Category: 2016 Presidential Election

Russian Hacking: It’s True Part 2

April 22, 2019

In Part I of this revelation, we proved to our readers/listeners that there actually WAS Russian hacking attempts that in some cases were successful during the 2016 U.S. Presidential election. There really is “there-there.” Today as promised we go into “who” and “how” it happened.

This is really important information — stuff Americans need to understand. Read and listen closely! And make certain you look-in to our Summary at the completion of this story.

Leaks and Counterfeit Profiles

Russia has been quite open about playing its hacking card. At a conference in Moscow, a top cyberintelligence adviser to President Vladimir Putin hinted that Russia was about to unleash a devastating information attack on the United States.

“We are living in 1948,” said the adviser, Andrey Krutskikh, referring to the eve of the first Soviet atomic bomb test, in a speech reported by The Washington Post. “I’m warning you: We are at the verge of having something in the information arena that will allow to us to talk to the Americans as equals.”

Mr. Putin’s denials of Russian meddling have been tongue-in-cheek. He allowed that “free-spirited” hackers might have awakened in a good mood one day and spontaneously decided to contribute to “the fight against those who say bad things about Russia.” Speaking to NBC News, he rejected the idea that evidence pointed to Russia — while showing a striking familiarity with how cyberattackers might cover their tracks.

“IP addresses can be simply made up,” Mr. Putin said, referring to Internet protocol addresses, which can identify particular computers. “There are such IT specialists in the world today, and they can arrange anything and then blame it on whomever. This is no proof.”

Mr. Putin had a point. Especially in the social media realm, attributing fake accounts — to Russia or to any other source — is always challenging. The Central Intelligence Security Agency concluded“with high confidence” that Mr. Putin had ordered an influence operation to damage Mrs. Clinton’s campaign and eventually aid Donald J. Trump’s. Facebook published a public report on information operations using fake accounts. It shied away from naming Russia as the culprit until when the company said it had removed 470 “inauthentic” accounts and pages that were “likely operated out of Russia.” Facebook officials fingered a St. Petersburg company with Kremlin ties called the Internet Research Agency.

Russia deliberately hides its role in influence operations, American intelligence officials say. Even skilled investigators often cannot be sure if a particular Facebook post or Twitter bot came from Russian intelligence employees, paid “trolls” in Eastern Europe or hackers from Russia’s vast criminal underground. A Russian site called buyaccs.com(“Buy Bulk Accounts at Best Prices”) offers for sale a huge array of pre-existing social media accounts, including on Facebook and Twitter; like wine, the older accounts cost more, because their history makes hacking harder to spot.

The trail that leads from the Russian operation to the bogus Melvin Redick, however, is fairly clear. United States intelligence concluded that DCLeaks.com was created in June 2016 by the Russian military intelligence agency G.R.U. The site began publishing a collection of hacked emails, notably from George Soros, the financier and Democratic donor, as well as a former NATO commander and some Democratic and Republican staffers. Some of the website’s language — calling Mrs. Clinton “President of the Democratic Party” and referring to her “electional staff” — seemed to contradict its pose as a forum run by American activists.

DCLeaks would soon be followed by a blog called Guccifer 2.0, which would leave even more clues of its Russian origin. Those sites’ posts, however, would then be dwarfed by those from WikiLeaks, which American officials believe got thousands of Democratic emails from Russian intelligence hackers. At each stage, a Large group of Facebook and Twitter accounts — alongside many legitimate ones — would applaud the leaks.

During its first weeks online, DCLeaks saw no media attention. But The Times found that some Facebook users somehow discovered the new site quickly and began promoting it on June 8, 2016. One was the Redick account, which posted about DCLeaks to the Facebook groups “World News Headlines” and “Breaking News — World.”

Melvin Redick’s Facebook Profile

Inconsistencies in the contents of Mr. Redick’s Facebook profile suggest that the identity was fake.

  1. Neither Central High School nor Indiana University of Pennsylvania has any record of Mr. Redick attending.
  2. According to his profile, Mr. Redick was born and raised in Pennsylvania, but one image shows him seated in a restaurant in Brazil, and another shows a Brazilian-style electrical outlet in his daughter’s bedroom.
  3. Mr. Redick’s posts were never of a personal nature. He shared only news articles reflecting a pro-Russian worldview.

The same morning, “Katherine Fulton” also began promoting DCLeaks in the same awkward English Mr. Redick used. “Hey truth seekers!” she wrote. “Who can tell me who are #DCLeaks? Some kind of Wikileaks? You should visit their website, it contains confidential information about our leaders such as Hillary Clinton, and others http://dcleaks.com/.”

So did “Alice Donovan,” who pointed to documents from Mr. Soros’s Open Society Foundations that she said showed its pro-American tilt and — in rather formal language for Facebook — “describe eventual means and plans of supporting opposition movements, groups or individuals in various countries.”

Might Mr. Redick, Ms. Fulton, Ms. Donovan and others be real Americans who just happened to notice DCLeaks the same day? No. The Times asked Facebook about these and a half-dozen other accounts that appeared to be Russian creations. The company carried out its standard challenge procedure by asking the users to establish their bona fides. All the suspect accounts failed and were removed from Facebook.

On Twitter, meanwhile, hundreds of accounts were busy posting anti-Clinton messages and promoting the leaked material obtained by Russian hackers. Investigators for FireEye spent months reviewing Twitter accounts associated with certain online personas, posing as activists, that seemed to show the Russian hand: DCLeaks, Guccifer 2.0, Anonymous Poland and several others. FireEye concluded that they were associated with one another and with Russian hacking groups, including APT28 or Fancy Bear, which American intelligence blames for the hacking and leaking of Democratic emails.

Lee Foster, who leads the FireEye team examining information operations, said some of the warlist Twitter accounts had previously been used for illicit marketing, suggesting that they may have been purchased on the black market. Some were genuine accounts that had been hijacked. Rachel Usedom, a young American engineer in California, tweeted mostly about her sorority before losing interest in 2014. In November 2016, her account was taken over, renamed #ClintonCurruption, and used to promote the Russian leaks.

Rachel Usedom’s Twitter account was taken over and used to post political leaks.

Ms. Usedom had no idea that her account had been commandeered by anti-Clinton people who used her account to spread propaganda . “I was shocked and slightly confused when I found out,” she said.

Notably, the warlist tweets often included the Twitter handles of users whose attention the senders wanted to catch — news organizations, journalists, government agencies and politicians, including @realDonaldTrump. By targeting such opinion-shapers, Mr. Foster said, the creators of the warlists clearly wanted to stir up conversation about the leaked material.

J. M. Berger, a researcher in Cambridge, Mass., helped build a public web “dashboard” for the Washington-based Alliance for Securing Democracy to track hundreds of Twitter accounts that were suspected of links to Russia or that spread Russian propaganda. During the campaign, he said, he often saw the accounts post replies to Mr. Trump’s tweets.

Mr. Trump “received more direct replies than anyone else,” Mr. Berger said. “Clearly this was an effort to influence Donald Trump. They know he reads tweets.”

Only a small fraction of all the suspect social media accounts active during the election have been studied by investigators. But there is ample reason to suspect that the Russian meddling may have been far more widespread.

Several activists who ran Facebook pages for Bernie Sanders, for instance, noticed a suspicious flood of hostile comments about Mrs. Clinton after Mr. Sanders had already ended his campaign and endorsed her.

John Mattes, who ran the “San Diego for Bernie Sanders” page, said he saw a shift from familiar local commenters to newcomers, some with Eastern European names — including four different accounts using the name “Oliver Mitov.”

“Those who voted for Bernie, will not vote for corrupt Hillary!” one of the Mitovs wrote on Oct. 7. “The Revolution must continue! #NeverHillary”

While he was concerned about being seen as a “crazy cold warrior,” Mr. Mattes said he came to believe that Russia was the likely source of the anti-Clinton comments. “The magnitude and viciousness of it — I would suggest that their fingerprints were on it and no one else had that agenda,” he said.

Both on the left and the pro-Trump right, though, some skeptics complain that Moscow has become the automatic boogeyman, accused of misdeeds with little proof. Even those who track Russian online activity admit that in the election it was not always easy to sort out who was who.

“Yes, the Russians were involved. Yes, there was a lot of organic support for Trump,” said Andrew Weisburd, an Illinois online researcher who has written frequently about Russian influence on social media. “Trying to disaggregate the two was difficult, to put it mildly.”

Mr. Weisburd said he had labeled some Twitter accounts “Kremlin trolls” based simply on their pro-Russia tweets and with no proof of Russian government ties. The Times contacted several such users, who insisted that they had come by their anti-American, pro-Russian views honestly, without payment or instructions from Moscow.

“Hillary’s a warmonger,” said Marilyn Justice, 66, who lives in Nova Scotia and tweets as @mkj1951. Of Mr. Putin, she said in an interview, “I think he’s very patient in the face of provocations.”

Another of the so-called Kremlin trolls, Marcel Sardo, 48, a web producer in Zurich, describes himself bluntly on his Twitter bio as a “Pro-Russia Media-Sniper.” He said he shared notes daily via Skype and Twitter with online acquaintances, including Ms. Justice, on disputes between Russia and the West over who shot down the Malaysian airliner hit by a missile over Ukraine and who used sarin gas in Syria.

“It’s a battle of information, and I and my peers have decided to take sides,” said Mr. Sardo, who constantly cites Russian sources and bashed Mrs. Clinton daily during the campaign. But he denied he had any links to the Russian government.

But if Russian officials are happy at their success, in 2016’s election and beyond, they rarely let the mask slip. In an interview with Bloomberg before the election, Mr. Putin suggested that reporters were worrying too much about who exactly stole the material.

“Listen, does it even matter who hacked this data?” he said, in a point that Mr. Trump has sometimes echoed. “The important thing is the content that was given to the public.”

Summary

In the wake of the nonstop claims from absolutely everyone on the Left about Russian meddling in 2016 and even some Republicans, it’s good to finally have verification that it really happened. Even though the world knew the Russians were proficient and committed to diligently working to thwart the wills of voters not only in the U.S. but in other countries, it has been extremely puzzling to locate, identify, and confirm factual occurrences of their election tampering attempts. It’s even more difficult in the case of the 2016 U.S. election to find factual confirmation of any of their efforts having any substantial impact yet alone that they changed or affected actual vote counts.

But what it most certainly has done is alert Americans — ALL Americans — to the fact that several countries have been and are trying to interfere with our elections. I’m certain part of their hopes in doing so is to distract Americans and the government from foreign policies that impact their countries directly. Let’s be honest: the U.S. has consistently and diligently worked hard to do the same things in the elections of our foreign foes.

Intelligence spying capabilities throughout the world have far exceeded the capabilities that in the 1970s were seen and heard only in James Bond movies that we all thought were impossible and would never be achieved. Yes, in part we conduct such activities to keep Americans safe and our country free from outside interference from other countries. But let’s be clear about this: we are at a tipping point in how we not only listen-in and watch through spying and electronic surveillance the activities of our foreign enemies, we found out daily just how much our government is using these tactics in the name of the Law to monitor every aspect of AMERICANS’ lives. No matter what the leaders of the “Spook” agencies tell us, that capability with very little accountability to Americans is deadly. The scary stories contained in Orwells 1984 are actually reality today and have been for much longer than we even thought was possible.

