RUTHFULLY YOURS

Senate Democrats have stalled nearly every Trump nominee in government, but their growing opposition to Mike Pompeo as Secretary of State suggests they don’t want the President to have even his top national security officials. Their new standard seems to be that any nominee who agrees with the elected President is disqualified.

“I don’t want a Secretary of State who is going to exacerbate the [sic] President Trump’s tendencies to oppose diplomacy,” Democratic Senator Tim Kaine (D., Va.) told CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday. He cited Mr. Pompeo’s opposition to Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Tehran and his support for “regime change,” although moderator Margaret Brennan didn’t let him finish that thought.

Mr. Kaine may recall that Donald Trump campaigned and won while opposing the Iran nuclear deal, and if Mr. Kaine is still sore about the outcome he should have told his running mate to campaign in Wisconsin. As for regime change, that isn’t Mr. Trump’s policy as far as we can tell, though does Mr. Kaine think the world is better with a regime in Iran that spreads terror around the world?

California Democrat Dianne Feinstein attributes her come-lately opposition to Mr. Pompeo’s allegedly undiplomatic statements about “Muslims and the LGBT community.” She doesn’t like that Mr. Pompeo supports traditional marriage. This has nothing to do with rallying allies to support a containment strategy for Iran, though it might relate to her Senate primary challenge from the left this year.

Sens. Feinstein and Kaine and 12 other Democrats voted to confirm Mr. Pompeo as CIA director—he was confirmed 66-32—perhaps because he’s so well qualified. Mr. Pompeo is a West Point and Harvard Law graduate who served three terms in Congress, and along with fellow Republican Tom Cotton unearthed the Obama Administration’s secret side deals with Tehran. He has invigorated the CIA clandestine service, tried to give Mr. Trump options on North Korea, and has gained the President’s trust. With Rex Tillerson out at State, Mr. Trump said Wednesday he had already dispatched Mr. Pompeo to conduct diplomacy with Kim Jong Un in Pyongyang.

Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz has released his watchdog report on the conduct of former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe and it is scathing. As I discussed in an earlier column, McCabe took the unprecedented step of a top former FBI officer of asking for donations on GoFundMe and racked in more than half a million dollars. He notably raised the money and then closed the site not long before the release of the report showing that he repeatedly made false statements to investigators as well as Comey. It was like creating a victim fund before police concludes whether you were attacked or the attacker. Horowitz did not convey any doubt as to McCabe being the culprit. He and his career staff found that McCabe not only lied but did so to advance his personal — the public’s — interest. If that is the case, it only magnifies the concerns over the treatment of McCabe as opposed to the Trump officials (like Michael Flynn) who he once investigated. The fact that he had the audacity to raise a half million dollars before the facts were made public only heightens these concerns.

At issue is the leak to The Wall Street Journal about an FBI probe of the Clinton Foundation.

Notably, the report itself belies the allegation of McCabe that he was victim of a witch hunt loyalists. Not only was Horowitz an Obama appointee but his staff were all career officials. More importantly, the report confirms that opened this review a week before Trump was sworn in. It preceded and had no connection to Mueller.

The report takes apart McCabe’s spin with clinical precision. It found that McCabe, 50, lied or misled investigators on not one but four occasions. It also found that these lies were clearly meant to help McCabe alone. McCabe said that he had full authority to make the disclosures. The IG found no evidence to support those claims. It also found that there was no evidence that then FBI Director James Comey was informed by McCabe. The IG states:

Hillary Clinton picked Judge Kimba Wood to be her husband’s Attorney General. According to various accounts from the period, Hillary was looking for someone “loyal” who would allow her to stack the Justice Department with her own political allies. It was still early in the game, but Hillary had always been Bill’s main plumber and she was anticipating all of the Clinton scandals that were yet to come.

Hillary had interviewed Kimba Wood for twice as long as her husband did. But the Clintons had also been allegedly encouraged to pick Wood by Michael Kramer who had been Time’s chief political correspondent and the judge’s husband. After interviewing Bill for Time’s fawning Man of the Year piece, he allegedly suggested that the President of the United States make his wife his Attorney General.

But even though Kramer had compared Bill Clinton to Lincoln and FDR, it was not to be. Between Wood’s employment of an illegal alien and her past as a Playboy bunny, it was all over. Kimba Wood, whose “rectitude” the media never stopped praising, went on to be involved in a sleazy scandal. She became known as the “Love Judge” for her role in her current husband’s affair. She filed for divorce accusing her former husband of withholding sex. Rectitude doesn’t get more old-fashioned than this.

“Wood is universally described as a woman of almost old-fashioned rectitude” (New York Magazine) and “Kimba Wood’s rectitude is something between a legend” (Detroit Free Press).

(Author’s note: In August 2016, I wrote an article entitled “James Comey and the Stinking Fish Factor,” warning readers that the Comey fish was already rotting and that things were bound to get worse. Clearly, they just did. And it’s just as clear that the uncontrolled hysteria we are witnessing from Democrats has to do not with bogus accusations about Russia but about the criminal indictments coming down the pike for the people they’ve blindly defended for decades—that would be Bill & Hill Clinton—and possibly against even bigger fish! I’ve updated this article by abbreviating its length but also adding a few sentences. -JS)

I always thought that James Comey was a company man. As it happens, the company he headed is among the most influential, powerful and scary companies in the world—the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

But still, a company guy. Whether working for a president on the moderate-to-conservative spectrum like G.W. Bush or for a far-left Alinsky acolyte like Barack Obama, makes absolutely no difference to this type of obedient—and also subservient—accommodator.

The red flag of skepticism should have gone up years ago to the American public when lavish praise was heaped on Comey by people who revile each other. While the spin insists that Comey is a lot of virtuous things—“straight-shooter,” “unbiased,” “fair-minded,” “non-partisan” “man of his word”—don’t be fooled. That’s Orwellian newspeak for someone who will do and say anything to keep his job, including, as Comey did in yet another Clinton fiasco case last summer, allow her to…

1. Create out of whole cloth an “intent” criterion in federal law to let a clearly corrupt politician––that would be Hillary––off the hook, and,

2. Appropriate the job of the Attorney General in announcing what the outcome of the FBI’s investigation should be.

While citing Hillary’s “extreme negligence” in handling classified information, a virtual litany of illegal acts committed by the then-Secretary of State, and the fact that hostile foreign operatives may have accessed her email account, Comey said he would not refer criminal charges to Attorney General Loretta Lynch and the Justice Department. Hillary, he said, was “extremely careless” and “unsophisticated,” among other spitballs he hurled in her direction before completely letting her off the hook!

Comey’s friend and colleague, Andrew C. McCarthy, said that the FBI director’s decision is tantamount to sleight-of-hand trickery. “There is no way of getting around this,” McCarthy wrote. “Hillary Clinton checked every box required for a felony violation…in essence, in order to give Mrs. Clinton a pass, the FBI rewrote the statute, inserting an intent element that Congress did not require.”