Russia Collusion

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow skips Durham probe’s guilty plea — despite previous Russia obsession

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow was once the go-to cable news host for the latest developments on what she believed was collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. Now, she seems to be steering clear of the latest developments that undermine the narrative she pushed for years. On Friday, former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith was expected to plead guilty to making a false statement in the first criminal case arising from U.S. Attorney John Durham’s review of the investigation into links between Russia and the 2016 Trump campaign — the so-called Russia “origins” investigation — two sources close to the matter told Fox News. Clinesmith was referred for potential prosecution by the Justice Department’s inspector general’s office, which conducted its own review of the Russia investigation. Specifically, the inspector general accused Clinesmith, though not by name, of altering an email about former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page to say that Page was “not a source” for another government agency. Page has said he was a source for the CIA. The Justice Department relied on that assertion as it submitted a third and final renewal application in 2017 to eavesdrop on Page under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). However, despite MSNBC covering the expected guilty plea earlier in the day, Maddow completely avoided the subject during her primetime show. “The Rachel Maddow Show” has seen its ratings slide since the conclusion of the Mueller investigation — despite an unprecedented news cycle focused on the coronavirus pandemic, unrest in U.S. cities and the 2020 presidential election. The Maddow slide also comes as millions of potential TV viewers have been largely confined to their homes because of virus-related shutdowns. Late last year, Maddow similarly failed to mention the damning abuses of the highly controversial FISA application process uncovered by Justice Department Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz in her exclusive sitdown with ex-FBI lawyer Lisa Page, who earlier this year became an MSNBC contributor. Maddow isn’t the only cable news personality to ignore Clinesmith’s guilty plea during primetime. CNN’s Anderson Cooper ignored the major news during his two hours on air. His colleague Don Lemon did the same in the 10 p.m. timeslot. Among the evening broadcast programs, “NBC Nightly News” also skipped the FBI controversy while ABC’s “World News Tonight” and the “CBS Evening News” addressed it.

..barely.  Rachel Maddow is just an obnoxious, self-serving, liberal hack, and a spectacular hypocrite.  And, people are starting to realize just how worthless she is, and are tuning her out.  Some enterprising journalist needs to ask her on camera why she’s avoiding these stories that clearly refute her Russia collusion hoax conspiracies she pushed for years.  Wouldn’t that be delicious?    🙂

MSNBC host Rachel Maddow’s ratings slide continues despite unprecedented news cycle

MSNBC’s most popular program, “The Rachel Maddow Show,” continued in May its extended nosedive in the cable news ratings, and some critics say it’s because the show’s eponymous host has spent the past several years misleading viewers. Maddow finished the month of May behind five different Fox News programs in total viewership, including non-primetime shows “The Five” and “Special Report with Bret Baier.” Maddow’s performance in May was even more alarming among the key demographic of adults age 25-54, where she averaged 455,000 viewers to finish tied for No. 7 in cable news, behind five different Fox News shows and even one program on MSNBC’s fellow liberal network CNN. CNN’s “Cuomo Prime Time” beat Maddow in the demo despite a month filled with negative publicity over his bro-friendly interviews with his sibling, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Even the little-watched “Anderson Cooper 360” managed to tie Maddow among the key demo during May. Maddow has been outside the top five cable news programs among total viewers and outside the top six in the demo for four consecutive months. Maddow has shed demo viewers for three straight months at the same time America has seen an unprecedented news cycle filled with everything from a global pandemic to rampant joblessness to the tragic death of George Floyd in police custody. “Rachel Maddow’s success was a one-trick pony. That trick was Trump-Russia conspiracy theories on an Alex Jones level of crazy. After the Mueller report, Maddow’s decline was inevitable,” Cornell Law School professor and media critic William A. Jacobson told Fox News, referencing the findings from former Special Counsel Robert Mueller. “She got a respite due to impeachment hysteria, but now that that too has passed, there’s no reason for anyone except the hardcore left to watch her,” Jacobson added. “Her decline could be permanent unless some other political paranoid delusion draws people back to her.” Maddow’s highest-rated month ever was January 2019, at the height of her nightly “what-ifs” regarding whether or not President Trump’s administration colluded with Russia. Maddow even finished the first quarter of 2019 as the most-watched cable news program among 25-54 demo. Attorney General William Barr’s letter summarizing Mueller’s report was released on March 24 — the final week of the quarter — indicating that a Trump campaign-Russia conspiracy didn’t exist, contradicting Maddow’s nightly narrative, and that was that. Now, critics have said she’s fighting tooth-and-nail with low-rated CNN shows just to stay relevant. “I think this is a battle of extreme idiocy and that favors CNN. Maddow has two strikes against her — she tends to be wonky and she lost a lot of leftist support when she was massively wrong about Russia. Even the left has the standard of wanting their pundits not to make them look bad. And she did,” Media Research Center Vice President Dan Gainor said. However, if the MSNBC host needed some positive news, Gainor said he didn’t think CNN has figured out a way to compete with her by practicing better journalism. “CNN has become a parody of a news network with the unethical faux journalism of anchor Chris Cuomo repeatedly interviewing his brother, the disastrous New York governor,” Gainor told Fox News. “Lucky for CNN, their viewers aren’t tuning into Cuomo or Anderson Cooper for news. They can’t be. They are tuning in for spectacle. And that, CNN will happily supply.” DePauw University professor and media critic Jeffrey McCall told Fox News that Maddow will keep her loyal fan base, who has proven to stick with her for the long haul, but her days of competing for the top spot could be over because casual viewers have evaporated. “Maddow’s credibility likely took a hit in the eyes of the less loyal viewers once the Russian collusion story dissipated,” McCall said. “The strategy of focusing so much of her program around one issue looked good at the time and her ratings jumped, but sustaining that momentum was a challenge once the news agenda changed.” McCall added that Maddow “still does draw a sizable and dedicated audience,” but “she will need to find another enticing anti-Trump storyline to lure back the more casual viewers” if she wanted to return to her pre-Mueller perch.

