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The Humanitarian Hoax of Open Borders: Killing America With Kindness Linda Goudsmit By Linda Goudsmit

Posted By on July 24th, 2017

The Humanitarian Hoax is a deliberate and deceitful tactic of presenting a destructive policy as altruistic. The humanitarian huckster presents himself as a compassionate advocate when in fact he is the disguised enemy.

Obama, the humanitarian huckster-in-chief, weakened the United States borders for eight years presenting his crippling policies as altruistic when in fact they were designed for destruction. His legacy, the Leftist Democratic Party with its “resistance” movement, is the party of the Humanitarian Hoax attempting to destroy American democracy and replace it with socialism.

Open borders for “suffering” refugees is the humanitarian hoax of the 21st century. The Leftist humanitarian hucksters and the colluding mainstream media present sympathetic images of displaced refugees seeking shelter to seduce the American public into believing that their open-border policy is humanitarian and the epitome of human kindness. Even Elmo gets a prime-time interview on CNN to encourage parents to reinforce Sesame Street’s message that refugee children are just like them – another generation of indoctrinated youth.

Open-borders have a twin purpose for the leftist humanitarian hucksters

Open-borders have a twin purpose for the leftist humanitarian hucksters. First, open borders are designed to flood America with illegal immigrants many who will vote illegally for their Democratic Party benefactors. Second, opening America’s borders to masses of immigrants from Islamic countries with cultural norms hostile to America will facilitate the social chaos necessary for the destruction of American democracy – the overarching goal of the leftist Democratic Party and their humanitarian hucksters.

The Islamist humanitarian hucksters are trying to convince the Western world that open borders are a humanitarian effort that will benefit the West because their peaceful religion will provide cheap labor, cultural enrichment, and cultural diversity.

Europe is the harbinger of cultural suicide. The left-wing liberal leaders in Europe have already opened their borders and demanded that the native European populations adapt to the hostile cultural norms of the Muslim immigrants. Rape, murder, terrorism, beheadings, every imaginable savagery followed. Immigrants with hostile cultural norms have no intention of working or assimilating. To the contrary, their mass immigration is a tactic of population jihad designed to conquer the host country and transform it into an Islamic state ruled by religious sharia law.

The Leftist/Islamist axis has the initial shared goal of destroying American democracy but their ultimate goals are diametrically opposed to one another. Leftists are trying to impose socialism and their belief that it will provide social justice and income equality. Islamists are trying to impose sharia law and their belief that the world will be at peace when the world has been conquered and converted to Islam.

The conflicting end goals of the Leftists and Islamists are no problem for the globalist elite

The conflicting end goals of the Leftists and Islamists are no problem for the globalist elite who are busy manipulating the entire Leftist/Islamist axis. The globalist elites who fund the leftist humanitarian hucksters and the Islamist humanitarian hucksters are using them both as useful idiots to facilitate the great Humanitarian Hoax of open borders worldwide that will create the overwhelming social chaos necessary to internationalize the police force and impose their own special brand of a new world order.

The Leftist/Islamist axis is populated by people too arrogant to understand that they are being used as puppets by the globalist elite who have an end game of their own.

Socialism with its complete government control is the prerequisite social structure for the globalist elite to internationalize the socialist countries and impose one-world government. One-world government is the new world order that the globalist elite intend to rule themselves. It is unapologetically described in chilling detail in Lord Bertrand Russell’s 1952 book “The Impact of Science on Society.” One-world government is a binary socio-political system of masters and slaves. There is no social justice in one-world government, there is no income equality in one-world government, there are no Leftists or political agitators of any kind in one-world government – only a docile, compliant population of slaves ruled by the globalist elite.
One-world government is the goal and the underlying motive of the campaign to destroy America from within

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Thought of the Day “Term Limits Revisited” by Sydney Williams

Posted By on July 24th, 2017

Daniel Webster spent a total of 27 years in the Senate and the House and served as Secretary of State for three Presidents. So, he knew whereof he spoke when he once warned: “Now is the time when men work quietly in the fields and women weep softly in the kitchen; the legislature is in session.” Today, his words sound dated and, perhaps, sexist, but his meaning resonates. Congress can be dangerous to our health. Webster understood power – its benefits, its temptations, its iniquity. To the good, it is a means to improve society; to the impressionable, it is an aphrodisiac; to opportunists, a venue for harm.

