Refurbishing Russiagate

The headliners from Drudge:

Longtime Trump Org CFO granted immunity...
'Narrow in scope'...
Manhattan D.A. Eyes Criminal Charges...
Prosecutors inch closer to Trump...
Loyalty Tested as Closest Confidants Become Witnesses...
'We don't know quarter of what's in pocket of Mueller'...
RUDY TAKES SHOT AT PRESIDENT FOR 'FLIPPING' COMMENTS...
DRAMA: George Conway tweets again...
BUCHANAN: We are headed for hellish year...
DAN RATHER: STAY TUNED...
Kavanaugh argued the president can be impeached for lies, cover-ups and refusing to testify...
Dems' midterm strategy: Stop talking about Trump...

Can we stop pretending this ever had anything to do with Russia yet? Hoo Boy: Top Trump Org Finance Exec, Allen Weisselberg, Granted Immunity By Feds In Cohen Probe

Ken White at WaPo: Witnesses ‘flipping’ does corrupt justice. But not because they’re ‘rats.’

America’s criminal justice system routinely coerces defendants to cooperate and incentivizes them to lie to please prosecutors. But most victims aren’t presidential confidants accused of bank fraud. The vast majority of people who confront the choice between cooperation and a longer sentence are poor and uneducated. When it comes to jailing our fellow Americans, we have champagne tastes, but when it comes to defending them, a store-brand-soda budget. Public defenders and other indigent defense attorneys are notoriously, consistently and outrageously underfunded . Pleading guilty and implicating a co-defendant can be the only practical choice when your lawyer lacks the time and resources to mount an effective defense. In fact, flipping on your cohorts can be the only way to avoid the de facto punishment of pretrial detention: In many jurisdictions, defendants plead guilty and cooperate because they cannot afford bail , and they would otherwise languish in jail awaiting trial for many months or even years, whether or not they have a defense.
. . .
The criminal justice system, from petty drug cases to sophisticated grand jury investigations by specially appointed former FBI directors, runs on flipping defendants. If we want fairness for both the cooperating defendants and the people they implicate — if we want faith in the results — we need serious reform. That means thinking about how poverty drives cooperation and digging into our pockets to fund the defense of people we want to jail. But it also means asking tough questions about how the system fails to police itself. There are no reliable methods in place to track repeat cooperators or to ensure that evidence undermining their credibility is turned over to the defense, and very few prosecutors face consequences for withholding information that impeaches their witnesses. A system that cared about reliable cooperator testimony would ensure both.

Fairness also demands that we examine the vast power we’ve given prosecutors, who through unreviewable and usually opaque charging decisions can have even more authority than judges over a defendant’s sentence. Federal prosecutors could flip Cohen because they had broad discretion to charge him with dozens of crimes or none; they alone decided how sweet a deal to offer and how ugly the alternative was. The federal sentencing guidelines contribute to that phenomenon and to prosecutorial power. Few Americans realize that it made little difference that Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, was convicted on only eight of the 18 counts against him: Under the strange alchemy of sentencing guidelines, his recommended sentence may not be significantly lower than it would have been if he were found guilty on all 18. And by deciding what information to provide to the court and the probation office that drafts the pre-sentence report, prosecutors can further guide the sentencing outcome, further increasing their power to coerce pleas and cooperation.

Neo Neo remembers the Stevens prosecution: On the Cohen plea

What I’ve never seen is this sort of general technique used by partisans of one party to get the president of the United States, although I’ve seen something like it on a lower level; Ted Stevens comes to mind. In Stevens’ case, the name of the Michael Cohen figure was Bill Allen, who (unlike Cohen) at least was not Stevens’ lawyer. A little tiny memory refresher here [emphasis mine]:

On July 29, 2008, Stevens was indicted by a federal grand jury on seven counts of failing to properly report gifts, a felony, and found guilty at trial three months later (October 27, 2008). The charges relate to renovations to his home and alleged gifts from VECO Corporation, claimed to be worth more than $250,000. The indictment followed a lengthy investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) for possible corruption by Alaskan politicians and was based in part on Stevens’s extensive relationship with Bill Allen. Allen owned racehorses, including a partnership in the stud horse So Long Birdie, which included Stevens and eight others, and which was managed by Bob Persons. The FBI not only had calls between Allen and Stevens, made after Allen became a cooperating witness, but they had thousands of wiretapped conversations involving the phones of both Allen and VECO Vice President Rick Smith. They had also videotaped meetings between Allen and state legislators at VECO’s hotel suite in Juneau, the state capitol. Allen had testified in court that he bribed Ted’s son Ben, the former Alaska Senate president. A former VECO employee said he did campaign fundraising work for Stevens while on VECO’s payroll, a violation of federal law. Allen , then an oil service company executive, had earlier pleaded guilty—with sentencing suspended pending his cooperation in gathering evidence and giving testimony in other trials—to bribing several Alaskan state legislators. Stevens declared, “I’m innocent,” and pleaded not guilty to the charges in a federal district court on July 31, 2008. Stevens asserted his right to a speedy trial so that he could have the opportunity to clear his name promptly and requested that the trial be held before the 2008 election.

