Showing posts with label collusion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label collusion. Show all posts

Friday, June 14, 2019

Observations from the Swamp #2 – May Wrap up – Mueller musings




Report for May


The month of May ended in a tumultuous avalanche of opinions on the secret meaning of the Mueller report, which was aggravated when Special Prosecutor Mueller came out of his den for the first time in over two years to deliver his own strange public statement on his report.


Yes, there really is a Mueller and we found him indeed alive though a bit worn.
After his nearly ten-minute address in which he said everything he wanted to say was in his original report already released by Attorney General Barr, and everyone should read the 400 plus page document, we were left with our heads spinning.


Seriously, read over 400 pages of legalese that draws no conclusions, no further indictments, and yes, no Russia collusion.  I do not think Americas are that hungry for such an inconclusive document.

Nothing new, so why would we read it?

To those who ignore the report, here is a summary.  There are four competing versions of the report depending on your bias.


Mueller’s version

He said he could not find the president innocent of conspiracy to obstruct justice.  Whoa!  Here I thought our criminal justice system guaranteed we were innocent until proven guilty.  Of course, he did not say the president was guilty either.  Just what is he saying?

So, he then makes the statement that the criminal justice system has no way to solve this conundrum, but there are constitutional means to do this.  This from a prosecutor in the criminal justice system, who works for the criminal enforcement arm of the government, the Justice Department, the heart of the Executive branch of government?

The news media says that means he told the Congress to investigate which is not what he said.  He referred to other Constitutional means.  How in the world could a member of the executive branch make referrals to another independent branch of government, the legislative branch of congress?

It would seem that violates the very principle of the separation and independence of the three branches of government.  Nowhere does any law say the congress has the right to determine guilt or innocence under criminal statutes.  That would be an infringement of the congress, legislative branch, on the executive branch powers.


Democrat version

The second version of the analysis came from the Democrats in the House who are straining to keep from self-destructing.  The leadership, including the six committee chairmen whose committees are investigating the president, seem determined to investigate every single thread mentioning Trump, his kids, his parents, and everything that happened in his life that might reflect on what he is doing as president.

This has the makings of the biggest fishing expedition in the history of our country to find a legitimate cause for impeachment.  Which clearly means after two and a half years and tens of millions of dollars of investigations, they still cannot figure out how to get rid of Trump.
Under the orchestration of Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her pit bull chairmen, their intent seems to use every trick in the book to paralyze the president, cripple his presidency, and send him into oblivion in the next election.

Thus, nothing has changed.


Republican version

Not to be left out in the cold, the Republicans have their own version of what the report means.  Most largely remain silent figuring enough politicians are making fools of themselves, why risk a career just to jump on the credibility of the strange report.  That has not stopped President Trump, target of all the investigations, from commenting.
He is a very mad person about what is taking place.  Perhaps he should be since every member of the Democratic leadership has ignored the innocent until proven guilty criminal justice principle.  Before any investigative committee held their first hearings the Democrats already declared him guilty of something and/or everything.


In the meantime…


The Democrats seem to be single-handedly continuing to undermine our criminal justice system which began with the Clinton presidency and his Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, HR 3355. 

The largest crime bill in the history of the United States was originally written by one Senator Joe Biden, consisted of 356 pages, and provided for 100,000 new police officers, $9.7 billion in funding for prisons and $6.1 billion in funding for prevention programs.  President Bill Clinton signed it into law.


The Center for American Progress says the following about the Clinton/Biden law.
Many consider the crime bill to be one of the cornerstone statutes that accelerated mass incarceration of minorities. But the law’s negative effects did not end there. States and localities were incentivized through a massive infusion of federal funding to build more jails and prisons and to pass so-called truth-in-sentencing laws and other punitive measures that simultaneously increased the number and length of prison sentences while reducing the possibility of early release for those incarcerated.

