RUTHFULLY YOURS

We all knew what Watergate was. We knew what Iran-Contra was. And the Lewinsky scandal. And the purported outing of Valerie Plame. Up until now, each time a special prosecutor has been sicced on a presidential administration, we’ve known what the allegations were. Our views about whether the conduct involved warranted such debilitating scrutiny may have diverged sharply. But at least we knew what the investigations were about, what the presidents and/or their subordinates were accused of doing.

That’s because what they were accused of doing was criminal. You need a prosecutor only to investigate crime.

The id-in-chief is on the verge of forcing his attorney general out — and with him, much of the conservative base that got past its wariness of Donald Trump because of Jeff Sessions’s support. Yet, as the appearance of scandal engulfs the administration, we still don’t know what crimes Trump and his subordinates are suspected of committing. Or even if they are suspected of committing crimes at all.

Mind you, the “Russia investigation” — the investigation with no specified crime — has already factored heavily in the dismissals of a top White House staffer and the head of our country’s premier investigative agency. Now it seems the nation’s top federal law-enforcement officer is on the brink. There is background noise about indictments, pardons, and impeachment. But we still don’t know what the allegation is. Or if there is one.

At the risk of trying our readers’ patience, I am going to beat a dead horse I’ve been wailing on since the first days of the Trump-Russia controversy. I do it because someday we may look back and realize the debacle was driven by the confusing label of “counterintelligence investigation,” which has obscured, well, everything.

The confusion starts with the label itself. When you hear “investigation” you think crime. But counterintelligence is not about rooting out crime; it is about divining the intentions of foreign powers. It is not enough to say that crime is not its focus. Crime is not permitted to be its focus.

In the counterintelligence context, because the government is not trying to build a criminal case, the constitutional protections that apply in criminal investigations are significantly diminished. Thus, if the government pretextually exploits its counterintelligence authorities to conduct criminal investigations, serious legal problems arise. The 9/11 controversy over “the wall” — the infamous regulations that prevented information-sharing between counterintelligence and criminal agents — occurred precisely because the Justice Department was overeager to demonstrate its determination to keep the two realms separate.

Counterintelligence work would be more accurately described as “information gathering and analysis” than as an “investigation.” Investigations are about collecting evidence in order to prosecute crimes.

This is expressly reflected in federal regulations — specifically, the ones that control when a “special counsel” should be appointed and when an attorney general should recuse himself. These things come into play only when criminal activity has occurred. They are not applicable to counterintelligence probes, which usually don’t involve prosecutors at all.

There is a need for an attorney general to disqualify himself, or for a special counsel to be appointed, only when the AG or the Justice Department at large is beset by a conflict of interest. How do we know whether there is such a conflict? We look at the known crime, or the factual basis for suspecting a crime. We then ask whether some political or personal connection to the criminal transaction under examination disqualifies the AG or the Justice Department from participation. To answer the question, “Is there a conflict?” we look at the criminality that must be investigated or prosecuted.

The American political system has never quite seen anything like the current opposition to President Trump and his unusual reaction to it.

We are no longer in the customary political landscape. Usually, the out-of-power opposition — in this case, the Democratic party — offers most of the criticism and all of the alternative policies in order to win in the next election. Instead, Trump has an entire circle of diverse critics shooting at him. But they just as often end up hitting one another — and themselves.

So far, Trump’s most furious Democratic opponents have not been able to offer alternative visions to Trump’s agenda that might help them win back Congress in the 2018 midterm elections. Higher taxes, more government regulations, less gas and oil production, loose immigration policies, and the promotion of identity politics are not really winning issues.

Instead, the aim is to either to remove Trump before his first term is up or to so delegitimize him that he is rendered powerless.

Yet obsessions with Trump often lead to boomerang excesses — mad talk and visuals, from obscene rants to decapitation art — that hurt the attackers more than Trump.

