Ringing the bells for Christian traditions and getting our story out there. If we don’t, who will?
You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘Robert Mueller’ tag.
Over the past week, there has been an increasing America’s attorney general, Jeff Sessions — former senator for Alabama — to resign or be fired.
He is supposed to be ‘honorable’, yet he fails to stop highly questionable moves by the Mueller investigation against President Donald Trump.
He is known to be the ‘silent assassin’ and ‘silent executioner’ from his days as US Attorney for the Southern District of Alabama and, subsequently, the state’s attorney general.
The problem is that when Sessions thinks of criminals, only gang members, drug dealers and human traffickers come to mind. Fair enough. However, he has spent too long in Washington DC to see another criminal class: politicians and government employees.
Because of that blind spot, he cannot be an effective attorney general (AG). And, as important as jailing gang members, drug dealers and human traffickers is, the overriding national concern right now is upholding the Constitution and putting crooked politicians — past and present — behind bars.
The latest episode in this long drawn out investigation of Robert Mueller’s is that President Trump’s personal attorney, Michael Cohen, had his home, office and the hotel room in which he was staying at the time ransacked by the FBI in New York on Monday, March 9, 2018 (Mueller is pictured at top right, Sessions beneath him):
Remember that Mueller and his team are only supposed to be investigating alleged Russian collusion involving Trump and his team. After nearly a year, they have not found any evidence of that with regard to the Trump campaign, so they have moved the goalposts and expanded their brief to find anything against Trump or one of his associates.
Jeff Sessions can’t help. Shortly after Mueller came on board, Sessions recused himself from any investigation into the presidential campaign of which he had been a part.
As Mueller’s investigation seems to be all-encompassing, Sessions’s hands are effectively tied.
There are those who say he could recuse, because of various irregularities with the investigation. However, it is likely he will play by the rules.
Therefore, for all intents and purposes, deputy AG Rod Rosenstein effectively runs the Department of Justice (DOJ).
With regard to Michael Cohen:
Meanwhile, former Secret Service agent Dan Bongino points out the obvious:
This is something Sessions could — and should — work on:
He can — and should — assign work involving MS-13, drug dealers and human traffickers to subordinates in the DOJ and FBI. As it stands:
A lot of us had high hopes for Sleepy, who seemed pretty alert at first, but now the United States is approaching, if not already in, a constitutional crisis:
Ultimately:
Sessions could be investigating any number of those scandals and crimes, but he is not. His all-around inactivity in this regard is harming the nation, regardless of what many think:
On Tuesday, April 10, Judge Andrew Napolitano, legal analyst for Fox News, blamed the Cohen raid on Sessions’s recusal and said that he never should have accepted the AG appointment (emphases mine below):
Napolitano said the government raided Cohen’s office looking for evidence of bank fraud and believes it never would have escalated to this point if Sessions had made different choices.
“[Sessions] should have never accepted the appointment,” Napolitano said. “The Russia investigation started in October of 2016 and he knew he was going to be a witness. But if he felt he had to recuse himself — Mr. President you are entitled to an attorney general in whom have you great confidence. I’m not sure if I’m the guy if I recuse myself. Half of what the DOJ does, I will have nothing to do with.”
Earlier, on Saturday, April 7, longtime political strategist, Trump friend and earliest campaign manager Roger Stone said that congressmen have told him Sessions might not be mentally fit for office. Mediaite reported on a radio interview Stone gave that day to WMAL’s Steve Malzberg:
Stone replied that Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein is the “de facto attorney general,” before making a jaw-dropping allegation:
“I think Jeff Sessions is either neutered or non compos mentis. He may in fact even be senile.”
Malzberg asked if those comments should be taken literally, and Stone responded in the affirmative.
“Members of congress who have met with me have told me that he’s around the bend, he makes little sense, that he seems befuddled, confused, bewildered. So yeah, something is not well, he needs to step down.”
After President Trump found out about the raid on Michael Cohen, he spoke out:
“The Attorney General made a terrible mistake when he recused himself,” Trump said, raising again his dissatisfaction with Sessions for recusing himself from matters relating to the Russia investigation.
On April 10, The Daily Caller reported that two congressmen are awaiting overdue documentation from Sessions and Rosenstein about intelligence abuses:
Republican Reps. Jim Jordan and Mark Meadows appeared together on “Fox & Friends” Tuesday to express their displeasure with the Department of Justice and suggested a new attorney general might be the only cure.
Meadows of North Carolina and Jordan of Ohio said they were frustrated by delays within the DOJ, in turning over sensitive document related to intelligence abuses …
[Meadows] accused the FBI and DOJ of trying to hide information from Congress and said if Attorney General Jeff Sessions can’t get the job done then Trump should find someone who can.
Jim Jordan told The Daily Caller:
Congressman Jim Jordan says Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein should be “held accountable” for the leadership they have displayed at the Department of Justice, specifically as it relates to special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.
“I’ve been extremely disappointed,” the Ohio Republican told The Daily Caller in an interview Tuesday. “They’re keeping critical facts from us, like the conversation between Peter Strzok and Lisa Page where they talk about the relationship Strzok has with one of the FISA court judges, the same judge who by the way heard Michael Flynn’s case and recused himself after Flynn pled guilty.”
It’s not as if Sessions is the only one at the DOJ with conflicts of interests. Rod Rosenstein has them, too:
The congressman had previously suggested Sessions step down as AG, but he specifically stated Tuesday that Rosenstein should see punitive measures for his role in both the Mueller probe and the FBI’s original Trump-counterintelligence investigation.
“Rod Rosenstein, who oversees the obstruction of justice investigation into the firing of James Comey, can he really do that when he’s the guy who wrote the memo recommending the firing of James Comey?” he posed. “[Rosenstein] signed one of the FISA renewals, despite knowing that the author of the dossier that the FISA warrant was based on had his relationship with the FBI terminated because he broke protocol and leaked information to the press — I mean, come on!”
The Republican-majority Senate told Trump last year they would not approve any new cabinet appointments and still forbid him from making them while they are in recess. This puts the president in a bind. He might be able to make a lateral move by putting Scott Pruitt, current head of the Environmental Protection Agency, into the AG post.
Whatever the case, Sleepy Sessions would do well to wake up and smell the coffee, recuse himself (wherever possible), then get on the case. In terms of investigating politically oriented crimes, he has done a terrible job not only for President Trump — but also for the American people.
Coming soon: Sessions’s recusals explained
In February, I published a guest post from one of my readers, George True, on the Parkland, Florida school shooting. If you missed it, please be sure to read it.
A few days ago, George True commented on ‘The bottom to top plan to save America’, which explains why we have not seen high profile arrests yet. (If you haven’t read it, please do, as it will put what follows in context.
George kindly granted me permission to use his eloquent, inspired comment as a guest post. Emphases mine below.
This is an excellent Christian perspective on what is happening in America right now:
I certainly hope this what is happening behind the scenes. Many American patriots, including myself, were expecting to see a number of high level arrests and prosecutions by now. The sheer number of crimes committed by high ranking members of the Obama administration is almost overwhelming to contemplate. And the in-your-face audacity of it all and them more or less daring anyone to do anything about it is breathtaking in its arrogance. The weaponizing of virtually all agencies of government by the prior administration against anyone, including common people, who had different political views is a level of evil that is so far beyond the pale it defies description.
