change of American strategy and years fighting to correct earlier mistakes, a new president took office and deliberately junked the hard-won victory by precipitously withdrawing all U.S. forces.

These cumulative failures, compounded by President Obama’s decision to back away from America’s traditional partners, Saudi Arabia and Israel, handed the region to Iran and its proxies. Iran’s rise, America’s fall, and the emergence of Sunni extremists (to oppose the Shiites) are deeply intertwined. They form the context for America’s current troubles across the Middle East, South Asia, and Africa.

This box of snakes was opened to the public by the death of four U.S. Special Forces soldiers in Niger. Rather than leading to a serious debate, the episode immediately fell into partisan name calling.

Draining the Swamp By Charles Kesler

For a businessman it must be frustrating to sit at the Resolute desk in the Oval Office and realize how unbusinesslike is the government surrounding you.

President Trump issues executive orders, which can be stayed immediately by some obscure federal judge in a deep-blue state. He can ask the State Department to unwind the Iran treaty, but his own employees drag their feet. He negotiates with scores of congressmen who, like cats, enjoy being stroked but immediately go their own ungrateful way. And don’t even purr.

No wonder he is said to be frustrated. Some of these vexations come with the job. They are consequences of the very constitutional system he has sworn to preserve, protect, and defend. Separation of powers, an independent judiciary, and checks and balances are meant, in part, to frustrate over-ambitious office holders and their schemes.

These same constitutional devices, however, are also supposed to lead to better, more deliberative laws, judicial decisions faithful to the Constitution, and a chief executive who can energetically, to use e Federalist’s word, enforce the law and protect national security. They are supposed to produce good government, in other words.

But good government has not been forthcoming lately. This isn’t the Constitution’s fault. Its commands have been disregarded, or reinterpreted, and its operations distorted for so long and to such an extent that it functions as our frame of government much less reliably than you might think. Though still to be reckoned with, the capital-C Constitution yields far too often to the small-c (“living”) constitution, another word for government as usual in Washington, D.C.—that is, government as we have come to know, fear, and resent it since the 1960s.

When Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton concluded the political deal that put the nation’s capital on the banks of the Potomac, the District of Columbia was swampland; and to the metaphorical swamp it is returning. Trump is right about that. Some buildings, mostly monuments, museums, and memorials, continue to rise high above the muck, but others seem to inch lower every year.

Consider the Capitol, and the biggest legislative accomplishment it has seen since the 1980s, Obamacare. How could Congress have passed Obamacare the way it did in 2010—on a party-line vote, with corrupt bargains aplenty, and unconstitutional (big-C) provisions galore—and then turn around and fail to repeal the law the way it did this summer? “To lose one parent,” observed Oscar Wilde, “may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.” To have passed President Obama’s health bill may be regarded as a grave constitutional misfortune. But to fail to repeal it smacks of constitutional carelessness. Democrats were responsible the first time, Republicans the second. The former didn’t tell the truth about Obamacare, the latter (some of them, at least) about their oath to repeal it. How then are the American people supposed to reassert control over their own government, if neither party can be trusted?

Lynch, the Clintons and a series of fantastic coincidences Gregg Jarrett By Gregg Jarrett

I don’t believe in coincidences. Not when it comes to crimes. Especially when they involve political corruption.

No such thing as a coincidence. Doesn’t exist.

Yet, we are led to believe it was merely a coincidence that Bill Clinton just happened to be on the tarmac of an Arizona airport at the same time as then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch. We are supposed to accept that their private meeting on board Lynch’s plane had nothing whatsoever to do with the criminal investigation of Hillary Clinton which the A-G was overseeing at the time.

Right. They just “schmoozed” about grandkids and what-not.

I guess it was also just a coincidence that a few days after the furtive tarmac meeting the decision was announced that criminal charges against Clinton, the Democratic nominee for president, would not be filed, notwithstanding compelling evidence that she repeatedly violated the Espionage Act by storing highly classified documents on her private, unauthorized and unsecured email server in the basement of her home.

Sure. Makes perfect sense. To a naïve, gullible fool.

Maybe it was purely a coincidence that there was another FBI investigation going on involving Russia’s corruption-fueled purchase of U.S uranium assets and which also happened to implicate the Clintons, but was kept hidden from Congress and the American people by Lynch and her predecessor, Eric Holder. Hmm…

And perhaps it was simply an odd coincidence that the investigation of this uranium bribery, extortion, money laundering and kickback case was supervised by then-FBI Director Robert Mueller, his successor James Comey, and then-U.S Attorney Rod Rosenstein, all of whom appear to have covered it up but are now directly involved in the Trump-Russia probe.

Strange confluence of people and events, eh?

I don’t buy any of it. Not for one minute. And not entirely because I don’t believe in coincidences. It is because all the above-mentioned people are known to trifle with the law or ignore disqualifying conflicts of interest. They seem to be without principles –devoid of the kind of scruples that should guide people in service of our government.

Mueller is serving as special counsel in the Trump-Russia case. He reports to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein who appointed him.

Yet both Rosenstein and fired FBI Director James Comey are witnesses in the case, since Rosenstein recommended to President Trump that Comey be fired.

It is well established that Comey and Mueller are long-time friends, allies and former partners. How can Mueller be fair and impartial given these glaring conflicts of interest? He cannot. And he should recuse himself. Rosenstein should also step aside in overseeing the case. He cannot be prosecutor and witness simultaneously.

Their conflicts are compounded by recent reports that all three men were involved in the Russian uranium case which was kept hidden from Congress. How can Americans have confidence in the outcome of the Trump-Russia case if they engaged in a cover-up of the Clinton-Russia case?

Which brings us to Hillary and Bill. The Clinton name is synonymous with scandal. The sleazy Whitewater land deals, an illicit affair with a young White House intern that led to impeachment, deceptions following the Benghazi murders, Travelgate, cattle futures, suspected slush funds, evidence of perjury, the list is seemingly endless.

Through it all, the ability of the Clintons to evade indictments would make Houdini proud. They are escape artists of the highest order.

Loretta Lynch should never have presided over the Hillary Clinton email case. She owed her career to none other than Bill Clinton who nominated her to serve as U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York which nicely positioned her for elevation to Attorney General a few years later.