RUTHFULLY YOURS

This weekend is the first anniversary of the inauguration, which we shall commemorate in today’s movie feature later. It’s also the twentieth anniversary of a turbulent weekend in Washington, culminating in the launch down the catway of Monica Lewinsky’s little black dress. The drama of January 1998 put certain words and phrases in the public discourse for the next two years, including “impeachment”, “vast right-wing conspiracy”, “the meaning of ‘is'”, and “completion”, which President Clinton was said by Monica in the Starr Report not to reach.

Yes, it was twenty years ago today/Slick Willie taught the intern to play! In a sense, the Clintons have never reached completion – which is why, two decades on, the news is full of Uranium One, Hillary-commissioned dirty dossiers and Huma’s emails – not to mention the exposure of Harvey Weinstein and other Clinton buddies for availing themselves of the same interns-with-benefits approach to the workplace. We may run some old pieces from the Dawning of the Age of Incompletion in the weeks ahead. But, if you’re wondering what we were talking about before Monica, the answer is Paula – who became near totally eclipsed by Miss Lewinsky. This was my Sunday Telegraph column of January 18th 1998. I blush to say some of the lines herein have wound up in anthologies of quotations, including most recently in Matthew Parris’ collection Scorn – though I have to say I don’t think my Scornometer was cranked all the way up to eleven. I suppose it’s all comparative, which brings us back to that poor Media-ite fellow…

Last week, President Clinton declared most of storm-ravaged northern New England a federal disaster area. This weekend, he was back in Washington attending to the real federal disaster area: his pants.

They are, alas, not eligible for government financial assistance, although after spending most of his presidency trying to shake off the dogged Paula Jones, they could surely use some. Yesterday’s trip to his lawyers’ office to give his sworn deposition on sexual-harassment allegations was, according to the White House, his first “face to face” meeting with Mrs Jones – an artful, quintessentially Clintonesque choice of words with which she would not disagree, given her testimony re the previous encounter. He also denied that the case was proving a distraction: “I just try to put it in a little box and go on and do my work.”

First Apple and now Starbucks . Reliably Democratic precincts in corporate America keep reporting good news for both owners and workers as a result of Republican tax reform. Now the biggest political question of 2018 is whether an economic upshift will trigger a shift in U.S. voting patterns this fall.

The Associated Press reports today:

Starbucks is giving its U.S. workers pay raises and stock grants this year, citing recent changes to the tax law.

All employees will soon be able to earn paid sick time off, and the company’s parental leave benefits will include all non-birth parents. Starbucks Corp. said Wednesday that the changes affect about 150,000 full-time, part-time, hourly and salaried employees, most of whom work as baristas or shop managers. The new benefits apply to workers at more than 8,200 company-owned stores but not at the 5,700 licensed shops like those found inside supermarkets.

Starbucks is the latest to say it’s boosting pay or benefits due to the passage of the Republican tax plan, which slashed the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent. Walmart, for example, raised its starting hourly salary from $9 to $11 earlier this month, and also expanded its parental leave benefits.

In a press release, Starbucks adds, “These new offerings are in addition to the nearly $7 billion of capital that Starbucks will deploy to build and renovate stores, manufacturing plants and technology platforms in the U.S. over the next five years.”

On Thursday after the markets close, Starbucks will report its earnings for the quarter ended in December. “Following several disappointing quarters, there is hope that an improving retail environment may benefit Starbucks,” notes the Journal.

As the Democratic Party has moved sharply leftward in recent years, it has increasingly become the party of government and the non-profit sector. As the Journal’s Daniel Henninger has been chronicling for years, Democrats have systematically been disconnecting themselves from the private economy. Seattle-based Starbucks and the tech giants of Silicon Valley are among the notable exceptions.

Normally a stalwart outpost of cultural liberalism, Starbucks employs people who gave Hillary Clinton about fifty times as much as they gave Donald Trump in the 2016 election cycle, according to OpenSecrets.org. But will rising prosperity from the shop counter to the executive suite change political behavior? Sure it’s only money but of course money allows baristas and everyone else in our economy the freedom to pursue whatever activity or agenda they choose. CONTINUE AT SITE

New FBI documents released in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) investigation suggest then-FBI Director Robert Mueller was involved in a potential coverup denying that the FBI found connections between a Saudi Arabian family living in Sarasota, Fla., and the September 11, 2001 attacks. Mueller’s involvement in this case might cast a pall over his investigation into Donald Trump’s alleged connections with Russia.

The case revolves around Abdulaziz al-Hijji, his wife Anoud, and her father Esam Ghazzawi, an advisor to a Saudi prince. The al-Hijjis abruptly left their home in Sarasota two weeks before the September 11 attacks, leaving behind jewelry, clothing, and cars.

An original FBI investigation reportedly uncovered links between the Hijjis and the 9/11 attacks, but subsequent FBI statements denied the connections. In 2012, the website Broward Bulldog (now Florida Bulldog) filed a FOIA request for FBI files regarding the case.

