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It’s Very Odd That The FBI And DOJ Didn’t Check Into Christopher Steele’s Leaks To The Press

By
Gustavo
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0

Would you do everything you could to determine whether you could trust a source who lied to you before relying on him to treat a U.S. citizen guilty of treason?

Here’s a hypothetical question for journalists: Let’s say you managed to convince the translator in the room during the President Trump-Vladimir Putin meeting to speak to you, and you only, on the condition of anonymity, and you’re in the midst of writing an explosive, exclusive story for your publication. As you’re writing, you look up to see BREAKING NEWS on CNN and listen as Wolf Blitzer reports the story you’re writing, with the exact fly-on-the-wall detail you received from your “exclusive” source.

So what’s your first move? Would you assume CNN must’ve convinced the Russian translator to talk to them and move on with your story without taking any action, or would you call your source to figure out where that CNN information came from? If your source denied talking to CNN, would you believe him and move on, or would you do whatever you could to determine whether you can trust this source on such an important matter? You’d want to know the answer to that question before proceeding, would you not?

A hypothetical question for editors: Let’s say you’re editing an article on a Pentagon policy change and notice a number of paragraphs that you think you may have read before in another publication. You Google the lines and find that your reporter appears to have lifted entire paragraphs of copy from another article.

So what’s your first move? Would you reflect on your reporter’s stellar reputation, assume it had to be a strange coincidence, and simply append an editor’s note saying: “We are aware that passages in this article may appear familiar to the reader, but we’re confident that our reporter would never plagiarize another writer’s work”? Or would you contact your reporter immediately to determine whether those passages were lifted?

If your reporter denied plagiarizing the paragraphs, would you believe him and move on, or would you do whatever you could to determine whether you could trust your reporter before taking any further action? You’d want to know the answer to that question before proceeding, would you not?

So here’s a hypothetical question for the FBI: Let’s say you’re putting together a secret document requesting a secret court to declare a fellow American a treasonous agent of a foreign power and grant the government clandestine access to his intimate communications. As you’re reviewing the evidence you plan to include, you discover a news article that contains information known only to your source and his employer—the same information you are planning to include in the secret FISA warrant application.

As your relationship with the source—which has included financial compensation—is predicated on his agreement not to share this information with anyone (other than his employer) outside of the FBI, it occurs to you that his possible abrogation of the agreement will reflect poorly on his credibility and judgement, necessitating his dismissal as a source, and calling into question whether you can responsibly certify his credibility in front of a FISA judge.

On the other hand, if it was his employer who leaked the information to the press, you may be able to include the source’s information in your secret FISA warrant application, as his employer wasn’t under the same confidentiality restrictions. You’re at a crossroads, and the viability of crucial information provided by your principal source is at risk.

So, what’s your first move? A significant part of your case against the American citizen—the part that, if true, proves that he was involved in private, treasonous negotiations with high-level Russian officials in Moscow in July 2016—hinges entirely on the credibility of this source, and you need to know whether you can vouch for this guy under oath.

Would you immediately contact your source to determine whether he provided that information to the reporter? If he denied leaking the information, would you believe him and proceed with certifying his information and credibility in the secret warrant application requesting the court to designate a fellow citizen an agent of a foreign power?

Or would you do everything you could—including contacting and questioning his employer, requesting to examine your source’s phone and email, and investigating his movements and travel timeline—to determine whether you could trust this source before taking any further action? You’d want to know the answer to that question before proceeding, would you not? Or would you do this?

As I asked above, the FBI would want to know, wouldn’t they? And if they wanted to know, they’d have the awesome resources of the world’s most powerful investigative agency at their disposal to determine whether the “well-placed Western intelligence” source in the article was their guy, and, more importantly, whether their guy was lying to them about actively leaking sensitive investigative information to the press.

It would not seem beyond the FBI’s investigative and analytical abilities to assess the “well-placed Western intelligence source” characterization as a profoundly significant description, as their “Source #1” was, indeed, a well-placed Western intelligence source, and his employer was not.

So the question remains: wouldn’t they want to know? The answer, taking into consideration all above, is that it doesn’t seem as if they did want to know. While that’s only an opinion, there is evidence to support it. The principal piece of evidence is that Source #1 did, indeed, provide that information to the reporter, despite the FBI’s certification to the court that they did “not believe that Source #1 provided that information directly to the press.”

It is now public knowledge that Christopher Steele was the “well-placed Western intelligence” source of Michael Isikoff’s September 2016 Yahoo News article. He admitted as much in a deposition to a United Kingdom court in May 2017:

There are only three reasonable explanations for why the FBI told the FISA judge they didn’t believe Steele was the source in the Yahoo News article:

  1. They didn’t ask him.
  2. They asked him, he lied to them, and they did nothing further to determine whether he was telling the truth.
  3. They asked him, he lied to them, and, recognizing how crucial his credibility was to the information they were planning to present to the FISA court, they pulled out all investigative stops available to determine whether they could responsibly certify to the court that the information they provided the court came from a credible source who would not, and did not: lie to the FBI; violate the conditions of his agreement with the FBI; or leak investigative information to the press related to an American citizen that would certainly result in the citizen being publicly accused, without trial or charge, of being a treasonous Russian agent. Despite their herculean efforts, they were unable to determine whether Steele or Fusion GPS principal Glenn Simpson, was the “well-placed Western intelligence source” of the information in the article.

If you’re torn between two of the options above, consider this hypothetical: Imagine the FBI did their homework and (officially) discovered the truth: that Steele had lied to them about the leak to Isikoff, a lie that would have been uttered and discovered prior to the October 21, 2016 FISA proceeding.

This would present a challenging set of circumstances, in a legal and moral sense, to the FBI. Their source had committed a demonstrable felony—he lied to the FBI—yet a pivotal portion of their FISA application consisted of information provided by a now-felonious liar, upon whose character and credibility the FBI relied as a guarantor of the indeterminable credibility of the second- and third-removed sources who provided information to him.

Lest we forget, that information goes to the heart of the case against the American citizen the FBI asked the court to designate an agent of a foreign power, thus suspending his rights under the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution and giving the government unlimited access to his private and personal communications.

Given that hypothetical, how would the FBI describe the credibility of their source to the FISA court judge? Would it look like this?

Or, would it more accurately look like this? “FLYNN’s Source #1’s false statements and omissions impeded and otherwise had a material impact on the FBI’s ongoing investigation into the existence of any links or coordination between individuals associated with the [Trump] Campaign and Russia’s efforts to interfere with the 2016 presidential election.”

Or maybe this? “Through his false statements and omissions, defendant PAPADOPOULOS Source #1 impeded the FBI’s ongoing investigation into the existence of any links or coordination between individuals associated with the [Trump] Campaign and the Russian government’s efforts to interfere with the 2016 presidential election.”

As I previously expressed here, there are any number of perils to an intelligence officer or agency “falling in love with their source”—that is, allowing the consequence of the moment to override one’s professional and moral responsibility to accurately and dispassionately handle, assess, and ensure proper disposition of a problematic source, and of the information derived from that source. It never ends well.

The facts—according to the FISA application the FBI and DOJ presented—are that Steele lied to the FBI about his leaks to the press prior to the October 2016 FISA proceeding. The FBI was either unable or unwilling to apply their awesome investigative capabilities to either prove or disprove the lie.

Had the lie been proven, or officially acknowledged, it is unlikely that the FBI/DOJ attorneys presenting the case to the FISA judge would be able to convince the judge of the credibility of their Source #1, a felonious liar.

The only way to avoid any of the above moral and legal dilemmas would be if the FBI was unable to determine whether the “well-placed Western intelligence source” in Isikoff’s article was Steele (the FBI’s well-placed intelligence source) or Simpson. That’s what they say happened. So, back to the question: They’d want to know, wouldn’t they?

James Comey’s Own Words Suggest FBI, DOJ Hid Dossier Funding From The FISA Judge

By
Gustavo
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If James Comey, who signed the FISA application, couldn’t figure out who funded the dossier, how could a judge?

There weren’t many surprises in the newly released and redacted Carter Page surveillance warrant application, as much of it has been in the public domain for many months now. Nor should anyone be particularly surprised at the polarized response. It’s simply a sign of the times that people are less inclined to apply a reasoned and balanced approach to issues that involve Russia and, even tangentially, President Trump, regardless of which ideological corner one calls home.

Perhaps the most hotly contested topic of conversation after the release was the notion, first posed in a memo produced by Republicans on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) in January 2018 (the “Nunes memo”) that the Federal Bureau of Investigation and U.S. Department of Justice failed to properly represent to the court the identity of the individuals and/or organizations responsible for commissioning the Steele dossier.

In the Nunes memo, the HPSCI Republicans noted the FBI’s vague characterization of the paymasters’ provenance. They argued the FBI should have more clearly represented to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court the fact that the ultimate client of Fusion GPS and Christopher Steele was the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee.

