Russiagate Diverted to Epstein Island

Althouse reads Lawfare so you don't have to  "Mueller is...likely to be grumpy when you question him. And who can blame him? You would be grumpy too if you were being subjected to hours of unwanted hectoring by your colleagues, many of whom are not very bright..."

"... will not have done their homework, and will want to yell at the man and ask him things that would be wildly inappropriate for him to answer. But you are that rare thing: a diligent member of Congress who wants to use your time with Mueller to bring out important findings and nuances of the Mueller report. What do you do?"

Writes Benjamin Wittes in "If I Had Five Minutes to Question Robert Mueller." From the advice:

[A]sk him questions to which you know the answer. This is not an investigative hearing. It is an exercise in political and legal theater, and you are trying to provide a compelling elucidation of Mueller’s work and findings. Ask only questions you know he can answer and whose answers you know will reasonably contribute to the thread you are developing.

At least he's admitting it's all for show. Margot Cleveland at Da Fed claims  Having Mueller’s No. 2 Testify To Congress Will Hurt Democrats More Than Trump

But, far from damaging Trump, Weissmann’s closed-door testimony—if handled properly—will assist Republicans in unraveling the Russia-collusion-turned-obstruction witch hunt and inflict far greater damage on the Democrats. Here’s why.

While the general populace viewed Mueller as an apolitical straight-shooter (at least until he put his name to a final report that exposed him as a political hack), those familiar with Weissmann’s prosecutorial and professional history held a much different view of the number two man. Yet, even now, only a small segment of society knows Weissmann’s name, much less the details about his questionable background. That will change soon with Democrats’ decision to call Weissmann to testify, thrusting Mueller’s sidekick into the spotlight—blemishes and all.

And Weissmann’s warts are many. First, we have Weissmann’s applause for the insubordination former acting attorney general Sally Yates showed President Trump. “I am so proud. And in awe. Thank you so much. All my deepest respects,” Weissmann emailed Yates upon learning that Yates had refused to fulfill her duty to defend Trump’s travel ban and had instructed Department of Justice attorneys to do likewise. Trump immediately fired Yates, while Mueller later chose Weissmann to lead the special counsel team.

We also have Weissmann’s financial support of the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton through thousands in campaign contributions. The Wall Street Journalalso reported that Weissmann attended Clinton’s 2016 election night party in New York City, further raising the specter of an anti-Trump bias at play.

Then there are questions concerning Weissmann’s meeting with Associated Press reporters on April 11, 2017, about Trump’s onetime campaign chair, Paul Manafort. The following day, the AP published an “explosive expose,” detailing Manafort’s purported dealings with Ukrainian officials, including approximately $1.2 million in payments recorded in a handwritten ledger in Ukraine, suggesting Weissmann had leaked details to the journalists during the April meeting.

Weissmann’s meeting with the AP reporters pre-dated the special counsel investigation, as did Weissmann’s knowledge of the Steele dossier and author Christopher Steele and Fusion GPS Founder Glenn Simpson’s meetings with DOJ lawyer Bruce Ohr. Yet many in the media have ignored Weissmann’s early involvement in the investigation into the Trump campaign—even after Ohr’s reveal in his congressional testimony that, in fall 2016, he shared with Weissmann information peddled by Steele and Simpson. This fact suggests Weissmann knew that the FBI was using Ohr as a conduit for Steele’s supposed intel after the FBI had terminated its confidential human source relationship with Steele for lying.

The key phrase is "if handled correctly". What are the chances? John Sexton at Hot Air, Carl Bernstein: The Media Made A Big Mistake In Coverage Of The Mueller Report. Gosh durn it, they were just too nice to Trump!

“We’re in a cold civil war in this country. The figures of Trump’s approval rating is a reflection of that cold civil war and how appealing his message has been to almost half the people in this country,” he said. While it’s not completely clear what Bernstein expects the media to do at this point, he clearly wants the media to spread the negative coverage more broadly: “We are not making in the press the connections between what’s going on in the country and Donald Trump, the president.”

And a link between Mueller and burgeoning Epstein scandal? Whoa whoa WHOA! Thread from 2018 about possible connection between Jeffrey Epstein and Mueller’s FBI is enlightening. Yeah, Mueller's had his hands in a lot of the FBI's recentish mistakes.

Breaking: Epstein Indictment Released


So, will the Epstein prosecution be turned into a weapon against Trump? In the newest  story, Jeffrey Epstein charged with federal sex trafficking crimes involving young girls, WaPoo managed to mention Donald Trump before Bill Clinton and in Epstein indictment renews questions about earlier case handled by Trump Cabinet official, they stress that the prosecutor in Epstein's previous case, Alexander Acosta is now a Trump Labor Secretary.

At his 2017 confirmation hearing, the only senator to ask him about the plea deal was Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.).

Acosta told Kaine that “professionals within a prosecutor’s office” decided on the deal, taking himself out of the negotiations. On Monday, Kaine called for Acosta’s ouster.

Stacy McCain. MSNBC and CNN Are Trying to Spin the Jeffrey Epstein Scandal Against Trump

Everybody with access to a computer can discover that Bill Clinton took dozens of flights on billionaire sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s private jet, nicknamed the “Lolita Express,” and yet viewers of the liberal cable channels are being treated to a warped version of the story in which Epstein is falsely depicted as Donald Trump’s best friend, and the realscandal involves Trump’s Secretary of Labor Alex Acosta.
This partisan spin is being replicated on broadcast network news, as Kristine Marsh of Newsbusters notes that ABC’s Good Morning America(hosted by former Clinton aide George Stephanopoulos) covered the latest Epstein charges without even mentioning Bill Clinton:

CBS and NBC, on the other hand, tried to connect Epstein to Trump. While NBC’s Stephanie Gosk gave a passing mention to both Clinton and Trump (without any mention of the “Lolita Express”), CBS This Morning’s Mola Lenghi spent more time on both Trump and Clinton, while emphasizing comments Trump made praising Epstein in 2002:

Epstein has had several high-profile friendships in the past. Bill Clinton reportedly rode on his jet more than a dozen times in the early 2000s. In a 2002 interview, then private citizen Donald Trump called Epstein ‘a terrific guy’ and ‘it’s even said he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them, are on the younger side.’

However, Lenghi didn’t mention that after Epstein had been convicted of assaulting an underage girl, Trump had barred him from Mar-a-Lago. All three networks didn’t mention either that Epstein was a major donor to Democrats for years, a fact that most certainly would’ve made the cut had he donated to Republicans.

“Democratic Party operatives with bylines,” as someone keeps saying.

From Red State, Users On Wikipedia Are Trying To Quietly Edit Out Democratic Connections In Epstein’s Bio, while Nancy Pelosi's daughter admits, "It is quite likely that some of our faves are implicated..." and Hollywood, Media Partied With Epstein After His Plea To Soliciting Underage Girl, Clintons Invited His ‘Fixer’ To Chelsea’s Wedding. They were pretty chummy with Harvey Weinstein too, for a long time, knowing his proclivities, and Roman Polanski is still one of their deities. It's like they don't take this war on women stuff seriously or something. Bill Clinton Denies Knowing Anything About His Pedophile Friend Jeffery Epstein But Flight Logs Show Otherwise. Really Bill? On the other hand, Donald Trump Helped Build a Case Against Jeffrey Epstein

Interviewed by The Conscious Resistance outside the courthouse after the settlement announcement, Edwards was asked about accusations that President Trump has been involved in the same things as Epstein.