This is by far the greatest government scandal in the entire history of the United States. And so far the perpetrators have gotten away with it scot free. If they are not indicted and prosecuted for their many felonies committed against the American people, then one can truly say that there is no law anymore in the former constitutional republic known as America, except the law of the jungle.
The Deep State is attempting to isolate Trump and get him before he gets them. The Republican establishment in particular is complicit in the attempt to bring Trump down. Never in my life have I seen one of the major political parties not even attempt to defend the leader of their party. Most of them are probably compromised, either through blackmail or having been bought off. And the travesty of Mueller, one of the unindicted co-conspirators in the Uranium One scandal, investigating Trump on the bogus and fraudulent claim that his 2016 campaign somehow conspired with Russia is both disgusting and enraging to see day after day. If real justice were in effect, Mueller and his entire crew of virulently anti-Trump leftists, along with all of the main criminals of the Obama administration would be taken into custody by the Marine Corps and transported to Guantanamo forthwith, where they would await trial by military tribunal.
I am not a vengeful person. Yet my soul cries out to see justice done. Something on the order of seventy million American Christians who remember what our country used to be prayed daily and fervently to our God for deliverance from the criminal cabal that has had a stranglehold on every aspect of our government. Our prayers were answered in the form of President Donald Trump, an imperfect man, but one who also remembers what out country used to be and was willing to risk everything, up to and including his very life in order to restore our republic to we the people. I cannot believe that God would bring us this far only to have the Deep State take out our champion that He has anointed.
I still fervently pray, with all my strength and all my heart and soul that there is much going on behind the scenes that we do not know about. I pray daily for Donald Trump’s health and safety, and that things are proceeding according to plan. Let the corrupt media bray and spew their misinformation and deliberate disinformation. Let the Deep State think they have gotten away with it, even as the net slowly but surely encircles them. And let us all continue to fervently beseech God for justice, and to thank God for all that he has done and continues to do for each of us individually and all of us collectively. I want nothing more than to be a righteous man in a once again righteous nation – a nation that looks to God for guidance, protection, and love.
That is a perfect description of the egregious present and the God-fearing past in America.
I hope George seriously considers starting his own WordPress blog. His thoughts deserve a wide audience.
This post can be found on my Recipes / Health / History / Health / Trump page.
Q continues to divide Trump supporters.
When the original Q — Q Clearance Anon — began posting for several days from the end of October through the first week or so in November 2017 — a lot of us thought that high level indictments were under way.
Then, another Q took over, thought to be comprised of a handful of people in the White House. Since then, Q followers have been in two camps: those who expect ‘live action’ (as some Americans say nowadays) and those who have come to take Q’s news as it happens.
The first group is becoming disillusioned. Below is a case in point. Q’s original messages and others’ comments are on 8chan.net (not for the faint-hearted or easily offended, but I have retained the live links below for those interested in the threads). N.B.: I do not approve of the alienating 8chan content. Last month, Q wrote several times of ‘March madness’ and the following exchange took place (message 990):
I still follow your lead on all of this (relying more on the inquiry of those digging here), but March wasn’t nearly as ‘mad’ as what you sold us. Please don’t build us up to break us down, Q.
Q replied that the month’s madness was all about talks between South and North Korea and the upcoming talks involving the United States:
NK.
Q
To anyone waiting for Hillary Clinton to be arrested, that is not a very exciting answer. However, to those in the corridors of power, the possibility of resolving a six-decade old problem is. The Korean War never officially ended. If President Trump can get Kim Jong Un to denuclearise without a shot being fired, that would be an excellent and historic development, as no other US president has ever tried to attempt such a breakthrough.
Early in April, Q outlined the month’s developments (message 988, emphases in the original):
April [A].
IG report.
Sessions public attack.
RR problems.
Seals broken.
[A]rrests.
Why was Huber made public?
Why now?
Everything has meaning.
[A]wan.
Tarmac.
Iran.
NK.
U1.
FBI.
DOJ.
Mueller.
Election Integrity.
Immigration Bill.
Border.
Wall.
Military start.
BIG month.
Q
I wrote about Robert Mueller’s investigation, the FBI, DoJ and Inspector General (IG) Michael Horowitz a month ago. More is coming out and Horowitz’s long-awaited report might be out this month. I won’t be holding my breath.
That said, the day after Q posted this, news emerged about RR — Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. A memo from 2017 that Rosenstein sent Mueller suddenly surfaced allowing Mueller to go outside the scope of the Russian collusion investigation. On April 3, the Gateway Pundit reported (emphases in the original):
Last week we stated that the US is now in a constitutional crisis due to the unconstitutional and corrupt Mueller investigation kept in place by corrupt FBI and DOJ Leadership. Former Trump Campaign Manager Paul Manafort may soon be the one to shut it all down.
Mueller’s illegal Trump-Russia investigation continues to take corrupt and unconstitutional actions while criminal activities in Obama’s FBI, DOJ and State Department are ignored. If there is justice, America will soon have a real investigation looking into the Obama and Clinton criminal acts while in office.
Paul Manafort first made arguments in a suit with Robert Mueller, Rod Rosenstein and Jeff Sessions as Head of the DOJ, related to illegalities in the way that Rosenstein set up the Mueller special counsel. Rosenstein’s special counsel order was not based on a crime and unconstitutionally stated that Mueller could basically look at anything he wanted to look at. These provisions are against the law and are now for the courts to settle.
The FBI raided Mr and Mrs Manafort’s home during the early hours of the morning in late July 2017, alarming them both, to say the least. The heretofore unseen Rosenstein memo, dated August 2, 2017, was:
supposedly directing Mueller to look into Manafort actions with a Russian operative perhaps before 2016. This however is clearly outside the scope of Sessions’ recusal as argued by Manafort and doesn’t even address Manafort’s argument that these actions are not for Mueller to take or Rosenstein to order but are Sessions actions alone as AG.
If Rosenstein and Mueller can’t come up with something legal and constitutional their gooses may finally be cooked by of all people, Paul Manafort. We can only hope and pray for justice.
In message 1028, Q presented a series of questions about the Mueller investigation, with information no doubt to be revealed in the months ahead. The same message had this about Trump, Manafort and a Trump campaign volunteer, Carter Page, whose stay was short:
It was not supposed to be revealed POTUS is not under criminal investigation _ NOT YET.
Traitor.
Massive intel sweep.
Manafort was a plant …
Carter Page was a plant.
Trace background.
Open source.
Why is Mueller going after ‘inside plants’?
Oh well, at least Paul Manafort got then-candidate Trump the necessary delegates to win the Republican nomination in July 2016.
As for the Awans, see Wikipedia for now. I have a whole collection of articles, but there is too much to go into for the purposes of this post.
Construction of the border wall began on March 26 by the Army Corps of Engineers based in Greencastle, Indiana. The emblem of the Army Corps of Engineers is a white castle on a red background. Q referred to this last month on the day President Trump said wall construction would begin the following Monday:
Depending on the context, a future mention might mean this particular unit in relation to the wall.
In other matters domestic, we might find out more about the tarmac meeting Bill Clinton had with Obama’s Attorney General Loretta Lynch in the summer of 2016, when he boarded her plane for a private conversation. A big no-no.
On March 30, Fox News reported that Attorney General Jeff Sessions appointed a federal prosecutor, John Huber, to look into:
certain issues involving the FBI, the Clinton Foundation and Uranium One, but said he would not appoint a second special counsel at this point.
