Assume, for the sake of argument, that powerful, connected people in the intelligence community and in politics worried that a wildcard Trump presidency, unlike another Clinton or Bush, might expose a decade-plus of questionable practices. Disrupt long-established money channels. Reveal secret machinations that could arguably land some people in prison.
What exactly might an “insurance policy” against Donald Trump look like?
He would have to be marginalized at every turn. Strategies would encompass politics, the courts, opposition research and the media. He’d have to become mired in lawsuits, distracted by allegations, riddled with calls for impeachment, hounded by investigations. His election must be portrayed as the illegitimate result of a criminal or un-American conspiracy.
To accomplish this, bad actors in the intel community could step up use of surveillance tools as a weapon to look for dirt on Trump before his inauguration. They could rely on dubious political opposition research to secretly argue for wiretaps, plant one or more spies in the Trump campaign, then leak to the press a mix of true and false stories to create a sense of chaos.
Once Trump is in office, a good insurance policy would call for neutralizing the advisers seen as most threatening, including his attorney general. The reigning FBI director could privately send the implicit message that as long as Trump minds his own business, he won’t be named as a target. When the president asks the FBI director to lift the cloud and tell the public their president isn’t under investigation, the FBI director could demur and allow a storm of innuendo to build. Idle chatter benefits the plot. There would be rampant media leaks, both true and false, but none of them would benefit Trump.
All would be well unless the president removes the FBI director. Then, a rider on the insurance policy would kick in. After months of assuring Trump he’s not under investigation, he must now become a focus to keep him away from the Justice Department and the FBI; once an investigation opens, all of Trump’s attempts to affect policy or to dig into allegations against the intelligence community could be portrayed as obstruction of justice.
How to open an investigation after all these months? Appoint a special counsel. (Easy to get the right one, with Trump’s attorney general out of the way.) How to get public and congressional support for a special counsel? Through a partnership between the fired FBI director and the media; he could secretly leak to The New York Times anti-Trump versions of memos he wrote, inventing the pretext for a special counsel probe. The chosen special counsel should be an insider with his own legacy to protect. Anti-Trump FBI officials who secretly vowed to “stop” Trump could be assigned to the investigation.
As crazy as it all sounds, it becomes slightly more plausible when we examine the record and find self-described conspiracies to develop “insurance policies.””
“In order to get Lindsey Graham’s point in this discussion with Harris Faulkner, first you’d have to know about the spy on Dianne Feinstein’s staff. Thanks to the collective silence of most media outlets, the audience for this argument might be somewhat limited — but that doesn’t make it any less powerful. Graham wants to know why the FBI warned Dianne Feinstein about a suspected spy but never bothered to tell Donald Trump about their suspicions over Carter Page and George Papadopoulos.”
“I’m gonna send a letter to Director Wray next week and ask him what is the policy? Why didn’t you tell president Trump that you had concerns about Carter Page? Is there a double standard here?
If this was a counter-intelligence investigation and not a criminal investigation, the FBI should have told President Trump they had concerns about Papadopoulos and Page. Why didn’t they do for Trump what they did for Feinstein?”
I told you a few weeks ago the story of how Obama halted an effort to stop Hezbollah from running drugs from South America to finance terrorism. And now we know Bruce Ohr was behind that as well as being neck deep in the Trump coup attempt.
“A former agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Agency’s Special Operations Division called in to the Mark Levin Show Thursday night and wondered if Bruce Ohr prioritized other issues over his previous job as director of the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force.
The agent, Derek Maltz, detailed to Levin how illicit American businesses were funneling money to terrorist organizations, and that his suspicion was Ohr either sidelined or ignored his responsibility to track these businesses in order to pursue a political agenda against the Donald Trump campaign.
Ohr is a key Justice Department figure in the Congressional Russia investigation whose wife Nellie Ohr worked for Fusion GPS, the opposition researchers behind the Democrat-funded and Christopher Steele authored anti-Trump dossier.
According to a report from The Hill, Bruce Ohr had communicated with Steele after Steele had reportedly cut ties with the FBI.
Maltz called into Levin’s show and explained to the radio host he was the head of his division when there was an initiative against Hezbollah in their cocaine and money laundering activities.
“Major cocaine loads leaving Colombia South America going into West Africa. Cocaine is sold millions and millions of dollars are collected Middle Eastern couriers transporting the cash back to Beiruit, Lebanon. Hezbollah militants protecting the money going into the banks. Money transfers back to America. Going into bank accounts,” Maltz said.
He went on to say, “Middle Eastern used car businesses taking cash out– buying cars at auto auctions– sending the cars back down to West Africa to resell for like 20, 25 percent profit, and monies were going right back to Hezbollah to support their overall worldwide initiative.”
In 2011, Ohr was head of the Department of Justice’s transnational organized crime strategy. The purpose of the strategy, according to Maltz, was to unite the U.S. government agencies to work against the biggest threats to the United States.
“Unfortunately, I now believe, based on everything I’m reading and hearing, that Mr. Ohr had other priorities as he was working in the Department of Justice with his political priorities,” said Maltz who said that Ohr’s responsibility was to unite the interagency of America to go after terror threats.”
“Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson told House investigators last year that he only met Department of Justice official Bruce Ohr after the 2016 election.
But Ohr’s records show that he was in contact with Simpson as early as August 2016.
Ohr’s wife worked for Fusion GPS on the Steele dossier project.
Newly released Department of Justice records appear to conflict with testimony that Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson gave to Congress in 2017 about the timeline of his interactions with top DOJ official Bruce Ohr.
Simpson claimed in testimony to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence on Nov. 14 that he did not have contact with any FBI or DOJ officials regarding the infamous Steele dossier until after the 2016 election. But Ohr’s emails, which have been provided to Congress, show that he and Simpson were in contact as early as August 2016.