What about Russia? No doubt they’re our #1 enemy. Even with our weakened economy for 8 years from Obama Administration financial starvation, we still have the #1 military on Earth. With the rebuilding of the military and our intelligence infrastructure being cleaned of those who have perpetrated these frauds on our public, we’re well on our way to putting significant space between us and Russia. But we better be smart. Unearthing their attempts to tamper with our elections is a big victory for us, but only if we take demonstrative actions.

Let their secrecy from those in the Obama Administration going unseen by our CIA, NSA, and FBI during the 2016 election cycle a warning. Unless we take care of our own country using every opening available to ferret out their foreign intelligence ploys, they will be here in great force very soon. Vladimir’s greatest desire is to instigate processes through KGB leftover ideas that dismantle the intelligence structure of the U.S., thereby forcing us to our knees. Say what you will about Donald Trump, but he promised to rebuild and re-establish the American military might and he’s started that process with a vengeance.

We close with this: did Russia change by their actions any votes from Hillary to Trump in 2016? We probably will never know. But what we DO know is they could have and almost certainly will going forward unless we take demonstrative steps to prevent those.

I know secrecy is critical regarding many elements of these efforts by our intelligence community. But certainly there are ways of communication they can use to make Americans feel comfortable that these agencies are really working for us. And instead of Congress chasing cameras all day every day to talk about Russia collusion, obstruction of justice, and impeachment, how about they instead pass meaningful legislation to make and keep America safe?

And they might start with stopping the aliens from storming our southern border. Those aliens are actually breaking the law!

Russian Hacking: It’s Real, Part I

April 21, 2019

I as well as millions of other Americans tired long ago about the reports we saw and heard over and over that “experts” continued to harass us with claiming “We know factually that the Russians interfered with the 2016 election in coordinated efforts to denigrate Hillary Clinton and to assist Donald Trump’s win of the White House.”

”Factually” is the word that perked me up: at TruthNewsNetwork we research, always digging for facts. I’m sure you will understand that when we are told by “experts” that something politically is “factual,” our stomachs turn and our heads ache because the belief that what political “experts” tell us today are “facts,” we are pretty certain they are NOT facts.

But in our patience and continued research, we have unearthed some facts about 2016 that support those Russian interference claims in 2016 with apparent attempts to discredit Clinton. We had significant help from other news sources in putting this together. (See credits at the end of this report) But saying this has been a difficult task and that there has been little cooperation from our normal sources is a gross understatement.

This report will be our ONLY such report going forward, so it is lengthy and detailed. We will present it in two parts to make it easier to digest. And we’ll hold our Summary until the end of Part II that you’ll see tomorrow.

Read carefully! There’s much “meat” in this. And it explains much and answers many questions you may have. But it will also initiate new questions for you. Let’s go!

The Fake Americans Russia Created to Influence the Election

I knew that the Russians had attempted on numerous occasions to impact the elections of foreign countries. So do the Chinese, and, for that matter, so does the United States! We’ve reported on those in previous reports here at TruthNewsNetwork. That being said, my assumption has always been that the NSA and the CIA as the two foremost U.S. intelligence agencies on the frontlines of defense of the nation’s IT infrastructure stopped every threat. Surely their protections extended into our election system. Because of the cloak of secrecy that covers both agencies, I assumed it was for that secrecy that none of their methods were known to the public.

I was shocked to learn that those “experts” probably were right. What was a bigger surprise was the way the Russians had sneaked into our IT infrastructure.

It’s not surprising the Russians use spies. They always do. We do, China does, and every other country on Earth does too. But apparently, the Russians in 2016 didn’t (at least on the most part) use actual Russian spies. They created “fake” Americans to be their spies.

Russian Spies in America

Melvin Redick of Harrisburg, PA, a friendly-looking American with a backward baseball cap and a young daughter, posted on Facebook a link to a brand-new website.

“These guys show hidden truth about Hillary Clinton, George Soros and other leaders of the US,” he wrote on June 8, 2016. “Visit #DCLeaks website. It’s really interesting!”

Mr. Redick turned out to be a remarkably elusive character. No Melvin Redick appears in Pennsylvania records, and his photos seem to be borrowed from an unsuspecting Brazilian. But this fictional concoction has earned a small spot in history: The Redick posts that morning were among the first public signs of an unprecedented foreign intervention in American democracy.

The DCLeaks site had gone live a few days earlier, posting the first samples of material, stolen from prominent Americans by Russian hackers, that would reverberate through the presidential election campaign and into the Trump presidency. The site’s phony promoters were in a cyber army of counterfeit Facebook and Twitter accounts, a legion of Russian-controlled impostors whose operations are still being unraveled.

The Russian information attack on the election did not stop with the hacking and leaking of Democratic emails or the onslaught of stories, true, false and in between, that battered Mrs. Clinton on Russian outlets like RT and Sputnik. Far more difficult to trace was Russia’s experimentation on Facebook and Twitter, the American companies that essentially invented the tools of social media and, in this case, did not stop them from being turned into the sources of deception and propaganda.

An investigation by The New York Times and new research from the cybersecurity firm FireEye reveals some of the mechanisms by which suspected Russian operators used Twitter and Facebook to spread anti-Clinton messages and promote the hacked material they had leaked. Recently, Facebook officials disclosed that they had shut down several hundred accounts that they believe were created by a Russian company linked to the Kremlin and used to buy $100,000 in ads pushing divisive issues during and after the American election campaign.

On Twitter, as on Facebook, Russian fingerprints are on hundreds or thousands of fake accounts that regularly posted anti-Clinton messages. Many were automated Twitter accounts, called bots, that sometimes fired off identical messages seconds apart — and in the exact alphabetical order of their made-up names, according to the FireEye researchers. On Election Day, for instance, they found that one group of Twitter bots sent out the hashtag #WarAgainstDemocrats more than 1,700 times.

The Russian efforts were sometimes crude, with a trial-and-error feel, and many of the suspect posts were not widely shared. The fakery may have added only modestly to the din of genuine American voices in the pre-election melee, but it helped fuel a fire of anger and suspicion in a polarized country.

A Times investigation reveals missed signals, slow responses and a continuing underestimation of the seriousness of a campaign to disrupt the 2016 presidential election.

Given the powerful role of social media in political contests, understanding the Russian efforts will be crucial in preventing similar, or more sophisticated, attacks in the 2020 congressional races and the presidential election. Multiple government agencies have investigated the Russian attack, though it remains unclear whether any agency is focused specifically on tracking foreign intervention in social media. Both Facebook and Twitter say they are studying the 2016 experience and how to defend against such meddling.

“We know we have to stay vigilant to keep ahead of people who try to misuse our platform,” Alex Stamos, Facebook’s chief security officer, wrote in a post about the Russia-linked fake accounts and ads. “We believe in protecting the integrity of civic discourse.”

Critics say that because shareholders judge the companies partly based on a crucial data point — “monthly active users” — they are reluctant to police their sites too aggressively for fear of reducing that number. Remember: Facebook and Twitter are free to users. Advertising pays the bills AND investors their stock dividends. The more accounts, the more ads get sold and at higher prices.

The companies use technical tools and teams of analysts to detect bogus accounts, but the scale of the sites — 328 million users on Twitter, nearly two billion on Facebook — means they often remove impostors only in response to complaints.

Though both companies have been slow to grapple with the problem of manipulation, they have stepped up efforts to purge fake accounts. Facebook says it takes down a million accounts a day — including some that were related to the most recent French election and upcoming German voting — but struggles to keep up with the illicit activity. Still, the company says the abuse affects only a small fraction of the social network; Facebook officials estimated that of all the “civic content” posted on the site in connection with the United States election, less than one-tenth of one percent resulted from “information operations” like the Russian campaign.

Twitter, unlike Facebook, does not require the use of a real name and does not prohibit automated accounts, arguing that it seeks to be a forum for open debate. But it constantly updates a “trends” list of most-discussed topics or hashtags, and it says it tries to foil attempts to use bots to create fake trends. However, FireEye found that the suspected Russian bots sometimes managed to do just that, in one case causing the hashtag #HillaryDown to be listed as a trend.

Clinton Watts, a former F.B.I. agent who has closely tracked Russian activity online said that Facebook and Twitter suffered from a “bot cancer eroding trust on their platforms.” But he added that while Facebook “has begun cutting out the tumors by deleting false accounts and fighting fake news,” Twitter has done little and as a result, “bots have only spread since the election.”

Asked to comment, Twitter referred to a blog post in June in which it said it was “doubling down” on efforts to prevent manipulation but could not reveal details for fear of tipping off those trying to evade the company’s measures. But it declared that Twitter’s “open and real-time nature is a powerful antidote” to falsehoods.

“This is important because we cannot distinguish whether every single Tweet from every person is truthful or not,” the statement said. “We, as a company, should not be the arbiter of truth.”

Part I Wrapup

During an interview with the Daily Show’s Trevor Noah, Barack Obama denounced the conspiracy theory that Russians tampered with the American voting process. “We were frankly more concerned in the run-up to the election to the possibilities of vote tampering, which we did not see evidence of,” he admitted. “And we’re confident that we can guard against.”

Then Breitbart.com reported that: Obama downplayed the hack of a private email account of Clinton campaign chief John Podesta, defending his administration for revealing in October that the Russian government was connected.

“None of this should be a big surprise,” Obama said, “Russia trying to influence our elections dates back to the Soviet Union.” Obama dismissed the hack and the leaked emails as “not very interesting” and lacking “explosive” revelations. He puzzled as to why it was an “obsession” by the news media despite the knowledge that the Russians were responsible.

He also criticized President-elect Donald Trump for calling on the Russian government to hack Hillary’s emails to reveal the contents of the deleted emails from her private server, and reminded the audience that Trump had campaign officials connected to Russia.

“What’s happened to our political system where some emails that were hacked and released ended up being the overwhelming story, and the constant source of coverage – breathless coverage – that was depicted as somehow damning in all sorts of ways when the truth of the matter was it was fairly routine stuff?” he said.

Watch (and Listen) closely to exactly what Obama said to Trevor Noah about Russian hacking in 2016:

What I find interesting is how the former President of the United States, who had just completed 8 years in office, downplayed in this interview just after the election of Donald Trump the seriousness of the role the Russians played in the 2016 election and apparently in previous elections — perhaps even his own in 2008 and 2012!  The book is still out on that.

In Part 2, we will look further into what actually happened with the Russians in 2016 and how it happened. We discuss the impact it made on vote totals and what has happened regarding Russian election hacking in our elections since 2016. You don’t want to miss it! Catch it first thing tomorrow at www.TruthNewsNet.org!

 

Play

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Mueller Time!

April 19, 2019

Attorney General Barr appeared with Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein to give his “final” report about the presentment of the Mueller Report to Congress and the American people. The report in full (with minimal redactions for legal purposes) was released 2 hours later to Congress and the public.

We are NOT going to go through the details of the report. This story today is simply to point out some facts about the process and how those facts and the process itself play into the future of the U.S. To that end, let me say this: the Mueller Report and Mueller’s entire process of putting his team of attorneys together, the methods they used for interrogations, grand juries, and even making arrests have never been seen in American history in past Special Counsel or Special Prosecutor cases. 

