On the back of the August CPI report, the hotter-than-expected headline inflation and core inflation (without food and gas) numbers are being perceived as bad news for Federal Reserve policymakers. While investor expectations for next week’s meeting were that the Fed would hike the target interest rate by 75 basis points (three-quarters of a percent), there were hopes that a more positive inflation report would give the Fed cover to raise its target rate only by 50 basis points (half a percent). Now, while the 75 basis-point hike is still the expectation, there is concern the Fed may raise by a full percent.
At issue is what that means for the broader economy. The hopes that the Fed could achieve what investors call a “soft landing” — bringing down inflation without tanking the economy in the process — were never realistic and now are broadly waning. Even Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, who spins every bad piece of news (and also told us inflation was going to be “transitory” and not a problem), said in an interview this weekend, “The Fed is going to need great skill and also some good luck to achieve what we sometimes call a soft landing.”
Well, it’s hard to say the Fed has a lot of skill. After years of artificially suppressing interest rates and loading up the balance sheet with trillions of dollars in assets, in March 2020 the Fed said it needed to take swift action to save the economy. Officials’ ensuing actions instead helped to destroy the economy, including enabling historic inflation.
They also told us the “transitory” inflation lie, while refusing to stop their damaging policy. In fact, they didn’t officially reverse course until after inflation had reached a 40-year high. So, depending on their skill is like depending on me not to eat a slice of pizza if it is in front of me — that is, not a high dependability rate.
The luck factor isn’t on their side, either. The Fed’s tool kit of increasing the interest rates and reducing the balance sheet (if officials ever get around to the latter) are demand-side tools. They are meant to quell consumer purchasing, reduce business investment, and slow down the economy. However, we have massive undersupply broadly throughout the economy: an undersupply of workers, food, energy, housing, and other commodities. The Fed can “print” money, but it can’t print people, food, or oil. So, the only way officials can slow things down is by substantially slowing economic activity.
We already have had two quarters of negative real GDP, so aggressively trying to slow things further isn’t the luck a soft landing needs. Add on to that the global recessionary pressure, from those self-inflicted energy issues in Europe to the real estate bubble popping and other issues in China, and the macro backdrop doesn’t present as very “lucky” for the economy, either. The Fed, along with its government cronies, has made a deliberate mess of the economy. Don’t count on skill and luck to fix it any time soon.
As the 2022 midterm election nears, polls increasingly indicate that Democrats will be more competitive than previously thought. The red tsunami, which once looked menacing, now appears to be nothing more than a small ripple. But polling expert Nate Cohn explained this week a key “warning sign is flashing again,” suggesting polls are overestimating Democrats’ prospects.
Jen Psaki, the former White House press secretary turned MSNBC employee, claimed Tuesday that election forecasts have “flipped,” now showing Democrats in the driver’s seat less than two months from Election Day. Indeed, polls are increasingly showing Democrats may not lose control of the Senate and potentially even the House. But those polls do not tell the whole story.
Cohn wrote in the New York Times that ahead of the 2020 presidential election, Joe Biden was outperforming then-President Donald Trump in many of the same regions of the country where polls overestimated support for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election. Such overestimation in favor of Democrats appears to be happening again.
“That warning sign is flashing again: Democratic Senate candidates are outrunning expectations in the same places where the polls overestimated Mr. Biden in 2020 and Mrs. Clinton in 2016,” Cohn wrote.
Cohn highlighted one Senate race in particular — Republican Sen. Ron Johnson’s battle against Democrat Mandela Barnes in Wisconsin — as a potential bellwether for bad polling after a recent Marquette Law School poll showed Barnes leading Johnson by a significant margin of 7 points.
Cohn explained:
But in this case, good for Wisconsin Democrats might be too good to be true. The state was ground zero for survey error in 2020, when pre-election polls proved to be too good to be true for Mr. Biden. In the end, the polls overestimated Mr. Biden by about eight percentage points. Eerily enough, Mr. Barnes is faring better than expected by a similar margin.
The Wisconsin data is just one example of a broader pattern across the battlegrounds: The more the polls overestimated Mr. Biden last time, the better Democrats seem to be doing relative to expectations. And conversely, Democrats are posting less impressive numbers in some of the states where the polls were fairly accurate two years ago, like Georgia.
When Cohn plotted the places where polls overestimated Democrats, he discovered a “consistent link between Democratic strength today and polling error two years ago.” According to Cohn, “persistent and unaddressed biases” in survey methodology — like nonresponse bias — is causing pollsters to derive misleading polls. What this means practically, he explained, is that what appears to be Democratic strength in the run-up to the election could actually be nothing more than a “mirage.”
If the same polling errors from previous elections persist this year, Republicans will handily win the House and could even take control of the Senate.
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Donald Trump.
In Democrat-run cities with defund the police initiatives, gun control policies, and illegal immigrants, crime has dramatically increased. While most crime that the leftist media covers at length is done to further their political narrative, much more crime that does not garner the same coverage makes these cities a dangerous place to live.
This weekend was no exception, as crime ran rampant in Democrat strongholds across the nation. Here are just a few highlights.
Philadelphia, PA
Over the weekend, 20 people were shot in the city of Philadelphia, four of whom were pronounced dead. There were an additional four stabbings this weekend in the east coast city. This deadly weekend put the city at 380 homicides for the year so far as of Saturday. While 2021 was the deadliest year the city has seen, Philadelphia is set to surpass last year’s record this year if this murder rate continues.
The four fatalities included a 64-year-old man who was repeatedly shot then pronounced dead at the hospital, according to a local news outlet. Joseph Durpee, a man who was in the area when this shooting occurred, stated, “It’s exhausting.” Like other Philadelphians, he wants “to walk around and not fear for [his] life.”
As a result of this rise in crime, reports show that the people of Philadelphia, specifically women, are increasingly becoming gun owners. According to Breitbart, “women began flooding into concealed carry classes as crime rose last year” and “outpaced men ’51 percent to 49 percent’” in concealed carry permit applications.
Former police firearms instructor Terrance Lappe stated, “I’ve been living in Philadelphia for almost 64 years and have never seen anything like this.” She added, “That’s why I carry a gun.”
Chicago, IL
Six people were shot and killed in Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s Chicago this past weekend, with an additional seven teenagers wounded among the 28 total non-fatal shootings. The shootings occurred between 5:00 p.m. Friday and 5:00 a.m. Monday.
Among the fatal attacks over the weekend included a 45-year-old man who was found in Washington Park on the South Side with a gunshot wound to the chest Friday evening. He was pronounced dead at University of Chicago Medical Center.
Four minors were shot within a six-hour span on the South Side, including a 17-year-old boy who was wounded in a drive-by shooting and taken to the hospital in critical condition. A 14-year-old boy was also wounded in a drive-by shooting but was in “good condition” when taken to the hospital.
While shootings are down from last year in Chicago, overall crime has risen to upwards of 45 percent in some districts, driving businesses out of the crime-ridden city. Despite this major uptick, Lightfoot stated last month that Chicago is making “progress” on crime. Violence committed and shootings of multiple Chicago residents each weekend, including teenagers, does not “scream” progress to people outside of Lightfoot’s line of thinking.
San Carlos, CA
Illegal immigrant Jose Rafael Solano Landaeta is in custody on murder charges for the brutal beheading of his ex-girlfriend Karina Castro this past Friday. Castro, who was also a mother of two, had placed a restraining order against Landaeta in April, according to law enforcement sources. Landaeta also “has criminal priors,” a report stated.
Castro’s grandmother stated that Landaeta was “a diagnosed schizophrenic on meds” and “would use that as an excuse for his behavior.”
Unfortunately, this murder is not the only crime states have seen as a result of mass illegal immigration. Just last month, two Mexicans who entered the United States illegally were charged with the murder of a North Carolina sheriff’s deputy.
Another illegal immigrant was just sentenced 29 years in a U.S. prison for “violent” and “sadistic” home invasions in Texas. Not only are legal U.S. residents shelling out massive amounts of taxpayer dollars to provide for lawbreaking migrants, their cities see crimes committed by this population rising as well.
According to reports, the Biden administration has allowed several hundred suspected terrorists inside the United States as part of its poorly vetted Afghanistan refugee pool.
Sophia is an intern at The Federalist and a student at Le Moyne College. She majors in English and intends to pursue a career in journalism.
Democrats and their fangirls in the national media pretend they have this thoughtful, nuanced view about where the country is right now, but it really boils down to: None of America’s institutions or political processes are lawful nor legitimate unless we’re the ones controlling them.
Elections, Supreme Court decisions, legislation signed into law, “norms,” etc. All of it holds meaning so dear to their hearts.*
*Except when Republicans are in power, in which case it’s all fraudulent.
That dynamic was reinforced in virtually everything Vice President Kamala Harris said during an interview that aired Sunday with NBC’s Chuck Todd. She said the Senate filibuster rule should be discarded for Democrat priorities, but believed it should be maintained for everything else. Roll the tape…
Todd: “Are you comfortable that this could end the legislative filibuster for good, probably, even if you only try to do it for two issues?”
Harris: “No, I’m not. No I’m not.”
She said the country needs a president who will “speak up and raise the alarm” about those “who right now are vividly not defending our democracy.” Then she excused Democrats who actively supported and elevated Republican primary congressional candidates who voiced skepticism about the 2020 election.
Back to the tape…
Todd: “When you see the Democratic Party and some parts of the party funding ads to promote some of these election deniers in primaries… Is this something you’d be comfortable with?”
Harris: “I’m not going to tell people how to run their campaigns, Chuck.”
She professed to be deeply dedicated to ensuring the world witnesses America’s dedication to “the importance of democratic principles, rule of law, human rights.” Then she undermined our highest court, accusing the justices of being politically motivated.
To the tape…
Todd: “How much confidence do you have in the Supreme Court?”
Harris: “I think this is an activist court.”
There is no logical end to Harris and every other Democrat leader’s thought process other than: When we run things, it’s right, just, and everyone must accept. When it’s not us, everything is improper, invalid, and unlawful.
To be a Democrat is not to be pro-democracy. It’s to pursue a one-party state.
On Sunday liberal media host Chuck Todd asked Kamala Harris if the threat from Trump and conservatives was as great as the threat from Al-Qaeda when they murdered 2, 000 plus Americans.
Chuck Todd:We are now at the 21st marking of the September 11th attacks. This was a foreign terrorist attacking our democracy, attacking this country. We are now as a nation fighting a threat from within. Is the threat equal or greater than what we faced after 9-11?
Kamala Harris:That’s an interesting question… There’s an oath that we always take, which is to defend and uphold our Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic. We don’t compare the two in the oath but we know they both can exist.
They both believe this pure lunacy.
They don’t just say that Jan 6 selfie-takers were as threatening to ‘our democracy’ as Al Qaeda 9/11 hijackers-
There were 2,977 murdered by Islamists on September 11, 2001 attacks. There were 4 Trump supporters killed on January 6, 2021. The demonic left believes this is comparable!
As The Gateway Pundit reported earlier — This is not the first time Kamala compared the 9-11 attacks to January 6.
Jim Hoft is the founder and editor of The Gateway Pundit, one of the top conservative news outlets in America. Jim was awarded the Reed Irvine Accuracy in Media Award in 2013 and is the proud recipient of the Breitbart Award for Excellence in Online Journalism from the Americans for Prosperity Foundation in May 2016.
On Monday, the U.S attorney’s office for the Middle District of Florida announced the arrest of 40-year-old Miguel Diaz Gonzalez. He has been charged with production of child pornography. Gonzalez, who is alleged to have operated online under the username “Satan’s child,” was reportedly in possession of a video wherein he is depicted raping an 8-year-old who had previously been in his care.
Gonzalez first became a person of interest when the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children was tipped off to potential illegality involving an online storage account tied to the username “Satan’s child.” Investigators examined the account and the contents associated with it, finding child sexual abuse material.
Authorities traced the account to Gonzalez’s Orlando home. Having executed a search warrant of the property, law enforcement agents determined Gonzalez was the user of the account in question. With the link established, they executed another warrant to search the account.
According to the Justice Department, officials found a video documenting Gonzalez’s rape of a child.
Gonzalez was arrested by the FBI on September 8. His booking report indicated that he had several tattoos depicting skulls and demons as well as one that read “F— the world.”
If convicted, Gonzalez faces a maximum sentence of 30 years.
The FBI, Orlando Police Department, Seminole County sheriff’s office, and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement were involved in the investigation.
This case is brought as part of Project Safe Childhood (PSC), a nationwide initiative to combat the technology-facilitated epidemic of child sexual exploitation. PSC was launched in May 2006 by the DOJ and works through a network of federal, state, local, and tribal law enforcement agencies to protect children and throw offenders behind bars.
According to the DOJ, technological advances have “encouraged child sexual exploitation offenders, especially those operating online, to an unprecedented degree.” The department noted that virtually every new technology made available to law-abiding citizens can be weaponized by degenerates against the innocent.
Encryption, IP-masking technologies, highly protected online communities, video-streaming services, and mobile devices, in the wrong hands, can help offenders elude law enforcement and continue victimizing children.
Assistant United States attorney Cortney Randall, who has been with the PSC for nearly 15 years, noted that victims can be targeted in a variety of ways. Whereas Gonzalez’s alleged victim was someone he knew personally, some offenders reach out to children via messaging apps and online games.
Randall told Fox46, “When you do come across something online or someone does try and contact your child please report it to law enforcement. … Even if your child is not a victim, that person is just going to go out and find a new victim.”
Even if offenders responsible for victimizing children are imprisoned, their criminal content may remain in circulation online for the consumption of other offenders. For this reason, the PSC has highlighted the importance of hunting down those who produce, distribute, and possess child pornography.
Inflation was at 8.3% in August, significantly exceeding economists’ predictions with core prices jumping even higher, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Consumer Price Index (CPI).
Core prices, which measures all prices less food and energy, remained elevated at 6.3%, slightly higher than July’s 5.9%, according to the BLS. With core prices remaining strongly elevated, it is unlikely that the Federal Reserve will slow its rate of interest increases designed to combat inflation, and will once again hike rates by 0.75% next week, according to The Wall Street Journal. (RELATED: Fed Unveils Bleak Forecast In Another Troubling Sign For The Economy)
Economists had predicted inflation to decrease from 8.5% to around 8.1%.
“The Federal Reserve will require at least three months of reassuring inflation data—along with evidence of a cooling labor market—before considering softening its tone,” said Mark Haefele, chief investment officer at UBS Global Wealth Management, according to the WSJ. This estimate is in line with the Federal Reserve’s estimate that the fight against inflation will likely take until the end of the year, according to a report.
The energy index continued to fall 5% from July, but energy costs have still increased 23.8% year-on-year, according to the BLS. Gasoline in particular remains high at 25.6%, down from 44.9% in July, with fuel oil remaining up 68.6% even after falling 5.9% in August.
Food prices posted the largest 12 month increase in 43 years, with a 11.4% year-on-year increase in national food prices, up from July’s 10.9%, according to the BLS. Prices for shelter also remain elevated, increasing 6.2% year-on-year, compared to 5.7% in July.
Under President Biden’s economic plan, we’re: – Bringing home jobs that went overseas – Making things here in America – Making our supply chains more secure – Winning the race for the future
The Biden administration has been taking a victory lap on economic conditions, with Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen claiming that the U.S. had undergone an exceptionally rapid recovery “by any traditional metric,” in remarks at a Ford electric vehicle facility Sept. 8. She went on to say that “Household balance sheets are strong.”
The Federal Reserve, which operates independently of the Biden administration, has been less optimistic, and described the economy as “generally weak” in a report just one day prior to Yellen’s speech. Roughly half of the regional banks that comprise the Federal Reserve system reported that their regional economies were either stagnant or declining, with the remainder reporting either slight or modest growth.
“Last month President Biden made a huge production over a 0.0% month-to-month change in the CPI from June to July,” said Peter C. Earle, economist at the American Institute for Economic Research in a statement to the Daily Caller News Foundation. “There isn’t anything to celebrate in today’s July-to-August CPI numbers, so the likely spin will be to return to touting the so-called Inflation Reduction Act.”
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Donald Trump.
While you wouldn’t know it by following America’s legacy media, citizens across the globe are expressing widespread dissatisfaction with their respective government’s failed leadership. Whether it’s at the ballot box or in the streets, tens of thousands of people are openly rejecting the globalist ethos permeating governments worldwide that has resulted in higher costs of living, skyrocketing energy prices, and increasing difficulty among citizens addressing their families’ basic needs.
Spanning from Europe to South America, the backlash has been broad in both message and scope.
Indonesia
Thousands of Indonesians turned out en masse in some of the country’s biggest cities on Tuesday to demand that their “government reverse its first subsidised fuel price increase in eight years amid soaring inflation.”
According to Reuters, “[u]nder pressure to control a ballooning energy subsidy budget, President Joko Widodo on Saturday said he had little choice but to cut the subsidy and let fuel prices rise by about 30 percent,” with oil costs “32% higher than a year ago.”
“Protests took place in and around the capital, Jakarta, and in the cities of Surabaya, Makassar, Kendari, Aceh, and Yogyakarta, among a series of demonstrations led by students and labour groups that police say could draw big crowds this week,” the Reuters report reads. “Thousands of police were deployed across Jakarta, many guarding petrol stations, fearing they could become targets of mounting anger over a price increase that unions say will hurt workers and the urban poor the most.”
As noted by Bloomberg News, Indonesia “has one of the highest poverty rates in the world at 9.5%,” with the cost of necessary items like food set to become more expensive amid the country’s inflation increase.
“Workers are really, really suffering right now,” said Abdul Aris, a union official.
Italy
In Naples, Italians gathered in the streets outside the city’s town hall this past weekend to voice their displeasure with the nation’s rising energy costs. Protestors at the demonstration were filmed burning their energy bills in metallic bins while purportedly chanting phrases such as “We don’t pay the bills!” and “Now it will be chaos!”
“We don’t want [soaring bills] anymore!” protestors also shouted.
According to The London Economic, “Residents in the country will be asked to turn down the heating starting from October to help curb energy use, with limits on the use of central heating in public buildings also being brought in.”
Given that Italy is “heavily reliant on Russia for gas imports,” the European sanctions put on Moscow and Rome’s acceleration towards “green energy” are expected to leave Italians facing a rough winter ahead.
People in Naples burn their energy bills and besiege the town hall: "We don't pay the bills! Now it will be chaos!" In Naples they don't joke. pic.twitter.com/X2ZN82AfAT
Voters in Chile over the past weekend overwhelmingly rejected a newly proposed, left-wing constitution that would have provided the government with vastly more power and control over the country’s citizenry.
