President Trump
regularly blocks people from following him on his @realDonaldTrump
Twitter feed. Who can blame him when insufferable
hags like Holly O’Reilly (@AynRandPaulRyan)
post vitriol like this:
O’Reilly bitched and
moaned about being blocked and in jumped Knight First Amendment Institute at
Columbia University demanding, via a sternly worded letter, he unblock her and
any other accounts he may have blocked and if he doesn’t they will sue the
pants off him.
Jameel Jaffer,
Executive Director declared, “Though the architects of the Constitution surely
didn’t contemplate presidential Twitter accounts, they understood that the
president must not be allowed to banish views from public discourse simply
because he finds them objectionable. Having
opened this forum to all comers, the president can’t exclude people from it
merely because he dislikes what they’re saying.”
But not all First
Amendment scholars are convinced the Institute would have a strong case in
court.
“The question of whether
the President’s Twitter feed is a public forum is a more complicated question,”
says Neil Richards, a professor at Washington University’s Law school,
specializing in First Amendment theory. “The law here is famously muddled,
because it’s trying to prevent the government from discriminating against
people who speak on public streets and parks, but it’s trying to fight the urge
to make everything a public forum.”
“Let me tell you,
you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday of
getting back at you,” Chuck Schumer said on television. “So even for a
practical, supposedly hard-nosed businessman, he’s being really dumb to do
this.”—Sen. Chuck Schumer,
January 4, 2017 during an
appearance on the Rachel Maddow Show
Last Saturday morning
President Trump dropped a bombshell with his Twitter accusation that
Teleprompter Jesus had wiretapped his phones at Trump Tower and ever since everyone’s
hair has been on fire.
The rabid junkyard
dogs began frothing at the mouth insinuating the president’s Tweet was “unhinged”.
Kevin Lewis,
spokesman for The World’s Most Dangerous Community Organizer, said in a
statement later in the day, "A cardinal rule of the Obama Administration
was that no White House official ever interfered with any independent
investigation led by the Department of Justice.
As part of that practice, neither President Obama nor any White House
official ever ordered surveillance on any U.S. citizen. Any suggestion
otherwise is simply false."
Moments after Lewis’
statement was released, Obama’s former speechwriter, Jon Favreau tweeted, “I’d
be careful about reporting that Obama said there was no wiretapping. Statement just said that neither he nor the
WH ordered it.”
You
have to read the sixth paragraph of the published report written by Michael S.
Schmidt, Matthew Rosenberg, Adam Goldman and Matt Apuzzo to learn the FBI “aided
by the National Security Agency, the CIA and the Treasury Department’s Financial
Crimes Unit” had accelerated their efforts but “found no conclusive evidence of
wrongdoing.” “One official said
intelligence reports based on some of the wiretapped communications had been
provided to the White House.” [emphasis mine]
If
no conclusive evidence of wrongdoing was found why does “the paper of record”
continue to suggest the probes continue?
Only
a Pollyanna would dare believe “remnants” of the Obama Administration had
nothing to do with bugging National Security Advisor Michael Flynn and leaking
the transcripts to Obama-friendly media outlets or surveilling Senator Jeff
Sessions. Sessions, after all, has no
experience in running guns into Mexico like Eric Holder did and he most
certainly did not engage in a conversation with the husband of the woman who
was the target of an FBI investigation about golf and grandchildren a la
Loretta Lynch.
John
Crudele reckons
the investigation President Trump has called for could turn into a big headache
for the Democrats.
“WikiLeaks, which dumped hundreds of thousands of
Democrats’ e-mails onto its site, never had one e-mail that came from Hillary
or was sent to her.”
“WikiLeaks had promised what it called the fourth phase
of e-mail dumps the week before the election, but that’s the only promise it
didn’t keep. So, what happened? My guess is that President Obama’s stern
warning to Vladimir Putin caused the Russian president to stop the promised
leak of Hillary’s personal e-mails.”
“Any investigation of the Russian hacking is liable to
result in Hillary’s e-mails being read, and perhaps released.”
“The media’s focus on Trump’s Russian connections ignores
the much more extensive and lucrative business relationships of top Democrats
with Kremlin-associated oligarchs and companies. Thanks to the Panama Papers,
we know that the Podesta Group (founded by John Podesta’s brother, Tony) lobbied for Russia’s largest bank, Sberbank. ‘Sberbank
is the Kremlin, they don’t do anything major without Putin’s go-ahead, and they
don’t tell him ‘no’ either,’ explained a retired senior U.S. intelligence official.
According to a Reuters report, Tony Podesta was ‘among the high-profile lobbyists
registered to represent organizations backing Ukrainian President Viktor
Yanukovich.’ Among these was the European Center, which paid Podesta $900,000
for his lobbying.”
“That’s not all: The busy Podesta Group also represented Uranium One, a uranium company acquired by
the Russian government which received approval from Hillary Clinton’s State
Department to mine for uranium in the U.S. and gave Russia twenty percent
control of US uranium. The New York Times reported Uranium One’s chairman, Frank Guistra, made
significant donations to the Clinton Foundation, and Bill Clinton was paid
$500,000 for one speech from a Russian investment bank that has ‘links to the
Kremlin that was promoting Uranium One stock.’ Notably, Frank
Giustra, the Clinton Foundation’s largest and most controversial donor, does
not appear anywhere in Clinton’s ‘non-private’ emails. It
is possible that the emails of such key donors were automatically scrubbed
to protect the Clinton Foundation.”
“Let’s not leave out fugitive Ukrainian oligarch, Dymtro
Firtash. He is represented by Democratic heavyweight lawyer, Lanny
Davis, who accused Trump of ‘inviting Putin to commit espionage.’”
Bloomberg’s
Michael Riley reported US progressive groups are being targeted by Russian
hackers who have scoured their emails for embarrassing details and attempted to
extract hush money according to sources familiar with the probes being
conducted by the FBI. The Center for
American Progress and Arabella Advisors received ransom demands accompanied by
samples of sensitive data.
Former Attorney
General Michael Mukasey said that Trump is probably
right that Trump Tower was bugged.
Undoubtedly by the Justice Department which became weaponized against
him. To wit, Obama’s attorney general, Loretta Lynch declares
in a video for Senate Democrats:
“I know that this is a time of great fear and uncertainty
for so many people. I know it’s a time of concern for people, who see our
rights being assailed, being trampled on and even being rolled back. I know
that this is difficult, but I remind you that this has never been easy. We have
always had to work to move this country forward to achieve the great ideals of
our Founding Fathers.”
“It has been people, individuals who have banded
together, ordinary people who simply saw what needed to be done and came
together and supported those ideals who have made the difference. They’ve
marched, they’ve bled and yes, some of them died. This is hard. Every good
thing is. We have done this before. We can do this again.”
We see
what you did there Loretta. We are familiar with your “code language”.
