These days, we are learning about just how corrupt and criminal a sitting president can be, what with "the big guy" taking his cut of millions of dollars of cash from China's government-linked firms like a mafia don, as greedy famiglia members gathered around for the spoils.
According to the New York Post:
Bank records newly obtained by his House Oversight Committee show that Hunter Biden associate Rob Walker transferred north of $1.3 million in 2017 not only to usual suspects Hunter and presidential little brother Jim but also to daughter-in-law Hallie (son Beau’s widow; Hunter’s brief fling) — plus an unknown simply tagged as “Biden.”
The family that gets paid together stays together, it seems.
Most of that big chunk of change came from a $3 million transfer from an affiliate of Chinese energy outfit CEFC to Walker. CEFC, now defunct, was one of China’s biggest private companies and a main target of Hunter Biden’s operations back in 2017, with the First Son angling for a ultra-high-paid board seat and equity stakes for him and Jim and an unnamed “big guy” widely thought to be Joe.
Those are the House revelations coming out now about Joe Biden and his family's activities around influence-peddling with China, which was far from the only country they were in such "business" with. That's what the House committee investigating this is currently rolling out, as the media yawn, the prosecutors refuse to touch this, and nothing is expected to be done about it.
It's also far from the only corruption associated with House Biden.
There also have been revelations about classified documents found on Hunter Biden's abandoned laptop and sales of those classified documents done through rewritten "consultant" reports. There was a report of the Bidens sharing an office at Sweden House in Washington D.C. with office keys issued for Joe Biden, Jill Biden, Jim Biden, Hunter -- and a communist party-linked Chinese official. All about "business" of course, although the only product being sold was Biden's office. They didn't actually make stuff.
Nobody prosecuted there.
But wait: There is a crime! They've finally got what they claim is proof of hush money paid by President Trump back in 2016 and they're going to make a "historic first" arrest:
NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump said in a social media post that he expects to be arrested Tuesday as a New York prosecutor is eyeing charges in a case examining hush money paid to women who alleged sexual encounters with the former president. Trump provided no evidence that suggested he was directly informed of a pending arrest and did not say how he knew of such plans.
But in a Saturday morning message on his Truth Social network, Trump noted “illegal leaks” from the Manhattan district attorney’s office that he said indicate “THE FAR & AWAY LEADING REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE & FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, WILL BE ARRESTED ON TUESDAY OF NEXT WEEK.”
That's what passes for "crime" among these guys, even as far bigger crimes involving the unprecedented sale of public office for millions of dollars bring no fear of legal consequences for House Biden.
The irony and cynicism this picture invokes is amazing.
Justice has now been reduced to Getting Trump, in this case, for paying off a whore to keep quiet about whatever it was they were doing together in his long ago so he could run for president.
At the same time, the House is revealing that Joe Biden and virtually all his relatives acted like a mafia, peddling influence, consorting with America's enemies, living like kings without any visible source of income, and kicking back cash to "the Big Guy."
What's wrong with this picture?
Trump is the one who needs to go to jail here? Yes, he shouldn't have been associating with a filthy porn star like Stormy Daniels, particularly since he was married to the beautiful Melania -- dumb, dumb, dumb. Yes, he shouldn't have been involved in even trying to repress the story of his fling with Daniels, which didn't sound much like sex actually, given that he'd endured far more damaging revelations, from his self-own attack on John McCain, to Melania Trump's softcore porn pictures in her long ago, without so much as a political scratch on him. None of these things had any impact on voters' willingness to vote for him given that they could see that Trump was a fighter -- for them -- and they were hungry for that. The voters already knew what they were getting with Trump and they were saying 'yes,' so one more crappy story about some crummy people he'd associated with in the past would have been an utter nothingburger he should not have worried about.
But bad judgment is not a crime the way taking cash from China in exchange for doing what it wanted and then not disclosing it, is. That's called bribery and treason, the real kind.
