RUTHFULLY YOURS

The Justice Department on Friday indicted three Russian companies and 13 individuals for interfering in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, and the man who should be most upset is Donald J. Trump. The 37-page indictment contains no evidence of collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign, but it does show a systematic effort to discredit the result of the 2016 election. On the evidence so far, President Trump has been the biggest victim of that effort, and he ought to be furious at Vladimir Putin.

The indictment documents a broad social-media and propaganda campaign operating out of Russia and involving hundreds of people starting in 2014 that “had a strategic goal to sow discord in the U.S. political system.” It certainly succeeded on that score, as Democrats and the media have claimed that Mr. Trump’s election is illegitimate because he conspired with Russia to defeat Hillary Clinton. The charge has roiled American politics and made governing more difficult.

The good news for Mr. Trump is that the indictment reveals no evidence of collusion. The Russians “posted derogatory information about a number of candidates,” the indictment says, and by 2016 “included supporting the presidential campaign of then-candidate Donald J. Trump” and “disparaging Hillary Clinton.” But it adds that the Russians “communicated with unwitting individuals associated with the Trump Campaign,” and it offers no claims of a conspiracy.

Readers of the indictment will be amused at the comic opera details. In or around June 2016, for example, Russians posing online as Americans “communicated with a real U.S. person affiliated with a Texas-based grassroots organization.” This “real U.S. person” vouchsafed the deep political secret that the Russians “should focus their activities on ‘purple states like Colorado, Virginia & Florida.’” Sure enough, the Russians thereafter referred to targeting “purple states.” Someone actually paid Russians to collect this insight.

“Hillary paid Steele to assemble a “salacious and unverified” dossier, with help from Blumenthal and Shearer, and paid Russian informants…..Indict them.”
On Friday, February 16, Special Counsel Robert Mueller indicted thirteen Russian nationals and several Russian companies for “interfering” with the 2016 election. Paragraph one of the indictment reads:

The United States of America, through its departments and agencies, regulates the activities of foreign individuals and entities in and affecting the United States in order to prevent, disclose, and counteract improper foreign influence on U.S. elections and on the U.S. political system. U.S. law bans foreign nationals from making certain expenditures or financial disbursements for the purpose of influencing federal elections. U.S. law also bars agents of anyforeign entity from engaging in political activities within the United States without first registering with the Attorney General. And U.S. law requires certain foreign nationals seeking entry to the United States to obtain a visa by providing truthful and accurate information to the government.

The indictment does not charge that Russians colluded or conspired with Donald Trump or the Trump campaign. The indictment does not allege that Russia affected the results of the election. The indictment does charge that Russia started its campaign in 2014, before Trump announced, so that its intent to interfere did not matter as to the candidates.

Russia denigrated Hillary, Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio and generally favored Bernie Sanders, Jill Stein, and Donald Trump.

The main thrust of the indictment is that the Russians “failed to register as foreign agents carrying out political activities within the United States, and obtaining visas through statements.” Had the Russians registered and stated so in their visa applications, then presumably there would be no violations, except for stealing the identities of Americans.

Special counsel Robert Mueller has brought charges against 13 Russian nationals and three Russian groups for interfering with the 2016 U.S. elections.

The explosive new charges allege that the Russians created false U.S. personas and stole the identities of real U.S. people in order to interfere with the 2016 presidential election, an assessment previously reached by U.S. intelligence agencies.

“This indictment serves as a reminder that people are not always who they appear to be on the Internet,” Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein said at a press briefing announcing the indictments.

“The indictment alleges that the Russian conspirators want to promote discord in the United States and undermine public confidence in democracy.”

President Trump, who has repeatedly cast doubt on whether Russia interfered with the election, has been briefed on the indictments, the White House said.

The efforts, which began in 2014, were connected to the so-called Internet Research Agency, a shadowy Russian operation based in St. Petersburg that leveraged Facebook and other social media platforms to spread divisive messages leading up to the 2016 election.

