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Barr: ‘Simply Not True’ Comey was Hands-Off During Crossfire Hurricane Investigation By Tobias Hoonhout

Posted By on December 20th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/barr-simply-not-true-comey-was-hands-off-during-crossfire-hurricane-investigation/

William Barr pushed back Wednesday on James Comey’s assertion that he had no knowledge of the “particulars” of the FBI’s infamous Crossfire Hurricane probe, in which the bureau was found to have made 17 “significant errors” in pursuing FISA warrants to surveil members of the 2016 Trump campaign.

During an interview Sunday with Fox News’ Chris Wallace, Comey attributed the FBI’s errors in the FISA process detailed by DOJ inspector general Michael Horowitz’s report to “sloppiness,” and said that he “didn’t know the particulars of the investigation” as director.

“As a director sitting on top of an organization with 38,000 people, you can’t run an investigation that’s seven layers below you,” he said. “You have to leave it to the career professionals to do . . . If a director tries to run an investigation, it can get mucked up in other kinds of ways given his or her responsibilities and the impossibility of reaching the work being done at the lower levels.”

But speaking Wednesday with Fox News’ Martha McCallum, Barr disagreed with Comey’s characterizations, especially the former FBI director’s claim that he was “seven layers” above the investigation.

“One of the problems with what happened was precisely that they pulled the investigation up to the executive floors, and it was run and birddogged by a very small group of very high-level officials,” Barr said. “The idea that this was seven layers below him is simply not true.”

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If Impeachment Articles Are Not Delivered, Did Impeachment Happen? By Andrew C. McCarthy

Posted By on December 20th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/12/trump-impeachment-if-impeachment-articles-are-not-delivered-did-impeachment-happen/

It’s hard to believe the Speaker’s latest stunt will go on for very long.

I’ll confess: Last night, when I was first told that Speaker Nancy Pelosi was toying with the idea of not delivering the two articles of impeachment voted by the House against President Trump, I assumed it was a joke.

For these last weeks, the Democrat-dominated chamber has been in a mad rush to impeach the president. Democrats even tacked on article two — “obstruction of Congress” — because, they told us, time could not be wasted engaging in the usual negotiation and litigation over legislative demands for executive branch information. Trump is a clear and present threat to “continue” undermining our elections, we were admonished. That’s why he needs to be impeached right now. That’s why the political class cannot responsibly leave his fate up to the sovereign, the People, who will vote in November.

But now that the deed is done, it’s . . . hey, not so fast.

Pelosi and Democratic leadership have convinced themselves there may be advantage in delaying the formal, ministerial delivery of the impeachment articles — as if Mitch McConnell were in as much a hurry to receive them as Democrats were to conjure them up. The thought is that this latest strategic petulance might pressure Senator McConnell into promising a full-blown trial, including summoning as witnesses top aides of the president whom the House didn’t bother to summon because tangling over privilege issues would have slowed up the works.

So it’s not a joke, but I still have to laugh. When I was a prosecutor negotiating plea deals, I always found the most pathetic defense lawyers were the ones who acted like they were playing with the House money when, in stark reality, it was they who needed something from me. Now here’s Pelosi trying to play hard to get with McConnell who, I imagine, couldn’t care less how long Democrats want to dither.

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Sidney Powell: Durham Report May Indict Brennan, Comey, And McCabe

Posted By on December 20th, 2019

https://trendingpolitics.com/sidney-powell-durham-report-may-indict-brennan-comey-and-mccabe/

In a bombshell of a statement, attorney Sidney Powell suggested that at least three top Obama regime figures could soon be in serious legal jeopardy. 

Powell, who is currently representing former national security adviser and retired Army general Michael Flynn – who was set up by the FBI – predicted that John Brennan, James Comey and Andrew McCabe may have indictments in their future. Following the release of the long-awaited DOJ Inspector General’s report which provided damning evidence that high-ranking officials relied on the debunked dossier of slimy British spook Christopher Steel to defraud the secret court, the next phase is coming. 

According to Powell, the ongoing investigation into the origins of the Russia hoax by Attorney General William Barr and prosecutor John Durham could result in the trio facing charges and the very real possibility of jail time. 

The crusading attorney made her comments during a round table discussion on the podcast The War Room.