Stevens was found guilty, and just about everyone in both parties pressured him to resign from the Senate. That was the true goal of the prosecution, I believe—not to necessarily put him in prison, but to create a climate that would ruin him politically. But he lost his election instead.

What happened next was the discovery (initially through a whistleblower) of an enormous degree of prosecutorial misconduct, including the following:

the discovery of a previously undocumented interview with Bill Allen, the prosecution’s star witness, that raised the possibility prosecutors had knowingly allowed Allen to perjure himself on the stand. Allen stated that the fair market value of the repairs to Stevens’s house was around $80,000—far less than the $250,000 he said it cost at trial. More seriously, Allen said in the interview that he didn’t recall talking to Bob Persons, a friend of Stevens, regarding the repair bill for Stevens’s house. This directly contradicted Allen’s testimony at trial, in which he claimed Stevens asked him to give Persons a note Stevens sent him asking for a bill on the repair work. At trial, Allen said Persons had told him the note shouldn’t be taken seriously because “Ted’s just covering his ass.” Even without the notes, Stevens’s attorneys claimed that they thought Allen was lying about the conversation…
Stevens’s attorney, Brendan Sullivan, said that Holder’s decision was forced by “extraordinary evidence of government corruption.” He also claimed that prosecutors not only withheld evidence but “created false testimony that they gave us and actually presented false testimony in the courtroom”—two incidents that would have made it very likely that the convictions would have been overturned on appeal.
On April 7, 2009, federal judge Sullivan formally accepted Holder’s motion to set aside the verdict and throw out the indictment, declaring “There was never a judgment of conviction in this case. The jury’s verdict is being set aside and has no legal effect,” and calling it the worst case of prosecutorial misconduct he’d ever seen.
Disgusting. But these revelations came too late for Stevens, who had been narrowly defeated in his re-election bid. So the forces desirous of bringing Stevens down were fully successful, even though their duplicity was later discovered. The full report didn’t come out till 2012, two years after Stevens’ death in an airplane accident. But at least he lived to see some vindication.

I’ve gone into so much detail about the Stevens case because although it’s not a perfect analogy, it’s relevant, and it should anger every single person who reads about it, no matter what political side that person might be on. The goal with Stevens was to force him to lose his election, resign, or face expulsion from the Senate. The goal with Trump is to get him impeached and even convicted, if possible. I happen to think the first option is very possible if the Democrats win the House, but I doubt conviction would occur in the Senate unless a great many GOP moderates went along, and I don’t quite see that happening.

And just for reference, one of Mueller's current team of prosecutors, Andrew Weissman was one of the prosecutors on the Steven's prosecution that was censured. And it's not his only time. Manafort Prosecutor Has a History of Bullying, Withholding Information, Critics Say

“He is very good at stretching the law to encompass conduct that is not criminal,” said Sidney Powell, an attorney who represented former Merrill Lynch executive James Brown.

Mueller Is Already Taking Measures to Muzzle Manafort, Matt Naham, Law and Crime:

Special counsel Robert Mueller is taking measures to prevent convicted felon Paul Manafort from claiming he is being “selectively prosecuted” in his upcoming Washington, D.C. trial.

NPR’s Carrie Johnson reports that Mueller has petitioned the D.C. judge Amy Berman Jackson to prevent Manafort from making this argument, claiming that Manafort’s defense team “repeatedly” ignored Judge T.S. Ellis III’s order during the Virginia trial.

Crime and Punishment, by Roger Kimball, American Greatness

The crime at the center of this deep-state initiative is the election of Donald Trump. The tort? He was elected without the permission of the ruling class, its jesters and its scribes and moralists. Pete Wehner does not approve of Donald Trump. Bill Kristol thinks he is infra-dig. Psychiatrists are still trying to figure out what Mad Max Boot and Jabbering John Brennan think.

But this, Ladies and Gentlemen (and unlike the MTA and the London Tube, we still use the phrase “Ladies and Gentlemen” here), this is the crime: Donald Trump was elected. That’s it. That’s the crime. It’s not in the statute books, but a little thing like that never stopped a diligent bureaucrat, especially one armed with a phalanx of partisan prosecutors and an unlimited budget.