For someone who has a Philosophical Doctorate (in Political Science), Rachel Maddow is spectacularly stupid.  Rachel comes across as a snotty, arrogant, elitist that knows more than you and talks down to her viewers.  The funny thing is that she has been wrong so many times in the last 3.5 years since President Trump was elected, that it’s too many to list here.  From before Trump took office, her whole shtick was the so-called “Russia collusion.”  She is a liberal conspiracy nut gone crazy…and her liberal millennial Trump-derangement base got sucked into her lies and silliness.  But, when reality sunk in and the Russia narrative was proven to be a total hoax, and moreso after the Trump impeachment fiasco was a bust, that fan base left.  It’s stunning that anyone still watches her…especially since she’s been outed as a total fraud.

Supreme Court blocks House Dems’ efforts to get Mueller grand-jury info released

The Supreme Court temporarily denied a motion Wednesday from House Democrats to obtain grand-jury testimony and other documents from former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation as they conduct what they’ve referred to as an “ongoing presidential impeachment investigation” into President Trump. The court’s order kept undisclosed details from the probe into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election out of the Democrats’ hands until at least early summer. Democrats have until June 1 to brief the court about whether the full case should be heard. The Democrats had told the court Monday they were in an “ongoing presidential impeachment investigation” while arguing that Mueller’s now-completed Russia probe needed to be turned over as a result. “The [House Judiciary] Committee’s investigation did not cease with the conclusion of the impeachment trial,” the Democrats told the nine justices. “If this material reveals new evidence supporting the conclusion that President Trump committed impeachable offenses that are not covered by the articles adopted by the House, the committee will proceed accordingly — including, if necessary, by considering whether to recommend new articles of impeachment.” They were seeking testimony, transcripts and exhibits to look into the possible influence over decisions made in the prosecutions of longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone and former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. Stone was sentenced to three years in prison for obstructing Congress and other charges. The Justice Department moved to drop its case against Flynn after serious questions were raised about the nature of the investigation that led to his guilty plea of lying to the FBI. The Trump administration has been reluctant to turn over further documents related to Mueller’s probe to House Democrats. DOJ officials said they turned over all relevant information, citing grand-jury rules for not providing unredacted material. The agency argued that federal guidelines protected the secrecy of grand-jury materials and that the exception allowing the disclosure “preliminarily to or in connection with a judicial proceeding” didn’t apply, especially given Trump’s acquittal by the Senate in an impeachment trial earlier this year. Democrats said the preliminary impeachment hearings in the House constituted a pending judicial proceeding. The DOJ has been conducting a separate internal review of the Russia investigation origins, which is expected to be completed sometime during the summer. John Durham, the U.S. attorney for Connecticut, was appointed last year by Attorney General Bill Barr to review the events leading up to the 2016 presidential election and through President Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20, 2017. Durham has since expanded his investigation to cover a post-election timeline spanning the spring of 2017 — when Robert Mueller was appointed as special counsel. On Monday, Barr said he didn’t expect the probe to lead to any criminal charges against either former President Barack Obama or former Vice President Joe Biden. “As for President Obama and Vice President Biden, whatever their level of involvement based on what I know, I don’t expect Durham’s work will lead to a criminal investigation of either man,” Barr said. “Our concern of potential criminality is focused on others.”

Kudos to the Supremes for this decision, albeit a temporary one.  The Dems are wanting confidential grand jury testimony, they know they can’t have, so they can do Impeachment 2.0..in a never-ending witch hunt to undo the 2016 election, or in hopes of having another hoax read should President Trump get re-elected in November.  This is a win not just for team Trump, but for the rule of law…which affects all of us.