It is true that our representatives no longer represent us as they once did. Demographics prove the point. In 1800, there were 32 Senators and 106 House members, representing a population of 5.3 million people, or one for every 38,400 people. By 1900, the population of the U.S. was just over 76 million. We were represented by 90 Senators and 357 members of Congress, or one representative per 170,000 residents. Today, with a population of 321 million, 100 Senators and 435 House members, each member represents, on average, over 600,000 residents. Our representatives are less representative. However, the adaption of social media and changes in communication and travel should mean they are not isolated, that they should be able to better understand and be more responsive to the needs of the people. Somehow, that doesn’t seem true. They live, it appears, as secluded as the gods once did on Mt. Olympus.

The arguments used to support term limits tend to congregate around the idea that our representatives are out of touch; that party affiliation is more important than the wants and needs of constituents; that cronyism has become endemic and costs of campaigns, along with the time required to raise funds, take their toll. Term limits would encourage more active participation, and representatives would be freer to use judgement rather than heeding the demands of lobbyists. Term limits would promote fresh ideas and empower more quickly new arrivals to the Senate or the House. There are times when Congress absolves itself of laws it imposes on constituents. Ruth Bader Ginsburg made that point: “One might plausibly contend that Congress violates the spirit, if not the letter, of the constitutional doctrine of separation of powers when it exonerates itself from the imposition of laws it obligates people outside the legislature to obey.”

After an election, approval for Congress typically rises. People assume that the new Congress will enact laws championed by the victors during the campaign. But, inevitably they disappoint. The 2016 election was no exception. Congressional approval rose to 39% in January, but has subsequently slipped to 20%, according to Gallup, about where it was before the election. Bickering and rancor returned. Egos prevent accommodation. Whichever party is in control follows the advice of former Louisiana Governor Huey Long: “I used to get things done by saying please. Now I dynamite them out of my path.”

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COURTING DISASTER: SUPREME COURT DECIDES AGAINST HOMELAND SECURITY Court guts presidential authority to prevent the entry of terrorists. Michael Cutler

Posted By on July 24th, 2017

Within days of taking office President Trump issued an Executive Order that would, among other actions temporarily, suspend the entry into the United States, of citizens of seven countries that are associated with terrorism and/or are unwilling or unable to verify the identities and backgrounds of their citizens.

Those countries were: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.

In this dangerous era it is difficult to prevent the entry of foreign terrorists from many countries. However, when it is impossible ascertain the true identities or previous affiliations with criminal or terrorist organizations for aliens seeking entry, our government is forced to “fly blind” in a storm.

Trump’s Executive Order was issued to provide the U.S. government with an opportunity to attempt to develop a means of properly vetting aliens from these countries and was entirely consistent with long-standing immigration laws, specifically with Section (f) of 8 U.S. Code § 1182 – Inadmissible aliens).

This statute has been used by previous presidents to prevent the entry of aliens whose presence would be “detrimental to the interests of the United States.”

Terrorists certainly fall into that category.

Here is the relevant paragraph:

Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate.

Subsequently, the Trump administration eliminated Iraq from the list of countries and “tweaked” his executive order that has been largely described in the media as a “Travel Ban” for the citizens of “Six Muslim Majority Countries.” The media, out of an apparent desire to obfuscate the purpose of this Executive Order, has assiduously ignored the actual title of the Executive Order, Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry Into the United States which concisely articulates the purpose of that Executive Order, a purpose that is now blithely being ignored by the media and some federal judges.