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Pelosi’s impeachment delay is an unforced error Refusing to hand impeachment articles to the Senate looks like partisan pique because it is Charles Lipson

Posted By on December 20th, 2019

https://spectator.us/pelosi-impeachment-delay-unforced-error/

One of our perennial school pranks was to place a whoopee cushion secretly on the chair of an unsuspecting teacher. When she sat, she would launch the resounding clap of flatulence. That, metaphorically, is what just happened to Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Unfortunately, she placed it on her own chair. The embarrassing noise sounded when she announced she would delay sending the House’s Articles of Impeachment to the Senate.

This delay was a nakedly partisan ploy — and a major error of political judgment. Every day it continues will cost Democrats in the general election.

Why?

First, the Democrats should be emphasizing only the constitutional necessity of impeachment. That’s why Speaker Pelosi wore funereal black for the House vote, why she tried in vain to stop jubilant Democrats from taking selfies after the vote. (She seemingly couldn’t control Washington Post reporters, who did the same thing. Democracy dies in derangement.) The delay highlights the Democrats’ raw political calculations. Of course, those calculations are always the drivers for both parties in Washington. What Pelosi’s stunt does, though, is put them front and center.

The real motives are painfully obvious. Democrats want Trump out not for some specific reasons (the articles of impeachment are virtually inkblots) but because they truly, deeply hate him. Republicans want to keep him, most because they like him, some because they think the party will implode if they remove him now. Both parties are united. Impeachment only solidified their stances. 

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The Deep State Will Challenge the New FDA Head Henry Miller & Jeff Stier

Posted By on December 19th, 2019

https://amgreatness.com/2019/12/18/the-deep-state-will-challenge-the-new-fda-head/

If we are to realize the kind of aggressive, innovation-promoting deregulation called for by President Trump, Stephen Hahn will need to disrupt the agency’s built-in bias for overregulation.

Now that the Trump Administration’s new FDA commissioner, Dr. Stephen Hahn, has been confirmed, he’ll find he has one of the most difficult and important jobs in government. The FDA’s purview is wide, regulating pharmaceutical and other medical, food, and vaping products that account for more than 25 cents of every consumer dollar, over a trillion dollars annually.

Government regulation offers some reassurance to the public, to be sure, but when it is wrong-headed or merely fails to be cost-effective, it actually costs lives—directly by withholding life-saving and life-enhancing products, and also indirectly by diverting societal resources to gratuitous regulatory compliance.

Dr. Hahn is inheriting an organization that is huge, critical, and dysfunctional. The stakes are high. For example, FDA has pushed the average cost (including out-of-pocket expenses and opportunity costs) to bring a new drug to market to over $2.5 billion. That ensures that many new drugs will have a hefty price tag, and that others will never be developed at all.

Putting FDA on the right track will require toughness and discipline at an agency where more than 99.9 percent of the employees are civil servants who cannot be fired even for incompetence or insubordination. (Did we hear someone mutter, “deep state?”)

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MY SAY: WHAT IS A COLLECTIVE NOUN FOR THE DEMOCRATS?

Posted By on December 19th, 2019

A gathering of witches is called a “coven.”  A gathering of ravens who often gang up on their prey or animals that enter their space, is actually called a “congress” or an “unkindness” 

Barracudas in numbers are called a “battery.” Vultures in a group are called a “wake.”  Rattlesnakes convening are called a “rhumba.”

By Jove! Here is a perfect collective noun for the Democrats in Congress:

A group of hyenas is called a “cackle.”

Perfect!

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Boris Johnson’s Victory Heralds a Golden Era in US-UK Relations by Con Coughlin

Posted By on December 19th, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15310/boris-johnson-us-uk-relations

The US president said a future US-UK trade agreement has “the potential to be far bigger and more lucrative” than any deal that could have been made with the EU.

Compared with the calamitous impact a victory for Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, whose politics is defined by his visceral anti-Americanism, would have had on transatlantic relations, Mr Johnson’s return to Downing Street will have been greeted with enormous relief in the White House, as it means Washington now has a firm ally in London, someone who is committed to breathing new life into the vital and long-standing partnership between Britain and America.

Boris Johnson has only been back in Downing Street a few days following his stunning victory in Britain’s general election, but there are already early signs that his premiership will preside over a dramatic revival in transatlantic relations not seen since the heyday of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher.

