Featuring Right thinking from a left brain, doing the job the American Media Maggots won’t, embracing ubiquitous, sagacious perspicacity and broadcasting behind enemy lines in Occupied Fornicalia from the veritable Belly of the Beast, the Bill Mill in Sacramento, Fornicalia, I continue to proffer my thanks to the SHR Media Network for allowing me to utilize their studio and hijack their air twice weekly, Tuesdays and Thursday nights, thanks to my shameless contract — as well as appear on the Sack Heads: Against Tyranny Show every Wednesday night.
On January 17th, it was the second anniversary of BZ broadcasting on the SHR Media Network. BZ has held his show, the Berserk Bobcat Saloon, on SHR continuously since January 17th of 2017. BZ is forever in debt to the co-owners of SHR, Sack Heads SHAUN and Sack Heads CLINT for believing in me and providing me with air time, a studio and unparalleled support. God bless them for that. I had a message, and they allowed me to become something of a messenger.
Hour 1: BZ spent the first hour with KEN McCLENTON, The Exceptional Conservative himself and owner of TECN, The Exceptional Conservative Network. Ken is a force to be reckoned with in the DC area, where he lives and broadcasts, and is a beacon of Conservatism for black Americans. He fights the good fight every day in the face of ridicule and hatred for daring to be a black Conservative. Come listen to what he had to say!
Hour 2: BZfeatured an SHR Media Special Report: “Mueller Reveals a Soft Coup Against America.” Great depth and detail in an examination of Attorney General William Barr’s release of his summary of the Mueller investigation into Trump, concluding that there was no collusion or conspiracy involved between Trump and Russia. Finally!
BZ says: “Prepare for retribution. You can’t turn this nation upside down and not expect any fallout, Leftists, Demorats and American Media Maggots.” Retribution hell; I want decimation. This is a thousand times worse than Watergate because the situation involved the deaths of four Americans, and the attempt to turn this nation into a dictatorship from the interference of Barack Hussein Obama and his Leftist annihilists.
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I’ve said this since late 2016, all through 2017 and 2018, with the March 2019 Mueller report now confirming:
What we experienced in America, instigated by the Barack Hussein Obama 44 administration, the DNC, Hillary Clinton and her campaign, the DOJ and the FBI plus other abetting actors like John McCain (and many others), was a soft coup against a presidential nominee, a president-elect and a sitting president of the United States.
Donald John Trump.
This soft coup was, yes, against him but by extension was aimed directly at you and me. Us. American voters. Anyone who dared not to vote for Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Here’s what happened in a nutshell: the counterintelligence divisions of the FBI, the DOJ, the CIA, the DIA and the NSA were all arrayed — in concert with the DNC, the Demorats, Hillary Clinton, Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, Fusion GPS, Christopher Steele, John McCain, Glenn Simpson — while working hand-in-hand with the American Media Maggots in a week-by-week, day-by-day, hour-by-hour hammering of the situation — and in concert with the Barack Hussein Obama administration and the then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch — were working overtime with all possible available resources in order to not only derail the candidacy of an individual for president but, further, to smear the person in such a way as to make them a pariah, a leper, forevermore in the minds and eyes of the United States and the world.
This was spying on a political campaign. Spying on a private citizen. With the full weight of the US government behind.
This is something a tinpot dictatorship does. This is something a totalitarian society does. Not a Republic. Not a nation that abides by laws and operates by the rule of law.
Then there was the dirty bought-and-paid-for “dossier” financed by the DNC, the FBI, Hillary Clinton and aforementioned Russian oligarch. You want actual “Russian collusion”? Want to mix in Jimmy The Leak?
The fuckery was afoot, the plot drawn, and even “insurance” formulated by FBI agents Lisa Page and Peter Strzok in case Hillary Clinton failed to win the presidency. The Russia investigation was just that “insurance.” There was no way, of course, this could happen. But “just in case.”