In a letter directed to Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte and House Oversight Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy, Sessions revealed that he asked U.S. Attorney John Huber to lead the evaluation into issues raised by the committees in recent months.
Huber’s appointment is definitely a positive step. I hope it means the IG’s report is coming soon.
North Korea is still in the mix as is Iran. With Mike Pompeo in place as Secretary of State after Rex Tillerson’s departure, things will begin moving rapidly. Pompeo and Trump see eye to eye. Also, John Bolton has replaced HR McMaster as National Security Adviser. Although I am not a fan of Bolton, he and Trump are on the same page geopolitically. Bolton has been known to do what he is asked. As Trump believes in negotiating solutions rather than starting wars, I’m praying for a positive, lasting outcome.
Q also signalled that Silicon Valley giants could be brought down to size (message 989):
>875265
Facebook.
Amazon.
Twitter.
GOOG. ……….. BIG problems.
Q
With regard to GOOG, Q gave us a name to watch for: Jared Cohen (message 1024). He is CEO of Jigsaw, formerly Google Ideas. He worked closely with Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton during their respective tenures as Secretary of State. He was on the social media side of ‘regime change’ outside of the US.
Q discussed the necessary presence of troops and future wall along the southern border to prevent the human ‘caravan’ (Pueblos sin Fronteras’ word) from entering the United States (message 1009). According to Q, this caravan seems to have been cooked up by the CIA (Clowns) and Democrats with big background money. John McCain (‘name we don’t say’) and Jeff Flake are pro-immigrant Republicans:
>>893904
Troops to Border.
Clown Black Ops.
Private funds.
Raised how?
Troops @ Border does what?
Impact?
To who?
D’s involved.
MS_13/Illegals road block.
Sex traffic road block.
Children road block.
Drugs road block.
Guns road block.
China/Russia pass-through-intel-pull road block.
Name we don’t say AZ road block.
Jeff Flake AZ road block.
Big money TERMINATE.
The WALL means more than you know.
The FIGHT for the WALL is for so much more.
Q
Message 1025 expressed gratitude and reminded everyone of the Q slogan ‘Where we go one, we go all’ (image courtesy of an 8chan reader, not Q):
We are sincerely appreciative for your kind words and appreciation. Means more than you know. Each one read in full. We are in this together. WWG1WGA.
2018 will be glorious!!
God bless,
Q
As I write, there have been four military air crashes during the first week of April. (UPDATE: A fifth occurred on Saturday, April 7, also noted by Q (message 1068).)
A Chinese satellite also fell to earth.
Such a close succession of military crashes is practically unheard of.
Q had this to say (message 1030):
Coincidence or silent war?
Pray.
Night
[2]
Q
An 8chan contributor commented:
4th crash chances of all being accidents is less than 1% (0.8%), and Q basically confirms it ain’t accidents. Damn
As for the satellite, Q asked (message 1033):
>914474
What fell from space recently?
Accident or retaliation?
Q
China hasn’t said much about the satellite and the media are reporting it as a routine event.
Q’s questions point to rogue players in various national governments. An 8channer offered this explanation, which is along the same Q themes from last year (emphases mine):
have anons not learned yet?
the cabal is GLOBAL
that means chinese russian israel britain USA ALL have traitors
xi putin and potus are leading the fight against them
much disinfo and acting
never telegraphn
make enemies guess
WE ARE WINNING
there are many traitors and criminals that can inflict damage but THEY CANNOT WIN
In closing, Q has referenced this short video from the Military Channel three times in the past few days:
Q has mentioned April showers more than once. I hope rain — justice — is due for America’s domestic enemies.
I hope to revisit this post at the beginning of May, if not before.
The week of December 11, 2017 has been chock-a-block with news.
It’s unlikely Big Media have reported the bulk of it. What follows are a few stories people might have missed.
The anti-Trump FBI ‘insurance policy’
A series of text messages between FBI counterintelligence official Peter Strzok and his mistress, FBI lawyer Lisa Page were released on Tuesday, December 12. The Daily Caller reports (emphases mine):
Two FBI officials who worked on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation exchanged text messages last year in which they appear to have discussed ways to prevent Donald Trump from being elected president.
“I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy’s office — that there’s no way [Trump] gets elected — but I’m afraid we can’t take that risk,” FBI counterintelligence official Peter Strzok wrote in a cryptic text message to Lisa Page, an FBI lawyer and his mistress.
“It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you’re 40,” Strzok wrote in the text, dated Aug. 15, 2016.
Andy is likely Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe.
Several congressional panels have been after these text messages since the beginning of December, when news emerged of their existence. However, Strzok was dismissed from the Mueller investigation four months ago.
The text messages, some of which The Daily Caller quotes, are anti-Trump. Some have four letter words. Most are cryptic:
“Maybe you’re meant to stay where you are because you’re meant to protect the country from that menace,” Page wrote.
“I can protect our country at many levels, not sure if that helps,” Strzok replied.
Like many of the exchanges, the full context of the message is not entirely clear.
Strzok also offered praise for Clinton while suggesting that he planned to vote for her.
In a March 2, 2016 text Strzok said he would likely vote for Clinton. In another exchange he wrote that if Trump won the Republican primary, Clinton would likely win the presidency.
On Wednesday, December 13, the Department of Justice inspector general, Michael Horowitz, released more information about the texts. The Daily Caller has more on the story. Horowitz received the text messages on July 20:
A week later, he met with Mueller and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to inform them of the politically-charged texts.
Strzok was “immediately” removed from the investigation after Mueller was told of the texts.
Strzok, who then served as the FBI’s No. 2 counterintelligence official, conducted many of the biggest interviews in the investigation, including with Clinton and her top aides, Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills …
The FBI handed over those messages on July 20, 2017. After reviewing those exchanges, Horowitz expanded the investigation to include all of the text messages exchanged between Strzok and Page from Nov. 30, 2016 to July 28, 2017.
Horowitz’s office received those messages on Aug. 10.
Strzok’s departure from Mueller’s team was reported by ABC News on Aug. 16. The network reported that Strzok had been placed in a job in the FBI’s HR department.
The reason for Strzok’s demotion remained a secret for nearly four months as the Justice Department and Mueller’s office declined media and congressional requests for an explanation. The levy finally broke on Dec. 2, when The Washington Post and New York Times simultaneously reported the existence of the text messages.
A sample of the texts were released Tuesday night ahead of Rosenstein’s testimony before the House Judiciary Committee …
Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee pressed Rosenstein on that text message, suggesting that Strzok was indicating that he planned to prevent Trump from being elected.
[Senator Charles] Grassley, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, sent a letter to Rosenstein on Wednesday inquiring about the text message.
Rosenstein said Wednesday that the Justice Department and FBI plan to soon make Strzok available for an interview with the House Intelligence Committee.
Strzok’s cryptic Aug. 2016 text [re the insurance policy] was sent just after he was handpicked to supervise the FBI’s investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.
Horowitz’s letter leaves a few questions unanswered. For one, it is not clear whether Strzok sent politically-charged texts with anyone else. It is also not clear whether the messages contained in the second requested batch of Strzok texts contain any controversial remarks.