Meanwhile, the prosecutor's case against Trump looks flimsy. Details about whether Trump really knew about the piddly hush money payment point to an acquittal -- Trump never signed the hush-money agreement, which is why Daniels felt free to not hush, though that didn't stop her from taking the hush money anyway, being a whore. Trump's sleazy fixer (pity he couldn't get anyone better), Michael Cohen, testified that he couldn't get Trump on the phone to even tell him that he paid the hush money, and all he could do was get an intermediary to say she'd tell him, and who knows if she did? That too, could exonerate Trump as instigating or even knowing about this. We know that Trump might have benefited from the hush money paid had Stormy done what she was paid to do, but there's no evidence that Trump launched or even knew about this stupid caper.
In any case, it was piddly stuff, it wasn't stolen money and it wasn't government money here, it was just a foolish episode of private money badly spent to repress an unimportant news story.
That stinks not just in proportion to the Biden revelations, it stinks compared to the other level of repression of news we have thus far seen:
Where's the prosecution of the FBI, Twitter, Facebook, the intelligence honchos, the Democrats and all the other illegally acting actors who conspired together repressed the very valid New York Post story of Hunter Biden's abandoned laptop and all the revelations it contained? Once again, it's only bad if Trump tries to repress a story with private money and we should pay no attention to the democracy-threatening specter of the government itself acting in naked violation of the First Amendment to repress a far bigger story with no fear of consequences.
That's the real scandal.
What's coming out now not presents a twisted distortion of judicial priorities, rendering the whole thing a 'witch hunt' as Trump claims, you can bet that this oddly prioritized pursuit of 'justice' is sure to be noticed by the American voters.
Trump has called for large demonstrations by the public should he be arrested and you can bet he will get them. (The chief risk here is that the government will seed provocateurs in the large groups, which the Trump team should be ready for.)
What we have here is nothing but the giggly prosecutors long-held wet dream of Getting Trump, putting him in handcuffs, parading him in a perp walk, and releasing a mugshot, claiming they're treating him no differently from any other criminal in this age of Soros-backed D.A.s Letting Muggers Go.
The hypocrisy piled upon hypocrisies is astounding. One can only hope that it backfires, badly, onto them as it effectively rallies the public to Trump. Two-tiered justice is repellent upon a targeted political opponent and the public is not going to miss this. I know that that was the dynamic with many voters in the 2016 election -- they voted for Trump not because they particularly wanted him but because the establishment's reaction was so virulent and unfair. There's a reason for this too -- they can see that it's not only a bid to Get Trump, it' a message to the voters that any one of them could be treated just as capriciously and unfairly by a left-wing juggernaut exercising power illegitimately through politicized justice.
That will be what drives the public to rallying around Trump. One can only hope it backfires on these miscreants worse than it ever did and this is their last mistake.
Image: Screen shot from Natasha Owens video, via YouTube
My mom used a pressure cooker that was the terror of the household. It bounced around all over the counter and, unless the heat was applied and the pressure released with incredible care, it was like having a bomb in the kitchen. When I look at what the Democrats are doing in America, I am reminded of that pressure cooker. Their latest scheme is to Trump’s arrest even as they announce that they are doubling down on persecuting the almost entirely peaceful J6 protesters who unwittingly trespassed in the Capitol. The first action builds pressure; the second denies Americans their constitutional safety valve. I fear that this cannot end well.
Let’s think about the chronology just to make sure we understand what’s going on:
The Tea Party emerged in 2009. Even though its rallies were peaceful and always left the rally locations immaculate, Democrats in and out of the media described Tea Partiers as dangerous, racist, wild-eyed activists. The template was in place.
Trump mulled the idea of running for president, and leftists were initially excited because they foresaw an easy Hillary victory against him.
Trump became the primary candidate, the crowds turning out for him were unprecedented, and Hillary was revealed to have violated multiple national security laws, only to limp into the election thanks to a James Comey “fix.”
Trump won, and Democrats had a massive, very public, complete mental breakdown.
Shortly before Trump entered office, high-level Democrats (Hillary? Obama?) instituted what came to be the Russia collusion hoax.
These ordinary Americans at a Tea Party protest in 2009 are the same ones the Democrats targeted on J6 and are targeting now. Photo by a1mega. CC BY 2.0.
Despite the Russia collusion hoax, the Ukraine phone call hoax, a failed impeachment, and myriad other faux scandals, Trump looked like a shoo-in for reelection. The economy was booming, China was being constrained, illegal immigration was diminishing, peace was blossoming in the Middle East, and there were no new wars or concentration camps. Something needed to be done. Enter COVID.
