Tag Archives: Abuse of Power

🕵🏼‍♂️ #SpyGate Part III ~ THE LIST: Essential Sources & Reading

by Annie | Leave a comment

UPDATE, Tuesday, September 18, 2018: My bad. My VERY, VERY bad. BAD Annie! How could I NOT include THE TIMELINE! Doug Ross has compiled, and continually updates, THE MOST COMPREHENSIVE TIMELINE AVAILABLE. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve referred to it to overlay this fact or that and gained INVALUABLE insight. ANY decent researcher must ALWAYS keep one, or have access to one, and THIS IS IT.

Most of my reading on the biggest scandal in American history starts on Twitter. Why? Because Twitter knows things before the legacy media does. Often it’s the only place that knows it because the legacy media is complicit in this scandal and wants very much to ignore it.  And once Twitter knows it, and links to stories on it, the story advances forward.

I write this presuming that you are generally familiar with the #SpyGate scandal, not out in the wilderness like say, a CNN viewer might be, so if you are lost, I am sorry. This is not the post to catch you up. It is the post to dig deep. I will offer you this thumbnail summary however:

Team Obama, in concert with Team Hillary, mounted a full-spectrum, multi-agency, counter-intelligence political-espionage operation on Donald Trump starting at least as early as 2015 (I’ve seen some reporting that made me think they might have started snooping around years earlier, when Trump first started mouthing off about Obama’s birth certificate, but I don’t have enough to really bite on that, so I won’t. Just want it out there just in case we find out later it’s true. If you put a gun to my head right now, I’d tell you I think it is.)

But, back to my thumbnail: they spied. This is not arguable. If you don’t or won’t believe it is, I can’t help you. Facts are stubborn things. It happened. Period. Full stop. Like the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, and there’s gravity on earth, it happened. You cannot argue it. Well, you can, but you’d be an idiot.

So, with that premise in hand, here are my best #SpyGate sources – in no particular order. (Honestly. They are all brilliant… well… except the first one. I just have a cool list.):

1. Me! I keep a Twitter list of about 90 sources (that number can change) which you can subscribe to. If for some reason the link is broken to my list, you can always just go to my Twitter home page and click the link for my lists and grab it there. Here is my Twitter home page if, for some reason, the embedded link is broken: https://twitter.com/bloodless_coup (Note: All of the sources that follow are in my #SpyGate Twitter list, but, obviously, I’m not listing all 90+ here. Just the absolute essentials.)

2.   for LEGAL DOCUMENTS. There’s a person who calls himself “Techno Fog” and has his location marked as Trump Tower. NO IDEA who s/he is but s/he must be a lawyer with a subscription to Pacer (court generated paperwork). I presume this because s/he has court transcripts & analysis up on Twitter lickety-split. So if you’re wondering what happened in court that day with something Trump-Russia related, Techno Fog is your go-to guy/gal.

3.  for DEEP INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY SOURCES. John Solomon. This guy has has sources, deep ones, and understands the whooooole picture, micro and macro. For some inexplicable reason, The Hill, where he writes, puts him under “Opinion” and does not make his by-line clickable. (I know, I know… It’s very explainable. Just not to normals like us…) Anyway, this guy is doing absolutely groundbreaking reporting on this story and they bury him. Whatever. He’s essential reading. He doesn’t tweet much, if at all, but whenever he posts a story, you’ll see it on his Twitter feed, so follow him.

4.  for EXCRUCIATINGLY DETAILED ANALYSIS. Jeff is a money guy. According to his own website “Jeff Carlson is a CFA® charterholder. He worked for 20 years as an analyst and portfolio manager in the High Yield Bond Market. He holds degrees in finance and economics.” As such, he is extremely detailed, methodical, logical, and… intuitive. He susses out conclusions he’s drawn from a series of facts and brings us along for the ride. IOW: He reads between the lines and shows us what the invisible ink says. He’s very, very smart. His tweets are always informative and his articles always deeply sourced, with tons of links, and usually require two or three reads to absorb it all. He doesn’t tweet often, nor does he post often, but when he does, it’s always, always worth it. He and “Sundance” at The Conservative Treehouse (The Last Refuge) seem to have formed an alliance of respect for each other’s work, and that just makes me respect the both of them even more. I wrote about “Sundance” in my first #SpyGate post of links & sources, and you can link to him on Twitter here.