“The only thing that I can say about President Trump is that he is the only person who, in 2009 when I served a lot of subpoenas on a lot of people, or at least gave notice to some pretty connected people, that I want to talk to them, [Trump] is the only person who picked up the phone and said, let’s just talk. I’ll give you as much time as you want. I’ll tell you what you need to know, ” Edwards recalled.

He added about the president, “[He] was very helpful, in the information that he gave, and gave no indication whatsoever that he was involved in anything untoward whatsoever, but had good information.”

Edwards was also asked about the rumor in a Patterson book that Trump actually had Epstein kicked out of Mar-a-Lago for hitting on an underage girl.

The attorney replied, “I definitely have heard that. I definitely have heard that and I don’t know if it was Trump himself as opposed to a manager there.”

Edwards also heard that Epstein hit on the underage daughter of a member of his club so Trump banned him. Edwards wasn’t sure if that’s true.

More Epstein coverage via The Wombat's, In The Mailbox: 07.08.19, JustOneMinute: Jeffrey Epstein Busted and at PJ Media's Morning Briefing  Rich Clinton Foundation Donor Epstein Busted for Underage Sex Trafficking

Reuters also wants you to know that the prosecutor who made that deal was Alex Acosta, who is President Trump's secretary of Labor, but they didn't bother to mention Mueller was running the FBI at the time Epstein got a slap on the hand. USA Today, which is just total garbage, wants you to know there is a Trump-Epstein connection because they put it in the title that Epstein was an "associate" of Trump.

Capt. Ed at Hot Air,  WaPo/ABC Poll: Record High On Impeachment … Opposition?

Has anyone noticed that Democrats have become a lot quieter on the subject of impeachment lately? Robert Mueller will testify before the House Judiciary Committee in ten days, but the fevered demands for Donald Trump’s removal have receded. One key result from the latest Washington Post/ABC poll shows why:

37% support for Congress initiating impeachment proceedings against Pres. Trump in new @ABC News/WaPo poll, unchanged since April, while opposition to this step has grown by 13 points to 59%. https://t.co/wzDsLdnyu1 pic.twitter.com/hLPY7zf5Qz

— ABC News (@ABC) July 7, 2019

Let's Kick this Ball Around a Little

Unless you've been hiding under a rock, or taking a well earned vacation from the internet, I'm sure you're aware that the US Women's Soccer team, beat the Dutch team 2-0 to win the World Cup on Sunday with former SI swimsuit stars Alex Morgan and Megan Rapinoe. I even caught the end of the game, after returning from a walk to the beach.

Alex Morgan and Megan Rapinoe

I'm even reasonably sure that you're aware of the "controversy" in which Megan Rapinoe (she with the blue hair) refused to honor the US flag, and pre-declined an invitation to the White House in advance of the teams win because her chosen candidate did not win the election.  Stacy McCain was not impressed: Anti-American Women Win World Championship of Anti-American Sport

If you don’t want to Make America Great Again, why should Americans cheer for you? If you are an American opposed to the freely elected government of your own country, our First Amendment protects your right as a citizen to engage in protest, but those who support the government cannot be required to endorse your protest.

I must say I had mixed feelings, but I finally decided it didn't matter what Megan and a few rabid anti-Trump members of the team thought. Athlete's aren't exactly well known for their intellectual acuity

How many celebrity athletes expressed Tea Party sentiments while Obama was president? Can anyone recall sports teams refusing to go to the White House after winning a championship during the Obama years? Perhaps you can think of a right-wing analog of Megan Rapinoe, but searching my memory, I don’t recall any Democrat president ever being openly insulted the way the U.S. women’s World Cup team has insulted President Trump. And if Rapinoe and her teammates imagine that soccer will become more popular because they have made their sport symbolic of an anti-American protest movement, my guess is that they will be learn otherwise. There has been a lot of noise about the disparity of income between men and women in professional soccer, but the fact is that in most of the world, this is a sport played primarily by men.

For a thorough debunking of the pay disparity issue, I urge you to read John Glynn's article in Da Federalist, Yes, There Is A Soccer Pay Gap: The Women Make More Than The Men Do, relative to the revenue they bring in. And revenue is what professional sports is all about. But back to Stacy:

Only in the United States, where real men play real football, is soccer regarded as a coed sport. One reason the U.S. women are so dominant in international competition is that in soccer-crazy countries like Brazil and Argentina, the sport is still regarded as too rough for girls to play. (And if you’ve seen how Brazilians and Argentines play the game, you understand why they routinely stomp the crap out of the U.S. men’s team.)

Soccer became a suburban sport with the fear of American football felt by many American mothers. My own sons played soccer, largely for that reason. One of my sons also put one of his good friends in the hospital with a concussion. No foul was called.

Honestly, I am pro-soccer. I think America is a big enough country that we can afford to have some of our best athletes pursue soccer without much loss to our dominance of other professional sports. Can you imagine what the U.S. men’s World Cup team would be like if soccer attracted the kind of athletes who compete in the NBA and NFL? We can afford to spare a few would-be linebackers or point guards to strenghten our soccer program, but that’s not going to happen if soccer cannot escape its unfortunate reputation as an un-American sport, and the protests by Rapinoe & Co. are making that reputation worse, not better.

Yep. Limiting your popularity to only those who agree with you is bad business.

Also — and I hate to point this out, but somebody’s got to do it — would it be possible to allow some heterosexual players on the U.S. women’s team, just for the sake of “diversity” and “inclusion”?

I don't care about that. Elite women's sports tend to be dominated by lesbians because their hormones balance just ain't quite average, and the extra testosterone increases ability to add muscles, speed and aggression.

My question is why is the victory of the women's team from a country of over 300,000,000 people over the women's team of a country of 17,000,000 people portrayed as  a victory for feminists?

The Wombat has Rule 5 Sunday: Baba Fumika up and running at The Other McCain.

Reason #6389 that Trump was Elected

Gov’t Dependency Plunges Under Trump — Why Aren’t We Celebrating?

Friday’s jobs report showed that the economy created 224,000 new jobs, yet the unemployment rate edged up to 3.7%.

Both are welcome news. The unemployment rate went up because 158,000 rejoined the labor market. These are people who previously didn’t have a job and weren’t looking for one.

The labor market is tight enough that people who’d given up on work are getting lured back into the job market. And they’re finding work.

As of June, there were 5.6 million more people with jobs than when President Trump took office — despite claims by prominent economists that the economy was already at full employment when he was sworn in.

The healthy labor market has resulted in something even more important yet little noticed: A sharp trend away from dependency on federal welfare and other benefits.

Take a look at the numbers:

Food Stamps. The Department of Agriculture reports that April enrollment in food stamps — which is officially called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — was down more than 308,000. So far this year, SNAP enrollment has declined by nearly 1.2 million. And since Trump took office, the number of people collecting food stamps has plunged by more than 6.7 million. Enrollment is now lower than it’s been since August 2009.