Democrats use COVID to shut down the economy, close schools, censor speech, and institute mail-in balloting that, in many states, was illegal according to their own constitutions. Most significantly, they use the self-inflicted death of a felon with major heart disease who’d taken fatal levels of illegal drugs as an excuse to launch the BLM revolution. And it was a revolution, designed to overthrow the government through hysterical racial division and attacks on America’s infrastructure: cities burned, and activists targeted the White House, law enforcement, and the federal judiciary. (Remember the Portland federal courthouse siege?)
The election results are ludicrous. A hugely successful president who managed rallies with tens of thousands of people despite COVID and who had caused significant numbers of minorities to cross to his side lost to a corrupt, demented, racist, and very stupid puppet who campaigned from his basement, in an election riddled with manifest problems, everything from mail-in voting (with all the evidence and envelopes immediately and illegally destroyed), to counting stoppages in the middle of the night.
Trump asks people to protest, clearly meaning a peaceful, First Amendment protest, something he emphasized several times on January 6. Cheerful, non-violent people head to the Capitol to make their voices heard. Unbeknownst to them, they’ve been set up. Despite warnings about potential violence, Nancy Pelosi refuses more security and keeps the Capitol Police in the dark. Operatives tell Trump supporters to enter the Capitol, remove the “no trespassing” signs, and force entry into the building.
Two weeks ago, by showing that the QANON shaman narrative was a lie, Tucker Carlson busted the cornerstone of the J6 narrative. Remember, as the law has said for over 300 years, Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus (“False in one thing, false in everything.”)
Then, two things just happened simultaneously, one of which you know and one of which you may not know:
You already know that Trump announced last week that he’s about to be arrested—on a charge Manhattan DA Bragg must know is invalid—and he asks people to protest:
What you may not know is that at roughly the same time, the DOJ warned the D.C. federal court that, despite already charging more than 1,000 people for unwittingly entering the Capitol on J6 (thanks to those unindicted operatives), it still plans to indict more than 1,000 other people on J6 charges.
Democrats have created a situation in which Trump supporters will inevitably protest (egged on by Trump himself), and they’re making it plain that they will destroy anyone who protests this time around. Conservatives are about to be caught in an incredibly dangerous pincer move.
The fact is that what’s happening is deserving of protest. What we’re seeing is that, to those in power, there are two legal systems in America. Democrats have demanded the de-incarceration of violent criminals, defunded the police, refused to arrest or charge the BLM and Antifa activists who caused billions of dollars of damage and dozens of deaths, stopped enforcing our border laws, and given a pass to everyone from Hillary Clinton to the Biden family for corruption and national security violations. Meanwhile, they’re suddenly all about “law and order” when it comes to entrapping and destroying the common people who, by exercising their First Amendment rights, stand between Democrats and total political power.
This is creating a dangerously volatile situation that Democrats only think they can control. When legal, unarmed, only marginally violent protests are turned into the “most dangerous insurrection since the civil war,” the Democrats have effectively closed a safety valve available only in free societies. Now, they’re making it plain that they intend to increase the pressure while still keeping the valve closed. Unless conservatives thread this needle with incredible wisdom, I’m afraid that the pressure in America may build to uncontrollable levels.
President Biden is more worried about Russians crossing their border with Ukraine than he is about the Russians crossing our border with Mexico.
The problem with America’s porous southern border and an unfinished wall to serve as a deterrent is the inability to know who has entered into the United States. Other than wanting to get into America without following the legal process, we know nothing about the countless illegals who are already here, including rough estimates that are close to accurate.
Border Patrol drone video of unknown illegals crossing the border
Most people who cross illegally may be decent and simply want to take care of their families as best they can. Then there are those unknown from all over the world who are not decent and have no honorable intentions. Without a means to identify people coming across the border illegally, there may very well be war criminals and other bad actors hiding from their own people.
Several outlets have reported Russians being found at the southern border. Not a small number, but thousands with no way to know how many Russians are in America illegally. The cartels deliver anyone who will pay without question.
