The Politicization of the FBI

A Critical U.S. Agency Goes "Banana Republic"

Joseph E. diGenova
Former U.S. Attorney

The following is adapted from a speech delivered on January 25, 2018, at Hillsdale College’s Allan P. Kirby, Jr. Center for Constitutional Studies and Citizenship in Washington, D.C., as part of the AWC Family Foundation Lecture Series. 

Over the past year, facts have emerged that suggest there was a plot by high-ranking FBI and Department of Justice (DOJ) officials in the Obama administration, acting under color of law, to exonerate Hillary Clinton of federal crimes and then, if she lost the election, to frame Donald Trump and his campaign for colluding with Russia to steal the presidency. This conduct was not based on mere bias, as has been widely claimed, but rather on deeply felt animus toward Trump and his agenda.

In the course of this plot, FBI Director James Comey, U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, FBI Deputy Director of Counterintelligence Peter Strzok, Strzok’s paramour and FBI lawyer Lisa Page, FBI General Counsel James Baker, and DOJ senior official Bruce Ohr—perhaps among others—compromised federal law enforcement to such an extent that the American public is losing trust. A recent CBS News poll finds 48 percent of Americans believe that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Trump-Russia collusion probe is “politically motivated,” a stunning conclusion. And 63 percent of polled voters in a Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll believe that the FBI withheld vital information from Congress about the Clinton and Russia collusion investigations.

I spent my early legal career as a federal prosecutor. I later supervised hundreds of prosecutors and prosecutions as a U.S. Attorney and as an Independent Counsel. I have never witnessed investigations so fraught with failure to fulfill the basic elements of a criminal probe as those conducted under James Comey. Not since former Acting FBI Director L. Patrick Gray deep-sixed evidence during Watergate has the head of the FBI been so discredited as Comey is now.

The Case of the Clinton Emails

The Hillary Clinton email scandal began in 2013 with the U.S. House of Representatives investigation into the attack on the American embassy in Benghazi, Libya, on September 11, 2012. It was during that investigation that accessing Secretary of State Clinton’s emails became an issue. But it wasn’t until The New York Times broke the story on March 2, 2015, that Clinton had a secret, personal server that things really took off.

Thousands of emails that the House at first requested, then subpoenaed, conveniently disappeared—remember those reports about BleachBit and the smashing of Clinton’s numerous phones with hammers? Clinton and her aides were, to say the least, not forthcoming. It was clearly time for the FBI and DOJ to act, using the legal tools at their disposal to secure the emails and other materials the House had subpoenaed. But that didn’t happen.

One tool at their disposal was the grand jury—the sine qua non of a criminal investigation. Grand juries are comprised of 16 to 23 citizens who hear a prosecutor’s case against an alleged criminal. The subject of the investigation is not present during the entire proceeding, which can last up to a year. A grand jury provides investigators with the authority to collect evidence by issuing subpoenas for documents and witnesses. FBI agents and prosecutors cannot themselves demand evidence. Only a grand jury can—or a court, in cases where a subpoena recipient refuses a grand jury’s command to provide documents or to testify.

Incredibly, FBI Director Comey and Attorney General Lynch refused to convene a grand jury during the Clinton investigation. Thus investigators had no authority to subpoena evidence or witnesses. Lacking leverage, Comey then injudiciously granted immunity to five Clinton aides in return for evidence that could have been obtained with a subpoena. Even when Clinton claimed 39 times during a July 2, 2016, interview—an interview led by disgraced FBI agent Peter Strzok—that she could not recall certain facts because of a head injury, Comey refused the case agents’ request to subpoena her medical records.

Comey claims he negotiated the immunity deals because of his concern about time. Yet the investigation was opened in the summer of 2015, nearly a year before he cut these deals. Compare this to the DOJ’s handling of four-star Marine General James E. Cartwright, who pleaded guilty in October 2016 to a false statement about leaking classified information to The New York Times. In that case, the DOJ bragged about its use of subpoenas and search warrants.

Not only was there no grand jury, the FBI never issued a search warrant—something it does when there is concern a person will destroy evidence. Clinton deleted half her emails and then claimed, under penalty of perjury, that she had turned over to the government all emails that “were or potentially were” work-related. The FBI later found email chains classified as “secret” or “confidential” that she had not turned over. Still no search warrant was issued.

Comey’s dereliction did not stop at the failure to utilize essential prosecutorial tools. He violated several rules that prosecutors consider sacrosanct:

• Comey allowed one lawyer to represent four material witnesses, an arrangement ripe for the four to coordinate testimony.
• After needlessly giving immunity to two lawyers representing Clinton, Comey permitted both to sit in on her July 2, 2016, FBI interview—a patent conflict. He claimed he could not control who sat in on the “voluntary” interview. That’s nonsense. He could have convened a grand jury, subpoenaed Clinton, and compelled her to appear and be questioned without a lawyer or else plead the Fifth Amendment.
• Comey authorized the destruction of laptop computers that belonged to Clinton’s aides and were under congressional subpoena.
• Comey ignored blatant evidence of culpability. It is ridiculous to the general public and risible to those who have security clearances for Clinton to claim she thought that “(c)” placed after paragraphs in her emails meant the material was in alphabetical order rather than meaning it was classified. If she thought (c) indicated alphabetical order, where were (a) and (b) on the documents? Clinton and her supporters touted her vast experience as a U.S. Senator and Secretary of State, positions requiring frequent use of classified information and presumably common sense. Yet neither experience nor common sense informed her decisions when handling classified materials.
• Comey and the FBI never questioned Clinton about her public statements, which changed over time and were blatantly false. “I did not email classified information to anyone” morphed into “I did not email anything marked ‘classified,’” which morphed into the claim that (c) did not mean what it clearly meant. False and changing statements are presented to juries routinely by prosecutors as evidence of guilt.
• Breaking DOJ protocols, violating the chain of command, and assuming an authority he never had, Comey usurped the role of the U.S. attorney general on July 5, 2016, when he announced that the case against Clinton was closed. He justified his actions saying that he no longer trusted Attorney General Lynch after her June 27, 2016, meeting with Bill Clinton on the tarmac at the Phoenix airport. This meeting took place at the height of the so-called investigation—just days before Peter Strzok interviewed Clinton on July 2. Thanks to the efforts of Judicial Watch to secure documents through the Freedom of Information Act, we now know that Comey was already drafting a letter exonerating Clinton in May 2016—prior to interviewing more than a dozen major witnesses. We also know that the FBI’s reaction to the impropriety of the tarmac meeting was not disgust, but rather anger at the person who leaked the fact of the meeting. “We need to find that guy” and bring him before a supervisor, stated one (name redacted) FBI agent. Another argued that the source should be banned from working security details. Not one email expressed concern over the meeting. An FBI director who truly had his trust shaken would have questioned the members of Lynch’s FBI security detail for the Arizona trip about how the meeting came to be. Comey didn’t bother.