Page first entered the spotlight in December 2017, when it was revealed by the JusticeDepartment inspector general that she and then-FBI Special Agent Peter Strzok exchanged numerous anti-Trump text messages. The two were involved in the FBI’s initial counterintelligence investigation into Russian meddling and potential collusion with Trump campaign associates during the 2016 election, and later served on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team.
Among their texts was one concerning the so-called “insurance policy.” During her interview with the Judiciary Committee in July 2018, Page was questioned at length about that text — and essentially confirmed this referred to the Russia investigation while explaining that officials were proceeding with caution, concerned about the implications of the case while not wanting to go at “total breakneck speed” and risk burning sources as they presumed Trump wouldn’t be elected anyway.
Further, she confirmed investigators only had a “paucity” of evidence at the start.
Then-Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., kicked off that section of questioning by asking about the text sent from Strzok to Page in August 2016 which read: “I want to believe the path you threw out in Andy’s [McCabe’s] office—that there’s no way he gets elected—but I’m afraid we can’t take the risk. It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you’re 40.”
The former FBI lawyer explained how the FBI was trying to strike a balance with the investigation into the Trump campaign—which agents called “Crossfire Hurricane.”
“So, upon the opening of the crossfire hurricane investigation, we had a number of discussions up through and including the Director regularly in which we were trying to find an answer to the question, right, which is, is there someone associated with the [Trump] campaign who is working with the Russians in order to obtain damaging information about Hillary Clinton,” Page said. “And given that it is August, we were very aware of the speed and sensitivity that we needed to operate under.”
You caught that, correct? “The Director” is none other than Jimmy “The Leak” Comey who had been keep in this loop. And there was a “paucity” of evidence. Lisa Page said that, even prior to the appointment of Robert Mueller as Special Counsel by Assistant Attorney General Rod Rosenstein — the same Rosenstein who wrote a letter to President Trump outlining the various and numerous reasons to fire James Comey — there was no evidence to indicate Trump-Russia “collusion.” From September of 2018:
More than nine months after the FBI opened its highly classified counterintelligence investigation into alleged coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia, FBI lawyer Lisa Page said investigators still could not say whether there was collusion, according to a transcript of Page’s recent closed-door deposition reviewed by Fox News.
“I think this represents that even as far as May 2017, we still couldn’t answer the question,” Page said.
“I cannot provide the specifics of a confidential interview,” Ratcliffe told Fox News when asked for comment. “But I can say that Lisa Page left me with the impression, based on her own words, that the lead investigator of the Russian collusion case, Peter Strzok, had found no evidence of collusion after nearly a year.”
May 2017 is a key month because FBI DIrector James Comey was fired by President Trump and Mueller was designated special counsel. In August, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who appointed Mueller, wrote the still-secret “scope memo” spelling out the boundaries for the special counsel investigation.
Comey testified to the Senate Intelligence Committee in June 2017 that he leaked memos he wrote after conversations with Trump in order to force the appointment of a special counsel.
“I asked a friend of mine to share the content of a memo with the reporter, I didn’t do it myself for a variety of reasons, but I asked him to because I thought that might prompt the appointment of a special counsel,” Comey testified June 8, 2017. (RELATED: James Comey Denies Being A Leaker)
Comey instructed his friend, Daniel Richman, to give the Times a memo he wrote about a conversation he had with Trump on Feb. 14, 2017. Comey claimed Trump asked him to shut down an investigation of former national security adviser Michael Flynn.
Comey’s ploy worked, as Robert Mueller was appointed special counsel May 17, 2017.
Dear Chairman Graham, Chairman Nadler, Ranking Member Feinstein, and Ranking Member Collins:
As a supplement to the notification provided on Friday, March 22, 2019, I am writing today to advise you of the principal conclusions reached by Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III and to inform you about the status of my initial review of the report he has prepared.