Nevertheless, on June 26, 2017 the Supreme Court decision inexplicably exempted aliens from the Executive Order who had “bona fide relationships” with close family members or entities in the United States. Here are two relevant paragraphs from the Supreme Court decision:

For individuals, a close familial relationship is required. A foreign national who wishes to enter the United States to live with or visit a family member, like Doe’s wife or Dr. Elshikh’s mother-in-law, clearly has such a relationship. As for entities, the relationship must be formal, documented, and formed in the ordinary course, rather than for the purpose of evading EO-2. The students from the designated countries who have been admitted to the University of Hawaii have such a relationship with an American entity. So too would a worker who accepted an offer of employment from an American company or a lecturer invited to address an American audience.

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Humanitarian Hoax in the Military: Killing America With Kindness By Linda Goudsmit — #1

Posted By on July 24th, 2017

The Humanitarian Hoax is a deliberate and deceitful tactic of presenting a destructive policy as altruistic. The humanitarian huckster presents himself as a compassionate advocate when in fact he is the disguised enemy.

Obama, the humanitarian huckster-in-chief, weakened the United States military for eight years presenting his crippling policies as altruistic when in fact they were designed for destruction. His legacy, the Leftist Democratic Party with its “resistance” movement, is the party of the Humanitarian Hoax attempting to destroy American democracy and replace it with socialism.

Barack Obama perpetrated the Humanitarian Hoax on the military

In a stunning reversal of military protocols and procedures Barack Obama perpetrated the Humanitarian Hoax on the military. Scheduled to take effect July 1, 2017 Obama’s “Tier Three Transgender Training” materials were presented as compassionate and deeply respectful of the minuscule population of transgender soldiers. In fact these protocols and procedures were designed to weaken the military by making the feelings of a few soldiers more important than combat-readiness, and by placing the needs of individuals over the well-being of their units. Obama’s policies were not misguided they were deliberate.

Defense Secretary James Mattis has ordered the military branches to study the impact of President Barack Obama’s decision last year to allow open transgender troops to remain on duty rather than being automatically discharged.

Left to Mr. Mattis is a decision on whether to induct transgender people into the military. Facing a July 1 deadline, Mr. Mattis delayed a decision until at least January.

The mission of the military is unequivocally national defense – the protection of America and her people. The military is one of the only appropriate collectives in a democracy. It is a unique culture with unique rules where collective units, not individuals, are prioritized and where the mission supersedes the men/women who serve. Police departments are another form of appropriate collective in a democracy whose similar mission is national defense at a local and state level. Obama and his leftist Democratic Party are deliberately trying to weaken and undermine American police departments as well.

Obama’s long-term plan for socialism and its cradle-to-grave government control

Obama’s long-term plan for socialism and its cradle-to-grave government control is a political power grab that steals individual right and replaces them with national government rights. Like any predator the Democratic Party focuses its prey on the short game and disguises its long term objective. Sexual predators do not lure children with vegetables – they offer candy. Political predators do not lure their voters with hard work – they offer them free college, free healthcare, free food, free housing, free everything – and then the windows close, the doors lock, and the prey is captured and exploited.

Socialism is political candy for Americans who have been indoctrinated to believe that it will provide social justice and income equality. There are no individual rights in socialism – all rights belong to the national government. There are no property rights in socialism – all property belongs to the national government. The only social justice or income equality provided by socialism is that everyone is equally poor and equally exploited.

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The Humanitarian Hoax of Climate Change: Killing America With Kindness

Posted By on July 24th, 2017

The Humanitarian Hoax is a deliberate and deceitful tactic of presenting a destructive policy as altruistic. The humanitarian huckster presents himself as a compassionate advocate when in fact he is the disguised enemy.

Obama, the humanitarian huckster-in-chief, weakened and politicized the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for eight years by presenting his crippling policies as altruistic when in fact they were designed for destruction. His legacy, the Leftist Democratic Party with its “resistance” movement, is the party of the Humanitarian Hoax attempting to destroy American democracy and replace it with socialism.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was established by executive order under President Richard Nixon in 1970 and then ratified in the House and Senate. The primary mission of the EPA was the protection of human health and the environment through writing and enforcing regulations based on laws passed by the US Congress. At that time in history the growing public awareness of environmental issues stimulated the creation of non-governmental environmental protection agencies as well. The most famous was Greenpeace, which was created by environmental activists from Canada and the US.

