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For Fri, Dec. 8, 2017
~All Gave Some~Some Gave
All~God Bless America
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Three Dangerous Potential Side Effects of Sexcapades Inquisition
It goes without saying that Rep. Ruben Kihuen (D-NV) and other Members of Congress are where they are today politically thanks in large part to Hillary Clinton’s husband, the Oval Office desk, an intern, a cigar and a certain blue-stained dress. Ick.
That infamous ending began with a string of multiple allegations of sexual misconduct and abuse – including assault(“You better get some ice for that”) and rape – by numerous women, all of whom were credible and, according to feminist lore, were supposed to be believed.
Yet Hillary stood by her man, feminists defended him and Democrats protected him. So Bill got off, so to speak. But now the pendulum has swung.
Allegations without substantiation of inappropriate behavior from 40 years ago have been leveled against Alabama U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore, who hasn’t been accused of actions even remotely similar to those of Bubba before him.
And that, combined with the ongoing purge of Hollywood tycoons and media giants, has opened the floodgates on Capitol Hill with plenty of other shoes yet to drop – especially once the identities of the players being protected by that secret congressional “shush” fund are inevitably revealed.
But there are three dangerous potential side effects looming…
1.) Overreaction. In Kihuen’s case he’s been accused of propositioning a young woman of his same age for dates and dalliances and twice allegedly “touched her thighs.” It made her feel “uncomfortable.”
This is not sexual assault. No cigars were harmed. No one needed to put ice on a busted lip. No DNA tests on a dress.
This was a twenty-something guy with raging hormones trying to get lucky and being shot down. It was stupid to pursue such an “office romance,” especially in politics. But does it rise to the level of forced resignation? Or is this an example of making a mountain out of a molehill?
2.) False claims. They happen. Have happened. And will happen. So this notion that the woman must *always* be believed must always be viewed with at least a modicum of skepticism.
There are, indeed, women who, for a variety of reasons – sometimes revenge over being spurned – will fabricate an accusation which does grievous harm to an innocent man. This is why the current guilty-until-proven-innocent/trial-by-media environment is so potentially dangerous.
3.) Blow-back. It already happens to blacks and Hispanics every day. An employer who has been stung unfairly by a claim of discrimination decides to avoid any possibility of such headaches in the future by simply not hiring minorities - while taking care to reject them for reasons other than race.
Women are now going to be subjected to similar “underground” discrimination. Employers don’t want or need the potential aggravation. It might not be “fair,” but it is reality.
This is not to excuse the truly piggish behavior of the likes ofHarvey Weinstein and Al Franken. But every action spurs a reaction. And an over-reaction will have its own consequences. We can all thank Bill and Hillary Clinton for that.
(Mr. Muth is president of Citizen Outreach and publisher of NevadaNewsandViews.com.)
Capital of Israel at last...Trump Promise kept...
Trump: ‘I Have Determined That It Is Time to Officially Recognize Jerusalem as the Capital of Israel’
by JOEL B. POLLAK
Ahmad Gharabli / AFP / Getty
President Donald Trump announced Wednesday in a televised address from the White House that the United States officially recognizes the city of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and will begin moving its embassy there.
President Donald Trump announced Wednesday in a televised address from the White House that the United States officially recognizes the city of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and will begin moving its embassy there.
“I have determined that it is time to official recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel,” President Trump said. “While previous presidents have made this a major campaign promise, they failed to deliver. Today, I am delivering.”
He later added: “Today, we finally acknowledge the obvious: that Jerusalem is Israel’s capital. This is nothing more or less than a recognition of reality. It is also the right thing to do. It’s something that has to be done.”
He also said that the U.S. would finally move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem in accordance with the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995, and would make it a monument to peace.
“I’ve judged this course of action to be in the best interests of the United States of America, and the pursuit of peace between Israel and the Palestinians.”
Speaking in front of several Christmas trees, and a fireplace festooned with holiday bunting, Trump said: “When I came into office, I promise to look at the world’s challenges with open eyes and very fresh thinking. We cannot solve our problems by making the same failed assumptions, and repeating the same failed strategies of the past. Old challenges demand new approaches.”
US President Donald Trump holds up a signed memorandum after he delivered a statement on Jerusalem from the Diplomatic Reception Room of the White House in Washington, DC on December 6, 2017 as US Vice President Mike Pence looks on. President Donald Trump on Wednesday recognized the disputed city of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital — a historic decision that overturns decades of US policy and risks triggering a fresh spasm of violence in the Middle East.’I have determined that it is time to officially recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel,’ Trump said from the White House.’It’s the right thing to do.’ / AFP PHOTO / SAUL LOEB (Photo credit should read SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images)
He noted that past presidents had signed waivers delaying the recognition of Jerusalem and the relocation of the embassy “under the belief that delaying the recognition of Jerusalem would advance the cause of peace.”
