Reading the report of Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz, it is obvious that Dr. Jill McCabe, the wife of fired FBI Deputy Director Andy McCabe, was recruited by the Clinton machine to run for office and then showered with money to give the Clintons more influence at the FBI.
The inspector general’s report documents Dr. McCabe’s brief political career. First Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe stops by the hospital where she works to meet her. Then McAuliffe invites her to the governor’s mansion to talk about running for office. While she is there he takes her to a speech in his limousine where he introduces her to the audience, then he takes her back to the governor’s mansion to talk further about running for office.
It doesn’t make sense for McAuliffe to court someone so intensely who was not politically active to run for an office that he knew she couldn’t win.
Then McAuliffe provides her campaign with $675,000 up front, which was 40 percent of the money she raised. He probably provided another large percentage through donors loyal to the Clintons from across the country.
That is huge money to a novice running for a state Senate seat, but is chicken feed to the Clinton machine, so it probably didn’t take McAuliffe much effort to raise the money for her campaign.
Then wonder of wonders, Andy McCabe, a mid-level FBI agent from the Washington field office, in a little over a year, becomes the deputy director of the FBI and in charge of the investigation of Hillary Clinton. How amazing that someone whose wife the Clintons had just provided with hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign funds was just by coincidence appointed up the ladder to deputy director like magic.
It is actually a lot like the meeting between Attorney General Loretta Lynch and Bill Clinton in Lynch’s plane at the Phoenix Airport, where Clinton just happened to be sitting waiting for Lynch. Of course, they discussed nothing other than grandchildren and golf.
And if you believe that about the Lynch and Bill Clinton meeting then you probably believe that the governor of Virginia, who happens to be one of the Clintons’ best friends, just happened by a hospital emergency room to visit with an obscure doctor whose only claim to fame was that she was married to a mid-level FBI agent.
We also know a couple of things about McCabe that made him interesting to the Clintons. First, he is a liar. According to the inspector general’s report, he not only lied under oath about leaking a news story to The Wall Street Journal, after he leaked the story he called up the head of the New York FBI office and reamed him out for the leak.
And it appears McCabe may have some other issues. How else do you explain that he had a $70,000 conference table in his office and when text messages were released to Congress the price of that table was redacted because evidently it was so highly classified that even members of Congress with top security clearances couldn’t be allowed to know that fact?
It’s not likely anyone will ever be able to prove that Dr. McCabe was recruited just so the Clintons could get to her husband, but it has all the earmarks of a Clinton operation – making sure they had a man in place in case they needed him.
The airport meeting was probably in the same vein. The Clintons wanted to make certain that in light of the overwhelming evidence against Hillary Clinton that the Justice Department would, in the immortal words of Sgt. Schultz, report, “I see nothing. I know nothing.”
And it all worked. The inspector general’s report is chock full of extreme bias on behalf of Hillary Clinton and hatred for President Donald Trump. Since none of the top agents involved in the investigation admitted on the record that they fixed the investigation, the inspector general couldn’t report that they did. But the inspector general admits that the evidence is there that there was bias.
The chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence noted that in the interview of Hillary Clinton there wasn’t one question about her intent in setting up the private email server and yet the entire reason she was not prosecuted, according to fired FBI Director James Comey, was that there was no intent. It would be like law enforcement interviewing a man found with a bag full of money, a gun and a mask, never asking him if he had robbed a bank and letting him go because all they had was circumstantial evidence.
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They used to call it herd journalism, but herds are kind of peaceful and this is less like a herd and more of an attack group, like a cackle of hyenas.
This children at the border stuff is cackle journalism at its worst. So people entering this country illegally are being separated from their children. There is a simple solution to the problem: For the parents who don’t want to be separated from their children, don’t enter the country illegally.
Trump has not been shy about making it known that he planned to end illegal immigration into the US. Trump can’t end it all, just like the wall won’t stop everyone, but he can enforce the current laws, which is what he is doing.