According to The Blaze, the “170-page document containing 388 articles” would have “enshrine[d] 100 rights including the right to: a ‘nutritionally complete’ diet; ‘leisure’; ‘neurodiversity’; equality for ‘sexual and gender diversities and dissidences, both in the public and private spheres’; housing; sex parity in all public institutions; and to free education.”
With nearly two-thirds (61.9 percent) of Chileans opposing the measure, the vote represents a humiliating defeat for the country’s socialist president, Gabriel Boric, who supported the proposed constitution.
“I commit to put my all into building a new constitutional itinerary alongside congress and civil society,” Boric said.
Opponents of adopting the radical document celebrated voters’ decision, with Carlos Salinas, a spokesman for the Citizens’ House for Rejection, saying that “[t]oday we’re consolidating a great majority of Chileans who saw rejection as a path of hope.”
“We want to tell the government of President Gabriel Boric… that ‘today you must be the president of all Chileans and together we must move forward,” he said.
Czech Republic
In the Czech Republic, approximately 70,000 citizens showed up in the nation’s capital of Prague on Saturday to protest their government’s handling of the ongoing energy crisis and to express opposition to the European Union and NATO. Organized by a wide swath of ideologically diverse political groups, “including the Communist Party of the Czech Republic and the Eurosceptic Tricolor Citizens’ Movement,” demonstrators “held Czech flags, as well as placards against the EU and NATO, Prime Minister Petr Fiala, rising energy prices, and calls for neutrality and dialogue with Russia.”
Protestors also demanded “the resignation of the current coalition government of conservative Prime Minister Petr Fiala, whom they criticize for following pro-Western policies and allegedly paying more attention to war-torn Ukraine than to his citizens.”
“The purpose of our demonstration is to demand change, mainly in solving the issue of energy prices, especially electricity and gas, which will destroy our economy this fall,” event co-organizer Jiří Havel said.
The head of the Tricolor Party, Zuzana Majerová Zahradníková, echoed similar sentiments, saying that the “Czech Republic needs a Czech government” and that “[Prime Minister Petr] Fiala’s government may be Ukrainian, maybe Brussels, but not Czech.”
Event organizers are currently scheduling another protest for Sept. 28, according to The New Voice of Ukraine.
Other countries that have experienced protests against their governments in recent weeks include New Zealand and Germany, among others.
Shawn Fleetwood is a Staff Writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He also serves as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood
A judge has temporarily blocked California from enforcing a law that a Christian medical organization claims would force its members to participate in the process of assisted suicide despite its moral objections. U.S. District Judge Fernando Aenlle-Rocha granted a preliminary injunction last Friday halting enforcement of a provision of the state’s Health & Safety Code.
The 19,000-member Christian Medical & Dental Associations and Dr. Leslee Cochrane sued California over a bill that they say removed conscience protections for medical professionals morally opposed to any form of participation with assisted suicide. While Aenlle-Rocha disputed the plaintiffs’ religious discrimination claims, he believes “they are likely to succeed on their Free Speech claim.”
“The ultimate outcome of this requirement is that non-participating providers are compelled to participate in the Act through this documentation requirement, despite their objections to assisted suicide,” wrote Aenlle-Rocha, an appointee of former President Donald Trump.
The judge’s order blocks the state from enforcing the provision requiring a healthcare provider unwilling or unable to participate to “document the individual’s date of request and provider’s notice to the individual of their objection in the medical record.”
While the provision in question still allows doctors not to perform physician-assisted suicide, the policy requires doctors to document the date of the patient’s request for lethal drugs in the patient’s medical record and “transfer the records of that first oral request to a second physician upon the patient’s request.” Plaintiffs argued that the provision requires objecting healthcare professionals “to discuss, refer for, or otherwise participate in assisted suicide.”
The Alliance Defending Freedom, a nonprofit religious freedom advocacy organization representing the plaintiffs, celebrated the temporary block in a statement Tuesday.
“Our clients seek to live out their faith in their medical practice, and that includes valuing every human life entrusted to their care. Participating in physician-assisted suicide very clearly would violate their consciences,” said ADF Senior Counsel Kevin Theriot.
“We’re pleased the court followed the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in NIFLA v. Becerra that clarified First Amendment protections extend to religious medical professionals.”
In 2015, then-Gov. Jerry Brown signed the End of Life Option Act, which took effect in 2016 and made California the fifth state to allow residents to end their lives with doctor-prescribed drugs. Last October, California passed Senate Bill 380, which opponents said reduced the level of conscience protections for medical professionals opposed to physician-assisted suicide. In February, CMDA and Cochrane sued California on grounds the new law forces a physician with a patient who requests an assisted suicide to “document the request in that patient’s medical record, even if the physician objects to participating in assisted suicide in any way.”
“In sum, the original End of Life Options Act provided broad protection for conscientiously objecting physicians, but SB 380 eliminates or limits that protection,” read the suit.
“Plaintiffs desire not to participate in assisted suicide in any way, but they fear penalization under SB 380 and action against their medical licenses if they do not.”
A Daily Caller News Foundation reporter described how the FBI pressured Americans to sign away their gun rights during a Wednesday appearance on Real America’s Voice.
“The FBI opened various investigations into online threats made online, things like people … making controversial remarks on social media, potentially people tipping other people off, maybe saying things on things like planes, and the FBI received these tips, open investigations and after that, they use these investigations as an impetus to show up at people’s homes or in other redacted locations,” DCNF investigative reporter Gabe Kaminsky said on “The Water Cooler.” (RELATED: ‘A Certain Irony’: Rand Paul Rips FBI After Bombshell DCNF Report)
WATCH:
At least 15 people signed forms relinquishing their Second Amendment rights after the FBI presented them, Kaminsky reported. Gun Owners of America obtained the forms through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and provided them to the DCNF.
“Obviously, we spoke to a lot of legal experts and a lot of gun experts, including people at Gun Owners of America and lawyers who have worked lot with these groups and are very familiar with these groups, who were unsure of the legality of how this bodes for not only the Second Amendment, but other statutes of U.S. code,” Kaminsky said.
One of the statutes in question discusses handling those who are mentally incompetent.
“The glaring discrepancy here is that the Gun Control Act of 1968 rules that the only way people can be barred, or one way people can be barred from possessing guns is if they are ruled mentally defective or adjudicated as mentally defective or adjudicated as being in a mental facility, and so these people are not going through that legal process,” Kaminsky said.
The House of Representatives voted in 2017 to overturn an Obama-era regulation allowing the Social Security Administration to share information about those with mental illness with the FBI, which operates the National Instant Background Check System (NICS).
The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the DCNF.
I came across this video this morning. It’s from Preger U and a great explanation of the difference between a Democracy (which we Are not), and a Republic, which we are.
The Difference Between a Democracy and a Republic
If you ask Americans to name their country’s form of government, most of them will say they live in a democracy. However, the real answer is more complicated (and unexpected) than that. Robert George, Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton University, explains.
Joe Scarborough — host of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” — said Friday that “Jesus never once talked about abortion” in the New Testament, and he accused pro-life Christians of “heresy,” saying they’re “perverting the gospel of Jesus Christ down to one issue.”
“Morning Joe” ran a video of Republican South Carolina state Sen. Katrina Shealy, who calls herself “pro-life,” speaking against a near-total abortion ban in the state — which was defeated Thursday. In the clip, Shealy said those in favor of an abortion ban without exceptions for rape and incest are “miscommunicating with God — or maybe you’re just not communicating with him at all.”
Scarborough lauded Shealy’s speech and then accused pro-life Christians of “heresy” and suggested that Jesus doesn’t necessarily oppose abortion because the Bible doesn’t record him having said the word.
“As a Southern Baptist, I grew up reading the Bible — maybe a backslidden Baptist, but I still know the Bible. Jesus never once talked about abortion, never once! And it was happening back in ancient times, it was happening during, in his time!” Scarborough said angrily. “Never once mentioned it, and for people perverting the gospel of Jesus Christ down to one issue, it’s heresy.”
He then ripped pro-life Christians again, saying they’re “using” Jesus to force raped children to carry pregnancies to term, noting the recent case of the 10-year-old Ohio rape victim who traveled to Indiana to get an abortion since she couldn’t get one in her home state.
“If you don’t believe me, if that makes you angry, why don’t you do something you haven’t done in a long time?” Scarborough said sarcastically. “Open the Bible, open the New Testament, read the red letters. You won’t see it there. And yet there are people who are using Jesus as a shield to make 10-year-old raped girls go through a living and breathing hell here on Earth. They’ve also conveniently overlooked the parts of the New Testament where Jesus talks about taking care of the needy. Taking care of those who are helpless, who live a hopeless life. Because they believe, these state legislators believe, that life begins at fertilization and ends at childbirth.”
Reproductive Rights Has Galvanized Michigan Voters, Says House Member youtu.be
When it comes to history, and American history in particular, definitions matter. In 2006, before becoming the leader of the free world, former President Barack Obama famously said, “Whatever we once were, we are no longer a Christian nation — at least, not just. We are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, and a Hindu nation, and a nation of nonbelievers.”
It wouldn’t be the last time the 44th president would suggest America once held to an exclusivist Christian identity, but the claim begged a larger question: did it ever? By the end of Obama’s first term, most Evangelical leaders seemed to say “no.” A 2012 survey conducted by the National Association of Evangelicals found less than a third of American Evangelicals believed the U.S. is a “Christian nation,” though there was considerable debate over exactly what that looks like. A decade later, not much has changed.
In a wide-ranging interview, Dr. Richard Land, executive editor of The Christian Post, urged American Christians, regardless of their political persuasion, not to allow the Left to define how they see the United States.
According to Land, the Left-leaning American media invented the hot-button phrase “Christian nationalism” as a pejorative term that serves to undermine the fundamental relationship between Christians and this nation as defined in the U.S. Constitution.
“I’m not a Christian nationalist,” Land said. “I’ve read about some, but I don’t know any.”
“I think it is a tactic by the Left and their toadies in the media to suppress patriotic beliefs and to suppress the idea that America is a unique country,” added Land.
“They hate that, they don’t believe it themselves.”
The notion of Christian nationalism has a contentious history, one that some commentators say stretches back at least as far as the dawn of the New Deal, when Christian leaders rallied around the Cross of Christ in response to what they saw as government encroachment.
For others, the phrase conjures up images of Jerry Falwell Sr. and the Religious Right of the 1970s and early 1980s, or former President Donald Trump and his Make America Great Again movement — and, for some, its alleged corollary, the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, which The Washington Post headlined as a “kind of Christian revolt.”
Andrew Whitehead and Samuel Perry, authors of the book, Taking America Back for God: Christian Nationalism in the United States, defined the term as the belief that the “United States is and should be a Christian nation.”
Whitehead and Perry wrote: “Christian nationalism merely uses the Bible to impose its conservative political agenda. By asserting that they are true followers of Christ in a country that is founded on Christian principles, adherents of Christian nationalism can brand their political opponents as both ungodly and un-American.”
But Land, who also serves as president emeritus and adjunct professor of theology and ethics at Southern Evangelical Seminary, rejects the term.
“To be a patriotic American does not make you a Christian nationalist,” he said. “To believe God has played a unique role in our history, or that America is a unique nation, does not make us Christian nationalists.’
“Pejoratively, they want to tie Christian nationalism to racism and to prejudice, and I reject those labels.”
In celebration of the nation’s independence back in July, Robert Jeffress, senior pastor of First Baptist Dallas, told his congregation that while he doesn’t consider himself a “Christian nationalist,” he does believe the United States was founded as a “Christian nation.”
In his message, Jeffress said that anyone listening to “left-wing” organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union or the Freedom From Religion Foundation “will come to believe that America was founded by men with a wide diversity of religious beliefs.” That couldn’t be further from the truth, according to Jeffress, who added, “that version of American history belongs in the same category as the story of George Washington and the cherry tree: it is a complete myth.”
While Land conceded that Jeffress was making a “valid point,” he said he disagrees with him when it comes to the question of whether we were founded as a Christian nation. Instead, Land believes America is “an experiment combining Judeo-Christian values with Enlightenment ideas,” but warned that it “doesn’t work unless the majority of the people are aware of being subject to a higher authority.”
Land said, “Jeffress and I, because we’re both Baptists, believe in separation of both Church and State, and thus believe the freedoms guaranteed to us in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution belong to everyone, regardless of their faith.”
He further noted that the Declaration of Independence makes reference to God numerous times, perhaps most famously in its conclusion in which the Founders wrote: “For the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the Protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”
Still, Land said, that’s a far cry from declaring America to be a Christian nation.
“I don’t believe we were founded as a Christian nation,” he said. “I believe we were founded by people who were Christians or were operating out of a Christian worldview.
“In the Declaration of Independence, they do not declare their independence from God, they’re just declaring their independence from Great Britain.”
Twelve of the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence, for instance, were Presbyterian — including the sole clergyman signer, John Witherspoon — for which reason many Presbyterians today claim loyalists to King George III saw the American Revolution as a largely “Presbyterian Rebellion.”
Witherspoon himself went on to help formalize the Articles of Confederation and the U.S. Constitution, paving the way for the birth of the U.S. federal government.
The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution “prohibits the government from making any law respecting an establishment of religion” and “government actions that unduly favor one religion over another.” It also prohibits the government from “unduly preferring religion over non-religion, or non-religion over religion.”
More than two centuries after an 1802 letter from President Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptist Association in Connecticut in which Jefferson famously described the First Amendment as “a wall of separation between Church and State,” Land and others contend that all the limitations in the First Amendment are on the State, not the people.
The amendment was intended, Land added, to protect “the church” from “the state.”
Two days after he sent the letter, Jefferson attended a church service conducted in the House of Representatives.
Five years before the first Congress convened, the Capitol building was used as a church, according to the Library of Congress. The first services were held in the fall of 1800 in the north wing of the House. Within a year of his inauguration, Jefferson himself began attending church services at the Capitol, before he later famously created his own version of Scripture to omit fundamental tenets of the faith, including the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
In what might be the judiciary’s most overt reference to America as a Christian nation, U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Brewer, writing the majority decision in the 1892 case Church of the Holy Trinity v. United States, noted the observance of the Sabbath and other traditions as a “clear recognition” of faith in civic life.
“These, and many other matters which might be noticed, add a volume of unofficial declarations to the mass of organic utterances that this is a Christian nation,” wrote Brewer.
It’s that extensive confluence of Christian faith and American history that, according to Land, raises the question of defining exactly what is meant by phrases such as Christian nationalist.
“When people who are liberal try to label a Christian nationalist as anybody who believes America has anything to do with God or that God has anything to do with America, they’re denying most of American history,” he said.
Many of the Founding Fathers, added Land, “believed that God, for some reason, had a special interest in the United States of America.”
John Adams, the country’s second president, who, according to Land, “had more to do with the Constitution than anybody except James Madison,” said in 1798: “We have a government designed only for a moral and religious people. It is insufficient for any other.”
“What he meant by that was, if you’re going to have limited government … you’ve got to have a majority of the population who are voluntarily obeying the law when nobody else is around because they are aware that they are accountable to a higher authority,” Land said.
He pointed to Puritan founder John Winthrop, who spoke about America as “a city upon a hill,” a phrase echoed over 300 years later by President Ronald Reagan.
“Was [Winthrop] a Christian nationalist?” Land asked.
Abraham Lincoln once called America the “last best hope of Earth,” one that “the world will forever applaud, and God must forever bless.”
“Was he a Christian nationalist?” again asked Land.
As the U.S. lurched toward World War I, Woodrow Wilson, the son of a Presbyterian minister, spoke about fighting “the war to end all wars.”
“Was he a Christian nationalist?” Land asked rhetorically.
Pointing to John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address, Land said while the speech became well-known for a number of reasons, many overlook what Kennedy said was the driving force behind our nation: “For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life. And yet the same revolutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought are still at issue around the globe — the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state, but from the hand of God.”
“That’s pretty clear,” said Land.
In fact, with a handful of exceptions, nearly every president in American history has been identified with Protestant Christianity. Yet with the exception of Trump, none of them have been historically accused of appealing to Christian nationalist ideology.
2016 presidential election
When it comes to global use, the term Christian nationalism was relatively — though not completely — nonexistent for the first two decades of this millennium, seeing only slight bumps during the George W. Bush administration. Part of that, according to Google, is due to a lack of search engine data.
Around the time of Trump’s election in November 2016, the term “white nationalism” — a much more pejorative precursor to the more narrow Christian nationalism — saw a sharp rise in searches, fueled in part by allegations of Trump’s support from white nationalist figures like David Duke and William Johnson.
The first significant spike in searches for Christian nationalism came in August 2019 following a pair of mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio. But it wasn’t until the U.S. Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021, that both search terms were seemingly conflated and the contemporary notion of Christian nationalism seeped into the national consciousness.
Outlets like HuffPost ran articles suggesting the events of Jan. 6 — which it described as “an episode that was permeated with the symbols of Christian nationalism” — were directly tied to the government allowing and even funding conservative Christian education in the United States.
Even more left-leaning media sites such as Vice reported hearing from Christians around the country who “said they’ve witnessed their congregations lose focus and slide into Christian nationalism” even as churches grow “older and whiter than before.”
During a 2021 webinar hosted by Christians Against Christian Nationalism, a coalition of faith leaders and organizations, the progressive Rev. Michael Curry, presiding bishop of The Episcopal Church, said while he believes that there are “innocent forms of Christian nationalism,” he warned of a “more virulent or dangerous kind” that involves people viewing their country as “God’s favorite.”
“That borders on blasphemy, idolatry,” argued Curry. “That kind of nationalism is dangerous. It is dangerous to civic health; it is dangerous to the health of a Christian.”
Progressive Christian activist and author Shane Claiborne, who is listed as one of the endorsers of Christians Against Christian Nationalism, called on churches to remove the U.S. flag from their altars or consider adding the banners of other nations following the Jan. 6 violence.
“To be part of the Body of Christ is to transcend nationality,” the Red Letter Christians co-founder and leading figure in the New Monasticism movement argued. “That’s part of what it means to be ‘born again.’”
But Land said while he’s personally faced criticism for churches he’s attended where both the American and Christian flags were displayed, there’s never been any doubt about which one comes first.
“Every church I’ve been in, we understand the pecking order: the ultimate flag is the Christian flag,” he said.
Land recalled memories of being a young boy in Houston, Texas, and being led to recite a Pledge of Allegiance to the U.S. flag, the Christian flag and the Bible. So, why then do we have the American flag in church when there are so many people who come from other countries to our churches?