On January 30 of this year, Business Insider had an article by Sarah Al-Arshani, The US southern border saw a growing number of migrants from Russia, Ukraine, and other distant countries last month, stated:
“In December, over 2,000 Russians and 300 Ukrainians made their way to the border. Axios reported most of them had either arrived or were found at a legal port of entry in San Diego, California.”
Over 2000 Russian at a single port of entry who were caught, compared to how many at other points in last December alone who made it into the United States. There are several unverified stories about Russian saboteurs who were already in Ukraine before Russia invaded, which is certainly in line with Putin’s history.
The Russians who are currently in the United States illegally are an unknown threat. Not just the potential added ranks to the Russian mob, one of the most brutal organized criminal organizations in the world, if not the worst, but Russian saboteurs as well.
Ukraine has been invaded, again. Under another Democratic president who will do nothing, just like Obama with Crimea. If sanctions worked, there would have been no invasion a second time and Crimea would have returned to Ukraine. What are new sanctions going to do to Putin? Same thing as the old. Absolutely nothing.
If there are enough saboteurs in place and the Russian Mob supplying weapons, we could be very busy fighting an enemy from within and without. An attack on American power grids would be devastating to the country and easy target with the right military hardware in place.
That is just one of numerous potential targets that could easily be attacked by Russian saboteurs that are most likely already in the United States. Motivated individuals have carried out devastating attacks against America in the past through military or terroristic actions and will do so in the future.
Considering the weakness of Biden, God help all Americans if it happens during his presidency.
Top State Official Sounded Alarm About ‘Conflict of Interest’ Linked to Hunter Biden’s Work in Ukraine
EDWIN MORA
The Obama administration allowed former Vice
President Joe Biden’s son Hunter to continue
working for Ukrainian company Burisma, even
after learning that the firm and its owner were
corrupt, top U.S. State Department official
George Kent testified, according to transcripts
released Thursday.
Hunter served on Burisma’s board of directors from 2014 until April of this year.
In 2014, the U.S. spent hundreds of thousands in American taxpayer funds on assisting an investigation into corrupt activities linked to Burisma owner Mykola Zlochevsky, Kent revealed.
During his closed-door deposition on October 15, Kent told House impeachment investigators that he raised concerns about Biden’s lucrative position in 2015.
According to the transcripts, Kent, a deputy assistant secretary charged with overseeing U.S. policy towards Ukraine, testified:
The first time I was in Ukraine as acting deputy chief of mission in the period of mid-January to mid-February 2015, subsequent to me going into the deputy prosecutor general on February 3rd and demanding who took the bribe and how much was it to shut the case against Zlochevsky I became aware that Hunter Biden was on the board. I did not know that at the time.
And when I was on a call with somebody on the vice president’s staff and I cannot recall who it was, just briefing on what was happening into Ukraine I raised my concerns that I had heard that Hunter Biden was on the board of a company owned by somebody that the U.S. Government had spent money trying to get tens of millions of dollars back and that could create the perception of a conflict of interest.
The United States spent “roughly half a million dollars” in support of a Zlochevsky-linked investigation in 2014 — the year Burisma hired Hunter, Kent revealed.
Kent indicated that then-VP Biden’s staff dismissed his concerns about Hunter’s work in Ukraine.
“The message that I recall hearing back was that the vice president’s son Beau Biden was dying of cancer and that there was no further bandwidth to deal with family related issues at that time,” he testified.
“That was the end of that conversation” about Hunter Biden’s conflict of interest in Ukraine, Kent later added.
Kent said he first visited the U.S. embassy in Ukraine in mid-January 2015. He indicated that he soon learned Burisma was corrupt.
“Burisma had a reputation for being, first of all, one of the largest private producers of natural gas in Ukraine but also had a reputation for not being the sort of corporate, cleanest member of the business community,” the top State official said.
He testified that he was so concerned about Burisma’s reputation that he put the breaks on coordinated activity between the company and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
House Democrats pursuing the impeachment probe have accused Trump of abusing his power by pressuring his Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky during a July 25 call to investigate corruption allegations against the Bidens, allegedly in exchange for aid.
Trump, Zelensky, and some impeachment probe witnesses, including Kent, have denied the claim. Other witnesses, however, have presumed that a quid pro quo took place in which Trump leveraged U.S. aid to pressure Ukraine to investigate the Bidens.