American citizens get separated from their children every time a parent is arrested and put in jail. These are people who are presumed innocent because they haven’t been convicted of any crime, but the police haul them off in handcuffs and they are forcibly separated from their children. If these people make bail, the separation may not be long; if they don’t, it could be months. Then if they are convicted of a crime and sent to prison, the separation could be for years.
The illegal immigrants caught at the border are also detained because law enforcement has reason to believe they have committed a crime, and in some, but not all cases, they are separated from their children while a determination is made.
If there is some huge difference between how foreign nationals who are apprehended for allegedly breaking the law and American citizens who are apprehended for allegedly breaking law, I don’t see it.
I haven’t heard many of the people horrified that parents are being separated from their children present a solution, other than have open borders so that people would not be detained when they enter this country illegally.
It was the solution of President Barack Obama, and is one of the reasons that the country has a huge illegal immigrant problem today.
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If you think it is an accident that the Democrats and their cohorts in the mainstream media suddenly started caterwauling about the children at the border at the same time the inspector general’s report on the FBI investigation of the Hillary Clinton email debacle was released, then you don’t understand Washington politics. It is not a coincidence.
The cackle journalism on the children at the border demonstrates the power of the mainstream media. The story is everywhere. And with so many heart wrenching videos of young children weeping, it’s difficult to maintain any semblance of objectivity.
But if you step back and ignore the visuals and the cackle of journalists comparing this to concentration camps, you realize that the animosity toward the Trump administration for creating this problem is misplaced.
The laws don’t have to require that children be separated from their parents in some situations. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said, “How is it that the people making the laws don’t get blamed but the blame goes on the organization that is enforcing the laws.”
If the majority of representatives and senators believe that this is a bad law, they can change it tomorrow.
The huge difference at the border is that the Trump administration is enforcing the law and the Obama administration used selective enforcement. Some children were separated from their parents under the Obama administration, but that was not seen as a problem by the mainstream media because it was Obama and, by definition, everything Obama did was moral, right and just.
Trump is being raked over the coals for enforcing the laws written by Congress and interpreted by the courts.
Trump has ended catch and release, which is one of the programs that resulted in the US having 12 million to 15 million illegal immigrants living in this country. Under that program people crossing the border illegally who were caught, charged with illegally entering the country and told to report to court months later where their cases would be heard.
Probably out of the millions of illegal immigrants caught and released someone actually showed up in court, but the vast majority went on about their business. They knew if they went to court they would be sent home and they also knew that the federal government had no way to find them once they left the area.
The difference now is that people caught illegally crossing the border are detained until their court case is heard, which is usually a matter of days.
What holds everything up and has resulted in most of the kids being separated from their parents are people who are caught illegally crossing the border who then request asylum.
What the mainstream media and everyone who has jumped on the bandwagon want is for Trump to stop enforcing the law as it has been interpreted by the courts.
Not enforcing the immigration laws are what got us in the mess we are in today. I don’t think there is any doubt that Trump, who wants comprehensive immigration reform, is pressing the issue by enforcing the current laws – something that past presidents refused to do.
But the message should be loud and clear to those who are considering entering this country illegally. If they are caught, there is a strong likelihood that the children they are traveling with, whether their children or the children of someone else, will likely be separated from them at the border and then reunited with them when they are forced to leave the country.
Nielsen said that of the 12,000 children the federal government currently is currently caring for, 10,000 crossed the border by themselves and only 2,000 crossed the border with an adult who may or may not be a parent or relative.
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The mainstream media are having a heyday with the statements by Laura Bush condemning the practice of separating the children of illegal immigrants from their parents at the border. Of course, what the mainstream media don’t mention is that the policies being enforced go back to when her husband, George W. Bush, was president, and he didn’t solve the illegal immigration problem.
Although both the Bushes and Trump are Republicans, there is no love lost between the two families. Trump humiliated Jeb Bush in the Republican primaries by labeling him as the “low energy candidate.” It was particularly damaging to Jeb Bush’s campaign because it was so apt. But until Trump stepped into the ring, Bush was considered one of the front-runners.
So for Laura Bush to step up to slap Trump down is no surprise, and not much different from the attacks Trump is receiving from the left. The Bushes never supported Trump and don’t like him.