Republicans should have been delighted with control of both houses of Congress, the Supreme Court, state governorships and the legislatures, and the White House. In principle, they laud Trump’s efforts to appoint strict constructionists to the federal courts, to increase oil and gas production, to reform Obamacare and the tax code, and to restore deterrence abroad.

Yet the Republican-controlled Congress is nearly paralyzed. It simply cannot unite to deliver on promised major legislation. Some senators and representatives find Trump too uncouth to support his otherwise agreeable proposals, and they fear (or hope) that he may not finish out his term. Some worry that Trump’s low approval rating might hurt their own reelections. Some are careerists who value getting along more than fighting for the White House agenda.

The result is that when factions of the Republican Congress are not battling one another, they are feuding with Democrats and often with the Trump White House.

One reason Trump has been slow to make major appointments is that he cannot trust the establishment of his own party, many of whom in 2016 signed petitions declaring Trump unfit for office.

At best, some anti-Trump intellectuals and pundits still cannot separate Trump’s conservative agenda (which they privately support) from Trump’s reality-television persona (which they find boorish and beneath the dignity of the presidency). At worst, some are so invested in the idea that Trump would or should fail that their opposition threatens to become an obsessive self-fulfilling prophecy.

The anti-Trump conservative-intellectual establishment also does not quite know where to aim its fire. At Democrats whose agendas they used to oppose? At Congress for supporting or not supporting Trump? At the liberal media that court anti-Trumpers because they find their Trump hatred useful for the time being?

The media have given up on impartial news coverage. Some journalists have announced that Trump is so beyond the pale that he deserves only unapologetic critical treatment. Research has shown that network coverage has been overwhelmingly anti-Trump.

At the center of this directed fire is the flamboyant, sometimes polarizing but usually cunning Trump. He is not a stationary target. He constantly ducks and weaves, with a flurry of executive orders, major White House shakeups, and trips throughout Europe and the Middle East, where he often gives good speeches and sometimes is warmly greeted.

The result of the circular firing squad is a crazed shootout where everyone gets hit.

A very brief refresher.

The Donald Trump Jr. meeting was about the Magnitsky Act which sanctions Russia. Obama and Hillary and Putin opposed the Act. So did Fusion GPS which was hired to go after it. It was also behind the Trump dossier. Bill Browder is the key surviving Magnitsky Act figure. He was set to testify against Fusion GPS.

And the Dems pulled the plug.

Senate Democrats used a parliamentary maneuver Wednesday to cut short a high-profile hearing, where a key witness was set to testify on Russia’s misdeeds and also raise fresh allegations against the company behind the infamous anti-Trump dossier.

Bill Browder, the CEO and co-founder of Hermitage Capital, was set to tell the Senate Judiciary Committee that the co-founder of the firm Fusion GPS was hired to conduct a “smear campaign” against him. Further, he planned to testify the campaign was orchestrated by Natalia Veselnitskaya — the Russian attorney who sought the highly scrutinized Trump Tower meeting with Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort in June 2016.

Browder released written testimony ahead of the hearing but his public remarks were delayed when Democrats invoked the “two-hour rule” to protest Republican efforts to repeal ObamaCare. The seldom-used rule bars committees from meeting more than two hours after the full Senate begins a session.

“I don’t know if the minority is intentionally trying to block testimony that may be critical of a firm behind the unverified Trump dossier, but I’ll bet two bits that had Paul Manafort or Donald Trump, Jr. appeared at today’s hearing, it would not have been prematurely shut down,” Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said in a statement. “The Democrat leadership is playing politics, plain and simple.”

The Dems really don’t want to touch the subject of Fusion GPS. Or delve into any details about the Magnitsky Act. That way lies accusations of collusion. And to protect themselves, they attempted a cover-up. And as they ought to remember, it’s not the crime, it’s the cover-up.

The ban on transgender service that President Trump reaffirmed was there for eight years under Obama. It was there in his first term and his second term. And the media said nothing.