Ohr’s wife, a Russia expert named Nellie Ohr, worked for Fusion GPS on its anti-Trump research project. Ohr was also in close contact with Christopher Steele, the former British spy Simpson hired to investigate then-candidate Donald Trump’s links to Russia. (RELATED: GOP Lawmakers Renew Focus On Bruce Ohr, The DOJ Official Whose Wife Worked For Fusion GPS)
Ohr, who was demoted from his position as associate deputy attorney general in December, maintained contact with Steele even after the FBI cut ties with the former MI6 officer over his unauthorized disclosures to the media.”
“Republican Sen. Marco Rubio has introduced legislation that would allow parents to cash in a portion of their future Social Security benefits early to finance family leave. He’s billing the proposal as pro-family, but it would actually hurt families by worsening the program’s already dire financial problems.
Rubio’s bill would give new parents the option to take at least two months of paid leave, in exchange for delaying their Social Security benefits for three to six months after they retire. Rubio’s passion for providing paid family leave is admirable, but his proposed solution is fundamentally flawed. The Social Security system is currently not financially stable, and allowing more benefits to be drawn from the trust fund will only quicken its existing death spiral towards bankruptcy.
Rubio tried to argue that his paid leave plan isn’t funded via Social Security per se, but with individual Social Security benefits. He tweeted on Friday, “I don’t want to fund #PaidFamilyLeave with #SocialSecurity. I want working American parents to have the OPTION of funding THEIR paid leave by drawing early on a portion of THEIR social security benefits which THEY paid for with THEIR taxes.” But this isn’t really how Social Security works.
When you pay your Social Security taxes, that money is used to make Social Security payments to retirees. It’s not as if you pay into a personalized government bank account during your working years and draw from that bank account after retiring. Your money is immediately used to pay benefits for current retirees. If more money is paid in taxes than paid out in benefits, the surplus enters the Social Security trust fund.”
“Sen. Chuck Grassley, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee announced Friday that confirmation hearings for Judge Kavanaugh, Trump’s second pick for the Supreme Court, will begin September 4.
From The Hill:
The Senate Judiciary Committee announced on Friday that it will hold its confirmation hearing for Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh early next month.
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the committee’s chairman, announced the hearing for President Trump’s nominee to replace former Justice Anthony Kennedy will start on Sept. 4 and last three to four days.
“He’s a mainstream judge. He has a record of judicial independence and applying the law as it is written. … It’s time for the American people to hear directly from Judge Kavanaugh at his public hearing,” Grassley said in a statement.
Republicans want Kavanaugh on the bench as early as the first of October, before the court starts its next term. They’ve warned that they won’t delay a final vote until after the midterm elections in November.
Senate Democrats have accused Republicans of rushing the nomination process and are trying to delay confirmation until some 900,000 pages of documents from W’s tenure as President are made public. The National Archives refused to turn over the documents without a request from the committee chairman, Sen. Grassley.
According to the Judicial Crisis Network, Kavanaugh’s confirmation is standard procedure and he’s been vetted thoroughly.”
I’m not much for the federal govt stepping into state and local matters. But in this case, I think it’s long overdue. Someone needs to stop the bloodshed, and the Democrats running Chicago have proven inept at the task for far too long.
.@gslivingston: "Trump, send the National Guard down here. Give us a breather so we can figure this out. Yes, let's talk, bc we have to make some changes here. Let's do it like Eisenhower – get some federal troops in here and let's make this a better place for all Chicagoans." pic.twitter.com/3tv5MO2e1t
“After years of being stonewalled by the Obama administration, the hundreds of Tea Party groups that were targeted by the Internal Revenue Service in 2013 for political purposes finally received justice Wednesday when U.S. District Judge Michael R. Barrett approved a multimillion-dollar settlement.
Although the settlement doesn’t include an admission of guilt by the IRS, it does force the agency to finally pay penance by forking over $3.5 million total to the hundreds of conservative non-profit that were unfairly targeted for intense scrutiny after applying for tax-exempt status.
“It shows that when a government agency desires to target citizens based on their viewpoints, a price will be paid,” Edward Greim, the attorney who led the class-action suit against the IRS, said to The Washington Times.
It was not until October of 2017, nine months after President Donald Trump took office, that the federal government finally agreed to settle the Tea Party groups’ complaint.
Wednesday’s ruling also marks the first time the IRS has ever agreed to pay for its transgressions: “I’m not frankly aware of any other class action lawsuit against the IRS for anything where the IRS paid money,” Citizens for Self Governance president Mark Meckler, who funded the lawsuit, said.
When asked whether the IRS might ever target non-profits over political purposes again, he said, “I’m a hundred percent certain it could happen again.””
————————–
“Last week, I blogged that U.S. Senator Feinstein had a “driver” who turned out to be a Chinese spy who reported back to government officials about local politics.
While she endeavored to minimize the impact of this individual to her work, The Daily Caller did some digging and it turns out he was substantially more involved with her office than chauffeuring California’s Senior US Senator to events.
All the details of a former, longtime Sen. Dianne Feinstein staffer who’s accused of relaying information to Chinese intelligence services while working for the California Democrat point to Russell Lowe, a Daily Caller News Foundation investigation has determined.
Lowe worked for 20 years in Feinstein’s San Francisco office, where he was a staff liaison to the Asian-American community before leaving approximately five years ago. All those details match up with the descriptions of the Chinese spy Feinstein reportedly employed.
The New York Post’s Paul Sperry took a look at the FBI’s accounts and concluded that Feinstein was an “easy mark” for Chinese espionage.