Comey described Clinton’s handling of classified information as “extremely careless,” a clumsy attempt to avoid the legal language of “gross negligence” for criminal mishandling of classified information—and we later learned that Peter Strzok, again, was responsible for editing this language in Comey’s statement. But practically speaking, the terms are synonymous. Any judge would instruct a jury to consider “gross negligence” as “extremely careless” conduct.

Comey claimed that “no reasonable prosecutor” would bring the case against Clinton. I have spent many years investigating federal crimes, and I can tell you that a reasonable prosecutor would have utilized a grand jury, issued subpoenas and search warrants, and followed standard DOJ procedures for federal prosecutions. In short, Comey threw the case. He should have been fired long before he was.

In late spring 2016, just weeks prior to Comey’s July 5 press conference clearing Clinton of any crime, FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe ordered FBI agents in New York to shut down their investigation into the Clinton Foundation. Their objections were overruled. Sources have told me that McCabe also shut down an additional Clinton investigation. This is the McCabe who, while he was overseeing the Clinton email investigation, had a wife running for the Virginia State Senate and receiving more than $460,000 in campaign contributions from a longtime Clinton loyalist, Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe. Moreover, it was only after the news of Clinton’s private server became public in The New York Times that McAuliffe recruited McCabe’s wife to run for office. McCabe eventually recused himself from the Clinton probe, but that was one week before the 2016 election, after the decisions to clear Clinton and to pursue the Trump-Russia collusion investigation had already been made. So his recusal was meaningless.

In clearing legal impediments from Clinton’s path to the Democratic nomination, Comey and his senior staff thought they had helped Clinton clinch the presidency. Their actions put an end to a decades-long tradition of non-political federal law enforcement.

The Case of Trump-Russia Collusion

Rumors of collusion with Russia by Trump or the Trump campaign surfaced during the primaries in 2015, but gained in strength soon after Trump secured the Republican nomination in July 2016. Thanks to DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz, we now know that high-level FBI officials were involved in promoting these rumors. Among Horowitz’s discoveries were text messages between FBI Deputy Director of Counterintelligence Peter Strzok and FBI lawyer Lisa Page that suggest an illegal plan to utilize law enforcement to frame Trump. The most revealing exchange we know of took place on August 15, 2016. Concerned about the outcome of the election, Strzok wrote:

I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in [Andrew McCabe’s] office—that there’s no way [Trump] gets elected—but I’m afraid we can’t take that risk. It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you’re 40.

No amount of sugar coating or post hoc explanation of this and other texts can conceal the couple’s animus against Trump and support for Clinton. Strzok’s messages illustrate his commitment to Clinton’s victory and Trump’s defeat or, if Trump won, to an “insurance policy.”

The term “insurance policy” obviously refers to the Trump-Russia collusion investigation, which to this day remains a probe with no underlying crime. This is not the talk of professional investigators, but of corrupt agents who have created two standards of justice based on their political leanings. It looks like a reprise of the schemes undertaken during an earlier era, under FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, that led to the creation of the Church Committee—a committee on which I served, and which tried to reform the FBI to prevent it from meddling in domestic politics.

At the heart of the Russia collusion scheme is the FBI’s utilization of a document paid for by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee. Called the Steele Dossier because it was written by former British MI6 officer Christopher Steele, this document contains unsubstantiated information designed to taint Trump and his presidency. While Clinton partisans point out that candidate Clinton never referred to the Steele Dossier in her speeches, the fact is that she did not have to—the FBI hierarchy was doing it for her! Indeed, FBI General Counsel James Baker was recently reassigned because of his having leaked information about the Steele Dossier to the magazine Mother Jones.

Not one claim concerning Trump in the Steele Dossier has ever been verified by the FBI, according to Andrew McCabe himself in recent testimony to the House Intelligence Committee. The only confirmed fact is unsurprising: former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page traveled to Moscow on his own dime and met with various Russians—all perfectly legal.

Comey and then-CIA Director John Brennan laundered the Steele Dossier through the U.S. intelligence community to give it an aura of credibility and get it to the press. It was also used by the FBI and senior DOJ officials to secure wiretap warrants from a secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court. Then its contents, via court-authorized FISA warrants, were used to justify the illegal unmasking of the identities of wiretapped Trump officials. The contents of these National Security Agency intercepts were put on spreadsheets and presented to members of President Obama’s National Security Council (NSC)—specifically Susan Rice and Ben Rhodes—and subsequently leaked to the press. According to former NSC staff, President Obama himself read the FISA intercepts of Trump campaign personnel. Unsurprisingly, there was no request for a leak investigation from either the FBI or the DOJ.

In sum, the FBI and DOJ employed unverified salacious allegations contained in a political opposition research document to obtain court-sanctioned wiretaps, and then leaked the contents of the wiretaps and the identities of political opponents. This was a complex criminal plot worthy of Jason Bourne.