Gregg Jarrett: Ending Michael Flynn prosecution exposes and destroys Trump-Russia collusion hoax

The collusion house of cards has finally and fully collapsed. In a stunning turn of events Thursday, the Justice Department dropped its case against former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. Exculpatory documents concealed by the FBI and federal prosecutors for more than three years showed that the retired Army lieutenant general never lied or committed a crime. The FBI knew Flynn did not collude with Russians. He is a patriot, not a traitor. The notion that candidate Donald Trump conspired with Moscow to steal the 2016 presidential election was always an implausible phantasm built on a foundation of Russian disinformation commissioned by the Hillary Clinton campaign and Democrats. The malevolent James Comey, fired director of the FBI, knew this but it didn’t deter him. He and his lieutenants sedulously stacked the cards, one by one, against Trump by exploiting the bogus allegations and pursuing an illicit investigation designed to drive him from office. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and his sycophants in the media propagated the Russia hoax by insisting there was “solid evidence” that Trump was a secret Kremlin asset and predicting the imminent demise of his presidency. Except no such evidence ever existed. Collusion was nothing more than an illusion and a delusion. Tragically, people like Flynn became collateral damage amid the carnage of corruption, dishonesty, abuse and injustice. But the weight of all the lies and propaganda has inexorably toppled the house of cards in a slow-motion crash. I have long argued in numerous columns and two books that the retired Army lieutenant general was set up and framed by Comey, FBI Assistant Director Andrew McCabe and disgraced FBI agent Peter Strzok. They invented a perjury trap under false pretenses and deceived Flynn. Their goal was “to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired.” They knew Flynn was innocent – and hidden records proved it. The two agents who interviewed him in January 2017 concluded “that Flynn was not lying.” Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his team of partisan prosecutors also knew Flynn was not lying, but they didn’t care. Utilizing the full force of the federal government and their unlimited resources, they intimidated and bullied an innocent man into pleading guilty to making a false statement. To accomplish this, they threatened to criminally charge Flynn’s son unless the father capitulated to their demands. That aspect of the coerced plea was hidden from the court when Flynn threw in the towel. He was financially ruined and his reputation shattered. He was forced to sell his home. Thanks to the intrepid work of Flynn’s new counsel, Sidney Powell, and a review of the case ordered by Attorney General William Barr, the ugly and unconscionable actions of the FBI and Mueller’s hit squad were uncovered and exposed. The distinguished retired three-star general has now been vindicated. In a recent column, I wrote that Flynn became “the victim of one of the worst miscarriages of justice in modern times” and “he should sue the very people and government that persecuted him under the pretext of a legitimate prosecution. Let the litigation begin. Damages should run into the millions of dollars. Flynn deserves it. And the Justice Department should now consider whether crimes were committed by those who deliberately obscured the truth and arguably obstructed justice. Another card that fell this week came from the Office of Director of National Intelligence. The office notified Schiff that transcribed interviews of 53 witnesses who appeared behind closed doors before the House Intelligence Committee in 2017 and 2018 would be released to Congress and the public, despite Schiff’s best efforts for more than two years to bury the testimony. Why would the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, who has demanded transparency from Trump, want to hide the truth about him? Because the declassified 6,000 pages produced not a scintilla of collusion evidence. Zero. Of course, Intelligence Committee Chairman Schiff knew this all along, since he questioned the witnesses. He just didn’t want the American public to know it, inasmuch as it completely undermined his false collusion narrative. “Schiff is in panic mode,” a senior administration official told Fox News. Not a single witness provided any evidence of collusion, according to two sources familiar with the transcripts. The transcripts utterly discredit Schiff and expose him as a poseur. For years during television appearances, Schiff professed to have uncovered the hobgoblin of a grand conspiracy involving Trump. Yet, he refused to offer any proof. He pretended that he was privy to evidence that he did not have. As I wrote in my book “Witch Hunt: The Story of the Greatest Mass Delusion in American Political History: “The more Democrats and the media worked in concert to advance their hallucination that Trump had colluded with Russia, the more audacious Schiff became in his public denouncements of the president. He frequently insinuated that he had special access to damning information that few others could procure. Even after the House Intelligence Committee issued its majority investigative report concluding that it had all been a hoax, Schiff announced, ‘I can certainly say with confidence that there is significant evidence of collusion between the campaign and Russia.’ He produced no such evidence because it did not exist.” On CBS’ “Face the Nation,” Schiff ventured that Trump “may be the first president in quite some time to face the real prospect of jail time.” This claim was ludicrous, of course. Yet, Schiff was so heavily invested in the scam and the celebrity it brought him that there was no reversing course. He knew it was untrue. But like a guy with a counterfeit bill, he kept trying to pass it off to others. Schiff is living proof that the truth always has a nemesis. Still another card fell this week when the Justice Department belatedly made public the unredacted version of the so-called “scope memo” penned by then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in August 2017 detailing the scope of Mueller’s Russia investigation. Rosenstein authorized Mueller to specifically target Trump campaign aide Carter Page for “colluding with Russian government officials with respect to the Russian government’s efforts to interfere with the 2016 election for President of the United States.” However, Rosenstein already knew that these allegations, based on the anti-Trump “dossier” –composed by ex-British spy Christopher Steele – had been discredited by the FBI. Seven months earlier, bureau agents had located Steele’s primary source of information. That source debunked the “dossier” as exaggerations and fabrications, according to the findings of Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz. At that point, the FBI should have shut down its probe. Instead, Comey persisted. When Comey was fired in May 2017, Rosenstein appointed Mueller to launch a new investigation – even though the deputy attorney general well knew there was no credible evidence that supported the appointment of a special counsel under federal regulations. Mueller knew this as well, since he was given the FBI files. On “Hannity” on Fox News on Wednesday, Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., stated that “the legal foundation to justify Mueller’s appointment in my view does not exist. … That’s why this (scope) memo is so important.” Graham is correct. The Mueller investigation was illegitimate from the outset, even though it eventually found no evidence of a collusion conspiracy. Rosenstein misconstrued – and thereby misused – the special counsel regulations. An “articulable criminal act” must first be identified. It must antecede the appointment, not vice versa. But when Mueller was appointed, the FBI had developed no such evidence. That was confirmed by Steele’s source, as well as the subsequent testimony of Comey and former FBI lawyer Lisa Page. The evidentiary premise of a crime was conspicuously missing. Thus, Mueller began his investigation in search of a crime, reversing the legal process mandated under the regulations. None of this seemed to matter to Rosenstein. He was determined to get rid of Trump. Evidence shows he plotted to secretly record the president and then use the recording as evidence to try to remove the president from office under the 25th Amendment. As a result, Rosenstein should have been disqualified from any involvement in the special counsel case. It was not possible for someone so noticeably antagonistic to the president to be an unbiased and neutral party overseeing that investigation. Not only was the naming of a special counsel unauthorized, but the FBI’s original investigation launched in July 2016 was improper. In an interview on Fox News last month, Attorney General William Barr called the three-year Russia probe “one of the greatest travesties in American history.” Barr made it abundantly clear that it should never have happened. He said: “Without any basis, they started this investigation of his (Trump’s) campaign, and even more concerning, actually is what happened after the campaign, (There was) a whole pattern of events while he was president … to sabotage the presidency … or at least have the effect of sabotaging the presidency.” Barr has vowed “to get to the bottom of it.” With his appointment of Connecticut U.S. Attorney John Durham, the attorney general has committed his department to holding individuals accountable. “If people broke the law, and we can establish that with the evidence, they will be prosecuted,” Barr promised. There is no doubt that Comey, McCabe, Strzok, Rosenstein, Schiff and a great many others were intimately involved in the scheme to sabotage Trump. They managed to initiate the Trump investigation with no evidence of a crime and then convince the country that an unparalleled investigation was necessary. Their phony collusion narrative was a conspiracy in and of itself, contrived as a political instrument and then weaponized by unscrupulous government officials. Now that their house of cards has collapsed, it is time for a reckoning.