Disability. The number of workers on Social Security’s Disability Insurance program has sharply declined as well. It went from 88 million in January 2017 to 84.9 million as of May. That’s the lowest it’s been since August 2011. Some of that decline is because beneficiaries who turn 65 shift over to regular Social Security. But the data also show that new disability applications are down. Average monthly applications for SSDI this year is 9% below where it was in 2016, government data show.

Medicaid. Enrollment in Medicaid also has dropped sharply since Trump took office — despite the fact that Virginia decided to expand its program under Obamacare, which added some 300,000 to its Medicaid rolls over those years. As of this March, the total number of people on Medicaid and CHIP — the health insurance program for children — was down by 2.5 million.

Obamacare. The number enrolled in Obamacare has declined every year since Trump took office as well, and is now 1 million below where it was at the end of 2016.

Welfare. The number of those collecting welfare — either on the federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families or what are called “separate state programs” — has dropped by more than 800,000 under Trump.

This is all good news, and most of it is in sharp contrast to the previous administration. Food stamp enrollment was 13 million higher when Obama left office than when he came in. There were 1.4 million more workers on disability. Medicaid enrollment exploded thanks to Obamacare. The number on welfare was only slightly lower by the end of Obama’s two terms in office, despite the fact that the recession ended six months after he was sworn in.

In a less biased news media world, the decline in government dependency would be front-page news.

To the liberals in the news, less people dependent on the government and less likely to vote for Democrats. No reason to celebrate that!

Russiagate: A Comey Family Business?

A rather long, detailed and provocative version of the events from Leo Goldstein at PJ Media in Here's How the 'Russia Collusion' SpyGate Deception May Have Played Out. I prefer a version in which stupidity and blind ambition play a bigger role, and actual malice  slightly less, because I tend to think that stupidity plays a larger role in human events than even the history writers admit. It's still worth the read. A taste whet your appetite:

The Initial State of Affairs (mid-April 2016)

• Donald Trump is most likely the Republican presidential candidate.
• Hillary Clinton is endorsed by Obama and is virtually guaranteed the Democratic presidential nomination, despite an underwhelming performance against Bernie Sanders.
• FBI Director James Comey has promoted the pro-Hillary troika Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, and Lisa Page, as well as Bill Priestap, to the top of the FBI. The Hillary exoneration operation, called the Mid-Year Exam (“MYE”), is already at full steam. The same FBI people tasked with exonerating Hillary Clinton will investigate Trump.
• Due to the rapid expansion of digital technology, the Obama administration had an opportunity to create new agencies, divisions, and committees devoted to cyber security and other digital technologies. But they are staffed with partisans. Examples include the head of the U.S. Digital Service Mikey Dickerson, who ran false-flag Facebook operations against the Alabama Republican Senate candidate in 2017, and fake Republican groups on Facebook, intended to discourage the Republican vote in 2018. State Department intelligence advisors Jonathon Morgan and Renée DiResta have collaborated with him and set up a company called New Knowledge, which advised Congress on the alleged Russian social media operations. Of course, they gave false advice in support of the Russian hoax.
• The FBI Cyber Division (CyD) became dysfunctional, as acknowledged by Peter Strzok in some of his infamous texts. Because the CyD was involved in the investigation of Hillary’s server, James Comey probably did to the CyD the same thing that he did to counterintelligence: replaced competent and honest professionals with Democratic partisans.
• The DNC has engaged with the Ukrainian government to produce dirt on Paul Manafort. He was the former adviser to Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and supported by Putin.

Streiff at Red State has more the WaPoo article on the Mysterious Mr. Mifsud in CIA Prepares The Blame The Consultant Excuse For Screwing The Pooch With The Steele Dossier. Will the Mysterious Mr. Mifsud, photographed with all sorts of western politicians and intelligence types, be the designated fall guy? Well, I guess they want foreign fingerprints on it.

Andy McCarthy at NR on Oleg Deripaska's rejection of the the FBI collusion theory with Paul Manafort, Russian Oligarch Scoffed at FBI’s Collusion Theory. Fairly conventional until:

Solomon reports that the FBI’s interview of Deripaska was not disclosed to Manafort’s defense during the proceedings at which he was convicted — federal criminal cases in Virginia and Washington, D.C. Manafort’s lawyers claim that this concealment violated Manafort’s due-process rights. One need not be a Trump-deranged collusion diehard to understand why this claim will get nowhere.

The suggestion that the nondisclosure amounts to a Brady violation (the relevant precedent is the Supreme Court’s 1963 ruling in Brady v. Maryland) misapprehends the prosecution’s obligations. Brady requires the government to surrender to the defense information uniquely in its possession that tends to exculpate the defendant. Information is not exculpatory unless it shows the defendant is not guilty of the crime charged. Manafort was never charged with any offense alleging a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. As Solomon notes, he was charged and “convicted on tax and lobbying violations unrelated to the Russia case.” Deripaska’s reported statements to the FBI have no bearing on those offenses.

Manafort’s counsel intimates that the government’s possession of potentially exculpatory information means the investigation of Manafort was illegitimate. I am not a fan of Mueller’s probe, but there is no Brady right against being investigated. The purpose of an investigation is to determine if a crime has been committed. Usually, there is evidence on both sides of the question — that’s why you investigate rather than forging ahead with an indictment. Brady simply means that if prosecutors formally charge a person with a crime, they must disclose information in their possession that indicates the person did not commit the crime.

That information, by the way, must actually be exculpatory. Here, not only is Deripaska’s information irrelevant to the crimes that were charged against Manafort. It might not have qualified as Brady material even if “collusion with Russia” had been alleged. The statement amounts to Deripaska’s opinion. To be sure, it is not an uninformed opinion. The oligarch is close to Putin and the Russian regime. To my knowledge, however, no one has alleged that Deripaska had any knowledge or participation in Russia’s hacking of Democratic email accounts, or of the dissemination of those emails to the media via WikiLeaks and other channels. Unless he was a conspirator in the scheme, or otherwise shown to have insider knowledge about it, Deripaska’s opinion about who might or might not have participated in it would be immaterial. Brady only requires government disclosure of material information that shows innocence.

That's not what I wanted to hear, but that's why you read Andy McCarthy; he knows the laws.

And of course, a big news item, not on the surface connected to spygate, is the fact that the Southern District of New York has reopened the case of Jeffrey Epstein, the billionaire mathematician/hedge funder, accused of, well, all kinds of nasty things, who pleaded guilty to almost nothing to then Federal prosecutor Acosta, now Trump's Labor Secretary, and was serving a sentence of house/work arrest. It's interesting because he flew all sorts of interesting people, including Bill Clinton and Alan Dershowitz to his private island in the company of underage women. Is this Barr digging deeper, or what. Anyway, it gets into spygate because James Comey's pussy hat wearing, women's marching daughter is on the prosecution team, Guess Whose Daughter Is Reportedly a Prosecutor in Jeffrey Epstein Case, and that a familiar dark force, Fusion GPS tried to tie Trump to Clinton's pedophile pal Epstein as part of smear campaign:

Fusion GPS, the opposition research firm whose Democrat-financed Russia dossier fueled an FBI investigation into Donald Trump, pitched other stories about the Republican presidential candidate to Washington reporters, including an attempt to tie him to a convicted pedophile who was once buddies with former President Bill Clinton.