The implications of withholding such information aren’t hard to appreciate and don’t require a particularly nuanced understanding of evidentiary procedures to cause concern. While both sides disagree on whether the description in the FISA application was sufficient to properly apprise the court of the political agenda of the entity that commissioned the opposition research, their disagreement seems to be a matter of scale.

Democrats and the majority of the media aren’t arguing that no citation was necessary. To the contrary, their argument seems to be that a citation in the FISA request was sufficient to alert the judge to Clinton and the DNC’s hidden hands. They say it would be self-evident to any judge, upon reading the citation embedded below, that Clinton and the DNC were behind the information provided by “Source #1.”

At the very least, they argue, the judge would be appropriately apprised of the political genesis of the opposition research: telling the judge Clinton’s campaign paid for it wouldn’t better attune the judge to the notion that political opposition research is inevitably compiled at the request and to the potential benefit of, well, political opposition.

As with many arguments, practical tests can be applied to both sides to discern the truth. In this particular case, a good way to test whether the citation is sufficient would be a simple experiment.

Let’s Conduct that Thought Experiment

First, recall that Fusion GPS was initially commissioned by the right-wing Washington Free Beacon through January 2017 to conduct opposition research on Trump, apparently in support of a Republican primary competitor (or several). The Clinton campaign and DNC signed a separate agreement with the law firm.

Now, for the experiment. Clear your head of any thoughts involving the Clinton/DNC involvement in the dossier, and imagine that the Steele dossier was developed under the Free Beacon contract and the Clinton campaign never got involved.

Now read the citation again. Does it still make sense after substituting a Republican-owned, conservative newspaper for Hillary Clinton and the DNC? Now use your imagination and substitute anybody or any organization you want for Hillary Clinton and the DNC: Joe Biden; The Washington Post; Fox News; the king of Jordan; Donald Trump Jr.; Renaldo; Vladimir Putin.

Can they all fit into that citation? If any of the individuals or entities listed above were indeed the ultimate funders of the research, would a single word of that citation have to be changed to represent to the court what most on the Left are characterizing as an appropriate level of specificity about the commissioning party to the FISA judge?

No, not a word would have to be changed. Regardless of how frequently or loudly those who refuse to entertain the notion may deny it, the citation offered to the FISA judge was insufficient to alert the judge to the materially significant fact that the FBI was presenting derogatory information about one political candidate from an opposition research document commissioned and paid for by the opposing candidate.

Nothing in that citation suggests the judge would assume this to be the case. It could, quite literally, be just about anyone on earth who paid for that research, based on the FBI’s vague description.

James Comey’s Own Testimony Supports This Reading

You don’t have to take my word for it. Read this excerpt from Brett Baier’s interview of former FBI director James Comey on Fox News, April 26, 2018.

Baier: When did you learn that the DNC and Hillary Clinton campaign had funded Christopher Steele’s work?

Comey: Yes, I still don’t know that for a fact.

Baier: What do you mean?

Comey: I’ve only seen it in the media. I never knew exactly which Democrats has funded – I knew it was funded first by Republicans –

(Crosstalk)

Baier: But that’s not true.

Comey: I’m sorry?

Baier: That’s not true that the dossier that Christopher Steele worked on was funded by Republicans.

Comey: My understanding was his work started funded by – as oppo research funded by the Republicans.

Baier: So Free Beacon and – said that they had Glen Simpson and Fusion GPS on account of a retainer but they did not fund the Christopher Steele memo or the dossier. That was initiated by Democrats.

Comey: Ok, my understanding was the activity was begun that Steele was hired to look into was first funded by Republicans then picked up – the important thing was picked up by Democrats opposed to Donald Trump.

Baier: So it that why – did you tell President Obama that the dossier was – who it was funded by?

Comey: No, not to my recollection.

Baier: Did you want to know who it was funded by?

Comey: I wanted to know what I knew which was it was funded by people politically opposed to Donald Trump.

Baier: Ok.

Comey: Which particular opponents wasn’t that important to me.

Baier: But when did you – So you, still, to this day, don’t know that it was funded by the DNC or the (inaudible)?

Comey: I’ve read that in the media, but I don’t know for a fact and didn’t know, when I was at the FBI, which exact opponent of the president’s funded that.

Fascinating. Read that last line again. Comey says he didn’t know when he was at the FBI and still doesn’t know, which opponent of the president’s funded the Steele dossier.

Comey signed the FISA application from which the citation embedded above was copied. His signature served as certification by the FBI that the information in the report was verified and submitted for purposes consistent with the law. He subsequently signed the next two FISA warrants on Page, all of which contained the same citation regarding the identity of the Fusion GPS/Steele clients.

If the director of the FBI can read that citation at least three times in the course of assessing the application for his personal certification and not come away from it assuming that Clinton’s campaign and the DNC were the ones who commissioned it, how on earth can anyone argue the judge would make that assumption?

Making Things Clearer Would Have Been Easy

If you agree that the judge wouldn’t necessarily make that assumption, but are still arguing that the citation was “legally sufficient to advise the judge of the political nature of the opposition research,” answer this question: What would keep the FBI from simply writing,“The U.S.-based law firm that hired the identified U.S. person to conduct research on Candidate #1 did so on behalf of Candidate #1’s opponent, Candidate #2”?

Would anyone object to using that language in the citation? If so, why? It would seem a rather precarious position to argue that the simple act of telling the judge the full truth in a FISA proceeding is unnecessary—that less than the truth is sufficient to satisfy one’s personal FISA hearing evidentiary standards.

People vacillate and hide the truth for the same reason people tell outright lies: they don’t want the truth to be known. What form those lies take are incidental to the intent, which is to withhold, conceal, misdirect, or mislead.

Why the FBI Chose Obscure Language Instead

There are a couple of possible reasons the FBI would choose the language they did, one of which is that they didn’t know it was paid for by the Clinton campaign and the DNC. That would be a remarkable and embarrassing admission, yet that’s the reason Comey suggested.

Rep. Devin Nunes was right: the FBI failed to adequately identify the source of funding behind the Steele information presented in the FISA application.

The other option is that the FBI didn’t want the court to know who actually paid for the dossier. Given the ease with which they could have accurately described the true fund source of the research, yet failed to do so, those appear to be the only two options available.

If you’re trying to discern whether Comey is telling the truth, consider this: Would Comey rather suffer a brief period of embarrassment, or acknowledge that he signed and certified a deliberately misleading FISA application that resulted in a year of government surveillance of Page?

Whichever the case, Comey told us he was fooled by his own FISA application, while the Left tells us the judge had everything he or she needed to rule on the warrant request. Accepting both of these positions at face value is counter-intuitive. If Comey would agree that it’s just as possible Media Matters for America paid for the research as it is Hillary Clinton, then it would follow that the judge didn’t have the information necessary to make an informed assessment of the sourcing.

Rep. Devin Nunes was right: the FBI failed to adequately identify the source of funding behind the Steele dossier information presented in the FISA application. The only question remaining is: Why?

WATCH: Nikki Haley Slams UN, Walks Out On Palestinian Representative

By
Gustavo
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0

U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley slammed the United Nations on Tuesday for pushing an investigation into the measures Israel took to secure its border during violent clashes with Hamas-backed insurgents earlier this week. After she concluded her speech, she walked out of the chamber when a Palestinian representative began to speak.

For months, Palestinians have been protesting along the Gaza-Israeli border in objection to Israel’s 70 years in existence. Protestors have been reportedly burning tires in order to create a thick black cloud of smoke that obfuscates them and enables them to carry out acts of violence. Israel Defense Forces (IDF) say Hamas insurgents used the U.S.’s embassy relocation to Jerusalem as an excuse to storm the border and plant explosives. At least 58 Palestinians were killed yesterday, spurring the U.N. to propose investigating the IDF to determine if their actions violated international law — a proposal Haley slammed as preposterous.

WATCH: 

“Who else would accept this type of activity on your border?” Haley asked the council. “Those who suggest the violence has anything to do with the U.S. location of the embassy are sorely mistaken.”

“Hamas maps and social media show the fastest routes to reach Israeli communities in case demonstrators make it through the security fence,” Haley said. “They have reported on Hamas messages over loudspeakers that urge demonstrators to burst through the fence, falsely claiming Israeli soldiers were fleeing, when in fact, they were not.”

She then walked out of the chamber as a Palestinian representative began speaking.

Watch Clinton, Bush, And Obama Promise To Recognize Jerusalem As Israel’s Capital (And Then Do Nothing)

By
Gustavo
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0

The United States opened an embassy to Jerusalem today at the order of President Trump, who finally fulfilled a promise former presidents made for decades.

“We will move the American embassy to the eternal capital of the Jewish people, Jerusalem,” Trump said. “Therefore, I have determined that it is time to officially recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. While previous presidents have made this a major campaign promise they failed to deliver. Today I am delivering.”

President Bill Clinton said in 1992 that Jerusalem is Israel’s capital, despite the U.S. embassy being in Tel Aviv. “Jerusalem is still the capital of Israel and must remain an undivided city accessible to all,” he said.