After all, the Bushes are by definition swamp creatures and Trump came to drain the swamp.
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It’s nearly impossible to get fired from a government job. Look at FBI agent Peter Strzok. He was removed from FBI headquarters on Tuesday, but he’s still getting a paycheck. Trump famously said he could go out on the street and shoot someone and his supporters would still vote for him. The same could be said of Strzok: He could shoot some innocent person and the next day go to work like nothing happened.
Here’s the question that Comey needs to be asked the next time he appears before Congress, which should not be long. Strzok was the lead agent on the Hillary Clinton email investigation and the lead agent on the Russian collusion investigation. Is Strzok the only agent the FBI has? Two big political investigations going on at the same time and he is in charge of both? Then he was chosen to be a part of special prosecutor Robert Mueller’s investigation.
Strzok, from his text messages, has tremendous animosity toward Trump and a devotion to Hillary Clinton. So Strzok as the lead agent decides to investigate Trump and not even look at the more than 300,000 emails found on Anthony Weiner’s laptop. Weiner, who is married to Hillary Clinton’s top aid Huma Abedin, is currently in prison for sexting with a minor.
It wasn’t until the agents in New York finally said, what in the world do you want us to do with all of these State Department emails, that Strzok even bothered to look at them. Then, in one of the most amazing investigations of all time, Strzok looked at all 141,000 emails related to the State Department in a matter of days and reported that there was nothing there.
Hillary Clinton admitted throwing away 30,000 emails that were about her daughters wedding and her mother’s funeral. Were those 30,000 missing emails on Weiner’s laptop? Were those 30,000 emails really personal and none related to the State Department? We know that isn’t true because some have been found on other devices that Hillary Clinton had destroyed that were State Department emails.
How did Strzok know there was nothing there? No one, in fact no 10 people, can look at 141,000 emails in a couple of days. The FBI might not realize this, but the subject line of an email isn’t always accurate.
Is the FBI sure that there weren’t a bunch of emails about State Department business to Hillary Clinton’s good friend Sidney Blumenthal? Could there have been an email about the Clinton Foundation having something to do with the State Department? Might there be some emails on there about Bill Clinton speaking in foreign countries and collecting enormous fees?
The American public doesn’t know and Strzok doesn’t know because he could do no more than glance at a relatively few emails during the time he had to complete the investigation and get back to investigating Trump, who he had said he would prevent from ever becoming president.
*****
The fact that FBI agents and attorneys were texting back and forth all day on FBI phones and sending instant messages on FBI devices and didn’t think the FBI was capturing and saving those texts and instant messages is appalling.
These are supposed to be the top investigators in the country, with some, like Strzok, involved in counter intelligence. They were involved in investigating the whole Hillary Clinton homebrew server email scandal, which means that if they didn’t know anything about how emails and other electronic messages are sent and saved before, they should have known from being involved in the investigation.
They are probably not complete idiots that don’t understand that the emails and messages were government-owned public records. But that means they lied to the inspector general. But then they all told a bunch of lies to the inspector general. Shoot, given the chance I think I couldn’t resist lying to the inspector general. It appears you can tell the inspector general that red is blue and, in your opinion, the shrew, not the blue whale, is the largest living mammal, and he would simply write it down and include it in his report.
*****
CNN attack dog Jim Acosta is certainly correct – there is no law that says reporters have to be polite. But there is no law that says people in general have to be polite. Life is better when people treat others with consideration, but some people never learn that.
Trump is extremely accessible to reporters. He has held impromptu press conferences and sometimes he stops and answers more shouted questions as he is walking past reporters than Obama answered at press conferences – if you eliminate the questions that the Obama press office planted with supportive reporters.
The people who should be worried about Acosta are his fellow reporters, because Trump doesn’t have to stop and talk to them. Obama didn’t. Trump could walk right past and ignore all the questions. If Acosta keeps up with the belligerent, childish attacks, Trump may start doing that.