While some said they “lacked courage,” he said, they made their decisions based on facts as understood at the time. But after two decades of waivers, it was clear that delaying the recognition of Jerusalem had no benefit for peace, Trump argued.
Instead, Trump said, acknowledging that Israel has the right to determine the location of its own capital was a “necessary condition for achieving peace.”
On a practical level, Trump said, it was apparent to all that every major institution of the Israeli government is located in Jerusalem, and that is where foreign dignitaries met with the Israeli heads of state and government.
He added: “Jerusalem is not just the heart of three great religions, but it is now also the heart of one of the most successful democracies in the world. Over the past seven decades, the Israeli People have built a country where Jews, Muslims, Christians, and people of all faiths are free to live and worship according to their conscience and beliefs.”
Trump said that Jerusalem is today, and must remain, a place “where Jews pray at the Western wall, where Christians walk the Stations of the Cross, and where Muslims worship at Al-Aqsa mosque.”
He was careful to note that the new policy was not intended to prejudice ongoing negotiations between Israelis and the Palestinians. And he argued that his decision on Jerusalem was part of a “new approach” to the Israel-Palestinian conflict, one that would achieve a “great deal” for both sides.
“The United States remains deeply committed to helping facilitate a peace agreement that is acceptable to both sides,” he said. “I intend to do everything in my power to help forge such an agreement.” He added that the U.S. would support a two-state solution if agreed to by both sides.
“Above all, our greatest hope is for peace, the universal yearning in every human soul.”
He also addressed critics of the new policy, calling for calm, moderation, and tolerance.
“There will of course be disagreement and dissent regarding this announcement,” President Trump said. “But we are confident that ultimately, as we work through these disagreements, we will arrive at a peace, and a place, of greater understanding and cooperation,” he said.
“This sacred city should call forth the best in humanity, lifting our sights to what is possible — not pulling us back, and down, to the old fights that have become so totally predictable,” he said. “Peace is never beyond the grasp of those willing to reach it. … Our children should inherit our love, not our conflicts.”
President Trump also placed his announcement in the context of his broader policy in the Middle East, which is focused on working with Arab nations to fight extremism. He reiterated his message from his visit to Saudi Arabia in May: “It is time for the many who desire peace to expel the extremists from their midst. It is time for all civilized nations and people to respond to disagreement with reasoned debate, not violence. And it is time for young and moderate voices all across the Middle East to claim for themselves a bright and beautiful future.”
He added that Vice President Mike Pence would be visiting Israel in the coming days.
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The White House issued the following proclamation:
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PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP’S PROCLAMATION ON JERUSALEM AS THE CAPITAL OF THE STATE OF ISRAEL
“My announcement today marks the beginning of a new approach to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.” – President Donald J. Trump
RECOGNIZING JERUSALEM: President Donald J. Trump is following through on his promise to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of the State of Israel and has instructed the State Department to begin to relocate the U.S. Embassy to Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
STATUS OF JERUSALEM: President Trump recognizes that specific boundaries of sovereignty in Jerusalem is highly sensitive and subject to final status negotiations.
COMMITTED TO THE PEACE PROCESS: President Trump is committed to achieving a lasting peace agreement between Israelis and Palestinians.
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Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He was named one of the “most influential” people in news media in 2016. He is the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
Laura Ingraham: Mitt Romney’s 2016 Attack on Trump ‘Unprecedented in Its Viciousness’
by REBECCA MANSOUR
9
In her new bestselling history of the conservative-populist movement, Fox News primetime host Laura Ingraham declares Willard “Mitt” Romney’s 2016 speech against Donald Trump “one of the most scathing and controversial speeches in modern presidential politics.”
As Ingraham explains in Billionaire at the Barricade: The Populist Revolution from Reagan to Trump, Mitt Romney’s March 3, 2016, address at the University of Utah was “unprecedented in its viciousness; never had a party’s previous presidential nominee gone after his party’s leading presidential contender so aggressively and personally.”
Ingraham then offers a blow-by-blow recounting of Romney’s anti-Trump screed:
Romney called Trump dumb: “Donald Trump tells us that he is very, very smart. I’m afraid that when it comes to foreign policy his is very, very not smart.”
Romney called Trump a business idiot: “His bankruptcies have crushed small businesses and the men and women who worked for them. He inherited his business, he didn’t create it. And what ever happened to Trump Airlines? How about Trump University? And then there’s Trump Magazine and Trump Vodka and Trump Steaks, and Trump Mortgage? A business genius he is not.”
Romney called Trump a hater of women: “Think of Donald Trump’s personal qualities, the bullying, the greed, the showing off, the misogyny, the absurd third grade theatrics.”
Romney called Trump a liar: “Dishonesty is Donald Trump’s hallmark.”
Romney called Trump a con man and worked in a KKK reference: “There’s plenty of evidence that Mr. Trump is a con man, a fake. Mr. Trump has changed his positions not just over the years, but over the course of the campaign. And on the Ku Klux Klan, daily for three days in a row.”
