Give Us This Day Our Daily Russiagate . . .

And deliver us from evil. If you must read any of these articles in full, Andrew McCarthy's Congress’ contempt stunt against Attorney General Barr is surely one of them. The idea of holding someone in contempt of Congress for following a law that Congress passed is simply demented. And they know it, and they don't care; they just hope enough of the public buys it to keep hope in collusion and obstruction alive. And when you've lost David Brooks: Democrats Are “Making A Terrible Mistake” On Contempt, Destroying Checks And Balances

This is an unpopular view at the Times clearly but the Democrats are making a terrible mistake in putting the disagreement about redaction at the center of American politics. https://t.co/mwk1YxjkWH

— David Brooks (@nytdavidbrooks) May 10, 2019

So why keep hitting themselves on the head like that (Reuters) More contempt citations ahead for Trump advisers: senior U.S. Democrat. Because it will feel so good when they stop? Michele Goldberg tells liberals If This Is A Constitutional Crisis, Act Like It, Democrats in urging the Democrats on to even more stupidity.

Ace, Jim Jordan: Democrats Are Trying to Destroy AG Barr In Order to Blow Up His Investigation Into Their Deep State Allies/Fellow Operatives

Well yes. Yes, that's it.

Maybe obvious, but it's great to once in a while have an elected representative get it, though.

"I don’t think today is actually about getting information," Jordan continued. "I don't think it's about getting the unredacted Mueller report. I don't think last week’s hearing was actually about having staff question the attorney general. I think it's all about trying to destroy Bill Barr because Democrats are nervous he’s going to get to the bottom of everything. He's going to find out how and why this investigation started in the first place."

Weirdly, the leftwing propaganda organs of the Democrat Party seemed to be skeptical of the contempt citation filed against Eric Holder, but are totes psyched about the one against Barr . . .

But AllahPundit hold out Never-Trumper hope as  Napolitano: Let’s Face It, Bill Barr Misled Congress, so now we're arguing not about whether or not the four page letter, which was superseded by the lightly redacted 400 page report, was accurate (it was), we are arguing about how Barr failed to testify initially that Mueller's team was unhappy with the 4 page letter. I have a solution. Let's subpoena Mueller's staff to testify before the Senate. That should clear up where the push back came from and why. And also cost each one about 100K in lawyers fees. Win win.

Heavy breathing at WSJ as reports say Don McGahn Rebuffed White House Request to Say Trump Didn’t Obstruct Justice. Also at WaPoo, McGahn refused White House request to say Trump did not obstruct justice.

But Burck declined on McGahn’s behalf, the people said, because Attorney General William P. Barr had already concluded there was insufficient evidence to accuse the president of criminal obstruction. Burck also concluded that there was no reason for McGahn as a witness to weigh in.

At WaPoo, (secret code)  ‘There was no attempted coup’: FBI’s former top lawyer defends Russia probe  Red State, but at Red State, Former FBI General Counsel James Baker Tries To Gaslight Us On The Russia Hoax And It Doesn’t Work "Former FBI counsel James Baker crawled out from under the warm, damp and odoriferous place he’s been keeping himself to try to rehabilitate his shredded integrity with the aid of another swamp creature" before getting down to properly Fisk it. Just a sample. This is another good one for a full reading.

Baker said the Russia probe “was not predicated on the info that Christopher Steele gave us in the form of the dossier.” The FBI knows people sometimes have an agenda and “we vet the hell” out of the information they provide. “You want to do everything you can to validate it.”

This is simply false. We know for a fact that the FISA warrant on Carter Page was 100% based on the Steele Dossier. We can dance around what “predicated” means but without the Steele Dossier, the Papadopoulos inquiry would have gone no further than it did.

Some parts of the Steele dossier may have “washed out,” Jim Baker said, but “this is what happens in an investigation. An investigation is basically a question that you start out with….”

And when it proves to be largely false, you should stop, and apologize to the people whose life you overturned, not seek to entrap them into perjury and or obstruction charges, which seems to be the DOJ/FBI way to justify their mistakes after the fact. Ed Morrissey, Did FBI Know Steele Dossier Was “Inaccurate” Before Seeking FISA Warrant?. It sure looks that way. They were probably in denial though, because they so desperately wanted to investigate the Trump campaign. Ed also points out More Comey: It’s “Totally Normal” To Use Undercover Agents On Presidential Campaigns. Please show us how you infiltrated the Obama campaign.