*****
If you for a moment think that the mainstream media are fair, think about this. When then virtually unknown Sen. Barack Obama was cleaning the heir apparent Hillary Clinton’s clock in the 2008 primaries, nobody claimed that the only way Obama could win was with illegal foreign assistance.
At the time, a number of conservatives supported Obama because they believed that the Republican candidate would have a much easier time defeating Obama – who had no name recognition and no national team – than Hillary Clinton – who had nearly 100 percent name recognition and a well organized national team.
Obama won to a large degree because Hillary Clinton’s support was wide and shallow. Democrats would support her because she was the heir apparent, but not many people liked her. When Obama proved himself to be a viable alternative, it was curtains for Hillary Clinton.
In the 2016 primaries, a confirmed socialist who is not even a member of the Democratic Party started winning primaries. Sen. Bernie Sanders was supposed to be one of those niche candidates who are wildly popular with their small cadre of disciples but have no wider appeal. But Sanders gave Hillary Clinton a run for her money.
If the Democratic National Committee had not stepped in to prop up Hillary Clinton, she could have lost the Democratic primary. Sanders did manage to win a number of primaries and nobody said that it was because he colluded with the Russians.
The idea that the only way Trump could defeat Hillary Clinton was by colluding with the Russians ignores reality. Hillary Clinton has had two-and-a-half real political contests in her life. The New York Senate seat was a gift from her husband, Bill Clinton, to make up for the whole Monica Lewinsky debacle. Hillary Clinton ran against Obama in 2008 and lost and she ran against Trump in 2016 and lost. She did beat Sanders in the 2016 primary, but you really can’t count him as a real opponent and she had to cheat to win.
Hillary Clinton is a terrible candidate with huge negatives and not much in the way of positives. She is rude in private and false in public. She can walk out and read a prepared speech fairly well, but if she is asked even five questions afterwards she falls apart.
If the media had not been so completely in the tank for Hillary Clinton in 2016, and had reported fairly and accurately on the campaign, it would not have been such a shock that Trump won.
But the narrative that the only way Hillary Clinton could lose was if Trump had illegal assistance from Russia is false on its face.
We now know that it wasn’t only the mainstream media that were in total support of Hillary Clinton; the FBI was also. And despite the fact that the man leading the Russia Investigation, Strzok, had extreme bias against Trump, no evidence of Russian collusion was found by the FBI and it appears that Mueller, despite assembling a team of Hillary Clinton supporters to investigate Trump, hasn’t found any evidence either.
It is long past time for the Mueller investigation to end.
*****
If I am ever investigated for a crime, I hope that an inspector general for the Justice Department will do the investigation, because if the inspector general does the investigation and I don’t admit to the crime then no crime was committed.
Hillary Clinton, for example, who served as a senator for eight years and as secretary of state for four, claimed she didn’t understand what a classified document was or what the notations marking something as classified meant. According to the inspector general, this is perfectly believable and to have someone serving as secretary of state for four years who knew nothing about classified documents does not indicate in any way that she wasn’t being completely honest.
To have an aide to the secretary of state forward 141,000 emails to her husband’s computer, a man who at the time was under investigation for sex crimes with a minor, is not cause for alarm and violates no law.
Apparently, destroying government property to hide evidence of wrongdoing is not a crime if it is done to protect a Democratic presidential candidate.
As far as the agents doing the investigation, the fact that they declared loyalty to Hillary Clinton and when investigating her found nothing amiss despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary is not evidence that their support for the Democratic presidential nominee had any effect on their investigation.
It would appear that the inspector general investigating the case of a man who walked into a bank wearing a ski mask, holding a gun in one hand and a note that read, “Give me all the money,” in the other, if that man said he had no intention of robbing the bank, the inspector general would find that the man had no intention of robbing the bank.
The fact that some people will lie to protect themselves does not seem to be a possibility that the inspector general considers.
The inspector general’s report isn’t even internally logical.