We did predict here the release of his findings would certainly NOT end the noise about Donald Trump and his alleged collusion with Russia and also alleged obstruction of justice. In fact, Mueller’s findings and the structure of his report left the door open for all those on the Left to simply ratchet-up their investigation threats, subpoenas, and more allegations. In our Summary, we’ll detail exactly where we are. Let’s put all this in bullet points to make it easy to follow (and keep it brief):

♦Collusion

“The Special Counsel’s investigation established that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election principally through two operations.

“First, a Russian entity carried out a social media campaign that favored presidential candidate Donald J. Trump and disparaged presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

“Second, a Russian intelligence service conducted computer-intrusion operations against entities, employees, and volunteers working on the Clinton campaign and then released stolen documents.”

The report said there was no collusion found between Donald Trump or any member of his campaign and the Russians regarding manipulation of the 2016 election.

♦Conspiracy

The report said there were numerous contacts between members of Trump’s circle and Russia and that the campaign “expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts.”

But it said the efforts did not amount to criminal conspiracy.

“While the investigation identified numerous links between individuals with ties to the Russian government and individuals associated with the Trump campaign, the evidence was not sufficient to support criminal charges.

“The investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”

♦Obstruction of Justice

The report said the special counsel investigated numerous actions by Trump “that raised questions about whether he had obstructed justice.”

These included “public attacks on the investigation, non-public efforts to control it, and efforts in both public and private to encourage witnesses not to cooperate with the investigation.”

“The president’s efforts to influence the investigation were mostly unsuccessful, but that is largely because the persons who surrounded the president declined to carry out orders or accede to his requests.

“Because we determined not to make a traditional prosecutorial judgment, we did not draw ultimate conclusions about the president’s conduct.

“At the same time, if we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the president clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state.

“Based on the facts and the applicable legal standards, however, we are unable to reach that judgment.

“Accordingly, while this report does not conclude that the president committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.”

♦Efforts to Remove Special Counsel

The report detailed an effort by Trump to have the special counsel removed.

“On June 17, 2017, the president called (White House counsel Don) McGahn at home and directed him to call the acting attorney general and say that the special counsel had conflicts of interest and must be removed.

“McGahn did not carry out the direction, however, deciding that he would resign rather than trigger what he regarded as a potential Saturday Night Massacre.”

The determination by the Special Counsel was that President Trump could not be legally implicated in any action to remove Special Counsel Mueller.

♦The “Rest of the Story”

I know, the above is really brief. And what it does is summarize all of the “meat” — if one can call it meat — in the report. But, believe me, there’s plenty more “stuff” in the Mueller Report.

Again, we will not detail it all — there’s a bunch of stuff that basically seems to be included to in some way justify the $25 million + of taxpayer dollars spent and the 2 years of constant daily political uproar regarding the president and nothing more.

The report highlights most of the areas of question American have had and still have, even with the release of the report. Questions regarding the possible influence many felt the President tried to use to “influence” Michael Cohen in his multiple testimonies to Mueller’s team were included in the report with “no finding of wrongdoing.

Conventional wisdom states that in spite of the bottomless budget of taxpayer dollars used in this investigation, in spite of millions of pages of documents, numerous subpoenas, and testimony, 37 indictments (none of which implicated Mr. Trump or his campaign for Russian collusion), Donald Trump is walking away with no “baggage.” But is he?

Mueller may be done, but Congress is not. Members of Congress — all Democrats — who hold very critical jobs heading committees are still beating the drum of  “Collusion and Conspiracy.”

♦“Russia, Russia, Russia!“

Who’s guilty of still carrying the “Russia” torch?

Congressman Adam Schiff (D-CA)

March 27, 2017: The ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee said on MSNBC there is evidence that is “not circumstantial” of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government.

August 5, 2018: Rep. Schiff said there is “plenty of evidence of collusion or conspiracy in plain sight” regarding the Trump campaign and Russia.

March 25, 2019: “There’s a difference between compelling evidence of collusion and whether the special counsel concludes that he can prove beyond a reasonable doubt the criminal charge of conspiracy,” Schiff told host George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s “This Week.”

Congressman Jerold Nadler (D-NY)

March 24, 2019: “Obviously, we know there was some collusion,” he said during an appearance on CNN. “We know the president’s son and campaign manager were involved in a meeting with the Russians to receive what they thought was information stolen by the Russians from the Democratic National Committee, as part of the Russian government’s attempt to help Trump in the election.” (It was later shown in sworn testimony that the meeting was called to make available “Opposition Research” materials to the Trump team which was perfectly legal and used by every campaign in the 2016 election)

(One note here since we’re speaking of Congressman Nadler: in the Clinton Impeachment Starr Report that Starr released without redactions to the public. Nadler and 13 other Congressman currently still in the House all fought AGAINST its release at the time. But Nadler’s committee is demanding continuously for the Mueller Report to be released without any redactions)

Calling the comparison “apples and oranges,” Nadler said his remarks on the Starr report concerned the release of grand jury information to the public rather than to Congress.

Nadler did not take a position on whether the full Mueller report could contain grounds for impeachment, saying “there could be grounds for impeachment, there could be grounds for other actions, there could be things the American people ought to know.”

Congressman Eric Swalwell (D-CA)

March 25, 2019: Swalwell, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, is quoted from a March 2018 interview on CNN saying, “In our investigation, we saw strong evidence of collusion.” He was referring to his panel’s Russia investigation. That inquiry took place when the House Intelligence Committee was in GOP control and concluded there was no collusion.

March 26, 2019: Swalwell told Chris Matthews on MSNBC’s Hardball, that all the evidence points to the president being a “Russian agent” and that he has not seen “a single piece of evidence that he’s not” a Russian agent. He stood by those claims on Fox News’ The Story with Martha MacCallum.

Senator Mark Warner (D-VA)

March 4, 2019: Senator Mark Warner said there are “enormous amounts of evidence” linking the Trump campaign to Russia — the same day House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff said there’s “direct evidence” of collusion between the two.

Senator Chris Coons (D-DE)

March 6, 2017: Liberal Delaware Senator Chris Coons caused a stir when he indicated during a televised interview that yet-undisclosed transcripts of recorded phone conversations conclusively prove that elements of the Trump campaign explicitly colluded with the Russian government during the 2016 presidential election.

Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-CA)

March 24, 2019: “Here you have a president who I can tell you and guarantee you is in collusion with the Russians to undermine our democracy,” Waters said.

Waters predicted in December 2017 that Mueller’s report is “going to lead right to, not only collusion, obstruction of justice, money laundering.”

♦Summary

As we warned, Democrats are just getting started. And their attack dogs — the Leftist Media — moments after the completion of Barr’s presentation summary of the now released report showed America what Democrats are totally about for 2020: NOTHING NEW. Sadly for their base, they have nothing to offer the nation other than “Get Donald Trump.” STILL!

We close today with the most troubling revelation in the Mueller report. There is stark proof that the President’s terminology of the Mueller investigation as a “Witch Hunt” was and is warranted. It’s contained in the following statement from the report:

“If we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the president clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state. Based on the facts and the applicable legal standards however, we are unable to reach that judgment. The evidence we obtained about the president’s actions and intent present difficult issues that prevent us from conclusively determining that no criminal conduct occurred.”

By making this statement as THE basis — not for their findings but for their NO-findings — Mueller and his staff of “13 angry Democrats” (as termed by Sean Hannity) have categorically reversed a fundamental  guarantee given in the U.S. Constitution. According to Mueller, the inability of such a mass of investigators with such a mountain of evidence never before seen in any other federal investigation could not find evidence to justify charging President Trump with a crime. Yet they end the report by saying they could not conclusively determine that no criminal conduct occurred! 

It either DID occur or it DIDN’T occur. If it happened, a crime was committed. If it didn’t happen, NO crime was committed.

The Mueller gang just stomped all over the fundamental that millions of people charged throughout American judicial history in civil and criminal trials alike have relied on for fundamental fairness in their prosecution: The Presumption of Innocence. That presumption clearly states that those charged are “Innocent Until PROVEN Guilty.” 

It’s sad that a sitting president who in the 2016 presidential election demolished a career-political opponent who was a shew-in for the White House was NOT given the Presumption of Innocence.

Maybe that is the “new” way for the Judiciary in America to operate now. Maybe it’s so just in politics.

Or maybe — just maybe — this was Robert Mueller’s parting shot at President Trump for NOT offering him the FBI Director’s job in that Oval Office meeting with Rod Rosenstein which was purportedly a job interview for Mueller.

Is that what Due Process in America has come to?

 

 

Play

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Attorney General Barr: “SpyGate Crucifixion”

April 16, 2019

The Department of Justice released news that the redacted version of the Mueller Report will be made available to Congress and the American public Thursday morning, April 18, 2019. That will be a memorable day in American history that most on both sides of the political spectrum have been salivating over while waiting. And based on the “summary” sent to Congress shortly after Mueller announced he had finished and sent his final report to the DOJ, both sides will probably find red meat in the full version. We need to discuss that. But before we do, “if” you read Attorney General Barr’s summary letter, you’ve probably forgotten most of it. We’ll talk about specifics he included. But before we do, here’s a link to his summary. Please read it again.

Attorney General Summary of Mueller Report

Our Thoughts

While reading Attorney General Barr’s letter, several things became obvious to us:

  • The AG included Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in the process of digesting Mueller’s near 400-page report, dissecting its parts, and determining the reasoning for Mueller’s findings, and the included evidence in the report that supports his not taking any further actions via indictments;
  • The investigation was exhaustive. Mueller employed 19 attorneys who had help from 40 FBI agents, “intelligence analysts, forensic accountants….”
  • Mueller issued more than 2800 subpoenas, 500 search warrants, more than 230 “orders for communication records,” 50 more orders authorizing the use of “pen registers,” 13 requests of foreign governments for evidence, and 500 witnesses were interviewed; (A pen register, or dialed number recorder (DNR), is an electronic device that records all numbers called from a particular telephone line)
  • While Mueller referred several other matters to various legal offices for further investigation, Mueller did not recommend any further indictments;
  • Also, Mueller did not obtain any sealed indictments of which details are still unknown and if existing, might lead to further legal actions.

Regarding the two areas that the Special Counsel and his team investigated in this matter — collusion by members of the Trump Campaign or the President with Russia and possible obstruction of justice by the President — Mueller concluded there was NO collusion with Russia committed. Secondly, there was not sufficient evidence of obstruction of justice to prove that “beyond a reasonable doubt” any such obstruction occurred. (IMPORTANT: we will go into detail on “Alleged Obstruction” below)

The Investigation DID conclude that the Russians DID attempt to impact the 2016 presidential election. “The first involved attempts by a Russian organization to conduct disinformation and social media operation in the U.S. designed to sow social discord, eventually with the aim of interfering with the election.”

The second element involved the Russian government’s “efforts to conduct computer hacking operations designed to gather and disseminate information to influence the election. The Special Counsel found that Russian government actors successfully hacked into computers and obtained emails from persons affiliated with the Clinton campaign and Democratic Party organizations, and publicly disseminated those materials through various intermediaries, including WikiLeaks.”