Romney claimed there were “bombshells” in Trump’s taxes.
Romney called Trump a bigot: He creates scapegoats of Muslims and Mexican immigrants. He calls for the use of torture. He calls for killing the innocent children and family members of terrorists.”
After all that, Romney got to the really bad stuff.
“Here’s what I know. Donald Trump is a phony, a fraud. His promises are as worthless as a degree from Trump University,” said Romney. “He’s playing the members of the American public for suckers. He gets a free ride to the White House and all we get is a lousy hat.”
Ingraham says she, like all conservatives, was livid after Romney’s attempt to torpedo his own party’s leading presidential candidate.
“The guy who wrote off 47 percent of the country is now attacking the guy who is broadening the reach of the party?” she tweeted after Romney’s speech. “It’s good to see Romney really fighting for something. If only he had cared this much about stopping Obama.”
Dick Morris & Eileen McGann: Now the Deep State Has a Name–the Federal Bureau of Investigation
by DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN
Don’t fall for former FBI Director James Comey’s latest tweet claiming that “the FBI is and always will be independent.”To the contrary, we now know that the FBI has been overtly biased in favor of Hillary Clinton and her associates and overly zealous in its investigation of Donald Trump and her associates.
The G-men have gone rogue.
In fact, recent reports suggest the FBI now serves as the command center of the Deep State, aptly housed in the J. Edgar Hoover Building. The iconic former director would undoubtedly approve of their questionable tactics.
Working hand in hand with the special counsel’s office, the FBI/Deep State is in high gear. Through constant leaks of confidential or embarrassing materials, unmasking classified information about Trump associates, stonewalling Congressional requests for testimony and information about FBI conduct, selective prosecutions, and the coordination and hiring of high-level and deeply-biased partisans, the Deep State follows its battle plan for impeachment and annihilation of Donald Trump and campaign aides.
It looks like the top echelon of the Deep State includes, at the very least, former FBI director James Comey, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, Special Counsel Robert Mueller, Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe, former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates, and FBI agents Lisa Page and Peter Strzok, as well as the many other overt Hillary supporters and Trump haters populating the Special Prosecutor’s Office and the FBI.
It started during the campaign. At the core of the FBI and the Justice Department, a small group was apparently obsessively dedicated to defeating Donald Trump and electing Hillary Clinton as president.
When the voters unexpectedly thwarted their plans, these deep-state holdovers switched their idee fixe to a well-orchestrated and more sinister campaign: to impeach Trump. Without any regard for the will of the electorate, these deep-state actors decided that they know best. To them, Trump and his supporters are amoral barbarians who should not allowed to be anywhere near their White House.
They want him gone – whatever it takes. And they are working 24/7 to make that happen.
There’s more: they want to whitewash Hillary’s potential criminal liability.
Since neither of these could be accomplished by ordinary orthodox law enforcement practices with fair and unbiased investigators and prosecutors, a new strategy emerged: cover up Hillary’s culpabilities and exaggerate any problems of the Trump team.
Recent disclosures show that the integrity of FBI has been severely and blatantly compromised by the active political partisanship of at least one top agent — evidencing conflicts of interest and meddling in potential criminal matters to protect Hillary Clinton.
Both Comey and Mueller showed astonishingly bad judgment in giving unbridled authority to FBI agent Peter Strzok, who led the investigations into whether there was a Trump/Russian collusion/illusion and whether Hillary Clinton should be prosecuted for sending classified information on her private email server.
Strzok and his mistress, FBI lawyer Lisa Page, were part of a hotbed (no pun intended) of unabashed anti-Trump and pro/Hillary sentiment within the FBI, exchanging emails and messages — apparently still too inappropriate for Mueller to release — that shared their profound anti-Trump bias.
Strzok and his mistress, FBI lawyer Lisa Page, were part of a hotbed (no pun intended) of unabashed anti-Trump and pro/Hillary sentiment within the FBI, exchanging emails and messages — apparently still too inappropriate for Mueller to release — that shared their profound anti-Trump bias.
Page worked directly under Andrew McCabe, whose wife received over $600,000 in donations to her failed Congressional campaign directed by Clinton crony Terry McAuliffe, another conflict that has been ignored.
Page routinely participated in meetings about the Trump and Hillary investigations.
Strzok was influential in eliminating Hillary’s criminal culpability. He got rid of the problematic conclusion that her conduct involved potential criminal activity. After his fellow FBI experts (including Andrew McCabe) had drafted a memo concluding that Mrs. Clinton was guilty of “gross negligence” in handling the classified emails, Strzok led the effort to replace the fateful words with the more innocuous “extreme carelessness” (the language used in the final report and by Comey) so that Hillary could get away scot free.
“Gross negligence” is a term of art and the language used in the statute to determine what rises to the level of criminal activity.
Mueller kicked Strzok off the staff of the special counsel in August, relegating the top counterintelligence agent to FBI Siberia — the HR Department.