“The reason is, the American flag has never tried to persecute Christians,” Land said. “Almost all of the other countries in the world at some point in time, they have persecuted some kind of Christians.’
“But in America, the American flag has been the symbol of the First Amendment, which is about religious freedom. And it’s the First Amendment for a reason. All the other freedoms protect the ‘first’ freedom, which is the right to worship God as we please or not to worship Him at all.’
“So I have no problem with the American flag being in churches. The American flag is a symbol of soul freedom.”
The corporate press
Since the events of Jan. 6, some of America’s best-known media outlets have published a number of stories referring to Christian nationalism in relatively stark headlines, including:
“Christian nationalism is surging. It wasn’t inevitable” – The Washington Post
“Christian nationalism is a threat, and not just from Capitol attackers invoking Jesus” – USA Today
‘Lynchburg Revival’ Activists Warn Of Rising ‘Christian Nationalism’ – NPR
“White Christian Nationalism is the Most Dangerous Weapon in America” – Newsweek
“Trump’s army of God: Doug Mastriano and the Christian nationalist attack on democracy” – Salon
While by no means a comprehensive list, even such a relatively small sample of headlines underscore what Land described as a “Southern Poverty Law Center kind of attitude” among the American media establishment toward patriotic Christians.
Land said the use of Christian nationalist and nationalism is merely another attempt by the political Left to “label Christians with what they see as a negative label … the same way they tried to make cisgender a negative label.”
“Basically, if you believe in any sense that America has a unique role to play in the world, and that God in His providence has had something to do with the United States, then you’re a Christian nationalist.’
“Then they start saying, ‘This is just for white people.’’”
For Land, such a view, both secular and otherwise, is incompatible with American history.
He recalled one episode where our first President George Washington wrote a letter to a Jewish congregation in Rhode Island, welcoming them not as guests, but as fellow Americans.
“May the Children of the Stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other Inhabitants,” Washington wrote.
Land said that sentiment is intrinsic to the fabric of our country.
“We believe in religious freedom,” Land said. “You’re free to have your mosque, you’re free to have your Shinto temple, you’re free to have your synagogue.”
He pointed to a 2015 poll that found 62% of American adults believe in the notion of American exceptionalism, that God has granted America a “special role” on the world stage.
“We are not [a] chosen nation, but America is exceptional, and God has blessed us in unique ways,” he said. “We are the recipients of divine providence, divine blessing, and blessing, by definition, is undeserved. Otherwise, it would be called a reward.’
“No nation has been blessed by God more than the United States of America, and that incurs certain obligations.”
For Land, understanding Christian nationalism or any other intended pejorative involving patriotism and faith should be viewed not through the lens of social media tribalism, but in its historical context.
“On the whole, and it is on the whole that such questions must be answered, American influence in the world has been a positive influence and not a negative influence. Wherever America’s gone, there’s been more freedom, been more respect for minorities, more respect for women.’
“That’s why so many people want to come here.”
In fact, Land said, it’s the continued desire of people from all over the world trying to make their way to the U.S. that speaks to America’s decidedly remarkable place in history.
“I don’t think it’s Christian nationalism to say America is a unique country,” he said. “Every other country in the world is founded on blood and soil. People of certain ethnicities, people of a certain geographic location. Not the United States.’
“The United States is based upon an idea: anybody can become an American.”
Facing opposition from ideological movements like critical race theory (CRT) — which, according to Land, seeks to “deconstruct American history and make America out to be an awful place” — Land said now more than ever, it’s important for Christians to push back against blanket descriptors like “Christian nationalism.”
“They should reject the term and replace it with things like ‘patriotic American’ or ‘someone who understands how unique the Declaration of Independence is,’” he said.
“It’s not racist. Anybody can become an American, and we’ve demonstrated that by our history.”
A devout Christian, father, and African-American, Michael Anderson didn’t feel represented by either party and until Jan. 31 of this year, remained politically unaffiliated. But a series of events has led him to align with and campaign alongside conservatives in one of North Carolina’s most liberal counties.
Anderson is an attorney for a Big Tech company in Charlotte. Headquartered just a few miles across the border in South Carolina, his company claims the fifth largest internet footprint in the United States. Higher-ups have a stated goal of widespread “influence.” They are making good on that goal.
On Nov 18, 2021, the CEO stood before an all-employee meeting at the Charlotte location and declared for the “greater good of humanity” it was no longer enough to segregate the workers who had not received a Covid-19 vaccine. They had to be removed entirely. The entire company had been working remotely for nearly two years at that point, Anderson said. The announcement came just before the holidays.
“Hundreds of people found out that day they would be fired unless they submitted to the mandate without an approved medical or religious exemption,” Anderson said.
Anderson reached out to co-workers via an internal Slack channel sharing his concerns and received a flood of responses expressing stress and fear.
“I’ve worked in some difficult places with some difficult people and that was the most difficult week of my career,” Anderson said. “I grew up in a single-parent family below the poverty level. Single mothers [were contacting me]. Pregnant women were contacting me to see whether they could receive a medical exemption. There were so many inequities and unjust consequences to this poorly thought out, draconian mandate.”
About 60 employees linked up. “All these people [losing their jobs] are super high-performing, hardworking people, some who have been in the company for 15-16 years,” Anderson said. “I asked the CEO to change the policy, the director of diversity, the General Counsel; I couldn’t change their minds.”
Anderson began using his legal expertise to assist exemption-seekers. Alongside like-minded freedom fighters, he developed a coalition, ByManyOrByFew, to inform, educate and connect voters.
“I thought we ought to do something to fight against these policies and funnel people toward politicians who were freedom-minded,” he said.
But Anderson didn’t stop there. Within weeks of the company announcement, he decided to run for a North Carolina House seat in Mecklenburg, one of the most Democratic counties in the state. Choosing a party affiliation by now was a no-brainer.
In preparation to testify before the South Carolina House and Ways subcommittee on December 7, 2021, for a workplace vaccination bill that could eventually impact the North Carolina arm of the company he works for, Anderson reached out to both political parties. Not one Democrat would respond, but many Republicans fighting for individual rights did. “Forty-four Caucasians were fighting to protect my rights,” he said.
Vaccines historically have a disparate impact on minorities. Anderson references the Tuskegee Experiment, as one horrific example. He saw history repeating itself with the Covid-19 vaccine, led by a Democratic president.
“When you had these vaccine mandates come out, I placed the blame at the feet of President Biden,” Anderson said. “Although his mandates were ultimately unsuccessful, a lot of companies were encouraged and enabled to have their own vaccine mandates and a private company has a lot more flexibility compared to the government. As a result, by their terms, that caused systemic, institutional racism because it has a disparate impact on minorities.”
That is who Anderson specifically wants to champion; and who Democrats continuously fail to support or outright harm with disastrous policies. Even with the CDC’s recently updated vaccine guidelines, Democratic leaders like Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser are pursuing policies that hurt miniorities disproportionately, like a vaccine mandate that would bar 40 percent of D.C. black teenagers from in-person learning.
“My district is 60 percent African American, 20 percent Latino,” Anderson said. “The reason why I like that and that’s where I want to be is not only because I am African American, there’s no demographic flipping faster from Democrat to Republican than Latino. And if you look at the vaccine mandates, there is no race that was hurt worse than African Americans.”
Minority voters have been impacted by other far-left policies, and are expressing their discontent at the polls. A recent interview by NPR with political scientist Ruy Teixeira revealed how Democrats are driving minority voters to flip partisanship, especially in the Latino population.
“…[T]he ultra-progressive wing of the Democratic Party privileging criminal justice reform over public safety,” has become a major concern of minority voters, Teixeira said. “People want to be safe from crime, and that includes a lot of nonwhite voters. It is not a matter for them of choosing between the two, but rather above all, you’ve got to keep our community safe.”
Anderson’s opponent for NC House District 99, Democratic Rep. Nasif Majeed, supported the “ultra-progressive” defunding of the Charlotte police in his previous campaign. Charlotte now has only 1,600 police officers for a city of 1 million people. Three hundred defections or retirements are expected in the near term and salaries start as low as $40,000. A lack of manpower has resulted in unanswered 911 calls and crimes below a felony going entirely unaddressed. “Social justice warriors” are crippling police response, according to local law enforcement.
Democrats’ leftist ideologies ruin cities and Anderson wants to get his town back on track, but he knows reform isn’t possible alongside current Democrats in North Carolina’s House, who hold a majority in the legislature.
A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania Law School, Anderson grew up below the poverty level in a biracial, single-parent home. Progressive policies pressed during the pandemic are driving inequity that entrap and eliminate those the far-left claim to champion, he said. He feels there is no place for him in the Democratic Party right now.
Through door-to-door campaigning, he’s found that many registered Democrats in Charlotte agree.
“I ask people what issues they need represented and how the system is failing them,” Anderson said. “You have to have conversations with people to know.”
Empowered by a Democrat president, Democrat House, and a coalition of Democrat governors, Covid-19 tyranny has driven a new type of minority leader like Anderson to represent an increasingly diverse Republican party — one that engages in the political battle and fights for the now tenuous freedoms once taken for granted.
Ashley Bateman is a policy writer for The Heartland Institute and blogger for Ascension Press. Her work has been featured in The Washington Times, The Daily Caller, The New York Post, The American Thinker and numerous other publications. She previously worked as an adjunct scholar for The Lexington Institute and as editor, writer and photographer for The Warner Weekly, a publication for the American military community in Bamberg, Germany. Ashley is a board member at a Catholic homeschool cooperative in Virginia. She homeschools her four incredible children along with her brilliant engineer/scientist husband who lives in Virginia.
California’s historic heat wave pushed temperatures to all-time record highs across the state Tuesday, including in San Jose (109 degrees) and Sacramento (116 degrees), according to the Weather Channel.
A temperature readout at an El Dorado Savings Bank in Sacramento, California, on Tuesday, Sept. 6, 2022.Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images
The mercury wasn’t nearly as high in Los Angeles on Tuesday (93 degrees) after topping out at 101 degrees Sunday. But according to Marc Brown — anchor for WABC-TV news in Los Angeles — the power still went out at the station Tuesday night:
The loss of power likely didn’t come as a big surprise. Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom asked state residents to curtail electricity usage Tuesday to ease the strain on power grids:
This heat wave is set to be the hottest & longest on record in CA for September.⁰ We are now heading into the worst part of it – the risk of outages is real. Your efforts have paid off so far, but we need everyone to double down to save energy after 4pm. https://t.co/XKRYd9EPQIpic.twitter.com/HtVh5DAjQD
— Office of the Governor of California (@CAgovernor) September 6, 2022
Newsom’s video appeal was met with a fair amount of mockery, particularly from commenters who didn’t believe the governor was suffering much under the heat compared to others. In the same way, Brown’s tweet about the power going out at KABC-TV attracted some sarcasm — but the comment that got the most attention came from the Oil & Gas Workers Association:
Get somebody to bring you 5 gallons of wind turbine.
“That had to be the best reply,” another commenter said. “The media is just as complicit in this disaster perpetuated by the alleged administration[s] in Washington and Sacramento. I wonder if ABC’s backup generators are run on windmills and solar panels?”
“Basic incompetence,” another user wrote. “California has all the resources it needs, they just have to execute smarter. Have [U.S. Rep.] Eric Swalwell [D-Calif.] head over [to] the wind turbine farm, lay down one of his notorious potent vigorous farts, and get those turbines spinning. Problem solved, you’re welcome.”
“This may be my favorite tweet in the history of Twitter,” another commenter announced.
“This is my favorite response. Ever,” another user said.
“I think I just fell a little in love with you!!!” another commenter confessed.
The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall.com, and WhatDidYouSay.org.
Source: AP Photo/Susan Walsh
The country is experiencing an historic surge in violent crime, and the link between Democratic policies and the crime wave is more firmly established than the law of gravity.
Republicans — are you guys awake?
This week, the Democrats and their auxiliary staff in the media gave less attention to the grisly kidnapping and murder of Eliza Fletcher than they did to two black girls allegedly snubbed by a performer in a Muppet costume a couple of months ago.
Fletcher, a 34-year-old hardware heiress, kindergarten teacher and married mother of two, was out for an early morning run near the University of Memphis campus on Friday when a 38-year-old career criminal, Cleotha Abston, leapt out of his SUV and dragged her, kicking and screaming, into the passenger side of his vehicle.
Based on copious evidence, including video and DNA, police arrested Abston almost immediately. His career highlights include a lengthy juvenile record: theft, aggravated assault, aggravated assault with a weapon and rape — as well as the violent kidnapping of a prominent attorney, whom he drove around in the trunk of his car for hours, looking for ATMs.
But Abston refused to tell police what he had done with Fletcher.
On Tuesday, police announced they’d found her body. Big story, right? MSNBC cut away from the press conference on this abduction-murder about four minutes in. The New York Times put the story on page A-20.
The old media motto “If it bleeds, it leads” has been replaced with “No stories that would make black people — or more to the point, white liberals — feel uncomfortable.” Fletcher, you see, was white, and Abston — well, as the black police officer said to my friend reporting a violent assault, “Black, right?”
Given that Memphis has recently elected a Soros-style Democratic district attorney, the kidnapper will probably be back on the street before the hapless Muppet impersonator is employable again.
But aren’t you glad Democrats have a zillion “crime” proposals that will take guns away from the law-abiding? Just think of what might have happened if we introduced guns into this situation! Under Biden’s “Safer America Plan,” attempted kidnappings will be fought mano a mano: a delicate 130-pound woman vs. a 6-foot, 175-pound man.
Yeah, you can definitely trust Democrats on crime, America.
Democrats enthusiastically supported the 2020 BLM riots that did more than a billion dollars’ worth of damage just in the first two weeks and left at least 25 people dead.
In the midst of this Democrat-encouraged destruction, candidate Biden, ol’ lunch-bucket Joe — the police have never had a truer friend! — took a knee at a BLM protest. You couldn’t get him out of his basement to campaign, but BLM was too important!
His running mate, Kamala Harris — as well as loads of his campaign staff — openly bragged about contributing money to bail out antifa and BLM rioters. Democrats — and only Democrats — supported “Defund the Police!” and actually did manage to defund the police in cities around the country.
As president, nearly a year after George Floyd’s death — giving Biden plenty of time for sober reflection — he issued an official White House statement bemoaning the fact that black people have to fear “interactions with law enforcement,” and blaming the “systemic racism” of the police for “the exhaustion that Black and brown Americans experience every single day.”
They “wake up,” Biden said, “knowing that they can lose their very life … after a grocery store run or just walking down the street or driving their car or playing in the park or just sleeping at home.” (Or after robbing a store, ingesting a massive quantity of fentanyl, then resisting arrest; threatening police with a knife; or standing next to a guy who’s shooting at the police from your hallway.)
Days before the 2020 election, Philadelphia police officers shot a career criminal, Walter Wallace Jr., as he was coming at them with a knife. Bodycam video shows the officers backing up while yelling at Wallace to drop the knife. But he wouldn’t do it. When the cops finally had a clear shot that wouldn’t endanger civilians, they fired. Wallace died. (Don’t believe Wikipedia; watch the video.)
In just the first five days of the ensuing riots, 57 Philadelphia police officers were injured, some seriously, and 19 law enforcement vehicles damaged. (In addition to fighting injustice, the protesters were doing some much-needed shopping: More than 10 miles from the protest site, stores such as Walmart, Lowe’s and Five Below were looted.)
As rocks and bricks rained down on Philly police, candidate Biden tweeted about the beloved Walter Wallace Jr. (prior convictions: robbery, assault, possessing an instrument of crime after kicking down a woman’s door and putting a gun to her head, and another assault charge for punching a police officer in the face):
“Our hearts are broken for the family of Walter Wallace Jr., and for all those suffering the emotional weight of learning about another Black life in America lost. Walter’s life mattered.”
We’re still waiting for Biden’s tweet on Eliza Fletcher’s life. He’s probably too busy, ensuring that you won’t be able to get a gun in a country where criminals run amok because we can’t put another “black body” in prison.
What started out as an innocent remark on Instagram has left Brittany Aldean, the wife of country music singer Jason Aldean, as the target of an unhinged wave of attacks from America’s demented “Trans the Kids” crowd.
In a late-August video reel showing herself transforming “from a relatively makeup-free face into fully ready glam,” Aldean captioned the post by saying she’d “really like to thank [her] parents for not changing [her] gender when [she] went through [her] tomboy phase” and that she “love[s] this girly life.”
While only an anodyne caption, the comment evoked the ire of self-proclaimed country artist Cassadee Pope, who took to Twitter to lash out at Aldean for comparing her “‘tomboy phase’ to someone wanting to transition.”
“You’d think celebs with beauty brands would see the positives in including LGBTQ+ people in their messaging,” Pope said.
Fellow country singer Maren Morris also decided to throw her irrelevant opinion into the mix, saying, “It’s so easy to, like, not be a scumbag human” and calling Aldean “Insurrection Barbie,” in an apparent reference to the Aldeans’ previously expressed support for former President Donald Trump.
Rather than back down and cower in the face of the latest left-wing, angry mob, Aldean is doubling down and openly criticizing the demonic practice of forcibly mutilating children seemingly being championed by Pope and Morris.
“Advocating for the genital mutilation of children under the disguise of love and calling it ‘gender affirming care,’ is one of the worst evils. I will always support my children and do what I can do [to] protect their innocence,” Aldean said on Instagram. “Some parents want to be accepted by society so badly that they’re willing to make life-altering decisions for their children who aren’t old enough to fully comprehend the consequences of those actions. Love is protecting your child until they are mature enough as an adult to make their own life decisions.”
“Karen Morris, thanks for calling me Barbie,” Aldean added in response to Morris’s tweet.
Since the social media spat, Aldean has continued in professing her advocacy for children being exploited by deranged, pro-trans leftists, with the beauty-line entrepreneur recently reaffirming her views during an interview on “Tucker Carlson Tonight.”
“I think that children should not be allowed to make these life-changing decisions at such a young age,” she said. “They are not mature enough; they should have parents who love them and advocate for them regardless. We have ages on everything. We have it for cigarettes, driving, military, voting. … Yet for some reason people think that we can let a child choose their gender so young? It’s very baffling to me.”
She continued, saying that “[t]here are so many consequences of doing that a[t] such a young age” and that “[s]ociety should be able to sit back, speak our minds about it and fight for these children.”
Aldean has since released a Barbie-inspired T-shirt with the phrase “Don’t tread on our kids,” with profits from the apparel line benefiting Operation Light Shine, a charity dedicated to helping “fight child exploitation and human trafficking.”