A nonpartisan friend (he did not vote for Trump or Hillary) wrote me with another bit of practical advice for the president. Reflecting on the vindictive, death-by-a-thousand-cuts procedure of Robert Mueller, he noted that the president could “avoid this form of slow water torture by simply pardoning Manafort and anyone else who has gotten in Mueller’s sights. I can,” he said, “right now write the presidential statement”:

I am now pardoning Paul Manafort and everyone else who has come within the gun sights of the special counsel. These individuals have fallen into jeopardy entirely because of their association with me, my campaign, my business, my family, and so forth. None of them would be in such trouble but for the fact that they are seen by Mr. Mueller as stepping stones in his quest to get me.
Rather than wait until the end of the process, I have decided to pardon everyone now, because the enormous distraction caused by the Mueller investigations threatens to distract the nation from attending to crucial business in a very dangerous world. This is a fight between Mr. Mueller and me, not between Mr. Manafort, nor anyone else, and Mr. Mueller. I signed the pardon papers this morning.
Having now pardoned all of Mr. Mueller’s targets, I invite him to file a report with the House of Representatives, recommending my impeachment. The House, and, if articles of impeachment are voted by the House, then the Senate sitting as my jury, are the proper arena for this battle.
This is a political, not a legal battle. I am prepared to wage that political battle within the House and the Senate in an impeachment context, and before the American people in the next presidential election, in which, I hereby announce, I intend to run for a second term. Let the American people have their say.

Neither Don Lemon nor Rachel Maddow nor their many confrères in the media would like this. Indeed, it would drive them, if possible, to further frenzies. But, hey, in for a penny, in for a pound. If, as I say, Donald Trump’s crime was simply being elected, such a forthright expedient might be just the ticket.

Unbiased Chuck Todd: A "Functional Washington" Would Be Looking For Ways To Draw Up Articles of Impeachment Papers On Trump and unbiased Conrad Black: Trump Has Already Won on Impeachment

Andrew Ferguson, Weekly Standard: We Can’t Wait for Michael Cohen’s Inevitable Memoir. I beg to differ. From Reality TV to Reality Politics: What Cohen, Omarosa, and Avenatti know that Democrats don't. That there's no such thing as bad publicity? Omarosa: I’m ready to testify at Trump impeachment trial. Anything to stretch her 15 minutes.

But seriously: Cohen Guilty Plea Shows Campaign Finance Law Issues

It should be simple: people, businesses, organizations, and unions can donate to whatever candidate they want. No donation limits. Candidates can spend said money however they want but an itemized list needs to be provided to the FEC and made public.
. . .
Former FEC Commissioner Bradley A. Smith suggested at Reason.com the confuzzling system really caught Cohen and Trump in a Catch-22.

In the Cohen case, the prosecutors hung their hat on FECA’s definition of “contributions” and “expenditures” as anything spent or contributed “for the purpose of influencing any election.” That’s a pretty broad definition, and certainly it may have been thought that paying hush money to Trump’s old memories would “influence an election.” Thus, they argue, payment of the hush money was subject to limits on the size of contributions used to pay, could not include corporate funds, and had to be reported to the FEC.
But there is another provision in the statute that prohibits a candidate from diverting campaign funds to “personal use.” “Personal use,” in turn, is defined as any expenditure “used to fulfill any commitment, obligation, or expense of a person that would exist irrespective of the candidate’s election campaign.” These may not be paid with campaign funds, even if they are intended to influence the election…
The upshot is that TV ads, polling, hiring a campaign accountant to comply with federal laws, and renting office space are all examples of expenses that exist only because the person is running for office—they are campaign expenses. But if Trump or some other candidate were to tell his personal lawyers, “I want all the lawsuits against me settled. I think they’re a bunch of B.S., but they’re hurting my candidacy,” the settlements would not be “campaign expenses,” even though the payments were made to “influence an election.”

Smith thinks Cohen would have been nabbed by investigators either way because of the way the system is set up. He’s not defending the hush money payments – just pointing out how easy it is for regulators to find violations.

Anything a candidate does he (or she) intends to influence an election. Say for example, putting her email server in her bathroom, and using it to illegally transfer classified material. Victory Girls:  James Comey Lied: Majority Of Hillary Clinton Emails On Weiner Laptop Were Never Examined:

Lie Number One: Comey claimed in his book as well as during interviews that he never heard about the emails until early October. He also claimed at the same time that he never realized that Huma was a close personal confidante of Hillary Clinton’s.

Meanwhile was action taken regarding these emails given the issues and the Hillary Clinton email investigation titled “Mid-Year Exam?” Nope. In fact Strzok sat on them for another 26 days.

It took several FBI agents blowing the whistle on the inaction to get the investigation going. However, there were still others who insisted anything in the emails was all a giant nothing burger.

Lie Number Two: Comey actually stated that new technology allowed them to comb through all the new emails and text messages to accurately compare the new trove with all other emails that Hillary so ‘helpfully’ provided in earlier days of the investigation. In fact, the system used had a major technical glitch that didn’t allow them to compare the two. Of the 694,000 emails uncovered; only 3,077 were reviewed. Yes folks, you read those numbers correctly.

Lie Number Three: Comey testified that no new sensitive information had been found. Except for the fact that out of the emails reviewed, MORE classified info was found that included emails about extremely sensitive material concerning Israel and the terrorist group Hamas. Hillary Clinton was NEVER asked about the new information uncovered. NEVER.