In 2014, the FBI released 11 pages, including statements reiterating that the al-Hijjis had left the U.S. shortly before the 9/11 attacks and that “further investigation” had revealed “many connections” between the family and 9/11 suspects, the Miami Herald reported.

The FBI later claimed there were no connections between the al-Hijjis and 9/11 — and that’s where Mueller comes into the picture.

One FBI document, dated September 2012, was a copy of an April 16, 2002, report that agents found “many connections” between the family and “individuals associated with the terrorist attacks on 9/11/2001.” The couple’s name was blanked out, but remained discernible. This flatly contradicted FBI statements that agents had found no connections.

FBI Supervisory Special Agent Jacqueline Maguire wrote in a 2014 memorandum that the 2002 report was “a bad statement. It was overly speculative and there was no basis for the statement.”

The FBI had at least three reports detailing connections between the family and the 9/11 hijackers, however.

In response to Florida Bulldog’s FOIA request, the FBI produced 80,000 classified pages for U.S. District Judge William J. Zloch of Fort Lauderdale, Fla. The FBI also gave Zloch the index organization to process the files. Mueller, now special counsel in the Trump-Russia investigation, was referenced in a document in this database.

The former FBI director was mentioned in a note about an FBI white paper dating back to September 15, 2010. The paper was written shortly after the Bulldog and the Miami Herald published a story about the departure of the al-Hijjis shortly before 9/11.

“It was created to brief the FBI Director concerning the FBI’s investigation of 4224 Escondito Circle,” the al-Hijjis’ Sarasota address, according to the index. CONTINUE AT SITE

Glenn Simpson, founder of the D.C.-based news-for-hire firm Fusion GPS, is a conspiracy theorist. He says so himself. On page 126 of a transcript released last week from Simpson’s Nov. 14 testimony before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, here’s how the ex-reporter describes his own state of mind: “As sort of cynical and conspiracy-minded as I am,” Simpson told committee members and staff investigating issues related to Russia and the 2016 elections, “I am still shocked by all kinds of things that have happened here.”

For more than a year now, the opposition research that the former Wall Street Journal reporter prepared for his paying customers at the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign has dominated the news cycle. The Steele dossier, produced by Fusion GPS and named after the former British spy Christopher Steele, who allegedly authored it, is the foundation of the grand speculation that Donald Trump won the 2016 election by colluding with Russia.

The collusion narrative has kicked off three congressional inquiries plus Robert Mueller’s special investigation. Far-flung conspiracy theories about Russia, Trump, Putin, Facebook and whoever else are treated as normal “news” every day of the week, with the result that Russiaphobia has swept through Democratic-leaning metropolitan strongholds, which now believe Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump are equally responsible for Hillary Clinton’s loss last November.

In some sense, none of this should be surprising. Before he left the practice of journalism in 2009, Glenn Simpson was an investigative reporter. As every journalist knows, the investigative reporter is a special breed, valued because of his or her ability to see connections that are likely lost on others—often because there is no connection. What newspaper editors will never admit when they are scooping up prizes won by their ace investigative reporters, but every professional who has been around the block in the news business knows, is that nine of every 10 stories pitched by an investigative reporter are indelibly riddled with speculative lunacy. The one good lead needs to be carefully managed for months by at least one sub-editor before it ever reaches the desk of the top editor, whose publication, and professional reputation, requires excising every trace of madness before the story sees print. If you doubt this, here’s a sample of what a legendary Pulitzer Prize-winning ace investigative reporter like Seymour Hersh sounds like unplugged, i.e. pretty much like every other investigative reporter I have ever met.

For a brief, shining moment, CNN paused in its nonstop coverage of everything it loathes about President Trump for some actual “breaking news.” One of the network’s reporters had noticed that Congress was looking into malfeasance and political corruption at the Obama-era Department of Justice, FBI, and intelligence agencies. This is still news to most mainstream outlets.

There are now three major congressional investigations, peeling away layers of political bias, unequal application of the law, and, perhaps even felonies by senior officials who may have leaked classified documents, obstructed justice, and violated Fourth Amendment guarantees against unreasonable search and seizure.

These probes center on credible allegations that the FBI and DOJ fixed the investigation of Hillary Clinton to clear her and her top associates, and then launched an investigation of Donald Trump for partisan political reasons. If these allegations are true—and they have not yet been proven—this is the biggest American political scandal since Watergate. It would mean that the executive branch agency tasked with enforcing the law, instead subverted the law to protect its favored presidential candidate and damage the opposition party’s. Then, it tried to cover it all up.

If true, this would be a very deep pool of corruption, but CNN dove head-first into the shallow end. What most concerned the network was that Rep. Devin Nunes would not give the FBI his classified memo detailing the evidence uncovered so far. The CNN on-air panel discussing this topic featured a former Obama-era intelligence official, and he was shocked, shocked at Nunes and Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee. The FBI should get that memo immediately, he said, because it is the lead law enforcement agency in such matters. The CNN panel could only think of one reason Nunes was being so secretive: He was just trying to distract from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of alleged Trump-Russia collusion. For its part, CNN wasn’t distracted at all. It was entirely focused on Trump.