The Pall Over the Special Counsel and the FBI

Layered over this debacle is a special counsel investigation unfettered by rules or law. Not surprisingly, James Comey triggered the special counsel’s appointment—and he did so by design. According to Comey’s testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee, having been fired on May 9, 2017, he leaked official documents to his friend, Columbia Law School professor Daniel Richman, with the specific intent that Richman would leak them to the press. Reportage on that leak is what led Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to appoint Robert Mueller—a former FBI director and Comey’s good friend—as special counsel to investigate allegations of Trump-Russia collusion.

Mueller’s reputation has been damaged by a series of decisions that violate the ethical rules of appearances. For instance, he hired Democratic partisans as lawyers for the probe: Andrew Weissmann, who donated to Clinton and praised Acting Attorney General Sally Yates for disobeying Trump’s lawful Presidential Order regarding a travel ban for residents of certain nations that harbor terrorists; Jeannie Rhee, who donated to Clinton and represented Ben Rhodes in the email probe and the Clinton Foundation investigation; and Aaron Zebley, who represented Clinton IT staffer Justin Cooper in the email server probe.

Mueller also staged a pre-dawn raid with weapons drawn on the home of Paul Manafort, rousing Manafort and his wife from their bed—a tactic customarily reserved for terrorists and drug dealers. Manafort has subsequently been indicted for financial crimes that antedate his campaign work for Trump and that have nothing to do with Russia collusion.

Then there’s the fact that when Mueller removed Strzok from the investigation in July 2017, he didn’t tell anyone. The removal and its causes were uncovered by DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz. Why was such vital information concealed from the public? It is not, as is often claimed now, that Strzok was a minor figure. All the major decisions regarding both the Clinton and the Trump-Russia collusion investigations had been made under Strzok.

Significantly, Strzok also led the interview of General Michael Flynn that ended in Flynn pleading guilty to making false statements to the FBI. It is important to recall that Flynn’s FBI interview was not conducted under the authority of the special counsel, but under that of Comey and McCabe. It took place during Inauguration week in January 2017. Flynn had met with the same agents the day before regarding security clearances. McCabe called Flynn and asked if agents could come to the White House. Flynn agreed, assuming it was about personnel. It was not.

Flynn had been overheard on a FISA wiretap talking to Russia’s Ambassador to the United States, Sergey Kislyak. There was nothing criminal or even unusual about the fact of such discussion. Flynn was on the Trump transition team and was a federal employee as the President-Elect’s national security advisor. It was his job to be talking to foreign leaders. Flynn was not charged with regard to anything said during his conversation with Kislyak. So why was the FBI interrogating Flynn about legal conduct? What more did the FBI need to know? I am told by sources that when Flynn’s indictment was announced, McCabe was on a video conference call—cheering!

Compare the FBI’s treatment of Flynn to its treatment of Paul Combetta, the technician who used a program called BleachBit to destroy thousands of emails on Hillary Clinton’s computer. This destruction of evidence took place after a committee of the U.S. House of Representatives issued letters directing that all emails be preserved and subpoenaing them. Combetta first lied to the FBI, claiming he did not recall deleting anything. After being rewarded with immunity, Combetta recalled destroying the emails—but he could not recall anyone directing him to do so.

The word in Washington is that Flynn pleaded guilty to take pressure off his son, who was also a subject of Mueller’s investigation. Always the soldier. But those who questioned Flynn that day did not cover themselves with law enforcement glory. Led by Strzok, they grilled Flynn about facts that they already knew and that they knew did not constitute a crime. They besmirched the reputation of federal law enforcement by their role in a scheme to destroy a duly elected president and his appointees.

A pall hangs over Mueller, and a pall hangs over the DOJ. But the darkest pall hangs over the FBI, America’s premier federal law enforcement agency, which since the demise of J. Edgar Hoover has been steadfast in steering clear of politics. Even during L. Patrick Gray’s brief tenure as acting director during Watergate, it was not the FBI but Gray personally who was implicated. The current scandal pervades the Bureau. It spans from Director Comey to Deputy Director McCabe to General Counsel Baker. It spread to counterintelligence via Peter Strzok. When line agents complained about the misconduct, McCabe retaliated by placing them under investigation for leaking information.

From the outset of this scandal, I have considered Comey a dirty cop. His unfailing commitment to himself above all else is of a pattern. Throughout his career, Comey has continually portrayed himself as Thomas Becket, fighting against institutional corruption—even where none exists. Stories abound of his routine retort to anyone who disagreed with him (not an unusual happening when lawyers gather) during his tenure as deputy attorney general under President George W. Bush. “Your moral compass is askew,” he would say. This self-righteousness led agents to refer to him as “The Cardinal.” Comey is no Thomas Becket—he is Henry II.

A great disservice has been done to the dedicated men and women of the FBI by Comey and his seventh floor henchmen. A grand jury probe is long overdue. Inspector General Horowitz is an honest man, but he cannot convene a grand jury. We need one now. We need our FBI back.

Climate Gate: 1 & 2

Check out these three articles on politically-correct climate data:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/feb/6/noaa-agrees-review-claim-data-manipulation-climate/

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/feb/5/climate-change-whistleblower-alleges-noaa-manipula/

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4192182/World-leaders-duped-manipulated-global-warming-data.html#ixzz4XwLUFctN

What Evil and Destruction Hath Barack Obama Rought?

The Stillborn Legacy of Barack Obama

by

Charles Krauthammer

National Review

2016 October 6

His signature domestic legislation and his foreign policy of preening disengagement are both coming apart at the seams. 

Only amid the most bizarre, tawdriest, most addictive election campaign in memory could the real story of 2016 be so effectively obliterated, namely, that with just four months left in the Obama presidency, its two central pillars are collapsing before our eyes: domestically, its radical reform of American health care, a.k.a. Obamacare; and abroad, its radical reorientation of American foreign policy — disengagement marked by diplomacy and multilateralism.

Obamacare

On Monday, Bill Clinton called it “the craziest thing in the world.” And he was talking about only one crazy aspect of it — the impact on the consumer. Clinton pointed out that small business and hardworking employees (“out there busting it, sometimes 60 hours a week”) are “getting whacked . . . their premiums doubled and their coverage cut in half.”