Not only that, but the new information was never analyzed for damage to national security. NOR was it referred to the other U.S. intelligence agencies to determine what if any aspects of our national security had been compromised. Which is something that they should’ve done because it is a FEDERAL MANDATE to do so. In fact it’s an actual policy that must be adhered to.

Lie Number Four and Five: Material recovered was NOT duplicate material but brand new information, that was classified. A call sheet regarding a discussion with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ran four pages. A classified ‘readout’ of a call with a UAE prime minister ultimately ended up housed on Weiner’s laptop under the subheading titled “Anthony Campaign.” Contrary to Comey’s testimony on May 2017, these emails had not been seen before.

Lie Number Six: Comey has maintained that the FBI left no stone unturned. And perhaps for the agents in the field that is true. As for Peter Strzok and James Comey, they left a significant number of stones untouched in their investigation. Why? Hillary Clinton.

Exit Question per the Real Clear Investigations report: Where is the Weiner laptop and what did the FBI do with the data from it?

Resplendent Russiagate

It's a big one again, so diving right in with Ace's Judge Tells the FBI That It Will No Longer Be Permitted to Hide Behind "We Can Neither Confirm Nor Deny" Answers, But Must Actually Answer Questions About How It Handled the Alleged Steele Dossier.  No more shuck-and-jive. It's about time. Mark Penn at Da Hill: Press needs to restore its credibility on FBI and Justice Department

Now, these are all established facts. Let’s review them again: Ohr was a senior Justice Department official whose wife was employed by the research firm hired by Clinton and the DNC to get dirt on Trump. This was not reported on any disclosure forms. Ohr’s wife worked on the same Trump-Russia project as Steele, who concocted the dossier, and Ohr himself established a secret back channel with Steele, who had been dismissed for lying to the FBI — all, apparently, so that Steele was never far from learning about the investigation or having input into it. His texts even refer to a fear of “firewalls” being discovered.

This is an absolutely stunning development, suggesting a “deep state” conspiracy hidden even from superiors and driven on the basis of undisclosed dollars ultimately from the opposition candidate going to the wife of a DOJ official. Even moderate senators like Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) have been shocked by this and called for a special counsel to investigate the FBI. Yet, the mainstream media not only ignores the story while in the throes of Omarosa fever, but suggests only tin-hat conspiracy theorists would believe anything is wrong here.

The New York Times did write a story about Ohr — a story wondering why Ohr would possibly be on a list of people the president has suggested might lose their security clearance. The article says Ohr has been “at the center of a right-wing conspiracy theory” about the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation. Ohr, according to the Times, has been the subject of “conservative attacks” about the origins of the investigation which, the article notes, the Justice Department kept under wraps so as not to affect the election. Yup, they were actually trying to help Trump.

Margot Cleveland at the Federalist: New Info Indicates Clinton-Funded Oppo Research Launched FBI’s Trump Investigation. Like we needed new info? Elizabeth Vaughn at the Geller Report: John Brennan’s CIA ‘Operated Like A Branch Office Of The Hillary Campaign’. A useful review. When you've lost Lindsey Graham: Graham calls for special counsel to investigate FBI's handling of Clinton emails, FISA warrant. AP Interview: Top Republican opens up about Russia probe. Still nada:

“Nothing in this town stays classified or secret forever,” Burr said. “And at some point somebody’s going to go back and do a review. And I’d love not to be the one that chaired the committee when somebody says, ‘well, boy, you missed this.’ So we’ve tried to be pretty thorough in how we’ve done it.”

Burr said there is “no factual evidence today that we’ve received” on collusion or conspiracy between Russia and President Donald Trump’s campaign. But he said he’s still open on the issue and hasn’t personally come to any final conclusions, since the investigation isn’t finished.

John Sexton at Hot Air: NBC News: Sen. Nelson Leaked Some Genuine, But Classified, Information

So the bottom line here is that while Nelson did not make this story up, he did completely botch the handling of it. First and foremost, he was not supposed to reveal this because it was classified. Second, this apparently has to do with potential, ongoing threats from the 2016 penetration of Florida’s election system, not with any new penetration of the system.

On Paul Manafort's Purge Trial, The big media in the Manafort trial are trying to dox the jury. Ace: CNN and Other Media Organizations Plead to Manafort Judge: Please Give Us the Jurors' Names So That We Can Dox Them Into Voting the Way We Demand.

because they want them to vote the "right" way

— Seth Mandel (@SethAMandel) August 17, 2018

The judge said NFW, citing among other things, the fact that he has been threatened, and needs protection from the Federal Marshall Service: Manafort Trial Judge Has Been Threatened, Has U.S. Marshals Protection (John Sexton, Hot Air), Manafort’s Judge Is Under Federal Protection After Wave Of Threats (Da Caller). Bay way of Wombat Socho's  "In The Mailbox: 08.17.18" Power Line has: Democrats Frighten Manafort Jurors.