Journalist sources told The Washington Times that Fusion founder Glenn Simpson pushed the idea of a close relationship between Mr. Trump and Jeffrey Epstein, who pleaded guilty in 2008 to soliciting sex from an underage girl.

The Trump-Epstein link appears purely social, far short of Mr. Clinton’s 20-plus plane rides on Epstein’s “Lolita Express” private jet around the globe in the early 2000s.
. . .
“The New York Times, I know they work with Fusion,” said Mr. Silverstein, an investigative reporter who skewers the left and right. “Fusion works with a lot of big media organizations. That would give them influence in Washington.”

“I have worked with them,” he said. “I have gotten tips from them and stories from them. And every time I do, I go out and re-report … because I assume it is for a client and it is not 100 percent accurate. And I’ve never gotten anything from them that was 100 percent accurate. Not because they were slanting or lying or twisting. Every time I’ve gotten something from them, ‘This is a report. You’ve got to check it out.’ I have a great relationship with those guys.”

Do you trust SDNY and Comey's daughter to play it straight, or will they use this as an excuse for another go at Trump? I don't trust them.

The Trials and Tribulations of Being Fabulously Wealthy and Famous

Not mention insanely good looking. Karlie Kloss: "It's Been Hard" to Be Related to the Kushners and Trumps

This time last year, life looked a lot different for Karlie Kloss. Last July, the 26-year-old model became engaged to her longtime boyfriend Joshua Kushner. But when they got married a few months later, the change extended far past Kloss's official marital status—hence the cover line "her life-changing year" accompanies her face on the August issue of British Vogue.

For starters, Kloss decided to convert to Judaism before marrying Kushner, a 34-year-old venture capitalist. "Changing part of who you are for someone else can be seen as weak," she told Vogue. "But you know what? Actually, if you've been through what I've experienced, it requires you to be anything but weak. It requires me to be stronger and self-loving and resilient. I really did not take this lightly."

"All the work (and family support) has paid off. Kushner is now worth a staggering $800 million, according to Celebritynetworth.com."

But faith is far from Kushner's only defining characteristic—hence the other major change that married life has brought for Kloss, which has gotten no shortage of media attention. Her new husband happens to be the brother of Jared Kushner, a (controversially) key member of the Trump administration. As of this past October, he's also officially Kloss's sibling-in-law—as is his wife, none other than Ivanka Trump.

"It's been hard," Kloss said of her newfound connection with the family, which stands at odds with many of her staunchly Democrat views. "But I choose to focus on the values that I share with my husband, and those are the same liberal values that I was raised with and that have guided me throughout my life."

What I want to know is whether this means her long rumored affair with Taylor Swift is over, or is she the third wheel in this relationship?

 In any case, this isn't the first time that Kloss has opened up about the difficulties her marriage has presented. "Josh and I share a lot of the same liberal values that guide our lives and the things we stand for," Kloss told Vogue last October. "At the end of the day, I’ve had to make decisions based on my own moral compass—forget what the public says, forget social media," she continued of her decision to marry into the Kushner family. "I've chosen to be with the man I love despite the complications. It’s frustrating, to be honest, that the spotlight is always shifted away from my career toward my relationship. I don’t think the same happens in conversations with men."

Some NSFW from when she was a lean and hungry up and coming model. She still looks lean and hungry.

The Wombat has Rule 5 Sunday: Baba Fumika up and running at The Other McCain.

I Just Hate it When That Happens

You check and double check the numbers, but a mistake slips by anyway: Fertility Clinic Funhouse

People who trust science to solve their fertility problems put their faith in the expertise of medical professionals. What could possibly go wrong? Lots, it turns out. There was Dr. Norman Barwin, the Canadian fertility doctor who was recently reprimanded “for inseminating at least 11 women with his own sperm and giving the wrong sperm to dozens more women beginning in the 1970s.” There was Dr. Jan Karbaat, the Dutch fertility doctor who “secretly used his own sperm to inseminate patients without their consent and father 49 children.” And there was Dr. Donald Cline, the Indiana fertility doctor who fathered at least 50 children by secretly inseminating patients with his own sperm.

Then there was the case of the Ohio lesbian couple, Jennifer Cramblett and Amanda Zinkon, who chose a blue-eyed blond-haired sperm donor (No. 380) for their IVF procedure. Instead, the clinic accidently used a black sperm donor (No. 330 — oops!), so they sued the clinic.

Being an enthusiastic proponent of the old-fashioned method of procreation, I’m not much impressed with the high-tech approach. Why put yourself at the mercy of scientific “experts” in a laboratory to accomplish what two teenagers can usually do in the backseat of a Buick with no more medical assistance than a four-pack of wine coolers?

Now comes the latest sad tale of fertility-clinic misadventures:

A Queens couple that tried for years to get pregnant suffered the mother of all mix-ups once they finally succeeded — giving birth to someone else’s babies, thanks to a bungling Los Angeles fertility clinic, a stunning new lawsuit claims.
Married in 2012, the Asian husband and wife — identified in court papers only as Y.Z. and A.P. — turned to CHA Fertility Center, when their countless attempts, both natural and with artificial insemination, failed.
Run by Dr. Joshua Berger and co-owner Simon Hong, the clinic boasts that it’s a “mecca of reproductive medicine” that has “fulfilled the dreams of tens of thousands of aspiring parents from Southern California and beyond in over 22 countries.”
With hope in mind, the Flushing couple made the trip West in January 2018 to meet with Berger and Hong, and eventually underwent a months-long regimen of medicines, vitamins, tests and procedures that yielded eight embryos.
In all, they spent $100,000 on facility, specialist and doctors fees, medication, lab expenses and travel costs, the couple claimed.
. . .

By September, A.P. was pregnant.
The two “were ecstatic to learn that after years of trying to conceive, they had success and were pregnant with twins,” according to court papers.
But subsequent sonograms showed something wasn’t right.
Ultrasound technicians kept telling the couple that A.P. was carrying twin boys, prompting the “confused” pair called CHA to find out why.
The doctor and clinic owner “assured [A.P. and Y.Z.] that they were having girls and that nothing was wrong.”
On March 30, 2019, A.P. went to a New York hospital. The next day, she gave birth via a cesarean section.
Both babies were boys — and neither shared Y.Z. and A.P.’s Asian ethnicity, the couple charges.
CHA personnel, including Hong, flew to New York to conduct genetic tests that confirmed the newborns weren’t genetically related to Y.Z. and A.P.
“The testing also confirmed that the two male babies were not genetically related to each other,” the couple alleges.
Y.Z. and A.P. were then forced to give custody of each infant to their respective biological parents, who were also clients of CHA.

But sure, trust science. The “experts” know what they’re doing, right?

There's mistakes, and there's fraud. . .

The Wombat has Rule 5 Sunday: Baba Fumika up and running at The Other McCain.

About That "War on Science"

H/T Watts Up With That

When you're not allowed to ask questions, it isn't science, it's religion.

Linked by EBL in Simona Halep wins Wimbledon 2019 🇬🇧🎾🇷🇴, Kate Wears Her Kelowna Dress To Wimbledon 🇬🇧🎾,  Ghislaine Maxwell: Did she procure the underaged girls for Epstein?, How Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, Ilhan Omar, and Ayanna Pressley may deal with Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi..., UK Ambassador to the USA, Sir Kim Darroch Resigns..., 🐄 Cow Appreication Day 🐄  and Cara Buono looks good in Stranger Things 3.