This, as the program’s entire economic foundation is crumbling. More than half its nonprofit “co-ops” have gone bankrupt. Major health insurers such as Aetna and UnitedHealthcare, having lost millions of dollars, are withdrawing from the exchanges. In one-third of the U.S., exchanges will have only one insurance provider. Premiums and deductibles are exploding. Even the New York Times blares, “Ailing Obama Health Care Act May Have to Change to Survive.”

Young people, refusing to pay disproportionately to subsidize older and sicker patients, are not signing up. As the risk pool becomes increasingly unbalanced, the death spiral accelerates. And the only way to save the system is with massive infusions of tax money. 

What to do? The Democrats will eventually push to junk Obamacare for a full-fledged, government-run, single-payer system. Republicans will seek to junk it for a more market-based pre-Obamacare-like alternative. Either way, the singular domestic achievement of this presidency dies.

The Obama Doctrine 

The president’s vision was to move away from a world where stability and “the success of liberty” (JFK, inaugural address) were anchored by American power and move toward a world ruled by universal norms, mutual obligation, international law, and multilateral institutions. No more cowboy adventures, no more unilateralism, no more Guantanamo. We would ascend to the higher moral plane of diplomacy. Clean hands, clear conscience, “smart power.”

This blessed vision has just died a terrible death in Aleppo. Its unraveling was predicted and predictable, though it took fully two terms to unfold. This policy of pristine — and preening — disengagement from the grubby imperatives of realpolitik yielded Crimea, the South China Sea, the rise of the Islamic State, the return of Iran. And now the horror and the shame of Aleppo.

After endless concessions to Russian demands meant to protect and preserve the genocidal regime of Bashar al-Assad, we finally capitulated last month to a deal in which we essentially joined Russia in that objective. But such is Vladimir Putin’s contempt for our president that he wouldn’t stop there.

He blatantly violated his own cease-fire with an air campaign of such spectacular savagery — targeting hospitals, water-pumping stations, and a humanitarian aid convoy — that even Barack Obama and John Kerry could no longer deny that Putin is seeking not compromise but conquest. And he is prepared to kill everyone in rebel-held Aleppo to achieve it. Obama, left with no options — and astonishingly, having prepared none — looks on.

At the outset of the war, we could have bombed Assad’s airfields and destroyed his aircraft, eliminating the regime’s major strategic advantage — control of the air.

Five years later, we can’t. Russia is there. Putin has just installed S-300 antiaircraft missiles near Tartus. Yet, none of the rebels have any air assets. This is a warning and deterrent to the only power that could do something — the United States.

Obama did nothing before.  He will surely do nothing now.  For Americans, the shame is palpable.

Russia’s annexation of Crimea may be an abstraction, but that stunned injured little boy in Aleppo is not.

“What is Aleppo?” famously asked Gary Johnson. Answer: the burial ground of the Obama fantasy of benign disengagement. 

What’s left of the Obama legacy?  Even Democrats are running away from Obamacare.  And who will defend his foreign policy of lofty speech and cynical abdication? 

In 2014, Obama said, “Make no mistake: [My] policies are on the ballot.” Democrats were crushed in that midterm election.

This time around, Obama says, “My legacy’s on the ballot.” If the 2016 campaign hadn’t turned into a referendum on character — a battle fully personalized and ad hominem — the collapse of the Obama legacy would indeed be right now on the ballot. And his party would be 20 points behind. 

— Charles Krauthammer is a nationally syndicated columnist. © 2016 The Washington Post Writers Group.

CAN THIS COUNTRY WITHSTAND 4 (or 8) MORE YEARS OF THE OBAMA CORRUPTION, DECEIT, AND CAPITULATION?

Bill Clinton’s airport run-in with Loretta Lynch was no accident

And We Now Live In A Banana Republic

By Edward Klein

New York Post

2016 October 3

In his new book, Guilty As Sin (Regnery), out Tuesday (2016 October 4), Edward Klein claims officials in the Obama administration decided before the first witness was interviewed that Hillary Clinton would not face prosecution over the handling of classified email.  An excerpt:

Bill Clinton’s private jet was cleared for takeoff and was taxiing toward the active runway at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport when a Secret Service agent informed him that Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s plane was coming in for a landing.

“Don’t take off!” Bill barked.

As his plane skidded to a halt and then headed back to its parking space, Bill grabbed a phone and called an old friend — one of his most trusted legal advisers.

It was June 27, 2016 — one year into the FBI investigation of Hillary Clinton’s emails.

“Bill said, ‘I want to bushwhack Loretta,’ ” the adviser recalled. “ ‘I’m going to board her plane. What do you think?’ And I said, ‘There’s no downside for you, but she’s going to take a pounding if she’s crazy enough to let you on her plane.’

“He knew it would be a huge embarrassment to Loretta when people found out that she had talked to the husband of a woman — the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party — who was under criminal investigation by the FBI,” the adviser continued. “But he didn’t give a damn. He wanted to intimidate Loretta and discredit [FBI Director James] Comey’s investigation of Hillary’s emails, which was giving Hillary’s campaign agita.”

Bill hung up the phone and turned to a Secret Service agent.

“As soon as her plane lands,” he said, “get the attorney general on the phone and say the president would like to have a word with her.”

Once inside Lynch’s plane, Bill turned on the Clinton charm. He gave Lynch’s shoulder an affectionate squeeze and shook hands with her husband, Stephen Hargove.

“Bill said he could tell that Loretta knew from the get-go that she’d made a huge mistake,” his adviser said. “She was literally trembling, shaking with nervousness. Her husband tried to comfort her; he kept patting her hand and rubbing her back.

“Bill made small talk about golf and grandchildren and [former Attorney General] Janet Reno, and he kept at it for nearly a half-hour. It didn’t make any difference what they talked about; all he wanted to do was send a message to everyone at Justice and the FBI that Hillary had the full weight of the Clinton machine, the Democratic Party, and the White House behind her.

“It was clearly tortuous for Loretta. Bill told me later that he noticed there were beads of sweat on her upper lip.”