Indeed..  LTG Michael Flynn, Ret., has been 100% exonerated, and this whole so-called Russia “collusion” has been proven to have been a complete hoax on the American people by corrupt officials at the FBI from James Comey on down, Hillary Clinton (and her campaign), the DNC, members of the dominantly liberal mainstream media, and many Democrat politicians hell bent on bringing down Trump no matter the cost.  And, in the process, lots of these people committed crimes.  Now it’s time for payback.  Hopefully Sidney Powell and the rest of Flynn’s very capable legal team are working on that.  The man is owed millions..and that’s just the civil side of things.  Lots of these folks should go to jail.  We’ll, of course, be keeping a close eye on this developing story.  Thanks to Gregg Jarrett for his spot on legal analysis.  He was one of the few legal commentators in the media that has been right about this story all along.

Gregg is a Fox News legal analyst and commentator, and formerly worked as a defense attorney and adjunct law professor. He is the author of the No. 1 New York Times best-selling book “The Russia Hoax: The Illicit Scheme to Clear Hillary Clinton and Frame Donald Trump.” His latest book is the New York Times bestseller “Witch Hunt: The Story of the Greatest Mass Delusion in American Political History“

Durham’s investigation into possible FBI misconduct is now criminal probe, sources say

U.S. Attorney John Durham’s ongoing probe into potential FBI and Justice Department misconduct in the run-up to the 2016 election through the spring of 2017 has transitioned into a full-fledged criminal investigation, two sources familiar with the investigation told Fox News on Thursday night. One source added that DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s upcoming report on alleged FBI surveillance abuses against the Trump campaign will shed light on why Durham’s probe has become a criminal inquiry. Horowitz announced on Thursday his report would be available to the public soon, with “few” redactions. The investigation’s new status means Durham can subpoena witnesses, file charges, and impanel fact-finding grand juries. Fox News reported on Tuesday that Durham’s probe had expanded significantly based on new evidence uncovered during a recent trip to Rome with Attorney General Bill Barr. Barr reportedly told embassy officials in Italy that he “needed a conference room to meet high-level Italian security agents where he could be sure no one was listening in.” A source in the Italian Ministry of Justice told The Daily Beast earlier this month that Barr and Durham were played a taped deposition made by Joseph Mifsud, the professor who allegedly told ex-Trump aide George Papadopoulos that the Russians had “dirt” on Hillary Clinton. Mifsud reportedly was explaining to investigators in the deposition why people would want to harm him, and why he needed police protection. Papadopoulos has suggested he was connected with Mifsud as part of a setup orchestrated by intelligence agencies. Sources told Fox News that Durham was “very interested” to question former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and former CIA Director John Brennan, an anti-Trump critic who recently dismissed the idea. The New York Times reported Thursday that Durham’s criminal review has prompted some CIA officials to obtain criminal legal counsel in anticipation of being interviewed. Brennan and Clapper were at the helm not only when Mifsud spoke to Papadopoulos, but also when an unverified and largely discredited dossier, written by British ex-spy Christopher Steele and funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee, was used to help justify a secret surveillance warrant against former Trump adviser Carter Page in the run-up to the 2016 election. (The Times’ reporting on Thursday, which overtly framed Durham’s probe as politically tainted without evidence, did not mention the Steele dossier at all.) The FBI apparently obscured the fact that the Clinton campaign and DNC funded the dossier in its warrant application, telling the secret court only that the dossier was prepared at the behest of an unidentified presidential campaign. Additionally, in its original FISA application and subsequent renewals, the FBI told the FISA court it “did not believe” Steele was the direct source for a Yahoo News article implicating Page in Russian collusion. Instead, the FBI suggested to the secret court, the September 2016 article by Michael Isikoff was independent corroboration of the dossier. But, London court records showed that contrary to the FBI’s assessments, Steele briefed Yahoo News and other reporters in the fall of 2016 at the direction of Fusion GPS. It has further emerged that Steele had communications with a State Department contact — which were relayed to the FBI — in which Steele claimed the Russians were running a “technical/human operation run out of Moscow targeting the election” and that “payments to those recruited are made out of the Russian Consulate in Miami.” There is no Russian consulate in Miami, a fact the State Department official, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Kathleen Kavalec, emphasized in her notes. And, Steele had suggested his client was “keen” to see his information come to light prior to Election Day. Kavalec forwarded her notes to the FBI and other government officials several days before the FISA warrant was issued for Page. Additionally, Special Counsel Robert Mueller was unable to substantiate other key claims in the dossier, including that the Trump campaign employed hackers in the United States, that there was a compromising recording of the president in a hotel room, and that ex-Trump attorney Michael Cohen flew to Prague to build a conspiracy with hackers. Cohen has denied ever heading to Prague, and no public evidence has contradicted that claim.

Uh oh!!  Boy are the Dems and their willing accomplices in the dominantly liberal mainstream media losing their minds.  They can’t stand that the shoe is now on the other foot.  Rachel Maddow nearly had a meltdown last night on MSNBC.  The whole Russia so-called “collusion” hoax is unraveling, and those responsible for creating it in an attempt to undue the results of the 2016 election are the ones now being investigated.  Some of them will probably end up going to jail.  Guess we’ll see..  This story is developing..  Sit back and pop some popcorn..  This is gonna be fun to watch!      🙂

William Barr confirms expanded Justice Department probe of Russia-Clinton links

Attorney General William P. Barr revealed Wednesday that the Justice Department is looking into the possibility that Russian operatives fed disinformation to the Hillary Clinton campaign during the 2016 presidential election season. Mr. Barr told a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing about the expanded scope of a review into “the activities over the summer of 2016,” which included vehemently anti-Trump FBI senior officials making key decisions on the investigations of Mrs. Clinton and Republican candidate Donald Trump. One key question is how much the FBI relied on the dossier compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele, using information gleaned from Russian sources, which helped spur the Trump-Russia collusion narrative. The dossier was funded by payments from the Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee that were hidden in campaign finance reports behind payments to a law firm. Republican senators said it’s possible that Mr. Steele’s Russian sources were intentionally feeding him disinformation, which then made it to the highest levels of the FBI. Indeed, former FBI Director James B. Comey’s first personal interaction with Mr. Trump was to brief him on the Steele dossier shortly before his inauguration in January 2017. “That’s the definition of collusion,” said Sen. Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the chamber’s senior Republican. Mr. Barr said he doesn’t know the answer — yet. “That is one of the areas that I’m reviewing. I’m concerned about it, and I don’t think it’s entirely speculative,” he told the Senate Judiciary Committee.