The report says that the Hillary Clinton email investigation was not conducted according to standard procedure, that a long laundry list of exceptions were made and that the head of the FBI had already decided that Hillary Clinton wouldn’t be charged months before she or any of her principals were interviewed. That’s a pretty sweet deal. And you know that the agents who were doing the investigation got the message loud and clear that Hillary Clinton had committed no crimes, but the admitted desire by the leaders of the investigation that Hillary Clinton be the next president had nothing to do with the numerous exceptions made in the investigation.
How can even an august personage like the inspector general make the leap to say that although there was evidence of extreme bias and support of Hillary Clinton in the ranks of the FBI and although the rules for an investigation were completely changed for the Hillary Clinton “matter” that the two aren’t connected?
How on earth can any experienced investigator justify allowing Hillary Clinton’s aides to sit in on her interview before they themselves were interviewed? Wow, do you think they all said exactly the same thing?
One reason to interview people involved separately is to see if they tell the same or similar stories. If you let them sit in on the interview of the principle then you know they are all going to tell the same story. Why even bother to interview the others? For that matter, since Comey had made up his mind before the interview, why bother to interview Hillary Clinton at all?
According to Comey, the reason Hillary Clinton was not guilty of anything is that she didn’t intend to break the law, and he knew this without anyone asking her if she intended to break the law.
*****
The inspector general’s report is a lot like Comey’s report on the Hillary Clinton email scandal. In that, Comey first listed a number of crimes that Hillary Clinton and her staff committed and then said – but we aren’t going to prosecute. Ignoring the fact that it is not the FBI director’s decision on whether or not to prosecute, the FBI is supposed to investigate, turn the results over to the Justice Department and the Justice Department makes the decision on whether or not to prosecute.
The inspector general’s report lists where Comey violated accepted procedure and notes that Comey himself said that his decisions were based not on the evidence but on political considerations. The FBI is supposed to be politically neutral, but Comey admits that he was not. He made a huge miscalculation in sending a letter to Congress stating that the Hillary Clinton email investigation was not complete.
It is also well documented in the inspector general’s report that almost before the investigation had begun, the FBI had already determined what the result would be. Comey started writing his statement in May, before Hillary Clinton and her upper level staff were interviewed. That’s an investigation that fits with Comey’s predecessor, Bob Mueller, who decides what the outcome is first and then looks for evidence to support that outcome.
Even taken in the best light possible, the inspector general’s report indicates the FBI has huge management and political bias problems and is no longer a politically neutral investigative agency but simply another arm of the Democratic Party.
How can the FBI and the Justice Department possibly justify not providing Congress with one of the most damning text messages between FBI agent Strzok and his lover FBI attorney Lisa Page. If the FBI and Justice Department didn’t have it then the FBI is guilty of being really poor investigators. But the evidence is that they did have it and didn’t want Congress or the public to see it, and that is known as cover up.
Who is going to investigate that crime? We already know what happens when the Justice Department is left to investigate itself. The report will be, “Nothing to see here folks, just hardworking people doing their jobs.”
Congress needs to have an outside agency investigate the FBI and the Justice Department because it is clear they are not going to do it themselves with any degree of objectivity or integrity.
It’s a very sad state of affairs, but the country cannot survive with an FBI that the people don’t trust. And what Republican can trust the FBI now?
*****
Trump has a huge problem in his own government. It’s most obvious in the Justice Department and the FBI, but it goes much deeper. When Trump took the oath of office, he should have fired everyone in the government who was appointed by President Obama. The Senate has to confirm about 1,200 of those but there are another 2,800 government employees appointed by the president that the Senate doesn’t have to approve.
So that’s about 4,000 federal employees and Trump should have asked for the resignations of all of them. If they didn’t resign by close of business on Jan. 20, then he should have fired them on Jan. 21.
Trump, in his defense, didn’t have 4,000 people on a list to replace all of those that he would have let go. But the federal government would not shut down if the under assistant deputy of something or other office was vacant for a few days, weeks, months or maybe years.
The federal government has far too many employees and is too top heavy.
Look at how much better shape Trump would be in if he had fired FBI Director Comey, Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, whatever in the world Rod Rosenstein’s job was at the time and everyone else in the Justice Department who had been appointed by Obama.