One week later, Barack Obama invited Hillary to fly with him to North Carolina for a campaign rally. He wouldn’t have let her use two of the greatest symbols of presidential power — Air Force One and the podium with the Seal of the President of the United States — if he thought there was even the slightest chance she was going to be indicted. But Attorney General Lynch had privately assured him that she wouldn’t let that happen, and that the fix was in.

Many members of the mainstream media thought that FBI Director Comey was hell-bent on indicting Hillary. They called him the Eliot Ness of his time — squeaky clean and untouchable.

But that was a complete misreading of Comey.

He was affable, had a good sense of humor, and might come across as a straight arrow, but he didn’t get to be director of the FBI by falling off the turnip truck. It took huge ambition and an instinct for political survival.

Comey knew that if he recommended an indictment of Hillary — something that was fiercely opposed by the president, the attorney general, the Democrats in Congress, and the mainstream media — he’d ignite a firestorm and go down in history as the man who traumatized the country’s political system. What’s more, if after all of that, Hillary was found not guilty by a jury, it would blacken Comey’s reputation for all time to come.

The day after Obama and Hillary flew to North Carolina, Comey held a televised press conference in the FBI auditorium. Dressed in a blue shirt and gold tie, which matched the colors of the FBI flag standing behind his lectern, Comey methodically laid out a bill of indictment against Hillary Clinton.

He said that Hillary and her top aides at the State Department — Huma Abedin, Cheryl Mills, and Jake Sullivan — had been “extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.”

On and on he went, for a full 10 minutes, making an iron-clad case that Hillary was guilty of gross negligence in her handling of classified material, and that she had violated a federal statute that did not require evidence of intent to prove her guilty.

Attorney General Lynch sat in her office, along with her top aides, watching Comey deliver his blistering rebuke of Hillary Clinton.

Lynch had promised President Obama and Valerie Jarrett that Hillary would not be indicted. But here was the director of the FBI on national TV laying out what appeared to be an unassailable case for prosecuting her.

How could this have happened?  What had gone wrong? Would she be forced to resign?

All these thoughts went through Lynch’s mind, as she later recalled to a friend, as she listened to Comey drone on.

She was livid.

Finally, she couldn’t stand to watch him anymore. She covered her eyes with her hands and let out a string of curses aimed at Jim Comey. And then, three-quarters of the way through his news conference, Comey dropped a bombshell.

Hillary, he said, shouldn’t be prosecuted for her handling of classified information — even though it wasn’t his job to make prosecutorial decisions. That was up to the prosecutors in the Justice Department. There was no evidence, he said, that Hillary had intentionally transmitted or willfully mishandled secret documents in order to harm the United States.

“Our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case.”

Hillary was clearly guilty as sin, and the right thing would have been for Comey not only to say so — which he did — but to make her pay for her sins.

But he didn’t.

Newsweek Magazine Final Gets it Right!

Newsweek rips into President empty suit like never before!

Newsweek Closed Its Doors with a Slam at Obama.  Newsweek Is Now History.  The liberal Newsweek Magazine is going out of business, but not before it attacks the President.  This is quite an article, even more so when you consider that NEWSWEEK finally had the guts to admit it. WOW!  Newsweek COVER!!!  It is their last cover before they fold.  Also read the article at the end. AMAZING!!!

Finally, Matt Patterson and Newsweek speak out about Obama.  This is timely and tough.  As many of you know, Newsweek has a reputation for being extremely liberal.  The fact that their editor saw fit to print the following article about Obama and the one that appears in the latest Newsweek, makes this a truly amazing event, and a news story in and of itself.  At last, the truth about our President and his Agenda are starting to trickle through the protective wall built around him by the liberal media...


By Matt Patterson

(Newsweek Columnist -- Opinion Writer)

Years from now, historians may regard the 2008 election of Barack Obama as an inscrutable and phenomenon, the result of a baffling breed of mass hysteria akin perhaps to the witch craze of the Middle Ages.  How, they will wonder, did a man so devoid of professional accomplishment beguile so many into thinking he could manage the world's largest economy, direct the world's most powerful military, execute the world's most consequential job?

Imagine a future historian examining Obama's pre-presidential life: ushered into and through the Ivy League, despite unremarkable grades and test scores along the way; a cushy non-job as a "community organizer;" a brief career as a state legislator devoid of legislative achievement (and in fact nearly devoid of his attention, less often did he vote "present"); and finally an unaccomplished single term in the United States Senate, the entirety of which was devoted to his presidential ambitions.

He left no academic legacy in academia, authored no signature legislation as a legislator.  And then there is the matter of his troubling associations: the white-hating, America-loathing preacher who for decades served as Obama's "spiritual mentor;" a real-life, actual terrorist who served as Obama's colleague and political sponsor.  It is easy to imagine a future historian looking at it all and asking: how on Earth was such a man elected president?  There is no evidence that he ever attended or worked for any university or that he ever sat for the Illinois bar.  We have no documentation for any of his claims.  He may well be the greatest hoax in history. Not content to wait for history, the incomparable Norman Podhoretz addressed the question recently in the Wall Street Journal: To be sure, no white candidate who had close associations with an outspoken hater of America like Jeremiah Wright and an unrepentant terrorist like Bill Ayers, would have lasted a single day.

But because Mr.  Obama was black, and therefore entitled in the eyes of liberal Dom to have hung out with protesters against various American injustices, even if they were 'a bit' extreme, he was given a pass.  Let that Sink in: Obama was given a pass - held to a lower standard because of the color of his skin.  Podhoretz continues: And in any case, what did such ancient history matter when he was also so articulate and elegant and (as he himself had said) "non-threatening," all of which gave him a fighting chance to become the first black president and thereby to lay the curse of racism to rest? Podhoretz puts his finger, I think, on the animating pulse of the Obama phenomenon - affirmative action.  Not in the legal sense, of course.  But certainly in the motivating sentiment behind all affirmative action laws and regulations, which are designed primarily to make white people, and especially white liberals, feel good about themselves.  Unfortunately, minorities often suffer so that whites can pat themselves on the back.