One word…karma.  What goes around, comes around.  Now the shoe is on the other foot, and AG Barr is rightfully assembling a team to look into how this whole nonsense actually started.  The whole things was based on lies and a brazen abuse of power by the Obama DOJ.  Pop some popcorn and get ready to sit back and watch the fireworks as the heads of Dems explode over this.  They fed America the lie that their duly-elected President was a traitor and a Russian plant.  Now, we know the whole Russian collusion narrative was a hoax; a hoax perpetrated by Dems and their willing accomplices in the dominantly liberal mainstream media.  AG Barr is gonna investigate how it started, and follow the trail wherever it leads.  And corrupt Dems are nervous as heck, which is why they’re disingenuously crying foul.  This is gonna be fun!  For more, click on the text above.   🙂

Gregg Jarrett: Trump-Russia ‘collusion’ was always a hoax — and dirtiest political trick in modern US history

There was never any evidence that Donald Trump “colluded” with Russia to steal the 2016 presidential election from Hillary Clinton. It was all a hoax. It constituted what is surely the dirtiest political trick in modern American history. The hoax was based largely on an anti-Trump “dossier” conjured from the fertile imaginations of two nefarious characters: ex-British spy Christopher Steele; and Fusion GPS Founder, Glenn Simpson. It was commissioned by the Hillary Clinton campaign and Democrats, then peddled all over Washington to journalists, the FBI, the State Department and the Department of Justice. It spread like an airborne contagion in a 50 mile per hour wind. The premise of the ruse was as outlandish as the actions of those who advanced it. Steele was fired by the FBI for lying and went into hiding. Simpson eventually invoked the Fifth Amendment and clammed up. There were no credible facts when the FBI wrongfully launched its “collusion” investigation in July of 2016, violating its own regulations. There was still nothing remotely plausible in May of 2017 when fired FBI Director James Comey absconded with government documents and leaked them to the media for the sole purpose of triggering the appointment of a special counsel, Robert Mueller. If you harbor any doubts about the “paucity” of evidence, read the closed-door testimony of FBI lawyer Lisa Page and Comey. Their admissions will stun you. Along the way, the FBI obtained a wiretap warrant on a Trump campaign associate, Carter Page, by concealing vital evidence to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) and deceiving the judges. No one, as yet, has been held accountable for any of that. The last time I checked, perpetrating a fraud on a court is a felony. Several of them, in fact. Oh, and undercover informants were dispatched by the FBI to infiltrate the Trump campaign. Now, after an exhaustive 22-month investigation, we have finally learned from the new Attorney General, William Barr, that “the Special Counsel’s investigation did not find that the Trump campaign or anyone associated with it conspired or coordinated with Russia in its efforts to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election.” Trump did not hack the Clinton campaign and Democratic Party organizations. Trump did not hatch a plot in the bowels of the Kremlin to win the election. The infamous Trump Tower meeting with a Russian lawyer was not a crime. Carter Page was not a spy after all. The list of false accusations that Trump has suffered are too numerous to recount here. You’d need a calculator. To Democrats and most in the media such trivial things as evidence never mattered. They didn’t care about that. They treated facts as a mere nuisance. They allowed their political bias and personal animus toward Trump to blind them. Their obsessive belief in a nonexistent conspiracy with Putin consumed all common sense. As their hatred for Trump and his policies grew, they became more sedulous in propagating fictitious stories. Democrats in Congress like Adam Schiff, Eric Swalwell, Richard Blumenthal, Nancy Pelosi, Jerold Nadler, Maxine Waters, and so many others all claimed without a scintilla of proof that Trump “colluded” with Russia. For two years, they pronounced him guilty in the court of public opinion. Democrats convinced themselves that President Trump’s election was misbegotten. They accepted “collusion” as a matter of faith driven by their own prejudices, and teased by hope out of ignorance. Will they ever apologize? Of course not. They will conjure some vacuous excuse and move on to the next accusation. They’re already doing it. Many journalists were equally reckless and malevolent. Most of them never bothered to examine the facts, evidence and the law. They refused to do their jobs. Instead, they abandoned objectivity and suspended their sense of fairness. They allowed enmity to obscure their judgment. In the process, the media squandered credibility, its only currency. It is no wonder that many Americans have little trust in journalists to be honest in their reporting. Will network brass take action to punish those who so egregiously exaggerated or, in some cases, even lied to Americans? Not a chance. Network chiefs were complicit cheerleaders. The media, together with Democrats, are already parsing and pivoting. Without missing a beat, they are pivoting to obstruction of justice by parsing what Attorney General William Barr wrote in his summary letter to the heads of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees. Barr stated, “Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and I have concluded that the evidence developed during the Special Counsel’s investigation is not sufficient to establish that the President committed an obstruction of justice offense.” Barr and Rosenstein, the two top officials at the Department of Justice, did not reach this conclusion in a vacuum. They sought the opinions of other lawyers at the DOJ, including the Office of Legal Counsel. They studied the evidence and the law. They consulted the same DOJ lawyers who were guiding Mueller on the subject of obstruction during his long investigation. They reached a firm consensus that, under the law, President Trump never acted “with corrupt intent” to obstruct “a pending or contemplated proceeding.” One of the reasons that led Barr and Rosenstein to their inexorable conclusion is that Trump had committed no underlying crime of conspiracy with Russia or, if you like, “collusion.” In simplistic terms, it is difficult to argue that someone intended to obstruct a non-crime. This is exactly the question Trump has posed on more than one occasion when he asked, rhetorically, “Why would I interfere in something I didn’t do?” Why, indeed. While Mueller was more than willing to conclude that Trump never “colluded” with Russia, he deliberately dodged rendering any decision on obstruction of justice. He left it entirely to Barr. In so doing, the special counsel abdicated his responsibility as the prosecutor who was hired to make this very decision. While shirking this authority, Mueller then took an inappropriate swipe at Trump by writing, “While this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.” This was a blatant cheap shot by Mueller, although thoroughly expected. It’s very much like a prosecutor who loses a case and then claims to the media, “Well, the jury may have found the defendant not guilty, but that doesn’t mean he’s innocent.” Technically, that’s true. But it’s how losers try to justify the result they don’t like. Mueller knew Trump did not obstruct justice in firing Comey. The president was constitutionally authorized to dismiss him for a stated reason or no reason at all. Even Comey admitted it in a letter to his staff, and there were a plethora of reasons to sack the director. The president’s subsequent public remarks about the firing did not come close to exhibiting a “corrupt intent” to interfere in the Russian investigation. Trump’s comments were widely misreported and misrepresented by the media. This should come as no surprise to anyone. As for Trump’s alleged remark to Comey that he “hoped” that his fired national security adviser Michael Flynn would be cleared by the FBI, this did not constitute an attempt at obstruction of justice, as I explained in detail in my book, “The Russia Hoax.” Again, Comey all but admitted this when he testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee. In separate hearings, Rosenstein, Comey and Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe all assured Congress that no one had tried to obstruct their investigations. I suspect Mueller ducked his obligation to render a decision on obstruction and inserted the “exonerate” language in his report so that rabid Democrats in Congress would take up the anti-Trump cause as a pretext for impeachment proceedings. Sure enough, within minutes of Barr’s letter, House Judiciary Chairman Jerold Nadler, D-N.Y., commenced the obstruction-impeachment battle when he tweeted, “In light of the very concerning discrepancies and final decision making at the Justice Department following the Special Counsel report, where Mueller did not exonerate the President, we will be calling Attorney General Barr in to testify before the House Judiciary in the near future.” The Russia Hoax begat the Witch Hunt… and Mueller has seen to it that the Witch Hunt is far from over.

