Monday, March 18, 2024

Trouble Might Be Coming for Members of the January 6th Committee

Trouble Might Be Coming for Members of the January 6th Committee

AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin

Earlier this week we highlighted how there looks to be a whole lot of problems plaguing the January 6 Select Committee from the previous Congress. Rep. Barry Loudermilk, who serves as the Committee on House Administration's Subcommittee on Oversight, released a report which called out many of the narratives we had previously been force fed about January 6, 2021. Now, he's saying that criminal referrals could come for those involved, at least at some point down the road. 

In an interview with Just the News, he addressed how accountability is warranted, though he also wants more information. The write-up described Loudermilk as "frustrated that videotapes of interviews, transcripts and other evidence that Congress gathered under the prior Jan. 6 inquiry run by Democrats was deleted, destroyed, moved to other federal agencies or locked behind passwords that have not been recovered, and he believes some form of accountability is warranted."

What's particularly telling is what Loudermilk had to say about Cheney's involvement:

“As far as holding people accountable, yes, they should be,” Loudermilk said during an interview with Just the News, No Noise television show. “But I think that's going to be a little ways down the road, because there is so much more information that we need to get. And we need to build not only this, to get the truth out to the American people, but see just how big this case potentially is for obstructing.”

Loudermilk also took a shot at Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., the former chairman of the Jan 6 Select Committee, saying he believes Thompson left control of decisions of the committee to his former Republican vice chairwoman, ex-Rep. Liz Cheney.

“There's still documents that we need to get hold off. We still don't have passwords for the encrypted documents,” Loudermilk said. “It's amazing that you know, when I asked the former Chairman Bennie Thompson, ‘all I want you to do is give me the passwords.’ He said, ‘I don't even know what you're talking about.’

“Well, I think it's coming down to he probably didn't, because now new information we're getting is that Liz Cheney ran that committee,” Loudermlk added.

This is revealing. While it was Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS), who was the chairman, and Cheney who was the vice chairman, it looks like she could have been pulling the strings here. 

One part of the report mentioned above did reveal that Cheney held a position that was initially meant for a Democrat. "Cheney was not the minority ranking member but served as Vice Chair of the Select Committee—a position under House Rules for a member of the same party as the Chair. Pelosi appointed Cheney to the Select Committee as one of Pelosi’s eight majority appointments to the Select Committee. Former Select Committee staff members spoke out against Cheney’s insistence that the Selec tCommittee focus on President Trump," a finding of the one-page explainer revealed. 

Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN) had been named by then House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) to serve as a Republican member on the Select Committee, and would have been ranking member, but then Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) objected to him and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) serving. 

Banks also posted his outrage about the report's findings earlier in the week.

Again, accountability, such as criminal referrals could come in time, as Loudermilk went on to explain, with added emphasis. This especially applies to Cheney as a former member:

Lawmakers and congressional staff enjoy significant immunity from punishment, at least in criminal court, for their official actions in Congress under the Constitution’s separation of powers.

Loudermilk said he will decide on a possible course for seeking accountability after his subcommittee resolves access to the evidence that is still missing and determines responsibility. He said options range from a criminal referral to DOJ for obstruction to censure by Congress or a referral to the House Ethics Committee for investigation.

“Those are options. We also have to look at what other options are there. There’s also censure-ship, ethics, obviously, but also consider there are members of that Select Committee who are no longer members of Congress. So they may fall under a different scenario,” he said.

“So we do have the tools of members of Congress, but also, active members of Congress have certain protections. So we'll have to work on that. Because as you talked about earlier, we're in uncharted territory right now. And so we're going to have to work through this,” he added.

Cheney lost her primary by nearly 40 points to now Rep. Harriet Hageman in August 2022. She is indeed no longer a member, though still looks to be involved in the political process as part of her focus against former and potentially future President Donald Trump. 

Of the nine members on the Select Committee, only five members remain in Congress. Not only did Cheney lose her primary, but former Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), who is as rabidly anti-Trump as Cheney is, retired. For all of his troubles, Illinois Democrats had pretty much redistricted his seat out of existence. Former Rep. Stephanie Murphy (D-FL) chose to retire rather than lose, and sure enough her seat is now filled by Republican Rep. Cory Mills. Although she did run for reelection, former Rep. Elaine Luria (D-VA) lost the general to now Republican Rep. Jen Kiggans. Her involvement on the January 6 Select Committee indeed did not help Luria, as even The New York Times admitted

As our sister site of Twitchy covered, pointing to an article from Breitbart about the interview, people very much want to see these criminal referrals.

Meanwhile, Cheney, who has had no problem getting into it with conservatives over social media to defend the Select Committee, has been quiet since March 12, when she fired off a post doubling down. 

Could Donald Trump Be the Key to Convincing Black Voters That 'Democrats are the Real Racists?'

Could Donald Trump Be the Key to Convincing Black Voters That 'Democrats are the Real Racists?'

AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell

As November gets closer, we continue to see a trend in polls beyond the fact Donald Trump is leading against President Joe Biden.

The once solidly blue African-American voting bloc is starting to turn purple, as more black voters express approval of the former president and say they will vote for Trump in the polls.

