RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/434711-new-york-prosecutors-throw-out-constitution-to-charge-manafort

This month, the greatest off Broadway production should be titled “The Prosecutors,” starring Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. and New York Attorney General Letitia James. As in another dramatic comedy, “The Producers,” the state case against former Donald Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort seems designed to fail, leaving its prosecutors with the convenient windfall of public support and none of the burden.

The New York state charges that Vance filed against Manafort appear to run afoul of state and federal protections against double jeopardy, or being prosecuted twice for the same underlying conduct. The timing of the charges alone seemed right out of the playbook of “The Producers” character Max Bialystock, the corrupt Broadway figure who insisted that in New York the rule is “if you got it, flaunt it, flaunt it.” Accordingly, Vance waited just minutes after the Manafort sentencing to hit him with state charges, guaranteeing the maximum exposure and credit for his effort.

The problem is that the case appears not only constitutionally flawed but ethically challenged, coming right out of the Max Bialystock School of Prosecution. I have long been one of the longest and loudest critics of Manafort. He is a corrupt and despicable person who deserves the two sentences that could keep him in jail for the rest of his life. However, it is not his crimes but his association with President Trump that has driven the manic effort to charge him in New York. In this current age of rage over Trump, Manafort is a readily available surrogate for selective prosecution.

http://thefederalist.com/2019/03/19/peter-strzok-lie-spy-targeting-trump-campaign/

Last Thursday, Doug Collins, the ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, released the committee’s transcript of its interview of disgraced former FBI agent Peter Strzok. During the day-long questioning, Strzok sought to explain away the more deleterious text messages he sent to his mistress and former FBI lawyer Lisa Page.

When one considers Strzok’s explanation of his reference to an “insurance policy” in light of Page’s testimony, which Collins also released last week, and other previously known facts, there seem to be only two possibilities: Strzok was lying or an unknown spy was targeting the Trump campaign.

Strzok sent the “insurance policy” text to Page on August 15, 2016, just two weeks after the FBI’s launch of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation of the Trump campaign: “I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy’s office—that there’s no way he gets elected—but I’m afraid we can’t take that risk. It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you’re 40,” the former deputy assistant director wrote to Page.
Strzok’s Answer

When questioned on the meaning of this text by members of the House Judiciary Committee, Strzok testified that “we had received information from a very sensitive source alleging collusion between the Government of Russia and members of the Trump campaign.”

“As is frequently the case in counterintelligence investigations and any national security investigations,” Strzok added, “there’s a tension between the protection of a sensitive source and method of pursuing the investigation related to that information.”

https://amgreatness.com/2019/03/18/how-a-former-mccain-associate-obtained-the-steele-dossier-and-helped-advance-the-russian-collusion-narrative/

After receiving a subpoena to appear before the House Intelligence Committee last year, David Kramer, a close associate of the late Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.), invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. The committee had additional questions to ask Kramer about his handling of the infamous Steele dossier, which he helped circulate on Capitol Hill and in the news media after the 2016 presidential election.

Now, we may know why.

Kramer’s recently unsealed court deposition in a lawsuit related to the dossier contains bombshell revelations that not only directly contradict media reporting about how McCain came into possession of the dossier, but Kramer’s December 2017 testimony also undercut claims made by McCain himself in his 2018 book. This might explain why Kramer refused to appear before the committee for a second time.

It’s important to revisit the history of the dossier. While the term is meant to confer seriousness (it sounds more official than “file”), the dossier is nothing more than unverified political opposition research produced by Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer who now runs a consulting firm in London. Steele was hired in mid-2016 by Glenn Simpson, the head of Fusion GPS, also a political consulting firm, to dig up Russia-related dirt on then-candidate Trump. Simpson, in turn, was being paid by the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.

(Steele and Simpson have collaborated since 2009 on behalf of “oligarchs litigating against other oligarchs,” according to a 2017 article in The Guardian.)