In June 1996 — after the staffer had begun working for Feinstein — the FBI detected that the Chinese government was attempting to seek favor with the senator, who at the time sat on the East Asian and Pacific affairs subcommittee of the Foreign Relations Committee, which oversees US-China relations. Investigators warned her in a classified briefing that Beijing might try to influence her through illegal campaign contributions laundered through front corporations and other cutouts.
“All the details of a former, longtime Sen. Dianne Feinstein staffer who’s accused of relaying information to Chinese intelligence services while working for the California Democrat point to Russell Lowe, a Daily Caller News Foundation investigation has determined.
Lowe worked for 20 years in Feinstein’s San Francisco office, where he was a staff liaison to the Asian-American community before leaving approximately five years ago. All those details match up with the descriptions of the Chinese spy Feinstein reportedly employed.
“Chinese intelligence once recruited a staff member at a California office of U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein, and the source reported back to China about local politics,” Politico Magazine reported on July 27, describing the staffer as “a liaison to the local Chinese community” who was secretly “reporting back” to Chinese intelligence services.
Since then, more details have emerged about the alleged spy, including that he worked for Feinstein for 20 years, “attended Chinese consulate functions for the senator” and was fired five years ago.
All of those details point to Lowe, who was listed on Feinstein’s payroll as an “office director” in 2013, according to records maintained by the Sunlight Foundation.”
“Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s Ties To China Go Way Deeper Than An Alleged Office Spy
Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s warm relationship with and advocacy for Communist China go back decades and involve millions, if not billions, of dollars.
I sometimes say that in my last life maybe I was Chinese.”—Sen. Dianne Feinstein
As media, intelligence agency, and political scrutiny of foreign meddling is seemingly at its apex, a story with big national security implications involving a high-ranking senator with access to America’s most sensitive intelligence information has been hiding in plain sight.”
——————————
Once again. more Democrat collusion with foreigners ignored.
From the Federalist link at 2:29PM….
“In 1986, Feinstein and Jiang designated several corporate entities for fostering commercial relations, one named Shanghai Pacific Partners. Feinstein’s husband served as a director. His financial position was relatively small, less than $500,000 on one project, the only such position in China the Feinstein family held when Feinstein entered the Senate in 1992.
That project, however, which Blum’s firm participated in alongside PRC state-run Shanghai Investment Trust Corp., was one of the first joint ventures between San Francisco and Chinese investors, reportedly “cited by Chinese officials as a testament to the friendly business ties between Shanghai and San Francisco that Feinstein had initiated.” Subsequently Blum’s investments in the Middle Kingdom mushroomed.
In May 1993, Feinstein expressed her strong support on the Senate floor for continued trading with China. Contemporaneously, her husband was seeking to raise up to $150 million from investors, including himself, for a variety of Chinese enterprises.
In August 1993, Feinstein and her husband visited Beijing for extensive meetings with Chinese leaders at President Jiang’s invitation. As the Los Angeles Times reported in a 1994 exposé on Feinstein’s husband’s business ties and the potential conflict of interests they presented: “Such encounters are fondly remembered when deals are clinched back in China, according to American experts in Chinese business practices. They said that Feinstein’s consistent support for China’s interests cannot help but benefit her husband’s efforts to earn profits there.”
The historical record suggests these American experts were right. Blum successfully raised $160 million for the aforementioned Asia fund under his Newbridge Capital investment company, including investing $1-2 million himself. The fund invested in several state-owned and Chinese government-linked businesses.”
“Boston Globe initiates “coordinated response” to Trump’s anti-press rhetoric; More than 100 papers on board”
“They’re all Jim Acosta now, it seems.
CNN’s Brian Stelter reports Saturday that more than 100 newspapers will publish editorials decrying President Trump’s anti-press rhetoric this coming Thursday:
The Boston Globe has been contacting newspaper editorial boards and proposing a “coordinated response” to President Trump’s escalating “enemy of the people” rhetoric.
“We propose to publish an editorial on August 16 on the dangers of the administration’s assault on the press and ask others to commit to publishing their own editorials on the same date,” The Globe said in its pitch to fellow papers.”
————————
You know that whole notion that the press hasn't declared a reciprocal war on Trump and his supporters? Yeah, stuff like this makes that claim look like pure, 100% #FakeNewshttps://t.co/mn6UxRxCvn
“We actually agree that Trump could tone it down a bit, but we can’t shake the feeling that so many papers are happy to get on board because they see themselves as the opposition party rather than unbiased news outlets.”
“Gotta hand it to Special Counsel Robert Mueller: He knows how to set off a stick of dynamite. I refer, of course, to his office’s recent indictment of thirteen Russians in Russia, which we are now to chase after, yelling “Pearl Harbor!” on the Left and “No collusion!” on the Right, forgetting all about the coalescing revelations of corruption and conspiracy and, yes, Russian influence, to elect Hillary Clinton in 2016, and, failing that, to destroy the Trump presidency.
The key is still in the “dossier” spying scandal.
Nellie Ohr is the “dossier” spying scandal’s woman in the middle.
To one side of Ohr, there is the Fusion GPS team, including fellow contractor Christopher Steele. To the other, there is husband Bruce Ohr, who, until his “dossier”-related demotion, was No. 4 man at the Department of Justice, and a key contact there for Steele.
As central as Nellie Ohr’s placement is, her role in the creation of the “dossier” remains undefined. For example, the House Intelligence Committee memo on related matters vaguely tells us that Nellie Ohr was “employed by Fusion GPS to assist in the cultivation of opposition research on Trump”; the memo adds that Bruce Ohr “later provided the FBI with all of his wife’s opposition research.” Senator Lindsey Graham more sensationally told Fox News that Nellie Ohr “did the research for Mr. Steele,” but details remain scarce.