George W. Bush promised 18 years ago, “As soon as I take office I will begin the process of moving the U.S. ambassador to the city Israel has chosen as its capital.”

“I continue to say that Jerusalem will be the capital of Israel, and I have said that before, and I will say it again,” President Barack Obama said at an AIPAC conference. “And Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided.”

WATCH: 

The embassy move has been met with mixed reactions.

At least 52 Palestinians died on Monday during violent clashes between Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and protestors. IDF estimates there are 50,000 protestors demonstrating along the border on Monday in protest of the embassy move. The demonstrations along the border are part of a larger protest in opposition to Israel’s 70 years in existence. At 4 p.m. on Monday, the same time Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner were inaugurating the embassy, groups of rioters tried to swam the border and several tried to plant explosives, according to The Times of Israel.

On another note, Jerusalem’s best and most well-known soccer team has renamed itself after Trump in honor of the president’s commitment to relocate its diplomatic headquarters.

Why Robert Mueller Is The Clown Prince Of Federal Law Enforcement

By
Gustavo
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0

Other than the president himself, perhaps no public figure is more debated and discussed these days than Special Counsel Robert Mueller. On the Right, former Speaker Newt Gingrich has called him “the tip of the deep state spear aimed at destroying or at a minimum undermining and crippling the Trump presidency.” On the Left, best-selling author J.K. Rowling has tweeted: “If someone, somewhere, isn’t rushing Robert Mueller Christmas angels into production right now, I will be bitterly disappointed.”

Could both sides be off-base? As we enter the second year of Mueller’s sprawling investigation, with no apparent end in sight, Hanlon’s Razor teaches us to “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.” What if Mueller were not some sort of avenging angel, but rather just a bumbling bureaucrat? To put it somewhat differently, why assume that the same folks who brought us Amtrak, the U.S. Post Office, and Healthcare.gov somehow knocked it out of the park with the Office of Special Counsel?

Whatever else one might say about Washington DC, it has never been accused of being a meritocracy. Rather, it has always been a place where people trade on connections. Until President Obama came into town and shook things up a bit, for centuries our federal government was mostly overseen by a bipartisan old-guard of WASP privilege.

A Near-Parody Of Privilege

If anything, the story of Robert Swann Mueller III reads like a parody of that privilege. Born to a wealthy DuPont executive, Mueller was sent off to St. Paul’s, the elite New Hampshire boarding school (where he was John Kerry’s lacrosse captain), before matriculating at Princeton, New York University, and the University of Virginia. In 1966, he married Ann Cabell Standish, an alumnus of Miss Porter’s Finishing School in Farmington, Connecticut, and Sarah Lawrence College. (To his credit, Mueller did volunteer post-college with the Marines, and served bravely in Vietnam.)

After law school, Mueller had a short stint with a private law firm before hitching his wagon to William Weld, then the U.S. attorney in Boston. It was there that, as a young federal prosecutor, Mueller first made a name for himself in connection with some questionable mob cases.

As Alan Dershowitz recalled on “The Cats Roundtable” podcast, Muller is “the guy who kept four innocent people in prison for many years in order to protect the cover of Whitey Bulger as an FBI informer. … And that’s regarded in Boston of one of the great scandals of modern judicial history. And Mueller was right at the center of it.” Others have said the charges are unfounded. Whatever the truth, the Bulger affair did not hold him back.

Post-Boston, Mueller entered the revolving-door world of federal prosecutors and Big Law, bouncing around in various roles until, in 2001, he landed the job of a lifetime: director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. His ascendancy did not come without words of warning. Time magazine quoted one former prosecutor, anonymously: “The cynics are saying, let him take over the FBI, it’ll be great theater, and he’ll run it into the ground in six months.” The former prosecutor was wrong. It only took Mueller one week.

Mueller’s FBI Missed Big Cases It Should Have Gotten

The Senate unanimously confirmed Mueller as FBI director on August 2, 2001, but Mueller did not show up for his swearing in for another 33 days. It was an ill-timed sabbatical. When the tragedy of 9/11 struck, Mueller surely recognized his absence would be noticed. Mueller tried to preempt those questions. Three days after 9/11, he claimed: “There were no warning signs that I’m aware of that would indicate this type of operation in the country.”

That was untrue. Indeed, the final House-Senate Joint Intelligence Committee report concluded that 9/11 might have been prevented had the FBI been on alert. In August 2001, during Mueller’s absence, the bureau become aware that two known terrorists—9/11 hijackers Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar—had arrived in the United States. The FBI’s San Diego field office even had an active informant connected to the two, but FBI headquarters never told the office to search for them. The FBI agent handling the informant in San Diego told Congress, “I’m sure we could have located them and we could have done it within a few days.”

One week after the 9/11 attacks, letters with anthrax were mailed to various media outlets and the offices of two U.S. senators, killing five and infecting 17 others. Coming as soon as it did after 9/11, hysteria naturally ensued. This was Mueller’s first true test as FBI director. The results were not pretty. As Mollie Hemingway noted, Mueller “completely botch[ed] the anthrax killer case, wasting more than $100 million in taxpayer dollars, destroying the lives of multiple suspects, and chasing bad leads using bad methods.”

Mueller first wrongfully accused Steven Hatfill. Taxpayers ended up paying Hatfill $6 million to make good on that error. Mueller then accused another man, Bruce Ivins, based on scientific conclusions by the National Academy of Sciences later determined to be flawed. Too late. A distraught Ivins killed himself. Mueller never apologized for either.

How Robert Mueller Handicapped the FBI

To appreciate why the FBI so inept at catching terrorists during these years, one has to understand the transformative changes Mueller inflicted on the Bureau. In law enforcement, the experience is key. One would expect it to be encouraged. But Mueller took the opposite tack, instituting a policy that required all FBI employees in any type of supervisory position for five years to either move to Washington to sit at a desk or else leave the FBI.

The policy drew a stinging rebuke from the FBI Agents Association, which said the program hobbled local field offices by forcing out seasoned agents. The numbers bear that out. In the first nine months of 2007 alone, according to NPR, some “576 agents found themselves in the five-and-out pool. Less than half of them – just 286 – opted to go to headquarters; 150 decided to take a pay cut and a lesser job to stay put; 135 retired, and five resigned outright.” Overall, Mueller’s “Five and Out Policy” devastated the FBI ranks.

For surrounding himself with an army of “yes men,” however, Mueller’s personnel practices were a smashing success. It was so much so that at the end of his stint, Mueller managed to talk his way into a two-year extension to his original ten-year term.

That is how Mueller came to still be in charge on April 15, 2013, when two homemade bombs detonated near the finish line of the Boston Marathon. Three persons (one an eight-year-old boy) were killed and hundreds were injured. More than a dozen runners lost limbs.

Once again, a subsequent congressional investigation uncovered that Mueller’s FBI had been notified but did not act in time. In March 2011, the Russian intelligence agency FSB cabled the FBI, warning that the man who would become the lead bomber, a Chechen immigrant named Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was known to have associated with militant Islamists. The FBI investigated but quickly cleared him.

The FSB in September 2011 sent a second cable, this time to the CIA. Again, the FBI did not act. In 2012, Tsarnaev traveled to and spent six months in Dagestan, a terror-filled Russia region next to Chechnya. The FBI was alerted to his travels but decided neither to detain nor question him.

Once again, Mueller did not apologize. Rather, he told Congress the agent who handled the matter “did an excellent job in investigating, utilizing the tools that are available to him in that kind of investigation. … As a result of this, I would say, thorough investigation, based on the leads we got from the Russians, we found no ties to terrorism.”

Robert Mueller Finally Decides to Talk Russia

Four years later, we now have a Mueller-Russians redux. Shortly after getting turned down for a second stint as FBI director under President Trump, Mueller accepted an appointment as special counsel, tasked with investigating the man who had just turned him down for a job. While the theory has never been completely sketched out, the nub of the Russia collusion case is that Russia or the Trump campaign had something to do with WikiLeaks’ release of emails pilfered from the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s email servers.

One cannot legitimately accuse Mueller of botching the Russia collusion investigation since he has never actually conducted one.

One cannot legitimately accuse Mueller of botching the Russia collusion investigation since he has never actually conducted one. Presumably, someone legitimately investigating the source of the WikiLeaks emails would ask WikiLeaks who gave it to them. WikiLeaks’ founder, Julian Assange, has been locked in Ecuador’s London embassy for years, so there would be no difficulty finding him. Yet last September, Assange tweeted out that “Robert Mueller’s team … has [never] bothered to contact WikiLeaks or me, in any manner, ever.”

Meanwhile, even the “Resistance” has grown frustrated with Mueller’s plodding. They want Trump out yesterday. They may have a point. The president made his fortune in the rough-and-tumble world of New York real estate. Given the vast expanse of the U.S. criminal code, any capable litigator, with a handful of subpoenas, could find scores of technical “crimes” committed by any businessman. So why is Mueller taking so long?