5.  Sarah & Solomon are sort of the Frick & Frack of DEEP STATE SOURCES. They often appear on Hannity together. When he’s not interrupting them they impart unique and excellent information. They are usually first with new Strzok & Page texts, news of pending document releases, dramatic turns in the story on the whole. They are both absolutely essential. Parenthetically, Sara has worked as a foreign correspondent in some very dangerous areas, Syria for example. I have profound respect for her courage and careful reporting. You can find her personal home page where she publishes her work here. She’s a Fox News Contributor but does not seem to publish there, just does analysis. Must be part of her deal. Whatever. She’s a gem.

6. Paul Sperry writes for the New York Post & sometimes for RealClear Investigations. His Twitter feed has a habit of dropping SpyGate MOABS then… we have to wait for the story. Sometimes days. It’s absolutely maddening! But in the best possible way. Anyway, he seems to have a few very good sources on what’s going on. He doesn’t tweet or post often, but when he does, it’s because he has something new and very, very important to advance the story forward.

7.  Lee Smith is someone new to me. I’d never heard of him prior to this whole mess. What a pity. He’s an excellent reporter/analyst. Smith is sorta like Jeff at The MarketsWork in that he has a way of reading between the lines and noticing what’s not there. So much of the best analysis in the Obama/post-Obama eras is exactly that, and it’s a very particularized talent. For instance, in his latest piece he lays out, as Dan Bongino perfectly describes it “a devastating indictment of the media’s significant role in the plot to take down Donald Trump.” Understand? They weren’t passive observers in all this, just taking information from their sources and printing it. They were active collaborators in the effort to subvert then remove a duly elected president of the United States. They knew they were lying. They knew it. How do we know? Because as Jeff at the MarketsWork ably deduced, (using his talents to suss out things not immediately evident) the media has had the full, unredacted Carter Page FISA since last spring, the spring of 2017. That’s right. The media has it, has had it, for over a year… and has not published it. Now why would they do that? What reporter worth his salt would hold that back? It’s like the holy grail of the congressional investigations, at least, and the whole Trump-Russia investigation writ-large. Answer? Because they’re not reporters. They’re activists, propagandists. There can be no other explanation. Repeat: there can be no other explanation.  You can find him at RealClearInvestigations and at The Tablet.

8. The Federalist’s Margot Cleveland is my footnote lady. You want deep in the weeds? Like, there’s-not-enough-Benadryl-in-the-world-to-save-you-deep-in-the-weeds? Margot’s your gal. When you read her bio at the The Federalist you’ll understand why I’m so impressed with her. When you read her writing, you’ll be even more impressed. Girl’s got game. She doesn’t publish often, but when she does, boy howdy – be ready to fire up the neurons. You can find her writing here.

9. Fox’s Catherine Herridge. Catherine Herridge does not have a Twitter account. She’s got to be the only reporter alive without one, and in a way, it’s admirable! She has deeeeeep sources in the intelligence community, both the intelligence officials and the congressmen who oversee them. It’s just not possible to have more respect for a reporter than I have for Catherine. She’s rock solid, unflappable, essential. You can find her latest articles for Fox here.

10. Fox’s Russia coverage can be found here. They have a page dedicated to the “Russia Investigation” and this is it. Updates a few times a day, typically. Less so on the weekend.

In my post #SpyGate 🕵🏼‍♂️ Primer / Cliff Notes, Part II I referred you to Fox’s Gregg Jarrett and The Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway. You can follow Jarrett on Twitter here and Mollie here.

In my post #SpyGate 🕵🏼‍♂️ Primer / Cliff Notes (Part I) I referred you to The Last Refuge and Dan Bongino. You can follow The Last Refuge on Twitter here and Bongino here.

THAT’S IT! Strap in! It’s going to be a bumpy ride!

Share the post "🕵🏼‍♂️ #SpyGate Part III ~ THE LIST: Essential Sources & Reading"

We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ D.O.J., America.

by Annie | Leave a comment

DOJ CLOSED DUE TO CORRUPTION small copyI love this idea. Love, love, love, love, LOVE this idea. I present this article to you from The American Thinker in part, but heartily recommend it in its entirety. Bolds are mine.

