Category Archives: crime
Obama Turns Over National Security Apparatus Keys
The Daily Beast is alarmed by the massive national security apparatus The President is turning over to The Donald. It kills by drone and fights wars without congressional approval.
Whenever George W. Bush started a war he made sure to to pack a Congressional resolution. President Obama, not so much.
Obama ended “torture” of enemy combatants. Instead he blows them up by drone. Even American citizens make the hit list.
He also engineered a nuke treaty with Iran without Senate approval. He simply deemed it not a treaty.
Now all that power is in the tiny hands of President-elect Trump.
National Security Apparatus
Here’s Jameel Jaffer, the director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University:
“Many Americans were willing to invest broad power in the presidency because they trusted the president. But obviously the powers that we invest outlast any particular president, and now those powers are available to Trump.”
Oh.
Obama’s Fake Name and Hillary’s Secret Email Server
President Obama told CBS News that he learned about Hillary’s secret email server at “the same time everybody else learned it through news reports.”
That was before the FBI showed Huma Abedin an email the president had sent to Hillary – using a pseudonym. “Why is this not classified?” exclaimed Huma.
Did Obama share classified information on Hillary’s unsecured secret server? Maybe the Russians will let us know.
All About Obama
Fox’s Judge Napolitano and National Review’s Andrew McCarthy (a former federal prosecutor) speculate that the FBI went easy on Hillary because Obama would have been a defense witness in her case.
Update 10/31/16: Former Attorney General Michael Mukasey joined the all about Obama theme writing in today’s WSJ, “If Mrs. Clintgon was at criminal risk for communicating on her nonsecure system, so was he.” “He” being the president.
Hillary’s Secret Email Server
Here’s Neera Tanden, an informal Clinton advisor and president of the progressive think tank Center for American Progress :
“Do we actually know who told Hillary she could use a private email? And has that person been drawn and quartered?” Tanden added the next day. “Like whole thing is fucking insane.”
FBI Immunity Chest
Rather than convene a grand jury to subpoena her computer, the FBI gave Cheryl Mills immunity from prosecution. Mills served as Hillary’s chief of staff and as her attorney.
Immunity with Impunity
The FBI also gave immunity to four others and agreed to destroy computers after reviewing evidence on them.
Here’s what VDH thinks of that:
Had anyone else in government set up a private e-mail server, sent and received classified information on it, deleted over 30,000 e-mails, ordered subordinates to circumvent court and congressional orders to produce documents, and serially and publicly lied to the American people about the scandal, that person would surely be in jail.
We’re All Weasels Now
Not that anyone asked, but Director Comey assured us the FBI is not overrun by weasels.
Members of Congress needed assurances after last Friday’s FBI document dump. The dumped documents revealed that Clinton consiglieri Cheryl Mills sat in on Hillary Clinton’s FBI interview. Mills listened along with eight other lawyers while Hillary was questioned about her private email server. Mills is also a witness in that case. Legal experts say that’s unusual because it gives attorney/client protection to her communications with Hillary.
And the Justice Department gave her immunity anyway.
No Weasels Here
Committee Chair Trey Gowdy, a respected former federal prosecutor himself, says this isn’t the FBI he remembers.
When you have five immunity agreements and no prosecutions, when you are allowing witnesses who happen to be lawyers who happen to be targets to sit in on an interview — that is not the FBI that I used to work with.“
Comey sputtered that it is so.
“I hope, someday, when this political craziness is over, you’ll look back again on this, because this is the FBI you know and love,” the Bureau’s director told Gowdy. “This was done by pros, in the right way. That’s the part I have no patience with.”
And he insisted “We are not weasels.”
Elephant In Debate Room
CNN says Hillary Clinton won the debate. Donald Trump disagrees but most other polls aren’t backing him up, so far.
Trump seemed to get the best of Hillary in the first 30 minutes when they tangled over trade rules. He caught her on the wrong side of President Obama’s Trans-Pacific Trade Deal, pointing out that she had called it the “gold standard.” Hillary denied this and then replied it wasn’t her responsibility and that she had changed her mind. So Trump insisted that she say it was Obama’s fault:
TRUMP: You called it the gold standard of trade deals. You said it’s the finest deal you’ve ever seen.
CLINTON: No.
TRUMP: And then you heard what I said about it, and all of a sudden you were against it.
CLINTON: Well, Donald, I know you live in your own reality, but that is not the facts. The facts are — I did say I hoped it would be a good deal, but when it was negotiated…
TRUMP: Not.
CLINTON: … which I was not responsible for, I concluded it wasn’t. I wrote about that in my book…
TRUMP: So is it President Obama’s fault?
CLINTON: … before you even announced.
TRUMP: Is it President Obama’s fault?
CLINTON: Look, there are differences…
TRUMP: Secretary, is it President Obama’s fault?
CLINTON: There are…
TRUMP: Because he’s pushing it.
CLINTON: There are different views about what’s good for our country, our economy, and our leadership in the world. And I think it’s important to look at what we need to do to get the economy going again. That’s why I said new jobs with rising incomes, investments, not in more tax cuts that would add $5 trillion to the debt.
At that point Trump seemed to be mopping the floor with her. But Hillary quickly got under his skin by trashing his business acumen and ethics.
She took a page from the Harry Reid playbook to claim Trump doesn’t pay income taxes. Incredibly, The Donald seemed to agree by saying, “it makes me smart.” For the record, PolitiFact doesn’t agree. It rates her claim mostly false.
But after that Trump seemed Low Eenergy.
Elephant In Debate Room
The elephant in debate room was the fact that Immigration, Benghazi, and the Clinton Foundation didn’t make the cut. Those issues were never brought up by moderator Lester Holt or Trump.
Unburdened of that baggage, Hillary dragged her prey off into the tall grass. There she dismembered the small handed one with accusations of racism and sexism.
She claimed the Stop and Frisk law was ruled unconstitutional and moderator Holt backed her up. She also insisted the murder rate continues to decline. In truth, Stop and Frisk was never ruled unconstitutional. And the FBI released a report the next morning showing the murder rate had surged 10.8% in 2015.
Hillary went on to back up her racism charge using Tulsa and Charlotte as “tragic examples.” Trump lacked the energy to point out that Black people rioted in Charlotte where a black man was killed by a black police officer who worked for a black police chief.