Jack Shafer, Politico, John Brennan’s Trumpian Turn, "John O. Brennan can’t say he didn’t ask for President Donald Trump’s extreme attention." Bloomberg: Trump Is Not Trying to Silence Brennan The president’s strategy is the opposite: to make the former CIA director more prominent and use him as a foil. That would be typical. Nice for Brennan to fall for it, though. Dr. John at Flopping Aces, Trump isn’t trying to silence his critics. He’s stripping away security clearances from those who conspired against him. It's an amazing turn of dishonesty that the media et al accuse him of trying to silence critics by merely taking away their right to handle classified information. But we expect no less. Allahpundit: Trump Eager To Strip More People’s Security Clearances "Eager, but probably not so eager that he’ll nuke all of them at once. Gotta save those revocations for rainy-day news cycles." Well, the media set the game to the news cycle, and Trump has to play within those bounds. Besides, never knowing when the hammer will fall is kind of invigorating. Joe Seyton at Reason: Rand Paul: Trump Should Keep Revoking Ex-Obama Officials’ Security Clearances. Rand Paul has his good moments. David Kris at the WaPo has 3 ways revoking Brennan’s clearance is bad for the country. Because it makes it harder for the WaPo to get insider information is not listed.

Natasha Bertrand at da Atlantic gives Peter Strzok another tongue bath: Why the FBI Fired an Agent Who Wrote Anti-Trump Texts "The FBI’s disciplinary office had recommended Peter Strzok be suspended for two months but was overruled by the bureau’s deputy director."

The Former FBI special agent Frank Montoya Jr., who served as the director of the Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive until 2016, acknowledged that Strzok “made a serious mistake” in exchanging those highly opinionated texts with Page. “But it wasn’t a fireable mistake,” he said. “Guys in the bureau get DUI’s and they get 30 days on the bricks.

Drunken driving gun toting FBI agents with attitude are kept.That's comforting. But even Trevor Noah thinks Strzok's retirement plan is a bit too far (NSFW language):



Allahpundit: Feds Closing In On Michael Cohen Over Stormy Payoff?. It didn't work on John Edwards, but he wasn't a Republican.

AP source: It’s not just audio, Manigault Newman has video. Looking forward to something like this (NSFW link). And if you need something to displace that from your brain try Piers Morgan Says Omarosa Manigault Offered Him Sex to Win ‘Celebrity Apprentice’

“Omarosa sidled up to me at the New York Mercantile Exchange and said, quite seriously: ‘Piers, do you want a showmance?’ ‘A what?’ I replied. ‘A showmance. You know, a romance on the show — we get it on together. Happens all the time on Apprentice. Everyone has sex together. Then we can make lots of money out of it,’” Morgan wrote. “I stared at her grasping, ferociously ambitious little eyes, and laughed: ‘You must be joking, you deluded woman.’ She didn’t take it well. ‘What are you? Gay?’”

And speaking of grasping, and ferociously ambitious,  Stormy Daniels Reportedly Storms Out Of UK “Big Brother” At Last Minute  over "a last-minute demand for an extra £100,000, which was rebuffed" and How Michael Avenatti Got His Start In Political Dark Arts Under Rahm Emanuel.

Repugnant Russiagate

Quite a lot today, so sit down with cup a'Joe and read on: Killing two links with one stone:Ace:  Julie Kelly: Why Was the Weekly Standard Pushing Bullet-Points from the Steele Dossier Two Days Before Operation Crossfire Hurricane Began?

I've been waiting all day for this article.

I've been waiting all day for this article.In his online appeal for money after being fired this week, disgraced former FBI agent Peter Strzok credited an unlikely source to vouch for his victim status: The Weekly Standard.

At one time a leading conservative magazine, the Standard declared last month that Strzok's plight was merely an "overwrought tale of bias" and the case against him is "just sound and fury." The article brushed off Strzok's actions as “several bad judgment calls” and blasted Congressional Republicans for continuing a criminal investigation into the now-unemployed G-man.
Strzok is following only 32 people on his newly-verified Twitter account. Bill Kristol, the editor-at-large of the Standard, is one of them.
So, what’s with the fanboying between the Standard--an allegedly serious publication dedicated to advancing conservative principles--and a corrupt government bureaucrat who embodies everything the conservative movement fought against for decades?
I found an article in the Standard archives this week that might explain why. On July 24, 2016, just days before Strzok helped launch a counterintelligence probe into the Trump campaign, Kristol gave Strzok and the Obama Justice Department a big assist from the anti-Trump Right by posting a flawed and questionably-sourced article. "Putin's Party" is compelling evidence that Kristol and the Standard were far from mere sideline observers as the Trump-Russia collusion scam took shape in the summer of 2016.
At the very least, the timing of the article suggests there was careful coordination between the central players--including the Hillary Clinton campaign--and Bill Kristol to derail Trump's candidacy just weeks before the [election. But the article’s content also serves to raise alarming questions about the claims by many Republicans that “conservatives” had no knowledge of or involvement with the Christopher Steele dossier.