May 22, 2016
Abolish the Department of Justice
By Bruce Walker

The Obama Justice Department has revealed its final descent into naked politics and totalitarian bullying. Lois Lerner and Hillary Clinton, two transparently guilty criminals whose crimes are compounded by the fact that both are also lawyers, will face no indictments and no prosecution. The corrupt bosses of the Veterans Administration likewise face no sanction at all despite the manifest criminality of their actions.

Lying under oath to Congress, failing to comply with Freedom of Information Act requests, conspiring to obstruct justice, and many other clear wrongdoings permeate almost every single crevice of the Obama administration, and yet no one who matters has faced any trouble from the Department of Justice. …

The hyper-politicization of the Department of Justice by the left has been used unceasingly as a bludgeon against conservatives, Christians, and constitutionalists in America… (and) there is no real cure at the federal level. …The only effective solution is to do what may make many gasp, even many conservatives, and simply abolish the United States Department of Justice…

How, then, would federal laws and regulations be enforced?

States have full authority to do just that, and Congress can return to state courts and to state authorities the enforcement of federal laws. This is perfectly proper, as many federal laws are already enforceable by state officers. Congress can confer on states the right to enforce its laws, and, indeed, it can confer upon state courts exclusive jurisdiction over “federal questions,” with the single caveat that the Supreme Court would have appellate jurisdiction. This would solve many problems.

…It would mean folks like Lerner and Clinton, whose violations occurred in several states, would not be able to fix the system so that they are immune to prosecution. The powerful would suddenly find it impossible to game the system with fifty different states able to prosecute offenses.

…Returning the prosecution of federal offenses to state criminal justice agencies would have the practical effect of also devolving power back to the states. …This provides a practical check on the abuse of federal power… The diffusion of power that today is so concentrated in a few hands in Washington would be another vital and happy result of devolving back to states the power to enforce federal laws.

The president, of course, would still have the constitutional duty to see that the laws are faithfully executed, but nothing in the Constitution says that he must be given an army of federal bureaucrats to do that …Abolishing the Department of Justice is a good place to begin the Herculean task of cleaning this horrid mess.

###

Share the post "We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ D.O.J., America."

Withdraw Your Own Money? 15 Months in Jail.

by Annie | Leave a comment

The government stopped printing bills larger than $100 in 1945 and hasn't issued any since 1969. This one was found in a safe deposit box. It features Lincoln's Treasury Secretary, Salmon P. Chase, and is kept in the New York corporate office of the bank that bears his name.

The government stopped printing bills larger than $100 in 1945 and hasn’t issued any since 1969. This one was found in a safe deposit box. It features Lincoln’s Treasury Secretary, Salmon P. Chase, and is kept in the New York corporate office of the bank that bears his name.

I could not agree more with this article from The American Thinker. It was brave and needed to be said.

Enjoy.

The Troubling Prosecution of Dennis Hastert
April 29, 2016 By Michael Filozof

I don’t like Dennis Hastert. During his tenure as Speaker of the House, my attitude toward him was, more or less, “Meh.” Hastert is undoubtedly the pervert and sexual predator he is accused of being – he admitted so in court. In all probability, he got exactly what he deserved when he was sentenced to prison Wednesday.

That being said, I am troubled by the way Hastert was prosecuted. It seems to me that the government targeted Hastert because he was a prominent politician and, in so doing, threw the constitutional rights of criminal defendants out the window.

Hastert was accused of numerous incidents of homosexual contact with teenage boys over forty years ago, when he was a high school wrestling coach in Illinois. Hastert was never charged with those alleged crimes, because the statute of limitations for prosecuting him expired.

Hastert was instead indicted for violating federal banking law when he tried to pay one individual to keep quiet about the alleged abuse. The crime of “structuring” is utterly bizarre: if you take $10,000 cash out of your own bank account, the bank must report it to the federal government. If, however, you take $9,999 out, you will be accused of “structuring” the transaction to avoid the $10,000 reporting requirement.

In other words, the $10,000 number for reporting to the government that you took your own cash out of your own bank account isn’t really the true number at all; whenever the government thinks you are “structuring” by taking out less, they will nail you for that anyway. It’s like getting a ticket from a cop for driving below the speed limit because you were trying to avoid a speeding ticket. It’s one of the most questionable prosecutions I’ve ever heard of.