The Special Counsel’s Report
On Friday, the Special Counsel submitted to me a “confidential report explaining the prosecution or declination decisions” he has reached, as required by 28 C.F.R. § 600.8(c). This report is entitled “Report on the Investigation into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election.” Although my review is ongoing, I believe that it is in the public interest to describe the report and to summarize the principal conclusions reached by the Special Counsel and the results of his investigation.
The report explains that the· Special Counsel and his staff thoroughly investigated allegations that members of the presidential campaign of Donald J. Trump, and others associated with it, conspired with the Russian government in its efforts to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, or sought to obstruct the related federal investigations. In the report, the Special Counsel noted that, in completing his investigation, he employed 19 lawyers who were assisted by a team of approximately 40 FBI agents, intelligence analysts, forensic accountants, and other professional staff. The Special Counsel issued more than 2,800 subpoenas, executed nearly 500 search warrants, obtained more than 230 orders for communication records, issued almost 50 orders authorizing use of pen registers, made 13 requests to foreign governments for evidence, and interviewed approximately 500 witnesses.
The Special Counsel obtained a number of indictments and convictions of individuals and entities in connection with his investigation, all of which have been publicly disclosed. During the course of his investigation, the Special Counsel also referred several matters to other offices for further action. The report does not recommend any further indictments, nor did the Special Counsel obtain any sealed indictments that have yet to be made public. Below, I summarize the principal conclusions set out in the Special Counsel’s report.
Russian Interference in the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election. The Special Counsel’s report is divided into two parts. The first describes the results of the Special Counsel’s investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The report outlines the Russian effort to influence the election and documents crimes committed by persons associated with the Russian government in connection with those efforts. The report further explains that a primary consideration for the Special Counsel’s investigation was whether any Americans -including individuals associated with the Trump campaign – joined the Russian conspiracies to influence the election, which would be a federal crime. The Special Counsel’s investigation did not find that the Trump campaign or anyone associated with it conspired or coordinated with Russia in its efforts to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election. As the report states: “[T]he investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”
[Footnote from letter: In assessing potential conspiracy charges, the Special Counsel also considered whether members of the Trump campaign “coordinated” with Russian election interference activities. The Special Counsel defined “coordination” as an “agreement-tacit or express-between the Trump Campaign and the Russian government on election interference.”]
The Special Counsel’s investigation determined that there were two main Russian efforts to influence the 2016 election. The first involved attempts by a Russian organization, the Internet Research Agency (IRA), to conduct disinformation and social media operations in the United States designed to sow social discord, eventually with the aim of interfering with the election. As noted above, the Special Counsel did not find that any U.S. person or Trump campaign official or associate conspired or knowingly coordinated with the IRA in its efforts, although the Special Counsel brought criminal charges against a number of Russian nationals and entities in connection with these activities.
The second element involved the Russian government’s efforts to conduct computer hacking operations designed to gather and disseminate information to influence the election. The Special Counsel found that Russian government actors successfully hacked into computers and obtained emails from persons affiliated with the Clinton campaign and Democratic Party organizations, and publicly disseminated those materials through various intermediaries, including WikiLeaks. Based on these activities, the Special Counsel brought criminal charges against a number of Russian military officers for conspiring to hack into computers in the United States for purposes of influencing the election. But as noted above, the Special Counsel did not find that the Trump campaign, or anyone associated with it, conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in these efforts, despite multiple. offers from Russian-affiliated individuals to assist the Trump campaign.
Obstruction of Justice. The report’s second part addresses a number of actions by the President – most of which have been the subject of public reporting – that the Special Counsel investigated as potentially raising obstruction-of-justice concerns. After making a “thorough factual investigation” into these matters, the Special Counsel considered whether to evaluate the conduct under Department standards governing prosecution and declination decisions but ultimately determined not to make a traditional prosecutorial judgment. The Special Counsel therefore did not draw a conclusion – one way or the other – as to whether the examined conduct constituted obstruction. Instead, for each of the relevant actions investigated, the report sets out evidence on both sides of the question and leaves unresolved what the Special Counsel views as “difficult issues” of law and fact concerning whether the President’s actions and intent could be viewed as obstruction .. The Special Counsel states that “while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.”