She notes that Kristol's article hits all the major bullet points of the Hillary-Clinton-financed oppo hit, from Russian Water Sports to Trump being involved in the DNC hacking and all the rest of it.

I figure, maybe Kristol, a fake conservative corporatist chiefly a Republican to make the world safe for the Import-Export Bank, got the dossier from McCain, who of course is the same kind of Republican.

Or maybe, as Kelly suggests, he just got it from Glenn Simpson, who his son in law had hired originally to gather dirt on Cruz and Trump for the Free Beacon. Though the Free Beacon says it had terminated its relationship long before the Steele dossier was, um, supposedly written by Steele, maybe Simpson just knew that Cap'n Bill had a strong interest in seeing this master spy's alleged work.

There's nothing necessarily sinister in that -- except that people who allegedly serve us by providing us with the truth have been lying about it for, what, more than two years now?

Chuck Ross: Fusion GPS Fed False Story About GOP Lawyer to DOJ’s Bruce Ohr That Magically Appeared in Media Reports

Veteran GOP lawyer Cleta Mitchell suddenly found her name mixed up in the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

The first public mention of Mitchell came in a March 13 report released by Democrats on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. The report listed Mitchell, a partner at the firm Foley & Lardner, as one of the “individuals or groups who were involved in or may have knowledge of third-party political outreach from the Kremlin to the Trump campaign.”

Two days later, McClatchy newspapers cited two anonymous sources who claimed that Mitchell expressed concerns just after the election that Russians had funneled secret cash to the National Rifle Association.

Tom Fitton: How Were Bruce and Nellie Ohr, Christopher Steele, and Fusion GPS Plotting?

As this sordid scandal continues to unfold, it is increasingly clear that top DOJ official Bruce Ohr – working in conjunction with his wife and other Clinton-connected Fusion GPS actors – played a key role in laundering false information from Russia about Donald J. Trump. The DOJ must stop the stonewalling and release these documents, as the law requires.

No time limits, no 'public circus': Bruce Ohr to testify behind closed doors, Trey Gowdy says

Gowdy, a former federal prosecutor, said he used to do the work Ohr does now. "It is unbelievable that a prosecutor would insert himself into an ongoing investigation for which he had nothing to do," he added.

Guess how many senior FBI officials involved in Hillary email probe have been fired or resigned since 2017. Why guess, let's see:

At least six senior FBI officials involved in the Hillary Clinton email investigation have been fired or have resigned since May 2017.
👇 pic.twitter.com/8yl7TVuSWM

— Fox News Research (@FoxNewsResearch) August 15, 2018

Of course, in the most controversial news of the day, John Brennan was stripped of his security clearance. Politico: Trump pulls security clearance of ex-CIA Director John Brennan

“Mr. Brennan’s lying and recent conduct characterized by increasingly frenzied commentary is wholly inconsistent with access to the nation’s most closely held secrets and facilities, the very aim of our adversaries which is to sow division and chaos,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said, reading a statement from Trump while briefing reporters on Wednesday.

“Mr. Brennan has recently leveraged his status as a former high-ranking official with access to highly sensitive information to make a series of unfounded and outrageous allegations — wild outbursts on the internet and television — about this Administration,“ the president‘s statement continued.

 Dana at Patterico: President Trump Revokes Former CIA Director’s Security Clearance.

Allahpundit enlightens:

Just because someone retains their clearance to receive classified info doesn’t mean they retain their access to it. You can’t demand to see state secrets just because you’re cleared to see them. The administration has to make them available to you. And it hopefully goes without saying that having a clearance doesn’t shield you from prosecution if you’re caught sharing classified info with unauthorized recipients. In other words, if you were worried about Brennan leaking, today’s move doesn’t do much to reduce that risk. In all likelihood he had no access to any recent intel in the first place. And if people inside the administration were sharing it with him because they hate Trump, odds are they’re going to go on sharing it even after today’s action (although they can be jailed for doing so now).

Brennan, unsurprisingly, pushed back on the decision:

This action is part of a broader effort by Mr. Trump to suppress freedom of speech & punish critics. It should gravely worry all Americans, including intelligence professionals, about the cost of speaking out. My principles are worth far more than clearances. I will not relent.

Said the man who used his position as CIA Director to try suppress speech and punish his political foes.

Ace:  Let the Blue Checkmark Meltdown Begin: Leaky Brennan's Security Clearance Revoked. "Why should a man who is very reasonably suspected of having engineered a leak of classified information to CNN retain a security clearance requiring high ethics in handling such information?"