Kent testified that he had no “direct knowledge” of the alleged link between America’s security assistance to Ukraine and the Eastern European country opening of new investigations.
He also told investigators that it is appropriate for the Trump administration to “look at the level of corruption” in foreign countries like Ukraine when determining whether to provide or withhold aid.
The former vice president threatened to withhold aid himself to Ukraine to force the Eastern European country to fire its top prosecutor in 2016, who had investigated the owner of Burisma for possible corruption.
Until recently, Hunter served on the board of Burisma for up to $83,000 per month despite having no background in energy. His position prompted allegations of corruption.
Hunter admitted to ABC News last weekend that his father’s political position helped him secure the lucrative appointment to Burisma’s board of directors.
Based on Kent’s testimony, Trump had reason to be concerned about corruption linked to Hunter Biden’s position.
Fast-forward to today's still vocal Obama gang. Why no
indictments? Mum's the word. Can anyone hold to the
faith in American justice? Those who support the rule of
law feel like Charlie Brown trying to kick a football. It's
coming — oh, wait, it's coming...oh, wait...
GORDON WYSON
Judicial Watch: Only Crimes in Russia Scandal Are from ‘Obama Gang’
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/03/06/judicial-watch-only-crimes-in-russia-scandal-are-from-obama-gang/
Will We Ever Prosecute?
By Gordon Wysong
Imagine that the local cops know that a gang member, named William, broke into the pawn shop and stole guns, jewelry, and money. William's fingerprints, film image, and DNA add to the hard evidence log. The owner knows it; the prosecutor knows it; William's gang associates know it. But he is not arrested. Nearby shopkeepers and neighborhood mothers are asking why he is walking the street. No one explains it; mum's the word. Could it be there is a grand plan to take out the gang's leaders? No one knows; mum's the word. Shopkeepers and residents are about to give up and start moving away from the area, and no one asks them to stay the course.
Fast-forward to today's still vocal Obama gang. Why no indictments? Mum's the word. Can anyone hold to the faith in American justice? Those who support the rule of law feel like Charlie Brown trying to kick a football. It's coming — oh, wait, it's coming...oh, wait...
Without doubt, a criminal cabal is an extraordinarily complex organization, and understanding who did what, why, when, and how is a challenge to the mental faculties of anyone. But, what happens if the full scope of activities is never clear? Does everyone get off? Does complexity confer immunity?
In engineering, there is no perfect answer to anything, so changes are made incrementally, addressing the problems as they are recognized. Each step brings a clearer view of remaining problems, which are then addressed, each in its turn. The completed project is still flawed, but the solution is practical and productive.
So it should be with a grandiose scheme like the Russia Hoax. The ringleaders don't have to be handled with kid gloves. They don't even have to be handled at all. Just start with the low-hanging fruit, and get as far as possible.
Those old enough to remember My Lai, Vietnam, know that Lt. Calley and Cpt. Medina were not alone in their actions. However, their prosecution forever changed the game of passing the buck on war crimes.
So, too, can rabid prosecution of bit players in the Russian Hoax forever change the landscape in plots involving treason. Those who would participate at the lower levels must know they are subject to prosecution, so they remain circumspect in such a re-enactment of the coup attempt. This would be the Achilles heel of another cabal — those who are intimidated by the prospect of prison. Those who realize they don't have sufficient rank to escape punishment will be loath to participate in such a scheme. Without them, there will be no operational viability to an unlawful coup.
Admittedly, there are always problems in pursuing a criminal case. It must be so under our Constitution, but it cannot be impossible!
Prosecutors don't get all the information, but at a certain point, for each criminal, evidence accumulates that there is a real and provable crime. It may not include every transgression of that person, nor is it the magic revelation, untangling the Gordian knot of the conspirators. It is a simple criminal act. It is what it appears, and it need not be put in the context of the big picture — it is as plain as the nose on your face.
That stage is the stimulus for a prosecutor. It is the time to move. If the DOJ acts, many of the sins can never be prosecuted, because the prosecution of their lesser crimes may foreclose pursuit of other crimes under double jeopardy protection. However, failure to move puts evidence and witnesses at risk of being lost. This point has passed for so many of the coup conspirators that it seems there will be no justice for many of them, like Lois Lerner.