In 1922, Republican New York Congressman Fiorello La Guardia ran for
reelection and was opposed by a Tammany-backed Jewish candidate.
Sensing the opportunity to drive a wedge between La Guardia and his
Jewish supporters, the opposition circulated a flier in the Jewish
tenements calling La Guardia “a pronounced Jew hater.”

La Guardia fought back in a most unusual manner. He imposed one condition,
namely, that the entire debate be spoken exclusively in Yiddish.
Completely stunned, his opponent could not accept the proposal.

La Guardia, nicknamed the Little Flower (he was 5’2”) won reelection. La
Guardia was born in 1882 in Greenwich Village to his parents of
different religions. His Catholic father was Achille Luigi Carlo La
Guardia and his observant Jewish mother was Irene Lazzato Coen. To
maintain their heritage within the home, Achille spoke Italian to
Fiorello while Irene spoke to him in Yiddish. La Guardia became fluent
in both languages. Fiorello had earned a great reputation as a young
attorney among the Lower East Side’s immigrant Jewish garment workers
by representing many of them in court without charge. He also became
an early advocate for Jewish rights.

Every time a Muslim terrorist shoots, stabs, bombs or runs over Americans, the default response is, “Let’s not jump to any conclusions”. That’s swiftly followed by media spin pieces claiming that the majority of terrorist attacks are really committed by white male Republicans and the Amish based on math so bad that even the world’s crookedest bookie wouldn’t go near it. And anyone who argues that the pattern of Islamic terror attacks is a call for common sense migration reform is regarded as a racist and a coward who wants to destroy the Constitution by blowing a handful of attacks out of proportion.

(And do you know how many people are hit by lightning or stung by killer bees every year.)

And whenever a suburban shooting happens, especially in a school, it becomes a clarion call to dismantle the 2nd Amendment. And that’s also backed by some of the world’s worst statistics.

The worst gun violence statistics trolls work for Michael Bloomberg’s Everytown for Gun Safety. Bloomberg had bought Gracie Mansion out of the pocket change in his sofa cushion. But buying the office of mayor of New York City was a lot easier than his plans to buy the White House. Everytown was supposed to be a match for the NRA. But while the NRA represents gun owners, Everytown represents a lefty billionaire. And Bloomberg’s gun control trolls spent years dressing in drag to hide that simple fact.

There was Mayors Against Illegal Guns, but the group quickly began falling apart. Some members had to leave when they were caught misusing guns. Like Mayor James Schiliro who was arrested for waving guns around and demanding sexual favors from a young man. Then there was Ma Bloomberg’s Moms Demand Action. None of it worked. And Everytown for Gun Safety isn’t working either.

What does a fake group like Everytown do? It spreads fake statistics.

Everytown jumped on the Parkland, Florida school shooting to claim that there were “18 shootings at schools in the first 45 days of 2018.” If that sounds like a lot, you’re right.

But Everytown was being literally true, and false in every other way. There were 18 shootings at schools: counting suicides, accidental firearms discharges and shootings in the general vicinity of a school even when the building is completely empty. In around half of the shootings, no one was injured.

There was an interesting announcement on Wednesday for Ben Rhodes, formerly the Obama White House deputy national security adviser. Rhodes, you may recall, caught some flack at the end of Obama’s presidency for admitting to the New York Times that he was manipulating the media in his efforts to sell the Iran Deal: “We created an echo chamber,” [Rhodes] admitted, when I asked him to explain the onslaught of freshly minted experts cheerleading for the deal. “They were saying things that validated what we had given them to say.”

On Wednesday it was announced that Rhodes is joining the board of directors of the Ploughshares Fund:

If you know anything about the Ploughshares Fund, and their role in selling the Iran Deal, having Rhodes on their board is a good fit:

In March 2015, Joe Cirincione, president of a foundation called the Ploughshares Fund, was interviewed on NPR’s All Things Considered about the impending nuclear deal with Iran. “President Obama’s political opponents try to block everything he does,” he said. “But I think the center of the American security establishment is solidly behind the deal as it’s been outlined.” The interview was headlined on NPR’s website, “Nuclear Experts Remain Optimistic About Iranian Negotiations.”