Some Sketchy Russiagate

Another slow day, so you have no reason not to read Jeff Carlson's 33 Key Questions for Robert Mueller at ET in its entirety.

2) Who actually wrote Volume I and Volume II of your report?

The Mueller report often reads as highly opinionated and lacking in substance—particularly the section denoted as Volume II—which frequently cites news articles in the footnotes. At this point, it isn’t known with certainty if Mueller had any hand in writing the report directly, or if he simply served in an oversight capacity.

Barr has stated publicly that he and then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein didn’t agree with much of the legal analysis contained in the report and felt it represented the “views of a particular lawyer or lawyers,” and so Barr and Rosenstein “applied what we thought was the right law.”

Since I subscribe to the theory that Weissman and company selected Mueller as the figurehead, with Rod Rosenstein going along for the sake of comity (not comedy), I think we know the answer to this one. But then, they say in cross examination, you should never ask a question you don't know the answer to. It's a fine list, and there are many others that cover the same ground. Marc Tapscott at Insty particularly wants:

Questions nine and 14, for example, probe, respectively, Mueller’s ignoring the ties between the Hillary campaign and the DNC to Fusion GPS, Christopher Steele and the Steele Dossier, and the Russian ties of Fusion GPS.

I think that was built into the cake by Rod Rosenstein in his various charging letters, which, again, were probably pre-written by Weissman, and signed off on by Rosenstein. But it would be good to watch him dodge that one in real time.

Sundance at CTH reviews Sketchy Business – RCI Review Questions Unsubstantiated Conclusions of Mueller Report…

What Real Clear outlines parallels our own review where most of the substance claimed by Andrew Weissmann, Robert Mueller and Rod Rosenstein is essentially baseless.

At the Hollyhock Café...Bruce Hayden, a commenter at Althouse writes:

Re: https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2019/07/05/crowdstrikeout_muellers_own_report_undercuts_its_core_russia-meddling_claims.html

It may be a bit subtle, but I think that the tide has turned on the SpyGate scandal. The Deep State/LawFare people were fairly clever how they set up the Mueller investigation. Or maybe how it evolved. They created a very aggressive definition of Obstruction of Justice that essentially criminalized any interference with any criminal investigation, including esp their own, regardless of motive. It was never tested in court, would be rejected if it ever was tested there, and was ultimately rejected by AG Barr, DAG Rosenstein, and the DoJ OLC, whose job it is to interpret statutes for the Department. As I have noted before, it converted the specific intent Mens Rea Obstruction requirement into a general intent requirement. And it worked wonderfully for the Dems and Deep State, keeping the Trump Administration and Congressional Republicans on defense until the Democrats could capture the House last year, and shutdown the SpyGate investigations.

The Mueller investigation was shut down the only way that it could be, by unrecused AG Barr asserting oversight, and nailing down WTF Mueller and his band of hyper partisan Dem prosecutors were doing. Which turned out to have been pretending to investigate Russian collusion while actually using their unsanctioned and extremely egregious Obstruction interpretation to attack Trump and defend against being shut down. But the official purpose of the investigation was Russian Collusion, not Obstruction, so once Mueller admitted that the Russian collusion investigation had been over for better than a year, it was over except for writing up the report, which the hyper partisan Dem prosecutors stretched out as long as they could, but not long enough.

The key there is that they had planned for a smooth transition between the Mueller investigation and the Dem controlled House committees, as there had been between FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane and the Mueller investigation. Except that AG Barr moved more quickly than the House Dems could, and by the time that they could request that mountain of information, it was no longer under the control of Mueller and his prosecutors, who have essentially all been laid off, but AG Barr and the Trump Administration. I give the Dems very little chance at success in suing for that mountain of information, some of it dirt on Trump, etc, and much of it concerning spying by the Obama Administration on Trump and his people. They are suing, of course, but very, very, likely will lose. The Judiciary has shifted significantly towards the Republicans after the Republican Senate abolished Judicial filibusters and Blue Slips. And they cemented their control with the confirmation of Justice Kavenaugh (which is maybe why his confirmation was prioritized over AG Barr’s last fall).

The question now is how much of the illegal spying by the Obama Administration on its political enemies throughout much of his second term is made public, and whether it is going to be possible to hold any of the perps, below Obama, legally accountable. The next thing to watch is to see how much of what OIG is allowed to disclose in its recently completed investigation into FISA abuse. My bet right now is the FBI, under Dir Wray, will at least attempt to hide much of their own wrongdoing. AG Barr appears to have the legal authority, from Trump, to overrule Wray and the Deep State here, but may not have enough actual power over his Department to fully defeat them.

Should be interesting.

Shockingly, one of Obama's former CIA deputy directors, Michael Morell is unhappy with Bill Barr examining the CIA's role in spygate. WaPoo (30 day link), Trump and Barr are crossing another line

I have great respect for John H. Durham , the U.S. attorney for the District of Connecticut tapped by Barr to do the review. But, while Durham is familiar with the CIA from previous investigations, he and his team have no experience with, or knowledge of, the process of intelligence analysis itself. He and his team could well impose a hard-to-meet law enforcement standard on the analysts’ conclusions. That would create a burden of proof that might be right in a court of law but would be risky and unwise in the assessment of intelligence for real-time decision-making.

A similarly dangerous consequence of a Justice Department review of analysis is the chilling effect it may have on analysts and analysis. Out of prudence, any analyst asked to submit to an interview with Durham’s investigators will want to have a personal lawyer nearby — likely a first for many, if not all, of the analysts. This will all be watched closely inside the intelligence community: The prospect that Justice Department prosecutors could ask questions about how an analyst came to a specific conclusion — along with the thought that there may be legal consequences for having done so — could lead analysts to withhold their judgments or even decide that this profession is not for them. We lose as a nation with either outcome.

If the shoe were on the other foot — if a senior intelligence community official were asked to review decisions made by the FBI and career prosecutors — how do we think the attorney general, or career prosecutors, would react? With loud protests, no doubt.

Yes, but the CIA is not the supreme law enforcement body in the country.

Linked by EBL in Simona Halep wins Wimbledon 2019 🇬🇧🎾🇷🇴, Kate Wears Her Kelowna Dress To Wimbledon 🇬🇧🎾,  Ghislaine Maxwell: Did she procure the underaged girls for Epstein?, How Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, Ilhan Omar, and Ayanna Pressley may deal with Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi..., UK Ambassador to the USA, Sir Kim Darroch Resigns..., 🐄 Cow Appreication Day 🐄  and Cara Buono looks good in Stranger Things 3.

Another Great Moment in Climate Hypocrisy

Miley Cyrus Unleashes Expletive-Filled Climate Rant at Concert: ‘We Are the Last F*cking Hope on This Dying F*cking Planet’

Miley Cyrus gave a dire warning to fans on Friday when she closed out a concert with an expletive-laden rant to fans about the importance of taking action against climate change.

iHeart Radio reports that as the singer finished her performance at the 2019 Tinderbox Festival in Odense, Denmark, she launched into a rant criticizing the U.S. for not doing enough to protect LGBT people. After dismissing how she “might offend some people by calling my country sh*tty,” she began calling for her audience to get politically active.