The Wall Street Journal has more (note final paragraph):
This is a developing story which has the potential for unveiling criminality — but ultimately:
Alabama special election
In a surprise upset, the Democrat candidate Doug Jones was elected to the Senate, defeating Roy Moore.
The background to the story is that Jeff Sessions vacated his Senate seat in Alabama to serve as Attorney General earlier this year. Sessions appointed Luther Strange to replace him. Alabama governor Kay Ivey directed that a special election take place. However, I read anecdotally that she did not need to hold a special election. Strange could have served until his term ran out.
In any event, Luther Strange ran against Judge Roy Moore in the Republican primary. Strange lost to Moore. Accusations of molesting a teenage girl in the 1970s — unproven — led by an attorney who tried to smear then-candidate Donald Trump in 2016 — dogged Moore. Even so, Moore did not have any get-out-the-vote programme, whereas Jones and the Democrats did. Moore then lost to Jones — but only by 1.5%.
Could this have been a case of voter fraud in a state that votes overwhelmingly Republican?
Rumours are circulating that out-of-state voters were brought into Alabama and driven around from polling station to polling station — a classic Democrat strategy that works.
The Republican Party — specifically Mitch McConnell, Senate Majority Leader — also refused to help Moore. McConnell’s detractors refer to him as Turtle.
Imperator_Rex has a good analysis, excerpted below:
He concludes that Trump surely has a game plan in mind.
The 2018 mid-terms require Republicans like McConnell to shape up or ship out.
However, as Imperator_Rex says, McConnell and his ilk don’t really care. They are all part of the Uniparty, so life continues for them much as before. Democrat dominance, especially when it comes to opposing Trump, is preferable to a Republican majority that might be persuaded to turn Trump policies into law.
Jones’s election nearly puts the number of Democrat senators on a par with Republicans. Danger, Will Robinson, danger!
Message to the black electorate
On December 13, the Revd Leon Benjamin and his family were guests at the White House.
They are an example of the middle class families helped by Trump’s proposed tax reform. Trump spoke about the tax plan, then invited the pastor to speak.
Pastor Benjamin had an important message, which began with:
To God be the glory!
Former Milwaukee sheriff David A Clarke expressed similar sentiments the day before:
Happy news
On Wednesday, December 13, First Lady Melania Trump participated in a charity drive for toddlers, the Marine Corps Reserve’s Toys for Tots, at Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling in Washington, D.C.
Press Secretary Sarah Sanders received a verbal kicking after Thanksgiving from CNN’s April Ryan, an annoying journo at the White House press briefings. Ryan criticised Sanders’s pecan pies, accusing the press secretary of not having made them herself.
So (although the crusts look store-bought) …
Here’s what happened on the day. Food really does bring people together:
Never mind that. Sarah’s dad had a message for her:
This will be my last news-related item until after Christmas.
Some reading this would be delighted if President Donald Trump were toppled from office.
With the recent revelations during the past two weeks, it does not appear as if this will happen (thank goodness), but the coup is real.
In July, I wrote about a South African — now American — Evangelical pastor who held a 24/7 prayer vigil at his church praying for Trump’s safety.
Pastor Rodney Howard-Browne is no tin-foil hat wearer. The danger is real.
Cascade Free Zone has an excellent article, ‘The Deep State Coup’, which is brilliantly written and informative. I highly recommend it.
Brief excerpts and a summary follow. Emphases mine below.
The coup has been going on since the November 8, 2016 election. The means and accusations were in place long before then — e.g. the Russian dossier. Note that the dossier is still in active play and old accusations about Trump and women are making the news cycle once again. Impeachment stories feature strongly as do news items about the president’s mental state.
Now:
We are approaching the end of the first-phase of the coup. This is a non-military coup, but what we are witnessing clearly fits the definition of “the overt seizure of the state by an elite within the state apparatus”.
Renowned patriot author and speaker Matt Bracken, in a series of postings and interviews, has outlined the basic mechanics of the coup. Central figures include former FBI director James Comey and the Independent Counsel Robert Mueller, assistant US Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and current acting director of the FBI Andrew McCabe. Motivation for all of them is self-preservation. As we have learned Clinton-World was a very corrupt place and the list of self-serving deals and those who benefited from them includes all of the key plotters. None of them believed there was any chance Hillary would lose and leave them exposed. She did. They are.
Here is an illustration of the plot:
The Special Counsel investigation of Russian collusion — led by Robert Mueller — has not found the president guilty of anything.
Meanwhile, several Democrats have found themselves embroiled in impropriety.
So have law enforcement organisations, such as the FBI:
Americans of a certain generation have to strip away the years of propaganda indoctrination that the FBI are “the good guys” and look closely at what they do. The DOJ are their partners in all this, together they are the muscle of the Deep State plotters.
As for the wiretapping — the word the New York Times used in a headline — of Trump Tower last year:
This was clearly an illegal use of the most powerful wiretapping tool in the US law enforcement arsenal. FISA warrants were created to help prevent terrorism, not to ensure election of Deep State approved candidates. It has been criminally misused by the Obama administration to spy on political opponents and blackmail them with the illicitly obtained knowledge.
This goes further than deposing Trump. This is meant to also prevent his successor, Vice President Mike Pence, from taking his place:
the Deep State agenda is not merely to remove Trump, but also to remove Pence, Ryan, McConnell and whoever else stands in their way. Discussion of “do-over elections” is a serious topic there, as is simply removing every person until a flexible insider is found to run things.
Good grief. If that isn’t a totalitarian notion, what is?
There are minor — yet seemingly powerful — players, too. Saul Montes-Bradley has a good Twitter thread, excerpted below, spelling edited (photos in the thread):
(3) Two major events occupied out time last year during the campaign: The Clinton investigation over Hillary’s corrupt and felonious handling of her office as Secretary of State, and the,”Steele Dossier,” that abhorrent and at times sophomoric attempt to besmirch candidate Trump.
(6) I have tried to keep abreast of events as they developed, from the collusion of a venal press with the DNC, to the shenanigans of FBI agents in the Mueller probe.
(8) But it is much, much worse.
And all is coming together now.
Let’s bring a few more names to the forefront.
Does anyone remember Aaron Zebley? …
(9) Zebley was Mueller’s Chief of Staff at the FBI before becoming a Senior Counselor in the National Security Division at the Department of Justice.
Before that he was Special Agent of the FBI in the Counterterrorism Division for seven years.
(10) In between his two tours at the FBI, Zebley served as an Assistant US Attorney (AUSA) in the National Security and Terrorism Unit in Alexandria, Virginia.
If he is any measure, no wonder the fight against terrorism was an utter failure for years!
(11) In March 2014, he joined the law firm Wilmer Hale. “Aaron’s experience at the FBI, DoJ and the US Attorney’s Office will add to our internal investigations, crisis management and cybersecurity capabilities,” crowed his new managing partner …
wilmerhale.com/pages/publicat…
(12) Guess who this upstanding shyster represented there?
Justin Cooper …
(13) Yep.
The cretin who set up the Hilldebeast private email server in her basement and then took a hammer to the blackberries she claimed she did not use!
The one who handled classified information without a security clearance.
(14) … [Zebley] … went from defending Cooper to the Russia investigation under Mueller, working with McCabe and Strzok, who were supposed to have investigated Cooper…
Go figure.
(15) There’s always room for a couple more … in this caper.
Enter Andrew Weissman, for one.