Liberals routinely admit minorities to schools for which they are not qualified, yet take no responsibility for the inevitable poor performance and high drop-out rates which follow.  Liberals don't care if these minority students fail; liberals aren't around to witness the emotional devastation and deflated self-esteem resulting from the racist policy that is affirmative action.  Yes, racist.  Holding someone to a separate standard merely because of the color of his skin - that's affirmative action in a nutshell, and if that isn't racism, then nothing is.  And that is what America did to Obama.  True, Obama himself was never troubled by his lack of achievements, but why would he be?  As many have noted, Obama was told he was good enough for Columbia despite undistinguished grades at Occidental; he was told he was good enough for the US Senate despite a mediocre record in Illinois ; he was told he was good enough to be president despite no record at all in the Senate.  All his life, every step of the way, Obama was told he was good enough for the next step, in spite of ample evidence to the contrary.

What could this breed if not the sort of empty narcissism on display every time Obama speaks?  In 2008, many who agreed that he lacked executive qualifications nonetheless raved about Obama's oratory skills, intellect, and cool character.  Those people - conservatives included - ought now to be deeply embarrassed.  The man thinks and speaks in the hoariest of cliches, and that's when he has his Teleprompters in front of him; when the prompter is absent he can barely think or speak at all.  Not one original idea has ever issued from his mouth - it's all warmed-over Marxism of the kind that has failed over and over again for 100 years.  (An example is his 2012 campaign speeches which are almost word for word his 2008 speeches)

And what about his character?  Obama is constantly blaming anything and everything else for his troubles.  Bush did it; it was bad luck; I inherited this mess. Remember, he wanted the job, campaigned for the task.  It is embarrassing to see a president so willing to advertise his own powerless-ness, so comfortable with his own incompetence.  (The other day he actually came out and said no one could have done anything to get our economy and country back on track).  But really, what were we to expect?  The man has never been responsible for anything, so how do we expect him to act responsibly?

In short: our president is a small-minded man, with neither the temperament nor the intellect to handle his job.  When you understand that, and only when you understand that, will the current erosion of liberty and prosperity make sense.  It could not have gone otherwise with such an impostor in the Oval Office.

The FBI Is In The TANK For Hillary Clinton

FBI Managers Instructed to Exonerate Hillary Clinton

Bureau managers were obviously instructed to exonerate Clinton!

By Andrew P. Napolitano
The Washington Times
September 7, 2016

ANALYSIS/OPINION:
On Sept. 2, the FBI released a lengthy explanation of its investigation of Hillary Clinton and a summary of the evidence amassed against her. It also released a summary of Mrs. Clinton’s July FBI interrogation.

The interrogation was in some respects standard and in others very troubling. It was standard in that she was confronted with emails she had sent or received and was asked whether she recalled them, and her judgment about them was challenged. The FBI was looking for gross negligence in her behavior about securing state secrets.

The failure to secure state secrets that have been entrusted to one for safekeeping is known as espionage, and espionage is the rare federal crime that does not require prosecutors to prove the defendant’s intent. They need only prove the defendant’s gross negligence.

At one point during the interrogation, FBI agents attempted to trick her, as the law permits them to do. Before the interrogation began, agents took the hard copy of an innocuous email Mrs. Clinton had sent to an aide and marked it “secret.” Then, at her interrogation, they asked Mrs. Clinton whether she recognized the email and its contents. She said she did not recognize it, but she questioned the “secret” denomination and pointed out to the agents that nothing remotely secret was in the email.

By examining the contents of the email to see whether it contained state secrets, which it clearly did not, Mrs. Clinton demonstrated an awareness of the law — namely, that it is the contents of a document or email that cause it to be protected by federal secrecy statutes, not the denomination put on it by the sender.

This added to the case against her because she later told the FBI that she had never paid attention to whether a document contained state secrets or not. In the strange world of espionage prosecution, this denial of intent is an admission of guilt, as it is profoundly the job of the secretary of State to recognize state secrets and to keep them in their secure government-protected venues, and the grossly negligent failure to do so is criminal.

The FBI notes of the interrogation recount that Mrs. Clinton professed serious memory lapses 39 times. She also professed ignorance over what “C” means in the margin of a government document. “C” in the margin means “confidential,” which is one of the three levels of federal state secrets. The other two levels are “secret” and “top secret.” Under federal law, Mrs. Clinton was required to keep in secure government venues all documents in those three categories. The FBI found that she had failed to do so hundreds of times.

By denying that she had paid attention to notes in margins designating the presence of secrets, by denying that she recognized a secret when she saw one, and by denying that the location of planned drone strikes is secret (an obvious secret with which FBI agents confronted her), she succeeded in avoiding incriminating herself.

But by saving herself from indictment, she may have doomed her campaign for president. In this dangerous world, how can a person seeking the presidency be so dumb or ignorant or indifferent or reckless or deceptive about what is a secret and what is not?

The records released last week also reveal that the FBI must have been restrained from the outset from conducting an aggressive investigation. It did not present any evidence to a grand jury. It did not ask a grand jury for any subpoenas, and hence it didn’t serve any. It did not ask a judge for any search warrants, and hence it didn’t serve any. The data and hardware it gathered in the case were given to it in response to simple requests it made.

I counted five times in the report where the FBI lamented that it did not have what it needed. This is the FBI’s own fault. This tepid FBI behavior is novel in modern federal law enforcement. It is inimical to public safety and the rule of law. It is close to misconduct in office by high-ranking FBI officials.
Someone restrained the FBI.

The FBI did not ask Mrs. Clinton aggressive follow-up questions. Her interrogators just blithely accepted her answers. They failed to present her with documents she had signed that would have contradicted what she was telling them — particularly, an oath she signed on her first day in office promising to recognize state secrets when she came upon them and to keep them in secure venues. And agents violated Department of Justice policy by not recording her interrogation when her lawyers told them she would not answer questions if her answers were recorded.

