How Did That Hole Get There?

Nancy Pelosi’s impeachment inquisitor, Adam Schiff, gave opening remarks on September 26, 2019 during a House Intelligence Committee hearing on the whistleblower complaint against President Trump as it pertained to his congratulatory phone call with Ukraine’s President Zelensky that did not square with the facts.

Schiff said in his opening statement, and in numerous TV interviews, that Trump had asked Zelensky to “make up” or “manufacture” dirt on Trump’s potential 2020 opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden. That is patently false. Trump asked Zelensky to investigate, not provide false information.

Here’s the transcript of his remarks:

“It reads like a classic organized crime shakedown. Shorn of its rambling character, and in not so many words, this is the essence of what the President communicates. ‘We’ve been very good to your country, very good. No other country has done as much as we have. But you know what? I don’t see much reciprocity here. I hear what you want. I have a favor I want from you though. And I’m going to say this only seven times, so you better listen good. I want you to make up dirt on my political opponent, understand? Lots of it. On this and on that. I’m going to put you in touch with people, not just any people, I am going to put you in touch with the Attorney General of the United States, my Attorney General Bill Barr. He’s got the whole weight of the American law enforcement behind him. And I’m going to put you in touch with Rudy. You’re going to love him. Trust me. You know what I’m asking. And so I’m only going to say this a few more times. In a few more ways. And by the way, don’t call me again. I’ll call you when you’ve done what I asked.’” 

“This is in sum and character what the President was trying to communicate with the President of Ukraine. It would be funny if it wasn’t such a graphic betrayal of the President’s Oath of Office. But as it does represent a real betrayal, there’s nothing the President says here that is in America’s interest after all.”

Andrew McCarthy, who served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, is currently a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Director of the FDD’s Center for Law and Counterterrorism and served as an adjunct professor at New York Law School and Fordham University School of Law recently opined, “Adam Schiff is a smart guy. He did not idly dream up a “make up dirt” parody. He framed it because he knows that’s the kind of misconduct you would need to prove to warrant impeachment and removal of a president. In fact, Schiff could never prove that, but he figured parody is good enough for 2020 campaign purposes—and that’s what this [impeachment] exercise is all about.”

That is the gigantic sinkhole the Democrats have fallen into and from which they cannot extricate themselves.  If collusion with Russia had been a fact rather than a flight of fancy, the votes to impeach President Trump would have been overwhelming and he would have had to resign.  We’d be talking about President Mike Pence’s upcoming State of the Union Address and the Democrats would be shitting skittles and rainbows rather than clambering to find someone to “take out Donald Trump.”

Dragnet 2018: Not Your Grandfather’s FBI

The word “dragnet” was made famous in the mid-50s by the NBC TV show Dragnet, which featured Sergeant Joe Friday played by Jack Webb (pictured left).

A dragnet is a law enforcement term used to describe coordinated measures for apprehending criminals or suspects.

As a matter of principle, the law enforcement arm of the United States government must operate on a presumption of innocence.  A prosecutor should be assigned only if there is strong evidence that a crime has been committed.  In the absence of such evidence, a prosecutor should never be assigned to investigate whether an American may have committed some unknown crime.

What former FBI Director James Comey described in his testimony before the House Intelligence Committee in March of 2017 and what Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein later adopted to define Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s jurisdiction was not a criminal investigation or a prosecution nor did it provide a factual basis for either action.

The Obama Administration seized on, perhaps even created, the Russian probe in order to paralyze President Trump─to strangle his capacity to govern─and Obama holdovers in the Justice Department, for more than a year now, have been outrageously public about the existence of a “counterintelligence probe” and the Trump campaign investigation.

When Comey leaked his memos to the press, he knew it would instigate the appointment of a special counsel.

The collusion narrative was spawned by an unverifiable dossier bought and paid for by Hillary Clinton─a fact that was deliberately kept secret from the FISA court when the DOJ and FBI wanted warrants issued.

So far, four former Trump campaign associates─Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, Richard Gates and George Papadopoulos─have been charged in Mueller’s inquiry into alleged Russian interference, though none of the charges are directly related to any misconduct by the President's campaign.