Why?
A full recounting of all that is already known would be tedious, and to expound on the criminal conduct yet again seems shrill. It is not necessary to understand the intertwining of all the crimes before simply bringing the charges that are facially obvious. But the deferral of prosecution, for whatever reason it is done, allows many of the cabal to walk free when they shouldn't. In fact, the indication is that they are continuing the very conduct for which they should be prosecuted.
Why has McCabe not been charged with lying to the FBI, lying under oath? Nothing more is needed to start the dominos falling. Who will step forward to exonerate him? No one can, and no one will. That omission — of a vigorously supported defense — will send a message to the others in the coup conspiracy.
Why has Samantha Power not been indicted for violating national security requirements in unmasking or transferring her unmasking authority to others? It doesn't pass the smell test that she is too important to be prosecuted.
Why is Huma Abedin strolling around, free as a bird? She forwarded classified emails to Anthony Weiner's laptop. What else is needed to demonstrate a crime?
Did Strzok do anything? Did Page? Which one lied to Congress? Their contradictory accounts mean at least one is a perjurer. Sure, there is more "there" there, but it isn't necessary to keelhaul them; just send them to jail, and send others a message.
Listing all the cabal members, who are quite obviously criminal, is not easy — in fact, it is not doable. It need not be the aim. A public that finds this whole thing partisan or tedious will not be easily impressed if a 2,000-count indictment naming 43 people is suddenly dropped. Bringing along the public is certainly part of sending the message for future conspirators. It probably is better done gradually.
Removing the context and simply prosecuting crimes is the method to educate both today's and tomorrow's citizens.
Selecting single actors, and naming obvious crimes, will have a chance to convince even skeptical partisans that something is wrong. The lack of support from other participants will indeed remove most doubt.
The full scope of what has gone on will never be known, but the lessons for future participants in such a scheme is essential. The next time, the prosecution will be more severe, more certain, and more expedient. Protecting the Constitution is more important than perfect justice. Some miscreants will escape, but they will never sleep well again. The lesson must be taught.
A DOJ that fails to move loses its credibility and its honor. The foundation of the Republic is placed at risk. Without the rule of law, what do we have?
At some point, deferral of prosecution is dereliction or abetting. Has it reached that point?
Gordon Wysong is an engineer and entrepreneur who has served as a county commissioner in Cobb County, Ga.
Victorious Democrats would also end congressional investigations into the Hillary-Deep State-DNC-Russian-Clinton Foundation collusion and corruption. All the players in these massive, sordid affairs will be deemed “too big to jail” – and too closely tied to the Democratic Party to be investigated further. Paul Driessen
Hillary Clinton's Russia collusion IOU: The answers she owes America
BY JOHN SOLOMON, OPINION
During the combined two decades she served as a U.S. senator and secretary of State, Hillary Clinton’s patrons regularly donated to her family charity when they had official business pending before America’s most powerful political woman.
The pattern of political IOUs paid to the Clinton Foundation was so pernicious that the State Department even tried to execute a special agreement with the charity to avoid the overt appearance of “pay-to-play” policy.
Still, the money continued to flow by the millions of dollars, from foreigners and Americans alike who were perceived to be indebted to the Clinton machine or in need of its help.
It’s time for the American public to call in their own IOU on political transparency.
The reason? Never before — until 2016 — had the apparatus of a U.S. presidential candidate managed to sic the weight of the FBI and U.S. intelligence community on a rival nominee during an election, and by using a foreign-fed, uncorroborated political opposition research document.
But Clinton’s campaign, in concert with the Democratic Party and through their shared law firm, funded Christopher Steele’s unverified dossierwhich, it turns out, falsely portrayed Republican Donald Trump as a treasonous asset colluding with Russian President Vladimir Putin to hijack the U.S. election.
Steele went to the FBI to get an investigation started and then leaked the existence of the investigation, with the hope of sinking Trump’s presidential aspirations.
On its face, it is arguably the most devious political dirty trick in American history and one of the most overt intrusions of a foreigner into a U.S. election.