Aldean Is Right
Despite the hyperbolic virtue signaling from elitists like Pope and Morris, Aldean’s remarks about the realities of “transitioning” minors are 100 percent correct. Medically mutilating children’s genitals and pumping them full of wrong-sex hormones in the name of “care” is not compassionate; it’s satanic.
Just as is the case with any other weighty subject matter, most children have no clue what sex is, let alone transgenderism. The idea that minors are well-rounded and knowledgeable enough to understand the long-term implications associated with removing one’s penis or breasts is a hair-brained narrative that only the most hardcore leftists in society could convince themselves is true.
As noted by Federalist Contributor Samantha Stephenson, even among youth with gender dysphoria, “studies indicate that in all likelihood, symptoms will resolve in 93 percent of these children by the time they reach adulthood or even earlier — an outcome that is taken off the table for children subjected to experimental hormones with largely unknown effects, whose bodies are mutilated and fertility stolen.”
Ultimately, parents signing off on mutilating their child’s genitals are not doing what’s best for their son or daughter, but for themselves. From its inception, medically “transitioning” minors has always been about adults inflicting their will upon innocent, unsuspecting children, who are forced to live with the consequences of their parents’ ill-advised decision-making.
But rather than stand up and join Aldean in defending these kids, woke-ified celebrities like Pope and Morris will continue to attack anyone who dares to defy their twisted, pagan religion, which somehow convinces them that castrating and sterilizing children is both virtuous and humane. To them, who cares if these kids grow up to regret the procedure or become suicidal as a result? All that matters is getting a pat on the back from America’s residential, left-wing mob.
At the end of the day, Brittany Aldean has nothing to apologize for. The dangers of medically mutilating children are simply too horrific for society to sit in silence. Following Aldean’s lead, any and every sane American who understands the evils associated with this barbaric practice must speak up and get active, lest our children continue to pay the price.
Shawn Fleetwood is a Staff Writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He also serves as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood
Bill Barr is wrong about the Mar-a-Lago raid for the same reason Barr’s critics were wrong about his decision to investigate the Russia-collusion hoax.
Barr’s opinion now and those of his adversaries when he served as Trump’s attorney general both rest on the assumed veracity of leaks, spin, and misleading narratives. The facts have since vindicated Barr’s decision to investigate the investigators who targeted Trump, and until the details surrounding the latest attack on Trump are proven, nothing said by the Biden administration or its partners in the press should be accepted as true.
On Friday and again on Tuesday, Barr appeared on Fox News to discuss the Mar-a-Lago raid and the Department of Justice’s investigation into former President Donald Trump. During both appearances, Barr repeated the storylines pushed by the D.C. media cartel since news first broke that the FBI had raided Trump’s Florida home.
In his appearance on “America Reports” on Friday, Barr told hosts Sandra Smith and John Roberts he personally thought that for the DOJ “to take things to the current point they probably have pretty good evidence.” Barr continued:
Now let me just say I think the driver on this from the beginning was loads of classified information sitting in Mar-a-Lago. People say this was also unprecedented but it’s also unprecedented for a president to take all this classified information and put it in a country club, OK. How long is the government going to try to get that? They jawbone for a year. They were deceived on the voluntary actions taken. They then went and got a subpoena. They were deceived on that, they feel. And the facts are starting to show they were being jerk around. And so how long do they wait?
While he caveated his comments as “speculation,” and noted that until we see the evidence, “it’s hard to say,” Barr’s conclusions flow from the assumption that the details made public by the DOJ and the leaks to the media represent the truth — and the whole truth.
But those very same leaks should make Barr leery. Special Counsel John Durham’s team is leak free. Similarly, the other men Barr trusted to handle the sensitive investigations into the Clinton Foundation, the inappropriate prosecution of Michael Flynn, and the evidence of the Biden family corruption coming from Ukraine, ensured their teams kept the investigations confidential. Conversely, the previous get-Trump plots all relied on media leaks to push falsehoods about the investigations, whether it was Crossfire Hurricane, Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, or the impeachment efforts.
The evidence also indicates that the “driver” of the investigation was not the “loads of classified information sitting in Mar-a-Lago,” but Trump: He was the man; the government just needed a crime.
As I detailed soon after the raid, the trail to Mar-a-Lago began at the White House long before the discovery of classified material in boxes returned to the National Archives. The now-retired head of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), David Ferriero, recalled “watching the Trumps leave the White House and getting off in the helicopter that day, and someone carrying a white banker box, and saying to myself, ‘What the hell’s in that box?’” According to Ferriero, “that began a whole process of trying to determine whether any records had not been turned over to the Archives.”
NARA then made a criminal referral to the DOJ based not merely on the presence of classified materials but also suggesting Trump violated 18 U.S.C. § 2071 because the former president returned a document that he had previously torn up. NARA’s interactions with Trump contrast sharply with its handling of former President Barack Obama’s presidential documents and how it handled Hillary Clinton’s violations of federal law, as I’ve detailed extensively here, exposing the referral as a political hit.
Not only has Barr accepted the false narrative that the “driver” of the investigation was “loads of classified information sitting in Mar-a-Lago,” but during both yesterday and Friday’s interviews, the former attorney general repeated several of the storylines seeded by the leakers. While Barr made clear that the outcome of any charging decision depended on what the evidence showed and how clear it was, he has clearly internalized the leakers’ version of events.
“If they clearly have the president moving stuff around and hiding stuff in his desk and telling people to dissemble,” Barr noted at one point, the DOJ is more likely to charge the former president. “They were deceived on the voluntary actions taken. They then went and got a subpoena. They were deceived on that, they feel,” Barr remarked. Then yesterday, Barr told Fox News’s Martha MacCallum that there is “evidence to suggest they were deceived.”
The evidence, though, consists of select documents released by the DOJ, including heavily redacted documents, and media leaks. In other words, it’s precisely what convinced half the country that Trump colluded with Russia.
While it is possible that Trump deceived the DOJ or that he defied the grand jury subpoena, the entire Mar-a-Lago episode tracks the Russia-collusion-hoax playbook too closely to give credence to any of the accusations levied against the former president. And Barr is wrong to trust them.
Margot Cleveland is The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. She is also a contributor to National Review Online, the Washington Examiner, Aleteia, and Townhall.com, and has been published in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prize—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. As a stay-at-home homeschooling mom of a young son with cystic fibrosis, Cleveland frequently writes on cultural issues related to parenting and special-needs children. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.
Kathy Griffin, the same psychopath who took photos and released a video of herself holding the decapitated head of President Trump, is now declaring civil war if Americans don’t vote for Democrats in November.
The Gateway Pundit previously reported on her unapologetically grotesque stunt and her following attacks on the President’s youngest son, Barron.
The new threat comes after Joe Biden’s hateful and disgusting Hitler-esque speech where he threatened MAGA Republicans and declared them “a clear and present danger to our democracy” from a blood-red stage with Marines standing guard behind him.
According to Joe, it’s not the radicals, lunatics, and criminals who threaten Supreme Court justices and vandalize churches, pregnancy centers, and the offices of pro-life groups. Nor is it the violent Democrat domestic terrorist who conspired in an assassination plot against Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
What about the Democrat that tried to murder an entire Republican softball team?
Or when the left-wing mob defaces and removes statues of historical figures, they are told to hate?
Or is it the radical leftists who tried to assassinate Steve Bannon and Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene multiple times by sending armed police to their homes looking for a confrontation?
Nope. It’s peaceful, law-abiding Patriots who want cheap gas, safe communities, and low taxes that “represent extremism” in the eyes of dictators like Joe Biden.
Leftist Kathy Griffin’s latest rhetoric is that of a literal domestic terrorist, not to mention her outright voter intimidation against all Americans.
She is now trending on Twitter because of this threat on America.
Griffin got “ratioed” in the comment section on this tweet by regular people, calling out the absurdity and indicating they WILL vote Republican regardless of their party if she means this.
I'm voting GOP, just to see the reaction when all those progressive warriors finally leave their parents basement and discover sunlight still exists pic.twitter.com/lFsCGS4YMO
During a rousing Labor Day speech in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, President Joe Biden falsely claimed that he was “very engaged” in the civil rights movement in the 1960s — a bogus story he has repeated so many times that “advisers” have had to “gently remind” him that he’s lying. Even CNN and the New York Times have called BS on Biden’s repeatedly debunked claim to civil rights fame.
“I got very engaged in — in my case, the civil rights movement. And — and as a kid, I was — I worked a lot in the movement at work. And I got deeply involved in the Democratic Party, because the Democratic Party in Delaware was a southern Democratic Party then,” Biden said during his speech on Monday.
JOE BIDEN: "I got very engaged in my case in the civil rights movement. As a kid, I worked a lot in the movement."
On “The Rubin Report” Tuesday, BlazeTV host Dave Rubin shared a clip of CNN’s Jake Tapper in 2019 debunking Biden’s claims about having marched in the civil rights movement.
CNN's Jake Tapper: Joe Biden lied to voters when he claimed he marched in the civil rights movement. pic.twitter.com/TF0GemsMPz
“[Biden] lied to voters, according to the New York Times … about having marched in the civil rights movement,” Tapper said before playing a clip of Biden making the false claim as far back as 1987, which Biden debunked himself the same year.
Here is Joe Biden in 1987:
“I was not an activist…I was not out marching. I was not down in Selma. I was not anywhere else.” pic.twitter.com/ijty46nY83
Tapper went on the share a quote from the 2019 New York Times article:
More than once, advisers had gently reminded Mr. Biden of the problem with this formulation: He had not actually marched during the civil rights movement. And more than once, Mr. Biden assured them he understood — and kept telling the story anyway.
“That is really, really weird,” Tapper remarked.
It was also really weird when Biden claimed in January to have been “arrested” during the civil rights movement, saying “Seems like yesterday, the first time I got arrested — anyway.”
Did Joe Biden just claim he was arrested during the civil rights movement? That never happened. pic.twitter.com/VcKVS2hrN8
And here are a few more examples of Biden spinning tall tales about his civil rights activism, which he swears was “for real … not a joke.”
Joe Biden Faces Questions Over Claims of Civil Rights Activism youtu.be
Then there’s this montage of a whole bunch of other really, really weird lies from Biden’s “doomed” 1988 presidential campaign.
Stumbled across this montage from the doomed Biden ‘88 campaign and I’m crying at the McLaughlin Group reactions at the end. pic.twitter.com/A9etqn8J4H
Seems like Uncle Joe has had a little problem with serial lying for a really, really long time.
Rubin suggested that Biden may have been remembering his “mentor” and “friend” Democratic Senator and KKK member Robert Byrd when he said he got deeply involved in the civil rights movement back when “the Democratic Party in Delaware was a southern Democratic Party.”
Rubin also talked about the continued fallout from Biden’s divisive “MAGA Republicans” speech, Fox News’ Peter Doocy catching Biden in a lie about his own comments, and White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre doubling down on Biden’s talking points. Watch the video below. Can’t watch? Download the podcast here.
The government anonymously leaked accusations that the FBI retrieved a document detailing a foreign government’s military defenses and nuclear capabilities inside Mar-a-Lago.
A slew of the documents obtained at the Aug. 8 raid at Mar-a-Lago allegedly contained top secret content that only the president, his Cabinet members and near-Cabinet-level members are authorized to have knowledge of, sources told The Washington Post. Some of the information requires special clearances where only a few dozen people are allowed to have access to the operation’s existence. The sources did not reveal which foreign government’s information was contained in the document nor where in Mar-a-Lago the material was found, The Post reported. The leakers provided no detail on these so-called “nuclear documents,” leading to many unanswered questions on the severity and actual content in this document.
U.S. intelligence and defense communities have four separate categories for material classified as “nuclear documents:” nuclear weapon science and design, nuclear plans for allied countries, including Britain and France, plans for adversaries and nations in the gray zones that include Israel and India.
The FBI searched Trump’s home in part to find any classified documents relating to nuclear weapons, The Post previously reported. A receipt of property released to the public Aug. 12 disclosed that the FBI obtained 11 sets of classified documents, around 300 in total. These sets consisted of four sets of top secret information, three sets of secret and three more sets of confidential material. (RELATED: DOJ Says It Already Reviewed Documents Taken In Mar-A-Lago Raid)
(Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
The Department of Justice (DOJ) later released a highly redacted affidavit revealing that 14 out the 15 boxes sent to the National Archives and Record Association (NARA) in January had classification markings. The boxes contained 184 documents – 25 of the documents had “top secret” markings, 92 were labeled “secret” and 67 had a “confidential” warning. The document on the foreign government was one of the last batches of material found, The Post reported.
A grand jury issued May 11 ordered for all classified documents and top secret information to be returned to NARA, The Post reported. The subpoena listed more than two dozen sub-classifications of documents labeled “S/FRD,” which is primarily saved for the military use of nuclear weapons.
Agents reportedly found documents that are top secret to the extent that senior officials in President Joe Biden’s administration are unauthorized to review them, according to The Post. Some of the documents were referred to as “HUMINT Control Systems,” which are used to protect intelligence gathered from secret human sources. Some material was never meant to be shared with foreign nations, according to the affidavit.
U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon approved Trump’s request for a special master to review the documents and temporarily barred the Department of Justice further review of the material. Some of the material had reportedly been subject to attorney-client privilege, though the DOJ found “limited” items protected under those terms.
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Donald Trump.
Crossfire Hurricane agents never intended to drop their investigation of Donald Trump, and therefore any lies he told the FBI did not affect their decision-making, Igor Danchenko argued in a motion filed on Friday seeking dismissal of the criminal charges pending against him in a Virginia federal court. With the trial set to start next month, Special Counsel John Durham must now decide whether to acknowledge the deep state’s complicity or risk a second acquittal.
Durham charged Danchenko last year with five counts of making false statements to the FBI related to Danchenko’s role as Christopher Steele’s primary sub-source in the fake dossier the Hillary Clinton team peddled to the FBI and the media. According to the indictment, Danchenko lied extensively when he provided Steele with supposed intel, and then later made false representations to the FBI during a series of interviews.
One count of the indictment concerned Danchenko’s denial during an FBI interview on June 15, 2017, of having spoken with “PR Executive-1” about any material contained in the Steele dossier. According to Durham’s team, “PR Executive-1,” who has since been identified as the Clinton and DNC-connected Charles Dolan, Jr., told Danchenko that a “GOP friend” had told him Paul Manafort had been forced to resign from the Trump campaign because of allegations connecting Manafort to Ukraine.
“While Dolan later admitted to the FBI that he had no such ‘GOP friend’ and that he had instead gleaned this information from press reports, Dolan’s fabrication appeared in the Steele dossier.” But according to the indictment, when the FBI asked Danchenko whether he had talked with Dolan about that and other details included in Steele’s reports, Danchenko lied and said he hadn’t.
The four remaining counts of the indictment concerned Danchenko’s alleged lies during questioning by the FBI on March 16, May 18, October 24, and November 16, 2017, concerning conversations he supposedly had with Sergei Millian, who was the then-president of the Russian-American Chamber of Commerce. According to the indictment, Danchenko told FBI agents during those interviews that he believed Millian had provided him information during an anonymous phone call, including “intel” later included in the Steele dossier that there was “a well-developed ‘conspiracy of cooperation’ between the Trump Campaign and Russian officials.” However, no such call ever occurred, Durham’s team charged.
In seeking dismissal of these five counts, Danchenko’s attorneys argued in the motion to dismiss they filed on Friday that the government’s false statement charges failed as a matter of law because ambiguity in the FBI’s questions and in his own answers make it impossible to show he knowingly lied to the government. What proved more intriguing, however, was Danchenko’s second argument based on “materiality.” Here, in essence, Danchenko argued that his statements, even if knowingly false, could not create criminal liability because they were immaterial to the FBI’s investigation.
To support this argument, Danchenko notes that the FBI was already investigating Millian’s “potential involvement with Russian interference efforts long before it had ever interviewed or even identified Mr. Danchenko,” apparently based on Steele’s claim that Millian served “as the source of relevant information.” Accordingly, Danchenko maintains his supposed lies were not the reason the FBI targeted Millian.
Danchenko further emphasizes in his brief that Steele had falsely told the FBI that “Danchenko had reported meeting with [Millian] in person on multiple occasions.” Danchenko exposed Steele’s own lies by telling the FBI he had never met with Millian “and could not be sure he ever spoke to him,” Danchenko’s attorneys stress in their motion to dismiss, thus calling Steele’s “statements, and portions of the Company Reports, into question.” Yet, even after learning of Steele’s apparent lies, the FBI did not alter the course of the investigation and, in fact, continued to rely on Steele’s reporting to seek renewals of the FISA surveillance orders, Danchenko’s brief underscores to argue that nothing Danchenko said during his interviews really mattered to the FBI.
Because Danchenko’s statements failed to change the trajectory of the government’s investigation into Millian and more broadly Trump and his associates, Danchenko posits that “it is difficult to fathom how the government would have made any decision other than to continue investigating [Millian] … regardless of what Mr. Danchenko told them.” In other words, Danchenko’s alleged lies were immaterial.
As a matter of law, Millian’s materiality argument is weak, but as a matter of defense-attorney rhetoric, it holds the potential to score Danchenko an acquittal.
Potential for Acquittal
The legal standard for materiality requires a false statement to have “a natural tendency to influence, or [be] capable of influencing, either a discrete decision or any other function of the agency to which it is addressed.” Further, “the falsehood need not actually influence the agency’s decision-making process, but merely needs to be ‘capable’ of doing so.” Thus, legally speaking, that the Crossfire Hurricane team, and later Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office, seemed unconcerned with what Danchenko said, as shown by their continued reliance on Steele and his dossier, is irrelevant. The question is whether the lie was capable of influencing how a hypothetically “objective” government official would have acted had they known the truth.
While Durham’s team will argue to the jury — assuming the district court denies Danchenko’s motion to dismiss the indictment — that the alleged lies were capable of influencing several decisions of the FBI agents, the reality is that the jurors will have a hard time buying that proposition unless Durham exposes the malfeasance of the Crossfire Hurricane agents and the members of Mueller’s team. In short, Durham needs to tell the jury that Danchenko’s alleged lies did not actually influence the government’s investigation because the agents were out to get Trump.