Anyone familiar with the ways of our government will know. Vested with a basically unlimited budget, Mueller first set about spending the money. He assembled a staff that would make “Ben-Hur’s” casting director envious. His army of mini-Muellers then began investigating those near Trump for every crime imaginable, no matter how removed from Russia, then charging them with very broad indictments, before pleading those charges down in exchange for cooperation. All with lots of media leaks in between.

In some ways, this is a classic prosecutorial approach. If done competently, it can be quite effective. If not, however, prosecutors can find themselves crashing into a brick wall known as the federal judiciary. Of late, that has been Mueller’s fate. In just the last two weeks, Mueller minions have embarrassed themselves in three different cases across three separate federal courthouses.

Embarrassments One, Two, and Three

First up was Judge Kimba Wood in the Southern District of New York, where a Mueller-referred team of FBI agents raided and walked off with pretty much the entire office of President Trump’s personal attorney, Michael Cohen. The U.S. Attorney’s Office proposed that it conduct its own privilege review on behalf of Cohen. Wood quickly pooh-poohed that idea and instead ordered the prosecutors to turn over the seized materials to a special master and to not look at any of the documents until that review is complete.

‘I don’t see what relation this indictment has with anything the special counsel is authorized to investigate.’

Next up was Judge T.S. Ellis III in the Eastern District of Virginia, where Paul Manafort, President Trump’s second of three campaign managers, is being prosecuted for alleged banking fraud dating back to 2005. Ellis berated the special counsel’s office for prosecutorial overreach, for its pursuit of crimes that “manifestly don’t have anything to do with the campaign or with Russian collusion.” Ellis observed: “I don’t see what relation this indictment has with anything the special counsel is authorized to investigate …. What we don’t want in this country is we don’t want anyone with unfettered power.”

The third and most humiliating episode came in the District of Columbia, where Judge Dabney Friedrich is overseeing the indictments relating to the “Russian troll farm.” By way of reminder, those are the Russians who allegedly tried to sow dissension among these otherwise United States of America through Facebook click-bait ads.

Former prosecutor Andrew McCarthy has called the indictments a “publicity stunt,” pointing out that Mueller knows the individual troll farmers will stay in Russia, so the allegations will never be tested in court. Internet users also instantly noted that most of the indictment had been plagiarized from a 2015 Radio Free Europe article. Still, as publicity stunts go, this was a good one, as the media gave the indictments unquestioning coverage.

This Would Be Funny If It Weren’t Serious

There was really only one way Mueller could have screwed it up: indict a company. For some reason, Mueller indicted three. Unlike individual defendants, who get put in jail if they return to America for their arraignments, corporate defendants appear through counsel, who after court go out for single-malt Scotch.

Lo and behold, a few days ago one of the indicted Russian companies appeared in court, represented by a team of hard-nosed defense attorneys who proceeded to demand all manner of burdensome evidentiary discovery from Mueller. The special counsel responded by requesting a lengthy adjournment. Judge Friedrich gave that a quick no, basically telling the Mueller team to go try its case. I would not hold my breath.

At this point, every day seems to bring more bad news for Mueller.

At this point, every day seems to bring more bad news for Mueller. Last August, Vanity Fair breathlessly reported that: “Robert Mueller Just Formed An Alliance That Should Terrify Trump.” To circumvent the president’s pardon power, Mueller formed an alliance with New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who could charge unpardonable state crimes. Great idea in theory; in practice, not so much.

For years, it has apparently been an open secret in certain circles that Mr. Schneiderman enjoys abusing women (“role-playing,” in his parlance). Yet a number of friends told one of his victims that she should “keep the story to herself, [because] Schneiderman was too valuable a politician for the Democrats to lose.” The only person willing to blow the whistle on the record was a certain then-TV host, who in 2013 tweeted that Schneiderman was “worse than Spitzer or Weiner” (two other local pols took down in sex scandals). No one followed up.

Had Mueller, for 12 years the nation’s number one law enforcement officer, ever heard those rumors? Someone ought to ask him.

If Mueller did know, it may not have made any difference. To date, in his massive investigation, Mueller has only publicly granted immunity to one person, George Nader. Who is he? The Associated Press has reported that in 2002, Nader was convicted in the Czech Republic of ten cases of sexually abusing minors.

According to other media reports, in 1991 Nader pled guilty to a federal child pornography charge, and in 1985 he faced a similar charge in federal court involving allegations of importing from the Netherlands magazines depicting nude boys. A judge dismissed the 1985 charges based on an invalid search warrant. This is Mueller’s star witness.

It’s Not Special Counsels, It’s Mueller

Special counsel has not always been this bad. In the early years of the Reagan administration, a panel of federal judges appointed the late Leon Silverman as special prosecutor to investigate Labor Secretary Raymond Donovan, who was facing mob-related allegations.

Appointees should be accomplished attorneys who have proven their skills through courtroom skills, not political appointments.

Silverman had an earlier stint as an AUSA, but made his name in the private sector, as the most sought-after corporate litigator in America. He was considered to be a giant of the New York bar, with unquestioned integrity and skill. His reputation was forged in the courtroom, not in the DC cocktail circuit. He plainly did not need the gig. [Full disclosure: I started my legal career at Silverman’s firm, a few years after his retirement.]

Silverman proceeded to quickly and effectively investigate the allegations. In his report, Silverman identified “disturbing” evidence, but ultimately concluded that “there was insufficient credible evidence to support a prosecution of Secretary Donovan for any of the alleged wrongdoing or for his statements concerning such allegations.” Donovan bristled at the findings, but even he acknowledged that Silverman had treated him with “courtesy and professionalism.” No one questioned Silverman’s nonpartisanship.

What a difference a generation makes. If future presidential administrations are to be subjected to special/independent counsel/prosecutors, a return to that original standard would be warranted. Appointments should be placed in the hands of Article III judges, not bureaucratic hacks. Supervision should be as well. Appointees should be accomplished attorneys who have proven their skills through courtroom skills, not political appointments. Until then, we should all buckle our seatbelts, as this is going to be a long and bumpy ride.

John Dellaportas is an attorney who, since 1994, has practiced law in New York City. His practice focuses on securities litigation and enforcement, and commercial, real estate, and intellectual property matters.

Some May Call Trump Crazy, But South Koreans Say It’s Like A Fox

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Gustavo
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On May 10, President Trump celebrated the release of three American prisoners from North Korea. South Koreans cheered alongside, seeing this as another event in a long chain of welcome developments.

These days, South Koreans are enjoying feelings of relief and optimism that most have never known in their lifetimes. After more than six decades of a constant existential threat, a peaceful relationship with North Korea finally seems in the realm of possibility, even if it is still distant.

In April, denizens of Seoul spent many hours glued to the television, jaws dropped, watching the historic meeting of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un and the South Korean president, Moon Jae-in, in the demilitarized zone. It was surreal to see them together, holding hands, smiling and cracking jokes. While watching Kim chivalrously hold the door open for the first lady and hearing him say North Korea does not need nuclear weapons, people rhapsodized, “Is this real or is this a dream?”

Korean conservatives are cautious. Most acknowledge there is a long way to go before Kim takes concrete and verifiable actions toward denuclearization. Even so, the recent meeting of the leaders, as well as the upcoming Trump-Kim summit in Singapore, represent progress that most South Koreans assumed would be impossible to see in our lifetimes.

As an American living in Seoul, I am struck by the disparity between the United States and South Korea in public portrayals of President Trump’s role. Plainly, the outpouring of goodwill and gratitude toward him in Seoul would surprise most Americans.

Korean opinion writers and TV pundits lavish praise on Trump, attributing tactical brilliance and bullish confidence. The same qualities that used to invite mocking—his temper, propensity for spontaneous tweeting, grandstanding—are now interpreted as the bracing medicine to shock the region out of its longstanding ills.

Above all, Koreans are grateful that this American president dared to take risks to move the needle on North Korea, which many previous administrations miserably failed at. “President Obama never did anything for us” is a frequent refrain of people who were disillusioned by the 44th president’s doctrine of “strategic patience.”

Now, I wonder: is the American mainstream media being myopic in its failure to highlight the president’s positive influence on Asia? Or does it hold a greater commitment to continuing to paint the president as an incapable buffoon?

Even if we were to account for the fact that domestic news coverage tends to drown out international news, the disparity in tone is shocking. Sen. Lindsey Graham’s suggestion that Trump is awarded the Nobel Prize for his handling of North Korea met a lot of derision in the United States. The New York Times opinion page likened the president to a “wildly hirsute cartoon figure.”

It has been a long time since Trump was seen as a joke in Korea. In fact, according to a poll conducted by the newspaper Dailian and published on May 9, four out of ten South Koreans believe Trump deserves the peace prize, a statistic that would probably astonish most Americans. At the time of writing, entering “Trump” on Naver.com, South Korea’s top search engine yields the top suggested a search of “Trump Nobel Prize.”

To be sure, the tide of public opinion is fickle and doesn’t account for much. But it can reveal the patterns and consequences of influence. The progressive South Korean president, Moon, had a key role in shaping the way the public sees Trump.