Alex van der Zwaan, an attorney, pleaded guilty to lying to FBI investigators during the investigation, and was sentenced to 30 days in prison in April. He was the first to be sentenced in the probe. 

Regarding Papadopoulos, there’s something fishy about the charge filed by Mueller against him according to former top federal prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy.

“While much that has gone on in the Mueller investigation is curious, I have assumed the candor of the special counsel’s portrayal of the Papadopoulos case:  The young man was approached by an agent of Russia [Maltese professor Joseph Mifsud], who eventually informed him the Kremlin had ‘dirt’ on the Democratic Party’s nominee, Hillary Clinton, in the form of ‘thousands of emails of Clinton’.  To my mind, then, the only questions involved (a) the nature of Mifsud’s relationship to the Putin regime and (b) whether the emails in question were the hacked DNC emails or the thousands of emails Clinton deleted from her homebrew server.”

[SKIP]

“Remember, there is no allegation that Mifsud actually knew the Russians had Clinton emails, let alone that he ever showed Papadopoulos any such emails.  The claim is that Mifsud was told by unidentified Russian officials that the Kremlin had the emails.”

“So, what happens after Mifsud, allegedly, told Papadopoulos the Russians had these emails?  According to Mueller’s statement of the offence, the following day Papadopoulos sends two emails to high-ranking Trump campaign officials about his meeting with Mifsud and neither one of them says anything about emails.  It appears Papadopoulos was myopically focused on the possibility─farfetched, but apparently real to Papadopoulos─that Mifsud could help arrange a meeting between Trump and Putin.”

McCarthy is no hack.  He is a member of the Federalist Society and a former Chief Assistant U.S. Attorney in New York, best known for leading the prosecution against the Blind Sheik (Omar Abdel Rahman) and eleven other jihadists for waging a terrorist war against the United States – including the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and a plot to bomb New York City landmarks. After the 9/11 attacks, he supervised the U.S. attorney’s command-post near Ground Zero. He later served as an advisor to the Deputy Secretary of Defense.

The mainstream media has weaponized the storyline of Papadopoulos’ meeting with Mifsud as the exchange of information about emails that were hacked from the DNC and published during the 2016 presidential campaign.

McCarthy’s take is:  A very low-level, inexperienced Trump campaign adviser was interacting with a Maltese academic who had no real Kremlin ties and no inside information about whether Russia actually possessed damaging information about Clinton in the form of emails or otherwise.  This young campaign adviser then made a vague claim to an Australian diplomat, who did not hear him say anything about emails and did not report the conversation to his government through regular channels.

McCarthy adamantly asserts that after nearly two years of collusion banter, Congress needs to find the truth regarding whether Mueller’s contention that Mifsud and his associates were authentic agents of Russia or merely that Papadopoulos just thought they were.

NBC’s police drama, Dragnet, depicted law enforcement working methodically to investigate and apprehend criminals.  A gumshoe cop named Sergeant Joe Friday always insisted on “Just the facts, ma’am.”

Until just recently, the FBI’s credo of fidelity, bravery and integrity symbolized the world’s greatest law enforcement agency.  Now, the FBI [Comey, McCabe, Ohr, Strzok, Page] has damaged the constitutional values Americans embrace by picking a front-page fight with Donald J. Trump.

Dragnet 2018, what I prefer to call the Mueller probe, is an out of control investigation that was supposed to be about Russia has been more about money laundering in rug stores and porn stars than about the Kremlin’s meddling in the election.

Partisan forces (Obama holdovers) eager to feed the resistance inside the DOJ and FBI freely crusaded against a legitimately elected President and a lopsided team of Democrat lawyers working with Mueller have turned a mole hill into a mountain. Every conceivable angle has been probed; many of them far removed from Red Square.

Even with all the tools of spy craft, they’ve found nothing.  Nothing.

SEE ALSO:  “The Maltese Phantom of Russiagate” by Lee Smith (Real Clear Investigations)

“The Curious Case of Mr. Downer” by Kim Strassel (The Wall Street Journal)

“FBI Spy Stefan Halper’s Media Contacts Could Pose a Problem, Retired FBI Officials Say” by Chuck Ross (The Daily Caller)