Agreed!   Thanks to former attorney Gregg Jarrett for that outstanding recap.  Gregg formerly worked as a defense attorney and adjunct law professor. He is the author of the No. 1 New York Times best-selling book “The Russia Hoax: The Illicit Scheme to Clear Hillary Clinton and Frame Donald Trump.”

Alan Dershowitz: Mueller just filed Russia report. Here’s what Barr should do with it

All we know at this point is that Special Counsel Robert Mueller delivered his report on Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election to Attorney General William Barr on Friday. What we don’t know is how the attorney general will handle the report. Barr has several options. The fairest would be to immediately turn the report over to President Trump’s legal team and give them a week to write a response. Barr could then issue both reports simultaneously so that the American public could judge the comparative merits of both sides of this adversarial process. But there may well be pressures on the attorney general to send the report to Congress – thus making it public – as soon as he can vet it for possible national security omissions. If that’s what the attorney general does, then it is imperative that the American public withhold conclusions about the report until the Trump legal team has had the opportunity to respond in the court of public opinion. This is crucial because prosecutorial reports – and Special Counsel Mueller is a prosecutor – are, by their very nature, one-sided. Prosecutors only listen to inculpatory evidence rather than including exculpatory evidence. They interview witnesses against the subject, but not witnesses in favor of the subject. That is why the Trump legal defense team needs to provide its assessment of the Mueller investigation. Americans are impatient. The Mueller investigation has gone on since May 2017. So, there will be an impulse to arrive at judgments, at least preliminary ones, without waiting for the rebuttal. The Mueller report itself might give us some clues as to the manner in which the investigation was conducted. How much reliance was placed on bought or rented witness? That is, defendants who were given the opportunity to cooperate with prosecutors in order to reduce their sentences. Great caution ought to be exercised in accepting evidence from any such source, especially since they have not been cross-examined or subject to other challenges. We may also learn about whether there are any ongoing investigations by ordinary federal prosecutors in New York, Washington or Virginia. In addition, we may see a roadmap for further investigations by Congress. It is unlikely that the president will be charged with obstruction of justice for firing FBI Director James Comey, especially since the person overseeing the Mueller investigation, Rod Rosenstein, was centrally involved in that decision, offering the memorandum that justified it. Nor is it likely that the president or his campaign will be charged with any sort of collusion since there is no such crime in the criminal code. It is possible that we may see some allegations of campaign law violations, but those are likely to be rather technical and not rise to the level of an impeachable offense. So hold your breath and stay tuned, America. And please, don’t rush to judgment until you have not only read this report but any response the Trump legal team may offer. You will hear more from me once I’ve had an opportunity to read the report and any response.