Since inauguration in 2017, Moon has deliberately painted Trump as an important ally in normalizing inter-Korea relations. Even given his success in inviting Kim for amiable talks, Moon has consistently deflected praise, saying that most of the credit for any progress, as well as the Nobel Peace Prize, should go to President Trump.

Many see this as a strategy to stoke Trump’s famous ego, getting him to play along with the agenda. Be that as it may, what we see in Korea now is unprecedented progress toward peace, and both conservatives and progressives (who are usually defined by their anti-American stance) united in regarding Washington as an ally.

The plain fact is that no other American president has come close to achieving these things in Korea. Past Republican and Democratic administrations have been similarly unambitious and inert. I don’t know about the Nobel prize, but how about giving Trump some credit where it is plainly due? Koreans are happy to.

The ‘Mental Health’ Talk Against Trump Is A Coup Attempt

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Gustavo
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In the second season of the TV show “24,” President David Palmer (Dennis Haysbert) is removed from office for failing to launch a war against three Middle East countries purportedly behind a nuclear attack on U.S. soil.

Palmer has reason to doubt his intelligence agencies’ assurances of who was behind it, and it turns out the attack was orchestrated by a cabal of business and military leaders who want to launch a war for personal gain. The means by which Palmer is removed from office during the 4:00-5:00a hour on Day 2 is the 25th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, a portion of which reads:

Section 4. Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide… to the Senate and the…House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.

Palmer’s chief of staff explains, “it seems there are people, cabinet members, who question whether you’re fit to continue as chief executive.” The conniving vice president says in the cabinet meeting putting the president on trial, “What I intend to show is a pattern of erratic behavior since this crisis started.” Using half-true innuendos and rumors as well as deliberately false information, he convinces enough of the cabinet to depose Palmer. In other words, Palmer is the victim of a bloodless coup.

Now, “24” was so over the top that its dramatic twists became something of a punch line. How preposterous to imagine that a president’s handpicked cabinet would vote to oust him in a palace overthrow! But that fantasy land is precisely what some of the mostly unelected opposition hopes to see happen with President Trump as part of the more-than-a-year-long temper tantrum against the results of the 2016 election.

In the last debate of 2016, Fox News host Chris Wallace asked Trump if he would accept the election results, and he said “I will tell you at the time.” Hillary Clinton responded to Trump by calling his remark “horrifying.” The general media environment was to react with unabashed horror for at least 72 hours.

Trump’s comments were wrong — undermining confidence in the electoral process is unbecoming of a political leader of this great nation. But it’s doubtful that even Trump would have done a tiny fraction what his unelected opposition has done to undermine and overturn the results of the election had he lost. Even if he had thrown a year-long temper tantrum, he would not have been aided and abetted in it by a majority of the media or other members of the establishment.

Since his surprise win, the country has been subjected to attempts to delegitimize Trump’s election by blaming “fake news” for tricking voters into supporting him, or a year-long obsession, still noticeably unsubstantiated, with the idea that he conspired with Russians to steal the election from Hillary Clinton. We’ve heard people desperately attempt to keep the Electoral College from voting for him, been told that damaging information from intelligence agencies would keep him from being inaugurated, and that the cabinet should pull a “24”-style move and oust him via the 25th Amendment.

Among those struggling to accept the fact that the American people elected Donald Trump in 2016, the 25th Amendment has been a go-to fantasy for a while, particularly among those who strongly dislike Trump’s less-interventionist foreign policy. Eliot Cohen reached for it in the very first week of the presidency.

Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker waited until February 10 to say that the cabinet should use that amendment’s provisions since Trump is “so incompetent — or not-quite-right” that he poses a threat. Perhaps most famously, New York Times‘ conservative columnist Ross Douthat went hard for the 25th Amendment solution to what ails him in mid-May.

We’re coming in on the close of an unexpectedly successful first year for Trump, despite the media’s Sturm und Drang against the presidency, Trump’s lack of political allies, and his political naïveté. Trump’s year ended with corporate tax reform passed for the first time in decades. Individual tax rates were cut for the vast majority of Americans. Regulations have been slashed. Trump changed direction on the Paris Climate Accord, on the Clean Power Plan, and the Iran nuclear deal. Foreign policy has been reoriented, with results including real success against ISIS. He appointed numerous judges to federal courts. Last week, the stock market topped 25,000 for the first time, despite the prediction of New York Times columnist Paul Krugman that the stock market would “never” recover from Trump’s election. It was also the week that Michael Wolff’s gossipy if less-than-true book came out about the early chaotic days of the Trump White House, and the talk of mental unfitness — and accompanying fantasies about ousters — reached ever-new heights.

Wolff was transparent about his desire to raise this point as he went around to media outlets asserting “the story that I have told seems to present this presidency in such a way that it says he can’t do his job” and his hope or belief that it “will end this presidency.” Even as various journalists and media outlets admitted the book was false, that it had made-up quotes and anecdotes, and that it didn’t grasp basics of the Trump White House, they said they believed it was fake, but accurate.

Despite the veracity problems, journalists used the book to ask any manner of guests about mental health concerns. “Meet The Press” pushed out Wolff’s undoubtedly false message about the 25th Amendment without a moment’s hesitation:

At the same time, media leaders of the movement to oust Trump used a book by an academic who has been ranting and raving about Trump and mental fitness for more than a year. She claimed to meet with Democrats and a Republican senator (it turned out she had embellished that last part) to discuss Trump’s fitness. This was used for segment after media segment discussing the same.

Politico got the ball rolling with “Washington’s growing obsession: The 25th Amendment.” The not entirely stable “Morning Joe” has been obsessed about a 25th Amendment removal for months, and here’s MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough tweeting outa New York Times article that quotes the academic who is trying to get Trump ousted. Here’s that New York Times article. It mentions a 25th-Amendment ouster five times. It being a day ending in -y, the Washington Post‘s Jennifer Rubin was talking about a coup.

CNN host Brian Stelter used to oppose questions about the health of politicians when the politician was named Hillary Clinton, but he’s been on a tear about Trump’s mental health since at least February, more so recently, making claims of not being comfortable slightly hard to buy:

The Yale psychiatrist everyone is promoting is quoted in a Vox interview saying people should “contain” Trump against his will, force him to undergo an evaluation, and have him declared unfit, adding “many lawyer groups have actually volunteered, on their own, to file for a court paper to ensure that the security staff will cooperate with us. But we have declined, since this will really look like a coup…”

Yes, removing a president by force tends to look like a coup. Nevertheless, CNN and other media outlets are mainstreaming this conspiracy plot. Here’s The Atlantic getting in on the action:

Trump is unlike any previous president of the United States. Voters knew this when they chose him over Hillary Clinton. And there is nothing about Trump now that suggests his mental state is any different or worse or dangerous than when voters elected him, or when they first encountered him on gossip pages and in reality television decades ago.

To suggest otherwise is to undermine the democratic election of presidents, and to do so would be far more damaging to the country than anything Trump’s actually done. It is particularly noteworthy that members of an elite are calling for his ouster when Trump’s election was partly in response to anger at mismanagement by members of the media and political establishment.

Talk of mental health and a 25th Amendment removal, “by force if necessary,” is talk of a coup, just as it was in the TV show “24.” Responsible parties should consider how this is perceived by the part of the electorate they rarely speak to and cease.

4 Of The Biggest Myths That Are Being Feed About The Tax Cuts And Jobs Act

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Gustavo
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The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act cuts rates for most tax brackets, substantially reduces business taxes, increases the standard deduction, and eliminates many tax loopholes and deductions.
Congress passed historic, far-reaching tax reform legislation this week, and President Donald Trump is expected to sign it into law soon after some technical fixes. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act cuts rates for most tax brackets, substantially reduces corporate and small business taxes, increases the standard deduction for individuals and couples, and eliminates many tax loopholes and deductions.

Since Republicans first rolled out their plan to implement tax reform, liberal pundits and Democrats have created and perpetuated a number of false claims about the legislation. Some are based on earlier bills, while others were crafted out of thin air to make it as difficult as possible for Republicans and President Trump to promote their plan to help Americans keep more of their own money.

Below are four of the worst tax reform myths, alongside what’s really in Republicans’ tax reform legislation.

1.  Tax Reform Only Helps the Rich

Perhaps the most widely repeated claim is that the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act is designed to help the wealthiest few Americans while leaving the rest of us stuck with the bill. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act cuts rates for nearly all seven brackets, for both singles and couples, and roughly doubles the standard deduction.

The new standard deduction will be $12,000 for individuals and $24,000 for couples. Combined, these provisions ensure the overwhelming majority of lower- and middle-income filers will get a tax break. Most lower-income people won’t be required to pay any taxes.

Further, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act greatly improves the tax code for lower- and middle-income families with children by increasing the child tax credit from $1,000 per child to $2,000 per child. It also makes $1,400 of the tax credit refundable, which means many of those working adults with kids who don’t pay any income tax will receive as much as $1,400 per child from other taxpayers when they file their taxes, reducing the other taxes they pay (like payroll taxes).