Still, relevant facts have emerged. These include Nellie Ohr’s study in the USSR in 1989; her fluency in Russian and Ph.D. in Russian history in 1990; a 2010 CIA affiliation, which practically makes her former MI6 agent Steele’s “opposite number”; and the extremely curious detail, harkening back to earlier eras of spycraft, that on May 23, 2016, around the time she came on board Fusion GPS, Nellie Ohr applied for a ham radio operator’s license.
Notably, the “dossier” men in her life have tried to shield Ohr from public scrutiny, even at professional risk. Her husband, as the Daily Caller News Foundation reports, failed to disclose his wife’s employment with Fusion GPS and seek the appropriate conflict-of-interest waiver, which may have been an important factor in his demotion from associate deputy attorney general late last year.
Under Senate and House questioning, Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson consistently failed to disclose Nellie Ohr’s existence as one of his firm’s paid Russian experts, let alone that he hired her for the red-hot DNC/Clinton campaign Trump-Russia project.
Even Christopher Steele may have tried to keep Nellie Ohr “under cover.” Steele, put forth as the “dossier” author ever since its January 2017 publication in BuzzFeed, does not appear to have let on to his many media and political contacts that he had “dossier”-assistance from at least two fellow Fusion GPS Russian experts, Nellie Ohr and Edward Baumgartner. Baumgartner, interestingly, was a Russian history major at Vassar in the 1990s when Nellie Ohr taught Russian history there.
Thus, Nellie Ohr’s exact activities inside one of the great Russian-American disinformation campaigns of all time remain opaque. What most observers don’t realize, though, is that we already have a window onto her thinking through her strongly-etched, ideological view of Soviet history.”
———————–
“Judicial Watch is suing the Department of Justice for access to communications related to the infamous anti-Trump dossier.
The conservative watchdog group is seeking various records related to former Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr, his wife Nellie Ohr, dossier author Christopher Steele and Fusion GPS.
In a statement, Judicial Watch said it sued because the Justice Department failed to respond to a Freedom of Information Act request filed in May.
Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton explained on “Hannity” that Fusion GPS — which employed Nellie Ohr — was retained by a lawyer who represented the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee to compile opposition research on then-candidate Donald Trump.
He noted that Fusion GPS at the same time was working on behalf of Russian actors targeting critics of Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Magnitsky Act
The 2012 U.S. law cracked down on Russian officials suspected of human rights abuses.
“The irony here is that Fusion GPS was working for the Clinton camp to target Trump [and] also working for the Putin camp to target the government generally to get this Magnitsky Act pulled away,” Fitton said.”
I really don’t know what Muller thinks he can do.
He has no evidence of collusion. We would know about it by now.
How can the president obstruct justice?
Now. If Muller did, bring charges of some sort, what would happen?
Trump is a fighter. He will not resign.
It will be a bloody battle. He will expose Deep State corruption we don’t know about yet.
R. Muller is a smart man. He must be smart. But he looks pretty stupid from here. If he were really smart, he could close shop and go home. This is going to hurt lots of his friends.
“Democratic Congressman Keith Ellison, the co-chair of the DNC, has been accused of domestic violence by the son of his alleged ex-girlfriend, Karen Monahan.
The accusations were shared by Debra Hilstrom, a Democrat member of Minnesota’s house of representatives.
Hilstrom tweeted a link to the shocking Facebook post written by Austin Monahan, who had tagged Hilstrom in the hopes of shining a spotlight on the alleged abuse his mom suffered at the hands of Ellison, the first Muslim elected to the United States Congress.”
—————-
“In the emotional Facebook post, Austin Monahan accused Ellison of assaulting, harassing, threatening, and verbally abusing his mom.
“My name is Austin Monahan and I am writing this letter on behalf of me and my brother,” Austin wrote. “My brother and I watched our mom come out of pure hell after getting out of her relationship with Keith Ellison.”
Austin continued: “In the middle of 2017, I was using my mom’s computer trying to download something and I clicked on a file, I found over 100 text and twitters messages and video almost 2 min long that showed Keith Ellison dragging my mama off the bed by her feet, screaming and calling her a “@#$%^%$#@#” and telling her to get the @#$% out of his house.”
Austin added: “The messages I found, were mixed with him consistently telling my mom he wanted her back, he missed her, he knew he %$#@#$ up and we wished he could do things different, he would victim shaming, bully her, and threaten her if she went public.”
Wandering Views 
It’s not a conspiracy theory if it’s true.
http://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/401116-what-would-the-intelligence-communitys-insurance-policy-against-trump#.W2z3IXJwSnM.twitter
“Let’s begin in the realm of the fanciful.
Assume, for the sake of argument, that powerful, connected people in the intelligence community and in politics worried that a wildcard Trump presidency, unlike another Clinton or Bush, might expose a decade-plus of questionable practices. Disrupt long-established money channels. Reveal secret machinations that could arguably land some people in prison.
What exactly might an “insurance policy” against Donald Trump look like?
He would have to be marginalized at every turn. Strategies would encompass politics, the courts, opposition research and the media. He’d have to become mired in lawsuits, distracted by allegations, riddled with calls for impeachment, hounded by investigations. His election must be portrayed as the illegitimate result of a criminal or un-American conspiracy.
To accomplish this, bad actors in the intel community could step up use of surveillance tools as a weapon to look for dirt on Trump before his inauguration. They could rely on dubious political opposition research to secretly argue for wiretaps, plant one or more spies in the Trump campaign, then leak to the press a mix of true and false stories to create a sense of chaos.