And we look forward to hearing it, professor! Dr. Alan M. Dershowitz is Felix Frankfurter professor of law, emeritus, at Harvard Law School. His latest book is “The Case Against Impeaching Trump.” Yet, he is a registered Democrat who proudly voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016.  So, hardly on the Trump Train.  He’s just a fair-minded, and very respected lawyer.  Follow him on Twitter: @AlanDersh Facebook: @AlanMDershowitz.

‘Tradecraft failings’: CIA’s conclusion that Putin interfered in election to help Trump was flawed

U.S. intelligence agencies’ far-reaching conclusion that Vladimir Putin interfered in the 2016 presidential election to specifically help Donald Trump was flawed by “tradecraft failings,” says a House report. The conclusion was written by the CIA then under the direction of Obama loyalist John O. Brennan. The report said the CIA’s Putin-Trump analysis violated standards for analyzing intelligence products and noted that one guideline is to “be independent of political considerations.” It said the CIA’s draft section on Mr. Putin’s intentions lacked vigorous internal debate because it was restricted to an “unusually constrained review” by other agencies. The findings are contained in the Republican majority report of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence investigation into 2016 Russian election meddling. The intelligence agencies’ January 2017 Putin-Trump conclusion produced wide-ranging political ramifications. It buttressed the argument from Hillary Clinton, who from the moment she lost to Mr. Trump cited Russia as the reason. Obama loyalists, such as Mr. Brennan and former National Director of Intelligence James R. Clapper, have suggested that Mr. Trump is a Putin agent. House intelligence committee Republicans agreed unanimously about faulty analytical methods.

For more, click on the text above.

Democratic Sen. Mark Warner texted with Russian oligarch lobbyist in effort to contact dossier author Christopher Steele

Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee who has been leading a congressional investigation into President Trump’s alleged ties to Russia, had extensive contact last year with a lobbyist for a Russian oligarch who was offering Warner access to former British spy and dossier author Christopher Steele, according to text messages obtained exclusively by Fox News. “We have so much to discuss u need to be careful but we can help our country,” Warner texted the lobbyist, Adam Waldman, on March 22, 2017. “I’m in,” Waldman, whose firm has ties to Hillary Clinton, texted back to Warner. Steele famously put together the anti-Trump dossier of unverified information that was used by FBI and Justice Department officials in October 2016 to get a warrant to conduct surveillance of former Trump adviser Carter Page. Despite the efforts, Steele has not agreed to an interview with the committee. Secrecy seemed very important to Warner as the conversation with Waldman heated up March 29, when the lobbyist revealed that Steele wanted a bipartisan letter from Warner and the committee’s chairman, North Carolina Republican Sen. Richard Burr, inviting him to talk to the Senate intelligence panel. Throughout the text exchanges, Warner seemed particularly intent on connecting directly with Steele without anyone else on the Senate Intelligence Committee being in the loop — at least initially. In one text to the lobbyist, Warner wrote that he would “rather not have a paper trail” of his messages. An aide to Warner confirmed to Fox News that the text messages are authentic. The messages, which were obtained from a Republican source, are all marked “CONFIDENTIAL” and are not classified. They were turned over to the Senate panel by Waldman last September. Waldman, who did not return calls seeking comments, runs the Endeavor Group in Washington. Waldman is best known for signing a $40,000 monthly retainer in 2009 and 2010 to lobby the U.S. government on behalf of controversial Russian billionaire Oleg V. Deripaska. Deripraska had his visa revoked by the State Department in 2006 because of charges, which he has denied, that he has organized crime ties.

With each new day, the whole Russia collusion narrative being pushed by the Dems, and the dominantly liberal mainstream media, continues to unravel.  And, ironically, the tables have turned.  We’re finding out that the whole thing was a sham and driven by the DNC, Hillary, and Dems like Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) who really have been “colluding” with Russians all along to undermine our democratic processes and the last election.  For more on this developing story, click on the text above.