It appears the Clinton machine knew that what it was doing was controversial. That’s why it did backflips to disguise the operation from Congress and the public, and in its Federal Election Commission (FEC) spending reports.
Clinton and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) used the law firm of Perkins Coie to hire Glenn Simpson’s research firm, Fusion GPS, which then hired Steele — several layers that obfuscated transparency, kept the operation off the campaign’s public FEC reports and gave the Clintons plausible deniability.
But Steele’s first overture on July 5, 2016, failed to capture the FBI’s imagination. So the Clinton machine escalated. Steele, a British national, went to senior Department of Justice official Bruce Ohr — whose wife, Nellie, also worked for Fusion — to push his Trump dirt to the top of the FBI.
Nellie Ohr likewise sent some of her own anti-Trump research augmenting Steele’s dossier to the FBI through her husband. Perkins Coie lawyer Michael Sussmann used his connection to former FBI general counsel James Baker to dump Trump dirt at the FBI, too.
Then Steele and, separately, longtime Clinton protégé Cody Shearer went to the State Department to get the story out, increasing pressure on the FBI.
In short, the Clinton machine flooded the FBI with pressure — and bad intel — until an investigation of Trump was started. The bureau and its hapless sheriff at the time, James Comey, eventually acquiesced with the help of such Clinton fans as then-FBI employees Peter Strzok and Lisa Page.
To finish the mission, Simpson and Steele leaked the existence of the FBI investigation to the news media to ensure it would hurt Trump politically. Simpson even called the leaks a “hail Mary” that failed.
Trump won, however. And now, thanks to special counsel Robert Mueller, we know the Russia-collusion allegations relentlessly peddled by Team Clinton were bogus. But not before the FBI used the Clinton-funded, foreign-created research to get a total of four warrants to spy on the Trump campaign, transition and presidency from October 2016 through the following autumn.
The Clinton team’s dirty trick was as diabolical as it was brilliant. It literally used house money and a large part of the U.S. intelligence apparatus to carry out its political hit job on Trump.
After two years of American discomfort, and tens of millions of taxpayer dollars spent, it’s time for the house to call in its IOU.
Hillary Clinton owes us answers — lots of them. So far, she has ducked them, even while doing many high-profile media interviews.
I’m not the only one who thinks this way. Longtime Clinton adviser Douglas Schoen said Friday night on Fox News that it’s time for Clinton to answer what she knew and when she knew it.
Here are 10 essential questions:
1. In January 2018, the Senate Judiciary Committee sent a formal investigative request for documents and written answers from your campaign. Do you plan to comply?
2. Please identify each person in your campaign who was involved with, or aware of, hiring Fusion GPS, Glenn Simpson and Christopher Steele.
3. Please identify each person in your campaign, including Perkins Coie lawyers, who were aware that Steele provided information to the FBI or State Department, and when they learned it.
4. Describe any information you and your campaign staff received, or were briefed on, before Election Day that was derived from the work of Simpson, Steele, Fusion GPS, Nellie Ohr or Perkins Coie and that tried to connect Trump, his campaign or his business empire with Russia.
5. Please describe all contacts your campaign had before Election Day with or about the following individuals: Bruce Ohr, Nellie Ohr, Glenn Simpson, Christopher Steele, former Australian diplomat Alexander Downer, former foreign policy scholar Stefan Halper and Maltese academic Joseph Mifsud.
6. Did you or any senior members of your campaign, including lawyers such as Michael Sussmann, have any contact with the CIA, its former Director John Brennan, current Director Gina Haspel, James Baker, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page or former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe?
7. Describe all contacts your campaign had with Cody Shearer and Sidney Blumenthal concerning Trump, Russia and Ukraine.
8. Describe all contacts you and your campaign had with DNC contractorAlexandra Chalupa, the Ukraine government, the Ukraine Embassy in the United States or the U.S. Embassy in Kiev concerning Trump, Russia or former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort.
9. Why did your campaign and the Democratic Party make a concerted effort to portray Trump as a Russian asset?
10. Given that investigations by a House committee, a Senate committee and a special prosecutor all have concluded there isn’t evidence of Trump-Russia collusion, do you regret the actions by your campaign and by Steele, Simpson and Sussmann to inject these unfounded allegations into the FBI, the U.S. intelligence community and the news media?
