RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/05/obama-administration-politicized-intelligence-law-enforcement-apparatus/

The Obama administration blatantly politicized the government’s intelligence and law-enforcement apparatus.

‘Isn’t it a fact that you’re a scumbag?”

Our contretemps over the nomenclature of government informants has me unable to shake this arresting moment from my memory. In Manhattan, about 30 years ago, I was among the spectators basking in the majesty of Foley Square’s federal courthouse when we were suddenly jarred by this, shall we say, rhetorical question. The sniper was a mob lawyer in a big RICO case; the target was the prosecution’s main witness, the informant.

Until this week, I’d always thought the most noteworthy thing about this obnoxious bit of theater was the reaction of the judge, a very fine, very wry trial lawyer in his own right.

The prosecutors, of course, screamed, “Objection!”

The judge calmly shrugged his shoulders and ruled: “He can answer if he knows.”

Did he know? I don’t remember. I was laughing too hard to hear any response.

The court’s deadpan was not just hilarious. In its way, it was trenchant.

The judge was not insouciant. He was a realist. The witness had done what covert informants do: He pretended to be someone he wasn’t, he wheedled his way into the trust — in some instances, into the affections — of people suspected of wrongdoing. And then he betrayed them. But that’s the job: to pry away secrets — get the bad actors to admit what they did, how they did it, and with whom they did it, until the agents and prosecutors decide there is enough evidence to convict the lot of them.

The judge understood that. For all the melodrama, whether the informant was a hero or a villain hinged on how one felt not about him but about the worthiness of the investigation.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-marine-gets-his-medals-1527287941

‘A nice town, with good people” is how Lance Corporal Jimmy Reddington described his Pennsylvania hometown of Scranton to a fellow Marine who shared a foxhole in Vietnam, according to a story in the local Times-Tribune. Within three months of deploying to Vietnam, Reddington was killed in action. Fifty-one years later, in time for Memorial Day, this Marine will finally get the 12 medals he earned there, including two Purple Hearts.

The Marine with Reddington was Joe Silvestri, who was wounded but survived the same battle that took his friend’s life. Since discovering Reddington’s grave in 1994 in Scranton’s Cathedral Cemetery, Mr. Silvestri has been coming back, along with other Marines, to tend the grave and pay respects to their brother-in-arms.

The medals make this year’s commemoration a little more special. Because Reddington’s father died when he was young and his mother and sister have since died too, the medals will be presented to the local Marine Corps League. They will be presented by retired Lieutenant General Ron Christmas, a Marine legend for his actions in Hue, one of the bloodiest battles of the Vietnam War. Marines from Reddington’s Echo Company, 2nd Battalion, 5th Marines will also be on hand—some old now, some in wheelchairs, but all determined to see that one of their own gets his due.

There are Jimmy Reddingtons all around us. They wear different uniforms—Marines, Army, Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard—but they have in common a way of life that elevates service to country. Amid the cookouts, parades and flags that mark the last weekend in May, the stories of the men and women who didn’t live to make the trip home will rightly be told at thousands of Memorial Day celebrations in little towns and big cities across the United States.

Fifty-one years is a long time to wait for recognition. But the people of Scranton know it is never too late for the living to show our gratitude for the sacrifices that make America’s freedom possible.

For the past several days, the American public has been treated to quite a spectacle. Since President Trump first suggested in March 2017 that his campaign had been “wiretapped” by President Obama, we have been assured by our betters across the political spectrum that claim was not true and Trump’s accusations were the unhinged hallucinations of a mad man.

But as congressional investigators get closer to the truth, and the media begins casually to admit that yes, Obama (i.e., his Justice Department) did wiretap (i.e., surveil) the campaign (i.e., Trump Tower) as well as one member of his transition team, we are getting a shiny new spin: Well of course the Obama folks investigated the Trump campaign and of course it was not conducted by spies and of course this was all for the good of the country and of course it is Trump’s fault anyway.

The most mendacious tale now emerging from the news media, Democratic propagandists, and the NeverTrump Right is how the FBI’s investigation into the Trump campaign just months before Election Day actually helped Trump and hurt Hillary Clinton. Why? Because voters allegedly were unaware that Trump campaign associates were being “investigated” by the FBI for their tenuous ties to Russia; if we had known before November 8, 2016, Hillary would have won Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.

The latest dream sequence from #TheResistance originates from the May 16 scoop in the New York Times about President Obama’s FBI initiated probe called “Crossfire Hurricane” which was tasked to investigate four Trump campaign aides exactly 100 days before the presidential election. The general angle of the lengthy story is how former FBI Director James Comey was far tougher on the Clinton email probe and more cautious about the Trump campaign investigation. (Pause to chortle.)

The Times story appears to serve two purposes: First, to soften the blow of the upcoming Justice Department inspector general’s report on the Clinton email investigation, which is expected to cite misconduct by a number of Justice officials; and second, to get ahead of the news that the Obama Justice Department spied (yes, spied) on former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn beginning as early as August 2016.

But it was this little nugget—“News organizations did not publish Steele’s reports or reveal the FBI’s interest in them until after Election Day”—that sent Trump foes into the stratosphere. The voters-didn’t-know-about-the-FBI-investigating-Trump! meme joined Russian social media bots and brainwashed suburban moms as the latest part of the continuously evolving excuse for why Clinton suffered the most humiliating loss in electoral history.

https://amgreatness.com/2018/05/25/the-open-secret-of-the-fbis-investigation-of-trumps-campaign/
For days, the anti-Trump mob has leveraged that single sentence into a whole new plotline: The FBI helped Trump win the election by concealing the investigation from voters.