No explanation was given for this drastic act and Mueller has refused to give any details. Was it more than just anti-Trump pillow talk?
Strzok was all over the place. He participated in the interviews of Hillary Clinton, Huma Abedin, and Cheryl Mills at the behest of McCabe.
Strzok saw no problem when Hillary testified 39 times that she could not remember important details! Imagine if one of the Trump targets did the same.
Abedin and Mills both testified that they knew nothing about the secret server until it was disclosed in the press — even though their own emails contradicted them.
That was no problem for Strzok and the FBI either.
And it was Strzok who testified before Congress about the unreliable Steele dossier. Posing as a disinterested agent, he hid his pillow-talk trashing of Donald Trump.
As the Uranium One investigation produced evidence of collusion between the Clintons and Moscow, the FBI junta may have tried to deflect attention from this scandal to make out a case that it was Trump who was in collusion with Russia. Their chosen instrument, secretly funded by Hillary’s campaign, was a dossier that subsequently has been found to have been unverifiable and filled with contradictions, inaccurate information, and questionable, possibly fake sources.
But that was no problem for the FBI. After almost a year of trying to verify the claims in the dossier, it has utterly failed to do so.
An informant has charged Strzok with obstructing a probe into the dossier’s validity.
We don’t know exactly what Strzok’s role was in the FBI’s collaboration with ex British spook Christopher Steele, but given his position and assignments, there had to be some interaction.
Was he the one who offered $50,000 to Steele to get him to verify his alleged sources? (He never did verify them and has admitted that much of the dossier came from “unsolicited sources.”).
The FBI has refused to give any information about payments or offers of payments to Steele.
What was Strzok’s role in advising Comey to provide a summary of the dossier to President Obama, thereby assuring its leaking and publication?
There was another effort to protect the Clintons. The FBI kept information about the Uranium One deal secret by muzzling Special FBI agent, William Campbell, who had amassed evidence that the Clintons had taken suspicious payments — directly and through the Clinton Foundation — from Russian sources seeking to facilitate Russian acquisition of American uranium mines.
Deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe and then-U.S. Attorney Rod Rosenstein, charged with supervising Campbell’s investigation, under the general control of then FBI Director Robert Mueller, refused to tell the public or even Congress about the findings and hid them from the U.S. Committee on Foreign Investments weighing whether to approve the sale of 20 percent of our uranium mines to Russia. His FBI bosses made Campbell agree not to disclose his findings and blocked his testifying about them to Congress.
And Strzok was involved in the Flynn investigation. To further the line of a Trump-Russian conspiracy to fix the election, the Deep State reached out to ensnare incoming National Security Advisor Michael Flynn and make it seem as if he was involved. None other than Peter Strzok met with Flynn and asked him about his phone calls with the Russian ambassador. McCabe paved the way, telling Flynn that the interview would be a formality. He said that “some agents were heading over (to the White House).” Flynn thought it was part of the routine work of the FBI. It wasn’t until the interview began that Flynn apparently realized it was a formal interview and that he needed a lawyer. But he didn’t have one. What he didn’t realize was that he was being framed.
Strzok claimed that Flynn had lied to him. We have, of course, only Strzok’s word for it.
Comey claims that Trump asked him to back off. His proof: a letter he wrote to himself.
For half a year, the whole Deep State gang — Comey Mueller, Strzok, Page, Rosenstein — maneuvered to build a case against Trump and to shield Hillary.
It was, after all, Rosenstein who named Mueller as special counsel after Senator Al Franken (D-Minn) took time off from his escapades to ask Jeff Sessions during his confirmation hearings if any member of the Trump campaign had dealt with the Russian ambassador. Not considering himself a part of the campaign, he answered “no.” But when the media showed that he had spoken to the Russians, he was obliged to recuse himself from the investigation. That cleared the way for his deputy, Rosenstein, to name Mueller.
The Deep State weaves a tangled web, but it is increasingly its own leaders — Comey and Mueller — and its foot soldier Strzok who are being ensnared in it.
We are entitled to a full explanation of what went on. Now.
Fusion GPS Scandal Implicates Media In Possible Pay-To-Publish Scheme
A court filing from the U.S. district court for DC shows that Fusion GPS paid several journalists and was paid by a media organization.
By Lee Smith
Court filings released last month by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence suggest growing evidence of a pay-to-publish scandal that may shake large parts of the Washington press corps.
At the center of the controversy is the Washington DC-based communications shop Fusion GPS, which assembled and distributed the so-called “Steele dossier.” It’s named after former British spy Christopher Steele, who is believed to have authored the document alleging that Donald Trump and members of his campaign colluded with Russia to win the 2016 election. Steele acknowledges that some of the dossier’s information is sourced to Russian officials, including a “top-level intelligence officer.”
In its other Russia-related work, Fusion GPS engaged in a media campaign opposing a law targeting foreign nationals across the globe for human rights abuses. In its advocacy against the Global Magnitsky Act, a worldwide extension of the U.S. legislation imposing sanctions on Russian officials and other figures associated with the Russian government for their involvement in the detention and death of Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, Fusion GPS mirrored Kremlin talking points.