(16) … he returned to the Bureau in 2015 (amazing how many of these vermin found their way back to the bureau in 2015, isn’t it.)
This time as Chief of the Criminal Division’s Fraud Section.
Fraud, mind you.
(20) There are quite a number more.
Like Jeannie Rhea, a shyster in Mueller’s team, who defended Ben Rhodes, finally a focus of the investigation into the “unmasking” caper.
She and 8 others donated to the Hilldebeast’s campaign.
(21) Or Rudy Contreras, judge who presided over @GenFlynn’s plea agreement without telling anybody he was on the FISA court that authorized the tapping of Trump’s phones and God knows why, suddenly remembered and recused himself.
ONE DAY AFTER THE PLEA.
Did he find religion?
(22) And then of course, there’s good ‘ol Bruce Ohr, former Associate Deputy Attorney General, AND Director of the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces.
“Former” since Trump demoted him four days ago …
(23) Why was he demoted?
Oh, well, he forgot to declare a minor detail to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) investigating a tiny thingy called the “Trump Dossier.”
What did he forget?
(24) Nothing much. Just that he had “ties” to Fusion GPS and its founder, Glenn Simpson.
It gets better. Simpson had introduced him to Christopher Steele (though some sources he has known Steele for 10 years!).
(25) Steele, yes, the chap who concocted that abomination paid for by the DNC to smear candidate Trump.
Ohr met with Steele SEVERAL TIMES during the campaign, just as this thing was going on, and back with Simpson soon after the election.
What a coincidence!
(26) In fact, Simpson and Ohr met “around Thanksgiving” to discuss “the anti-Trump dossier, the Russia investigation and what Simpson considered the “distressing development of Trump’s victory.”
Distressing, indeed. And after all that work, too!
(27) But that’s not all.
Who was working with Steele in the cooking of the infamous dossier but Ohr’s better half, his wife, Nellie.
What do you know, SHE was HIRED by Fusion GPS in 2016!
Her area of expertise? You guessed it: Russia, Russia Russia.
(28) Ohr didn’t declare any of this. Oops! Forgot.
It was discovered by the HPSCI, but only after threatening Director Wray and Deputy Dog Rosenstein with finding them in contempt …
(29) And this in spite of the obstruction of … Adam Schiff, who tried every which way to stop the committee.
Uncharacteristically, he is now silent over this.
Cat ate his tongue.
(30) Who else had his nose in this?
Peter Strzok … who interrogated @GenFlynn without a lawyer and without disclosing his conflicts of interest.
(31) Now, as the Dimms like to remind us, there is under Federal law the crime of conspiracy to perform a criminal act.
Indeed, if it turns out that these band of 3rd world misfits conspired to undermine the investigation into the Clinton mishandling of classified information
(32) AND to pervert the 2016 elections AND to undermine the legitimately elected President of the United states, while endangering the country creating conflicts with foreign powers…
(33) …not to mention other beauties like egregious violations of the Hatch Act, lying to Congress, falsifying information…they should be in a world of trouble …
(34) Meanwhile, five have already been demoted or suspended pending investigation, one has been recused and, suddenly, it looks as if the … charge against @GenFlynn might well end up dismissed as the only evidence against him is the tainted word of a felon.
Poisoned fruit
(35) What upsets me the most, especially today, is that the FBI these vermin corrupted into a political police doing the dirty job of the DNC, neglected its counter espionage functions and endangered us all.
(37) I said months ago that the Dimms may come to regret ever having demanded this investigation.
It looks like that was an understatement.
They swallowed the hook, line and sinker.
Amateur hour is over.
Somebody WAS looking.
FINIS
Ultimately, the coup will fail. In fact, it looks as if many of the players are imploding. More will follow suit.
We can only hope that they are fully investigated and, where possible, prosecuted and sentenced.
Yesterday’s post discussed the events that took place Friday, December 1, 2017.
Today’s entry serves as an update on the weekend’s news. I won’t be recapping much of what I wrote about Friday, so you might want to read that post before continuing here.
ABC’s Brian Ross
ABC’s veteran reporter Brian Ross was suspended for four weeks without pay for his fake news of Friday that caused the US stock market to dip for an hour:
President Donald Trump was delighted:
But he was not yet finished:
Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, father of Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, is a past Republican presidential candidate and former Fox News show host:
This lawyer and writer for The Federalist listed more of Ross’s huge blunders:
Mueller investigation — Peter Strzok
One of Robert Mueller’s top investigators has been sacked from his team investigating the Trump campaign’s notional Russian collusion:
One could not make this up:
You can read clips from more articles on that subject here (image courtesy of a Reddit contributor).
Trump chimed in:
Advice came in for the new FBI director, Christopher Wray:
Judicial Watch has been keen for the McAuliffe/Clinton scandal to be investigated:
Their November 21 article begins with this summary:
(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch today released 79 pages of Justice Department documents concerning ethics issues related to FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe’s involvement with his wife’s political campaign. The documents include an email showing Mrs. McCabe was recruited for a Virginia state senate race in February 2015 by then-Virginia Lieutenant Governor Ralph Northam’s office.
The news that Clinton used a private email server broke five days later, on March 2, 2015. Five days after that, former Clinton Foundation board member and Democrat party fundraiser, Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe, met with the McCabes. She announced her candidacy on March 12. Soon afterward, Clinton/McAuliffe-aligned political groups donated nearly $700,000 (40% of the campaign’s total funds) to McCabe’s wife for her campaign.
Most Trump supporters knew about that during the 2016 campaign, but it got little media coverage.
Judicial Watch’s Tom Fitton has been doing great work in exposing Swamp scandals. See here, here and here.
This is very serious. Can one imagine a Republican getting away with such a thing?
Where’s the justice?
Lieutenant General Michael Flynn has been made to look like a criminal for lying to the FBI, but we have senior US officials — present and former — who have committed crimes. The American people are told there is nothing to see.
Congressman Steve Smith (R-Georgia) summarised the situation well:
Trump is, rightly, on the warpath:
Is he having a go at his Attorney General Jeff ‘Sleepy’ Sessions?
Sleepy will be leaving soon, probably early in 2018.
His immediate recusal from this probe, because it was connected with the Trump campaign and he was part of the campaign, caused a lot of grief for a lot of people, including the spring-summer campaign manager Paul Manafort, whom the Mueller team treated terribly — including a middle-of-the-night FBI raid on his and his wife’s home while they were asleep.
What Manafort has been indicted for isn’t even related to the Trump campaign but to work he did in Ukraine years before.
See how justly Manafort has been treated:
Obama still acts as if he’s in office
But wait, there’s more.
Never has there been a US president who hasn’t let his successor be in charge.
But not Obama:
Even if he was only referring to climate change, he should do the decent thing.
On December 2, the Washington Examiner reported:
While speaking to a group of business leaders in Paris, former President Barack Obama said there is a “temporary absence of American leadership” when it comes to tackling climate change.
“I grant you that at the moment we have a temporary absence of American leadership on the issue,” the former president noted, which was met with laughter from the room full of French former ministers and CEOs at the invite-only event, according to Reuters.
Obama also recently visited China:
Swamp tries to trap CIA director Pompeo
On December 2, the CIA director Mike Pompeo — a Trump appointee — was a guest at the Reagan National Defense Forum.
TrumpSoldier has a detailed Twitter thread on Pompeo’s appearance, video clips and still photos included. A summary with most of the tweets follows. I corrected a few original typos below.
