RUTHFULLY YOURS

WASHINGTON – Former Democratic National Committee Interim Chairwoman Donna Brazile said the DNC paid a great deal of money to make a “replica” of all of the information on their server and computers after the hacking was discovered last year and then “destroyed the machines.”

During a discussion about her new book, Hacks: The Inside Story of the Break-ins and Breakdowns That Put Donald Trump in the White House, Brazile was asked why the DNC did not immediately allow the FBI to examine its server after the hacking took place during the 2016 presidential campaign. Several cybersecurity firms, including CrowdStrike, attributed the hack to Russia.

“The first time I heard about the quote-unquote hacking, it was in June I heard about it. My machines had already started to have some really interesting – I had a DNC phone and a DNC computer and DNC email because as I mentioned I did a lot of stuff in the voting-rights field and [asked staff] ‘what’s going on?’” Brazile said during the event at the National Press Club on Tuesday evening. A staffer told her “‘we’re told to turn in all of our systems,’ so everyone turned in everything.”

The DNC hired CrowdStrike. “The person we hired was the former No. 3 at the FBI, and they worked it out. They got a list from the FBI of things the FBI wanted, and in that list of items that the FBI requested they asked for a replica or an exact copy of everything we had from our server, knowing that if we got rid of our server we actually would get rid of our entire database, our brain would gone and then essentially we would have nothing,” she added.

Brazile said the total duplication and remediation process after the hacking cost the DNC “millions” of dollars.

“We made a replica of everything and turned it all over to [the FBI]. We also let them see all of the evidence from all of the individual computers, from everything else. So we, trust me, it cost us quite a penny to make replicas and then we destroyed the machines and then bought the staff people new laptops,” she said. “If you can imagine this, right before the convention, these staffers had lost all of their data, all of their materials – everything was gone. Everything was wiped clean, but we made a replica.”

Brazile recalled the DNC having to decide whether to “shut down” or “kill” the server after the hack took place.

“We kept getting more spyware. They were so stealth. The operation was so stealth,” she said.

Brazile mentioned that former FBI Director James Comey had said during one of his congressional testimonies that the DNC did not cooperate with the FBI in terms of access to its server. CONTINUE AT SITE

Within 10 days of taking office, President Trump issued Executive Order 13771, which directs agencies to reduce regulatory burdens by eliminating two existing regulations for each new one issued. This announcement was met with a healthy dose of skepticism, as the steady expansion of the regulatory state traditionally has been a bipartisan affair. No longer.

This week, the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs released a status report on agencies’ progress on regulations. In only its first 10 months, the Trump administration has far exceeded its promise to eliminate two existing regulations for each new one—an unprecedented advance against the regulatory state.

By comparison, in his final eight months, President Obama saddled the economy with as much as $15.2 billion in regulatory costs, while hiding from the public a needlessly “secret” list of more than 600 regulations. Reversing this trend sends a clear message to families and businesses: It’s OK to plan for the future without the looming threat of red tape.

On Thursday OIRA will publish the administration’s first Regulatory Plan and Agenda, which covers all federal agencies for fiscal year 2018. The plan calls for the administration to drive already substantial reductions in regulatory costs even further. This is a fundamental shift from the policies of the past.

Some regulations legitimately address important health, safety and welfare priorities identified by Congress. The Trump administration respects the rule of law and will not roll back effective, legally required regulations. But in the previous administration, agencies frequently exceeded their legal authority when imposing costly rules. Some agencies announced important policy changes without following the formal rule-making process.

Agencies are now expected to regulate only when explicitly authorized by law—and to follow the proper procedures. The same standards now apply to regulatory and deregulatory actions. If the government exercises its regulatory power, it should do so with fair notice and due process, and only upon a conclusion that the regulation is necessary and that the benefits of the regulation justify its costs.

Regulatory reform not only promotes individual liberty and a flourishing economy, it also supports constitutional democracy. Through OIRA’s regulatory review process, we ensure that agencies stay within the legal authority given by Congress. When the law provides discretion, we work with agencies to ensure that regulatory policy reflects presidential priorities. This executive direction makes the rule-making process democratic and accountable. CONTINUE AT SITE

Democrats and the media are accusing anyone who criticizes special counsel Robert Mueller as Trumpian conspirators trying to undermine his probe. But who needs critics when Mr. Mueller’s team is doing so much to undermine its own credibility?

Wednesday’s revelations—they’re coming almost daily—include the Justice Department’s release of 2016 text messages to and from Peter Strzok, the FBI counterintelligence agent whom Mr. Mueller demoted this summer. The texts, which he exchanged with senior FBI lawyer Lisa Page, contain expletive-laced tirades against Mr. Trump. Such Trump hatred is no surprise and not by itself disqualifying. More troubling are texts that suggest that some FBI officials may have gone beyond antipathy to anti-Trump plotting.

“I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy’s office—that there’s no way [Trump] gets elected—but I’m afraid we can’t take that risk,” Mr. Strzok wrote Ms. Page in an Aug. 15, 2016 text. He added: “It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you’re 40.”

What “policy” would that be? The “Andy” in question is Andrew McCabe, the deputy FBI director. FBI officials are allowed to have political opinions, but what kind of action were they discussing that would amount to anti-Trump “insurance”?

In another exchange that month, Ms. Page forwarded a Trump-related article and wrote: “Maybe you’re meant to stay where you are because you’re meant to protect the country from that menace.” He thanked her and assured: “Of course I’ll try and approach it that way.” Mr. Strzok, recall, is the man who changed the words “grossly negligent” to “extremely careless” in James Comey’s July 2016 public exoneration of Hillary Clinton’s emails.

There was a rush to judgment last week on Peter Strzok, a top FBI counterintelligence agent and one of the lead agents on the Hillary Clinton emails investigation, after revelations that Strzok exchanged text messages during the 2016 campaign with an FBI lawyer that were pro-Clinton and anti-Trump. The lawyer was Lisa Page, with whom he was having an extramarital affair.

Like Strzok, Page worked on both the Clinton probe and on special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of possible Trump campaign collusion with Russia.

In light of the obvious appearance of bias, Mueller rightly removed Strzok from the Trump-Russia case. (Page had already left the investigation.) Nevertheless, Strzok and the Mueller investigation were slammed as Clintonian pillars of anti-Trump animus. Not only were there calls for a purge of possibly corrupt bureaucrats in the FBI and Justice Department, but one Fox News host asserted that these government lawyers and agents should be “taken out in handcuffs” and “locked up.”

Interesting thing: Mueller recently took a guilty plea from Michael Flynn, fleetingly President Trump’s national security adviser, for lying in an FBI interview. News that the interview was conducted by Strzok added fuel to the bias fire.

Yet, as the Wall Street Journal reported last week, former FBI Director James Comey told the House Intelligence Committee in closed session last March that the agents who interviewed Flynn believed he had been truthful. Far from railroading Flynn (and, derivatively, Trump), it appears that Strzok and Comey’s FBI did not seek his prosecution. That decision was made months later, by Mueller’s investigators. It was based on additional investigation, which is hard to depict as skewed since Flynn, after all, has admitted his guilt.

There is significant reason to be concerned about investigative bias.