Stop. Alan Dershowitz has something to say about this point.
Excellent questions. May I be so base as to suggest that Mueller lacks the political cojones to draw the distinction, and may I also suggest that Mueller essentially “Comey’ed” the situation (using the name as a verb) insofar as he drew clear and numerous points but failed to do his job. Either there are events and situations worthy of prosecution or there are not. This was Mueller’s job. He equivocated. You see, Robert Mueller and Jimmy The Leak are not just friends, but they are former FBI Directors.
The Special Counsel’s decision to describe the facts of his obstruction investigation without reaching any legal conclusions leaves itto the Attorney General to determine whether the conduct described in the report constitutes a crime. Over the course of the investigation, the Special Counsel’s office engaged in discussions with certain Department officials regarding many of the legal and factual matters at issue in the Special Counsel’s obstruction investigation. After reviewing the Special Counsel’s final report on these issues; consulting with Department officials, including the Office of Legal Counsel; and applying the principles of federal prosecution that guide our charging decisions, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and I have concluded that the evidence developed during the Special Counsel’s investigation is not sufficient to establish that the President committed an obstruction-of-justice offense. Our determination was made without regard to, and is not based on, the constitutional considerations that surround the indictment and criminal prosecution of a sitting president.
In making this determination, we noted that the Special Counsel recognized that “the evidence does not establish that the President was involved in an underlying crime related to Russian election interference,” and that, while not determinative, the absence of such evidence bears upon the President’s intent with respect to obstruction. Generally speaking, to obtain and sustain an obstruction conviction, the government would need to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a person, acting with corrupt intent, engaged in obstructive conduct with a sufficient nexus to a pending or contemplated proceeding. In cataloguing the President’s actions, many of which took place in public view, the report identifies no actions that, in our judgment, constitute obstructive conduct, had a nexus to a pending or contemplated proceeding, and were done with corrupt intent, each of which, under the Department’s principles of federal prosecution guiding charging decisions, would need to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt to establish an obstruction-of¬justice offense.
37,040-41 (July 9, 1999). As I have previously stated, however, I am mindful of the public interest in this matter. For that reason, my goal and intent is to release as much of the Special Counsel’s report as I can consistent with applicable law, regulations, and Departmental policies.
Based on my discussions with the Special Counsel and my initial review, it is apparent that the report contains material that is or could be subject to Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 6( e ), which imposes restrictions on the use and disclosure of information relating to “matter[ s] occurring before [a] grand jury.” Fed. R. Crim. P. 6(e)(2)(B). Rule 6(e) generally limits disclosure of certain grand jury information in a criminal investigation and prosecution. Id. Disclosure of 6( e) material beyond the strict limits set forth in the rule is a crime in certain circumstances. See, e.g., 18 U.S.C. § 401(3). This restriction protects the integrity of grand jury proceedings and ensures that the unique and invaluable investigative powers of a grand jury are used strictly for their intended criminal justice function. Given these restrictions, the schedule for processing the report depends in part on how quickly the Department can identify the 6( e) material that by law cannot be made public. I have requested the assistance of the Special Counsel in identifying all 6( e) information contained in the report as quickly as possible. Separately, I also must identify any information that could impact other ongoing matters, including those that the Special Counsel has referred to other offices. As soon as that process is complete, I will be in a position to move forward expeditiously in determining what can be released in light of applicable law, regulations, and Departmental policies.
As I observed in my initial notification, the Special Counsel regulations provide that “the Attorney General may determine that public release of’ notifications to your respective Committees “would be in the public interest.” 28 C.F.R. § 600.9(c). I have so determined, and I will disclose this letter to the public after delivering it to you.