Conservative influencer Benny Johnson recently went to a Trump rally and spoke with black voters while wearing a T-shirt depicting Trump's famous mugshot from when he turned up for Fani Willis's RICO case against him. Many said the mugshot only enhanced Trump's image and made him look cool (and let's face it, it is a cool picture).

Still, you cannot help but notice a bit of irony, namely that Republicans have been trying to refute the pervasive idea of "systemic racism" harming black Americans, especially the belief that police unfairly target them.

Related: Confirmed: Minority Voters Shifting to GOP in Large Numbers

But because a rogue Department of Justice hellbent on preventing him from returning to the White House is unfairly targeting Trump, one could argue that some resonated with it through the very same lens his party refuses to look through.

This does not necessarily mean that Republicans should try to lean into a narrative that Democrats forge and wield, but if they were smart, Trump's legal persecution could be a means of turning the narrative against itself, while simultaneously providing an avenue to finally get the message that "Democrats are the real racists" to stick.

I have said before that the lawfare to keep Trump out of office is the only campaign advertising he needs since every development energizes his voters and makes them dig in their heels, and thus more money should go to get-out-the-vote drives and encouraging vigilance against voter fraud (and prepping layers in case anything screwy is detected).

But if advertising is necessary, this could be a possible ad or at least the outline of one (someone else can trim this down better than I could):

Democrats want you to believe that Donald Trump is a racist, spending four years trying to convince America of it. Yet under President Trump, more black and Hispanic citizens escaped from poverty than ever before.

Democrats also want you to believe that police unfairly target people by the color of their skin. Yet the reforms they have brought into place have only emboldened crime as radical Democrat prosecutors let even the most dangerous criminals back out on the street, harming everybody regardless of the color of their skin. 

Democrats do this to our cities in the name of fighting racism. But when people of all races speak out against it, Democrats punish them instead of the criminals, including Donald Trump, whom Democrats are trying to keep out of office with unjust lawfare for utterly bogus charges.

Voting for Democrats only means more crime and more poverty. Voting for Donald Trump means safer streets and more prosperity.

Who are the real racists here?

https://pjmedia.com/graysonbakich/2024/03/15/is-donald-trump-convincing-black-voters-democrats-are-the-real-racists-n4927357

The Democrat’s Fictitious World

The Democrat’s Fictitious World

 

AP Photo/Andrew Harnik

President Biden’s State of the Union address triggered predictable reactions among his supporters, who described hisspeech as high energy, forceful” and other adjectives rarely found preceding his name. Naturally, Republicans disagreed. “C’mon, man,” Shmuel Klatzkin quipped: “Was it Adderall, meth, or old-fashioned bennies?” Could’ve been a “miracle, or…better living through chemistry,” but that wasn’t the guy we’ve known since 2020, a man whose mangled syllables tumbled from his lips in batches of incoherence. In other words, the President played a role, a fictionalized version of himself, after which he reverted to form, because he couldn’t keep up the ruse.

In fact, Democratic speeches often reflect an alternate reality, as Dan McLaughlin and others put it, that refers to things that don’t exist, or if they do, are linked to reality by the thinnest threads imaginable. To take an extreme instance from the last century, during the Soviet era, Stalin justified his purgesby blaming Leon Trotsky, whose agents allegedly had penetrated every corner of Soviet society, creating havoc and organizing plots against the General Secretary (Stalin’s title). The only link to reality was Trotsky, who did exist until Stalin’s agents tracked him down and killed him in Mexico. But the rest was sheer fantasy, never happened, purely fictitious. Stalin’s enormous subterfuge solidified his power, which was his primary objective.

Since the Democrats’ moral collapse in the sixties, their lust for unchallenged power has reaped whirlwinds of grotesque fantasies that demonstrate the Party’s descent into a totalitarianmode of thinking and acting. The foundation of every totalitarian movement is fanatical commitment to a fictitiousworld, one best described by Hannah Arendt as comprising“fabricated insanity” buttressed by indoctrination and propaganda. Terror, concentration camps, and oppressionpracticed by twentieth century dictatorships have been replaced in America by wokism, DEI, the cancel culture, critical race theory, and censorship policies that eventually will coverthoughtcrimes as well as speech. All of which are incessant, ubiquitous, and shrill. 

Following the totalitarian script, Democrats have usedpropaganda that smothers harsh realities with blankets of euphemisms. Thus, “pro-choice,” “mostly peaceful protests,” and “gender-affirming surgery” have entered the American lexicon to mask infanticide, murderous riots, and experiences of poor souls who leave hospitals believing their disturbed mental condition was corrected by a surgical fix. All were rationalizations as well, but fictions, nonetheless. And of course, propaganda oozes from schemes to discredit their opponents, such as Russian collusion accusations that plagued Donald Trump and were revealed as fictitious only after they had smeared his reputation. 