Only in the summer of last year did the ban technically end. And, in practice, it remained in force. All the while there was no angry clamor about the suffering of potential recruits who couldn’t enlist. Those who are fuming with outrage now had hypocritically remained silent. Obama had done it. So it must be good.

Obama had kept the ban in place for almost his entire two terms in office. And he found a way to retain it throughout his final months. With a year’s review, the transgender recruits could only be accepted after he was out of the White House. That way he could have his social justice cake and eat it too. He would get the credit for ending the transgender ban without dealing with any of the problems.

And there were plenty of problems.

45% of transgender persons in the 18 to 44 age range are suicidal. This is a serious risk for personnel who are around weapons or operating machinery or aircraft. If this were the only issue, it would be enough to justify the medical ban.

Transgender operations and hormone therapy requires constant monitoring by a doctor. They carry serious health risks. Some of those risks require serious medications and ongoing management.

That is not what the military usually expects to deal with from recruits.

The Rand study being touted by transgender advocates who claim that medical expenses will only be in the millions relies on a statistical bait and switch. The actual cost is estimated to be in the billions.

The Army and Air Force wanted to delay implementation for another two years. That was on top of the original year review that was lapsing. The issue had become a heavy burden that we didn’t need.

So President Trump got rid of it. His policy is the same one that existed for most of Obama’s time in office. The televised outrage over it is shameless and cynical posturing by media hypocrites.

The transgender ban isn’t a moral or religious policy. It’s a medical one. The military doesn’t have the resources and isn’t equipped to deal with the complicated medical and social problems involved.

The Department of Defense fitness standards have an extensive list of disqualifiers. A “history of major abnormalities or defects of the genitalia such as change of sex” is there in between pelvic inflammatory disease and missing testicles. These medical issues are there alongside missing fingers, a history of gout and numerous other problems. They’re there because the military wants healthy and able recruits.

It’s that simple.

Military readiness demands personnel who can deploy on short notice without ongoing medical problems holding them back. It wants recruits in prime health who can give all they have. Medical issues don’t just drive up costs so that hard choices have to be made. They also cost lives.

Our armed forces run on teamwork. When members of the team can’t perform, they put lives at risk.

Bill Browder’s biography of his conversion from leftist doctrine is detailed in his book

Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man’s Fight for Justice by Bill Browder

In testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee Thursday, financier Bill Browder is expected to uncover another shocking revelation about Fusion GPS, the left-wing firm responsible for both the Trump-Russia dossier and the misleading defense of Planned Parenthood after the Center for Medical Progress sting videos. According to Browder’s prepared remarks submitted to the committee ahead of his testimony, the firm spread vicious lies about Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer who was imprisoned and killed for exposing corruption in Putin’s regime.

Browder’s testimony will dwell on the Russian government’s attempts to repeal a law passed in retaliation for abuses against Magnitsky, the Magnitsky Act. Russian attempts to repeal the law reached a fever pitch last year in Washington, and Browder will allege that the actors involved in this effort did not disclose their roles as agents for foreign interests, thus violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act. One of the notorious players in this game was none other than Fusion GPS.

Before addressing Fusion GPS, Browder will detail Magnitsky’s story. The financier — founder and CEO of Hermitage Capital Management, one of the largest investment advisers in Russia — will explain that in 2000, when Russian President Vladimir Putin first took power, he had to rein in the oligarchs. At first, Browder and Putin had the same enemies, so exposing corruption helped Putin.

In 2003, that all changed, and by 2005, Putin was targeting Browder. The financier hired Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky to investigate raids against his offices. Magnitsky uncovered astounding examples of identity theft and government corruption. For these discoveries, the lawyer was captured by Russian authorities and imprisoned.

Magnitsky was treated horribly and kept an official record of abuses against him by filing official complaints. He died on November 16, 2009, leaving behind a wife and two children. “Sergei Magnitsky was murdered as my proxy. If Sergei had not been my lawyer, he would still be alive today,” Browder’s testimony declares. So he pledged to “seek justice and create consequences for the people who murdered him.”