Once Trump is in office, a good insurance policy would call for neutralizing the advisers seen as most threatening, including his attorney general. The reigning FBI director could privately send the implicit message that as long as Trump minds his own business, he won’t be named as a target. When the president asks the FBI director to lift the cloud and tell the public their president isn’t under investigation, the FBI director could demur and allow a storm of innuendo to build. Idle chatter benefits the plot. There would be rampant media leaks, both true and false, but none of them would benefit Trump.
All would be well unless the president removes the FBI director. Then, a rider on the insurance policy would kick in. After months of assuring Trump he’s not under investigation, he must now become a focus to keep him away from the Justice Department and the FBI; once an investigation opens, all of Trump’s attempts to affect policy or to dig into allegations against the intelligence community could be portrayed as obstruction of justice.
How to open an investigation after all these months? Appoint a special counsel. (Easy to get the right one, with Trump’s attorney general out of the way.) How to get public and congressional support for a special counsel? Through a partnership between the fired FBI director and the media; he could secretly leak to The New York Times anti-Trump versions of memos he wrote, inventing the pretext for a special counsel probe. The chosen special counsel should be an insider with his own legacy to protect. Anti-Trump FBI officials who secretly vowed to “stop” Trump could be assigned to the investigation.
As crazy as it all sounds, it becomes slightly more plausible when we examine the record and find self-described conspiracies to develop “insurance policies.””
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It would also explain this.
https://hotair.com/archives/2018/08/10/graham-didnt-fbi-warn-trump-like-warned-feinstein/
“In order to get Lindsey Graham’s point in this discussion with Harris Faulkner, first you’d have to know about the spy on Dianne Feinstein’s staff. Thanks to the collective silence of most media outlets, the audience for this argument might be somewhat limited — but that doesn’t make it any less powerful. Graham wants to know why the FBI warned Dianne Feinstein about a suspected spy but never bothered to tell Donald Trump about their suspicions over Carter Page and George Papadopoulos.”
“I’m gonna send a letter to Director Wray next week and ask him what is the policy? Why didn’t you tell president Trump that you had concerns about Carter Page? Is there a double standard here?
If this was a counter-intelligence investigation and not a criminal investigation, the FBI should have told President Trump they had concerns about Papadopoulos and Page. Why didn’t they do for Trump what they did for Feinstein?”
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And this.
I told you a few weeks ago the story of how Obama halted an effort to stop Hezbollah from running drugs from South America to finance terrorism. And now we know Bruce Ohr was behind that as well as being neck deep in the Trump coup attempt.
http://dailycaller.com/2018/08/10/former-sr-dea-agent-critical-of-bruce-ohrs-job-performance-in-transnational-organized-crime-unit/
“A former agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Agency’s Special Operations Division called in to the Mark Levin Show Thursday night and wondered if Bruce Ohr prioritized other issues over his previous job as director of the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force.
The agent, Derek Maltz, detailed to Levin how illicit American businesses were funneling money to terrorist organizations, and that his suspicion was Ohr either sidelined or ignored his responsibility to track these businesses in order to pursue a political agenda against the Donald Trump campaign.
Ohr is a key Justice Department figure in the Congressional Russia investigation whose wife Nellie Ohr worked for Fusion GPS, the opposition researchers behind the Democrat-funded and Christopher Steele authored anti-Trump dossier.
According to a report from The Hill, Bruce Ohr had communicated with Steele after Steele had reportedly cut ties with the FBI.
Maltz called into Levin’s show and explained to the radio host he was the head of his division when there was an initiative against Hezbollah in their cocaine and money laundering activities.
“Major cocaine loads leaving Colombia South America going into West Africa. Cocaine is sold millions and millions of dollars are collected Middle Eastern couriers transporting the cash back to Beiruit, Lebanon. Hezbollah militants protecting the money going into the banks. Money transfers back to America. Going into bank accounts,” Maltz said.
He went on to say, “Middle Eastern used car businesses taking cash out– buying cars at auto auctions– sending the cars back down to West Africa to resell for like 20, 25 percent profit, and monies were going right back to Hezbollah to support their overall worldwide initiative.”
In 2011, Ohr was head of the Department of Justice’s transnational organized crime strategy. The purpose of the strategy, according to Maltz, was to unite the U.S. government agencies to work against the biggest threats to the United States.
“Unfortunately, I now believe, based on everything I’m reading and hearing, that Mr. Ohr had other priorities as he was working in the Department of Justice with his political priorities,” said Maltz who said that Ohr’s responsibility was to unite the interagency of America to go after terror threats.”
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And Glen Simpson of Fusion GPS, the employer of Ohr’s wife, needs to be indicted for lying to Congress. Ohr needs to be brought back in as well.
http://dailycaller.com/2018/08/10/glenn-simpson-bruce-ohr/
“Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson told House investigators last year that he only met Department of Justice official Bruce Ohr after the 2016 election.
But Ohr’s records show that he was in contact with Simpson as early as August 2016.
Ohr’s wife worked for Fusion GPS on the Steele dossier project.
Newly released Department of Justice records appear to conflict with testimony that Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson gave to Congress in 2017 about the timeline of his interactions with top DOJ official Bruce Ohr.
Simpson claimed in testimony to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence on Nov. 14 that he did not have contact with any FBI or DOJ officials regarding the infamous Steele dossier until after the 2016 election. But Ohr’s emails, which have been provided to Congress, show that he and Simpson were in contact as early as August 2016.
Ohr’s wife, a Russia expert named Nellie Ohr, worked for Fusion GPS on its anti-Trump research project. Ohr was also in close contact with Christopher Steele, the former British spy Simpson hired to investigate then-candidate Donald Trump’s links to Russia. (RELATED: GOP Lawmakers Renew Focus On Bruce Ohr, The DOJ Official Whose Wife Worked For Fusion GPS)
Ohr, who was demoted from his position as associate deputy attorney general in December, maintained contact with Steele even after the FBI cut ties with the former MI6 officer over his unauthorized disclosures to the media.”