Now the court filing from the U.S. district court for DC shows that Fusion GPS paid several journalists, including three who reported on “Russia issues relevant to [the committee’s] investigation,” the House Intelligence Committee said in a court filing.
The documents did not release the names of the journalists and media organization.
How Fusion GPS Used Media Contacts
To understand the role Fusion GPS played in promoting and distributing the Steele dossier as well as the company’s work to undermine the Magnitsky Act, we’ll need a fuller account of Fusion GPS’s relationship with the journalism industry its principals left and then cultivated.
The story starts at the Wall Street Journal, which is taking fire from the rest of the profession, plunging the paper into what some have described as a civil war between its traditionally right-wing editorial page and left-leaning news desk.
“I don’t know a single WSJ alum who’s not agog at where that edit page is heading,” tweeted former Wall Street Journal reporter Neil King, reacting to a Journal editorial calling for the firing of Robert Mueller. “WSJ edit page has gone full bats–t, now hosting an op-ed suggesting Trump pardon everyone, including himself,” tweeted former high-ranking Wall Street Journal editor Bill Grueskin, now a professor at the Columbia School of Journalism.
When the Journal’s Kimberley Strassel wrote on the editorial page that plenty of bombshells are to come in the Trump-Russia narrative—about the FBI, the Democratic National Committee, and Fusion GPS—Journal alums told Politico reporter Jason Schwartz that was all crazy talk. The real story, they suggested, was that News Corp owner Rupert Murdoch had whispered in Journal editor Gerard Baker’s ear that the paper better support Trump or else.
The Journal took the unusual step of responding to the Politico article, chastising the publication for omitting key details—like the fact that King is now employed by Fusion GPS. “Mr. Schwartz,” the editorial continued, “also failed to point out that Mr. King’s wife, Shailagh Murray, also a former Journal reporter, worked in the Obama White House. Perhaps Mr. Schwartz understands that this kind of political incestuousness is so routine in Washington that even to mention it would get him drummed out of the club.”
That is, the Journal suggested the Politicowriter was in on a game whose major players include Fusion GPS and Democratic operatives like Murray, in which the press’s role is to credential the fruits of Fusion GPS’s oppo research as legitimate news stories.
“Our reporting on Fusion GPS is unrelated to where its employees used to work,” Wall Street Journal editorial page editor Paul Gigot wrote me in an email. “We think the story of Russian meddling in the 2016 election is important, and where we differ with the rest of the press corps is that we think the story of Fusion’s ties to Russia and the Steele dossier, as well as the dossier’s influence on the FBI, are also important to investigate. Let’s get the full Russia story.”
Former WSJ Reporters Now Push Russiagate Story
Fusion GPS’s principals—Glenn Simpson, Peter Fritsch, Thomas Catan, and King—are all Journal alumni. Moreover, several other former Journal hands employed throughout the Washington DC press corps to cover the Russiagate beat have teamed with the Fusion four. Because Journal alums played a key role not only in creating the Great Kremlin Conspiracy but also in disseminating it, it is natural that the Journal would find itself in the middle of the story. It appears its newsroom is still influenced by the former staffers driving the Russiagate story.
William Browder, the driving force behind the Magnitsky Act, told me recently about his experience with the Journal’s newsroom and its relationship with the firm four former WSJ reporters have founded. “When I was trying to get journalists interested in a story about the role Fusion GPS was playing in trying to undo the Magnitsky Act,” said Browder, “I found that the Wall Street Journal was one of the places where Glenn Simpson and Fusion GPS were deeply entrenched in the newsroom.” Wall Street Journaleditor Gerard Baker did not reply to a request for comment on Browder’s assertions.
The Fusion GPS story doesn’t end with the Wall Street Journal. It only started there. Recently The Daily Caller reported on CNN reporter Evan Perez’s ties to Fusion GPS, showing photographs of Perez with Fritsch and King, with whom he shared bylines at the Wall Street Journal before they went to Fusion GPS and he moved to CNN. Perez had the lead byline on CNN’s January 10, 2017 story that broke how four U.S. intelligence chiefs briefed incoming president Trump and outgoing President Obama on the Steele dossier. The CNN story made no mention of Perez’s friends and former colleagues who produced and distributed the dossier that was the subject of the story.
Former WSJ reporter Adam Entous, recently hired by the New Yorker, had the lead byline on the Washington Post article breaking the news that Marc Elias, a lawyer from the DC law firm Perkins Coie, hired Fusion GPS to compile an opposition research file on Trump for the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the Clinton campaign. After the story broke, New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Ken Vogel expressed their professional frustration on Twitter. They were after the story, and someone else nailed it.