Browder’s efforts led to the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act, which froze assets and banned visas for those who killed Magnitsky, as well as for other Russians involved in human rights abuses. The bill passed the House (364 to 43) and the Senate (92 to 4) in November 2012 and was signed by President Obama in December that year.

Putin retaliated in the worst way possible. He banned the adoption of Russian orphans by American families. This was particularly horrible, Browder will argue, because Russia did not allow the adoption of healthy kids, only sick ones. American families adopted children with HIV, Down syndrome, and other ailments.

But thanks to Putin, these sick children would not be adopted by Americans. Instead, they would stay in the Russian orphanage system, which did not have the resources to properly care for them. Most would die before their 18th birthday, Browder will argue. “In practical terms, this meant that Vladimir Putin sentenced his own, most vulnerable and sick Russian orphans to death in order to protect corrupt officials in his regime.”

The Magnitsky Act hit Putin hard, according to Browder’s testimony, because he keeps a great deal of his money in the West (where property rights are a thing) and because it struck at Putin’s ability to reward his cronies in similar ways.

So Putin launched a campaign against the Magnitsky Act. Here’s where Fusion GPS comes in.

Whether it’s Mohammed becoming the most popular baby name, or one in 10 babies in England being Muslim or the fact that halal meat is being served in Pizza Hut, a Muslim story always tends to generate more heat than light. Indeed, Islamophobia is often perpetuated by fear and a sense that Muslims are taking over our jobs, our homes and our lives, thus leading to a polarizing society and the so-called clash of civilizations.

Those words are the lede of a December 2014 opinion piece for CNN entitled “The Muslims Are Coming!’ Why Islamophobia is so dangerous.”

To the embarrassment, more accurately the humiliation, of CNN, Deborah Wasserman Schultz, Nancy Pelosi, not to mention dozens of Democratic congressmen and women — all of whom used the article’s writer for IT help for their government computers — the author, Pakistani-born Imran Awan was arrested Tuesday by the FBI at Dulles Airport for alleged bank fraud. He was trying to flee the country for Qatar. (Yes, that Qatar!)

But that’s just what the shrinks call “the presenting complaint.” There may be a lot more to it — a whole lot more.

At best, Awan is a fraudster who, working with his family, bilked the U.S. taxpayers out of over four million in IT fees and overpriced computer equipment. At worst he’s an agent of Pakistan’s ISI in league with Al Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood, or even ISIS. There are other possibilities in between that are also of a frightening nature, including (although more remote) the mysterious death of Seth Rich.

Hello, what?

To take the worst first, for those who do not know the ISI, if you Google “Which intelligence service is the best in the world?” Pakistan’s ISI is number one, followed by India’s RAW, Israel’s Mossad, the CIA, and MI6. Russia’s FSB doesn’t make the cut. More on the ISI:

After fall of the Soviet Union, the ISI provided strategic support and intelligence to the Afghan Taliban against the Northern Alliance during the civil war in Afghanistan of the 1990s. [2] During more recent times, however, it has come under increasing criticism from both civilian and military circles for not having kept terrorist forces in society in check, especially against harbouring terrorists and acts against military forces, particularly those in neighbouring India. Recent political commentators and journalists, including Seymour Hersh, have noticed how dreaded terrorists like Osama Bin Laden had taken refuge close to military headquarters in Abottabad, Pakistan, and how it would be “impossible for the ISI not to know”.

For years, Imran Awan had access to the secret data and correspondence of many House committees, including foreign affairs. What did he do with it? As I said, that’s the worst case scenario (I guess). But I don’t want to bury my own lede in a welter of ledes, so here it is:

Jeff Sessions should immediately appoint a special counsel in this case whose tentacles are so vast they reach the highest levels of our government. The FBI, working unsupervised, has already been tainted by its heavily-criticized investigation of Hillary Clinton’s emails, an investigation that actually may turn out to be related to this one. It cannot be trusted to do this by themselves. We need a special counsel. CONTINUE AT SITE