Unprecedented? No: Trump-supporting Pentagon analyst stripped of security clearance after Stefan Halper complaints Pretty much proving that any thoughts that Halper was trying to penetrate the Trump campaign for the CIA are absolutely on target, too.

A Trump-supporting Pentagon analyst was stripped of his security clearance by Obama-appointed officials after he complained of questionable government contracts to Stefan Halper, the FBI informant who spied on the Trump presidential campaign.

Adam Lovinger, a 12-year strategist in the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment, complained to his bosses about Halper contracts in the fall of 2016, his attorney, Sean M. Bigley, told The Washington Times.

On May 1, 2017, his superiors yanked his security clearance and relegated him to clerical chores.

Mollie Hemingway, Da Fed: Media Conspiracy Theories About Devin Nunes Are Getting Out Of Control. Why not shorten the title to "Media Are Getting Out Of Control?"

First off, maybe Nunes is crazy to think that Democrats plan to impeach the president within 30 seconds of taking the House. Or, you know, maybe he got the idea that Democrats are thinking pretty intently on impeaching the president the moment they take the House from statements they’ve made here, or here, or here, or here, or here, or here, or here, or here, or here, or here, or here, or here. One or the other.

And I think at this point we can all agree that The Washington Post is not going to hold the FBI or DOJ accountable for any misdeeds in recent years. This is the paper, after all, that has yet to have one of its own reporters even mention the latest news with Bruce Ohr, much less write the dozens of hard-hitting investigative pieces people have every right to expect at this stage.

The WaFB: Supporters Raise Over $300,000 for Peter Strzok’s Legal Expenses

The more I think of his gofundme the more I'm disgusted. This guy ignored Paul Combetta's Reddit posts with intent while I got harassed & Hillary's server being hacked by a foreign power (not Russia) among other things & he's elevated with stacks of cash.https://t.co/4d87V1epQh

— Katica (@GOPPollAnalyst) August 14, 2018

The Firing Ceremony of Peter Strzok. pic.twitter.com/Dd1fXguLLa

— Carpe Donktum🔹 (@Carpedonktum) August 14, 2018

Simone Mangiante and George Papadopoulos

A long one, but read it all. Jeff Carlson, themarketswork: George Papadopoulos, Alexander Downer & the Opening of the FBI Investigation. Da Caller: Papadopoulos’s Wife Says He Should Scrap His Plea Deal With Mueller

Mangiante Papadopoulos says she does not believe Papadopoulos committed a crime and is guilty instead of misremembering nuanced details of his interactions with Mifsud.

Prosecutors claim that during a Jan. 26, 2017, interview, Papadopoulos, who did not have a lawyer present, falsely claimed he met Mifsud prior to joining the campaign in March 2016. But Papadopulos first met Mifsud about a week after learning he would join the Trump team. The pair remained in contact through the campaign.

As evidence that Papadopoulos did not intend to deceive the FBI, Mangiante Papadopoulos claims Papadopoulos volunteered Mifsud’s name to the agents who interviewed him.

Mangiante Papadopoulos has also denied that Papadopoulos took part in collusion between the campaign and Russian government. She also believes that government officials attempted to set up her husband with a series of approaches by government informants, including former Cambridge professor Stefan Halper. (RELATED: Simona Mangiante Says Her Husband Was ‘Absolutely Not’ Involved In Collusion)

Manafort trial Day 12: Prosecution hammers Manafort's 'lies,' defense chides 'selective' evidence

Prosecutors urged jurors in the trial of Paul Manafort to focus on financial records and Manafort’s “lies” — and to set aside personal feelings about a tainted star witness — as the government offered its closing argument on Wednesday.

Pushing back, lawyers for the former Trump campaign chairman argued that the case brought by special counsel Robert Mueller is a mishmash of "selective" evidence that doesn’t amount to any crime at all.

Althouse, who reads the NYT so I don't have to: "The dueling summations ended in a heated confrontation over whether Mr. Manafort’s lawyers had crossed a line in seeking to sow doubt about the prosecutors’ motivations."

"While the fraud charges against Mr. Manafort are not related to Mr. Mueller’s inquiry into Russian interference in 2016, as Mr. Trump’s former campaign chairman he might know about Moscow’s efforts to influence the campaign. Without saying so directly, the defense lawyers made clear that Mr. Manafort was a Republican, telling jurors that he had worked on the presidential campaigns of Ronald Reagan, Bob Dole, Gerald R. Ford and George Bush. Though they did not mention Mr. Trump by name, they said that Mr. Manafort had no income in 2016 because he had volunteered for 'a presidential campaign.' After prosecutors protested, Judge T.S. Ellis III of the United States District Court in Alexandria instructed the jury to 'ignore any argument about the Justice Department’s motive or lack of motive in bringing this prosecution.'"