Hillary Clinton owes us answers to each of these questions. She should skip the lawyer-speak and answer them with the candor worthy of an elder American stateswoman.
John Solomon is an award-winning investigative journalist whose work over the years has exposed U.S. and FBI intelligence failures before the Sept. 11 attacks, federal scientists’ misuse of foster children and veterans in drug experiments, and numerous cases of political corruption. He serves as an investigative columnist and executive vice president for video at The Hill. Follow him on Twitter @jsolomonReports.
Victorious Democrats would also end congressional investigations into the Hillary-Deep State-DNC-Russian-Clinton Foundation collusion and corruption. All the players in these massive, sordid affairs will be deemed “too big to jail” – and too closely tied to the Democratic Party to be investigated further.
Hillary Clinton's Russia collusion IOU: The answers she owes America
BY JOHN SOLOMON, OPINION
During the combined two decades she served as a U.S. senator and secretary of State, Hillary Clinton’s patrons regularly donated to her family charity when they had official business pending before America’s most powerful political woman.
Pretending Hunter Biden Is Irrelevant
Brent Bozell and Tim Graham
The impeachment trial of President Donald Trump should begin with an indictment of the media. The alleged crime committed by Trump revolves around his request that the president of Ukraine investigate Hunter Biden's shady business dealings with a corrupt Ukrainian oil and gas company when Joe Biden was vice president.
That investigation might have been unnecessary had the news media chosen to do what they're supposed to do: investigative journalism.
Why would Trump have to ask a foreign official for an investigation into Biden sleaze? Because when politicians have a D next to their name, the idea of the press holding people accountable goes out the window.
It is unfathomable that the American news media would choose not to investigate the activities of the vice president of the United States. Joe Biden used his portfolio of experience running then-President Barack Obama's policies in Ukraine to get his son a "consulting" job for which he was wholly unqualified but that reportedly paid him a cool 50 grand a month. Then Biden bragged in public that he demanded Ukraine's top prosecutor be removed under threat of America pulling its military aid. The whole thing was stained by his son's business connection.
Maybe somehow they all just missed it. Except they didn't. They knew it was happening.
Then-New York Times investigative reporter James Risen published the story of Hunter Biden and the oil company, Burisma Holdings, in December 2015. But The Times buried it by putting it on page A-22. The national media yawned. In their political calculations, Joe Biden wasn't running for president, and since it was Lame Duck season, why make the Obama-Biden White House look bad?
Ever since Trump's asking about Hunter Biden in a phone call to Kiev became a scandal, our Accountability Police have routinely repeated like a dancing line of puppets that there is "no evidence the Bidens did anything wrong."
Democrats and their media friends also play dumb when Republicans insist Hunter Biden should be part of the Senate impeachment trial. On the Sunday network news shows, moderators asked Democrats for their feelings about Biden being a witness in the trial. Their answers needed a laugh track.
On ABC, Sen. Cory Booker told George Stephanopoulos with a straight face, "These assaults on the Biden family are not relevant to what's at issue in this case." On CNN, Sen. Sherrod Brown sounded like he had a low IQ. "I don't know what Hunter Biden has to do with the phone call," he said.
It's not that he doesn't know. It's that he, like Booker, doesn't want to know.
This entire impeachment is about protecting the Biden family from any scrutiny or criticism. So asking questions about the Bidens becomes a scandal and is somehow a massive attempt to despoil the 2020 election. Democracy dies when the Bidens are asked questions?
At least Rep Jerry Nadler tried a slightly different spin on CBS, and it was even more brazen. He insisted, "Hunter Biden has no knowledge of the accusations against the president." How exactly does Nadler know that? Has Hunter Biden been living in a cave for the last few months? Nadler's whopper set up his next statement: "Their asking for Hunter Biden is just more of a smear of Hunter Biden that the president is trying to get the Ukraine to do."
No one can question Hunter Biden on anything. This is not the way the media and the Democrats have treated Donald Trump Jr., or Eric Trump, or Ivanka Trump.
The first lesson of this impeachment charade? The double standards for politicians and their children are breathtaking.
L. Brent Bozell III is the president of the Media Research Center. Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org.
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