The reactions, as you might guess, came pouring forth. Here are Steve Hilton, Gregg Jarrett, Sara Carter and Kayleigh McEnany.
Is there anyone here who believes that Barack Obama is stupid, ill-educated, unaware of politics and was so incredibly laissez-faire that he was completely oblivious as to what occurred in his administration? Particularly with regard to what became the number one target of the Demorats, Donald John Trump?
Here is ABC’s George Stephanopoulis speaking with Representative Jim Jordan:
Democrats want to keep the distractions going.
But to date there is not one bit of evidence of coordination, conspiracy, or collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia to influence the election.
The American Media Maggots did indeed shit car parts following AG Barr’s summary of the Mueller report.
So somehow this Steven Colbert video isn’t aging so well any more.
Here are the American Media Maggots in full-on continuous Trump Derangement Mode. Let’s listen.
Yet: I have a question. An obvious one. Perhaps so incredibly obvious that no one seems to have thought of it.
Dear Adam Schiff, Nancy Pelosi, Maxine Waters, Jerry Nadler, Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, James Comey, et al. You all swear you have proof of President Trump “colluding” with Russia or Russia having influenced our election for Trump, against Clinton. I believe you have index fingers. Or at least you have staff with index fingers. Why is it that you didn’t utilize said device and dial up the Mueller team?
“Say Bob, ol’ buddy, have I got some evidence for you.” And then give it to him.
You could have done this every day for the past two years. Yet either one of two things happened: 1) You simply forgot to, in the daily rush of your hectic lives, or 2) You never had any fucking evidence in the first place. Me? I’m going with number two.
We know the FBI was biased. There are numerous facts in evidence regarding that.
The Mueller report summary is out. The Leftists, Demorats and American Media Maggots, having been thwarted once more by facts, are busy resetting goalposts, changing equations, reframing accusations and generally shitting car parts. The question is: what next? Does the report itself get released?
Lindsay Graham, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee has some thoughts.
Further: why not release just about all the documents relevant to the case? President Trump could declassify a host of documents.
For example: why can’t we see just what it was that the FBI provided to the FISA courts in order to acquire their searches of Trump, the tower and his associates?
One thought is this. And it is a damning one. A massive reason why Leftists and Demorats want no further documents uncovered.
Does anyone understand the Fruit of the Poisonous Tree doctrine? If, for example, an investigation is conducted and it is found that a FISA judge signed off on an affidavit packed with specious, unverified information such as the salacious “dirty dossier” — up to and including outright falsehoods — everything in terms of evidence subsequently procured is illegal and therefore inadmissible in court.
That would mean: convictions and indictments on Michael Flynn, Manafort, Cohen, et al, would have to be vacated.
One final point, something I’ve always wondered.
Where was the benefit of the doubt for Donald Trump?
As in: “Mr Trump, I’m Agent Smith from the FBI and we have information to indicate your campaign may have been subject to some kind of infiltration attempt by foreign powers, to possibly include the Russians. Would you work with us to try to get to the bottom of this?”
You know. Like what happened to Kalifornia Senator Diane Feinstein when it was discovered that she had a Chinese operative as her driver and personal attache for ten years, in her office, with access to highly sensitive documents and information.
The FBI managed to afford Senator Diane Feinstein the benefit of the doubt.
Feinstein was ‘mortified’ by FBI allegation that staffer was spy for China: report
by Lukas Mikelionis
U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein fired a staffer a few years back who was allegedly part of an effort to spy and pass on political intelligence to the Chinese government.
The FBI informed Feinstein, the then-chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, about five years ago about the staffer and allegations that the staffer was a spy. The source who confirmed the incident to the San Francisco Chronicle said “Dianne was mortified” upon learning about it.
Certainly Donald Trump would have been “mortified” to discover such a thing in his campaign.
But let’s ask ourselves a fundamental question. Could it be remotely possible that the Chinese determined to insert an agent directly into Feinstein’s vehicle because she was the Chair of the Senate Committee on Intelligence — a committee upon which she still sits?
