Thursday, December 27, 2018

Russiagate Stumbling Towards New Year

What to call that period while you clean up from Christmas, eat all the leftovers, and wait for the New Year's Eve party?

This should more properly be filed under Clinton.com, but as it relates to the issues with the FBI and DOJ that continue to haunt us,  From Sundance at CTH: The FBI and DOJ Were Working to Protect Hillary Clinton a Lot Longer Than Generally Discussed…
Under the code name “Zero Footprint” Marc Turi originally drew up the plan to coordinate the flow of weapons from the U.S. through the intermediary of Qatar into Libya. Those U.S. weapons ended up in Libya and Syria being used by the enemies of the U.S., specifically al-Qaeda. [All Citations within The Benghazi Brief]

In February of 2012 Asst. Secretary of State Andrew Shapiro admitted the State Department had been attempting to relocate and buy-back those weapons since August of 2011. However, on September 11th 2012, while those efforts were still ongoing, the attacks in Benghazi against the U.S. State Department Ambassador Chris Stevens took place, and four Americans were killed.

In 2014 the DOJ filed charges against Marc Turi essentially for non registered weapons shipments. Turi’s defense was that the weapons were unregistered because the State Department and the CIA needed covert cover. Elements within the CIA confirmed the basic outline for Turi’s assertion.

In 2015 Turi provided Fox News with documents and email exchanges he had with high-level members of Congress as well as military, and State Department employees to back up his claim that the Obama administration authorized in 2011, at the height of the Arab Spring, a covert weapons program that spun out of control.

Marc Turi’s legal defense team said if the DOJ was going to prosecute him for the arms shipments, his defense would necessarily reveal how Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was actually the driver of the entire program.

The DOJ tried to claim “national security” issues and keep the aspects relating to the U.S. State Department and Secretary Clinton under wraps during the pre-trial motions. However, in October of 2016 a federal judge ruled the defense was allowed to use the documented evidence Turi possessed to defend himself.

The case was slated to begin trial on November 8th, 2016; ironically the same day as the U.S. presidential election. As a direct consequence of the October ruling, the DOJ announced they were dropping all the charges. The motive was transparently to protect Hillary Clinton . . .
At USA Today, Michael Medved imagines an Alternative reality where President Hillary Clinton is plagued by investigations, polarization
. . . Clinton also scored with her Supreme Court appointments. Merrick Garland, the unconfirmed choice of her predecessor, won scattered GOP support from senators who believed they’d never get a more moderate choice from a Clinton administration. To replace retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy, the president again turned to a legal scholar who had staked out turf in the middle of the road: Yale Law School’s Akhil Reed Amar, son of immigrants from India and the first Indian-American ever to serve on the nation’s highest court.

But after these conspicuous triumphs, Clinton stumbled badly with her “tax the rich” revenue bill meant to address the deficit, while shifting burdens from the middle class to the wealthy. It never had a chance in the Republican Congress, nor did her initiative to expand and secure Obamacare. In fact, her veto of the GOP’s sweeping Obamacare repeal brought an unpopular government shutdown for which Clinton drew most of the criticism.

Worst of all, she proved powerless to parry ongoing attacks on her alleged history of “corruption and scandal.” The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, led by the indomitable Trey Gowdy, revisited the email issue, while probing the Clinton Foundation and the Uranium One deal with Russia. Under relentless GOP pressure, Attorney General Sally Yates — a popular, charismatic holdover from Obama’s Justice Department — grudgingly appointed a special counsel to consolidate the investigations.

Her selection of Robert Mueller — a Republican straight-arrow and former FBI director — initially reassured both sides, but his seemingly endless probe undermined confidence in the administration and forced the resignation of White House Chief of Staff Huma Abedin. Questions over business and personal connections of first husband Bill Clinton became especially embarrassing, and he began spending most of his time away from Washington and his wife.

Generally, President Clinton followed the advice of White House counsel Lanny Davis and avoided direct attacks on Mueller and his team, but Vice President Tim Kaine took up the cudgels on her behalf, regularly dismissing the investigation as a “partisan witch hunt.”

The midterm elections saw Republicans adding to their majorities in both House and Senate, with Speaker Paul Ryan emerging as a clear favorite for the 2020 Republican presidential nomination. Clinton insisted that the GOP gained fewer seats than average for an opposition party in a midterm contest, but her advisers acknowledged that they needed Republican divisions to bolster their chances of re-election.
Sounds about right. Althouse finds Nate Silver imaging a different alternative future:  "This is why Trump won (re-election)."

A potential Trump impeachment is a 'huge risk' for 2019, financial expert says. The democrats would gladly sink the economy to get rid of Trump. The risk is they sink the economy without getting rid of him.

More on how Democrats Created Fake "Russian Bots" to Help Doug Jones Win the Alabama Special Election Against Roy Moore (Ace)
False flag. For real.
As Russia's online election machinations came to light last year, a group of Democratic tech experts decided to try out similarly deceptive tactics in the fiercely contested Alabama Senate race, according to people familiar with the effort and a report on its results.
The secret project, carried out on Facebook and Twitter, was likely too small to have a significant effect on the race, in which the Democratic candidate it was designed to help, Doug Jones, edged out the Republican, Roy S. Moore.
Note they immediately claim it was too small to impact the race -- and yet they've been claiming for two years that a hundred thousand or so dollars spent on FaceBook ads in the five billion dollar plus 2016 Presidential race was nigh decisive and an assault on our very democracy.

But this $100,000? Pish-posh. 'Tis nothing.

Internet billionaire Reid Hoffman apologizes for funding a group tied to disinformation in Alabama race
Internet billionaire Reid Hoffman apologized on Wednesday for funding a group linked to a “highly disturbing” effort that spread disinformationduring last year’s Alabama special election for U.S. Senate, but said he was not aware that his money was being used for this purpose.

Hoffman’s statement is his first acknowledgement of his ties to a campaign that adopted tactics similar to those deployed by Russian operatives during the 2016 presidential election. In Alabama, the Hoffman-funded group allegedly used Facebook and Twitter to undermine support for Republican Roy Moore and boost Democrat Doug Jones, who narrowly won the race. Hoffman, the co-founder of LinkedIn and an early Facebook investor, also expressed support for a federal investigation into what happened, echoing Jones’s position from last week.

The Alabama effort was one of a series of multi-million-dollar expendituresthat Hoffman made to dozens of left-leaning groups in the aftermath of the 2016 election, when he offered himself to reeling Democrats as a source of money, connections and Silicon Valley-style disruption to the staid world of party politics.

Hoffman invested $750,000 in one group, American Engagement Technologies, or AET, according to a person close to the matter but not authorized to discuss Hoffman’s spending. Hoffman’s statement Wednesday referred to AET, which has been linked to a campaign to spread disinformation targeting Moore.

But the statement left key facts unaddressed, including a full accounting of everyone who crafted and executed the campaign. The effort was the subject of a presentation in September to a group of liberal-leaning technology experts who met in downtown Washington to discuss electoral tactics, according to one of the attendees and documents from the meeting obtained by The Washington Post. This person spoke on the condition of anonymity because those at the gathering were required to sign non-disclosure agreements.
I'm sure there's a campaign finance violation here somewhere. Let's throw him in jail until we find one.

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