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And in other news…….
Rubio’s plan to suck even more.
http://thefederalist.com/2018/08/09/marco-rubios-plan-suck-social-security-dry-faster-family-leave-isnt-pro-family/
“Republican Sen. Marco Rubio has introduced legislation that would allow parents to cash in a portion of their future Social Security benefits early to finance family leave. He’s billing the proposal as pro-family, but it would actually hurt families by worsening the program’s already dire financial problems.
Rubio’s bill would give new parents the option to take at least two months of paid leave, in exchange for delaying their Social Security benefits for three to six months after they retire. Rubio’s passion for providing paid family leave is admirable, but his proposed solution is fundamentally flawed. The Social Security system is currently not financially stable, and allowing more benefits to be drawn from the trust fund will only quicken its existing death spiral towards bankruptcy.
Rubio tried to argue that his paid leave plan isn’t funded via Social Security per se, but with individual Social Security benefits. He tweeted on Friday, “I don’t want to fund #PaidFamilyLeave with #SocialSecurity. I want working American parents to have the OPTION of funding THEIR paid leave by drawing early on a portion of THEIR social security benefits which THEY paid for with THEIR taxes.” But this isn’t really how Social Security works.
When you pay your Social Security taxes, that money is used to make Social Security payments to retirees. It’s not as if you pay into a personalized government bank account during your working years and draw from that bank account after retiring. Your money is immediately used to pay benefits for current retirees. If more money is paid in taxes than paid out in benefits, the surplus enters the Social Security trust fund.”
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We have a date!
For Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings.
https://legalinsurrection.com/2018/08/we-have-a-date-kavanaugh-confirmation-hearings-begin-september-4/
“Sen. Chuck Grassley, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee announced Friday that confirmation hearings for Judge Kavanaugh, Trump’s second pick for the Supreme Court, will begin September 4.
From The Hill:
The Senate Judiciary Committee announced on Friday that it will hold its confirmation hearing for Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh early next month.
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the committee’s chairman, announced the hearing for President Trump’s nominee to replace former Justice Anthony Kennedy will start on Sept. 4 and last three to four days.
“He’s a mainstream judge. He has a record of judicial independence and applying the law as it is written. … It’s time for the American people to hear directly from Judge Kavanaugh at his public hearing,” Grassley said in a statement.
Republicans want Kavanaugh on the bench as early as the first of October, before the court starts its next term. They’ve warned that they won’t delay a final vote until after the midterm elections in November.
Senate Democrats have accused Republicans of rushing the nomination process and are trying to delay confirmation until some 900,000 pages of documents from W’s tenure as President are made public. The National Archives refused to turn over the documents without a request from the committee chairman, Sen. Grassley.
According to the Judicial Crisis Network, Kavanaugh’s confirmation is standard procedure and he’s been vetted thoroughly.”
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I’m not much for the federal govt stepping into state and local matters. But in this case, I think it’s long overdue. Someone needs to stop the bloodshed, and the Democrats running Chicago have proven inept at the task for far too long.
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This isn’t justice. It’s CVA with the court’s approval.
It’s a joke.
https://www.bizpacreview.com/2018/08/11/judge-orders-irs-to-pay-penance-to-conservative-non-profits-but-its-not-required-to-admit-guilt-662913
“After years of being stonewalled by the Obama administration, the hundreds of Tea Party groups that were targeted by the Internal Revenue Service in 2013 for political purposes finally received justice Wednesday when U.S. District Judge Michael R. Barrett approved a multimillion-dollar settlement.
Although the settlement doesn’t include an admission of guilt by the IRS, it does force the agency to finally pay penance by forking over $3.5 million total to the hundreds of conservative non-profit that were unfairly targeted for intense scrutiny after applying for tax-exempt status.
“It shows that when a government agency desires to target citizens based on their viewpoints, a price will be paid,” Edward Greim, the attorney who led the class-action suit against the IRS, said to The Washington Times.
It was not until October of 2017, nine months after President Donald Trump took office, that the federal government finally agreed to settle the Tea Party groups’ complaint.
Wednesday’s ruling also marks the first time the IRS has ever agreed to pay for its transgressions: “I’m not frankly aware of any other class action lawsuit against the IRS for anything where the IRS paid money,” Citizens for Self Governance president Mark Meckler, who funded the lawsuit, said.
When asked whether the IRS might ever target non-profits over political purposes again, he said, “I’m a hundred percent certain it could happen again.””
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And it will, because nobody gets held to account.
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Marco Rubio’s scheme is the worst thing I’ve heard from a Republican in decades.
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Now about Feinstein’s Chinese problem……
https://legalinsurrection.com/2018/08/california-sen-dianne-feinstein-was-easy-mark-for-chinese-spy/
“Last week, I blogged that U.S. Senator Feinstein had a “driver” who turned out to be a Chinese spy who reported back to government officials about local politics.
While she endeavored to minimize the impact of this individual to her work, The Daily Caller did some digging and it turns out he was substantially more involved with her office than chauffeuring California’s Senior US Senator to events.
All the details of a former, longtime Sen. Dianne Feinstein staffer who’s accused of relaying information to Chinese intelligence services while working for the California Democrat point to Russell Lowe, a Daily Caller News Foundation investigation has determined.
Lowe worked for 20 years in Feinstein’s San Francisco office, where he was a staff liaison to the Asian-American community before leaving approximately five years ago. All those details match up with the descriptions of the Chinese spy Feinstein reportedly employed.
The New York Post’s Paul Sperry took a look at the FBI’s accounts and concluded that Feinstein was an “easy mark” for Chinese espionage.