It’s also worth noting that under current law, the child tax credit phases out beginning at $75,000 for individuals and $110,000 for couples. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act extends the limits to $200,000 for individuals and $400,000 for couples, which means the vast majority of middle-income families will now be able to use the credit.

Anyone claiming the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act only helps rich people also ignores that cutting corporate taxes and taxes imposed on small business owners creates jobs and improves economic growth. The Tax Foundation estimates tax reform will raise wages and create 339,000 additional full-time equivalent jobs. Most of these jobs are not for the uber-wealthy, but lower- and middle-income earners. Additionally, if the tax reform provisions are made permanent (because the bill was passed using budget reconciliation, some provisions expire in a decade), the Tax Foundation claims 1.6 million additional full-time jobs will be created because of the business-friendly tax cuts in this legislation.

Slashing the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent has the added benefit of incentivizing U.S. corporations to stay in America, rather than go overseas in search of better tax climates, as so many have done over the past few decades. This is especially good news for manufacturing workers, who have been hit particularly hard in recent years by businesses leaving for lower-wage, lower-tax nations.

2. Sick People Will Pay More in Taxes

The House of Representatives’ original bill eliminated a deduction that exists under current tax law and allows people to deduct out-of-pocket medical expenses incurred that surpass 10 percent of their adjusted gross income (AGI). Senate Republicans refused to agree to that provision, but that hasn’t stopped many on the Left from continuing to demonize Republicans for allegedly trying to inflict financial pain on families facing costly illnesses.

This myth is particularly absurd, because not only did the Senate refuse to eliminate the deduction, the final version of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act passed by the House and Senate actually lowers the threshold at which people can claim the deduction, down to 7.5 percent of income. This means under Republicans’ legislation, people will be able to deduct even more of their medical expenses.

For instance, under current law, a family with an AGI of $50,000 can’t start deducting medical expenses until costs surpass $5,000. Under the Republican legislation, they could start deducting medical expenses at $3,751.

3. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act Kills Obamacare

Some have suggested Republicans are using tax reform to accomplish what they couldn’t just a few months ago: eliminating Obamacare. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) is an atrocious train wreck, and I would love if this tax bill managed to end Obamacare as well as cut taxes.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t do that. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act does, however, effectively eliminate in 2019 the penalty on people who don’t purchase “qualifying” health insurance plans. Currently, the Obamacare penalty is either 2.5 percent of household income (up to the total yearly premium for the average price of a Bronze plan) or $695 per adult plus $347.50 per child under 18 (up to $2,085), whichever is higher.

Some have said eliminating the penalty effectively ends Obamacare. The reason, based on some highly speculative estimates by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and others, that if people aren’t forced to buy an Obamacare plan, millions of healthy people won’t. Instead, they’ll either go without health insurance or purchase a cheaper, non-Obamacare-compliant health care insurance plan outside of an ACA exchange.

If millions of people do this, it will drive the cost of insurance up for the people left in the exchanges, most of whom (under this theory, anyway) will be sicker people. This will cause Obamacare to enter a death spiral, destroying the ACA.

There are at least two extremely problematic issues with this prediction. For starters, no one has any clue how many people will leave the Obamacare exchanges. CBO believes 13 million people will choose not to purchase insurance by 2027, but there’s literally no way to calculate this accurately. It’s just a guess—and not a very good one, either.

Further, if 13 million people to leave the exchanges, it would say a lot about just how terrible Obamacare is. No one wants sicker people to pay higher rates, but is forcing millions of people to continue to buy insurance they don’t want really the best way forward? Of course not!

Second, Obamacare is already collapsing under its own weight. Health insurers have been exiting the Obamacare exchanges as quickly as possible. According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, 1,565 counties have only one health insurance carrier (51.43 percent of all counties) in their Obamacare exchange. Even worse, some states, such as Arizona, Iowa, and Kentucky, only have one carrier available statewide. Overall, nearly 30 percent of all Obamacare exchange participants have just one option. The Kaiser Family Foundation reports in 2014 just 6 percent of ACA participants had one choice.

If Obamacare collapses, it won’t be because of this tax reform legislation, it will be because it’s been collapsing since it went into effect. Anyone who says Obamacare would be sustainable without the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act is simply lying. With or without tax reform, Obamacare is dying and needs to be replaced.

4. Tax Cuts Will Increase the National Debt by $1.5 Trillion

Generally speaking, lower tax rates generate less tax revenue for the federal government. Some tax reform opponents say the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act will cost about $1.5 trillion in lost revenue, a staggering figure, especially for those of us who believe our ever-skyrocketing debt is dangerous to our nation’s long-term fiscal health and stability.

America is already in a debt crisis, so adding to it shouldn’t be an acceptable path.

This figure, however, assumes the tax cuts will generate no economic growth. The Tax Foundation reports that when expected economic growth and expansion are included into its economic projections, the cost will actually be much closer to $448 billion over a decade, or about $44.8 billion per year. By comparison, the Obama administration spent about $1.2 trillion on its stimulus programs, most of which was spent between 2010 and 2012.

If you’re anything like me, even the modest $44.8 billion per year cost is too much to stomach. America is already in a debt crisis, so adding to it shouldn’t be an acceptable path. Yet Republicans have pledged to cut government spending next year, and $44.8 billion is only a fraction of the federal government’s massive budget. The $44.8 billion could be offset simply by eliminating government waste, leaving room for Congress to address the drivers of our national debt, namely social entitlement programs such as Medicare and Social Security.

Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) identified in its 2017 analysis 607 recommendations that would save taxpayers $336.2 billion in the first year alone. Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) claims in his 2017 report on federal waste that government wastes or spends inefficiently more than $400 billion. Even if only a small portion of the CAGW/Lankford waste could be identified and cut, Republicans’ tax plan could be paid for without a single meaningful government program being slashed. Then Congress could focus on addressing the true sources of our debt problem, which isn’t tax cuts but exorbitant spending.

8 Of FBI Agent’s Anti-Trump ‘Insurance Policy’ Texts

By
Gustavo
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How do the media handle dramatic updates that counter their narrative? This week, text messages sent by Peter Strzok, a chief investigator of the Clinton and Russia collusion probes, were released to Congress. In investigating Donald Trump’s alleged collusion with Russia to steal the 2016 election, the media have found no story too small, no detail too minor to cover. Each leak that can be even remotely tied to the narrative of Russia harming America with the Trump campaign’s help is exploited and hyped for round-the-clock attention. To give just one example, CNN ran a report in May dramatically headlined “First on CNN: AG Sessions did not disclose Russia meetings in security clearance form, DOJ says.”

The story said Sessions failed to note at least two meetings with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak on his security clearance form. CNN alleged the form requires him to list “any contact” he had with any foreign government or its representatives. “The new information from the Justice Department is the latest example of Sessions failing to disclose contacts he had with Russian officials,” the story alleged, driving the Russia-Trump collusion narrative.

Many other media outlets followed CNN’s lead, including the Washington Post, Politico, ABC News, and others.

Earlier this week, more than six months after the initial worrisome report ran, CNN ran a brief update noting that, well, it turns out Sessions never had to disclose those meetings as part of official government work and was told that at the time he filed his clearance form. The weirdest part was that the Department of Justice told CNN that originally, but the breathless report was filed and hyped in any case.

Many media outlets have pursued the Russia-Trump collusion narrative with such wild abandon that it’s almost comical, even though more than a year into the conspiracy investigation, there remains no evidence that Trump colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election. In fact, the lack of any evidence is itself becoming a story, as people try to figure out more about why the FBI was investigating the Trump campaign in the first place, and why there were so many selective leaks hinting at a broad conspiracy that has yet to materialize.

So how do the media handle dramatic updates that run counter to the narrative they’ve been pushing? This week, text messages sent by Peter Strzok, a chief investigator of both the Clinton email probe and the Russia collusion probe, were released to Congress. Some of them stood out:

In August 2016, Strzok, who played a lead-investigator role in the Hillary Clinton–emails investigation, flatly stated that the FBI could not ‘take that risk,’ referring to the possibility that Donald Trump might be elected president. He made the statement in a message to Lisa Page, a bureau lawyer with whom he was having an extramarital affair. Strzok referred to an alternative FBI ‘path’ regarding Trump’s ‘unlikely’ election that Page had proposed during a meeting they’d attended in ‘Andy’s office’ — meaning deputy director Andrew McCabe, the bureau’s number-two official, second only to then-director James Comey.

The texts, which displayed a high degree of animus toward Trump, also referred to an “insurance policy” of some kind to deal with the threat of his successful candidacy. The context of the texts remains to be learned, but there is no question that if such texts and conversations were discovered against the previous president, they would be front-page news for weeks on end.