Now the FBI has interjected itself into the presidential campaign by releasing these documents. Hillary and the FBI Notwithstanding the mountain of evidence pointing to Mrs. Clinton’s guilt, it is highly improper and grossly unfair to release evidence gathered against a person who will not be prosecuted. Moreover, it is tendentious to release only part of the evidence — only what agents want the public to see — rather than the complete file. Yet all this evidence is secret under Department of Justice regulations. Had any of it been intended for or presented to a grand jury, the release of it would have been criminal.

What happened here? The FBI seriously dropped the ball, and Mrs. Clinton was more concerned about being indicted than she was about losing the race for the presidency.

It is apparent that some in FBI management blindly followed what they were told to do — exonerate Hillary Clinton. There is no other explanation for the FBI’s failure from the outset to use ordinary law enforcement tools available to it. Yet some in the FBI are not professionally satisfied by this outcome. They know that a strong case for prosecution and for guilt is being ignored for political reasons.
What else do they know?

• Andrew P. Napolitano, a former judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey, is a contributor to The Washington Times. He is the author of seven books on the U.S. Constitution.

Two Americas!

Two Americas
By Bob Lonsberry

The Democrats are right, there are two Americas. The America that works and the America that doesn't. The America that contributes and the America that doesn't. It's not the haves and the have nots, it's the dos and the don'ts. Some people do their duty as Americans, obey the law, support themselves, contribute to society and others don't. That's the divide in America.

It's not about income inequality, it's about civic irresponsibility. It's about a political party that preaches hatred, greed and victimization in order to win elective office. It's about a political party that loves power more than it loves its country.

That's not invective, that's truth, and it's about time someone said it.  The politics of envy was on proud display a couple weeks ago when President Obama pledged the rest of his term to fighting "income inequality."  He noted that some people make more than other people, that some people have higher incomes than others, and he says that's not just. That is the rationale of thievery.  The other guy has it, you want it, Obama will take it for you. Vote Democrat.  That is the philosophy that produced Detroit .

It is the electoral philosophy that is destroying America.  It conceals a fundamental deviation from American values and common sense because it ends up not benefiting the people who support it, but a betrayal. 

The Democrats have not empowered their followers, they have enslaved them in a culture of dependence and entitlement, of victim-hood and anger instead of ability and hope. The president's premise “ that you reduce income inequality by debasing the successful“ seeks to deny the successful the consequences of their choices and spare the unsuccessful the consequences of their choices. Because, by and large, income variations in society are a result of different choices leading to different consequences.  Those who choose wisely and responsibly have a far greater likelihood of success, while those who choose foolishly and irresponsibly have a far greater likelihood of failure.

Success and failure usually manifest themselves in personal and family income. You choose to drop out of high school or to skip college and you are apt to have a different outcome than someone who gets a diploma and pushes on with purposeful education.  You have your children out of wedlock and life is apt to take one course; you have them within a marriage and life is apt to take another course. Most often in life our destination is determined by the course we take.

My doctor, for example, makes far more than I do.  There is significant income inequality between us.  Our lives have had an inequality of outcome, but our lives also have had an inequality of effort.  While my doctor went to college and then devoted his young adulthood to medical school and residency, I got a job in a restaurant.  He made a choice, I made a choice, and our choices led us to different outcomes. His outcome pays a lot better than mine.  Does that mean he cheated and Barack Obama needs to take away his wealth? No, it means we are both free men in a free society where free choices lead to different outcomes.

It is not inequality Barack Obama intends to take away, it is freedom. The freedom to succeed, and the freedom to fail. There is no true option for success if there is no true option for failure.  The pursuit of happiness means a whole lot less when you face the punitive hand of government if your pursuit brings you more happiness than the other guy.  Even if the other guy sat on his arse and did nothing.  Even if the other guy made a lifetime's worth of asinine and short sighted decisions.

Barack Obama and the Democrats preach equality of outcome as a right, while completely ignoring inequality of effort.  The simple Law of the Harvest “as ye sow, so shall ye reap“ is sometimes applied as, "The harder you work, the more you get."

Obama would turn that upside down.  Those who achieve are to be punished as enemies of society and those who fail are to be rewarded as wards of society.  Entitlement will replace effort as the key to upward mobility in American society if Barack Obama gets his way.  He seeks a lowest common denominator society in which the government besieges the successful and productive to foster equality through mediocrity.  He and his party speak of two Americas, and their grip on power is based on using the votes of one to sap the productivity of the other.  America is not divided by the differences in our outcomes, it is divided by the differences in our efforts.

It is a false philosophy to say one man's success comes about unavoidably as the result of another man's victimization.

What Obama offered was not a solution, but a separatism. He fomented division and strife, pitted one set of Americans against another for his own political benefit. That's what socialists offer. Marxist class warfare wrapped up with a bow. Two Americas , coming closer each day to proving the truth to Lincoln 's maxim that a house divided against itself cannot stand.

"Life is ten percent what happens to you and ninety percent how you respond to it." 

Islamism Comes to the United States of America

ALL Of A Sudden ... Seven Short Years Have Passed!

Before Obama there was virtually no outlandish presence of Islam in America.

• All of a sudden, Islam is taught in schools. Christianity and the bible are banned in schools.

• All of a sudden we must allow prayer rugs everywhere and allow for Islamic prayer in schools, airports and businesses.

• All of a sudden we must stop serving pork in prisons.

• All of a sudden we are inundated with law suits by Muslims who are offended by American culture.

• All of a sudden we must allow burkas to be worn everywhere even though you have no idea who or what is covered up under them.

• All of a sudden Muslims are suing employers and refusing to do their jobs if they personally deem it conflicts with Sharia Law.

• All of a sudden the Attorney General of the United States vows to prosecute anyone who engages in "anti-Muslim speech".

• All of a sudden, Jihadists who engage in terrorism and openly admit they acted in the name of Islam and ISIS, are emphatically declared they are NOT Islamic by our leaders and/or their actions are determined NOT to be terrorism, but other nebulous terms like 'workplace violence."

• All of a sudden, it becomes Policy that Secular Middle East dictators that were benign or friendly to the West, must be replaced by Islamists and the Muslim Brotherhood.