.@Comey: "Reasonable," "totally normal step" to plant undercover sources in a political campaign pic.twitter.com/IAL4iso2O6

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) May 10, 2019

Mollie Hemingway at Da Federalist, James Comey Has A Long History Of Questionable Obstruction Cases, with a long list of particulars and details. Read it all.

Let’s begin with the case of one Frank Quattrone, a banker who Comey pursued relentlessly on banking related charges without fruition. But while he couldn’t find any wrong-doing on criminal conduct, he went after him for supposed “obstruction of justice” because of a single ambiguous email. Sound familiar?

Before he was indicted, Comey made false statements about Quattrone and his intent. The first trial ended in a hung jury but the second one got a conviction.

That conviction was overturned in 2006. Quattrone was so scarred by the harassment, he began funding projects designed to help innocent people who are victims of prosecutorial overreach or other problems. He said his motivation for supporting such projects was that at the very moment he was found guilty in the second trial, he realized there must be innocent people in prisons who lacked the financial resources to fight for justice. He also started the Quattrone Center for the Fair Administration of Justice at the University of Pennsylvania Law School.

Quattrone has noted with interest the disparities in how he was treated by Comey for a single email compared to his handling of the Hillary Clinton email server scandal.

Regarding the notion that John Kerry should be indicted under the Logan Act from days previous, Sorry, President Trump — Mueller saved John Kerry from the Logan Act (Tom Rogan, WaEx) But this is precisely why we need to litigate the Logan Act, if the Congress won't repeal it (as they should). The investigation into Gen. Flynn, which resulted in his flimsy charges of lying to the FBI, was predicated on his violating the Logan Act. Who better than John Kerry, backed up by his wife's and/or George Soros' money to litigate it to the Supreme Court and rid of of this monstrosity once and for all.

Ace, The Media Needs a New Conspiracy Theory, and What a Surprise, They Get One From the Democrats: What If Trump Refuses to Leave Office and Declares Himself Emperor?

Weird how the media instantly and passionately adopts every single stinky conspiratorial fart gassed out by the Democrats.CNN's Chief White House correspondent Jim Acosta seemed to suggest Wednesday night that President Trump wants to extend his term is office, adding fuel to the latest media-driven anti-Trump conspiracy theory:

At rally in Panama City Trump jokes about staying in office “10 or 14” years. But he’s only joking, he says.

— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) May 9, 2019

Nancy Pelosi sharted this out earlier...

"If we win by four seats, by a thousand votes each, he's not going to respect the election," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) fretted in a New York Times piece last week. “He would poison the public mind. He would challenge each of the races. He would say you can't seat these people."

And now, like magic, androgynous puppet Jim Acosta is parroting it.

Deb Heine notes the other journalists Democrat Operatives With Bylines pushing this latest, greatest fever-swamp fringe conspiracy theory.

So far, no move from CNN to get themselves deplatformed for spreading dangerous conspiracy theories.

First, at Althouse, “We’re not meddling in an election, we’re meddling in an investigation, which we have a right to do. There’s nothing illegal about it," said Giuliani.

"Somebody could say it’s improper. And this isn’t foreign policy — I’m asking [Ukraine] to do an investigation that they’re doing already and that other people are telling them to stop. And I’m going to give them reasons why they shouldn’t stop it because that information will be very, very helpful to my client, and may turn out to be helpful to my government."

From "Rudy Giuliani Plans Ukraine Trip to Push for Inquiries That Could Help Trump" (NYT).

What is Ukraine currently investigating that Giuliani wants to encourage? According to the NYT, it's "the origin of the special counsel’s investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election" and "the involvement of former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s son in a gas company owned by a Ukrainian oligarch."

Then AP, Trump lawyer Giuliani threatens, then abandons, Ukraine trip

Democrats denounced a plan by President Donald Trump’s personal attorney to push Ukraine to open investigations that he hopes could benefit Trump politically, saying it was an overt attempt to recruit foreign help to influence a U.S. election.

But lawyer Rudy Giuliani has scrapped plans to visit Ukraine, citing concerns about who he would be dealing with there.

“I’ve decided ... I’m not going to go to the Ukraine,” Giuliani told Fox News on Friday night. “I’m not going to go because I think I’m walking into a group of people that are enemies of the president ... in some cases enemies of the United States, and in one case an already convicted person who has been found to be involved in assisting the Democrats with the 2016 election.”