Allahpundit: Rudy To Mueller: Finish Your Report In The Next Two To Three Weeks Or We’ll Unload On You Like A Ton Of Bricks. Not gonna happen. Pretty soon Mueller will ask to have a new building built and named after himself. WaPo: Trump’s lawyers prepare to fight subpoena all the way to the Supreme Court. Why not?

“It’s been a week, and we haven’t heard anything,” Giuliani said. “Plan A is we somehow work out the questioning. Plan B is we don’t and they subpoena. Plan C is they file the report and don’t issue a subpoena.”

The WaT: Sen. Bill Nelson goes silent amid charges of fabricating Russian hacking claim. Let Ace pick up the story: Bill Nelson: When I Made Huge News in the Liberal Media That Russians Had Already Hacked Florida's Election System In Advance of the 2018 Elections, I Meant That They Might Hack Them

Nope. He's lying.

First of all, let's get the backstory, from August 8th. The Tampa Bay Times -- which I know I can trust, because they're responsible for PolitiFact or one of those completely-reliable fact-check operations -- reported that Nelson said, verbally, unambiguously, that Russia had penetrated Florida's voting systems in advance of the 2018 elections. Not that they might or could penetrate them.

Not that they had in 2016.

But that Russians already have penetrated them in advance of the 2018 elections:

Oh, Oh, Oh, Omorossa! Matthew Walther: Omarosa's Unhinged is an unconvincing mess of a book

The central conceit of this memoir is the purported existence of one or more tapes said to feature President Trump using the N-word, perhaps in reference to Omarosa herself. The possibility is dangled in front of the reader virtually on page one and not revisited for hundreds of pages. After a short prelude in which she recounts her last day at the White House eight months ago, she rewinds and tells us her entire life story, complete with the names of every teacher she ever had and the details of her winning the Miss Buckeye Elk Pageant in high school (not to be confused with her victory in the Miss Youngstown Pageant the same year). We are treated to affectless summaries of her time doing various jobs in Bill Clinton's White House and her attempt to work for Hillary's 2016 campaign.

Speaking of her work for the Clinton campaign, by way of Wombat-socho's In The Mailbox: 08.14.18, the Weasel Zippers:  Omarosa Was A Horrible Employee For The Clinton Administration Too, which in turn refers to Da Caller: Former VP Al Gore’s Office Couldn’t Wait To Get Rid Of Omarosa, Too

The Trump White House is not the first to be unsatisfied with the work performance of Omarosa Manigault, the former senior Trump staffer who already released secretly recorded conversations she had with the president and Chief of Staff John Kelly

Despite Manigault’s complaints that she was treated poorly in the Trump White House during her tenure as one of the highest paid staffers there, former “numerous” staffers for Vice President Al Gore’s office told The New York Times last year that she was a terrible employee for the then-vice president..

At 24 years of age, she scored an entry-level, $25,000-per-year post replying to invitations for the vice president. According to The Times, she left a mound of 13 months-worth of unanswered correspondence addressed to Gore below her desk.

People Magazine reported a former staffer said, “she didn’t do her job, and it got everybody in trouble.”

“She was the worst hire we ever made,” Mary Margaret Overbey, Gore’s former office administrator told The Times.

Manigault was then moved to the Clinton White House to the position of deputy associate director of presidential personnel. She only lasted eight months in that job until she was transferred out of the White House all together to the Commerce Department.

There, Cheryl Shavers, who served as the Department’s undersecretary for technology, described Manigault to The Times as “unqualified and disruptive,” so she “had her removed.” Savers also told People Magazine in 2004 that “One woman wanted to slug her.”

Additionally, Omarosa reportedly embellished her job titles, tasks, and work performance on her resume in different posts and sources repeatedly disputed to The Times her claims, including a Howard University spokesman who said she was, in fact, a “facilitator and presenter” and never a professor at the school.

pre-boob job

It sounds like she rose above her level of competence quite  early in life, likely based on smooth, unaccented English, great looks, and a boost from Affirmative Action. But Black Americans aren't buying it en mass. AP: Black Americans aren’t buying Omarosa’s turn against Trump

“Her tell-all mea culpa won’t win her any brownie points with most blacks,” said Earl Ofari Hutchinson, author of the book “Why Black Lives Do Matter.” ″Their loathing of Omarosa is virtually frozen in stone. She’s still roundly lambasted as a two-bit opportunist, a racial sellout and an ego driven hustler.”

Few in the black community immediately rushed to defend Manigault Newman after she wrote a book titled “Unhinged” about her time in the White House. It paints a damning picture of Trump, claiming without evidence that tapes exist of him using the N-word as he filmed “The Apprentice” reality series, on which she co-starred.

Even Jimmy!  Jimmy Kimmel on the Time Omarosa ‘Stormed Out’ on Him: ‘There’s Clearly Something Wrong With Her’

Wombat-socho brings us "Rule Five Sunday: Barbi Benton" and "FMJRA 2.0: Talk Dirty To Me" on time and within budget.