Founding Greenpeace member Patrick Moore is now a vociferous critic of Greenpeace and its support for the unscientific politically motivated insistence upon man-made climate change. The extraordinary 6-minute video below is Dr. Moore’s testimony in front of the US Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, Subcommittee on Oversight on February 25, 2014.

The video chronicles Moore’s environmental activism as a young man and member of Greenpeace 1971-1986 to his current unequivocal rejection of the pseudo-science being used to support the unsupportable claims of man-made global warming and climate change. (Transcript of his testimony)

To understand why huckster-in-chief Obama insisted and continues to insist that climate change is man-made and the greatest threat to America it is necessary to understand the huckster and the hoax.
The huckster:

Obama was groomed by the globalist elite to bring “hope and change” to America, but it was not the hope or change that most Americans understood those words to mean. Barack Obama is a globalist and ideologically a radical socialist tutored in Saul Alinsky’s 1971 “Rules for Radicals.” Alinsky’s “Rules” is the guidebook for social revolution and transforming a democratic America into a socialist state. Socialism with its cradle-to-grave government control is the necessary political structure before imposition of the globalist elite’s end-game of one-world government. Barack Obama is a malignant narcissist whose self-aggrandizing personality made him the perfect puppet and most lawless president in US history. His stunning executive overreach was rivaled only by his greater crime of corrupting the impartiality of the US government by politicizing its agencies and using them to advance his personal political goals to weaken and destroy America. Barack Obama is a pawn of the globalist elites – the perfect con man.
The hoax:

The Humanitarian Hoax of climate change is the whopper of the 21st century. It is a deliberate political scheme to transfer the wealth of industrialized nations (particularly the US) to non-industrialized nations. It is globalized socialism where the assets of productive nations are transferred to non-productive nations. WHY?

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Jed Babbin:Certifiably wrong about Iran’s compliance It’s hard to believe, and much less to ‘certify’ that Iran is living up to its sworn obligations

Posted By on July 24th, 2017

During President Trump’s campaign he said that Mr. Obama’s 2015 nuclear weapons deal with Iran was the “worst deal ever.” Although there are many diplomatic deals vying for that title, the deal engineered by Mr. Obama is at least one of the worst ever for two reasons.

First, it essentially guarantees that the world’s principal terrorist nation will obtain nuclear weapons either during the fifteen-year term of the deal (stealthily) or openly soon after it ends. Second, because it does precisely nothing to limitIran’s development and production of ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons.

The Trump administration has certified to Congress that Iran is in compliance with the deal (the “Joint Cooperative Plan of Action”) twice, first in April and again last week. Those certifications are required every 90 days by the “Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act” (INARA), the anti-constitutional law that permitted Mr. Obama the ability to claim Senate approval of the deal without senate ratification.

Mr. Trump reportedly considered telling Secretary of State Tillerson to not make the July certification but decided not to. It would have been far better if the president had blocked both certifications.

The problems that should have blocked the certifications are found within INARA’s terms or are directly derivative of them.

INARA required that within five days of reaching an agreement with Iran, the president shall send Congress, “the full details of the agreement, including all supporting materials and any classified annexes to the agreement.”

That was never done. The Senate’s duty to object to that failure, thereby killing the deal, was ignored.

Because of the Senate’s failure we don’t know what the so-called agreement actually provides. For almost two years it has been entirely clear that secret side agreements were made with Iran that the U.S. wasn’t allowed to see. At least one of them provides that Iran can self-inspect the Parchin nuclear site which is believed to be the center of the Iranian nuclear weapons program. (Unsurprisingly, the self-inspections tell the IAEA that all is just peachy at Parchin.)

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Sweden: A Failed State? by Judith Bergman

Posted By on July 21st, 2017

The Swedish state, in true Orwellian style, fights those Swedish citizens who point out the obvious problems that migrants are causing.