It has been well-documented that these policies were failures. Their cost to society came not only from the staggering amount of taxpayer dollars that were invested in enforcement, but also from the disproportionate incarceration of a generation of African American men in the name of public safety. Moreover, tough-on-crime measures—specifically longer incarceration sentences—have had at best a marginal effect on improving public safety.

If the presumption of innocence standard and the right to defend oneself against criminal charges are ignore by the Democrats, thus undermining our criminal justice system, we all should be concerned about the future because no one will be safe anymore.


News Media version

Last of the four versions of analysis is the News Media version.  Here the track record of reckless reporting, fake news, intense Trump hatred, and total disregard for professional journalistic principles and ethics were tossed out when Trump first became a threat to the darling of the news media, Hillary Clinton, in the 2016 campaign.

When it comes to Trump, the media long ago tossed out protections like presumption of innocence, right to fair defense, or anything that might leave the impression he is good in any way.  The good news is the media bias is well known to most Americans who know fair, balanced, honest, just or objective reporting is pretty much a thing of the past.

Few people really care what the media says, reports or claims, for their association with the swamp has long ago been established.  As for Trump, Washington insiders, also known as the Establishment, see him as the greatest threat to their power, ability to influence people, and efforts to control people.  When Trump says drain the swamp the media is in his crosshairs.

The Future

Washington, D.C.

Democrat Presidential









Media versus Trump






News Highlights 


UK






North Korea





China - Hong Kong







Venezuela






Iran  







Sudan






Israel



Wednesday, March 27, 2019

The Melchizedek Chronicles - What to do about Trump! What is the right thing to do about Trump! Part II



Now that the world, the Democrats, and anti-Trump forces have been betrayed by their own supposed hero, Robert Mueller, with the release of the long-awaited Mueller Report, what next?


The Investigation…

Nearly $25 million
2,800 subpoenas
500 witnesses
40 FBI agents
21 lawyers


The media coverage of the investigation

“Russiagate” has been a news media obsession since Trump’s victory in November 2016. The nonpartisan Tyndall Report pegged the total amount of time devoted to the story on the evening newscasts of ABC, CBS and NBC last year at 332 minutes.

According to a count by the Republican National Committee released Sunday, The Post, The New York Times, CNN.com and MSNBC.com have written a combined 8,507 articles mentioning the special counsel’s investigation.  The cable news networks, particularly CNN and MSNBC, have added hundreds of hours of discussion about the topic as well.


The Mysterious Steele Dossier on Trump

Deep in the background of the two and one-half-year evolvement and completion of the Mueller investigation, dating back to the 2016 campaign for the presidency, there was the highly secret concocting of a mysterious dossier trashing Donald Trump that would become the most notorious counter-intelligent and opposition research project ever undertaken in an American presidential election.  

In August 2015, NBCUniversal made a $200 million equity investment in Buzzfeed.  Along with plans to hire more journalists to build a more prominent "investigative" unit.
In October 2016, Buzzfeed raised $200 million from Comcast TV and movie arm NBCUniversal, at a valuation of roughly $1.7 billion.  Altogether, Comcast and subsidiary NBCUniversal own about a third of Buzzfeed.
Why?


The Steele dossier on Trump

Mother Jones news reported on the existence of the elusive dossier behind the federal investigation of the Trump campaign and Democratic obsession to get Trump and invalidate the 2016 presidential election of Donald Trump on October 31, 2016.

The opposition research conducted by Fusion GPS on Donald Trump was in two distinct operations, each with a different client. The first research operation, from October 2015 to May 2016, was domestic research funded by The Washington Free Beacon, a Republican organization doing background on the GOP primary candidates.

The second operation, from April 2016 to December 2016, was funded by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the Hillary Clinton campaign. Only the second operation involved the foreign research that produced the Trump dossier.


At least for portions of the months of April and May 2016, the Washington Free Beacon and the Hillary Clinton Campaign/DNC were independently both clients of Fusion GPS.

Note NBCUniversal made substantial purchases of Buzzfeed in August of 2015 and October of 2016.