It will surprise no one that these texts were not covered with the same obsession that leaks regarding Russia have been covered. Here are some of the weaker ways that journalists and pundits responded to the news of the FBI’s “insurance policy” texts, instead of covering them like they cover news that is negative for President Trump.

1. These Were Private Texts!

Benjamin Wittes, editor in chief of the Lawfare blog and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, is a close friend and ally of former FBI Director James Comey who has helped him leak information to the press. He’s fond of tweeting out “tick-tick-tick” when leaks supporting a Russia collusion narrative are published. With this release of information, he had a much different approach:

The release of private correspondence between two Justice Department employees whose correspondence is the subject of an active inspector general investigation is not just wrong. It is cruel.

The text messages released to Congress were exchanged by FBI agents on FBI phones dealing with FBI matters. In no world is this private communication.

2. Leaks Are Suddenly, Briefly Bad

Natasha Bertrand is a reporter receptive to publishing storylines from the opposition research firm that put out the Russia narrative — Fusion GPS — as well as leaks from Democratic intelligence sources. But with the news of these texts, she became someone deeply concerned about leaks.

Her only two stories on the matter are not on the substance of the texts and what they indicate about the Russia and Clinton probes but, rather, whether the release of the texts was authorized. See, “In ‘highly unusual’ move, DOJ secretly invited reporters to view texts sent by ousted FBI agents” and “DOJ now says early release of FBI agents’ private texts to reporters was ‘not authorized’ by the department.”

Perhaps a year into a story based on nothing but a leak campaign against Trump officials is a bit late to express concern about communications between intelligence officials and reporters, particularly when in this case the emails were released to Congress.

Jonathan Chait and Max Boot also got the talking point to focus on how awful it was for the Department of Justice to release texts that were written on FBI equipment about FBI issues by FBI agents that led to a top FBI agent’s removal in a politically charged probe.

3. It’s Just Totally Normal Political Opinions

Jerry Nadler, the House Judiciary Committee’s top Democrat, said, “Peter Strzok wasn’t saying anything about Donald Trump that the majority of Americans weren’t thinking.”

It’s a cute line that was parroted by many in the media. And it’s true that FBI agents are allowed to have political opinions. But there are multiple problems with the sentiment, including that “the majority of Americans” aren’t tasked with investigating one, much less both, of the major-party candidates in a presidential election.

And if it were true that there was no problem with these totally normal political opinions, why did special counsel Mueller remove Strzok from the probe when he discovered the texts?

4. Strzok Also Lightly Critiqued Bernie Sanders, So There’s No Problem

“FBI Agent ‘Scandal’ Revealed To Be Even More Stupid Than Previously Known,” wrote Chait, for similar reasons to what Boot gave above.

This wouldn’t even be a good talking point if Strzok were investigating Chelsea Clinton and Bernie Sanders. But it’s a particularly bad talking point when they’re not. And it bears repeating: If these comments were no big deal, why was Strzok removed from the probe and shuffled off to human resources? Or, as Chuck Ross put it:

5. In a Way, These Texts Prove the Russia Collusion Narrative

As the many investigations grind on in search of any evidence that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to steal an election, some people still cling to the Russia-Trump collusion narrative. CNN analyst Asha Rangappa is representative:

Well, it’s impossible to know for sure, but at some point, this claim — that evidence of Trump colluding with Russia to steal an election is just around the corner — begins to be more difficult to put faith in.

6. It Was Just Stress, Man

The Wall Street Journal‘s Del Quentin Wilber had perhaps the sweetest defense of the texts. He admits that Strzok and his paramour didn’t like Trump, but, you know, they didn’t like a lot of people. And, “They were in very high-stress positions and worked many, many hours. I cannot imagine the pressure on Strzok as he led the HRC investigation.”

And “Affairs by agents and others in high-stress law enforcement jobs – I have covered everyone from cops/homicide detectives to agents to prosecutors – are fairly common.” And that “insurance policy” text was perhaps just a joke. Also, they took their jobs extremely seriously, but not so seriously that they remembered not to text messages like this on work cell phones or to have a casual and wordy chit chat with the people they’re cheating on their spouses with. I was mildly surprised to not see the texts blamed on this war and that lying SOB Johnson.

Again, though, this is a sweet and charitable defense of Strzok and Lisa Page. It’s perhaps noticeable because we don’t usually see such charity extended to members of the Trump administration and campaign who have been covered as potential Russia colluders and traitors.

7. Doesn’t Matter Because Strzok Was Kicked Off the Team in July

People who are beginning to connect the dots about the ongoing leaks regarding the Trump-Russia collusion narrative, and the role the FBI played in that narrative, have a different reaction to the texts than do strident critics of the Trump administration.

The latter says there is nothing to be concerned about because Mueller removed Strzok in July. That’s true, but it doesn’t explain why Mueller waited so long to tell inquiring members of Congress about the change, and it tells us nothing about the important role Strzok played in the year prior to his departure.

He was a key investigator in the Hillary Clinton probe into her mishandling of classified information. He opened the Russia-Trump probe. He interviewed most of the key players and shaped the investigations. Did Mueller review any aspect of his handling of the Russia probe? And why did news of the circumstances surrounding his departure only leak after Mike Flynn pled guilty? These, and other questions posed here.

8. Ignore, Ignore, Ignore

Of course, the most common media response to the texts has been to downplay or even ignore them. The New York Times begrudgingly covered the story, but somehow managed not to mention the “insurance policy” text.

There were other problems with The New York Times‘ coverage as well.

As Jason Beale wrote, “The most consistently damaging manifestation of journalistic bias isn’t “Fake News”, corrections and retractions of misreported stories, or one-party leaks – it’s this insidious manipulation of the tone, tenor, and substance of straight news such as this.”

CNN’s initial story failed to even quote any of the texts.

The Wall Street Journal‘s Kim Strassel states the obvious: “Press is focusing (deliberately) on Strzok texts expressing hostility to Trump, and noting it is OK for agents to have political opinions. The press needs to focus on the messages suggesting he’d act on that hostility (‘insurance policy’)–which is not OK.”

Oddly enough, Drudge didn’t mention the texts and has downplayed all Strzok-related coverage. Some NeverTrump conservative media have also downplayed it.

Many media outlets have buried their reluctant mention of these texts, almost as if they feel the texts are an indictment of their own uncritical coverage of the collusion narrative put forth by partisans.

Let’s at Least Pretend to Care about Covering the News

Listen, we have much to learn about the FBI’s Trump investigations, their use of Clinton opposition research to wiretap an associate of the Trump campaign, the orchestrated leak campaign in the waning days of the Obama administration, and Strzok’s role in any of these. The texts require greater elucidation.

But journalists should seek to cover this story, not cover it up or downplay it before the American public gets answers it is counting on journalists to help them get.

Media In Possible Pay-To-Publish Scheme

By
Gustavo
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Court filings released last month by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence suggest growing evidence of a pay-to-publish scandal that may shake large parts of the Washington press corps.

At the center of the controversy is the Washington DC-based communications shop Fusion GPS, which assembled and distributed the so-called “Steele dossier.” It’s named after former British spy Christopher Steele, who is believed to have authored the document alleging that Donald Trump and members of his campaign colluded with Russia to win the 2016 election. Steele acknowledges that some of the dossier’s information is sourced to Russian officials, including a “top-level intelligence officer.”

In its other Russia-related work, Fusion GPS engaged in a media campaign opposing a law targeting foreign nationals across the globe for human rights abuses. In its advocacy against the Global Magnitsky Act, a worldwide extension of the U.S. legislation imposing sanctions on Russian officials and other figures associated with the Russian government for their involvement in the detention and death of Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, Fusion GPS mirrored Kremlin talking points.

Now the court filing from the U.S. district court for DC shows that Fusion GPS paid several journalists, including three who reported on “Russia issues relevant to [the committee’s] investigation,” the House Intelligence Committee said in a court filing.

The documents did not release the names of the journalists and media organization.

How Fusion GPS Used Media Contacts

To understand the role Fusion GPS played in promoting and distributing the Steele dossier as well as the company’s work to undermine the Magnitsky Act, we’ll need a fuller account of Fusion GPS’s relationship with the journalism industry its principals left and then cultivated.

The story starts at the Wall Street Journal, which is taking fire from the rest of the profession, plunging the paper into what some have described as a civil war between its traditionally right-wing editorial page and left-leaning news desk.

“I don’t know a single WSJ alum who’s not agog at where that edit page is heading,” tweeted former Wall Street Journal reporter Neil King, reacting to a Journal editorial calling for the firing of Robert Mueller. “WSJ edit page has gone full bats–t, now hosting an op-ed suggesting Trump pardon everyone, including himself,” tweeted former high-ranking Wall Street Journal editor Bill Grueskin, now a professor at the Columbia School of Journalism.

When the Journal’s Kimberley Strassel wrote on the editorial page that plenty of bombshells are to come in the Trump-Russia narrative—about the FBI, the Democratic National Committee, and Fusion GPS—Journal alums told Politico reporter Jason Schwartz that was all crazy talk. The real story, they suggested, was that News Corp owner Rupert Murdoch had whispered in Journal editor Gerard Baker’s ear that the paper better support Trump or else.