But at Hastert’s sentencing, both the federal prosecutor and the judge made clear that the case was really about the sexual allegations, not the banking issue. Hastert was sentenced to fifteen months – more than double the six months recommended by federal sentencing guidelines. U.S. district judge Thomas Durkin called Hastert “a ‘serial child molester,’ and ignor[ed] the defense’s request for no prison time. ‘Some conduct is unforgivable no matter how old it is,’ Durkin told Hastert in a lengthy statement at the sentencing.”

The judge’s statement constitutes a serious problem in my view. Child molestation is not a federal crime; it’s a state-level crime. Judge Durkin had no business sentencing Hastert in federal court for state-level crimes for which the Illinois statute of limitations had expired and for which Hastert never stood trial. But that’s essentially what he did.

The accuser whom Hastert was trying to pay off remained anonymous. Why? In court documents, he is known as “Individual A.” Individual A received over a million dollars from Hastert. Did he pay income taxes on the money? Did he report the cash payments he received in excess of $10,000 to the government? If not, shouldn’t he be charged with tax evasion and failure to report cash transactions? What about blackmail? (In yet another strange twist, the Associated Press reports that “on Monday, Individual A filed a lawsuit saying he’s been paid only about half of the money and is still owed $1.8 million.”)

Other accusers who had not been paid off stepped forward at the sentencing – including the sister of a man who died from AIDS 21 years ago in 1995. “Stephen Reinboldt was named by prosecutors, who cited his sister, Jolene Burdge[.] … She told prosecutors Reinboldt’s first homosexual experience was with Hastert[.]” Is Burdge accusing Hastert of “turning” her brother gay? (I thought the gay lobby tells us we’re “born that way.”)

Even if Burdge’s allegations are true – which cannot be proven – what do they have to do with a sentencing in a federal banking case? Shouldn’t the judge have thrown out such hearsay? And doesn’t the testimony of relatives of long-dead “accusers” violate the Sixth Amendment’s right of a defendant to “be confronted with the witnesses against him”?

This whole matter stinks to high heaven. It’s pretty clear that the prosecution targeted Hastert because of his political status as a high-ranking Republican. Hastert may well have deserved it – and indeed, he cooperated with the prosecution by pleading guilty.

But the fact remains that other politicians – liberals, gays, and Democrats – have avoided criminal prosecution, while the feds threw the book at Hastert for things they didn’t even really have jurisdiction over. Democratic rep. Gerry Studds had a homosexual relationship with a 17-year-old boy in 1983. He was censured by the House but subsequently re-elected and regarded as a gay icon for being the first openly gay congressman. Openly gay Democrat Barney Frank lived with a gay prostitute in the 1980s and was reprimanded by the House. He, too, was re-elected and regarded as a gay pioneer.

Why didn’t federal prosecutors pursue Studds and Frank on flimsy unrelated charges? Why hasn’t Hillary Clinton been charged with mishandling classified information, like Gen. David Petraeus – or sent to prison, like Bradley (ahem – “Chelsea”) Manning? Why did Sen. Ted Kennedy get no jail time for killing Mary Jo Kopechne while driving drunk at Chappaquiddick – while Hastert will do fifteen months for withdrawing his own money from his own bank account? And what about the rape allegations against Bill Clinton?

The answer is clear: the criminal justice system isn’t neutral; it’s politicized. Back in the 1950s and 1960s, when the left was the counterculture, leftists were quite concerned with the criminal defense of Communists, hippies, draft evaders, pornographers, gays, civil rights marchers, and the like. Today, the left is politically ascendant and all too happy to stand idly by or be complicit in the prosecution of its Republican and conservative political opponents – e.g., Scooter Libby, Tom Delay, Rick Perry, and Dinesh D’Souza. Legions of liberal lawyers are willing to defend minority drug dealers and murderers – was none of them willing to question the prosecution of Hastert? Why did the gay lobby not speak out on his behalf?

The Constitution requires that the government must prosecute people fairly and abide by the letter and the intent of the law. That means that sometimes, people who morally deserve punishment will legally get off without it (such as O.J. Simpson).

Hastert is unquestionably a bad guy to defend. But the object here isn’t to defend Hastert; it’s to criticize the government. In the Hastert case, the government seems to have railroaded a guilty man. But if they can railroad Hastert, they can railroad anybody – including you and me.

###

Share the post "Withdraw Your Own Money? 15 Months in Jail."