 But what if they don't approve of your politics?

“The youth, this generation, we are the last f*cking hope on this dying f*cking planet,” Cyrus proclaimed. “I don’t like there’s more f*cking trash in the water than living f*cking animals that deserve to be there, that have nowhere else to go.”

Cyrus concluded with “and by the f*cking way, we don’t have anywhere to f*cking go, either! There’s no planet B, so don’t f*ck it up!”

I wasn't able to find any information on her recent tour or her upcoming one, but her Wonder World Tour in 2009 required

124 traveling workers, 19 truckloads of equipment, and 15 buses. The stage was quite different from that of the Best of Both Worlds Tour. It consisted of a rectangular main stage, which featured staircases that elevated the center of the stage, and a narrow runway, which connected the main stage to a B-stage that ran the length of the main stage 

Regarding the stage, Cyrus noted that it was "something not many people get to have. I'm able to move around to each side so there's no one person who feels like they don't have the best seat. Every seat is the best seat." Six LED multi-screen video units were located throughout the stage; the three largest were placed as the upstage wall, while the other three were hung by rigs above the stage. The center unit consisted of three screens that faced outward; two others were hung right and left to the center unit, both were double faced toward the center of the venue at a 45° angle, while the backside faced the upper-seat audience. The structure of the video panels was designed by Sims to ensure that all seats within the 270° angle at each venue received an equal view of the video screens.

No carbon footprint there!

Now, I don't really mind her employing a slew of wanna be musician, as well as truck drivers, fossil fuel producers, and electrical workers, but I'll be damned if I'm going to let her make me feel guilty about my carbon footprint.

Besides, if global warming gets too bad, Miley already has the ideal outfit (NSFW link).

The Wombat has Rule 5 Sunday: Baba Fumika  up and running at The Other McCain.

Well, It Wasn't Exactly The Big One . . .

. . . but it'll do until The Big One comes along: 7.1 Quake Rocks SoCal, Searles Valley Hit Hard For Second Time In 24 Hours

A 7.1 quake rocked Southern California Friday evening. The quake struck at 8:21 p.m.

KCAL9 anchor Sara Donchey held co-anchor Juan Fernandez’ arm as she steadied herself before ducking under her desk.

He, meanwhile, reported feeling nauseous about the quake that felt like it wasn’t going to stop.

Friday’s 7.1 and Thursday’s 6.4 both had epicenters near the community of Ridgecrest. The Thursday quake was already the biggest to hit Southern California in 20 years.

The 7.1 magnitude quake in the same series downgraded the previous 6.4 magnitude quake to a foreshock, and there is still the possibility of more significant quakes, including an even bigger one.



My brother's wife reported that they had a pretty good roll in Encino, and a short power outage. Southern California was lucky these struck out in relatively lightly populated areas, and were relatively well prepared.

I grew up in LA, from birth to 18, and only experienced a singly noticeable earthquake. I was an infant during the 1952 Kern County earthquake, magnitude 7.3, but as a teenager, I was working in a tropical fish store, and water started sloshing out of the tanks. No appreciable damage, and it barely made the news in those days. I was at school in NorCal for the 1971 Sylmar quake, magnitude 6.5, and our family home suffered a few cracks in the plaster out of that.

Reason #6388 that Trump was Elected

Via the Wombat's In The Mailbox: 07.05.19 (Evening Edition), the Weasel Zippers note CNN: June Jobs Report “Blows Away Expectations”…

Four more years of this? Who would want that?

Linked at Pirate's Cove in the weekly Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup and links.

Some Reluctant Russiagate

Not much. But did you hear that Hillary Clinton Withdraws As Cybersecurity Conference Keynote, Citing ‘Unforeseen Circumstance’ ? If you can't be good, at least you can be a bad example.

Meanwhile, Biden Losing It – 2015/2016 Russian Meddling “wouldn’t have happened under my watch”… But it did Joe! But if you're saying it's Barack's fault, we can go there if you want.

Also from Sundance at CTH, Report: New Horowitz Witness, Likely Kathleen Kavalec, Agrees to Talk to IG Investigators…

In a new report Fox News journalist Catherine Herridge outlines a “reluctant witness” who has recently agreed to cooperate with DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz and his review of potential FISA abuse by the Obama DOJ and FBI.

Fox News – Key witnesses sought for questioning by Justice Department Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz early in his investigation into alleged government surveillance abuse have come forward at the 11th hour, Fox News has learned.
Sources familiar with the matter said at least one witness outside the Justice Department and FBI started cooperating — a breakthrough that came after Attorney General William Barr ordered U.S. Attorney John Durham to lead a separate investigation into the origins of the bureau’s 2016 Russia case that laid the foundation for Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe.
[…] Late-breaking information is known to delay such investigations. Horowitz’s office similarly encountered new evidence late in the process of the IG review into law enforcement decisions during the 2016 Hillary Clinton email investigation.
In this case, additional FISA information came to light late in the process – including October 2016 contact (first reported by The Hill and confirmed by Fox News) between a senior State Department official and a former British spy Christopher Steele, who authored the infamous and salacious anti-Trump dossier. (read more)

While the “reluctant witness” is not specifically identified by Herridge in her reporting, as you can see above there is enough background material to identify it is likely former State Department official Kathleen Kavalec.

Kathleen Kavalec was the Deputy Assistant Secretary – Department of State, Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs, serving under Victoria Nuland and covered Russia as part of her State Dept. duties. Kavalec was contacted by Christopher Steele prior to the FISA application on Carter Page being sought by the FBI and DOJ. Kavalic wrote a series of notes and emails to the FBI undercutting the dossier central claims made by Steele.

The original reporting on the Kavalec emails and Steele contact was done by John Solomon. Here’s the basic background that explains why Inspector General Michael Horowitz would be interested in interviewing Kathleen Kavalec.
. . .
So put it all together. Chris Steele was producing the dossier for the FBI to use. Steele told State Dept. official Kavalec about the same information in his dossier. The State Dept. checked, and found out the information was false. The State Dept. warned the FBI. However, the FBI ignored the warning; and a week later used the dossier in the application for a retroactive Title-1 surveillance warrant against U.S. Person Carter Page.

To cover themselves; and because the claim was so central to the purpose of the Steele Dossier; the FBI then redacted the State Dept. warning about Michael Cohen traveling to Prague in the public email from the State Department.

Worse yet, in the application itself the FBI said the information proving Carter Page was an agent of a foreign power came from the State Dept. . .

Sundance also wonders Damn, is Bill Barr Corrupt Also? – DOJ Files New ‘Last Minute’ Motion to Keep Comey FBI Memo Content Hidden From Public…

In our opinion the content of the diary by former FBI Director James Comey, as outlined in what has formally been called “The Comey Memos”, is devastating to the U.S. Department of Justice and FBI. How do we know? Because the FBI is fighting like hell to keep even descriptions of the memo(s) content from becoming public.

Rather complex backstory with citations HERE and HERE and HERE.

In the background of what was The Mueller Investigation, there was a FOIA case where the FBI was fighting to stop the release of the Comey memos. Within that courtroom fight Mueller’s lead FBI agent David Archey wrote a series of declarations to the court describing the content of the memos and arguing why they should be kept classified.

The FOIA fight shifted. The plaintiffs argued for public release of the content of the FBI agent’s descriptions, now known as the “Archey Declarations”.