In June 1996 — after the staffer had begun working for Feinstein — the FBI detected that the Chinese government was attempting to seek favor with the senator, who at the time sat on the East Asian and Pacific affairs subcommittee of the Foreign Relations Committee, which oversees US-China relations. Investigators warned her in a classified briefing that Beijing might try to influence her through illegal campaign contributions laundered through front corporations and other cutouts.
The warning proved prescient.”
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http://dailycaller.com/2018/08/06/feinstein-chinese-spy/
“All the details of a former, longtime Sen. Dianne Feinstein staffer who’s accused of relaying information to Chinese intelligence services while working for the California Democrat point to Russell Lowe, a Daily Caller News Foundation investigation has determined.
Lowe worked for 20 years in Feinstein’s San Francisco office, where he was a staff liaison to the Asian-American community before leaving approximately five years ago. All those details match up with the descriptions of the Chinese spy Feinstein reportedly employed.
“Chinese intelligence once recruited a staff member at a California office of U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein, and the source reported back to China about local politics,” Politico Magazine reported on July 27, describing the staffer as “a liaison to the local Chinese community” who was secretly “reporting back” to Chinese intelligence services.
Since then, more details have emerged about the alleged spy, including that he worked for Feinstein for 20 years, “attended Chinese consulate functions for the senator” and was fired five years ago.
All of those details point to Lowe, who was listed on Feinstein’s payroll as an “office director” in 2013, according to records maintained by the Sunlight Foundation.”
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More. Doesn’t look good for DiFi.
http://thefederalist.com/2018/08/08/sen-dianne-feinsteins-ties-china-go-way-deeper-alleged-office-spy/
“Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s Ties To China Go Way Deeper Than An Alleged Office Spy
Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s warm relationship with and advocacy for Communist China go back decades and involve millions, if not billions, of dollars.
I sometimes say that in my last life maybe I was Chinese.”—Sen. Dianne Feinstein
As media, intelligence agency, and political scrutiny of foreign meddling is seemingly at its apex, a story with big national security implications involving a high-ranking senator with access to America’s most sensitive intelligence information has been hiding in plain sight.”
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It’s not hiding. It’s being ignored.
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Once again. more Democrat collusion with foreigners ignored.
From the Federalist link at 2:29PM….
“In 1986, Feinstein and Jiang designated several corporate entities for fostering commercial relations, one named Shanghai Pacific Partners. Feinstein’s husband served as a director. His financial position was relatively small, less than $500,000 on one project, the only such position in China the Feinstein family held when Feinstein entered the Senate in 1992.
That project, however, which Blum’s firm participated in alongside PRC state-run Shanghai Investment Trust Corp., was one of the first joint ventures between San Francisco and Chinese investors, reportedly “cited by Chinese officials as a testament to the friendly business ties between Shanghai and San Francisco that Feinstein had initiated.” Subsequently Blum’s investments in the Middle Kingdom mushroomed.
In May 1993, Feinstein expressed her strong support on the Senate floor for continued trading with China. Contemporaneously, her husband was seeking to raise up to $150 million from investors, including himself, for a variety of Chinese enterprises.
In August 1993, Feinstein and her husband visited Beijing for extensive meetings with Chinese leaders at President Jiang’s invitation. As the Los Angeles Times reported in a 1994 exposé on Feinstein’s husband’s business ties and the potential conflict of interests they presented: “Such encounters are fondly remembered when deals are clinched back in China, according to American experts in Chinese business practices. They said that Feinstein’s consistent support for China’s interests cannot help but benefit her husband’s efforts to earn profits there.”
The historical record suggests these American experts were right. Blum successfully raised $160 million for the aforementioned Asia fund under his Newbridge Capital investment company, including investing $1-2 million himself. The fund invested in several state-owned and Chinese government-linked businesses.”
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Nope. No bias here……
Coordinated too. The “well it’s an opinion piece” excuse isn’t gonna be sufficient here.
https://twitchy.com/brettt-3136/2018/08/11/boston-globe-initiates-coordinated-response-to-trumps-anti-press-rhetoric-more-than-100-papers-on-board/
“Boston Globe initiates “coordinated response” to Trump’s anti-press rhetoric; More than 100 papers on board”
“They’re all Jim Acosta now, it seems.
CNN’s Brian Stelter reports Saturday that more than 100 newspapers will publish editorials decrying President Trump’s anti-press rhetoric this coming Thursday:
The Boston Globe has been contacting newspaper editorial boards and proposing a “coordinated response” to President Trump’s escalating “enemy of the people” rhetoric.
“We propose to publish an editorial on August 16 on the dangers of the administration’s assault on the press and ask others to commit to publishing their own editorials on the same date,” The Globe said in its pitch to fellow papers.”
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“We actually agree that Trump could tone it down a bit, but we can’t shake the feeling that so many papers are happy to get on board because they see themselves as the opposition party rather than unbiased news outlets.”
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Keep digging.
https://spectator.org/nellie-ohr-woman-in-the-middle/
“Gotta hand it to Special Counsel Robert Mueller: He knows how to set off a stick of dynamite. I refer, of course, to his office’s recent indictment of thirteen Russians in Russia, which we are now to chase after, yelling “Pearl Harbor!” on the Left and “No collusion!” on the Right, forgetting all about the coalescing revelations of corruption and conspiracy and, yes, Russian influence, to elect Hillary Clinton in 2016, and, failing that, to destroy the Trump presidency.
The key is still in the “dossier” spying scandal.
Nellie Ohr is the “dossier” spying scandal’s woman in the middle.
To one side of Ohr, there is the Fusion GPS team, including fellow contractor Christopher Steele. To the other, there is husband Bruce Ohr, who, until his “dossier”-related demotion, was No. 4 man at the Department of Justice, and a key contact there for Steele.