Steele confessed that he never traveled to Russia, and instead relied on distant sources and hearsay for the dossier, which is a poorly formatted and in some places, ridiculous, collection of allegations about Trump and some associates. It’s nothing close to hard evidence—but that did not stop former FBI Director James Comey from presenting the dossier to a secret court in order to obtain a warrant to spy on a Trump campaign volunteer.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-jew-who-died-for-ilhan-omar-11552950199?mod=mhp

Rep. Ilhan Omar, a freshman Democrat from Minnesota, has become widely known for her attacks on supporters of Israel. Ms. Omar is a naturalized citizen whose Somali refugee family settled in the U.S. when she was a teenager. Tens of thousands of Somali refugees relocated to the U.S.—some 25,000 in the Minneapolis area—to escape the starvation, famine and civil war that turned Somalia into a lawless, failed state in the early 1990s.

Another name is worth recognition and remembrance, especially among Somali refugees: Lawrence Freedman. In 1992, the year after Ms. Omar’s family left Somalia, the U.S. sent troops there as part of a joint United Nations humanitarian effort. The U.S. intervention, Operation Restore Hope, began with the landing of U.S. troops near Mogadishu on Dec. 9.

Freedman was a U.S. Army veteran who earned two Bronze Stars in Vietnam. He was an original member of the Green Berets, reached the rank of sergeant major, and eventually became an instructor. He retired from the Army in 1990 and joined the Central Intelligence Agency. In 1992 the U.S. sent Freedman as part of an advance team to prepare the way for American troops in Somalia. On Dec. 23, two weeks after the troops had arrived, Freedman became the first American killed as part of the relief effort in Somalia.

Any American casualty is noteworthy, but Freedman’s sacrifice stands out because he was Jewish.

Thousands of Somali refugees who now live in Ms. Omar’s district had their freedom and security paid for with the blood of American soldiers—22 of them, including Freedman.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/poll-50-percent-say-mueller-investigation-is-witch-hunt/

50 percent of adults surveyed in an astonishing new USA Today/Suffolk University poll say that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation is a “witch hunt” and believe that President Trump has been the target of more investigative scrutiny than other presidents because of his politics.

The poll shows that trust in the president has increased as well. A majority of 52 percent still say they have little or no trust in Trump’s insistence that his campaign did not collude with Russia during the 2016 campaign season, but that number is down from 59 percent in December.
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Support for impeachment has faltered as well, with 62 percent saying the House should not impeach Trump compared to just 28 percent who want the lower chamber to seriously consider doing so. Democratic speaker Nancy Pelosi came out against the idea last week, telling the Washington Post, “Impeachment is so divisive to the country that unless there’s something so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan, I don’t think we should go down that path, because it divides the country.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/mccain-and-trump-11552939031

President Donald Trump is receiving the usual media condemnation for his weekend tweeting, including for his inaccurate commentary about the late Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz.) But reporters should acknowledge that an accurate recounting of the facts also shows ample grounds to criticize McCain’s actions during his final years in office.

On Twitter, Mr. Trump criticized McCain for the 2017 breaking of his promise to support repeal of the Affordable Care Act and also for McCain’s role in circulating the unverified Steele dossier with its claims of Trump-Russia collusion.

Mr. Trump tweeted that McCain embraced the dossier before the 2016 election when recent testimony suggests it was just after the election. Also, Mr. Trump claimed on Twitter that McCain finished last in his class at the U.S. Naval Academy when most reports indicate McCain actually finished fifth from the bottom.

Let’s hope for more accuracy from the President in the future, but he and many other Americans seem to have every right to be angry. On Thursday Rowan Scarborough reported for the Washington Times:

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/273194/california-drug-legalization-leads-political-daniel-greenfield

I’m shocked. Shocked.

In the more than two years since California voters approved the licensed growing and sale of recreational marijuana, the state has seen a half-dozen government corruption cases as black-market operators try to game the system, through bribery and other means. The cases are tarnishing an already troubled roll-out of the state permitting of pot businesses as provided for when voters approved Proposition 64 in November 2016…

“There is no doubt in my mind that the multi-billion-dollar nature of the marijuana industry is corrupting public officials,” said Lopey, a 41-year veteran of law enforcement who began his full-time career as a California Highway Patrol officer stationed in East Los Angeles.