If the Special Counsel’s office does not take this tack, what the jury will hear is the story Danchenko previewed in his motion to dismiss:
“During the course of its investigation into the [Steele dossier], the FBI determined that the defendant, Igor Danchenko, was a potential source of information contained in the [dossier]. In order to assist the FBI in its investigation of the accuracy and sources of the information in the [dossier], Mr. Danchenko agreed to numerous voluntary interviews with the FBI from in or about January 2017 through November 2017. He answered every question he was asked to the best of his ability and recollection. As part of the 2017 interviews, FBI agents asked Mr. Danchenko to review portions of the [dossier] and describe where he believed the relevant information had derived from and to explain how any information he had provided to [Steele] may have been overstated or misrepresented in the [dossier].”
Danchenko did as the FBI asked, his defense will argue to the jury, before stressing that even after Danchenko highlighted Steele’s lies to the bureau, agents continued to investigate Millian. This fact will serve as a lynchpin for Danchenko to argue that his statements, even if false, were immaterial.
A Likely Argument
In his motion to dismiss, Danchenko previewed another argument likely to be repeated at trial, namely that no one thought Danchenko lied until the appointment of a second special counsel. “The Special Counsel’s office closed its entire investigation into possible Trump/Russia collusion in March 2019,” Danchenko noted in his motion, stressing that while “approximately thirty-four individuals were charged by Mueller’s office, including several for providing false statements to investigators. Mr. Danchenko was not among them. To the contrary, not only did investigators and government officials repeatedly represent that Mr. Danchenko had been honest and forthcoming in his interviews, but also resolved discrepancies between his recollection of events and that of others in Mr. Danchenko’s favor.”
While these arguments are currently aimed at the court, a repeat will surely follow during next month’s trial, and unless Durham provides the jury with an explanation for the FBI and Mueller’s lack of concern over Danchenko’s statements to investigators, an acquittal seems likely.
Durham’s Strategy
We won’t have to wait until the start of the trial to learn Durham’s likely strategy, however, as the government’s response to Danchenko’s motion to dismiss will likely provide some strong hints, especially given some of the assertions included in Danchenko’s brief. For instance, in his summary of the facts, Danchenko claimed, based on the DOJ’s inspector general report, that there was an “articulable factual basis” to launch Crossfire Hurricane based on “information received from a Friendly Foreign Government.” The “information received from a Friendly Foreign Government” refers to then-Australian diplomat Alexander Downer’s claim that Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos made suggestions that the Russians could assist the Trump campaign with the release of damaging information about Clinton.
Those well-versed in the Russia-collusion hoax will remember that Durham has already publicly pushed back against the Inspector General’s claim that Downer’s tip prompted the launching of Crossfire Hurricane. Durham released a statement following the publication of the IG report contradicting the IG’s assertion and revealing that “based on the evidence collected to date,” his team had “advised the Inspector General that we do not agree with some of the report’s conclusions as to predication and how the FBI case was opened.”
Another passage in Danchenko’s brief could similarly prompt pushback by Durham. Relying again on the inspector general’s report on FISA abuse, Danchenko asserts that there is “no evidence the [Steele] election reporting was known to or used by FBI officials involved in the decision to open the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.”
Two years have passed since the IG issued its report, however, and during that time Durham has been continuing to investigate the claimed predication of Crossfire Hurricane. If his team found evidence that Steele’s reporting prompted the launch of Crossfire Hurricane, Danchenko’s motion provides a perfect opportunity for Durham to publicly reveal that evidence.
Whether Durham will reveal these details and others remains to be seen. And while the special counsel’s office used pretrial court filings in the criminal case against former Clinton campaign attorney Michael Sussmann to pepper the public with new revelations about the Russia-collusion hoax, the lead prosecutor in that case, Andrew DeFilippis, is no longer prosecuting the case against Danchenko. We should know soon whether Durham, who is now personally involved in the Danchenko prosecution, will use the case to expose more details about SpyGate.
Durham has already filed his first motion in limine, or a pretrial request for the court to rule on the admissibility of evidence, in the Danchenko case. That motion, however, concerns classified information and was thus sealed. The special counsel will likely be filing several more motions in limine in the weeks to come, with the court last week entering an order encouraging the parties to file those motions “as early as possible,” but no later than October 3, 2022, absent good cause.
Those motions, as well as Durham’s response to Danchenko’s motion to dismiss, will provide some insight into the special counsel’s planned strategy in the Danchenko case and specifically whether the special counsel will highlight the complicity of the deep state in the Russia-collusion hoax. If Durham doesn’t, it might cost his team a second loss.
Margot Cleveland is The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. She is also a contributor to National Review Online, the Washington Examiner, Aleteia, and Townhall.com, and has been published in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prize—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. As a stay-at-home homeschooling mom of a young son with cystic fibrosis, Cleveland frequently writes on cultural issues related to parenting and special-needs children. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.
Earlier today, Judge Aileen Cannon granted President Trump’s request for a Special Master review of the material confiscated by the Biden DOJ during their raid on his home at Mar-a-Lago.
JUST IN: Judge Aileen Cannon grants Trump's motion to appoint a special master "to review the seized property for personal items and documents and potentially privileged material subject to claims of attorney client and/or executive privilege."
Judge Cannon also ‘temporarily enjoins’ or forbids the Biden regime from ‘reviewing and using the seized materials’ pending the completion of the review.
This decision by the Florida judge enraged the lawless left who is accustomed to running roughshod over the US Constitution in their ongoing attempts to destroy President Donald Trump. Andrew Weissman, the former Justice official who ran the Mueller special counsel and is now a contributor on the fake news channels, suffered a meltdown following the decision. Sal Greco, a politically persecuted and fired NYPD officer, responded to Weissman’s temper tantrum.
After violating the civil rights of mob victims, the Enron defendants ( who’s convictions were overturned because of his misconduct ) and Paul Manafort; Andrew Weissmann ranting about “the rule of law “is a joke.
Andrew Weismann is in a lavender rage because an honest and courageous judge has delayed the politicized DOJ effort to destroy @realDonaldTrump while holding him to a different standard then Barrack Obama.
For the second time in his legal career, Andrew Weismann comes across a judge that actually respects the rule of law. The last time was the when his Enron convictions were overturned for his prosecutorial misconduct.
Here are a few of the twitter rants by Andrew Weissmann.
Jim Hoft is the founder and editor of The Gateway Pundit, one of the top conservative news outlets in America. Jim was awarded the Reed Irvine Accuracy in Media Award in 2013 and is the proud recipient of the Breitbart Award for Excellence in Online Journalism from the Americans for Prosperity Foundation in May 2016.
Fox News White House correspondent Peter Doocy read White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre’s old tweets claiming former President Donald Trump stole the 2016 election to her face Tuesday. Doocy asked the press secretary about false claims that the 2016 election was “stolen” as the White House repeatedly argues that “MAGA [Make America Great Again] Republicans” pose a threat to democracy over their claims about the 2020 election was fraudulent. The press secretary said the White House will focus on the present rather than 2016.
Doocy then read 2016 tweets where Jean-Pierre said Trump and Republican Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp “stole an election.”
“If denying an election is extreme now, why wasn’t it then?” he asked.
“So let’s be very clear that that comparison that you made is just ridiculous,” she said.
“How is that ridiculous?” Doocy interjected.
“You’re asking me a question, let me answer it,” she pushed back. “I was talking specifically at that time of what was happening with voting rights and what was in danger of voting rights. That’s what I was speaking to at the time and here’s the thing, I have said, Governor Kemp won the election in Georgia. I’ve been clear about that. I have said President Trump won the election in 2016 and I’ve been clear about that.” (RELATED: Jean-Pierre Says Biden’s Attacks On ‘MAGA Republicans’ Are ‘Not Political’)
The press secretary said the claims of a stolen election in 2020 led to the violence that took place on January 6, 2021. She claimed the riot led to the death of Capitol police officers, even though all of the officers died either from suicide or natural causes after the riot.
“What we are talking about right now is let’s not forget what happened on January 6, 2021, where we saw an insurrection, a mob that was incited by the person who occupied this campus, this facility at that time,” she said. “And it was an attack on our democracy. Let’s not forget people died that day. Law enforcement were attacked that day. That was the danger that we were seeing at the time. That’s what the president has called out and that’s what he’s going to do continue to call out.”
“So yes, when you have MAGA Republicans, an extreme part of Republicans, who just deny or do not want to really say what exactly happened on that day or say it was a protest when it clearly was not a peaceful protest. That’s not what we saw on that day. Yes, the president’s going to call that out.”
Ashli Babbitt a self-described Trump supporter who entered the building during the riot, was also killed at the riot. A Capitol police officer, Lt. Michael Byrd, fatally shot her in the left shoulder and neck.
Jean-Pierre told Doocy that the majority of Americans agree that democracy and the people’s rights must be protected.
Rep. Jaime Raskin (D-Md.) praised President Joe Biden on Sunday for attacking Trump supporters because they exhibit the “hallmarks” of being members of a fascist party. But it turns out Raskin has seemingly committed the same sin he alleged is critical to fascism.
Speaking on CBS News’ “Face The Nation,” Raskin suggested the Republican Party, especially the faction that supports Donald Trump, has evolved into a “fascist political party.”
“Two of the hallmarks of a fascist political party are: One, they don’t accept the results of elections that don’t go their way; and, two, they embrace political violence,” Raskin said.
“I think that’s why President Biden was right to sound the alarm this week about these continuing attacks on our constitutional order from the outside by Donald Trump and his movement,” he added.
Raskin wants Gingrich, Ginni Thomas and Pence to testify to Jan. 6 committee www.youtube.com
Raskin was responding to Trump’s controversial demand that the 2020 presidential election be held again “immediately” or that he be declared the “rightful winner” of the election. The demand came after Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told Joe Rogan the FBI warned the social media giant about Russian “misinformation” just before the Hunter Biden laptop story broke in October 2020. Social media companies quickly suppressed or outright censored that story, which has since been vindicated as neither misinformation nor false.
The charges of fascism are self-incriminating, because Raskin has openly questioned the outcome of presidential elections in the past. For example, Raskin has described George W. Bush as a “court-appointed president” who was not rightfully elected.
“The court has been thwarting formation of the popular will, the most spectacular example being Bush v. Gore, where the majority by a 5-4 vote enjoined the counting of more than 100,000 ballots in Florida and essentially gave America its first court-appointed president,” Raskin said on April 21, 2003.
\u201cIncredible work by the RNC to find a 2003 (!) clip of Jamie Raskin saying that the 2000 presidential election was stolen.\u201d
Meanwhile, Raskin was one of several House Democratic lawmakers who objected to the certification of Trump’s Electoral College victory in January 2017. Their effort ultimately failed because not one Democratic senator supported them. Democrats, in fact, have a long history of questioning the legitimacy of elections they lose.
Over the weekend, the Republican National Committee published a long video showing numerous Democrats questioning the outcome of the 2000 presidential election, the 2004 presidential election, the 2016 presidential election, and the 2018 Georgia gubernatorial election.
12 Minutes of Democrats Denying Election Results www.youtube.com
Talk about irony: A governor who violated his own Covid lockdown rules by attending a party at a chichi restaurant could sign legislation that puts many fast-food establishments out of business.
Late in August, the California legislature passed a bill that would impose new mandates on certain dining establishments. Gov. Gavin Newsom, D-French Laundry, has until Sept. 30 to sign or veto the bill. If it becomes law, the measure would set an example that unions hope to export elsewhere, while raising inflation in the nation’s most populous state. Here’s how.
Separate Minimum Wage
The bill would create a council to mandate a separate minimum wage applying only to certain fast-food establishments. According to the bill, the council could impose a minimum wage for these establishments next year of as high as $22 per hour—an amount nearly 42 percent higher than the statewide minimum wage of $15.50 that takes effect on Jan. 1, and an amount subject to additional annual increases. Creating a higher minimum wage would raise business costs, and help push prices ever higher. As it is, families have struggled to keep up with the current high rate of inflation, with real (i.e., inflation-adjusted) average hourly earnings falling in most months over the past year. Hitting these families with even higher costs for a meal at a fast-food establishment—sometimes the only “luxury” working-class households can afford—would provide ordinary California residents another proverbial kick in the teeth.
The new council of 10 appointed individuals will “establish sector-wide minimum standards on wages, working hours, and other working conditions adequate to ensure and maintain the health, safety, and welfare of, and to supply the necessary cost of proper living to, fast food restaurant workers.” (The bill doesn’t specify whether the “cost of proper living” includes dinners at restaurants like the one Newsom decided to frequent in the fall of 2020.)
To put it more bluntly: A group of unelected bureaucrats will decide how to micro-manage hundreds of businesses across the Golden State. These mandates will of course raise costs for the restaurants, and the restaurants will have no choice but to raise prices in response.
Inefficient, Absurd Loopholes
The requirements in the bill only apply to chain restaurants with at least 100 establishments nationwide, and which serve food in the following manner:
(1) For immediate consumption either on or off the premises.
(2) To customers who order or select items and pay before eating.
(3) With items prepared in advance, including items that may be prepared in bulk and kept hot, or with items prepared or heated quickly.
(4) With limited or no table service. Table service does not include orders placed by a customer on an electronic device.
One could easily envision businesses changing their model to avoid becoming ensnared by the bill’s mandates. For instance, a restaurant could operate like Katz’s Delicatessen in New York City, where customers receive tickets upon entering and pay after eating, on their way out the door. Such a system would mean that restaurants would not meet the “pay before eating” definition contained within the statute, but it also could raise the risk of “dine-and-dash” incidents, which would raise a restaurant’s costs.
Similarly, establishments could try to exempt themselves from the reach of the new council by providing full table service. Of course, providing full table service would raise businesses’ costs (although perhaps not as much as complying with the mandates created by the new regulatory regime), exhaust employees by forcing them to wait on customer tables in addition to their existing duties, or both.
The idea that California could potentially do for fast-food restaurants what a full-service-only requirement has done to New Jersey’s gas stations—whereby McDonald’s and Burger King employees in California could only ask “Would you like fries with that?” while customers are reclined at table—illustrates the absurdity of this bill. Newsom should do his state a favor and veto the measure, sending this ill-tasting legislative creation back to the cooks in the legislature who created this mess.
Chris Jacobs is founder and CEO of Juniper Research Group, and author of the book, “The Case Against Single Payer.” He is on Twitter: @chrisjacobsHC. Previously he was a senior health policy analyst for the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a senior policy analyst in The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Health Policy Studies, and a senior policy analyst with the Joint Economic Committee’s Senate Republican staff. During the debate over the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare, Jacobs was a policy adviser for the House Republican Conference under then-Chairman Mike Pence. In the first two years of the law’s implementation, he was a health policy analyst for the Senate Republican Policy Committee. Jacobs got his start on Capitol Hill as an intern for then-Rep. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.). He holds a bachelor’s degree in political science and history from American University, where he is a part-time teacher of health policy. He currently resides in Washington, D.C.
The time has come for a coalition of governors, attorneys general, and state legislators to demonstrate the power of broad-based federalism to interpose against extreme federal tyranny.
Many conservative commentators have finally woken up to smell the stench of the Fourth Reich following Biden’s speech targeting political opposition, reminiscent of the authoritarian language of past dictators. However, they should have been awake since March 2020, when our government declared de facto martial law on our lives, liberty, and property and used our bodies as lab rats with an ever-growing list of experimental therapies. They should have awoken from their slumber after Americans were targeted with solitary confinement and disproportionate punishment for zero or nebulous crimes at the Capitol on January 6, after months of killing, rioting, and looting by BLM with impunity.
If Biden’s speech is really to be a turning point in this one-sided cold war that is heating up, conservatives should resolve to use the power they already wield over Republican governors and demand united action for states to protect constitutional rights from this thuggish Biden administration and national security deep state apparatus that threatens our liberties more than any foreign enemy in our history. Rather than making idle promises of winning back the House with RINOs or winning back the presidency years from now when it’s too late, we should be demanding action now from 20 or so GOP trifecta-controlled state governments. If they fail to take action now, then the entire point of federal elections with divided government is moot.
What would a coalition of federalism look like? A group of prominent governors, attorneys general, and state legislative speakers and majority leaders would initiate a declaration in one state – let’s call it the “Miami Declaration,” for example. The declaration would lay out a list of grievances and examples of the federal government violating the rights of the individual: from medical freedom and bodily autonomy to privacy infringement, collusion with big tech against First Amendment rights, and using federal agencies to persecute political opponents. The declaration would pronounce these states to be constitutional sanctuaries that protect all constitutional rights, including against the federal government. Here are just a few ideas that should be contained in the declaration:
Criminalize the enforcement of any federal COVID mandate – whether by a federal, state, or private actor – within the boundaries of the states. This would include so-called federal lands within the state.
Order all education and health care institutions within the state to stop complying with recent edicts on transgenderism or COVID with the threat of severe fines.
Block the distribution of any new vaccines that have not been properly studied.
Create a commission to study who is responsible for the COVID response and the botched therapeutics, along with an audit of what other therapeutics are in the pipeline that violate bioethical norms.
Nullify onerous federal regulations on energy and mineral exploration and production within the coalition of states so that states can begin protecting their residents from the coming nuclear winter on energy use.
Impose severe penalties on tech companies that censor political opponents of the regime until they come clean on the scope of collaboration with the federal government against these individuals.
Provide legal and financial backing to those political dissidents being targeted by the federal government primarily for their political views.
Suspend all training and cooperation between state and local law enforcement and the federal alphabet soup agencies.
Even if Republicans refuse to block funding for the vaccines, Paxlovid, and Ukraine – most likely because they agree with Democrats on those issues – they should at least withhold support until the extra funding for the IRS is kept out of the bill. Fighting overzealous taxation, especially when it is politically targeted, was always a universal value of the Republican Party. The IRS waited until Friday afternoon before the holiday weekend to admit that information from 120,000 form 990-T filers was inadvertently posted online due to “a human coding error.” These means the names, contact information, and financial information of about 120,000 people who have IRAs in non-security assets were breached. Does anyone really trust that the IRS is telling us the whole truth?
From now until the election, Republicans will seek to distract us with flaccid promises of deliverance in the future. The best way to verify their sincerity is by demanding that they actually use the power they currently hold to counter deeply destructive and unpopular policies from this regime.
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Donald Trump.
The Biden administration and the corporate media continue to assure Americans that the FBI’s raid on former president Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home was both legally justified and of the utmost necessity. But the deep-state cabal and the leftist media cartel provided similar assurances about Crossfire Hurricane and Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s targeting of Trump, with the assurances later proving worthless.
Here are five times SpyGate taught Americans to distrust and disprove accusations leveled at Donald Trump.
1. Devin Nunes’ Memo Exposing FISA Abuse
On February 2, 2018, the House Intelligence Committee, then-chaired by Republican Rep. Devin Nunes, released a four-page memo detailing abuses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act by the FBI.