As central as Nellie Ohr’s placement is, her role in the creation of the “dossier” remains undefined. For example, the House Intelligence Committee memo on related matters vaguely tells us that Nellie Ohr was “employed by Fusion GPS to assist in the cultivation of opposition research on Trump”; the memo adds that Bruce Ohr “later provided the FBI with all of his wife’s opposition research.” Senator Lindsey Graham more sensationally told Fox News that Nellie Ohr “did the research for Mr. Steele,” but details remain scarce.
Still, relevant facts have emerged. These include Nellie Ohr’s study in the USSR in 1989; her fluency in Russian and Ph.D. in Russian history in 1990; a 2010 CIA affiliation, which practically makes her former MI6 agent Steele’s “opposite number”; and the extremely curious detail, harkening back to earlier eras of spycraft, that on May 23, 2016, around the time she came on board Fusion GPS, Nellie Ohr applied for a ham radio operator’s license.
Notably, the “dossier” men in her life have tried to shield Ohr from public scrutiny, even at professional risk. Her husband, as the Daily Caller News Foundation reports, failed to disclose his wife’s employment with Fusion GPS and seek the appropriate conflict-of-interest waiver, which may have been an important factor in his demotion from associate deputy attorney general late last year.
Under Senate and House questioning, Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson consistently failed to disclose Nellie Ohr’s existence as one of his firm’s paid Russian experts, let alone that he hired her for the red-hot DNC/Clinton campaign Trump-Russia project.
Even Christopher Steele may have tried to keep Nellie Ohr “under cover.” Steele, put forth as the “dossier” author ever since its January 2017 publication in BuzzFeed, does not appear to have let on to his many media and political contacts that he had “dossier”-assistance from at least two fellow Fusion GPS Russian experts, Nellie Ohr and Edward Baumgartner. Baumgartner, interestingly, was a Russian history major at Vassar in the 1990s when Nellie Ohr taught Russian history there.
Thus, Nellie Ohr’s exact activities inside one of the great Russian-American disinformation campaigns of all time remain opaque. What most observers don’t realize, though, is that we already have a window onto her thinking through her strongly-etched, ideological view of Soviet history.”
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More will be coming….
http://insider.foxnews.com/2018/08/11/judicial-watch-president-tom-fitton-suing-doj-steele-dossier-ohr-records
“Judicial Watch is suing the Department of Justice for access to communications related to the infamous anti-Trump dossier.
The conservative watchdog group is seeking various records related to former Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr, his wife Nellie Ohr, dossier author Christopher Steele and Fusion GPS.
In a statement, Judicial Watch said it sued because the Justice Department failed to respond to a Freedom of Information Act request filed in May.
Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton explained on “Hannity” that Fusion GPS — which employed Nellie Ohr — was retained by a lawyer who represented the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee to compile opposition research on then-candidate Donald Trump.
He noted that Fusion GPS at the same time was working on behalf of Russian actors targeting critics of Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Magnitsky Act
The 2012 U.S. law cracked down on Russian officials suspected of human rights abuses.
“The irony here is that Fusion GPS was working for the Clinton camp to target Trump [and] also working for the Putin camp to target the government generally to get this Magnitsky Act pulled away,” Fitton said.”
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I really don’t know what Muller thinks he can do.
He has no evidence of collusion. We would know about it by now.
How can the president obstruct justice?
Now. If Muller did, bring charges of some sort, what would happen?
Trump is a fighter. He will not resign.
It will be a bloody battle. He will expose Deep State corruption we don’t know about yet.
R. Muller is a smart man. He must be smart. But he looks pretty stupid from here. If he were really smart, he could close shop and go home. This is going to hurt lots of his friends.
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Whenever I see a photo of Mueller, I think that a slightly younger Sam Waterston could play him in a movie.
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Oh my…..
So when he’s not hanging with known terrorists or plotting against his own govt. he’s an even bigger dirt bag.
https://www.bizpacreview.com/2018/08/12/ex-girlfriends-son-says-dem-keith-ellison-violently-assaulted-his-mom-says-he-has-video-evidence-and-abusive-threatening-texts-663090
“Democratic Congressman Keith Ellison, the co-chair of the DNC, has been accused of domestic violence by the son of his alleged ex-girlfriend, Karen Monahan.
The accusations were shared by Debra Hilstrom, a Democrat member of Minnesota’s house of representatives.
Hilstrom tweeted a link to the shocking Facebook post written by Austin Monahan, who had tagged Hilstrom in the hopes of shining a spotlight on the alleged abuse his mom suffered at the hands of Ellison, the first Muslim elected to the United States Congress.”
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“In the emotional Facebook post, Austin Monahan accused Ellison of assaulting, harassing, threatening, and verbally abusing his mom.
“My name is Austin Monahan and I am writing this letter on behalf of me and my brother,” Austin wrote. “My brother and I watched our mom come out of pure hell after getting out of her relationship with Keith Ellison.”
Austin continued: “In the middle of 2017, I was using my mom’s computer trying to download something and I clicked on a file, I found over 100 text and twitters messages and video almost 2 min long that showed Keith Ellison dragging my mama off the bed by her feet, screaming and calling her a “@#$%^%$#@#” and telling her to get the @#$% out of his house.”
Austin added: “The messages I found, were mixed with him consistently telling my mom he wanted her back, he missed her, he knew he %$#@#$ up and we wished he could do things different, he would victim shaming, bully her, and threaten her if she went public.”
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NCIS fall preview night: 9/25/18
Or is this the wrong thread? The Sam Waterson reference threw me off.
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Again, just chiming in from the State of Denial (and TV escapism) ….
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Wrong show, DJ. 🙂
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