The Reagan National Defense Forum (RNDF) sounds conservative until one looks at who is on the steering committee (see point 4), including the CEO/Publisher of the Washington Post, a few Obama appointees, anti-Trump Republican senator John McCain and former Clinton adviser and CIA director Leon Panetta. Fox News’s Bret Baier conducted an interview on stage with Pompeo and Panetta (emphases mine below):
5) Mike Pompeo was going into swamp territory and now everything makes sense to me as you will soon see.
6) The slogan for the RNDF is “Investing in Peace Through Strength” I like Peace through Strength but the “investing” part sets off alarm bells. I am not going to investigate who funds them but I imagine it’s not pretty.
7) The RNDF is an organization that is run by active and retired swamp creatures whose main purpose is influencing and shaping policy.
8) Mike sat down with Panetta and his lackey Bret Baier for an hour and they discussed world events from a security perspective. It was light hearted and fun and that is all part of the set up.
9) Mike Pompeo is relaxed, joking and having fun. Panetta even tries to connect with him as “two Italians”. Bret’s ambush questions are strategically placed for maximum effect.
10) The Triggering!
Baier asks Mike Pompeo about Saudi Arabia: Panetta and decades of swamp failure are brought face to face with the dramatic sudden success of Trump Administration Foreign Policy.
11) Everything was jovial up to this point (at about 30 minutes in) Panetta’s reactions became really serious and concerned and his responses became lectures. An old swamp thing cut off from power flailing for relevance.
12) The Soft Ball
Baer asks Mike Pompeo how he shares intelligence with Trump.
No real answer, by the way. Good.
14) The Ambush!
Mike Pompeo asked about #FakeNews stores regarding the mental state of President Trump: “It’s Absurd” (watch and listen closely)
15) Remember everyone is laughing and having a good time up to this point and on cue as the question is asked Panetta laughs. It was the perfect set up!
16) You can see the moment when Mike senses the trap he licks his lips and smiles ever so slightly. He is ready!
17) Mike breaks character, reveals his power level, and suddenly kills the room! Panetta nervously begins laughing some more to try to lighten the mood. I would have loved to see Baier’s face as he absorbed this stare. I guarantee he looked down and away.
18) The next order of business to to try to get Pompeo to listen to the wisdom of a “very concerned” Panetta regarding the danger of #TrumpTweets
19) #TrumpTweets are Dangerous!
Mike Pompeo doesn’t think so. He uses them strategically.
In fact, The Hill reported on this interview:
CIA Director Mike Pompeo said on Saturday that President Trump’s Twitter habits have actually helped his agency gather and understand intelligence …
“I’ve actually seen it help us,” he said. “I have seen things the president has put on his Twitter account actually have a real-world impact on our capacity to understand what’s going on in other places in the world.”
“That is, our adversaries responded to those tweets in ways that were helpful to us to understand command and control issues, who’s listening to what messages, how those messages are resonating around the world.”
Back now to the Twitter thread. Baier was eager to pursue this line of questioning, even though Pompeo wanted to move on to other topics. Panetta also pressed Pompeo on Trump’s tweets, expressing ‘concern’.
22) Note Mike’s body language and comments he really is trying to politely end the conversation but they keep pushing…
23) THE KILL
CIA Director Mike Pompeo reminds old swamp creature (Leon Panetta) that he is a failure and irrelevant.
24) After you are done laughing consider how deadly serious this was. It was a carefully orchestrated trap completely scripted and gamed out in advance and Mike came up aces!
25) Pompeo’s ruthless defense of Donald Trump speaks volumes about his loyalty and dedication to the cause. His defense of #TrumpTweets confirms that they are highly strategic and coordinated with the CIA. This frightens everyone… but us.
No doubt this week’s narrative will be about Trump’s mental health again.
The Left’s dirty game
For over a year, the media and other Democrats have been saying that it was wrong for the Trump team to speak to the Russians prior to the inauguration.
It is legal and something that every president-elect’s transition team does.
As for contact with Russia during the campaign, to date, Mueller’s team has found nothing, except for the abortive meeting with the Russian lawyer. Donald Trump Jr, Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner left soon after it started. President Trump was unaware of it at the time.
My post yesterday listed three meetings that campaign advisers to then-candidate Obama had with Hamas and FARC. When he was still president-elect in January 2009, he met with the president of Mexico.
The Democrats — including the media — are being very dishonest with this anti-Trump narrative which is dividing the country.
In January 2017, Obama’s press secretary Mark Toner said there was no problem with the Trump team speaking with the Russian ambassador:
That text comes from the transcript of January 13. This is what precedes it:
QUESTION: — reports starting yesterday, but then more of them this morning, about contact between the incoming national security advisor and the Russian ambassador. I’m just wondering, from the State Department’s point of view, is this something that’s of concern at all? Or – I’ll just leave it there and then follow up.
MR TONER: Again, not necessarily – I’ve seen the reports. I don’t think they’ve been confirmed or corroborated yet. But that’s – as he’s part of the transition team, that’s really for them to speak to in how they are engaging. I mean —
QUESTION: Right, but —
MR TONER: — the president-elect is also engaged on his own with many world leaders.
Lt Gen Michael Flynn
Now a word about the embattled Lt General Michael Flynn.
On Saturday, December 2, Trump tweeted:
And:
The Conservative Treehouse has a good analysis and timeline of Flynn and the Russian ambassador, including Flynn’s dismissal. Excerpts follow (emphases in the original):
Many people have asked the question why would Michael Flynn have lied about talking to Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in the first place?
It’s a great question.
The Occam’s Razor answer is the toxic political environment that existed in January 2017, where the administration was being hammered by a tsunami of media narratives and political opposition claiming that any scintilla of contact with anything Russian meant that Putin and Trump were “colluding” BFFs,…. and Flynn didn’t want to fuel that nonsense.
That’s really the only reason to mislead about Russian contacts.
And/or once Vice-President Mike Pence made the statement that Flynn had no contact with anyone from Russia etc. any contradictory statement from Flynn would make Pence appear compromised; so Flynn had to stick to it without clarification.
Sunday January 15th – VP-elect Mike Pence appears on Face The Nation. [Transcript Here] …
[*NOTE* Notice the narrative questioning at the time (early Jan) was framed that ‘any contact’ with Russians was evidence of meddling/election-collusion with Russians.]
•Friday January 20th – Inauguration
•Tuesday January 24th – Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn was interviewed at the WH by the FBI. [Either Flynn contradicts Pence, or he tells a lie, those were his options.]
Afterwards, having received a report of the interview, Department of Justice (DOJ) employee, Sally Yates — since fired — had discussions about Flynn with other senior Obama holdovers still working there. This was what brought about the charge that Flynn lied to the FBI.
Another part of this story is that Flynn had talked to the Russian ambassador in December 2016 about the sanctions that Obama had imposed on Russia.
The following comes from The Last Refuge, the founder and author of The Conservative Treehouse (emphases mine below):
11. So on December 29th, sanctions day, Flynn spoke to Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak… Essentially, saying ‘chill out, we’ll get through this’ etc.
14. We arrive at Sunday January 15th. VP-Elect Mike Pence appears on Sunday talks to discuss political stuff and the Trump administration.