Now that the Iranian deal has been finalized, so many discomfiting facts about the campaign to push it through a reluctant Congress have emerged that it’s difficult to keep track of them all. The latest revelations, however, are especially startling. On May 20, the Associated Press reported that Cirincione’s Ploughshares Fund apparently bought and paid for this favorable NPR coverage, giving the news outlet $100,000 last year and $700,000 in grants over a decade. Ploughshares also gave money to the Center for Public Integrity, which supports the influential nonprofit news outlet ProPublica, along with left-leaning publications such as Mother Jones and the Nation to beef-up their Iran coverage.

Every year in the United States, more than 600,000 prisoners wind up released from state and federal correctional institutions. According to the Justice Department, 67 percent of these ex-offenders get arrested within three years for committing a new crime. The federal government has sought for decades to solve the problem of recidivism by funding programs intended to lead ex-offenders to employment—a key factor in avoiding a return to crime—and analyzing their effectiveness. During 1971–74, for example, the Living Insurance for Ex-Prisoners (LIFE) initiative gave ex-offenders in the Baltimore area weekly income supports and help in finding jobs. The Job Training and Partnership Act of 1982 tried “vocational exploration” and “job shadowing.”

In 1994, Opportunity to Succeed provided job-placement assistance for “criminally involved individuals with substance abuse problems” in Kansas City, New York, Oakland, St. Louis, and Tampa. In the late 1990s, the Job Corps began providing “vocational and educational preparation coupled with job placement services.” Yet studies have shown little success for these projects in getting former offenders into long-term employment—and keeping them out of jail. “The accumulation of evidence during the past half-century indicates that ex-offender job placement programs are not effective in reducing recidivism,” wrote Marilyn Moses of the National Institute of Justice, the in-house think tank for the Justice Department, in a 2012 review of eight federally funded programs of this kind.

Government efforts in this area may have fared so poorly because it’s “not the government’s problem to fix,” as Brandon Chrostowski, a 36-year-old chef, puts it. “Since the beginning of time, it has been the people who move society.” In 2007, Chrostowski—who formerly worked in some of the world’s finest restaurants, including Charlie Trotter’s in Chicago and Le Cirque in New York City—founded the EDWINS (for “education wins,” Chrostowski has said) Leadership and Restaurant Institute in Cleveland to lead ex-prisoners into the culinary trades. A combination training course, restaurant, dormitory, and job-placement enterprise, EDWINS is doing what those federally funded initiatives have failed to do—reliably place the graduates of its six-month program into jobs, many for the first time in their lives. EDWINS operates its own dormitory for participants and some alumni; its curriculum includes a required seminar on French wines. Some 73 percent of its 150 “graduates” have found and kept jobs in one of the 60 Cleveland restaurants eager to hire those trained in the institute’s eponymous four-star French restaurant. EDWINS’s recidivism rate: 1.3 percent.

Columnist for National Review Andrew McCarthy spoke with Chris Buskirk and Seth Leibsohn about unpeeling all the layers of the ongoing story of the level of involvement of the Obama Administration in surveillance over former candidate and now President Donald Trump’s phone. They all discussed the Steele dossier, Nunes Memo, Grassley memo, and there is even a Gerald Ford joke worked into the mix. Listen to the podcast and read the transcript only at American Greatness.

Chris Buskirk: I am Chris Buskirk. He is Seth Leibsohn. Welcome back to The Seth and Chris Show. We’re joined by Andrew C. McCarthy. He is a columnist at National Review. He is a former federal prosecutor and he is the beneficiary of what I like to call the Andrew C. McCarthy Full Employment Act, which was one of the outgrowths of the Obama campaign and the Clinton campaign for President.

Andy, they’re never going to let you sleep as you unpeel the onion of the story of corruption during the final year of the Obama Administration, are they?

Andrew McCarthy: Boy, Chris, I will tell you, I have never, I’ve never seen a story like this that absolutely does not have a news cycle, maybe. I was a prosecutor still during the days of the Clinton, Lewinsky scandal, so maybe there was a story that maybe had a rhythm like this for a time but I’ve never seen anything quite like this. It’s amazing.