When police officer Peter Springare said in February that migrants were committing a disproportionate amount of crime in the suburbs, he was investigated for inciting “racial hatred”.

Currently, a 70-year-old Swedish pensioner is being prosecuted for “hate speech”, for writing on Facebook that migrants “set fire to cars, and urinate and defecate on the streets”.

The security situation in Sweden is now so critical that the national police chief, Dan Eliasson, has asked the public for help; the police are unable to solve the problems on their own. In June, the Swedish police released a new report, “Utsatta områden 2017”, (“Vulnerable Areas 2017”, commonly known as “no-go zones” or lawless areas). It shows that the 55 no-go zones of a year ago are now 61.

In September 2016, Prime Minister Stefan Löfven and Minister of Interior Anders Ygeman refused to see the warnings: in 2015, only 14% of all crimes in Sweden were solved, and in 2016, 80% of police officers were allegedly considering quitting the force. Both ministers refused to call it a crisis. According to Anders Ygeman:

“… we are in a very difficult position, but crisis is something completely different. …we are in a very strained position and this is because we have done the biggest reorganization since the 1960s, while we have these very difficult external factors with the highest refugee reception since the Second World War. We have border controls for the first time in 20 years, and an increased terrorist threat”.

A year later the Swedish national police chief is calling the situation “acute”.

In 2015, only 14% of all crimes in Sweden were solved. In 2016, 80% of police officers were allegedly considering quitting the force. Nonetheless, Prime Minister Stefan Löfven (pictured above) refused to call it a crisis. (Photo by Michael Campanella/Getty Images)

Sweden increasingly resembles a failed state: In the 61 “no-go zones”, there are 200 criminal networks with an estimated 5,000 criminals who are members. Twenty-three of those no-go zones are especially critical: children as young as 10 years old are involved in serious crimes there, including weapons and drugs, and are literally being trained to become hardened criminals.

The trouble, however, extends beyond organized crime. In June, Swedish police in the city of Trollhättan, during a riot in the Kronogården suburb, were attacked by approximately a hundred masked migrant youths, mainly Somalis. The rioting continued for two nights.

Violent riots, however, are just part of Sweden’s security problems. In 2010, according to the government, there were “only” 200 radical Islamists in Sweden. In June, the head of the Swedish Security Service (Säpo), Anders Thornberg, told the Swedish media that the country is experiencing a “historical” challenge in having to deal with thousands of “radical Islamists in Sweden”. The jihadists and jihadist supporters are mainly concentrated in Stockholm, Gothenburg, Malmö and Örebro, according to Säpo. “This is the ‘new normal’ … It is an historic challenge that extremist circles are growing,” Thornberg said.

The Swedish establishment has only itself to blame for it.

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The Merkava 4: Why Hezbollah Should Be Afraid—Very Afraid The lessons of the 1973 and 2006 wars. Ari Lieberman

Posted By on July 21st, 2017

Following the 1973 Yom Kippur War, armchair pundits determined that the age of the tank as king of the battlefield had come to an ignominious end. They argued that the introduction of anti-tank guided missiles rendered the tank obsolete. How wrong they were. Several post-war studies of the conflict demonstrated that the tank was still indispensable to modern warfare and when employed in a combined arms manner with artillery and mechanized infantry, still reigned supreme.

Israel learned many lessons from the Yom Kippur War and incorporated those lessons into the development of its own indigenous tank, the Merkava (Chariot). The Merkava 1 entered service with the Israel Defense Forces in 1978 and first saw action in 1982 during Operation Peace for Galilee when it engaged and destroyed no fewer than nine Soviet-made, Syrian T-72 tanks without sustaining a single loss. It also reportedly succeeded in downing a Syrian anti-tank helicopter with its main gun.

Since that time, the Merkava has undergone several modifications and improvements, the latest iteration of which is the Merkava 4. The Merkava 4 is considered by armored warfare experts to be among the finest tanks in the world, and in terms of crew survivability, the safest.