At some point news media began hearing rumors about the dossier in the middle of 2016 as reported in Mother Jones October 31, 2016.  However, funding information and how the complete dossier was given to the FBI and news media were unknown.


It was not until the end of 2018 that factual information came forth.  The new revelations were contained in an opinion authored by U.S. District Judge Ursula Ungaro December 19, 2018 in a District Court case involving Buzzfeed.

As stated by the Judge, an associate of the late Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain shared with Buzzfeed News a copy of the unverified, salacious opposition research dossier alleging that Russians had compromising material on President Trump, according to a bombshell federal court filing December 19, 2018.


McCain had strenuously denied being the source for Buzzfeed after it published the entire dossier, which was funded by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign.

McCain has acknowledged giving the dossier to the FBI. But, until the opinion of the Judge was released, it remained a mystery what role, if any, his associates might have played in the dossier leaking to the media shortly afterwards.


In November 2016, according to the filing, McCain sent Kramer, a director at the McCain Institute for International Leadership, to London to meet with Steele.

McCain had learned from Sir Andrew Wood, the former British Ambassador to Russia, that Steele had collected damaging information about Trump, according to the filing. Wood was an informal adviser to Orbis, which was retained by Fusion GPS, the firm behind the dossier.


On Nov. 28, 2016, Kramer met with Steele and later obtained copies of the dossier from Glenn Simpson, the head of Fusion GPS, the filing states. Kramer then met with Buzzfeed reporter Ken Bensinger on Dec. 29, 2016 at the McCain Institute.

There, "Kramer reviewed with Bensinger what he knew about the dossier and explained that he took the allegations seriously." Then, Kramer showed Bensinger the dossier and purportedly informed him that “some of the information was unverified."

Bensinger left his meeting "with copies of all seventeen memos" authored by Steele, and promptly took the compiled dossier to Mark Schoofs, Buzzfeed’s senior editor in charge of investigative reporting.

Buzzfeed published the entire 35-page dossier under the title “These Reports Allege Trump has Deep Ties to Russia” on January 10, 2017, just before Trump was sworn into office on January 20, 2017.

It was this revelation that led to the Comey firing and the appointment of a special prosecutor.  The history and mystery of the dossier that was never proven accurate is the key question to what happened during Trump's presidency to date.


Justice Department and Congressional Investigations needed

Justice Department and Congressional investigations are needed to finish cleaning up the mess that has plagued the president and denied the people the full attention of their duly elected president.

Many questions remain concerning the development, funding sources, distribution and public release of the dossier as well as the internal actions within the Obama Justice Department and Administration, including those of Attorney General Loretta Lynch, National Security Advisor Susan Rice, CIA Director John O. Brennan, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, and FBI Director James Comey, along with various Justice Department senior executives, a number of whom have been fired or retired.  

There are always consequences to actions that were intended to mislead the public, slant the news, and punish the innocent and those consequences are on the horizon.  The same is true when politicians violated their oath to the Constitution and ethics which may snare many Democratic senators and congressmen, along with Democratic presidential candidates for president in 2020.


Finally, there is the absolutely horrendous efforts by the news media including Internet news producers and aggregators to blatantly drive the president out of office.  It was never the intent of our Founding Fathers that the first amendment, free speech and protection of the press, should be used to shield news media from unlawful, unethical, immoral and co-conspiratorial practices intended to discriminate against the object of their stories.

If there is any involvement by the media in the unlawful manipulation of the agencies of the government or the public news media resulting in the Mueller investigation the courts should strip the media of protection against liability under the first amendment.  Beyond that, any news organization that violated the Professional Ethical Standards for Journalism should be stripped of White House and Federal government clearance and credentials to all government activities.


Let the President do what he was elected by the people to do so hope can be restored in our nation, the real needs of the people can be met, the abuses and over-reach of the government can be eliminated, and we the people can get what we expect out of our national government.  The time for division must be put behind us and the leadership in solving national and world problems must be our future.  America deserves the chance to prove what makes us better than any other nation in the world, creativity, pride, compassion, care and equality for all.