“Folks involved in funding this lied about it, and with sanctimony, for a year,” tweetedHaberman. “When I tried to report this story,” wrote Vogel, “Clinton campaign lawyer @marceelias pushed back vigorously, saying ‘You (or your sources) are wrong.’”
So how did the Post get the Clinton campaign, DNC, or Elias to confirm the story? There’s no evidence they did. A former Clinton spokesman told the paper he wasn’t aware Fusion GPS was hired. A DNC spokesperson said the new leadership was not part of the decision-making. “Elias and Fusion GPS,” according to the Post report, “declined to comment on the arrangement.”
That leaves the firm’s principals as Entous’ most likely sources. Why? Because Fusion GPS and its principals had an interest in dumping information to deter the House Permanent Select Committee in Intelligence from successfully subpoenaing the company’s bank records for evidence that Fusion GPS paid journalists. “Entous,” said one veteran journalist familiar with the national security beat, “is tight with Fusion GPS.”
Feeding Friendly Media Anti-Trump Smears
Carol Lee of NBC News is another WSJ alum. At her new job she has worked on Russiagate stories with Ken Dilanian, a reporter Browder believes to be a regular and reliable purveyor of Fusion GPS-manufactured talking points. In September, for instance, Lee and Dilanian broke a story about the June 2016 meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, which also included Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort.
The network of journalists who take dossiers from Fusion GPS is rich and deep.
Lee and Dilanian reported, “Two sources tell NBC News that Manafort’s smartphone notes from the meeting included the words ‘donations’ in close proximity to the reference to the Republican National Committee.” NBC News was eventually forced to walk back the story when it turned out the word on Manafort’s phone was “donors,” not “donations,” a difference that nullified the thrust of the story, which was to suggest that Russia was funneling money directly to the Trump campaign.
But who fed Lee and Dilanian their story? It seems likely from the list of people at the meeting that their sources included Veselnitskaya herself and another Russian at the meeting, Rinat Akhmetshin—who both had partnered with Fusion GPS to try to undo the Magnitsky Act on behalf of pro-Putin elements. Indeed, Simpson met with Veselnitskaya before and after her meeting with Trump Jr.—a meeting Simpson says he didn’t know about until it was later reported.
The network of journalists who take dossiers from Fusion GPS is rich and deep, which is how the company manages to seed so many stories around the media and make its money. Others whose tenure at the Wall Street Journal intersected with those of Fusion GPS principals and who have filed numerous stories on the Trump-Russia narrative that originated with Fusion GPS’s “Steele” dossier include, among others, Devlin Barrettand Tom Hamburger of the Washington Post, and Matthew Rosenberg of the New York Times.
Paid Mouthpieces for Unknown Interests
Journalism is hardly the only industry networked not just by the work it produces, but also the values and professional ethic it reproduces. Thus the picture of the American news media that emerges from all this hush-hush, buddy-buddy back and forth isn’t pretty.
With the briefing, Obama’s intelligence chiefs had re-credentialed Fusion GPS’s oppo research as a news story.
Much of the fourth estate, it seems, is a world of Renfields, grotesque courtiers gorging on scraps left at the master’s table: reporters who conceal the for-profit sources that pay them and coordinate campaigns of political warfare with the partisan operatives and intelligence officials they’re supposed to be reporting on; and editors who publish conspiracies drawn from a platform for a Russian-manufactured disinformation operation furnished by former colleagues advocating on behalf of a pro-Kremlin interests to undermine American law. Why have they pushed a narrative based on a dossier that they couldn’t verify? Because they couldn’t abide the results of an American election.
For nearly a year most of the press—with the exception of Yahoo News and Mother Jones—held off from reporting on the dossier because they couldn’t discern how much, if any, of it was true. It was Barack Obama who put it back in play when, as CNN reported, his four intelligence chiefs briefed the newly elected Trump in early January 2017.
“One reason the nation’s intelligence chiefs took the extraordinary step of including the synopsis in the briefing documents was to make the President-elect aware that such allegations involving him are circulating among intelligence agencies,” reported CNN.
No, the point was to provide a pretext for a press that before the election had refrained from publishing the dossier to now put it out in the open. With the briefing, Obama’s intelligence chiefs had re-credentialed Fusion GPS’s oppo research as a news story. Now it was legitimate. Then the feeding frenzy began.
Corrupt Institutions Can’t Stop Corruption
Who knows how editors and journalists justify to themselves promoting a storyline based on a dossier that their journalistic ethics had previously rejected. Maybe they convinced themselves that the fate of the American press, or America itself, actually depended on promoting the dossier to jam a spike in Trump’s wheels. There was really no telling what the mad, press-hating tweeter-in-chief might do once in office.
If it weren’t for the Trump-Russia narrative, maybe digital subscriptions wouldn’t have surged at the Timesand elsewhere over the last quarter.