According to this summary, there is NO doubt that the Russians were definitely working hard to influence our election. But it is important to remember that they have been doing that for years, and not just to the U.S. For that matter, the United States has on numerous occasions attempted in numerous ways to impact the national elections of other foreign countries! In fact, TruthNewsNetwork has detailed the specifics of several of those. To be honest, the Chinese, the French, British, and even modern-day Germany is known for doing so.

The U.S. also attempted to sway Russian elections! In 1996, with the presidency of Boris Yeltsin and the Russian economy flailing, President Clinton endorsed a $10.2-billion loan from the International Monetary Fund linked to privatization, trade liberalization and other measures that would move Russia toward a capitalist economy. Yeltsin used the loan to bolster his popular support, telling voters that only he had the reformist credentials to secure such loans, according to media reports at the time. He used the money, in part, for social spending before the election, including payment of back wages and pensions. (See our story with complete details published here February 18th of 2018)

Special Counsel Mueller’s Methodology is Suspicious

Do you like me wonder why Mueller would with so many investigative resources at his disposal — subpoenas, grand juries, witness questioning, and testimony, cutting deals with people — using 19 of the most well-known investigative attorneys in U.S. history, spending a reported $25 million over 2 years would NOT give a conclusion in his report regarding both Russia collusion AND Obstruction of Justice? Conventional wisdom says “where there’s smoke there’s fire,” which means to most “if there is proof/evidence of any obstruction of justice indictments should be made.”

Why did Mueller — if there was an obstruction on the part of the President — not take the evidence to a grand jury to get an indictment? And if there was NO evidence of obstruction, why did he NOT say so in his report? (No, the report is not out yet, but Barr’s summary plainly states that Mueller instigated no indictments of the President) There are two reasons or excuses:

  1. Those on the Left immediately upon reading Barr’s letter stated the reason Mueller did not indict Trump for obstruction was because most believe a sitting president CANNOT be indicted for obstruction of justice, and that Mueller was afraid that a huge federal court battle would be initiated if he had pushed for an indictment of the President that would keep the furor going  for another two years or so to the chagrin of Americans.
  2. Our conclusion is the second: that Mueller’s team could not (at least by a majority of those 19 attorneys with Mueller added) unite on an obstruction decision. It appears that one or several of those Mueller attorneys — almost all of which are Democrats and are not fond of President Trump — thought that not recommending indicting this president would initiate even more investigations by the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives and even by the federal Southern District of New York. In that scenario, the rage, anger, and vitriol from the Left would continue and certainly even heighten in intensity while those additional investigations go on. And their feeling is certain that all of the unknowns and continuous allegations and questions without answers would guarantee the President’s credibility and integrity would be attacked by the attack dog media all the way through the 2020 elections.

The Mueller Investigation is the first one in U.S. history that occurred at the federal level in which NO conclusion was reached! THAT’S why the Mueller report left the question unanswered, “Did Donald Trump commit Obstruction of Justice?”

Summary

I would love to say that Mueller’s report will bring to an end to what the President has continually called “A Witch Hunt.” But it will not. Think about it: Democrats are desperate. Yes, they won the House of Representatives in the midterm elections. Yes, the Democrats have a choke-hold on the media who breathlessly and continuously perpetrate whatever the Democrat talking point “of the day” is each and every day.

But there are more “matters” that few are talking about. As of last week, there are more than 82,000 sealed federal indictments, some issued by federal courts in each one of the federal courts in all 50 states, all issued and sealed since November of 2017. Some expected some of those would be “Mueller indictments.” But according to his report, he obtained no indictments that were or are sealed. And no one is certain for whom those name, how many, or who initiated them. But it’s a serious matter. In U.S. history, no more than 3000 have been issued in a 12-month period. Something is up there.

And there’s one more thing: Attorney General Barr lit the media world up when he responded to a Senator’s questions in the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee Hearing when he testifed before that committee. Listen/watch closely to his responses:

Attorney General Barr made it clear that the DOJ is looking into spying during the 2016 campaign against the Trump Campaign. Immediately after the hearing, the media went into a frenzy about his statements. Several stated “He has no evidence. If he had proof he would have given it during the hearing,” and “AG Barr showed he’s nothing more than a mouthpiece and conspiracy theorist for President Trump.” Nothing could be further from the truth.

If you listen to his responses in the video and audio given above, you hear him respond to the Senator’s question about any evidence NOT by saying he has no evidence, but by saying this, “I am not going to discuss the evidence NOW. I’m going to wait for details to be finalized and I’ll come back with my report.”

There’s a BIG difference between what he said and that he HAS NO EVIDENCE.

So what can we expect when the report is released? More chaos, more vitriol, more media and political attacks against Attorney General Barr and, of course, President Trump. And what good can possibly come from it all? The Democrats will get exactly what they want and need: more negativity about President Trump and his Administration. They’ll scream louder and blame more, and in doing so, keep the anti-Trump rhetoric alive with absolutely no proof of any of the allegations!

Remember this: The Democrat Party has NO unity right now, NO real leadership, NO party platform for 2020. The only thing they have to use against the President is THE MUELLER REPORT! And since there’s “no there-there,” they MUST manufacture their own brand of truth.

But don’t think the other side will sit idly by. You can bet the President will amp up his twitter account, his campaign rally derision of Democrats and each 2020 candidate.

It’s not going to be fun very long. I promise Americans will (if they haven’t already) get tired of the constant back and forth between camps. I just hope Americans can stand solid for facts, not get distracted by more allegations without truth, and certainly do not lose sight of the massive swing to all things Left by every one of the Democrat 2020 presidential candidates.

Socialism has never and is not now working for ANY country in the World.

If that’s the only reason to re-elect Donald Trump that can be found, it certainly will be good enough!

Play

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

In The Beginning…

April 8, 2019

We’re two years in and now with the completion of the Mueller investigation, and at least six months more investigating by the FBI pre-Mueller. We have a Mueller declaration of no-finding of collusion with Russia on the part of the Trump Campaign and also no finding of obstruction of justice. And you know what else? We still don’t know how and who started this entire war against Donald Trump!

There are many ideas being thrown about by very intelligent people who certainly have access to a bunch of government intelligence that folks like you and me do not. But even those people have come up empty — “so far.” But how could that be? I’m an amateur in all this investigating stuff. But I am a researcher. And using all of TruthNewsNetwork’s considerable contacts for inside information, we have come up empty as well. But we’ve stumbled onto something that is the first piece of concrete information we’ve identified in this cesspool of Washington D.C. regarding this concerted and coordinated effort to unseat a sitting President.

Who has the power to bring to bear the considerable resources necessary to orchestrate such an attack and potentially win a battle to drive Donald Trump out of Washington? Who can do so and keep quiet his or her involvement in it for two years plus?

The book with the answers to this is still not on the menu at Amazon. But someone who very few expected has turned on a light — a bright spotlight — on this entire situation. And that someone has come forward with a big bunch of answers.

We have those answers to your “Mueller-Trump Debacle” questions. And we are bringing them to you straight from the proverbial “horse’s mouth.” This is about 24 minutes long. But once you begin this, you will NOT turn it off. In fact, you’ll watch and listen and again and again and again. Better yet, you’ll tell someone elsewhere to go to watch and listen for themselves.

So, here we go! I suggest you don’t turn this on until you know you can do so in twenty-four uninterrupted minutes. Then we’ll get together to summarize what we’ve seen and heard. Here with what happened “In The Beginning” is Dan Bongino.

Summary

If you did not know already, Dan Bongino was a longtime Secret Service Agent, New York policeman, has a widely viewed daily podcast and is a regular FOX News contributor. He also ran for Congress in Maryland. He like few has access to those who work inside the federal government — some currently and many formerly with various Intelligence Departments.

Now that you have listened and watched to this narrative, think back: how often did we maintain with our deductive reasoning that the chain of responsibility had to far up the chain of power in Washington — all the way to the White House. But think it through: all of the “leaks” of data and information by the likes of Susan Rice, Samantha Powers, James Comey, James Clapper, John Brennan, and others had to be initiated by not just a flunkie on the White House staff. Someone with access to the Oval Office had to be in that loop. In the Obama Administration, that narrowed the group of those possible to Vice President Joe Biden, Obama’s Senior “Handler” Valerie Jarrett, or Michelle Obama. But even if one or several of these were included in that information stream, none would have initiated it. It has to be President Obama himself.

So what happens now? Certainly, federal attorney Jim Huber in Utah who was given the green light in 2017 to investigate all things to do with the Clinton Campaign, the 2016 election, and all illegalities that may have occurred regarding any of these, has unearthed facts that will document these conclusions. Additionally, Inspector General Michael Horowitz is deep into a separate investigation. Most do not realize that former Attorney General Jeff Sessions authorized Jim Huber to use all of the federal resources directed by the Inspector General that are necessary to get to the bottom of all this. Those resources: 400+ federal attorneys already engaged in this in the Department of Justice.

What happens now? There is very little left to occur but the exposure of those involved in this non-military coup to remove a duly elected President from office.

One final note: many think some of those 70,000 sealed federal indictments issued since October 27, 2017, are for some of these people mentioned above and others that participated in this operation. It is certain that those indictments are for very serious wrongdoing by a bunch of people. In American history, there have NEVER been more than 3000 such indictments issued in any 12-month period.

When will we find out? It certainly will be soon. But here at TruthNews Network, we are confident this entire matter has never been seen before in American history. It runs really deep, and it involved hundreds of people. When revealed, many people who we know well with lengthy political histories in D.C. will be named.

I think we’re seeing the layers of the onion being peeled already. How many layers and how many in each layer is still to be determined. One thing is certain: as the onion layers are peeled away, there will be many tears for those guilty of wrongdoing.

Then maybe — just maybe — we can allow this President to get about the business of America for which he was elected.

Rampant Voter Fraud

January 8, 2019

Very few America voters believe in the sanctity of  the American election system. Think about it: in every American federal election, political pundits and candidates alike all over the country are claiming “This election’s results cannot be trusted because of voter fraud.”

But for every candidate who claims voter fraud there’s another who trumpets the system works continuously, ethically, and carefully, because those who operate elections make certain “every vote is counted” and that “no election fraud has occurred.”

But we continually see and hear reports like these during elections:

“The North Carolina Board of Elections has released affidavits from voters who told investigators of fraud allegations that a Republican campaign worker collected their absentee ballots in a U.S. congressional race in which the Democrat lost.

It is illegal in North Carolina for anyone except the voter or a near relative to deliver an absentee ballot in person.

Voters in Bladen County said McCrae Dowless, who worked for Mark Harris, the Republican candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives in North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District, collected their ballots and they did not know what he did with them, according to the affidavits, which were released on Sunday.

The Board of Elections voted last month to investigate claims of voter fraud and irregularities in Bladen County, declining to certify Harris as the winner in the race.

Christopher Eason of Bladenboro, North Carolina, said in an affidavit that Dowless came to his house and asked for his absentee ballot, which he handed over signed and unsealed.

“I signed the absentee ballot envelope but left the ballot completely blank. I did not make any selections in any of the contests on the ballot,” Eason wrote in the affidavit, provided to the Board of Elections by McCready’s lawyers.