The Journal took the unusual step of responding to the Politico article, chastising the publication for omitting key details—like the fact that King is now employed by Fusion GPS. “Mr. Schwartz,” the editorial continued, “also failed to point out that Mr. King’s wife, Shailagh Murray, also a former Journal reporter, worked in the Obama White House. Perhaps Mr. Schwartz understands that this kind of political incestuousness is so routine in Washington that even to mention it would get him drummed out of the club.”

That is, the Journal suggested the Politico writer was in on a game whose major players include Fusion GPS and Democratic operatives like Murray, in which the press’s role is to credential the fruits of Fusion GPS’s oppo research as legitimate news stories.

“Our reporting on Fusion GPS is unrelated to where its employees used to work,” Wall Street Journal editorial page editor Paul Gigot wrote me in an email. “We think the story of Russian meddling in the 2016 election is important, and where we differ with the rest of the press corps is that we think the story of Fusion’s ties to Russia and the Steele dossier, as well as the dossier’s influence on the FBI, are also important to investigate. Let’s get the full Russia story.”

Former WSJ Reporters Now Push Russiagate Story

Fusion GPS’s principals—Glenn Simpson, Peter Fritsch, Thomas Catan, and King—are all Journal alumni. Moreover, several other former Journal hands employed throughout the Washington DC press corps to cover the Russiagate beat have teamed with the Fusion four. Because Journal alums played a key role not only in creating the Great Kremlin Conspiracy but also in disseminating it, it is natural that the Journal would find itself in the middle of the story. It appears its newsroom is still influenced by the former staffers driving the Russiagate tale.

William Browder, the driving force behind the Magnitsky Act, told me recently about his experience with the Journal’s newsroom and its relationship with the firm four former WSJ reporters have found. “When I was trying to get journalists interested in a story about the role Fusion GPS was playing in trying to undo the Magnitsky Act,” said Browder, “I found that the Wall Street Journal was one of the places where Glenn Simpson and Fusion GPS were deeply entrenched in the newsroom.” Wall Street Journal editor Gerard Baker did not reply to a request for comment on Browder’s assertions.

The Fusion GPS story doesn’t end with the Wall Street Journal. It only started there. Recently The Daily Caller reported on CNN reporter Evan Perez’s ties to Fusion GPS, showing photographs of Perez with Fritsch and King, with whom he shared bylines at the Wall Street Journal before they went to Fusion GPS and he moved to CNN. Perez had the lead byline on CNN’s January 10, 2017, story that broke how four U.S. intelligence chiefs briefed incoming president Trump and outgoing President Obama on the Steele dossier. The CNN story made no mention of Perez’s friends and former colleagues who produced and distributed the dossier that was the subject of the story.

Former WSJ reporter Adam Entous, recently hired by the New Yorker, had the lead byline on the Washington Post article breaking the news that Marc Elias, a lawyer from the DC law firm Perkins Coie, hired Fusion GPS to compile an opposition research file on Trump for the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the Clinton campaign. After the story broke, New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Ken Vogel expressed their professional frustration on Twitter. They were after the story, and someone else nailed it.

“Folks involved in funding this lied about it, and with sanctimony, for a year,” tweeted Haberman. “When I tried to report this story,” wrote Vogel, “Clinton campaign lawyer @marceelias pushed back vigorously, saying ‘You (or your sources) are wrong.’”

So how did the Post get the Clinton campaign, DNC, or Elias to confirm the story? There’s no evidence they did. A former Clinton spokesman told the paper he wasn’t aware Fusion GPS was hired. A DNC spokesperson said the new leadership was not part of the decision-making. “Elias and Fusion GPS,” according to the Post report, “declined to comment on the arrangement.”

That leaves the firm’s principals as Entous’ most likely sources. Why? Because Fusion GPS and its principals had an interest in dumping information to deter the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence from successfully subpoenaing the company’s bank records for evidence that Fusion GPS paid journalists. “Entous,” said one veteran journalist familiar with the national security beat, “is tight with Fusion GPS.”

Feeding Friendly Media Anti-Trump Smears

Carol Lee of NBC News is another WSJ alum. At her new job she has worked on Russiagate stories with Ken Dilanian, a reporter Browder believes to be a regular and reliable purveyor of Fusion GPS-manufactured talking points. In September, for instance, Lee and Dilanian broke a story about the June 2016 meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, which also included Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort.

The network of journalists who take dossiers from Fusion GPS is rich and deep.

Lee and Dilanian reported, “Two sources tell NBC News that Manafort’s smartphone notes from the meeting included the words ‘donations’ in proximity to the reference to the Republican National Committee.” NBC News was eventually forced to walk back the story when it turned out the word on Manafort’s phone was “donors,” not “donations,” a difference that nullified the thrust of the story, which was to suggest that Russia was funneling money directly to the Trump campaign.

But who fed Lee and Dilanian their story? It seems likely from the list of people at the meeting that their sources included Veselnitskaya herself and another Russian at the meeting, Rinat Akhmetshin—who both had partnered with Fusion GPS to try to undo the Magnitsky Act on behalf of pro-Putin elements. Indeed, Simpson met with Veselnitskaya before and after her meeting with Trump Jr.—a meeting Simpson says he didn’t know about until it was later reported.

The network of journalists who take dossiers from Fusion GPS is rich and deep, which is how the company manages to seed so many stories around the media and make its money. Others whose tenure at the Wall Street Journal intersected with those of Fusion GPS principals and who have filed numerous stories on the Trump-Russia narrative that originated with Fusion GPS’s “Steele” dossier include, among others, Devlin Barrett and Tom Hamburger of the Washington Post, and Matthew Rosenberg of the New York Times.

Paid Mouthpieces for Unknown Interests

Journalism is hardly the only industry networked not just by the work it produces, but also the values and professional ethics it reproduces. Thus the picture of the American news media that emerges from all this hush-hush, buddy-buddy back and forth isn’t pretty.

With the briefing, Obama’s intelligence chiefs had re-credentialed Fusion GPS’s oppo research as a news story.

Much of the fourth estate, it seems, is a world of Renfields, grotesque courtiers gorging on scraps left at the master’s table: reporters who conceal the for-profit sources that pay them and coordinate campaigns of political warfare with the partisan operatives and intelligence officials they’re supposed to be reporting on; and editors who publish conspiracies drawn from a platform for a Russian-manufactured disinformation operation furnished by former colleagues advocating on behalf of a pro-Kremlin interests to undermine American law. Why have they pushed a narrative based on a dossier that they couldn’t verify? Because they couldn’t abide the results of an American election.

For nearly a year most of the press—with the exception of Yahoo News and Mother Jones—held off from reporting on the dossier because they couldn’t discern how much, if any, of it, was true. It was Barack Obama who put it back in play when, as CNN reported, his four intelligence chiefs briefed the newly elected Trump in early January 2017.

“One reason the nation’s intelligence chiefs took the extraordinary step of including the synopsis in the briefing documents was to make the President-elect aware that such allegations involving him are circulating among intelligence agencies,” reported CNN.

No, the point was to provide a pretext for a press that before the election had refrained from publishing the dossier to now put it out in the open. With the briefing, Obama’s intelligence chiefs had re-credentialed Fusion GPS’s oppo research as a news story. Now it was legitimate. Then the feeding frenzy began.

Corrupt Institutions Can’t Stop Corruption

Who knows how editors and journalists justify to themselves promoting a storyline based on a dossier that their journalistic ethics had previously rejected. Maybe they convinced themselves that the fate of the American press, or America itself, actually depended on promoting the dossier to jam a spike in Trump’s wheels. There was no telling what the mad, press-hating tweeter-in-chief might do once in office.

If it weren’t for the Trump-Russia narrative, maybe digital subscriptions wouldn’t have surged at the Times and elsewhere over the last quarter.

And if it weren’t for the Trump-Russia narrative, maybe digital subscriptions wouldn’t have surged at the Times and elsewhere over the last quarter. Sure, it would be bad if the tables were turned, and the other side had a noble public servant of its own like Robert Mueller coming after Hillary Clinton on the basis of some “dossier” of hogwash that a Trump donor paid $10 million for then leaked to Steve Bannon at Breitbart —but, well, that’s not happening. Not this time, anyway.

Journalists can try to pretend that none of this happened and that in fact, they are all still the heroes of their imaginations, bravely fighting Nazis and fascists. That the choices they made while playing dress-up are entirely justified by Trump’s awfulness, even if they also weakened the badly damaged structures of an institution that for the past century has been central to the American form of government.

Our political institutions, including the press, are designed to check the power that any one group accrues as a consequence of its sociological dynamics and make it difficult for them to advance their narrow interests, friendships, or whims at the expense of the public. The scandal that now threatens to put a stake through the heart of the media is that it may have been paid to publicize what it knows and has known for more than a year: The Great Kremlin Conspiracy Theory is a hoax.

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