After a lengthy back-and-forth legal contest, on June 7th Judge James E Boasberg agreed to allow the FBI to keep the Comey memo content hidden, but instructed the DOJ/FBI to release the content of the Archey Declarations.

Today, the U.S. Department of Justice -under Attorney General Bill Barr- while waiting until the last minute (28 days since prior ruling), filed a motion [full pdf below] to block the release of the Archey Declarations, despite the June 7th court order.

Again, if transparency in conduct of the DOJ and FBI during 2016 is the expressed goal of Attorney General Bill Barr, then his current department fighting to keep descriptions of FBI memorandum hidden from public review runs exactly counter to that intent. This DOJ activity does not bode well for a narrative of Bill Barr is an honest broker. This is an example of how to cover-up material that is damaging to the institution.

To be fair, Attorney General Bill Barr may not be aware the United States Department of Justice Civil Division, Federal Programs Branch, is fighting this court ordered release.

Patience, Grasshopper!

Rule 5 Saturday - Maria Meinke, World Wide Angler

Featured already in a post this week in a red white and blue bikini, this week's Rule 5 is Maria Meinke:

I'm just a simple girl who loves to fish, both salt & fresh water. I'm happiest when I have a rod in my hand. I don't care if I fish from land, kayak, boat, inshore, offshore or standing in a cold river. It's my happy place.

I have dual citizenship, American & New Zealand. I love to travel and have lived all over the world, just to name a few of my favorite places, Auckland New Zealand, Rarotonga in the Cook Islands, Maui Hawaii, Seattle Washington and of course Florida. The reason these are my favorites is because I was surrounded by beautiful oceans. I can't get enough of being by the water. With my fishing rod of course!

If you're ever in the area of Pine Island, give her a call to book a fishing charter. She'll be your first mate and specializes in all inshore fish: Reds, Snook, Sheephead, etc.

Sounds like the start of a plan.

Instagram: Marialuvsme4
Facebook Business: Maria Meinke
Facebook Personal: Maria Meinke
Twitter: Marialuvsme4

Linked at Pirate's Cove in the weekly Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup and links. The Wombat has Rule 5 Sunday: Cynthia Kirchner and FMJRA 2.0: Sweet Emotion up on time and within budget. Linked at The Right Way in Rule 5 Saturday LinkOrama.

It's Something I Worry About

A little. How risky is ‘flesh-eating bacteria’ for Maryland, Virginia beachgoers?

Not very — that’s according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
A young boy is recovering from so-called “flesh-eating bacteria,” after his mother says he was diagnosed with a Vibrio infection, after a visit to Ocean City. The boy’s mother, Brittany Carey, said in a Facebook post, her son had been swimming in the Sinepuxent Bay, north of the bridge between West Ocean City and the downtown area. She included photos of his spreading sores, which are now healing well.

Health officials say severe cases of vibriosis are rare, and water is safe to swim in.
According to the CDC, Vibrio bacteria naturally live in certain coastal waters and are present in higher concentrations between May and October when water temperatures are warmer. Vibriosis causes an estimated 80,000 illnesses and 100 deaths, per year.

Most people get vibriosis from eating raw and undercooked shellfish, particularly oysters. The symptoms are watery diarrhea and cramping.

Vibrio infection after treatment

In rare cases, Vibrio can enter a body through an open wound — including a cut or a scrape — after contact with brackish water, which is found in bays, near where rivers meet the ocean. People with compromised immune systems, especially those with chronic liver disease are more likely to get vibriosis.

The CDC says to reduce the chance of getting vibriosis, avoid contact with salt water or brackish water, or cover the wound with a waterproof bandage, and shower after swimming.

Maryland’s Department of Health suggests wearing water shoes and carrying hand sanitizer so that wounds that occur during contact with water can be cleaned immediately.

I wear shoes while wading, but I don't carry hand sanitizer.

The main thing to remember, according to the CDC: If a wound seems to be infected after contact with salt or brackish water, see a doctor promptly.

Vibrio infection is diagnosed when the bacteria are found in the stool, wound or blood of a patient who has symptoms of vibriosis. In mild cases, treatment is not needed, but patients should drink plenty of liquids to replace fluids lost through diarrhea.
According to the CDC, most people with mild illness recover after about three days.

However, people with Vibrio vulnificus — or flesh-eating — bacteria can get seriously ill, with necrotizing wounds, which could require amputation. “About 1 in 5 people with this type of infection die, sometimes within a day or two of becoming ill,” according to the CDC.

While not being anal about it, I do try to avoid getting scraped or poked while wading around in the bay. But I also occasionally get stuck by a fish spine (which also risks "fish handlers disease, aka Mycrobacteriosis), cut by a gill plate, or even stuck by a hook.

We do have one friend who got Vibrio and a whole lot more from a scrape that occurred in kayaking. Already immune compromise, he got a new liver out of it.

Reasons #6383 - #6387 that Trump was Elected

Maybe I should restart the sequence as reasons why Trump will be re-elected, but I'm not really bold enough to make that prediction. A pretty good 30,000 ft view of the Five Principles That Will Power President Trump's Reelection

Peace. Trump said this week that if he hadn’t been elected, the U.S. would be at war with North Korea. That’s a stretch, but he has demonstrated repeatedly that he is not eager to use America’s military overseas. In addition to smothering North Korean despot Kim Jong Un with love, he has signaled from day one he wanted to get along with a nuclear-armed Russia; refrained from bombing Iran; tried to pull all remaining U.S. troops out of Syria; avoided sending forces to remove Venezuela’s discredited dictator; and told his advisors he wants to get out of Afghanistan as soon as possible. Having watched what happened in past presidential elections to parties that were blamed for unpopular wars, Trump is not going to let anybody accuse him of being a military interventionist.

Prosperity. The single most reliable indicator of whether an incumbent president will be reelected is whether the economy is doing well. Under Trump, the economy is going gangbusters—in fact, better than most economists predicted was even possible. With unemployment at record lows and the stock market at record highs, there isn’t even a hint of inflation. Trump stimulated an economy thought to be in the late stages of expansion, and gave it a new lease on life. Democrats will say his trade policies are undermining prosperity, but the nation’s yawning trade deficit actually cuts a full percentage point off the economic growth rate each year, so there’s a link between all his tariffs and bolstering prosperity.

Sovereignty. If a country can’t control its borders and can’t stop foreign entities from interfering in its domestic affairs, then it has diminished sovereignty. Nationalists like Trump believe the sovereignty of nation-states, at least legitimate ones, should be absolute. So of course the fact that apprehensions of illegal migrants on the southern border were averaging over 3,000 per day in April is an issue, especially given uncertainty as to how many illegals were not apprehended. And signing onto multilateral treaties like the Paris climate accords or the Trans-Pacific Partnership can also be construed as potentially infringing sovereignty. Trump’s campaign will say he wants to restore America’s control of its destiny. How the Democrats will explain their incoherent approach to border security is anyone’s guess.