Before the memo’s release, the FBI publicly opposed the move, claiming in a public statement that the bureau had “grave concerns about material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo’s accuracy.” Justice Department officials likewise opposed releasing the memo, warning that “doing so would be ‘extraordinarily reckless.’”
The then-ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff, also sought to scuttle the release of the memo — or at least preempt the detailed revelations of FISA abuse — by calling the memo a “conspiracy theory” in an op-ed for The Washington Post. In it, Schiff condemned the release, saying the memo was “designed to suggest that ‘a cabal of senior officials within the FBI and the Justice Department were so tainted by bias against President Trump that they irredeemably poisoned the investigation.’”
Nancy Pelosi, who is now speaker of the House, likewise attacked Nunes, demanding in a letter to then-House Speaker Paul Ryan that Nunes be removed as Intelligence Committee chairman. Nunes “disgraced” the committee with his “dishonest” handling of the committee’s review of the Russia collusion problem, Pelosi wrote. Nunes’ committee, Pelosi claimed, had become a “charade” and a “coverup campaign … to hide the truth about the Trump-Russia scandal.”
In response to the Nunes memo, former FBI Director James Comey told the country the memo was “dishonest and misleading.” Comey further claimed it “wrecked the House intel committee, destroyed trust with Intelligence Community, damaged relationship with FISA court, and inexcusably exposed classified investigation of an American citizen.”
Former CIA Director John Brennan also attacked Nunes, calling his exposure of the FISA abuse “appalling” and an abuse of his chairmanship of the House Intelligence Committee.
Of course, years later, Nunes was proven correct, as the inspector general’s report confirmed, establishing that the Republican House Intelligence chair had, if anything, understated the FISA abuse.
For all the assurances the DOJ, FBI, their former leaders, and top politicians provided the American public, they were either lying or wrong — or both because there was “a cabal of senior officials within the FBI and the Justice Department … so tainted by bias against President Trump that they irredeemably poisoned the investigation.”
2. Surveillance Warrants Are Hard to Get
In addition to wrongly condemning Nunes’ memo, government officials attempted to calm concerns over the FISA surveillance by assuring the public that the process of obtaining a surveillance warrant was “rigorous” and that to obtain surveillance of American citizens, a court must find “probable cause” that warrants the wiretap.
Adm. Michael Rogers, then a commander of United States Cyber Command, testified about the FISA process during a March 2017 congressional hearing. In response to a question posed to eliminate “confusion in the public” about the collection of personal data, Rogers confirmed that the National Security Agency “would need a court order based on probable cause to conduct electronic surveillance on a U.S. person inside the United States.”
During the same hearing, the then-recently fired former FBI Director Comey expanded on the surveillance process. “There is a statutory framework in the United States under which courts grant permission for electronic surveillance either in a criminal case or the national security case based on the showing of probable cause,” Comey testified before Congress. “It is a rigorous, rigorous process, involving all three branches of government,” the former FBI director stressed, noting it must go through an application process and then to a judge who must approve the order.
The IG report on FISA abuse proved the promised rigor didn’t exist. And the later conviction of Kevin Clinesmith for “falsifying a document that was the basis for a surveillance warrant against former Trump campaign official Carter Page,” punctuated that reality. The facts revealed in the IG report further established that Americans’ faith in the FISA Court to serve as a check on the government was misplaced, with the judges serving as but a rubberstamp of the DOJ’s surveillance applications. So much for those assurances.
3. Don’t Worry, ’Merica, No Spying on Trump Took Place
A third assurance Americans received from the powers-that-be was that no spying on the Trump campaign occurred. The inspector general’s report on FISA abuse disproved those reassurances as well, revealing that the “Obama Administration Spied on the Trump Campaign Big Time.”
This reality pushed Russia-collusion hoaxers into esoteric discussions on the true meaning of “spying.” Even the United States Senate played the “it depends what the meaning of spying is” game, with New Hampshire Democrat Sen. Jeanne Shaheen quizzing FBI Director Christopher Wray on whether he would agree with then-Attorney General William Barr’s use of the word “spying.”
“I was very concerned by his use of the word spying, which I think is a loaded word,” Shaheen bemoaned. “When FBI agents conduct investigations against alleged mobsters, suspected terrorists, other criminals, do you believe they’re engaging in spying when they’re following FBI investigative policies and procedures?” the senator asked Wray.
“That’s not the term I would use,” Wray replied, before noting that different people use different colloquialisms.
The discussion did not end there, however, with Shaheen pushing Wray on whether he had seen “any evidence that any illegal surveillance into the campaigns or the individuals associated with the campaigns by the FBI occurred.”
“I don’t think I personally have any evidence of that sort,” Wray replied.
But even sidestepping the silly debate over what “spying” means, the guarantee Shaheen provided the American public — that no illegal surveillance into the Trump campaign or individuals associated with the Trump campaign had occurred — proved worthless.
The Department of Justice has since admitted that it illegally surveilled former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page and that such surveillance reached Trump campaign documents. So, yes, our federal government illegally surveilled the campaign of a presidential candidate.
4. Redactions Are Necessary to Protect Sources and Methods
A fourth key commitment conveyed to Americans throughout the multi-year unraveling of the Russia collusion hoax concerned the need to redact details in the publicly released documents. Such redactions were necessary to protect sources and methods, our overlords assured us.
For instance, in a December 9, 2019 press release Wray issued in conjunction with the DOJ’s inspector general’s report on FISA abuse, Wray “emphasized that the FBI’s participation in this process was undertaken with my express direction to be as transparent as possible, while honoring our duty to protect sources and methods that, if disclosed, might make Americans less safe.” Wray further promised that the FISA abuse report presented all material facts, “with redactions carefully limited and narrowly tailored to specific national security and operational concerns.”
Republican Sens. Ron Johnson and Chuck Grassley challenged that portrayal of the redactions, suggesting in a letter to then-Attorney General William Barr that several footnotes “were classified in the IG report only because they contradict certain claims made in the public version of the inspector general’s report on FISA warrants documenting misconduct in the FBI’s spying operation of the Trump campaign.”
“We are concerned that certain sections of the public version of the report are misleading because they are contradicted by relevant and probative classified information redacted in four footnotes,” Grassley and Johnson wrote. “This classified information is significant not only because it contradicts key statements in a section of the report, but also because it provides insight essential for an accurate evaluation of the entire investigation.”
The Republican senators then asked for the four footnotes to be declassified, stressing that “the American people have a right to know what is contained within these four footnotes and, without that knowledge, they will not have a full picture as to what happened during the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.”
In April of 2020, Acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell declassified the footnotes. And, as Grassley and Johnson had represented, the redactions weren’t necessary to protect “sources and methods.” Rather, the blacked-out lines were essential to distorting portions of the FISA report and to keeping the public in the dark about the full scope of the Spygate scandal.
Another document declassified by Grenell exposed that Mueller’s team falsely represented to a federal judge (and the American public) the substance of Michael Flynn’s December 2016 telephone conversation with then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
As I reported following Grenell’s declassification of the transcript of the call between Flynn, Trump’s then-incoming national security adviser, and Kislyak, Mueller’s office deceived the country and a federal court when prosecutors claimed Flynn had discussed U.S. sanctions with his Russian counterpart. The transcripts established that, contrary to court filings, Flynn never raised the issue of sanctions with the Russian ambassador.
The release of the Flynn transcript did reveal, however, the FBI’s secret “sources and methods” — but the sources and methods were those of deep-state actors seeking to rid themselves of the president’s chosen national security adviser by launching a perjury trap and then lying about what Flynn said.
5. Crossfire Hurricane Was Properly Predicated
To this day, both DOJ’s Inspector General Michael Horowitz and Wray maintain that the FBI’s launch of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation was properly predicated. Publicly released FBI documents say otherwise.
Former FBI agent Peter Strzok explained the supposed predicate for launching Crossfire Hurricane on July 31, 2016, in the opening “Electronic Communication” that he both prepared and approved. According to Strzok, the FBI opened the umbrella investigation into the Trump campaign after the government had “received information” “related to the hacking of the Democratic National Committee’s website/server.”
But Strzok’s summary of the information received made no mention of any intel obtained by the FBI related to the DNC hacking. Rather, the supposed intel “consisted of information received from an unnamed representative, now publicly known to be Alexander Downer, a then-Australian diplomat” stationed in London. The opening memorandum explained that Downer had relayed “statements Mr. [George] Papadopoulos made about suggestions from the Russians that they (the Russians) could assist the Trump campaign with the anonymous release of information during the campaign that would be damaging to Hillary Clinton.”
The opening document then asserted that Papadopoulos “also suggested the Trump team had received some kind of suggestion from Russia that it could assist this process with the anonymous release of information during the campaign that would be damaging to Mrs. Clinton (and President Obama.).” The electronic communication added a caveat, though, noting that it was unclear whether Papadopoulos “or the Russians were referring to material acquired publicly of [sic] through other means. It was also unclear how Mr. Trump’s team reacted to the offer.”
Thus, while Strzok framed the information received by the FBI as evidence “related to the hacking of the Democratic National Committee’s website/server,” the remainder of the Electronic Communication contradicted that claim and in fact acknowledged that the material might refer to “publicly acquired” information.
What the FBI did — or rather didn’t do — after the launch of Crossfire Hurricane further confirms the sham predicate set forth by Strzok in the Electronic Communication.
While Papadopoulos’s statements to Downer supposedly prompted the FBI to open the Crossfire Hurricane investigation, agents failed to question Papadopoulos for six months. The FBI also put little (or no) effort into determining who purportedly told Papadopoulos that the Russians had dirt on Hillary. The supposed source of that statement, Joseph Mifsud, could have been easily located soon after the launch of Crossfire Hurricane if the FBI genuinely believed Russia had conspired with the Trump campaign to hack and release the DNC emails.
Agents pursuing a legitimate investigation “would have immediately scoured Papadopoulos’s London-based connections and discovered he was associated with the London Centre of International Law Practice around the time he met with Downer. From there, the FBI could have easily fingered Mifsud as a possible source for the information, since he was listed as a board advisor and public source searches would show Mifsud had connections to Russia. (The intelligence community would have also hit on Mifsud’s many connections to Western intelligence agencies.)”
But the FBI did none of this, waiting instead until late January 2017 to quiz Papadopoulos on the source of the supposed inside information coming from Russia. Yet, Wray and the DOJ’s inspector general want Americans to trust them when they say that agents launched Crossfire Hurricane based on Papadopoulos’s London chat with Downer over drinks.
Special Counsel John Durham, however, says otherwise, having released a statement following the DOJ’s report on FISA abuse that informed the public that, “based on the evidence collected to date,” his team had “advised the Inspector General that we do not agree with some of the report’s conclusions as to predication and how the FBI case was opened.”
The special counsel’s public statements prove significant for two reasons. First, Durham’s comments refute the inspector general’s conclusions regarding the predication of Crossfire Hurricane. But beyond that, the fact that Durham needed to correct the record shows the lack of trust due the DOJ and even the inspector general’s office — something further confirmed during the special counsel’s prosecution of former Clinton campaign attorney Michael Sussmann.
Each of these five falsehoods peddled by the government to the public during the Russia collusion hoax has a clear corollary in the current scandal involving the FBI’s raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home. And after the lies, pretext, and political warfare exposed during the unraveling of SpyGate, the DOJ and FBI’s current entreat to an angry public to “trust them” will be ignored — as it should.
Margot Cleveland is The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. She is also a contributor to National Review Online, the Washington Examiner, Aleteia, and Townhall.com, and has been published in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prize—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. As a stay-at-home homeschooling mom of a young son with cystic fibrosis, Cleveland frequently writes on cultural issues related to parenting and special-needs children. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.
On Aug. 25, the California Air Resources Board, the state’s air quality regulator, announced a ban on the sales of new gasoline- and diesel-powered vehicles by 2035. Less than a week later, a heat wave threatened California with seven days of power shortages. So, the state’s grid operator asked electric vehicle owners not to recharge when they come home from work. This is all a painful part of the energy transition, we are told — needed to save the planet.
In its effort to wean itself off fossil fuels, California has found a willing and enthusiastic partner in the People’s Republic of China. Most batteries, solar panels, and wind turbines that make California’s green dreams possible are made in China. California leaders — from former Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to former Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown, and current Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom — have traveled to China to tout their green cooperation with Red China.
The push for electric vehicles (EVs) by California and China raises an intriguing question: Are both sides really weaning themselves off fossil fuels to save the planet and reduce pollution, or might there be an entirely different intention — at least for China?
U.S. climate czar John Kerry, a former senator, former secretary of state, and the Democratic nominee for president in 2004, epitomized American elite opinion when he said on Aug. 30 that China has “generally speaking, outperformed its (climate) commitments” and that the U.S. and China can make a difference for the world by “working together.”
When policymakers and strategists erroneously ascribe to others the same motives that they have themselves, it is called the Mirror-Image Fallacy. Opponents in warfare seek to deceive — the best deception plans are those that show the enemy what the enemy wants to believe. Mirror-Image Fallacy and deception plans can work hand-in-glove.
If China was truly going all-in on EVs to reduce pollution and curb its greenhouse gas emissions, one would expect to see that in its energy consumption profile. Instead, we see something different. Yes, China has been adding wind, solar, and nuclear power, but coal use is also increasing.
From 2010 to 2020, the amount of electricity produced by coal in China rose by 57 percent to 4,775 terawatt hours. From 2010 to 2021 — the latest year available and 2020 having been depressed by the response to Covid-19 — American coal use to generate electricity declined by 52 percent to 899 terawatt hours. U.S. coal power peaked in 2007. China surpassed U.S. coal use in 2006 and never looked back. Today, China generates more than five times the electricity from coal than the U.S., with construction underway or planned in China to build the equivalent of more than the entire operating U.S. coal fleet. By this one action alone, China will wipe out all projected U.S. reductions in greenhouse gas emissions — and then some.
Last year, China consumed 54 percent of the world’s coal. This is the main reason that China emits more greenhouse gasses than all the world’s developed nations combined — which shouldn’t be a shock given that America, Western Europe, and Japan outsourced much of their manufacturing to China over the past 20 years.
Apologists for China’s one-party communist government often cite the fact that China is still a developing nation, with about 200 million Chinese living on $5.50 a day as recently as 2018. It takes energy to be prosperous and prosperous people use energy — lots of it — for cars, air conditioning, heat, air travel, and the internet. Prosperous people, and those who expect to be, don’t typically try to overthrow their governments, either. For the Chinese Communist Party, this is key.
While the Western elite vanguard of the war against climate change sees greenhouse gas emissions as the singular existential threat, the Chinese Communist Party sees greenhouse gas emissions as the necessary byproduct of wealth, power, military might — and compliant subjects.
Were China’s leaders interested in growing their economy while improving air quality and holding the line on carbon dioxide emissions, they’d turn from coal to natural gas. If China expected to be an honest participant in the post-World War II liberal order, then it would have no qualms about increasing its dependence on natural gas.
But China has scant natural gas reserves, and the nearest large exporter, Russia, has built most of its pipeline capacity to serve Europe — which it is now cutting off, showing the danger of relying on foreign suppliers. Other major exporters in the Pacific include the U.S., Australia, and Indonesia, but China’s aggressive foreign policies have alienated these nations. Qatar has significantly increased its liquified natural gas exports to China, but these shipments are vulnerable to interdiction in the event of a conflict — it’s doubtful that much in the way of Chinese imports would make it past the Straits of Malacca.
This last point leads to a final, stunning, and very troubling conclusion. For years, strategists have assumed that China would never start a conflict that would deliberately involve America as an enemy because China imports some 72 percent of its oil, with about 85 percent of that imported oil transiting the Straits of Malacca.
But what if our policy experts have gotten China’s energy strategy all wrong? What if their efforts to reduce their reliance on oil had nothing to do with the environment and everything to do with energy security — with being able to fight a war indefinitely while being blockaded?
In 2019, 45 percent of the oil used in the U.S. was refined into gasoline for cars. Another 29 percent was made into diesel and jet fuel — applications less immediately replaceable by batteries since hydrocarbon fuels have about 100 times the energy density of lithium-ion batteries — one of the reasons why long-haul trucking and commercial jets aren’t likely to be electric anytime soon.
China is well into a program to go electric with respect to passenger vehicles. In China, this practically means that EVs are mostly coal-powered. That still leaves more oil demand than China’s modest domestic oil production can handle, risking the depletion of China’s reputed billion-barrel strategic petroleum reserve in 200 days or so.
Of course, with the onset of Covid-19, China perfected complete control of its population, shutting down travel at will and confining people to their homes. But a war can’t be won on lockdown, and people get restless. Here’s where China’s hidden ace in the hole comes in: coal gasification.
With a technology that matured in the 1920s, Germany under Hitler invested heavily in coal gasification to make gasoline and other fuels — Germany has a lot of coal and very little oil. On the eve of war in 1938, Germany produced just under 10 percent of its oil needs from domestic crude while importing 60 percent from overseas and about 8 percent from overland routes within Europe. The remaining 20 percent of Germany’s need was answered by converting coal to liquid fuels. By 1943, German synthetic fuel production had more than tripled to 42 million barrels annually.
In the 1940s, German synthetic oil was up to 20 times more costly than abundant American crude oil. But wartime necessities required its production. Today, deriving synthetic fuel from coal is about half of the cost of oil at $90 a barrel — but the process to manufacture it produces about double the greenhouse gas emissions by simply refining crude oil into fuels. Simply put, it’s cost-effective but bad for the climate — and China is investing heavily in it to reduce its reliance on imported oil.
A holistic look at China’s energy sector indicates a nation concerned only with energy security and not at all concerned with climate change. That has grave consequences for America’s ability to deter China from an ambitious campaign of military aggression.
Chuck DeVore is Chief National Initiatives Officer at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a former California legislator, special assistant for foreign affairs in the Reagan-era Pentagon, and a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army (retired) Reserve. He’s the author of two books, “The Texas Model: Prosperity in the Lone Star State and Lessons for America,” and “China Attacks,” a novel.
President Joe Biden speaks about the soul of the nation, outside of Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on September 1, 2022. | JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images
With two months to go until the midterm elections, President Joe Biden has declared that former President Donald Trump and many of his supporters are a threat to “the very foundations of our republic” in a speech that critics derided as an attack on American citizens.
In a speech Thursday evening at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Biden noted that the venue served as the location where “the United States Constitution was written and debated.” He noted that “this is where we set in motion the most extraordinary experiment of self-government the world has ever known,” creating a society based on “equality and democracy.”