Attorneys Jonathan Berkron and Marc Elias, who represent McCready, did not respond to a request for comment on Monday.”

California’s election operationa are constantly blamed for election wins and losses. Let’s face it: with California now giving illegals drivers licenses, it can be difficult if not possible for registrars of voting throughout the state to prove absolutely applicants for voting status are legally eligible to vote in federal elections. This as California before the 2018 midterm elections gave illegals the right to vote in local and certain state elections. It is not a far stretch to imagine voter fraud there. And in California, even lawsuits are common with abundant claims of voter fraud:

“California and Los Angeles County have agreed to purge as many as 1.5 million inactive voter registrations across the state as part of a court settlement finalized this week with Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog.

Judicial Watch sued the county and state voter-registration agencies, arguing that the California government was not complying with a federal law requiring the removal of inactive registrations that remain after two general elections, or two to four years.

Inactive voter registrations, for the most part, occur when voters move to another country or state or pass away but remain on the rolls. The lawsuit alleged that Los Angeles County, with its more than 10 million residents, has more voter registrations than it has citizens old enough to register with a registration rate of 112 percent of its adult citizen population.

The entire state of California had a registration rate of 101 percent of age-eligible citizens, the lawsuit said, citing data published by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.

The settlement is a third statewide voter-registration legal agreement or court order reached between Judicial Watch and states; the others were reached with government entities in Ohio in 2014 and Kentucky last year.

“This settlement vindicates Judicial Watch’s groundbreaking lawsuits to clean up state voter rolls to help ensure cleaner elections,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said in a statement.

Fitton said the California settlement would “clean up election rolls in Los Angeles County and California—and set a nationwide precedent to ensure that states take reasonable steps to ensure that dead and other ineligible voters are removed from the rolls.”

Secretary of State Alex Padilla said state officials “have and will continue to meet the goals of the National Voter Registration Act”—the federal law at issue in the case—in “maintaining the accuracy of voter rolls and increasing the number of eligible citizens who register and vote.”

Padilla tried to assure California voters that it would not lead to “unnecessary removal of active and eligible voters.”

“Safeguards remain in place to ensure voter-list maintenance procedures are followed before canceling any voter registration records,” Padilla said in a statement.

He also took a shot at Judicial Watch, arguing that the group’s statements about the settlement “conflates their unfounded claims with what was actually agreed upon in the settlement” but did not elaborate about what constituted an “unfounded claim” by the conservative group.

“The settlement is clear and simple: California will continue its work to adhere to modern list maintenance procedures under the [National Voter Registration Act],” he said. Padilla also hailed California as a leader in implementing election reforms to improve voter participation.

The California DMV’s new process of automatically registering people to vote, which began in late April of last year, was credited with boosting voter registration and turnout to historic highs. Nearly 1.5 million more people were registered to vote than were in the last midterm election in 2014, for a total of 19 million Californians, according to the California Secretary of State’s Office.

That so-called motor-voter law also raised still-unanswered questions about the number of illegal immigrants and other non-citizens who may have voted in the June primary and November gubernatorial and congressional midterm election. California officials still cannot say whether non-citizens voted, the Sacramento Bee reported.

On Thursday, Padilla confirmed for the first time that his office is actively investigating whether illegal immigrants and other noncitizens voted last year because the DMV erroneously registered them to vote.”

Even President Obama did not escape allegations of voter fraud during his administration that was allowed (if not in fact encouraged) through his entire eight years. Claims that he even encouraged it are plentiful:

Public Interest Legal Foundation President and General Counsel J. Christian Adams worked in the civil rights division of the Justice Department during the George W. Bush administration and the beginning of Obama’s first term. He was convinced that voter fraud is rampant.

“We know of election crimes that have gone on in the last seven years, one after another after another, that the federal government never prosecuted and never investigated, never did anything about and creating this Wild West atmosphere with voter fraudsters,” Adams said.

For examples, Adams cites Wendy Rosen, the 2012 congressional candidate in Maryland who also voted in Florida. He said there have been more than 1,000 non-citizens discovered voting in Virginia since 2011, and more than 800 others in Ohio. He said North Carolina found 41 ballots cast by non-citizens last year and Nevada found three.

Not only is the fraud not being investigated, in some cases it is celebrated.

“You have Melowese Richardson, a woman in Cincinnati, who said on camera that she voted six times for President Obama,” Adams said. “She was actually celebrated at an event that Al Sharpton was at. They treated her like a hero.”

Foreign Election Tampering

We are currently in the midst of multiple investigations into foreign intervention in U.S. elections. The Mueller investigation’s premise that initiated the probe was multiple claims of Russian collusion with members of the Trump Campaign  to impact the election in the favor of Donald Trump.

Former President Obama derided those who accused his administration of turning a blind eye to claims of election tampering. He demonstratively reprimanded Donald Trump for his claims of election meddling in the race to favor Hillary Clinton:

It is widely accepted that foreign actors continuously work to impact U.S. elections and those of other nations. Hackers often are working to somehow achieve election results for candidates perceived to be favorable for their governments.

It was confirmed that Russia indeed did impact the 2016 election through purchased ads on Facebook to prop up the candidacy of Donald Trump, even though Facebook officials vehemently denied those actions at first. Exactly what impact was made by those Russian measures are unclear. China has been rumored to attack multiple nations’ election processes to assist candidates favorable to their causes and to sow negative information about candidates perceived to be against China.

Summary

It seems that claims of election tampering throughout the country targets Democrats dramatically more than Republicans. Of course members of the Democrat Party discount such allegations. But multiple examples of Democrat operatives exposed in the midterm elections show there may be a concerted effort by Dems, almost with a sense of desperation.

It has been pointed out several times that the purported efforts by Democrats to “steal” elections (as they are sometimes accused of) are part of a larger process. Democrat Party membership has been slipping over the past years. That fact is illustrated most by not just losses in federal elections, but by the GOP domination in state and local elections in the last decade. Why is that?

It seems to be coordinated at the federal level. Many political experts claim it’s because Democrat Party leaders are in panic mode. What can they do to maintain and even gain more control of local, state, and federal offices? What could their reasoning be?

It seems their efforts are multi-fold, well-planned, and well thought out. Apparently their 180 degree turn regarding southern border control is part of their plan. It is no secret that their fight for open borders and getting illegals the ability to vote, is fundamental to their plan.

Finding ways to impact local, state, and federal elections in ”creative” ways is the second tier of this master plan. Attacking re-districting in courts is the third segment. And in the past few elections, that attack plan is helping, though Donald Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton was a definite setback.

The reason Dems have so dramatically pandered to minorities and now illegals has become more and more obvious: votes. Democrats feel confident that “if” illegals somehow obtain rights to vote in federal elections, those illegals will be obligated to Democrat candidates. Why? Dems will claim they unilaterally were responsible for not just voting rights, but the amazing benefits illegals receive from taxpayers even now. That sense of obligation is their hope to build their party — just like they have used black and Hispanic voters.

Will it work? The book is still out on that. Even though Pelosi and Company are consistent in their support of minorities and illegals, Americans are seeing and hearing more about this “plan” to build Democrat Party membership and realize what these methods can do to the country.

But, once again, Democrats have underestimated a huge segment of American voters. Remember: you can see and hear daily the disdain Democrats have for Conservatives. It’s as if they do not remember 2016 when Hillary’s “deplorables” actually took her sure win away from her.

I for one hope they continue down their present road; that their fragmented party continues to infight. That will only expose more and more about their methods to Americans.

We’ve said it over and over again: Democrats think they are smarter than Americans who are NOT Democrats. They take conservatives for granted.

Rep. Hank Johnson warned his constituents against creeping authoritarianism in an intense speech peppered with historical references, likening the political moment that brought President Donald Trump to power to the rise of Adolf Hitler.

“Our democracy teeters on the brink of failure,” the Georgia Democrat said at an event held by the Atlanta NAACP. “Americans elected an authoritarian, racist, anti-immigrant strongman to the nation’s highest office.”

Hitler “rode a wave of nationalism and anti-Semitism to power. Replace anti-Semitism with ‘all Latinos crossing our borders are rapists, drug dealers and murderers.’ Does that sound familiar?” Johnson asked, to a chorus of “yeses” from the crowd.

Congressman Johnson pretty much summed up the Democrat plan: divide Americans, embolden illegals, convince minorities they are eternally obligated to the only political party that cares about them.

Keep all this in mind and watch the political landscape closely this year. It’s always easier to make good decisions when you objectively view options, garnering truths from those options, then making educated decisions.

And making good choices in this intense negative atmosphere is critical.

Trump’s Campaign Finance Fraud

December 13, 2018

Everyone has heard about it. Trump’s former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, under specific direction of Candidate Donald Trump, paid hush money to two adult porn stars with which Trump allegedly had affairs. That money was Campaign money. How do we know that? The Media said so, of course. And Democrats make the same claims. So what happens now?

Let’s dig down into the nitty-gritty of all this:

  • Did Trump actually have affairs with the two women? President Trump says he did not. Of course, his saying so means nothing to Leftists. Anything he is accused of is factual in their eyes. Nevertheless, he was accused. Then why did Cohen under Trump’s direction pay the money? Remember this: Trump was running for President. Both of those women apparently came forward at a critical time in the campaign cycle. Having “bimbo leaks” at that particular time would be deadly to any campaign. Stopping their stories from hitting the news was critical.
  • We don’t know that Donald Trump actually had those affairs. He says he didn’t — they both say he did. To my knowledge, no evidence has been presented proving either had any involvement with Donald Trump. But even if he did, he did so prior to being a candidate for any office, and therefore his doing so would have been purely a personal matter. But the President maintains there were NO affairs with either woman.
  • Why would they both say it happened if it really didn’t happen? Come on! Both proved by the way they came forward at the time they came forward their purposes in doing so: MONEY and FAME. Democrats and their media puppets all took the bait and have incessantly beat the drum of “bimbo payoff” since the revelations. And with the Cohen admission of making the payoffs as campaign funds payout — which if true would be illegal — just stoked the liberal fires again.
  • The payoffs DID happen. Confirmation of that is not in dispute. However, were campaign funds used? Apparently, Michael Cohen provided no hard documentation showing the payoff methods and their details. But it is surely certain that if the Trump Campaign wrote checks or wired money, the Federal Election Commission would have stepped forward with that information. Cohen actually initially stated that he paid both women himself. As Trump’s personal attorney, Cohen was on a monthly retainer for legal services. It is commonplace for people of financial substance to have attorneys and accountants under contracts in that exact fashion. They pay for the operating expenses of their clients and bill clients for services provided above what those retainers cover. In that manner, Cohen’s paying them was normal.
  • “Those women were paid hush money to keep their stories from impacting the 2016 election results. The public would have NOT voted for Trump if they knew. Therefore, the payoffs were campaign fund violations.” That’s the story being passed around by Democrats. But their story doesn’t stop there. “Experts” are actually all over Mainstream Media outlets stating that this rises to the level of an impeachable offense. But there is precedence and irony here. And both past such events point to these payments — IF they were made to coverup Trump sexual impropriety and not just to thwart blackmail, which is what they seem to have been — are NOT criminal and probably were not at all improper.