Self-sufficiency. Like sovereignty, self-sufficiency is not a term Trump would likely invoke at a campaign rally. But the two ideas are related. Trump doesn’t subscribe to the theory of comparative advantage among nations, or to free trade, or to economic globalization, because he believes every nation is out to get the best deal for itself even if that means breaking the rules. In that regard, the international economy is not much different from the New York real-estate market where Trump made his fortune. So rather than sacrificing his generation to a principle (as Churchill might have put it), Trump wants America to be self-sufficient in key commodities and manufactured items. That’s why he tells Apple to make its iPhones here, and Mercedes to make its cars here. He doesn’t care if that violates trade rules—and neither do most voters.

Energy. I’m not talking about fossil fuels here, I’m talking about initiative. Trump is an activist who is relentless about pursuing his agenda, whether the topic is deregulation of the economy or denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. His energy level surpasses the performance of any president in living memory, and once he decides what his goals are he doesn’t pay much attention to critics. Having an activist at the helm conveys a sense of dynamism about the administration and the nation that is largely missing from the politics of other nations. You don’t need to agree with Trump’s agenda to see why nobody in Republican circles is talking about “passing the torch.”

Russiagate After the Fireworks

A really slow day, mostly recycled news, but one decent one from Aaron Maté at RCI: CrowdStrikeOut: Mueller’s Own Report Undercuts Its Core Russia-Meddling Claims

While the 448-page Mueller report found no conspiracy between Donald Trump's campaign and Russia, it offered voluminous details to support the sweeping conclusion that the Kremlin worked to secure Trump's victory. The report claims that the interference operation occurred "principally" on two fronts: Russian military intelligence officers hacked and leaked embarrassing Democratic Party documents, and a government-linked troll farm orchestrated a sophisticated and far-reaching social media campaign that denigrated Hillary Clinton and promoted Trump.

But a close examination of the report shows that none of those headline assertions are supported by the report’s evidence or other publicly available sources. They are further undercut by investigative shortcomings and the conflicts of interest of key players involved:

• The report uses qualified and vague language to describe key events, indicating that Mueller and his investigators do not actually know for certain whether Russian intelligence officers stole Democratic Party emails, or how those emails were transferred to WikiLeaks.
• The report's timeline of events appears to defy logic. According to its narrative, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange announced the publication of Democratic Party emails not only before he received the documents but before he even communicated with the source that provided them.
• There is strong reason to doubt Mueller’s suggestion that an alleged Russian cutout called Guccifer 2.0 supplied the stolen emails to Assange.
• Mueller’s decision not to interview Assange – a central figure who claims Russia was not behind the hack – suggests an unwillingness to explore avenues of evidence on fundamental questions.
• U.S. intelligence officials cannot make definitive conclusions about the hacking of the Democratic National Committee computer servers because they did not analyze those servers themselves. Instead, they relied on the forensics of CrowdStrike, a private contractor for the DNC that was not a neutral party, much as “Russian dossier” compiler Christopher Steele, also a DNC contractor, was not a neutral party. This puts two Democrat-hired contractors squarely behind underlying allegations in the affair – a key circumstance that Mueller ignores.
• Further, the government allowed CrowdStrike and the Democratic Party's legal counsel to submit redacted records, meaning CrowdStrike and not the government decided what could be revealed or not regarding evidence of hacking.
• Mueller’s report conspicuously does not allege that the Russian government carried out the social media campaign. Instead it blames, as Mueller said in his closing remarks, "a private Russian entity" known as the Internet Research Agency (IRA).
• Mueller also falls far short of proving that the Russian social campaign was sophisticated, or even more than minimally related to the 2016 election. As with the collusion and Russian hacking allegations, Democratic officials had a central and overlooked hand in generating the alarm about Russian social media activity.
• John Brennan, then director of the CIA, played a seminal and overlooked role in all facets of what became Mueller’s investigation: the suspicions that triggered the initial collusion probe; the allegations of Russian interference; and the intelligence assessment that purported to validate the interference allegations that Brennan himself helped generate. Yet Brennan has since revealed himself to be, like CrowdStrike and Steele, hardly a neutral party -- in fact a partisan with a deep animus toward Trump.

None of this means that the Mueller report's core finding of "sweeping and systematic" Russian government election interference is necessarily false. But his report does not present sufficient evidence to substantiate it. This shortcoming has gone overlooked in the partisan battle over two more highly charged aspects of Mueller's report: potential Trump-Russia collusion and Trump's potential obstruction of the resulting investigation. As Mueller prepares to testify before House committees later this month, the questions surrounding his claims of a far-reaching Russian influence campaign are no less important. They raise doubts about the genesis and perpetuation of Russiagate and the performance of those tasked with investigating it.

And this will probably earn him another accusation of Obstruction of justice, Trump to hold campaign rally on day of Mueller testimony (Tal Axelrod, Da Hill)

Asche Schow at Da Wire, notices how It Turns Out A Russian Oligarch Paid The Man Hired By Hillary Clinton To Claim Trump Colluded With Russia. Clinton campaign colluding with the guy who colluded with Russia.

The more we learn about the origins of the investigation into whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election, the more Russian connections link back to Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

And a much more detailed account by Sundance at CTH,  Oleg Deripaska Confirms He Was Employing Chris Steele in 2016, While Dossier Was Being Assembled…

Did Robert Mueller omit any mention of Oleg Deripaska from his 2017 Manafort indictment purposefully? Was Deripaska’s denial of any information about Manafort actually Brady material that Mueller and Weissmann intentionally kept from Manafort’s defense team?   And/or was Robert Mueller hoping to hide his prior professional work relationship with Deripaska?

Now that we know Deripaska was employing Chris Steele; and now that we know the FBI was aware that Deripaska was employing Chris Steele, this set of questions from Tom Cotton to FBI Director Christopher Wray has additional context.

Dan Bongino on the IG Horowitz investigation being in the write up phase, DOJ Inspector General’s Investigation COMPLETE, Report to Follow

The Congressman does expect the reports by both Horowitz and U.S. Attorney John Durham to be “significant.”

“But Michael Horwitz and his findings and John Durham and his findings, those are going to be significant. Those relate not to Trump misconduct, but potential Obama misconduct,” he said.

Ace stirs himself to respond in Rep. John Ratcliffe: Inspector General Horowitz's Investigation Is Complete, Report Is Being Written

I guess we'll see.

I'm not hopeful.

I urge cautious optimism; Horowitz was responsible for the takedowns of McCabe, Strzok and Page, so I think he deserves the benefit of the doubt. But we all know that DOJ people really hate to treat fellow DOJ people like they would the hoi polloi.

Celeb-rating the Fourth of July

Lucy Pinder

The Wombat has Rule 5 Sunday: Cynthia Kirchner up on time and within budget.

Cookout and Fireworks

The Harbor had a pot luck cook out this evening, starting at 6 PM. Georgia brought fruit skewers and some of her many Cucamelons. Good food, and much too much dessert.

Afterwards we drifted down to the beach with our chairs, and claimed our viewing seats atop Fox Hole dune.

You can see the first fireworks way down the beach

Fireworks here are, of course, illegal in the hands of mere civilians, but every year, up and down the beach, people set of thousands of dollars worth of fireworks, and the local sheriff's deputies watch to make sure no drunks pick fights.

Is this a great country or what?

Pretty soon it was dark enough for the main show.

I apologize for the poor pictures. I didn't take my Nikon out of mothballs, and relied on my point and shoot Lumix. Actually, the colors seem to be truer, but getting focused shots was much more difficult.