Warning that “equality and democracy are under assault,” Biden declared that “Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic.” The term “MAGA” refers to Trump’s 2016 campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again.”
“Not every Republican, not even the majority of Republicans, are MAGA Republicans,” he clarified. “Not every Republican embraces their extreme ideology.”
“I know because I’ve been able to work with these mainstream Republicans,” Biden continued. “But there’s no question that the Republican Party today is dominated, driven, and intimidated by Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans, and that is a threat to this country.”
“MAGA Republicans do not respect the Constitution. They do not believe in the rule of law. They do not recognize the will of the people. They refuse to accept the results of a free election.”
Biden warned that “MAGA forces are determined to take this country backwards — backwards to an America where there is no right to choose, no right to privacy, no right to contraception, no right to marry who you love.” This portion of the speech indirectly refers to the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 24 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which ruled that the U.S. Constitution did not contain a right to abortion and thereby reversed the Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion nationwide.
While the Dobbs decision itself outraged Democrats and pro-abortion activists, critics of the ruling also expressed concern about Justice Clarence Thomas’ concurring opinion in Dobbs describing the doctrine of substantive due process that underpinned the Roe decision as “demonstrably erroneous” and suggesting that the court should “reconsider” all rulings based on that principle. He specifically mentioned the rulings declaring rights to same-sex marriage and contraception as constitutional rights.
While Thomas expressed an openness to examine “whether other constitutional provisions guarantee the myriad rights that our substantive due process cases have generated,” Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives passed measures to codify the rights to same-sex marriage and contraception into federal law. The bills still await action in the U.S. Senate.
Biden continued his speech by contending that Trump and “MAGA Republicans” support “authoritarian leaders, and they fan the flames of political violence that are a threat to our personal rights, to the pursuit of justice, to the rule of law, to the very soul of this country.” According to Biden, “They look at the mob that stormed the United States Capitol on Jan. 6th — brutally attacking law enforcement — not as insurrectionists who placed a dagger to the throat of our democracy, but they look at them as patriots.”
Biden argued that the “soul of America is defined by the sacred proposition that all are created equal in the image of God” and that “all are entitled to be treated with decency, dignity, and respect.” He also urged people to “vote, vote, vote” in the upcoming midterm elections, stressing that “we need everyone to do their part.”
Additionally, the president suggested that “if we do our duty in 2022 and beyond, then ages still to come will say we — all of us here — we kept the faith” and “preserved democracy.” The implication was that voting for Democrats in the midterms was necessary to preserve democracy.
“We just need to remember who we are. We are the United States of America. The United States of America,” he concluded. “May God protect our nation. And may God protect all those who stand watch over our democracy. God bless you all.”
The speech received much criticism from conservative commentators and Republican politicians, among them Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla.
“Angry man smears half of the people of the country he is supposed to lead & promised to unite,” tweeted Rubio, getting nearly 13,000 likes by Friday morning.
Angry man smears half of the people of the country he is supposed to lead & promised to unite pic.twitter.com/Bfa84JBamM
Kathryn Jean Lopez of National Review objected to Biden’s inclusion of abortion opponents in his definition of MAGA Republicans, viewing it as pandering to pro-choice groups.
“If the president actually wanted to unite, he wouldn’t have attacked Americans who believe abortion is the civil-rights issue of our lives. He wouldn’t have mentioned contraception (no one is taking it away — it’s a scare tactic, and it’s a cynical, underhanded attack on the likes of the Little Sisters of the Poor, on conscience rights),” wrote Lopez.’
“I could have agreed with much that he said — about the election results, about division and anger and violence — if he hadn’t made sure to make Planned Parenthood happy during the speech. They are purveyors of violence and ought to be renamed UnParenthood.”
Franklin Graham, the president of the Christian charity Samaritan’s Purse and the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, also condemned Biden’s speech in a lengthy Facebook post: “Tonight President Biden said that MAGA threatens the very foundation of our republic. Really? I want to see America great again. I want to see America as a leader, as a place for people who desire liberty and justice for all. I don’t want to see this country turned into a socialist country.”
“Does believing in freedom, justice, opportunity, less taxes, and smaller government make me an extremist? Absolutely not. The ones who are extremists are the ones who want to take that away from us!” he added. “President Biden is trying to vilify and demean conservative, freedom-loving Americans who do not support the failing and economically unsound policies of his administration. This is just further dividing our nation.”
Graham insisted that “America can only have true greatness through God,” adding “The blessings of this nation have come from the hand of God.” He maintained that “We need to turn to Him” because “We need His help, His direction, and His healing.”
Criticism of the speech extended beyond political opponents of the president. Brianna Keilar of CNN took issue with the optics of the Biden speech, specifically that he had U.S. Marines behind him as he spoke.
“Whatever you think of this speech the military is supposed to be apolitical. Positioning Marines in uniform behind President Biden for a political speech flies in the face of that. It’s wrong when Democrats do it. It’s wrong when Republicans do it,” she tweeted.
Whatever you think of this speech the military is supposed to be apolitical. Positioning Marines in uniform behind President Biden for a political speech flies in the face of that. It’s wrong when Democrats do it. It’s wrong when Republicans do it.
Biden’s speech in Philadelphia came 68 days before the 2022 midterm elections that will determine control of the U.S. Congress for the next two years. The president’s approval rating has been consistently underwater over the past year, although it has rose slightly in recent weeks. As of Friday morning, the RealClearPolitics average of polls measuring presidential approval showed that 42.0% of Americans approve of Bidens job performance compared to 54.8% who disapprove.
Since presidential approval often plays an outsized role in determining the outcome of midterm elections, political observers have expected Republicans to do well in the upcoming midterms. The FiveThirtyEight Deluxe Model, which predicts the outcome of elections based on “polls, fundraising, past voting patterns” as well as experts political analysis gives Republicans a 75% chance of taking control of the U.S. House of Representatives while giving Democrats a 68% chance of keeping control of the U.S. Senate as of Friday morning.
All 435 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives are on the ballot this year along with 35 of the 100 seats in the U.S. Senate. Democrats currently have a narrow majority in the U.S. House of Representatives and a 50-50 majority in the U.S. Senate, with Vice President Kamala Harris casting the tie-breaking vote in favor of the Democrats.
Over the past several months, Republicans have consistently maintained a narrow lead on the generic ballot, which asks voters which party they would like to control Congress. However, the generic ballot has tightened over the summer and the RealClearPolitics average of polls asking voters for their preferences in the midterms shows Democrats with an extremely narrow 0.1% lead as of Friday morning.
1capitalized: a congregation of the Roman curia having jurisdiction over missionary territories and related institutions
2: the spreading of ideas, information, or rumor for the purpose of helping or injuring an institution, a cause, or a person
3: ideas, facts, or allegations spread deliberately to further one’s cause or to damage an opposing causealso: a public action having such an effect
The History of Propaganda
Propaganda is today most often used in reference to political statements, but the word comes to our language through its use in a religious context. The Congregatio de propaganda fide (“Congregation for propagating the faith”) was an organization established in 1622 by Pope Gregory XV as a means of furthering Catholic missionary activity. The word propaganda is from the ablative singular feminine of propogandus, which is the gerundive of the Latin propagare, meaning “to propagate.” The first use of the word propaganda (without the rest of the Latin title) in English was in reference to this Catholic organization. It was not until the beginning of the 19th century that it began to be used as a term denoting ideas or information that are of questionable accuracy as a means of advancing a cause.
Source: Merriam Webster Dictionary Web Site
In the hands of gifted people, terminology can be used for good purposes, as well as deceptive purposes. Of course, you already knew that. It’s part of the bases for propaganda.
Public Office speech writers are expert in these areas. The command of the English Language seems to be found more with professional speech writers that America’s general population. Sad commentary.
Left alone, the rhetoric produced by political parties begin to create a populace that believe more lies than truth. In political terms, we are called “low information voters.” More accurately, we have become deluded citizens. Deluded to what is truth. Left unchecked, tyrannical slavery is just around the corner.
These facts make what prompted this article. The terminology in question is heard daily on any news program, especially cable news. That terminology is, “MAGA Republicans want to destroy (or tear down) our democracy.”
It began around the 2016 general election, and has been amplified to overwhelming proportions. This terminology is as dangerous as it is deliberately deceiving.
First of all, we are not now, nor have we ever been, a DEMOCRACY. The framers of our Constitution were deliberate in that decision. A democracy is mob rule. 51% of the population controlling/oppressing the 49%. That is why our Forefathers gave us a REPUBLIC, more accurately, a Representative Republic in order to ensure Americans are never oppressed by anyone, any political party or force. To further enhance, and guarantee the success of the REPUBLIC, they gave us the “Electoral College” in our national elections that ensures all states, regardless of size, has equal say, insuring every vote counts and matters.
President Biden’s speech writers use the term a lot. You heard it multiple times last night in the speech. In fact, we who have a differing set of opinions, are a threat to the democracy President Biden and the Left want in America: Totalitarian rule by mob. (Reference summer of 2020 leading up to November 8th. Multiple mobs of violent people burning down portions of America and threatening every American who disagreed with them).
I want to maintain our REPUBLIC. I want to do whatever I can, legally and morally correct, to stop all efforts to turn America into RULE BY MOB DEMOCRACY. How about you?
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Donald Trump.
Students sit in a high school classroom. | Reuters/Stephane Mahe
A federal appellate court has ruled that a California high school must allow a club for Christian athletes requiring participants to sign a “sexual purity” statement opposing homosexuality to meet on campus as an official student group. On Monday, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the Fellowship of Christian Athletes over a dispute surrounding its efforts to regain official recognition at Pioneer High School in San Jose.
A 2-1 opinion authored by Judge Kenneth Lee contends that the San Jose Unified School District violated the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution by revoking FCA’s status as an official student club at its high schools in 2019. While the school district cited concerns that the club’s “sexual purity” statement and “statement of faith” constituted violations of the district’s non-discrimination policy, Lee wrote that the school district approved other student clubs whose constitutions limited membership based on gender identity and ethnicity.
The judge, appointed to the bench by former President Donald Trump, identified the district’s approval of the Senior Women of Leland High School — open only to girls — as an example of this phenomenon.
“Under the First Amendment, our government must be scrupulously neutral when it comes to religion: It cannot treat religious groups worse than comparable secular ones,” Lee wrote in the majority opinion. “But the School District did just that.”
The FCA’s “sexual purity” statement declares, “God desires His children to lead pure lives of holiness.” The statement also highlights the Bible’s teachings that “the appropriate place for sexual expression is in the context of the marriage relationship” and that “the biblical definition of marriage is one man and one woman in a lifelong commitment.”
“While upholding God’s standard of holiness, FCA strongly affirms God’s love and redemptive power in the individual who chooses to follow Him. FCA’s desire is to encourage individuals to trust in Jesus and turn away from any impure lifestyle,” the statement concluded.
In dissent, Obama-appointed Judge Morgan Christen contends that the FCA lacks standing to “seek prospective preliminary relief, and our court lacks jurisdiction over this preliminary injunction appeal.”
“It is uncontested that student groups like FCA must reapply each fall for official ASB recognition. It is also uncontested that only student club leaders may apply,” Christen wrote.
“Because the District’s nondiscrimination policy cannot cause a real or immediately impending injury to FCA if no students apply for ASB recognition, FCA cannot establish standing without evidence that a Pioneer FCA student has applied, or intends to apply, for ASB recognition for the upcoming school year. FCA failed to make that showing.”
FCA’s statement of faith contains similar language, asking members to affirm the beliefs that “God’s design for sexual intimacy is to be expressed only within the context of marriage,” that “God instituted marriage between one man and one woman as the foundation of the family and the basic structure of human society” and that “marriage is exclusively the union of one man and one woman.”
FCA was an official student club at three San Jose Unified School District high schools for over a decade before Pioneer High School social studies teacher Peter Glasser became aware of the FCA’s statement of faith and sexual purity statement. Glasser took issue with the club’s proclamation that “[t]he Bible is clear in teaching on sexual sin including sex outside of marriage and homosexual acts.” Glasser also opposed the statements’ insistence that “neither heterosexual sex outside of marriage nor any homosexual act constitute an alternative lifestyle acceptable to God.”
The FCA also required its officers to affirm that if they are “found being involved in a lifestyle that does not conform to FCA’s Sexual Purity Statement,” they will need to step down from their FCA leadership position.
Glasser posted the FCA statements on the whiteboard in his classroom, writing that he is “deeply saddened that a club on Pioneer’s campus asks its members to affirm these statements.”
In an email to the school’s principal, Glasser shared additional concerns about FCA’s beliefs stating that “God approves only of relationships between one man and one woman” and that “God assigns our gender identities at birth based on the physical parts He gives us.”
Glasser’s email led to a discussion among the school’s Climate Committee, a group of school leaders including principals and department heads, which culminated with the revocation of the FCA as an official school club. Glasser thought that the organization’s “views on LGBTQ+ identity infringe on the rights of others in my community to feel safe and enfranchised on their own campus, even infringing on their very rights to exist.”
The Climate Committee determined that the FCA statements violated school district policy requiring that “[a]ll district programs and activities within a school under the jurisdiction of the superintendent of the school district shall be free from discrimination, including harassment, with respect to the actual or perceived ethnic group, religion, gender, gender identity, gender expression, color, race, ancestry, national origin, and physical or mental disability, age or sexual orientation.”
While FCA continued to operate on campus despite lacking recognition as an official club, the organization experienced hostility from school officials, members of the school newspaper and the student community as a whole. Students from the school newspaper took “rapid-fire” photos of participants at FCA meetings and every meeting attracted protests from the student body. Teachers at the school, including Glasser, sought to “ban FCA completely from campus.”
This prompted a lawsuit seeking an injunction “requiring Defendants to restore recognition to student chapters affiliated with” the FCA and alleging violations of FCA students’ rights to free speech, expressive association and free exercise of religion under the First Amendment and the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. After a lower court sided with the school district, the 9th Circuit granted the plaintiffs’ request for a preliminary injunction and directed the lower court to “enter an order reinstating FCA as an official student club.”
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, has announced that a group of migrants was bused from the Lone Star State to Chicago, Illinois. The governor had already been busing migrants from Texas to Washington, D.C., and New York City, though the trips are undertaken voluntarily. Now, the Windy City will be another destination for migrants who opt for such a trip.
“President Biden’s inaction at our southern border continues putting the lives of Texans—and Americans—at risk and is overwhelming our communities,” Abbott said, according to a press release. “To continue providing much-needed relief to our small, overrun border towns, Chicago will join fellow sanctuary cities Washington, D.C. and New York City as an additional drop-off location. Mayor [Lori] Lightfoot loves to tout the responsibility of her city to welcome all regardless of legal status, and I look forward to seeing this responsibility in action as these migrants receive resources from a sanctuary city with the capacity to serve them.”
The first bus of migrants transported from Texas to the nation’s capital arrived in April, and earlier this month, the first bus arrived in the Big Apple. Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser, a Democrat, has twice requested the deployment of the D.C. National Guard to assist amid the migrant influx, but both times the Pentagon has rebuffed the mayor’s requests.
“As a city, we are doing everything we can to ensure these immigrants and their families can receive shelter, food, and most importantly protection. This is not new; Chicago welcomes hundreds of migrants every year to our city and provides much-needed assistance,” a spokesperson for Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s office said in a statement. “Unfortunately, Texas Governor Greg Abbott is without any shame or humanity. But ever since he put these racist practices of expulsion in place, we have been working with our community partners to ready the city to receive these individuals.”
NEWS: Today, the City of Chicago received confirmation that approximately 60 migrants were traveling to Chicago by way of Texas. Chicago is a welcoming city and as such has collaborated across various departments and agencies to ensure we greeted them with dignity and respect. pic.twitter.com/wJWEDtXLgZ
Dozens of federal officials across multiple agencies within the Biden administration communicated extensively with social media companies to coordinate censorship of information, according to internal documents released by Republican Attorneys General Eric Schmitt of Missouri and Jeff Landry of Louisiana. Officials within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) sent emails to employees at Facebook and Twitter to flag instances of alleged misinformation and provide talking points to counter allegedly false narratives spreading on the platforms. Government officials would occasionally initiate this activity, with one message from a CDC official requesting monthly meetings with Facebook to plan “debunking” strategies, and a White House official requesting the removal of a parody Anthony Fauci account.
One collection of emails shows Facebook staff collaborating closely with staff at the HHS to remove Facebook groups, with one message describing the collaboration as “critical.” Staff from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) discussed setting up “regular chats” with Twitter, and Twitter invited White House staff to be briefed on their efforts relating to vaccine misinformation. (RELATED: Court Orders Biden White House To Cough Up Top Officials’ Communications With Big Tech)
“I know our teams met today to better understand the scope of what the White House expects from us on misinformation going forward,” one email from Facebook staff to HHS staff states. “In our previous conversations I’ve appreciated the way you and your team have approached our engagement, and we have worked hard to meet the moment — we’ve dedicated enormous time and resources to fighting this pandemic and consider ourselves partners in fighting the same battle.”
Documents produced by the Department of Justice allegedly reveal a connection between 45 federal officials at the DHS and HHS and social media giants, with the social media companies disclosing connections to officials at the White House and U.S. Election Assistance Commision, among others, according to Schmitt’s press release. The administration has allegedly refused to disclose the connections of the highest-ranking members, citing executive privilege, according to the press release.
“The limited discovery produced so far provides a tantalizing snapshot into a massive, sprawling federal “Censorship Enterprise,” which includes dozens of federal officials across at least eleven federal agencies and components identified so far,” Schmitt and Landry write in a Wednesday petition for additional documents. “[These officials] communicate with social-media platforms about misinformation, disinformation, and the suppression of private speech on social media—all with the intent and effect of pressuring social-media platforms to censor and suppress private speech that federal officials disfavor.”
🚨In May, We filed a landmark lawsuit against top ranking Biden Admin. officials for colluding with social media companies to censor free speech. We have already received documents that show their cozy relationship, and now we’re demanding more. 🧵
The DHS this spring launched a short-lived initiative known as the Government Disinformation Board, which was supposed to study misinformation online and provide the DHS with tools to combat propaganda that posed a national security threat, according to The Washington Post. The program disbanded after just three weeks due to significant backlash, according to The Washington Post.
“We’re going to need another [Nina Jankowicz] down the road,” an anonymous DHS staffer to The Washington Post, referring to the board’s erstwhile executive director. “And anyone who takes that position is going to be vulnerable to a disinformation campaign or attack.”
Facebook, Twitter, DHS, HHS and The White House did not immediately respond to a DCNF request for comment.