15. On that Sunday 1/15/17 Pence appeared on CBS Face the nation (John Dickerson)
16. What does Dickerson start off with? Of course – The Vast Russian Hacking Election conspiracy: “did any advisor or anybody in the Trump campaign have any contact with the Russians who were trying to meddle in the election?”
17. Amid the questioning, there is no distinction between *BEFORE* the election, and during the President-Elect transition period (ie. *AFTER* the election). It’s just one long framed question about “contact” and “collusion” etc.
18. And with that framework VP-Elect Pence says: “Of course not. And I think to suggest that is to give credence to some of these bizarre rumors that have swirled around the candidacy.”
19. VP-Pence says “of course not”, ie NO CONTACT. In doing so, and without pointing out the transition team would have ordinary and customary contact, Pence has now painted Flynn into a corner.
20. Flynn has had contact (ordinary and appropriate contact), but VP-Elect Pence gave an emphatic: “Of course not.”
22. The January 24th [FBI] interview is where the “Flynn Lied” to the FBI came from.
23. At the time of the interview the media cycle was filled with intelligence leaks. During that interview Flynn had two options: Option #1) tell investigators he did have conversations with Kislyak in December – and as a consequence contradict VP Pence.
24. Option #2) tell investigators he did not have conversations with the Russians (Kislyak) and align with VP Pence statement a week prior.
Option #1 puts the criticism and Russia story on VP Pence for lying to CBS. (He didn’t, because the question was vague on timing but that didn’t matter amid the frenzy) and as an outcome weaken the incoming administration 4 days after inauguration.
26. Option #2 puts himself at risk; but protects VP Pence and avoids the immediacy of a narrative against the White House and new administration.
27. Likely Flynn knew the FBI was up to no good because they probably already knew the answer to the question (wiretapping). But these decisions were about politics amid the frenzied media swarm. The downstream sh[*]t-storm on Pence would have been brutal.
28. The very next day, Wed Jan 25th, Sally Yates (DOJ) gets an after action report on the FBI questioning of Flynn.
37. Note the presumption here is that Flynn had lied to VP Pence. However, there is nothing to indicate that angle/aspect is or was actually correct. Specifically, there is ample evidence the ‘lie to Pence’, evolved from a storyline -driven by necessity- to save face for Pence.
38. The administration was now boxed in. Flynn lied to protect Pence’s political posture/integrity/position, (ie. Military Leadership Training 101: never compromise your leadership), but was now confronted by Sally Yates. FUBAR!!
Conclusion — thus far
It seems this past weekend served, in part, as a watershed moment.
As I write, Trump’s Twitter account has over 43m subscribers. Imagine factoring in millions of others, e.g. yours truly, who don’t subscribe but check it at least once a day.
Tens of millions of people are reading and passing his tweets along to millions more every day.
Over time, that’s a lot of red pills being handed out.
Trump is taking this time to get the American people psychologically prepared for The Storm / the Silent War.
I have read several online commenters saying that they never realised how corrupt America is until they read about the Strzok dismissal and the crookedness of this Mueller investigation which, so far, has cost around $5m in taxpayer money.
Meanwhile, actual criminals who served at federal level are on the loose. Where’s the DOJ? Where’s the justice?
On Friday, December 1, 2017, Lt General Michael Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI.
Powerline has a simple explanation of the story, excerpted below (emphases mine):
News media are breathlessly reporting that Gen. Michael Flynn has agreed to plead guilty to lying to the FBI. You can read the Statement of the Offense here. The false statements alleged by the government seem rather pathetic: 1) Flynn falsely told an FBI agent that he didn’t ask the Russian ambassador to “refrain from escalating the situation in response to sanctions” the U.S. had just imposed, and 2) that he didn’t recall the ambassador subsequently telling him that the Russians had moderated their response per his request; 3) Flynn falsely said that he didn’t ask the Russian ambassador to delay or defeat a pending U.N. Security Council resolution, and 4) that the ambassador never subsequently described his country’s response to that request. (Flynn tried, unsuccessfully, to convince several members of the Security Council, including Russia, not to proceed with an anti-Israel resolution. This is to his, and President Trump’s, credit.)
That’s it, after a year of huffing and puffing. Nothing about the election, nothing about the long-awaited “collusion” between the Trump campaign and Russia. I have no idea why Flynn apparently lied to an FBI agent, assuming that he did. But the communications described in the information are exactly the sorts of contacts that a national security advisor to an incoming president should be having with foreign powers.
In short, the allegations against Flynn suggest that Robert Mueller has nothing significant against President Trump or other members of his administration.
The following statement is from President Donald Trump’s lawyer:
This happened after the election, when the president-elect’s transition team initially contacts foreign governments. Obama also did this in speaking with then-Mexican president Felipe Calderon on January 12, 2009, just days before his first inauguration.
In fact, it is alleged that Obama’s campaign team met with Hamas and Iranian contacts in 2008, during his campaign. In March 2008 — also during the primary campaign — it emerged they were in touch with Colombia’s FARC.
ABC’s Brian Ross reported on the Flynn guilty plea, saying that the general was in touch with the Russians when Trump was a ‘candidate’. As Ross’s faulty story broke, the markets fell slightly for an hour on Friday. Ross did not issue a retraction until hours later:
This is what Rush Limbaugh had to say about Brian Ross, who has twisted the truth before:
Later on Friday, The Hill reported that CNN’s Jim Acosta — another questionable reporter — said White House sources told him the Obama administration approved Flynn’s communications before they took place. Also note that Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner is also mentioned:
The White House said on Friday that it was the Obama administration that authorized former national security adviser Michael Flynn’s contacts with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during President Trump’s transition, according to CNN.
Flynn pleaded guilty on Friday to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Kislyak in the month before Trump took office, the first current or former Trump White House official brought down by special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russia’s election meddling.
Court records indicate that his communications with Kislyak were directed by a Trump transition official, with multiple news outlets reporting that official was Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner.
“They are saying here at the White House that Flynn’s conversations with Sergey Kisylak were quote ‘authorized’ by the Obama administration,” CNN correspondent Jim Acosta said.
“We should point out, that is something that we have not heard before in terms of a defense from this White House,” he said.
The White House did not immediately respond to The Hill’s request for comment.
Of course, James Clapper, Obama’s Director of National Intelligence — and no friend of the Trump administration — said the White House claim was ‘absurd’.
Regardless, Flynn’s conversations happened after the election — not before, as some of the Obama campaign’s did.
Acosta also filed a CNN story wherein a ‘senior White House official’ told him:
“There is no anxiety with Flynn and about what he might say.”
The President “feels sorry for Flynn… I think he likes Flynn,” this official said, adding the Trump is “thinking about Flynn and his family.”
As I write on Saturday (GMT), it seems likely that this story will run and run all weekend long. Trump detractors worldwide will enjoy this, such as ex-FBI director James Comey:
He was quickly rebuked by former Secret Service agent Dan Bongino:
More reports emerged from ABC, NBC (and other news outlets). From ZeroHedge (emphases in the original):
ABC news takes it a step further, reporting from an anonymous source that “Donald Trump directed him to make contact with the Russians, initially as a way to work together to fight ISIS in Syria.” – though NBC News reports it was Trump’s son-in-law and advisor Jared Kushner.