Obama, Explained, in ONE PARAGRAPH

by Annie | Leave a comment

Here it is.  You ready?  Because this is Obama, thus the insidious cancer of Progressivism, explained with the most sparkling clarity & brevity as I have ever seen.  Via Kevin D. Williamson at NRO, from whom I always learn something (the highest praise I can offer any writer) Bold text is my addition:

“Barack Obama isn’t a policy guy; he’s a personnel guy. An underappreciated aspect of Barack Obama’s politics is that he has been trying to convert the Democratic party from a party that lives in Congress to a party that lives in the White House. The Democrats owned Congress, and especially the House of Representatives, in the postwar era, with unbroken control of the speakership from 1955 to 1995. Until Newt Gingrich came in with the 1994 tsunami, the last Republican speaker had been a man born in 1884 who rode into office on the coattails of Calvin Coolidge. Except for a few brief interludes (January 3, 1947 to January 3, 1949; January 3, 1953 to January 3, 1955; January 3, 1981 to January 3, 1987), the Democrats ran the Senate, too, from the Great Depression until the Gingrich years. That version of the Democratic party was a lawmaking party. (It made a lot of bad laws.) Barack Obama’s Democratic party, the one he is giving birth to, is a different animal. He didn’t give a hoot what was in his signature health-care law — just so long as it empowered him to start putting his people in positions to make health-care decisions. His patron saint is Roy Cohn, who proclaimed the gospel ‘Don’t tell me what the law is. Tell me who the judge is.’ Barack Obama doesn’t want to write laws — he wants to appoint judges. He doesn’t want finely crafted legislation — he wants ‘The secretary shall issue.'”

Parenthetically, Mr. Williamson also illuminates why we are $18 trillion in debt. Democrats had the purse at the dawn of the Great Society and did not let go until 1996. That’s not to say Republicans don’t own some of this disaster; they most certainly do. But it wasn’t conservatives who ushered in the welfare state and support it to this day. That’s on progressives. And that’s why we’re $18 trillion in the hole. Every social welfare program they have supported from the New Deal through the Great Society to Obamacare is not just broke, it’s breaking the back of the Republic.  Everything they touch turns to sh*t.

Everything.

I heartily recommend your read the entire thing, here.

Share the post "Obama, Explained, in ONE PARAGRAPH"

“The” Chickens Roosted!

by Annie | Leave a comment

Politico opined:

“President Barack Obama made a big gamble last January when he issued four recess appointments during a three-day break between meetings of the Senate — and with the court ruling Friday broadly undercutting his ability to make such appointments, he may have lost even bigger.”

That’s an understatement!

This ruling was the bitch-slap of all bitch-slaps. Not only did the court rule that Obama’s unprecedented pro-forma recess-not-recess appointments violate the Constitution, they went back and *gasp* read not only *gasp* the Constitution, but *double-gasp* The Federalist Papers! They ruled that not only were the intrasession pro-forma appointments unconstitutional, they ruled that all intrasession appointments are unconstitutional!  Intersession won the day and all because of one little word: “the”. (You can read more about “the” here.)

The White House, The New York Times, and all the usual suspects are in spasms, naturally.  The N.L.R.B., amazingly, and with the White House’s blessing, is blowing it off and continuing their work. And once again, the left is dusting off “Bush did it first!” like that matters. They hate the guy except when his bad behavior justifies theirs. Kindergarten!  Bush, and, in fact, a dozen Presidents have made intrasession appointments. For decades. But no President had ever made a pro-forma appointment. That was uniquely brazen (In addition to the brazen pro-forma part, these appointments hadn’t even been submitted for Senate review. They’d been sitting there. Obama didn’t even go through the motions of starting the Senate review process. Didn’t lift a finger. Didn’t even give the Senate a chance to say no: just blew right past ’em. It’s breath-taking.) But that’s not even the point. The point is, through a dozen Presidents, nobody ever called them on it.

Until yesterday.

Lefties (bless their hearts 🙂 ) will never  learn that just because it’s been done before and gotten away with doesn’t make it right!  Especially when the Constitution is the rule!

Of course, the bonus is, it was Harry Reid who birthed the pro-forma strategy to stop Bush from making “recess” appointments.  Harry & his evil minions got their chickens plucked but good with this one.

The ruling is a work of art, truly, for lovers of originalist interpretation.  You can read it below or here.

Noel Canning v. NLRB by

Share the post "“The” Chickens Roosted!"