And if it weren’t for the Trump-Russia narrative, maybe digital subscriptions wouldn’t have surged at the Timesand elsewhere over the last quarter. Sure, it would be bad if the tables were turned, and the other side had a noble public servant of its own like Robert Mueller coming after Hillary Clinton on the basis of some “dossier” of hogwash that a Trump donor paid $10 million for then leaked to Steve Bannon at Breitbart —but, well, that’s not happening. Not this time, anyway.
Journalists can try to pretend that none of this actually happened, and that in fact they are all still the heroes of their own imaginations, bravely fighting Nazis and fascists. That the choices they made while playing dress-up are fully justified by Trump’s awfulness, even if they also weakened the badly damaged structures of an institution that for the past century has been central to the American form of government.
Our political institutions, including the press, are designed to check the power that any one group accrues as a consequence of its sociological dynamics, and make it difficult for them to advance their narrow interests, friendships, or whims at the expense of the public. The scandal that now threatens to put a stake through the heart of the media is that it may have been paid to publicize what it knows and has known for more than a year: The Great Kremlin Conspiracy Theory is a hoax.
Lee Smith is the media columnist at Tablet and a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.
EU warns Poland not to pass pro-life legislation
December 5, 2017 (Population Research Institute) – The European Union (EU) has warned Poland not to pass any legislation banning abortion in cases where unborn children are living with severe congenital disabilities.
On November 15, the European Parliament (EP) adopted a resolution initiating the formal process for rebuking an EU Member State found to be in “serious breach” of their obligations under the Treaty on European Union (TEU).
The EP alleges that Poland may be in violation of core EU principles with respect to human rights and democratic values. While the EP’s resolution primarily addresses the independence of the judiciary, it also condemns Poland for considering pro-life legislation that would protect the unborn children living with disabilities.
The resolution also calls on Poland to repeal a recent law signed by Polish President Andrzej Duda prohibiting the over-the-counter sale of the morning-after pill without a prescription. Previously, girls as young as 15 were able to obtain the morning-after pill over the counter. The EP’s resolution further calls on the Polish Government to provide free contraception to everyone at the taxpayer’s expense.
The EP further criticized the decision of the Polish Government to cut funding for liberal “women’s rights” organizations, such as the pro-abortion organization BABA Lubuskie Center for Women’s Rights. Left-wing observers have noted with alarm that funds that, under previous administrations, would have been given to pro-abortion groups have instead been awarded to Catholic organizations more in line with Polish traditional and family values.
Over 90 percent of Poland is Catholic and an overwhelming majority of Poles are opposed to legalized abortion.
The EP’s resolution instructs the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs to produce a report detailing Poland’s alleged violations of the TEU. It is anticipated that the report commissioned by the European Parliament will serve as the basis for a “reasoned proposal” which will likely be used as justification to invoke Article 7(1) procedures under the TEU.
Under Article 7(1), the European Union may vote to declare Poland in “serious breach” of EU democratic values and its human rights obligations under the treaty.
A formal rebuke of Poland under Article 7 would further pressure the European Council to consider taking formal corrective measures against Poland, including indefinitely suspending Poland’s voting rights in the European Council. A suspension of a voting rights, however, would require the unanimous consent of all other Council members, a perhaps unlikely outcome given Hungary President Viktor Orban’s proclivity to resist EU overreach.
The EP’s resolution against Poland is only the second time in the European Union’s history that an Article 7 procedure has been initiated against a Member State. Earlier this year, the European Parliament also opened an Article 7 procedure on Hungary for its refusal to comply with EU quotas for accepting refugees from the Middle East.
The EP’s move against Poland, however, represents the first time Article 7 is being used to condemn a Member State for pro-life legislation.
The EP resolution on Poland preemptively condemns any proposal to ban abortion of the unborn living with disabilities, despite the fact that no such bill has yet been introduced in the Polish parliament. The resolution “Strongly criticises any legislative proposal that would prohibit abortion in cases of severe or fatal foetal impairment.”
Earlier this year, the Polish grassroots organization the Stop Abortion Committee launched a citizen’s petition to ban abortion in cases of fetal disability. According to the Stop Abortion Committee, the petition has received 830,000 signatures, more than eight times the number of signatures required by Polish law for submitting a legislative proposal to parliament and nearly twice as many as signatories as last year’s failed initiative to ban all abortion. Both Polish President Duda and Prime Minister Beata Szydło have declared their support for the initiative.
The European Parliament’s attempt to censure Poland for considering legislation to protect the lives of the unborn with disabilities represents an unprecedented attempt by the EU to intervene in the democratic process of a Member State. The motion further transgresses on the right for states to protect the inherent and fundamental right to life through law as guaranteed by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
According to a CBOS poll from last year, as cited by the The Catholic World Report, 66 percent of Poles believe that human life should be protected “regardless of the circumstances” from “conception to natural death.” A separate 2014 poll found that 65 percent of Poles consider abortion “morally inappropriate.”