In the summer of 2006, Israel was forced to go to war again, this time with the notorious terrorist organization Hezbollah. On July 12, two Israeli reservists were killed and their bodies snatched during a Hezbollah cross-border attack. Israel could not allow the outrage to go unanswered and decided to launch an offensive against Hezbollah. Nearly 400 Merkava tanks, mostly of the older II and III variants, were haphazardly deployed in the latter stages of the 34-day conflict.

During the course of the war, Hezbollah guerrillas fired thousands of anti-tank missiles – from the first generation Sagger to the highly advanced Kornet – at static Israeli infantry and tanks but only succeeding in damaging some 40 tanks and of these, there were only 20 penetrations. Despite these encouraging numbers, so-called experts began to once again challenge the utility of the tank and its place in modern warfare.

IDF planners saw things differently. They went back to the drawing board in an effort to draw conclusions from the performance of the Merkava and tactics employed by its crew members.

With at least 1/3 of its fighting force permanently stationed in Syria, the probability of Hezbollah initiating war against Israel in the near future is low. Even in the absence of the Syrian conflict, Hezbollah will soon not forget the thrashing it took at the hands of the IDF during the 2006 campaign. Nevertheless, most experts agree that the next Lebanon war is not a question of if, but when, and when it does begin, Israel’s latest Merkava variant, the vaunted Merkava 4 will be in the thick of it.

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Justine Damond: Killed by “Islamophobia” Political correctness put her in the way of a “nervous, jumpy” Muslim cop who took her life. Robert Spencer

Posted By on July 21st, 2017

A forty-year-old Australian woman named Justine Damond called 911 in Minneapolis Saturday night to report what she thought might be a rape; when police arrived, she approached the police car, and a Minneapolis police officer named Mohamed Noor shot her dead. Since then, Noor has refused to be interviewed by investigators, but has spoken to friends about what happened and why. The more Noor and those who know him have spoken, the more it becomes clear: Justine Damond was a casualty of “Islamophobia.”

Mohamed Noor is a Somali Muslim. He was the first Somali Muslim on the Minneapolis police force. In 2016, Minneapolis Mayor Betsy Hodges expressed her excitement about that fact: “I want to take a moment to recognize Officer Mohamed Noor, the newest Somali officer in the Minneapolis Police Department. Officer Noor has been assigned to the 5th Precinct, where his arrival has been highly celebrated, particularly by the Somali community in and around Karmel Mall.”

Hodges wasn’t excited because Mohamed Noor had the skills necessary to become a fine police officer. She was only excited because he represented a religious and ethnic that she was anxious to court. And it is increasingly clear, as we learn about Mohamed Noor’s nervousness and jumpiness and lack of respect for women, and from his own account of events that he relayed to friends (that he was “startled” and reacted by opening fire), that Mohamed Noor was not cut out to be a policeman. He did not have the temperament for it, and if he hadn’t killed Justine Damond, he would likely have done something similar at some point.

So why was he on the force at all? Because he was the first Somali Muslim on the Minneapolis police force. He was a symbol of our glorious multicultural mosaic. He was a rebuke to “Islamophobes” and proof that what they say is false. Minneapolis authorities placed a great deal of faith in Mohamed Noor. He was for them the triumph of diversity, the victory of their worldview. But he has let them down.

Mohamed Noor is not a jihad terrorist. This was not a jihad attack. He is just a trigger-happy, panicky, reckless individual who held his job not because he was fit for it, but because of what he symbolized. And in the wake of his failure, Minneapolis multiculturalists aren’t about to reconsider their religion. On the contrary, they are doubling down. Minneapolis Mayor Betsy Hodges has immediately recognized — as authorities do everywhere after jihad attacks — that the real victims are not those who were killed or wounded, but the Muslim community. She should have issued a statement saying that she recognized that Mohamed Noor was not hired because he was competent, but because he was a Somali Muslim, and that she sees now that Leftist social engineering on the police force costs lives. She should have promised that from now on, police officers will be hired based on their fitness for the job, not their religion or ethnicity.