Let’s examine those two precedents.

Senator John Edwards

John Edwards is a former United States Senator from North Carolina and a Democratic Party vice-presidential and presidential candidate who, in August 2008, admitted to having had an extramarital affair. The affair was initially reported in late-2007 by The National Enquirer but was given little attention outside the tabloid press and political blogosphere. The Enquirer cited claims from an anonymous source that Edwards had engaged in an affair with Rielle Hunter, a filmmaker hired to work for his presidential campaign, and that Hunter had a child from the relationship.

Edwards vehemently denied the affair and that Hunter’s child was his. But after much media pressure, on January 21, 2010, Edwards issued a statement admitting the affair and that he was the father of Hunter’s child.

On June 3, 2011, Edwards was indicted by a North Carolina grand jury on six felony charges. The charges? They came from Edwards’ use of campaign funds to cover up the affair and the subsequent birth of the child. (Sound familiar?) Edwards faced a maximum sentence of thirty years in prison and a $1.5 million fine, or a USD $250,000 fine and/or five years imprisonment per charge. The indictment came after the failure of intensive negotiations for a plea bargain agreement that would have required Edwards’ guilty plea to the misuse of campaign funds.

After delays, due to John Edwards’ medical condition, jury selection for the trial began on April 12, 2012. Opening arguments began on April 23, 2012.  A verdict (not guilty on one count and a mistrial on the remaining five) to the trial was reached on May 31, 2012.

As Democrats, (who are about to take control of the House of Representatives, which is where impeachment proceedings would begin) mull over the constant cries of many Congressional Democrats and also from many big campaign donors to impeach President Trump, they have something much bigger than John Edwards’ conundrum with Rielle Hunter to deal with. “IF” they push forward with impeachment, they must deal with the 900-pound gorilla that lives in “their” house: a Congressional Sexual Settlement Hush Fund.

The “Hush” Fund

You may have heard whispers about this fund. You may have at the time you heard of it wondered who in Congress was involved, how long the fund has existed, who was paid out of the fund and for what, and what was the source of dollars IN the hush fund.

If you wondered those things then — two years ago — you STILL wonder about all of those! NOTHING HAS BEEN RELEASED.

Here are the details:

If you’re a victim of sexual harassment and you work for Congress, you can’t complain to the human resources department.

You can’t file a lawsuit, either — at least not until you’ve gone through months of mandatory counseling and mediation designed to keep such complaints out of court. And out of the public eye.

That’s all spelled out in the laughably named Congressional Accountability Act, a special set of rules designed to protect the people who wrote them.

Instead of HR, claims are handled by the congressional Office of Compliance. It receives allegations of sexual harassment, salary discrimination, and other workplace issues, and pays out settlements — with money supplied by the U.S. Treasury — if the parties reach an agreement. Since 1997, taxpayers have shelled out $15.2 million.

Think of it as the Taxpayer Hush Money Fund. You pay, and the complaints go away. Those records aren’t subject to the federal Freedom of Information Act. The compliance office doesn’t disclose the names of congressmen or their aides who reach settlements with their accusers. A case becomes public only if mediation fails and the victim later wins a favorable ruling in federal court or through an administrative process.

So, in the midst of such an outrageous and egregious system in place in Congress, who is responsible for it? And who funds it? The answers: it is part of a bill that Congress passed itself. Who pays for it? WE DO — EVERY DIME! Taxpayer money in — sexual harassment by members of Congress committed — victims get paid by those taxpayer dollars WITH NO ACCOUNTABILITY.

Surely there is some member of Congress who saw the horrors of this process and the outcry that would certainly come from Americans if revealed. Surely some member of Congress would blow the whistle and take action to expose this law and shine the light of revelation on all the wrongdoers who had wasted taxpayers dollars to pay off their sex victims. Well, there WAS such a lawmaker: Florida Governor-elect, Ron DeSantis.

BILLS-115hr4494ih

I have pasted the bill above. It is not really lengthy, but it is too long to post here. Click on it to read.

The bill was NOT intended to do away with the fund, but rather to force total transparency for Americans to see not only who in Congress were guilty of using unapproved taxpayer funds to pay off those abused by members of Congress, but to chronicle the dollars of every incident going forward.

The bill was introduced in Committee in the Fall of 2017 by DeSantis. It’s current status? More than one year later it is still in Committee: no hearings, no amendments, no discussion. Basically, it is dead.

Summary

Democrats in the House have a tall hill to climb if they choose to take the Trump “Bimbo Eruption” to the door of Impeachment. First, there’s the precedent set by federal courts in the John Edwards campaign funds charges in which that court determined Edwards was not guilty of campaign violations.

Then, Democrats would be forced to throw open the doors of sexual improprieties of dozens (if not hundreds) of current and past members of Congress. Why would they do that? Think about the current allegations against Trump in the Cohen revelations in federal court: he paid two women who accused then “private citizen” Trump of having affairs AND paid them with campaign funds. If any federal court went against the Edwards precedent and ruled against the President, that would mean the Congressional Hush fund and those who benefitted from hush payouts from the fund would be guilty of the same wrongdoing Trump is accused of! Every member of Congress who benefited from those hush fund dollars would have had them paid from — by the definition of “campaign fund disbursement rules” as determined and published by the Federal Election Commission — campaign funds paid out for personal purposes. The reasoning for THEIR payouts could only be to hide their personal wrongdoing to thwart the possible negative impact of the news of their wrongdoing IN THEIR CAMPAIGNS. Members of Congress run every two years for election and re-election — they are always campaigning.

Let’s face it: Democrats are simply posturing for political purposes. Their lapdog messaging merchants — the Mainstream Media — simply parrot those claims over and over. They hope an American public that is growing weary of all the political posturing and the necessity to fact-check every bit of news seen or heard, simply turn a deaf ear to this entire process and simply cave to the hollow and false allegations by Democrats and fall in line — their line — against the President.

Democrats and the Media are praying that facts will be forgotten, emotions will rule, and Trump will be driven from office.

They really, really pray that Robert Mueller will miraculously uncover Russian collusion on the part of Trump and that Trump criminality will do the dirty work for them!

Donald Trump is guilty of one thing for sure: his policies have made everything he has tackled politically better — much better — than as he found them.

Will that be enough to keep him in the White House for two more years and possibly six? The truth has worked in the past. Most Americans hope the truth will work this time, too.

 

Play

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Evidence: Russia Affected the Outcome of the 2016 Election

April 18, 2018

You have heard since the day after the 2016 election that Russia impacted the election to prevent Hillary Clinton from winning. Almost every news organization, every U.S. intelligence agency, and every politician in D.C. have made that claim again and again. It even resulted in the appointment of Robert Mueller as Special Counsel to not investigate the validity of these claims, but (using Russian election tampering as a factual basis for investigating)  to prove that the Trump Campaign worked with the Russians to directly affect election results.

I have one real problem with this: “Where’s the Beef?” Think about this: the FBI launched an investigation under James Comey. Both houses of Congress launched investigations. The CIA, ODNI, NSA and DNI all launched investigations. Let’s look at the evidence found that verify that 1) there WAS Russian direct intrusion into the 2016 presidential election process, and 2) the Trump Campaign was part of that process:

Russian Election Tampering “Facts”

  • From Wired: Did Russia Affect the 2016 Election? It’s Now Undeniable That headline following the Mueller indictment of Russians for election tampering. The story goes on to detail an elaborate system supposedly setup over time to use American media, email lists, planted news stories, and electronic advertising to affect American voters. Note that 13 Russians were “indicted” for their actions. What U.S. laws were broken? Certainly those laws and all of the specific details in the 37 page indictment will be made public in their trials. Oops: they are Russians. Vladimir Putin has already stated none of those 13 will be returned to the U.S. for trials.
  • On October 7, 2016, the ODNI (Office of the Director of National Intelligence) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) jointly stated that the U.S. Intelligence Community was confident that the Russian Government directed recent hacking of e-mails with the intention of interfering with the U.S. election process.[According to the ODNI′s January 6, 2017 report, the Russian military intelligence service (GRU) had hacked the servers of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the personal Google email account of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta and forwarded their contents to WikiLeaks. Although Russian officials have repeatedly denied involvement in any DNC hacks or leaks, there is strong forensic evidence linking the DNC breach to known Russian operations. In January 2017, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper testified that Russia also interfered in the elections by disseminating fake news that was promoted on social media.
  • On October 31, 2016, President Barack Obama warned Putin via the “red phone” to stop interfering or face consequences.[ In December 2016, Obama ordered a report on hacking efforts aimed at U.S. elections since 2008, while U.S. Senators called for a bipartisan investigation. President-elect Donald Trump rejected claims of foreign interference and said that Democrats were reacting to their election loss.
  • In a February 13, 2018 testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, the heads of the top six American intelligence agencies unanimously reaffirmed Russian interference.
  • Former President George W. Bush: “There’s pretty clear evidence that the Russians meddled,” Bush said at a talk in the United Arab Emirates. “Whether they affected the outcome is another question.” He also said: “It’s problematic that a foreign nation is involved in our election system. Our democracy is only as good as people trust the results.”
  • Huffington Post: “The report from heads of American intelligence agencies has confirmed the obvious: Russia deliberately tried to influence the outcome of the American election in favor of Donald Trump. The agencies’ report found no evidence that the Russians tried to electronically change vote totals; they were content to mess with our heads, and in that, they did quite well.”
  • In a exhaustive analysis of this issue, the website “Russia Matters” after months of intense research stated this: “According to the declassified ODNI report, the CIA, FBI and NSA assess that ‘Putin and the Russian government aspired to help President-elect Trump’s election chances when possible by discrediting Secretary [of State] Clinton and publicly contrasting her unfavorably to him.’ The CIA and FBI expressed ‘high confidence’ in the judgment, while the NSA expressed ‘moderate confidence.’ The ODNI report says that ‘Moscow’s approach evolved over the course of the campaign based on Russia’s understanding of the electoral prospects of the two main candidates.’ The report noted that Russian state-owned media outlets RT and Sputnik consistently favored Trump and portrayed Clinton negatively. As mentioned before, the ODNI did not publicly release the bulk of its supporting evidence, citing a desire not to compromise sensitive sources and methods
  • Ross Cohen of Quora.com at the beginning of his “proof” of Russian election meddling in his first sentence said, “Before discussing evidence, it’s important to be clear that the assessment of the U.S. intelligence community is unanimous: Russia interfered with the election. It happened.”

I could go on and on for hours giving you examples from various intelligence officials, media pundits, Congressional legislators and campaign officials in which each maintains that without any question, the Russian government figured heavily in the outcome of the 2016 U.S. presidential election, and that they did so to prevent Hillary Clinton from being President. But let’s stop this merry-go-round right here.

Russian Election Tampering “Truths”

It is common knowledge among U.S. officials — from the current and former White Houses, both Houses of Congress, and every intelligence agency — that Russia TRIED to influence the 2016 election. In fact, they have been TRYING to do so for decades — and not just U.S. elections! And TRYING to do so is common practice: not just by the Russians, but by multiple countries. DID YOU KNOW THE U.S. IS GUILTY OF FOREIGN COUNTRY ELECTION MEDDLING?