I have already gone into the major points of the story thus far, but two of ZeroHedge‘s ‘observations and takeaways’ are worth noting:
The article asks why Flynn would have lied and offers these possibilities:
Why would Flynn lie about his contact with the Russians in late January, five days after the Inauguration? Was it because the nation had been whipped into an anti-Russia frenzy? Or, as some have suggested, does the rabbit hole go much deeper and there are aspects of the Trump-Russia story that haven’t been made public yet? Again, if that were known, Flynn would be pleading guilty to a much more serious crime.
Ultimately:
That said, Flynn is facing a whopping six months in prison and a fine of up to $9,500 for lying to the Special Counsel.
The article concludes:
So – unless there’s more than meets the eye, it appears that the coverup is far greater than the crime in regards to Flynn’s decision to lie to the FBI. And whatever the outcome, the hard bounce in the S&P 500 would seem to suggest this is perhaps another nothingburger and not quite the end of Drumpf.
What follows is part of Imperator_Rex’s analysis (two name corrections are at the bottom of his thread, but I have just used ‘Obama/Said officials’). Emphases mine below:
5. The plea offenses are known as ‘process crimes’, in other words non-compliance with the technicalities of being in an incoming administration.
6. In return for the plea, Flynn will FULLY CO-OPERATE with Mueller’s SC. That’s what this is all about. And it’s not heading in the direction of the Clinton/DNC Trump-Russia lie, that much is certain.
7. To recap : in January 1017, General Flynn didn’t tell the truth to Jim Comey & Andrew McCabe’s clownshow of an FBI, about meeting the Russian ambassador.
Thank God he didn’t.
8. To clarify, an incumbent administration communicating with foreign states, while a lame duck POTUS runs out his or her term, is commonplace & happens all the time. As you’d expect it to be.
9. However, the FBI under Comey & McCabe was a corrupted organization, which Flynn knew well. IMO he did the RIGHT thing not telling them about the communications with the Russian ambassador. It would have been leaked, with the intent of bringing down Trump.
11. [Obama officials] used unmasked intel under a FISA warrant (probably based on the Fusion GPS dossier) to ID Flynn and then leaked it to WaPo, a crime.
[Said officials] also tried to ambush Trump by saying they warned him about Flynn.
It didn’t work. Trump was inaugurated.
12. Trump likely became fully aware of what they did in February, but definitely by at least May 8, 2017 …
13. After his ‘resignation’, Flynn offered to tell his ‘story’ in a public Congressional hearing, in exchange for immunity. This was denied. The last thing those snakes wanted was for Flynn to reveal all on live television.
14. General Flynn knows everything about Obama & Clinton. That’s because he was the Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, serving from July 2012 to his retirement from the military in August 2014.
18. This plea deal allows Flynn to provide testimony under oath, as well as 24/7 ‘assistance’, to Mueller about EVERYTHING he knows. But it won’t be about the Drumpf-Russia lie. It will be about other things …
20. Ignore the crowing of the hysterical MSM today. They have been consistently wrong about everything, because they are basing it all on the Trump-Russia lie.
They are 100% wrong on this, too.
22. Remember these words from General Flynn’s lawyers in March, 2017:
‘General Flynn certainly has a story to tell, and he very much wants to tell it, should the circumstances permit’.
The circumstances now permit.
The end.
Some evidence that Imperator_Rex could be right comes from Hillary Clinton’s campaign chief John Podesta’s answers to questions from an audience at Duke University on Wednesday, November 29:
The Duke Chronicle reported his answer to a student who asked about Pizzagate and his ties to Russia:
“This is how the alt-right does fake news,” Podesta said. “It’s personally painful because a lot of this is really total bullsh*t. My family and I have been put through this Pizzagate bullsh*t now for a year—which has totally been debunked, by the way.”
“My relationship with the company that you talked about, that was based in Boston, an American innovative company—I totally disclosed [my relationship with it]. Fox [News] has had to correct that twice,” he added in response to Kiprilov’s question. “I could go down the rest of your list. I have no relationship to the Podesta Group and haven’t for 15 years. You can stick with it. The one thing I will tell you is you have a lot of company on Twitter and on the internet, so have at it.”
The student told the Duke Chronicle (emphases mine):
“Pizzagate was a conspiracy theory, but the other allegations, I don’t know,” Kiprilov said. “If he had been a bit calmer and more mature in answering the questions, I would have been satisfied. I was disappointed that he got so angered and triggered by my question.”
A self-identified Republican who says she is not part of the alt-right, Kiprilov said she felt that Podesta misunderstood the nature of her question.
“I did not imply that I believed any of this,” she said. “I think he immediately assumed I did, so he lumped me with the alt-right crowd, which was very unfortunate that he jumped to that conclusion.”
iBankCoin reported (emphases in the original):
In response to the next question from an audience member about how John feels about his brother Tony Podesta of the Podesta Group being under FBI investigation, John Podesta made sure to distance himself from Tony as he stammered through his response:
“Look I think my brother, uh, uh, A) I’m not my brother. Does it worry me? You know, I, I, It’s, it’s painful. I mean his firm, uh, uh, after many years in business, uh, uh, un-unraveled as a result of, I think of the fact that it was under investigation,” adding that he thinks Tony’s involvement with [Paul] Manafort’s partner Rick Gates and Congressman Vin Weber (R-MN) was ill advised.
Just to be clear, Paul Manafort’s indictment has nothing to do with the Trump campaign, but for Ukraine-related work during his time with the now-defunct Podesta Group.
Podesta then answered a question about Hillary’s defeat in 2016. This is an amazing answer:
Before the night was over, Podesta answered questions about Russia’s effect of the election, stating that while he didn’t think Russia’s efforts to interfere with voting on election day succeeded, bots and Facebook ads spreading fake news did.
Wow.
iBankCoin rightly concludes:
Or, maybe Russian internet bots, Pokémon Go and Facebook ads promoting liberal activism are perhaps the lamest possible excuses for why Hillary Clinton lost the election.
If Mueller finds nothing after his investigation, it will then be up to Attorney General Jeff ‘Sleepy’ Sessions to act like an Attorney General — tough. That is unlikely to happen, however. The Gateway Pundit has a scathing article on Sleepy, saying that he is actually bringing down the Trump administration through his recusal from campaign investigations — which enabled Robert Mueller’s appointment as Special Counsel — and ineffectiveness with regard to the Swamp.
Technically, Sessions probably did have to recuse. If so, he never should have accepted the post. Trump, apparently, did not know until after the fact.
More articles like that and Trump’s base will clamour for Sessions to resign. He never should have taken the job if he planned on recusing almost immediately, then getting a Democrat to be his deputy.
Trump will have to think quickly and carefully about resolving that situation soon.
UPDATE — On December 2, Fox News reported that ABC’s Brian Ross was suspended for four weeks without pay for his story on Flynn:
ABC News announced Saturday that Chief Investigative Correspondent Brian Ross would be suspended for four weeks without pay over a botched “exclusive” about former national security adviser Michael Flynn.
During a live “special report” Friday morning, Ross reported that Flynn would testify that Donald Trump had ordered him to make contact with Russians about foreign policy while he was still a candidate. The report raised the specter of Trump’s impeachment and sent the stock market plummeting.
Later in the day, ABC issued a “clarification” to Ross’s report, saying that Trump’s alleged directive came after he’d been elected president. Ross himself appeared on “World News Tonight,” several hours after the initial report, to clarify his error.
To be continued tomorrow.