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Mueller Expands His Probe Again It’s all Russia, Russia and Trump, Trump — all the time. Matthew Vadum

Posted By on July 21st, 2017

Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III is yet again expanding the scope of his off-the-rails investigation into the Left’s wacky Russian electoral collusion conspiracy theory by examining financial transactions even vaguely related to Russia involving President Trump’s businesses and those of his associates, Bloomberg News reports.

Honest observers recognize that with the election of Donald Trump, the longtime Russophiles of the morally flexible Left flipped on their traditional friends in Moscow faster than you can say Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact or Operation Barbarossa. Ignoring its own history of rampant seditious collaboration with Russia, the Left has now managed to convince many that any past or present connection a Republican has or had to Russia, however trivial, is somehow now retroactively evidence of treason against the United States.

There is still no evidence that Trump covered up a crime, or even that there was an underlying crime to be concealed but that hasn’t stopped the Left’s witch-hunt from growing and the goalposts from being shifted.

Remember that it was just a month ago as the bizarre collusion allegations got stuck in the mud that Mueller expanded his investigation to include allegations that Trump tried to obstruct justice by firing FBI Director James B. Comey on May 9. The claim is that Trump did this to end Comey’s investigation into National Security Advisor Mike Flynn’s ties to Russia. Of course, as Harvard Law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz has pointed out repeatedly, the president has authority under the Constitution to fire the FBI director for any reason or no reason at all. Comey himself has freely acknowledged he served at the pleasure of the president.

That said, “FBI investigators and others are looking at Russian purchases of apartments in Trump buildings, Trump’s involvement in a controversial SoHo development in New York with Russian associates, the 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow and Trump’s sale of a Florida mansion to a Russian oligarch in 2008,” Bloomberg reported an anonymous source saying.

The report continues, elaborating that:

Mueller’s team is looking at the Trump SoHo hotel condominium development, which was a licensing deal with Bayrock Capital LLC. In 2010, the former finance director of Bayrock filed a lawsuit claiming the firm structured transactions in fraudulent ways to evade taxes. Bayrock was a key source of capital for Trump projects, including Trump SoHo.

The 2013 Miss Universe pageant is of interest because a prominent Moscow developer, Aras Agalarov, paid $20 million to bring the beauty spectacle there. About a third of that sum went to Trump in the form of a licensing fee, according to Forbes magazine. At the event, Trump met Herman Gref, chief executive of Russia’s biggest bank, Sberbank PJSC. Agalarov’s son, Emin, helped broker a meeting last year between Donald Trump Jr. and a Russian lawyer [i.e. Natalia Veselnitskaya] who was said to have damaging information about Hillary Clinton and her campaign.

Another significant financial transaction involved a Palm Beach, Florida, estate Trump purchased in 2004 for $41 million, after its previous owner lost it in bankruptcy. In March of 2008, after the real-estate bubble had begun losing air, Russian fertilizer magnate Dmitry Rybolovlev bought the property for $95 million.

As part of their investigation, Mueller’s team has issued subpoenas to banks and filed requests for bank records to foreign lenders under mutual legal-assistance treaties, according to two of the people familiar with the matter.

In addition, a federal money-laundering probe of Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort has reportedly been subsumed into the larger investigation headed by Mueller. Mueller’s office is also reportedly looking at Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross’s tenure as vice chairman of the Bank of Cyprus and at presidential advisor and son-in-law Jared Kushner’s efforts to obtain financing for his family’s real estate investments.

Newt Gingrich said yesterday that Mueller “has so many conflicts of interest it’s almost an absurdity,” but all of this seems above-board to Bloomberg.

“The Justice Department’s May 17 order to Mueller,” the media outlet reports, “instructs him to investigate ‘any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign’ as well as ‘any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation,’ suggesting a relatively broad mandate.”

Trump lawyer John Dowd disagrees. He said examining the president’s business dealings should be out-of-bounds for Mueller.