On February 16, 2018, dnewman.org published a story about U.S. interference in other countries elections. That report started this way: “The U.S. has a long history of attempting to influence presidential elections in other countries – it’s done so as many as 81 times between 1946 and 2000, according to a database amassed by political scientist Dov Levin of Carnegie Mellon University. That number doesn’t include military coups and regime change efforts following the election of candidates the U.S. didn’t like, notably those in Iran, Guatemala and Chile. Nor does it include general assistance with the electoral process, such as election monitoring. Levin defines intervention as “a costly act which is designed to determine the election results [in favor of] one of the two sides.”

At least 81 times the U.S. has tried to directly influence the results of national elections being held in sovereign foreign nations. Knowing that might give Americans a better understanding why so many foreigners no longer hold the United States in high esteem, and why so many foreigners speak angrily of U.S. matters. Today there are 41 foreign countries that summarily reject U.S. passports, thus preventing U.S. citizens from legal entry into their countries.

Summary

I cannot state factually that the Russian government through its own resources and that of independents did NOT try to impact the 2016 presidential election. We do it in other countries. On what moral authority is it all right for the U.S. to demean Russia (or any other country) for doing the same thing? In our February 16, 2018, story on this matter, we revealed that President Obama sent money to try to keep Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from re-election: and Israel is our ally!

I do, however, doubt seriously that “IF” Russia was involved in the 2016 election, it was to support the election of Donald Trump over Hillary. Reason says otherwise: Trump campaigned to dramatically increase funding to rebuild the U.S. military to stop the bullying by countries like Russia, Iran, and North Korea on the world stage. Hillary as Secretary of State and afterwards made multiple decisions — some very public — that supported Russia. (remember that famous red “Reset” button?) Putin would have certainly preferred a U.S. President who accepted a weaker U.S. military and who had already demonstrated an intense affinity FOR Putin’s Russia. But: I DON’T KNOW THAT FOR CERTAIN, JUST AS ALL OF THE PUNDITS WHO DECLARE THERE WAS RUSSIAN ELECTION INFLUENCE DO NOT KNOW.

The Mainstream Media in the headlines and stories I listed above and in others ALL reference reports of other reporters, news outlets, and Intelligence officials when declaring “There was Russian meddling in our election, everyone knows that, and intelligence agencies all confirm that.” Even members of Congress maintain that. CLAIMING THAT AGAIN AND AGAIN DOES NOT MEAN IT’S TRUE! Facts alone must do that

Evidence? If it’s there, we STILL haven’t seen it. Yet the frenzy continues everyday — not just that there WAS Russian meddling, but that Donald Trump was somehow involved.

We’ll finish this with a few moments of a Rose Garden speech on the matter one month before the 2016 election by the one guy who certainly “knew” about election meddling: President Barack Obama:

https://youtu.be/ZPpt7-QOGKc

So who should we believe about Russian election meddling?

I have an idea: somebody release “evidence” of election meddling to the American people — not “James Clapper said so,” or the CIA, NSA, FBI, or any other 3-letter agency’s story about it — and trust Americans to make educated decisions based on evidence alone. Until then, there has been NO proof of such election tampering proven successful in changing any American’s vote. And the continued statements that it factually occurred illustrate just how desperate the Left is to diminish the election of Donald Trump by Americans.

Americans elected this President. That is ALL that matters.

“If” Hillary was President

March 4, 2018

Just imagine for a few minutes what our world would look like if November 2016’s presidential election resulted in President Hillary Clinton rather than President Donald Trump. No matter your political persuasion, I think all will agree that the last year plus would have been different. How different? We can only speculate. But certainly things would have changed under Hillary, and certainly would have been vastly different than under this President.

Let’s “speculate” together. For the purpose of this story, let’s speculate those differences in these categories: Political, Economical, Foreign Policy, and Social. Let’s go!

Political

There would be obvious differences that are certain: political appointees including cabinet heads and White House staffers. Let’s not waste time on speculation of who those might be. Let’s concentrate on other politically certain important differences.

  1. Supreme Court Appointee(s) Without a doubt the single most impactful political event of Trump’s first year was the appointment of Neil Gorsuch to replace Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court. Gorsuch had a very conservative judicial record and extensive experience on the Bench. His taking the SCOTUS 9th spot was and will be critical as more and more contentious cases come before the Court that will assuredly result with verdicts often split down political lines. A Clinton Presidency would have certainly seen a liberal selection for the Supreme Court which would have certainly resulted in decisions that leaned liberal. Though not certain, there could likely be 1 if not 2 more SCOTUS changes in the next few years. If so, controversies that would include abortion, 2nd Amendment gun rights, and immigration law revisions would see certain Court challenges go the way of the Left under a Clinton administration.
  2. Appeals Court Appointees President Trump in his first year has appointed more judges to appeals courts than any other president. Why is that such a big deal? Obama appointed 362 judges: 2 Supreme Court Justices, 268 district court judges, 4 to the International Court of Trade, and and 55 to U.S. Courts of Appeal in his 8 years. Trump by November of his first year in office had appointed besides Gorsuch, 40 judges for District spots, but more importantly, 18 for Courts of Appeal. Adding 18 Conservative judges for Courts of Appeal is already making a staggering difference in cases. Why? Appeals judges make a huge majority of final determinations on cases — only 20%-30% of denials from appeals courts are ever heard at the Supreme Court. Obama stacked those courts with liberal judges. Replacing those 18 in Trump’s first 10 months will make a staggering difference on the outcome of controversial cases.
  3. “Russia, Russia, Russia!” The DOJ has announced a “look” into Clinton ties to Russia and their alleged ties to Russia for opposition research during the 2016 election. That is a 180 degree swing of the Russia narrative. With Hillary in charge, you can bet there would be NO look-back at the Clinton campaign for any wrongdoing. The current uproarl in the FBI and DOJ regarding leaks, fake news, false information, and potential obstruction of justice would have never happened under Hillary. All this and much more currently being investigated and some still to come would have simply disappeared or been quietly quashed when mentioned. Under Trump we are probably still a ways away from getting facts on all this. Under Hillary, such facts would have NEVER been known by the public.
  4. Clinton Foundation It is obvious from the dramatic and sudden “winding-down” of the Clinton Foundation after the election that there certainly was pay-for-play underway in their massive fund raising. When election results showed there would be no quid pro quo from a Clinton Administration for those contributions, contributions ceased. No doubt the Foundation would have continued to stay flush with money with Hillary in office. With a imminent DOJ investigation in addition to a Congressional look-see, no big companies or foreign governments are throwing good money after bad.

Economical

  1. Taxes Under Clinton, the massive corporate and individual tax cuts signed by President Trump into law would have never appeared. Probably (if not “Certainly”) there would have been federal tax increases instead.
  2. Regulations Hundreds of Obama regulations on businesses stifled the economy. Trump through Executive Order cancelled many of those and implemented a policy for the future stating that for every 1 new regulation, 2 old ones must be cancelled. Clinton would have kept the Obama regs in place and would probably have added more — especially in the case of Environment and Climate Change matters. The massive almost instant business expansions, increases in employment with historical declines in unemployment resulted in large part because of this. The Steel Industry received an immediate rebirth as did the Coal Industry. And there are more to come in the Trump era.
  3. U.S. Foreign Deposits Repatriation As a direct result of the new tax law, hundreds of billions of dollars stashed offshore by U.S. corporations is coming home, and bringing back manufacturing jobs and plants. Apple, which has 94 percent of its total cash of $269 billion outside the United States, said it would make a one-time tax payment of $38 billion on the repatriated cash. Apple also announced a $600 billion infrastructure and product development plan in the U.S. Dozens of other companies have already followed suit. Clinton would have maintained the Obama policy of doing nothing but blaming those companies who have made one thing clear: they pay massive taxes on profits to countries in which they operate. Why would they then pay the U.S. 35% taxes on top of that? So they have left money offshore. No more.
  4. Stock Market The status of the U.S. Stock Market is always a direct result of interest rates, corporate profits, and confidence in the U.S. economy. Because of numbers 1, 2, and 3 above, in a Clinton Administration we would have have not seen anything close to the $7 Trillion increase in the value of the stock market in a Hillary presidency. But it happened in Trump’s first year — which is the result of all of those 3 rolled together fueling massive confidence in the economy. Hillary Clinton followers scream that the Market increases result in good for only the wealthy and large companies in stock dividends and corporate profits. Not so. Tens of millions of Americans own stocks, bonds, and derivatives either through individual portfolios, retirement funds like 401K’s and Simple IRA’s. Market profits go straight to those accounts. And, of course, individuals buy and sell stocks and bonds just like the investment bankers, though in smaller scale. But profits as a per cent of investment are identical.

Foreign Policy

The World watched as during the Obama/Clinton Administration, America’s standing in the World took a sharp hit as the Obama Globalist agenda was rolled out over 8 years. Obama’s foreign policy was basically to tread water while doling out policies designed and implemented to be symbolic at best. The World looked on as his Middle Eastern fight against terrorism proved to be faulty at best and deadly at worst. ISIS burst onto the World scene for a longtime left unchecked. Many world leaders were cautious as they watched Obama cozy up to Russia, exposed by letting Putin know through his foreign minister on an open mike that Obama’s second term would bring “goodies” to Russia. Hillary’s role as Secretary of State resulted in tens of millions of dollars from foreign governments to show up in Clinton Foundation accounts, while Bill’s speaking fees tripled. On her watch terrorism exploded — and not just at Benghazi. Libya fell to ISIS because of her two-faced approach to diplomacy there and the Obama/Clinton led ousting of Quadafi. Although he was a longtime terrorist, he had gone quiet for several decades, primarily because of the bombing by Reagan of his personal conclave after the Libyan bombings throughout Europe. There was no real terrorist difficulties under his watch — until Obama/Clinton which resulted in his ouster and death.

Trump’s methods have been watched with caution by many world leaders while others have embraced his policies. He quickly made it clear through overseas visits, speeches, and White House meetings that the United States was no longer going to be the “Keepers of the World.” Under his guidance it would be “America First.” The obvious leaders were shocked and lashed out — at first. But when they saw his results in many areas at home and watched as he softened the disdain of the U.S., more and more have come calling. U.S. standing in the World has been horrible for more than a decade. Leaders in Asia and the Middle East have quickly warmed to the President and have renewed commitments on many fronts.

His recent announcement about U.S. intentions to demand fairness in the International Marketplace through U.S. tariffs on foreign goods to level the playing field have shocked many in D.C. and also overseas. Some leaders have responded in negative fashion — as was expected. But ALL realize that the U.S. has carried a tremendous load in paying massive tariffs for foreign imported goods while those countries plunder American markets without paying any tariffs for that access. Reality in world trade has simply been acknowledged now. Foreign leaders have been put on notice that the gravy train for them called the U.S. is over. Under Trump, what is good for foreign countries economically MUST be good for the U.S. If not, there will be a price to pay: literally.