California is going full narcosocialist and there’s a price to pay for that. The price is deeper corruption and criminality.

That case is just one of several that have involved cannabis sellers and growers allegedly bribing or trying to bribe government officials, or public officials acting illegally to get rich from marijuana.

Last year, Jermaine Wright, then the mayor pro tem of Adelanto, was charged with agreeing to accept a bribe to fast-track a marijuana business. Wright’s trial is scheduled for August. In May, FBI agents served search warrants at the home of Rich Kerr, who was mayor of Adelanto at the time, as well as at City Hall and a marijuana retailer.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273165/fake-newsom-lloyd-billingsley

“Gavin Newsom’s real ambition is not California’s governor seat,” University of San Francisco political science professor James Taylor told the San Francisco Chronicle, “it’s the presidency of the United States.” In similar style, Tad Friend of the New Yorker touts Newsom’s Bobby Kennedy look, as “Newsom seeks to embody Kennedy’s grainy glamour, to provide moral clarity in a bewildering hour.” For their part, Californians are now bewildered by the governor’s benevolence to the state’s worst criminals.

As the Sacramento Bee reported, Gov. Newsom “plans to sign an executive order Wednesday morning granting reprieves to all 737 Californians awaiting executions.” The governor’s action comes “three years after California voters rejected an initiative to end the death penalty, instead passing a measure to speed up executions.”

Newsom claims the death penalty system has “discriminated against mentally ill defendants and people of color,” while not making the state safer and wasting “billions of taxpayer dollars.”

According to the Bee, the governor’s moratorium invites a “vitriolic” response from death penalty proponents and “some of the families of murder victims in the state.” The piece cites no family members of those murdered by recipients of the governor’s reprieve.

The initial story of the San Jose Mercury News was in effect a press release for Newsom, citing Natasha Minsker of the ACLU, the state’s major criminals’ lobby, that Newsom was showing “bold leadership.” The piece also failed to name or quote any relatives of murder victims.

https://www.nysun.com/editorials/pompeos-contempt-of-court/90613/

In a week of grim news, one bright spot stands out, at least for us — Secretary of State Pompeo’s announcement that America will block members of the International Criminal Court from coming here to investigate war crimes in Afghanistan. The ICC is a threat to American sovereignty, part of a broad attack on the very idea of sovereignty being levied by world government types.

No doubt there will be those who set this down as an all too Trumpian contempt. Concern about the ICC, though, is broadly bipartisan. The court was brought into being via a treaty called the Rome Statute, adopted in 1998. America inked the parchment, but in 2000 President Clinton declared he would neither submit the treaty to the Senate for ratification nor recommend his successor do so.

The successor was President George W. Bush, who went Mr. Clinton one further. He worked with Congress to pass the American Service-Members’ Protection Act. It guards our GIs and officials from criminal prosecution by “an international criminal court to which the United States is not party.” It passed the Democratic-led Senate by a vote of 71 to 22. The opposition to the ICC was bipartisan.

https://www.nysun.com/editorials/chelsea-clintons-sister-souljah-moment/90612/

The attempt by students at New York University to blame Chelsea Clinton for the massacre of Muslims in New Zealand is a shocking marker of the temper of our times. At a vigil for the 49 persons killed by a self-described “racist” and “ethno-nationalist eco-fascist,” students accused Ms. Clinton of having stoked the killer’s hatred because — wait for it — she recently criticized anti-Semitism.

If that sounds crazy, feature the video that has gone viral on Youtube. It shows Ms. Clinton, visibly pregnant and backed against a wall, being told — by a woman jabbing a finger at her — “Forty-nine people died because of the rhetoric you put out there.” It was apparently a reference to Ms. Clinton’s condemnation of the anti-Jewish remarks of, among others, Congresswoman Ilhan Omar.