The suspected spy served as the lawmaker’s driver in California, but took on other roles as well, including helping out in her San Francisco office and being Feinstein’s liaison to the Asian-American community in the state. He attended Chinese Consulate events on behalf of the senator.
This is worth a chortle:
A former official said that the spy’s handler “probably got an award back in China” for his efforts to penetrate Feinstein’s office and pass on intelligence.
Taxpayer money paid this Chinese mole or spy. Yours and mine. First question: did he get a pension? How would we know? Wouldn’t it behoove the Demorats to keep such a cock-up quiet? Of course it would. What a great job. Steal secrets, spy on the gweilo, then take a cushy retirement.
Then let’s break this down as well:
The suspected spy served as the lawmaker’s driver in California, but took on other roles as well, including helping out in her San Francisco office and being Feinstein’s liaison to the Asian-American community in the state. He attended Chinese Consulate events on behalf of the senator.
He was a driver and, apparently, much more. Let’s be serious. After her husband’s close associations with China and her comfort factor in dealing with same, would it not be logical that the amount of time spent with her day after day, week after week, year after year, a bit of a confidant, would result in her guard letting down? Of course. It turns out that Russell Lowe wasn’t just her driver — he was her office manager as well.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s warm relationship with and advocacy for Communist China go back decades and involve millions, if not billions, of dollars.
As media, intelligence agency, and political scrutiny of foreign meddling is seemingly at its apex, a story with big national security implications involving a high-ranking senator with access to America’s most sensitive intelligence information has been hiding in plain sight.
The story involves China and the senior U.S. senator from California, and former chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Democrat Dianne Feinstein. It was buried eight paragraphs into a recent Politico exposé on foreign efforts to infiltrate Silicon Valley, as a passing example of political espionage.
Did the senator expose herself to potential blackmail, or the public to danger through leakage of sensitive, highly classified information? Is firing really the proper punishment for providing political intelligence to a foreign power?
By now you get my point. The FBI decided to do Senator Feinstein a solid by notifying her and her staff of the potential threat from within due to this individual. They told her something similar to “we think you have a Chinese spy problem.”
That is precisely what the FBI did not do for the Donald Trump campaign. They could have taken the staff and then-candidate/nominee Donald Trump aside and said something similar to “eh, just thought you should know, we think you have something of a Russia problem,” as with Feinstein.
But no.
Gosh. I wonder what the difference was? And wasn’t Robert Mueller the FBI director during that time, in 2013? Why yes, he was. Comey wasn’t appointed until September of 2013.
The difference was Donald John Trump.
This was a soft coup against President Trump.
But in truth it was and is a soft coup against the American people. The American voters.
Senior US Judge T.S. Ellis III, Eastern District of Virginia.
Has Robert Mueller reached his plateau?
Two rather surprising pieces of news emerged this past week regarding Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his team of Trump Fishing Expeditionists.
And, in case you failed to notice, Monday was the one year anniversary of the multi-million dollar special counsel appointment via the Mueller Fishing Company.
Federal judge accuses Mueller’s team of lying, trying to target Trump: ‘C’mon man!’
by Jake Gibson
A federal judge on Friday harshly rebuked Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team during a hearing for ex-Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort – suggesting they lied about the scope of the investigation, are seeking “unfettered power” and are more interested in bringing down the president.
If you thought that was glorious, like BTO, “you ain’t seen nothing yet.”
“You don’t really care about Mr. Manafort,” U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III told Mueller’s team. “You really care about what information Mr. Manafort can give you to lead you to Mr. Trump and an impeachment, or whatever.”
Who is US District Judge Thomas Selby Ellis III? He happens to be a 78-year-old Senior US Judge assigned to the Eastern District of Virginia. A Reagan appointee in 1987, he was born in Bogota, Colombia and graduated from Princeton with a BA in Engineering. He subsequently served in the US Navy as an aviator and took his JD magna cum laude from Harvard in 1969.