Although a small majority of Poles (53%) still support the status quo on abortion in cases of the unborn living with disabilities, pro-life sentiment in Poland has grown significantly in recent years. Since 2012, the number of Poles who support legislation restricting abortion has increased by 7 percent. Pro-life sentiment in Poland is likely to increase further in the coming years. A full 80 percent of young adults (18-24 years of age) support a complete abortion ban compared to only 50% of adults over 65.
“Two and a half centuries after being carved up by Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Russia, Poland again faces a threat to its future as an independent nation,” says Population Research Institute President Steven Mosher, “Only this time the danger is not only that its territory would be incorporated into a larger European state, but also that it might be forced to deny its own religious culture as a nation of faithful, practicing Catholics.”
Reprinted with permission from the Population Research Institute.
On November 15, the European Parliament (EP) adopted a resolution initiating the formal process for rebuking an EU Member State found to be in “serious breach” of their obligations under the Treaty on European Union (TEU).
The EP alleges that Poland may be in violation of core EU principles with respect to human rights and democratic values. While the EP’s resolution primarily addresses the independence of the judiciary, it also condemns Poland for considering pro-life legislation that would protect the unborn children living with disabilities.
The resolution also calls on Poland to repeal a recent law signed by Polish President Andrzej Duda prohibiting the over-the-counter sale of the morning-after pill without a prescription. Previously, girls as young as 15 were able to obtain the morning-after pill over the counter. The EP’s resolution further calls on the Polish Government to provide free contraception to everyone at the taxpayer’s expense.
The EP further criticized the decision of the Polish Government to cut funding for liberal “women’s rights” organizations, such as the pro-abortion organization BABA Lubuskie Center for Women’s Rights. Left-wing observers have noted with alarm that funds that, under previous administrations, would have been given to pro-abortion groups have instead been awarded to Catholic organizations more in line with Polish traditional and family values.
Over 90 percent of Poland is Catholic and an overwhelming majority of Poles are opposed to legalized abortion.
The EP’s resolution instructs the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs to produce a report detailing Poland’s alleged violations of the TEU. It is anticipated that the report commissioned by the European Parliament will serve as the basis for a “reasoned proposal” which will likely be used as justification to invoke Article 7(1) procedures under the TEU.
Under Article 7(1), the European Union may vote to declare Poland in “serious breach” of EU democratic values and its human rights obligations under the treaty.
A formal rebuke of Poland under Article 7 would further pressure the European Council to consider taking formal corrective measures against Poland, including indefinitely suspending Poland’s voting rights in the European Council. A suspension of a voting rights, however, would require the unanimous consent of all other Council members, a perhaps unlikely outcome given Hungary President Viktor Orban’s proclivity to resist EU overreach.
The EP’s resolution against Poland is only the second time in the European Union’s history that an Article 7 procedure has been initiated against a Member State. Earlier this year, the European Parliament also opened an Article 7 procedure on Hungary for its refusal to comply with EU quotas for accepting refugees from the Middle East.
The EP’s move against Poland, however, represents the first time Article 7 is being used to condemn a Member State for pro-life legislation.
The EP resolution on Poland preemptively condemns any proposal to ban abortion of the unborn living with disabilities, despite the fact that no such bill has yet been introduced in the Polish parliament. The resolution “Strongly criticises any legislative proposal that would prohibit abortion in cases of severe or fatal foetal impairment.”
Earlier this year, the Polish grassroots organization the Stop Abortion Committee launched a citizen’s petition to ban abortion in cases of fetal disability. According to the Stop Abortion Committee, the petition has received 830,000 signatures, more than eight times the number of signatures required by Polish law for submitting a legislative proposal to parliament and nearly twice as many as signatories as last year’s failed initiative to ban all abortion. Both Polish President Duda and Prime Minister Beata Szydło have declared their support for the initiative.
The European Parliament’s attempt to censure Poland for considering legislation to protect the lives of the unborn with disabilities represents an unprecedented attempt by the EU to intervene in the democratic process of a Member State. The motion further transgresses on the right for states to protect the inherent and fundamental right to life through law as guaranteed by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
According to a CBOS poll from last year, as cited by the The Catholic World Report, 66 percent of Poles believe that human life should be protected “regardless of the circumstances” from “conception to natural death.” A separate 2014 poll found that 65 percent of Poles consider abortion “morally inappropriate.”
Although a small majority of Poles (53%) still support the status quo on abortion in cases of the unborn living with disabilities, pro-life sentiment in Poland has grown significantly in recent years. Since 2012, the number of Poles who support legislation restricting abortion has increased by 7 percent. Pro-life sentiment in Poland is likely to increase further in the coming years. A full 80 percent of young adults (18-24 years of age) support a complete abortion ban compared to only 50% of adults over 65.
“Two and a half centuries after being carved up by Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Russia, Poland again faces a threat to its future as an independent nation,” says Population Research Institute President Steven Mosher, “Only this time the danger is not only that its territory would be incorporated into a larger European state, but also that it might be forced to deny its own religious culture as a nation of faithful, practicing Catholics.”
Reprinted with permission from the Population Research Institute.
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