• All of a sudden our troops are withdrawn from Iraq and the middle east, giving rise to ISIS.

• All of a sudden, America has reduced its nuclear stockpiles to 1950 levels, as Obama's stated goal of a nuke-free America by the time he leaves office continues uninterrupted.

• All of a sudden, a deal with Iran must be made at any cost, with a pathway to nuclear weapons and HUNDREDS of BILLIONS of dollars handed over to fund their programs.

• All of a sudden America APOLOGIZES to Muslim states and sponsors of terror worldwide for acts of aggression, war and sabotage THEY perpetrate against our soldiers.

• All of a sudden, the American Navy is diminished to 1917 Pre-World War I levels of only 300 ships. The Army is at pre-1940 levels. The Air Force scraps 500 planes and planned to retire the use of the A-10 Thunderbolt close air support fighter.  A further draw down of another 40,000 military personnel is in 
progress.

• All of a sudden half of our aircraft carriers are recalled for maintenance by Obama rendering the Atlantic unguarded, NONE are in the Middle East.

• All of a sudden Obama has to empty Guantanamo Bay of captured Jihadists and let them loose in Jihad-friendly Islamic states.  He demands to close the facility.

• All of a sudden America will negotiate with terrorists and trade FIVE Taliban commanders for a deserter and Jihad sympathizer.

• All of a sudden there is no money for American poor, disabled veterans, jobless Americans, hungry Americans, or displaced Americans but there is endless money for Obama's "Syrian refugee" resettlement programs.

• All of sudden there is an ammunition shortage in the USA.

• All of a sudden, the most important thing for Obama to do after a mass shooting by two Jihadists, is disarm American Citizens.

• All of a sudden, the President of the United States cannot attend the Christian Funerals of a Supreme Court Justice and a former First Lady because of previous (seemingly unimportant) commitments.
                                                         
All of a sudden, I’m sick to my stomach.  I’m not sure the majority of Americans recognize the seriousness of the situation and how much “progress” has been made by Islam these last 7 years, a very brief time compared to a 75 year lifetime!

It's a sad state today in the USA.

Hillary Has A History That Is Not Good

Have a look at this 20 minute video if you want to know how it is with Hillary Clinton.

http://endingthefed.com/hillarys-camp-freaking-out-as-this-video-goes-viral-no-way-to-stop-it-now.html

It is desperately sad that our country tolerates and rewards such corruption.

Hillary Has A Despicable Record

When Bill Clinton was president, he allowed Hillary to assume authority over a health care reform.  Even after threats and intimidation, she couldn't even get a vote in a   democratic  controlled congress.  This fiasco cost the American taxpayers about $13 million in cost  for studies,  promotion, and other efforts.

Then President Clinton gave Hillary authority over selecting a female attorney general.   Her first two selections were Zoe Baird and Kimba Wood - both were forced to withdraw their names from consideration.

Next, she chose Janet Reno—husband, Bill, described her selection as "my worst mistake."  Some may not remember that Reno made the decision to gas David Koresh and the Branch Davidian religious sect in Waco, Texas resulting in dozens of deaths of women and children.

Husband, Bill, allowed Hillary to make recommendations for the head of the Civil Rights Commission.  Lani Guinier was her selection.  When a little probing led to the discovery of Ms. Guinier's radical views, her name had to be withdrawn from consideration.

Apparently a slow learner, husband, Bill, allowed Hillary to make some more recommendations.  She chose former law partners Web Hubbell for the Justice Department, Vince  Foster for the White House staff, and William Kennedy for the Treasury  Department.  Her selections went well: Hubbell went to prison, Foster (presumably) committed suicide, and Kennedy was forced to resign.

Many younger voters will have no knowledge of "Travelgate." Hillary wanted to award unfettered travel contracts to Clinton friend Harry Thompson—and the White House Travel Office refused to comply.  She managed to have them reported to the FBI and fired.  This ruined their reputations, cost them their jobs, and caused a thirty-six month investigation.  Only one employee, Billy Dale, was charged with a crime, and that of  the enormous crime of mixing personal and White House funds.  A jury acquitted him of any crime in less than two hours.

Still not convinced of her ineptness, Bill allowed Hillary to recommend a close Clinton friend, Craig Livingstone, for the position of  Director of White House security.  When Livingstone was investigated for the improper access of about 900 FBI files of Clinton enemies (Filegate) and the widespread use of drugs  by White House staff, suddenly Hillary and the president denied even knowing Livingstone, and of course, denied knowledge of drug use in the White House.

Following this debacle, the FBI closed its White House Liaison Office after more than thirty years of service to seven presidents.

Next, when women started coming forward with allegations of sexual harassment and rape by Bill Clinton, Hillary was put in charge of the "bimbo eruption" and scandal defense.   Some  of her more notable decisions in the debacle were: (1) she urged her husband not to settle the Paula Jones lawsuit, (2)  after the Starr investigation, they settled with Ms. Jones, (3) she refused to release the Whitewater documents, which led to the appointment  of Ken Starr as Special Prosecutor.

After $80 million dollars of taxpayer money was spent, Starr's investigation  led to Monica Lewinsky, which led to Bill lying about and later admitting to his extramaritial affairs.

Hillary's devious game plan resulted in Bill losing his license to  practice law for 'lying under oath' to a grand jury and then his subsequent impeachment by the House of Representatives.

Hillary avoided indictment for perjury and obstruction of justice  during the Starr investigation by repeating, "I do not recall," "I have no recollection," and "I don't know" a total of 56 times while under oath.

After leaving the White House, Hillary was forced to return an estimated  $200,000 in White House furniture, china, and artwork that she had stolen.

Now we are exposed to the destruction of possibly incriminating emails while Hillary was Secretary of State and the "pay-to-play" schemes of the  Clinton Foundation—we have no idea what shoe will fall next.

But to her loyal fans - "What difference at this point does it make?"

Electing Hillary Clinton president would be like granting Satan absolution and giving him the keys to heaven!