Judge Ellis has presided over cases such as the American Taliban, John Walker Lindh, espionage act cases, Khalid El-Masri, and now the Paul Manafort case. In three words, Ellis has “seen it all.”
Continuing:
Further, Ellis demanded to see the unredacted “scope memo,” a document outlining the scope of the special counsel’s Russia probe that congressional Republicans have also sought.
Which, by the way, Mueller’s team has roughly three more days to produce.
The hearing, where Manafort’s team fought to dismiss an 18-count indictment on tax and bank fraud-related charges, took a confrontational turn as it was revealed that at least some of the information in the investigation derived from an earlier Justice Department probe – in the U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of Virginia.
Manafort’s attorneys argue the special counsel does not have the power to indict him on the charges they have brought – and seemed to find a sympathetic ear with Ellis.
Damn the judge for asking a particularly logical and pointed question.
The Reagan-appointed judge asked Mueller’s team where they got the authority to indict Manafort on alleged crimes dating as far back as 2005.
“We don’t want anyone with unfettered power,” he said.
He summed up the argument of the Special Counsel’s Office as, “We said this is what the investigation was about. But we’re not going to be bound by it, and we weren’t really telling the truth in that May 17 letter [appointing a special counsel].”
As we enter the second year of Robert Mueller’s sprawling investigation, Hanlon’s Razor teaches us to ‘Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.’
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?
OMG. I utterly failed to see that one coming.
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.
Hang on. The trip’s gonna get bouncy for a bit.
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.)
Are you now wondering if there’s a proverbial time bomb in here somewhere? Wonder no more.
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.”
Anyone also remember that, during that time, FBI agent John Connolly was providing information to Whitey Bulger? Bueller?
Mueller not the idyllic beacon of goodness, light and truth? Heaven forbid. Anyone recall this?
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.”
Want the “dirty little lies, the dirty little truth?” You’re going to get it.
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, 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.
Ah, the beauty of office politics. But wait; I thought Leftists, Demorats and the American Media Maggots insisted and continue to insist that all of our beloved Alphabet Agencies are completely unbiased and apolitical? Notice how I failed to throw “competent” in there?
I’ll leave you with this final bit. And please read the rest of Dellaportas’s article.
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.”
“We found no ties to terrorism.” That wasn’t Comey’s cock-up. It was Mueller’s. It’s as convincing as the Paris police saying, regarding the May 12th knife attack, that the “suspect’s motives were unclear.” Because, after all, nothing indicates a lack of clarity like the phrase “Allahu Akbar.”
Then there was this little bit of frippery from Monday’s TheHill.com:
Mueller may have a conflict — and it leads directly to a Russian oligarch
by John Solomon
Special counsel Robert Mueller has withstood relentless political attacks, many distorting his record of distinguished government service.
But there’s one episode even Mueller’s former law enforcement comrades — and independent ethicists — acknowledge raises legitimate legal issues and a possible conflict of interest in his overseeing the Russia election probe.
In 2009, when Mueller ran the FBI, the bureau asked Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska to spend millions of his own dollars funding an FBI-supervised operation to rescue a retired FBI agent, Robert Levinson, captured in Iran while working for the CIA in 2007.
Now hold up on that thar car wash, cowboy. Is it being said that — gulp — Mueller may have a Russian Collusion Connection instead of Donald John Trump, the guy with the dead orange cat on his head?
Yes, that’s the same Deripaska who has surfaced in Mueller’s current investigation and who was recently sanctioned by the Trump administration.
Helping him then, hurting him now? Just a wee bit of smegmatized Mark I Model I Conflict of Interest? Hell-ewww? But hang onto your girdle. It gets better.
First, as the FBI prepared to get authority to surveil figures on Trump’s campaign team, did it disclose to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that one of its past Russian sources waived them off the notion of Trump-Russia collusion?