First and foremost, the British prime minister has made it abundantly clear that his first priority will be to break the Brexit deadlock that has effectively paralysed British politics, and the country’s ability to make its voice heard on the international stage, at the earliest possible opportunity, thus opening the way for a trade deal with Washington.

As a start, Mr Johnson has committed his new government to fulfil its election pledge to complete Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union by the end of January. Furthermore, he will enshrine in law his promise that the complicated trade negotiations that are due to take place next year to finalise Britain’s future trading relationship with the EU bloc will be completed by the end of 2020.

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Turkey’s East-West Carpet Trading by Burak Bekdil

Posted By on December 19th, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15233/turkey-east-west

In addition, Turkey is in talks with Russia to purchase a second batch of the S-400 system, including coproduction and technology transfer options. If the S-400 system is operated in Turkey, Moscow could find a built-in cyber backdoor to spy on NATO assets.

Turkey’s Islamist strongman, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, said in September that it was unacceptable for Turkey not to have its own nuclear weapons – although Turkey is a signatory to both the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty.

In 2016, Erdoğan said that Turkey did not need to join the European Union “at all costs” and could instead become part of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, a security bloc dominated by China, Russia and Central Asian nations

Erdoğan thinks that he can forever benefit from the East-West divide by officially belonging to West but more-than-courting the East. He seems to love playing the Russia card to Americans and the America card to Russians. He should be led to understand that he cannot play this carpet trading game forever.

While NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, celebrated its 70th anniversary on December 4, these days it is sitting on a different paradigm than it did since its birth in Washington DC in 1949. Three years later, in 1952, Turkey, along with its Aegean rival Greece, became a member.

In the 67 years since its membership, Turkey has moved from being a staunch ally defending Europe’s southeast flank in the Cold War to being NATO’s unresolved burden.

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Corbyn Crushed, A Telling Lesson for Democrats But will the Democratic Party take heed?

Posted By on December 19th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/12/corbyn-crushed

British citizens went to the polls this past Thursday and handed opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn a humiliation that will permanently stain his already tarnished reputation. His Labor Party sustained a stunning rout at the hands of the conservatives and suffered its worst showing since before World War II.

True to form, Corbyn and his die-hard acolytes refused to take any responsibility for the calamity befalling their party and instead, blamed Brexit and the media for their defeat. Corbyn’s vapid explanations and denials are steeped in a combination of hubris, venality and fantasy. Britain’s citizens plainly recognized Corbyn for what he was, a vile, hard-core socialist and anti-Semite who could not be trusted to lead the nation.

As noted by Katie Hopkins at FrontPage, Corbyn ran on a platform that would have fostered an atmosphere inimical to the free market system. He called for the nationalization of utility companies. Wanted illegal aliens to have access to Britain’s already heavily burdened healthcare system and wanted to restructure the inheritance tax in a manner that would have further punished those who managed to accumulate some measure of wealth during their lifetime. 

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Pelosi Threatens to Call Off Impeachment Unless Senate Meets Her Demands Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on December 19th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2019/12/pelosi-threatens-call-impeachment-unless-senate-daniel-greenfield/

Speaker Nancy Pelosi refused to commit Wednesday to delivering articles of impeachment to the Senate, citing concerns about an unfair trial on removing President Donald Trump from office.

Senior Democratic aides said the House was “very unlikely” to take the steps necessary to send the articles to the Senate until at least early January, a delay of at least two weeks and perhaps longer.

“So far we haven’t seen anything that looks fair to us,” Pelosi told reporters at a news conference just moments after the House charged Trump with abuse of power and obstructing congressional investigations. “That would’ve been our intention, but we’ll see what happens over there.”

Pelosi’s comments, which echo suggestions raised by other Democrats throughout the day, inject new uncertainty into the impeachment timetable and send the House and Senate lurching toward a potential institutional crisis.

Though the House adopted two articles of impeachment charging Trump with abuse of power and obstruction of congressional investigations, it must pass a second resolution formally naming impeachment managers to present the case in the Senate. That second vehicle triggers the official transmission of articles to the Senate.

By delaying passage of that resolution, Pelosi and top Democrats retain control of the articles and hope to put pressure on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to adopt trial procedures they consider bipartisan.

What leverage does Speaker Pelosi think she has here?