Social

  1. Criminal Justice As a lawyer, Hillary has always been soft on crime. Obama’s Justice Department relaxed jail sentences, implementing early releases for federal prisoners, and refused to even prosecute under federal laws for drug offenses. States began to legalize recreational marijuana sales and use in violation of federal law — with NO penalties to the states or those individuals who participate. Donald Trump has through the DOJ toughened stances against all types of crimes and has aggressively implemented programs to partner with state and local law enforcement agencies to assist in fighting crime. Hillary during the campaign gave no plans nor made any promises to change any of the Obama criminal justice policies.
  2. Immigration Hillary was an open-borders proponent who lauded immigration of all kinds, including illegal immigration. She offered no plans to change border control policies or any changes in immigration laws, although years earlier she took a position of stiffening control of all illegal immigration. She is a Globalist and would prefer to see virtual open-borders to all. Trump’s immigration plans are widely known and daily reported on. He supports (and is initiating plans for) strict border control, abolishing chain migration and the existing immigration lottery program. He offered a DACA plan that would give legal status to 1.8 million illegals qualified under DACA that Democrats (including Hillary AND Bill) summarily rejected. He has issued multiple executive orders to temporarily halt immigration of all kinds from known terrorist countries while the U.S. perfects a realistic and thorough vetting process for ALL immigrants, only to have all temporarily halted by federal judges. And he is pushing members of Congress demonstrably to pass a comprehensive immigration bill to resolve the decades-old immigration issue in the U.S.
  3. Right to Life Hillary supports abortion and would appoint federal judges at every level in numbers that would ensure that Roe v. Wade would never be overturned. She supports Planned Parenthood and its continued federal funding. Trump is hardcore Right to Life, an anti-abortionist, and anti-Planned Parenthood because of the volume of abortions at its nationwide clinics. He has already appointed one Pro-Life Supreme Court Justice and will appoint others if/when any spots open.
  4. Political Correctness We are watching a president who literally gives no thought or concern about Political Correctness. Trump is a pragmatist on pretty much every political and social issue and is very vocal about all. He laughs at the PC police and the national Media and the political correct stands they take on pretty much everything. And his thoughts are supported by most Americans. Hillary along with her husband wrote the Political Correctness book. For decades in their control of the Democrat Party, they have set the standards on every issue as to what is correct and what is not.

Summary

I’ll be quick here. The differences between Hillary and Donald are many and obvious. As President Trump works diligently to implement more and more of his agenda this year, he along with many other Americans watch as those on the Left take every opportunity to bash those agenda items just as they did throughout 2017. Clinton meanwhile continues to bask in her reality for her election loss to Donald Trump in 2016. Her reality is false. Yet she continues to beat that blame game drum.

Those from her “basket of deplorables” are pushing hard — fighting, if you will — to maintain the implementation of the Trump Agenda so as to see more good results of his promised concepts actualize. Their hope is to in the mid-terms give President Trump more Congressional support for that agenda while simultaneously pushing back against any Leftist agenda.

Even if one is a Hillary supporter, it would be lunacy to refuse to recognize the stark policy differences between these two, and that the Trump agenda — the small amount that has been passed and implemented by this Congress — has done (and is doing) great things in the nation. Most Americans are confident that the election result of a Trump Administration is a good thing, and that a Clinton Administration would have definitively set the nation on a dramatic course toward a European Socialist model.

And that scares them.

U.S. Foreign Election Tampering: GUILTY!

February 17, 2018

Robert Mueller obtained indictments of Russians for interfering in American elections. Mueller’s indictment of 13 Russian people and three Russian companies accuses them of conspiring to interfere with “US political and electoral processes, including the presidential election of 2016.” Later in the day, he also announced a California man named Richard Pinedo had pleaded guilty to an identity fraud charge and become a cooperator, apparently in connection with the Russian charges. The indictments’ main emphasis, however, is on the propaganda efforts of one Russian group in particular: the Internet Research Agency. That group’s operations — which included social media posts, online ads, and organization of rallies in the US — were, the indictment alleges, often (but not exclusively) aimed at denigrating Hillary Clinton’s presidential candidacy, and at supporting Donald Trump’s.

Oddly enough, the Special Investigator’s indictments made it clear that NO Trump campaigners were involved in this Russian action against the American election process. Also important to note is that the Russian attempts occurred beginning in 2014 — long before there was even a Donald Trump Presidential candidate.

Government intrusion into other countries’ election processes is nothing new. It has been underway worldwide for many, many years. And it may surprise you, but the superior, moral, ethical, and better-than-any-other-country: the United States of America — has been pretty much the “Colluder in Chief” when it comes to attempted foreign election intrusion. I bet you didn’t know that.

U.S. Foreign Election Tampering History

The U.S. has a long history of attempting to influence presidential elections in other countries – it’s done so as many as 81 times between 1946 and 2000, according to a database amassed by political scientist Dov Levin of Carnegie Mellon University. That number doesn’t include military coups and regime change efforts following the election of candidates the U.S. didn’t like, notably those in Iran, Guatemala and Chile. Nor does it include general assistance with the electoral process, such as election monitoring. Levin defines intervention as “a costly act which is designed to determine the election results [in favor of] one of the two sides.”

These acts, carried out in secret two-thirds of the time, include funding the election campaigns of specific parties, disseminating misinformation or propaganda, training locals of only one side in various campaigning or get-out-the-vote techniques, helping one side design their campaign materials, making public pronouncements or threats in favor of or against a candidate, and providing or withdrawing foreign aid. In 59% of these cases, the side that received assistance came to power, although Levin estimates the average effect of “partisan electoral interventions” to be only about a 3% increase in vote share.

The U.S. hasn’t been the only one trying to interfere in other countries’ elections, according to Levin’s data. Russia attempted to sway 36 foreign elections from the end of World War II to the turn of the century – meaning that, in total, at least one of the two great powers of the 20th century intervened in about 1 of every 9 competitive, national-level executive elections in that time period.

Italy’s 1948 general election is an early example of a race where U.S. actions probably influenced the outcome. “We threw everything, including the kitchen sink” at helping the Christian Democrats beat the Communists in Italy, said Levin, including covertly delivering “bags of money”  to cover campaign expenses, sending experts to help run the campaign, subsidizing “pork” projects like land reclamation, and threatening publicly to end U.S. aid to Italy if the Communists were elected. Levin said that U.S. intervention probably played an important role in preventing a Communist Party victory, not just in 1948, but in seven subsequent Italian elections.

Throughout the Cold War, U.S. involvement in foreign elections was mainly motivated by the goal of containing communism, said Thomas Carothers, a foreign policy expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “The U.S. didn’t want to see left-wing governments elected, and so it did engage fairly often in trying to influence elections in other countries,” Carothers said. This approach carried over into the immediate post-Soviet period.

In the 1990 Nicaragua elections, the CIA leaked damaging information on alleged corruption by the Marxist Sandinistas to German newspapers, according to Levin. The opposition used those reports against the Sandinista candidate, Daniel Ortega. He lost to opposition candidate Violeta Chamorro.

In Czechoslovakia that same year, the U.S. provided training and campaign funding to Vaclav Havel’s party and its Slovak affiliate as they planned for the country’s first democratic election after its transition away from communism. “The thinking was that we wanted to make sure communism was dead and buried,” said Levin.

Even after that, the U.S. continued trying to influence elections in its favor.

In Haiti after the 1986 overthrow of dictator and U.S. ally Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier, the CIA sought to support particular candidates and undermine Jean-Bertrande Aristide, a Roman Catholic priest and proponent of liberation theology. The New York Times reported in the 1990s that the CIA had on its payroll members of the military junta that would ultimately unseat Aristide after he was democratically elected in a landslide over Marc Bazin, a former World Bank official and finance minister favored by the U.S.

The U.S. also attempted to sway Russian elections. In 1996, with the presidency of Boris Yeltsin and the Russian economy flailing, President Clinton endorsed a $10.2-billion loan from the International Monetary Fund linked to privatization, trade liberalization and other measures that would move Russia toward a capitalist economy. Yeltsin used the loan to bolster his popular support, telling voters that only he had the reformist credentials to secure such loans, according to media reports at the time. He used the money, in part, for social spending before the election, including payment of back wages and pensions.

In the Middle East, the U.S. has aimed to bolster candidates who could further the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. In 1996, seeking to fulfill the legacy of assassinated Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and the peace accords the U.S. brokered, Clinton openly supported Shimon Peres, convening a peace summit in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el Sheik to boost his popular support and inviting him to a meeting at the White House a month before the election. “We were persuaded that if [Likud candidate Benjamin] Netanyahu were elected, the peace process would be closed for the season,” said Aaron David Miller, who worked at the State Department at the time. In 1999, in a more subtle effort to sway the election, top Clinton strategists, including James Carville, were sent to advise Labor candidate Ehud Barak in the election against Netanyahu.

In Yugoslavia, the U.S. and NATO had long sought to cut off Serbian nationalist and Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic from the international system through economic sanctions and military action. In 2000, the U.S. spent millions of dollars in aid for political parties, campaign costs and independent media. Funding and broadcast equipment provided to the media arms of the opposition were a decisive factor in electing opposition candidate Vojislav Kostunica as Yugoslav president, according to Levin. “If it wouldn’t have been for overt intervention … Milosevic would have been very likely to have won another term,” he said.

Obama’s Foreign Election Tampering

The Obama State Department paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxpayers grants to an Israeli group that used the money to build a campaign to oust Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 2015’s Israeli parliamentary elections, a U.S. congressional investigation concluded. Some $350,000 was sent to OneVoice, ostensibly to support the group’s efforts to back Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement negotiations. But OneVoice used the money to build a voter database, train activists and hire a political consulting firm with ties to President Obama’s campaign — all of which set the stage for an anti-Netanyahu campaign, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations said in a bipartisan staff report. In one stunning finding, the subcommittee said OneVoice even told the State Department’s top diplomat in Jerusalem of its plans in an email, but the official, Consul General Michael Ratney, claims never to have seen them. Netanhahu survived that election — regardless of Obama’s efforts to defeat him.

Summary

Here are my thoughts on all the hype in the U.S. for the last 18 months of “Collusion:”

  • When someone screams loudly about someone else doing something incorrigible, those screams are often to hide the fact that the screamer is actually guilty of exactly what they are blaming someone else for. Listening to the Left’s cries against Trump for Russian collusion, it now appears that Democrats (and probably the Obama Administration) where certainly involved with the Russians in their quest to prevent a Trump election and subsequent presidential administration;
  • American political hypocrisy is leaking from the very pores of the Nation as the Media continuously beat the “nothing-burger” drum of “Russian Collusion.” And America is becoming the laughing stock of the World because of it.
  • The nonstop barrage of Collusion attack is numbing the nation to the realities of American life under this President that, on the most part, are improving the lives of middle class Americans in demonstrative fashion;
  • The Left is clawing at the very fiber of America in desperation to somehow maintain some vestige of dignity and honor of what they feel is the superior philosophies they espouse. Their attempts are having less and less effect.

That great eagle called “America” is slowly awakening and appears to be readying itself to fly at its former lofty heights across the Globe once again. Leftists are gnashing their teeth at that probability. Their painstaking and deliberate attempts to thwart the current unprecedented return of the wealth and prosperity to the middle class that the Left stealthily stole over years have been exposed. Daily more and more of those in the American middle class are seeing the lies that they accepted from Democrats for years and that democracy and a free market really are the best thing for the American middle class.

It is beginning to look like for America “The Best is Yet to Come!”