Second, the U.S. government in April imposed sanctions on Deripaska, one of several prominent Russians targeted to punish Vladimir Putin — using the same sort of allegations that State used from 2006 to 2009. Yet, between those two episodes, Deripaska seemed good enough for the FBI to ask him to fund that multimillion-dollar rescue mission. And to seek his help on a sensitive political investigation. And to allow him into the country eight times.
As Scooby-Doo says: “Ruh-roh.”
Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz told me he believes Mueller has a conflict of interest because his FBI previously accepted financial help from a Russian that is, at the very least, a witness in the current probe.
“The real question becomes whether it was proper to leave [Deripaska] out of the Manafort indictment, and whether that omission was to avoid the kind of transparency that is really required by the law,” Dershowitz said.
Melanie Sloan, a former Clinton Justice Department lawyer and longtime ethics watchdog, told me a “far more significant issue” is whether the earlier FBI operation was even legal: “It’s possible the bureau’s arrangement with Mr. Deripaska violated the Antideficiency Act, which prohibits the government from accepting voluntary services.”
Too “inside baseball” for you? I should care to remind: we are a nation of laws.
George Washington University constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley agreed: “If the operation with Deripaska contravened federal law, this figure could be viewed as a potential embarrassment for Mueller. The question is whether he could implicate Mueller in an impropriety.”
Then, despite the best wishes of Leftists, Demorats and the American Media Maggots.
In the meantime, the episode highlights an oft-forgotten truism: The cat-and-mouse maneuvers between Moscow and Washington are often portrayed in black-and-white terms. But the truth is, the relationship is enveloped in many shades of gray.
Robert Mueller has plenty of questions for President Trump, and maybe he will get to ask them. Most of them seemed like perjury traps rather than real questions for the president and, surprisingly, they contain very little that wasn’t in the public domain though prior leaks. In other words, the president is not a target because they have nothing implicating him, and so they want to use the interview to create such material.
But the conduct of the investigation by the special counsel and his team has raised a lot of questions as to its foundation, conflicts of interest, fairness and methods. Most of the public, based on the last Harvard Caps-Harris Poll, supports Robert Mueller going forward with his investigation, but I wonder whether that would still be the case if he were required to answer a few questions himself.
Perjury trap? Oh yes. Every question aimed at Donald Trump will be a perjury trap. The Perjury Trap of perjury traps in modern history.
Just a few questions from Penn’s article.
When you interviewed for FBI director with President Trump, had you had any conversations with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, FBI Director James Comey or any other current or former officials of the U.S. government about serving as a special counsel? Didn’t you consider going forward with the interview or being rejected as FBI director to create the appearance of conflict?
When you picked your team, what was going through your mind when you picked zero donors to the Trump campaign and hired many Democratic donors, supporters of the defiant actions of Sally Yates, who at the time was deputy attorney general, and prosecutors who had been overturned for misconduct? What were you thinking in building a team with documented biases?
When you were shown the text messages of FBI officials Lisa Page and Peter Strzok, why did you reassign them and not fire them for compromising the investigation with obvious animus and multiple violations of procedure and policy? Why did you conceal from Congress the reasons for their firing for five months and did you discard any of their work as required by the “fruits of a poisonous tree” doctrine?
What were your personal contacts with Rod Rosenstein and James Comey during the investigation as special counsel and before that as a private attorney? Would you be considered a friend of James Comey? Would that personal relationship not disqualify you as a prosecutor on the case under Justice Department guidelines?
Doesn’t the fact that Rod Rosenstein wrote a memo urging the firing of James Comey and, therefore, is a witness to key events you are reviewing, disqualify him as your supervisor under Justice Department guidelines?
Did you see in advance any of the text of the book by James Comey or have any conversations related to its contents? Are you reviewing the contradictory statements made by James Comey on key issues for possible perjury or referral for perjury?