Mark Levin suggested Wednesday that FBI agents who raided Mar-a-Lago may also have violated the Espionage Act, the same federal law that former President Donald Trump is accused of possibly violating.
The search warrant used to raid Mar-a-Lago last month revealed that Trump is under investigation for possible violations of the Espionage Act. Most likely, investigators are probing potential violation of the controversial law over Trump allegedly retaining highly classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, documents that could imperil national security in the wrong hands. Government attorneys included in a Justice Department court filing this week a picture of classified documents strewn on the floor of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago office.
Image source: The Department of Justice
The problem is that it’s not exactly clear where the documents came from. Were they discovered strewn on the floor of Trump’s office, as the picture suggests? Or were they found in a part of the property not where they were photographed, then staged for an evidentiary photo?
According to Levin, who is an attorney, staging the sensitive documents for a photo to be eventually released to the public via a court filing is a “grossly negligent use of classified documents” that should itself be prosecuted under the Espionage Act.
“It seems to me an argument should be made that spreading highly classified documents on the floor, with the covers of the documents noting that the documents are indeed classified and taking a photograph even of the covers purely for gratuitous public use (i.e., for no reasonable or legal purpose), is a grossly negligent use of classified documents and the FBI should be held accountable under the Espionage Act,” Levin wrote on Twitter.
2. and taking a photograph even of the covers purely for gratuitous public use (i.e., for no reasonable or legal purpose), is a grossly negligent use of classified documents and the FBI should be held accountable under the Espionage Act:
Whoever, being entrusted with or having lawful possession or control of any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, note, or information, relating to the national defense, (1) through gross negligence permits the same to be removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of his trust, or to be lost, stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, or (2) having knowledge that the same has been illegally removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of its trust, or lost, or stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, and fails to make prompt report of such loss, theft, abstraction, or destruction to his superior officer—Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.
So the argument goes, the documents were strategically photographed and the picture released to drive the public narrative in a certain direction. Indeed, constitutional lawyer Johnathan Turley outright said he believes the photo was “clearly intended for public consumption.”
“It is curious that the DOJ would release this particular picture which suggests classified material laying around on the floor. The point is to state a fact that hardly needs an optical confirmation: the possession of documents with classified cover sheets,” Turley wrote. “The government could simply affirmatively state the fact of the covered pages and would not likely be challenged on that point without the inclusion of this one photo.
“For critics, the photo may appear another effort (with prior leaks) to help frame the public optics and discussion. Clearly the court did not need the visual aid of a picture of documents with covers,” he added. “It seems clearly intended for public consumption.”
The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall.com, and WhatDidYouSay.org.
Source: AP Photo/Robin Rayne
Remember the twitching girls in upstate New York?
About a decade ago, more than a dozen teen girls, crazed with puberty and hormones, developed a weird medical condition. Despite the utter scientific implausibility of their alleged illness, the mania soon spread to other girls at their school. And then it all just disappeared, giving us a road map for dealing with teenaged girls today, who demand the right to mutilate their sexual organs and inject themselves with infertility-inducing drugs.
We’ll get back to the twitching girls. First a political point.
At brunch this weekend, a couple remarked, with some irritation, that in any gathering of Republicans, everybody always starts talking about transgenders. Evidently, it’s not just Republicans. The same topic was vexing Democrats at brunch the next day. The couple’s point was: STOP TALKING ABOUT TEENAGE TRANSGENDERS!
On the other hand, any politician with three functioning brain cells will hear the same story and think, The electorate is inflamed! I better start talking about transgenders! It’s nothing big, just the greatest medical malpractice in history currently being perpetrated on America’s youth.
All I needed to know about the transgender craze was that, in a massive survey of parents of transitioning teens, 92% were women, 71% had a bachelor’s or graduate degree, 86% favored gay marriage and 91% were white.
I’m dying to hear about the biological pathway of a medical condition that afflicts almost exclusively the offspring of liberal white women. (Silver lining: On breaks from talking about their transitioning daughters, the mothers can compare “long-haul COVID” symptoms.)
The adolescent transgenders themselves were 83% girls (by which I mean “female,” that mysterious life-form unidentifiable by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson).
These delicate creatures — hormones flooding their bodies, social acceptance more important than life itself — have launched any number of interesting societal phenomena through the years:
— anorexia nervosa (females are three times more likely to have anorexia than males);
— cutting (girls are three times more likely to engage in cutting than boys);
— cavalcades of prescription drugs that shouldn’t be given to any human being, least of all a teenager (teen girls are about twice as likely to be on antidepressants as teen boys); and now …
— transgenderism. (In the past decade, the number of girls seeking to transition has gone up by about 5,500%, compared to 1,500% for boys, according to the Tavistock Centre, the U.K.’s only gender identity clinic for teens.)
A Nexis search reveals that the word “transgender” was practically nonexistent in The New York Times until fairly recently. In the past 18 months, the Times has mentioned transgenders 2,784 times. You have to wonder how the Salem witch trials got rolling without the Times’ active encouragement.
But let’s get back to the twitching girls.
In 2012, the Times published a long magazine article about a rash of teenage girls in Le Roy, New York, having nonepileptic seizures — twitching, arms flailing, head jerking, uncontrollable humming, guttural noises, fainting, tics and so on.
The Tourette’s-like seizures first occurred in a cheerleader, spread to several members of the team, then leapt to a dozen other female classmates. But, oddly, this absolutely genuine medical condition barely affected the boys, staff or teachers at the school. (Only one boy and one teacher acquired the symptoms.)
This raised no suspicions among the mothers, who carried on at town meetings, screaming at school officials, “I’m done listening to you. You need to do something!”
Experts tested the water, the playing fields, the air, the abandoned manufacturing plants. The girls underwent extensive neurological testing. Erin Brockovich even sent a team to test the dirt at the school (despite the fact that she’d turned out to be completely wrong about the purported “cancer cluster” that made her famous).
The girls and their mothers appeared on “The Today Show” and the “Dr. Phil” show. CNN sent a team of experts to investigate.
In the end, there was nothing wrong with the girls. Everyone moved on. The tics went away.
Which, it turns out, is the only way these estrogen-fueled panics ever end. The Times cited famed epidemiologists, local neurologists and feminist writers all making the exact same point: The worst thing to do when facing a psychogenic outbreak is give it attention and support. Feminist literary critic Elaine Showalter, for example, listed three prerequisites to a mass hysteria: “physician-enthusiasts and theorists; unhappy and vulnerable patients; and supportive cultural environments.”
Luckily for the girls of Le Roy, they were ordinary kids in an ordinary town, not the new victim on the block, much less the little darlings of the upper crust. If they’d been students at The Brearley School in New York City, they’d be thrashing about in wheelchairs to this day.
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Donald Trump.
U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland issued a memo Tuesday reiterating the prohibition on Department of Justice (DOJ) employees communicating with Congress. The memo directed DOJ employees to an existing guideline restricting DOJ employees’ communication with federal lawmakers, Senate and House committees and congressional staff. Garland explained that these rules help the DOJ prevent political interference in the department’s activities.
“Like the policies regarding communications with the White House, these policies ‘are designed to protect our criminal and civil law enforcement decisions, and our legal judgements, from partisan or other inappropriate influence, whether real or perceived, direct or indirect,’” the memo read. Garland also cited a section of the department’s manual that explained the guidelines also help preserve Congress’ ability to “carry out its legitimate investigatory and oversight functions.”
NEW: Attorney General Merrick Garland also sent a memo today reminding DOJ employees of the policies around communications with Congress. pic.twitter.com/8lN5tlyE7C
The memo reiterated DOJ’s policy that all communication with members of Congress is subject to approval by the Office of Legislative Affairs (OLA). This policy requires the Assistant Attorney General for the OLA to manage all communications between department members and Congress “to ensure that relevant Department or Executive Branch interests are fully protected.”
“No Department employee may communicate with Senators, Representatives, congressional committees, or congressional staff without advance coordination, consultation, and approval by OLA,” the policy states. “All congressional inquiries and correspondence from Members, committees, and staff should be immediately directed to OLA upon receipt.”
Garland issued a separate memo Tuesday prohibiting politically appointed DOJ officials from participating in political events. The memo revoked exceptions that allowed “non-career appointees” to attend partisan political events for “close family members who were running for political office” and to attend events for non-relative candidates “in their personal capacities on the evening of Election Day.”
“As Department employees, we have been entrusted with the authority and responsibility to enforce the laws of the United States in a neutral and impartial manner,” the memo read. “In fulfilling this responsibility, we must do all we can to maintain public trust and ensure that politics — both in fact and appearance — does not compromise or affect the integrity of our work.”
Garland announced August 11 that he had “personally approved the decision to seek a search warrant” for the FBI raid the former president’s private residence. The FBI said it retrieved 11 sets of classified documents, including four sets of top-secret material. Trump has disputed this account, claiming that he had declassified all the documents in question.
Republican Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley announced in a July letter to Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray that whistleblowers had told him the FBI downplayed and discredited intelligence concerning Hunter Biden’s alleged criminal activity in his overseas business dealings. Grassley later accused the FBI of a partisan double standard in a subsequent letter to Wray.
In subsequent letter to Wray, Grassley claimed that “political bias” had “infected the FBI’s Washington Field Office” and accused Assistant Special Agent in Charge Timothy Thibault of closing the case surrounding the president’s son without any valid reason. Thibault, who frequently shared partisan content on social media while working for the FBI, resigned Friday and was allegedly escorted out of the FBI building.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has flagged thousands of Mexican passports with Middle Eastern names as part of a fraud investigation, according to a memo obtained by The Washington Free Beacon.
Since Jan. 1, DHS’ National Targeting Center has identified 28,500 individuals for “further evaluation,” according to an excerpt of the memo. (RELATED: Human Trafficker Says Cartels Harvest Children’s Organs And Stuff Drugs In Their Corpses: REPORT) The investigation will seek to determine whether the passport holders entered the U.S., according to a senior DHS official, who spoke with the Beacon. Federal officials have raised concerns about the potential risks of the vulnerabilities in border security amid the influx of illegal migration, according to the Beacon. Since October, CBP has encountered 343 people whose names appeared on a national terror watchlist,according to agency data.
“This investigation highlights that criminals often use legal travel to facilitate criminal activity. The nexus to Mexico should cause the public and lawmakers to reflect on how a porous border can be even more dangerous,” the anonymous DHS official told the Beacon.
FBI Director Christopher Wray recently said that the border posed a “significant security issue” and “represents a wide array of criminal threats that flow out of it,” including potential terrorists.
REUTERS/Jose Luis Gonzalez TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY
CBP officials apprehended two men from Yemen whose names appeared on the FBI terrorism watchlist after they illegally crossed the southern border into California during two separate occasions in January and March, 2021.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) continues to encounter record numbers of migrants under the Biden administration and is on pace to surpass 2,000,000 migrant encounters for fiscal year 2022,according to agency statistics.
DHS didn’t respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
A top FBI agent who resigned after accusations he worked to undermine the probe into Hunter Biden’s laptop and business dealings also allegedly pressured bureau employees to pad domestic terror data, drawing accusations of politicizing the agency from Republicans.
Timothy Thibault, the FBI’s former assistant special agent in charge who resigned Friday after Republican allegations of his political bias in connection to the Biden laptop investigation, was allegedly one of the agents trying to get FBI employees to bolster Domestic Violent Extremism (DVE) case counts to satisfy “performance metrics,” whistleblowers alleged in July, Breitbart News reported. Thibault and other bureau agents were allegedly pushing FBI employees to reclassify cases to involve DVE even if they do not meet the criteria, the outlet reported.
DVE defines a person “without direction or inspiration from a foreign terrorist group or other foreign power who seeks to further political or social goals wholly or in part through unlawful acts of force or violence,” according to the FBI. The allegation that Thibault was one of the FBI agent’s pressuring others to bolster DVE cases was made to Breitbart by Republican Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan.
“These whistleblower allegations that the FBI is padding its domestic violent extremist data cheapens actual examples of violent extremism,” said Jordan in the letter. “This information also reinforces our concerns—about which we have written to you several times—regarding the FBI’s politicization under your leadership.”
Thibault was allegedly escorted out of the FBI building Friday, a source familiar with the matter told Fox News. The former agent was allegedly part of a widespread effort within the bureau to discredit and downplay “negative Hunter Biden information” and label it “disinformation,” Republican Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley told Wray in July, citing whistleblowers.
Grassley accused Thibault in July of “improper conduct” in connection to the Hunter Biden probe after whistleblowers allegedly told the senator Thibault sought to shut the probe down. The investigation into Hunter Biden’s business dealings is still being run by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Delaware.
A senior FBI agent who has faced scrutiny from lawmakers over alleged political bias has reportedly resigned and is no longer with the bureau.
FBI Assistant Special Agent in Charge Timothy Thibault was seen being escorted out of the FBI building Friday, the Washington Times first reported. Fox News later confirmed that Thibault retired over the weekend and was walked out of the building according to standard procedure. Thibault’s departure from the FBI comes after whistleblowers have raised concerns with lawmakers over alleged political bias within the bureau. Senate Judiciary Committee ranking member Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and House Judiciary Committee ranking member Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) have come forward with allegations from sources within the bureau who said leadership, including Thibault, exerted pressure on subordinates to downplay the Hunter Biden investigation.
Thibault was one of 13 special agents assigned to the Hunter Biden laptop investigation ahead of the 2020 election. In a July 18 letter sent to FBI Director Christopher Wray and Attorney General Merrick Garland, Grassley named Thibault and detailed “highly credible” whistleblower claims that he did not follow the FBI’s strict substantial factual predication guidelines in the course of the Hunter Biden investigation.
“Based on allegations, verified and verifiable derogatory information on Hunter Biden was falsely labeled as disinformation,” Grassley wrote. “Accordingly, the allegations provided to my office appear to indicate that there was a scheme in place among certain FBI officials to undermine derogatory information connected to Hunter Biden by falsely suggesting it was disinformation.”
After noting that Thibault displayed “a pattern of active public partisanship in his then public social media content,” Grassley revealed that in October 2020, one month before the presidential election, Thibault had ordered closed “an avenue of additional derogatory Hunter Biden reporting.”
In a separate letter, Jordan disclosed whistleblower allegations that Thibault had pressured his subordinates to pad the number of reported “domestic violent extremism” cases to support the White House’s narrative about threats facing the country.
“These whistleblower allegations that the FBI is padding domestic violent extremist data cheapens actual examples of violent extremism,” Jordan wrote. “This information also reinforces our concerns — about which we have written to you several times — regarding the FBI’s politicization under your leadership,” he told FBI Director Wray.
Wray called the allegations against Thibault “deeply troubling” during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing earlier this month. Thibault was removed from his supervisory role on the Hunter Biden investigation after the whistleblower accusations became public.
President Joe Biden set off more than a few perv-o-meter alarms on Tuesday when he suddenly stopped in the middle of a speech about America being “safer” to make creepy comments to a 9-year-old (presumably a little girl) in the audience.
He taunted “brave right-wing Americans” who believe guns are an important deterrent against government overreach.
Biden: "You know what the Mexicans, Mexico, which has real problems causing us real problems? You know what their biggest complaint is? Can't we stop the gun trafficking across the southern border, into Mexico." pic.twitter.com/6EYYpHZtQ2
He claimed “the Mexicans” have “real problems” with “gun trafficking across the southern border, into Mexico.”
Biden: "You know what the Mexicans, Mexico, which has real problems causing us real problems? You know what their biggest complaint is? Can't we stop the gun trafficking across the southern border, into Mexico." pic.twitter.com/6EYYpHZtQ2
He told the most hilarious joke (you’ve heard a thousand times before) and a few complete whoppers that were almost as funny as his complete lack of knowledge about guns and ammunition, as Glenn Beck and Stu Burguiere discussed on “The Glenn Beck Program” Wednesday.
President Biden even shared a bizarre, meandering story about … well, we’re not sure what it was about, but it sounded pretty darn racist.
Joe Biden tells bizarre story:
"There's a place where I was the only white guy that worked as a lifeguard down in that area, on the East side. And you know, you could always tell where the best basketball in the state is." pic.twitter.com/xDWi7nE4KD
But the creepiest moment of the whole insufferable event came when the president suddenly stopped his super unifying speech to ask a child in the audience, “How are you, baby? How old are you? How old are you? … almost double figures!”
We all remember when he was called out for his proclivity to touch and caress young girls publicly. He promised to reform his old-fashioned “innocent” touching and inappropriate comments. He can’t control himself, even though he knows his reputation.
Constitutional law expert Jonathan Turley on Wednesday responded to the DOJ’s release of a staged photo of so-called ‘classified’ documents strewn over the floor at Mar-a-Lago.
Biden’s corrupt Justice Department late Tuesday night responded to Trump’s request for a special master to be appointed to review the documents seized by the FBI in its raid of Trump’s Florida residence.
Trump-appointed US District Judge Aileen Cannon from the southern district of Florida on Saturday announced the “preliminary intent to appoint a special master” to review all of the records seized by the FBI during its unprecedented raid on President Trump’s home at Mar-a-Lago.
Judge Cannon said the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago “involved political calculations” to diminish the leading voice of the Republican Party just months before the midterm election.
The DOJ’s response included one photo – “Attachment F” – the alleged ‘classified’ documents Trump was supposedly hoarding at Mar-a-Lago.
The FBI made sure to include the framed Time Magazine cover showing Trump in the White House being spied on by his Democrat political opponents – including Joe Biden.
This was done on purpose – a message if you will – and further confirmation that the release of the photo was purely political.
Jonathan Turley argued that the staged photo was “clearly intended for public consumption.”
“The picture could be seen by many that secret documents were strewn over the floor when this appears the method used by the FBI to isolate classified documents. It also seems entirely superfluous in releasing this one picture. ” Jonathan Turley wrote.
“It is curious that the DOJ would release this particular picture which suggests classified material laying around on the floor. The point is to state a fact that hardly needs an optical confirmation: the possession of documents with classified cover sheets. Indeed, the top of roughly half of the documents are redacted in photo. The government could simply affirmatively state the fact of the covered pages and would not likely be challenged on that point without the inclusion of this one photo.” he added.
“For critics, the photo may appear another effort (with prior leaks) to help frame the public optics and discussion. Clearly the court did not need the visual aid of a picture of documents with covers. It seems clearly intended for public consumption.” Turley said.
Notably, this filing includes this picture which is being widely distributed. It can, however, leave an obviously misleading impression that secret documents were strewn over the floor when this appears to be the work of the FBI agents… https://t.co/3P4HZv5wBd
American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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