Other fictions likely will remain with us for a long time, mostly because the lies and misrepresentations are built into huge organizations with millions of employees who have a stake in their perpetuation. Anthropogenetic climate change is the mother of all fictions, embracing every institution in the United States and Europe, regardless of its advocates’ unbroken recordof failed predictions. Is there actually such a thing as human-caused climate change? Sure, there is, states Stephen Koonin, who served in the Department of Energy in the Obama Administration and authored Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, and Why It Matters. Enough to justify apocalyptic frenzies about destroying civilization in order save it? No, he says, the data don’t support such a policy. Doesn’t matter; nearly unlimited power accrues to those who convince the masses otherwise. After all, the fate of the planet is at stake, right? Therefore, surrender your freedoms and eat bugs.

Koonin was labeled a “climate denier” for his troubles, an unscientific rebuke for challenging a totalitarian narrative. But when Harvard Economics Professor Roland Fryer found "no racial differences in officer-involved shootings,” he stated that “all hell broke loose,” and he needed police protection for a month. The deities of totalitarian narratives are jealous gods, indeed.

Which means that Americans who have families, careers, and reputations to protect  practically all of us  must step carefully through the minefield of “alternate realities” that plague the country and have energized America’s oldest political party for the past two generations. Challenging fictitious accounts about the foundations of our lives is a dangerous, perhaps even a life-threatening undertaking. But it must be done. Indeed, the survival of our Republic depends on it.

https://townhall.com/columnists/marvinfolkertsma/2024/03/14/the-democrats-fictitious-world-n2636486?utm_source=thdailyvip&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&bcid=15803c7fc8c68b6fd1f0a5e7f4b59fc49df45d48335d4339ad60f7b0a0c7404d&recip=28668535

Sunday, March 17, 2024

WILLFULLY YOURS

WILLFULLY YOURS

BY SCOTT JOHNSON IN INTELLIGENCEJOE BIDENLAW

Special Counsel Robert Hur found that President Biden willfully mishandled documents subject to the Espionage Act provision set forth in 28 U.S.C. § 793(e). However, Hur clouded the “willfulness” element of the offense by resting his non-prosecution recommendation in part on Biden’s present senility. Hur presents his analysis of the element of “willfulness” under section 793 in Chapter Nine of his report.

The relevant question is whether Biden committed the acts “willfully” at the relevant time. Hur had a smoking gun or two to prove the “willfulness” element of the offense. Among other things, however, he suggested that a jury would be reluctant to convict someone as out of it as Biden is and imputed the jury’s likely reluctance to Biden’s present inability to act “willfully” beyond a reasonable doubt. See, for example, Chapters Eleven and Twelve of the report.

Just to give an idea of the evidence Hur compiled, the Wall Street Journal’s James Freeman highlights a few passages from Hur’s report. Freeman quotes this from Chapter Twelve:

As with the classified Afghanistan documents [discussed in Chapter Eleven], there is evidence that Mr. Biden kept his notebooks after his vice presidency knowing they were classified and he was not allowed to have them.

The evidence shows convincingly that Mr. Biden knew the notebooks, as a whole, contained classified information. For eight years, he wrote in his notebooks about classified information during classified meetings in the White House Situation Room and elsewhere. He was familiar with the notebooks’ contents, which included obviously classified information. When reviewing the notebooks with [Biden ghostwriter Mark] Zwonitzer, Mr. Biden sometimes read aloud classified notes verbatim, but he also sometimes appeared to skip over classified information, and he warned Zwonitzer that the material in the notebooks could be classified. Mr. Biden also stored the notebooks in a classified safe in the White House for a time as vice president because the notebooks were classified.

In Mr. Biden’s written answers to questions from our office, he called into question whether he knew the information in his notebooks was classified. In those answers, Mr. Biden explained that when he described material in his notebooks to Zwonitzer as “classified’’ he did not actually mean “classified.” According to Mr. Biden, “I may have used the word ‘classified’ with Mr. Zwonitzer in a generic sense, to refer not to the formal classification of national security information, but to sensitive or private topics to ensure that Mr. Zwonitzer would not write about them.” Mr. Biden qualified this answer by explaining, “I do not recall the specific conversations you reference with Mr. Zwonitzer, which took place more than six years ago.”

This explanation-that “classified” does not mean “classified”-is not credible. At the time Mr. Biden met with Zwonitzer, Mr. Biden had nearly fifty years of experience dealing with classified information, including as a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, a member and Chairman of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, a member and Chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, and Vice President of the United States. It is not plausible that a person of his knowledge and experience used the term “classified” in this context as a euphemism for “private.”

Hur discusses the existence of grounds for reasonable doubt regarding Biden’s willfulness at the time of the acts (i.e., evidence that Biden thought the notebooks were his personal property), but falls back on Biden’s subsequent incompetence (my word, not Hur’s). If Biden thought they were his personal property, why did he lie about the meaning of “classified.” As I wrote yesterday, Hur’s analysis has the quality of a student working backward from the known answer to a question. Hur thus concludes Chapter Twelve:

Given the intelligence and military officials present and the topics discussed at the meetings Mr. Biden recounted for Zwonitzer, Mr. Biden should have realized that his notes did or were likely to contain classified information. But taken as a whole, the evidence will likely leave jurors with reasonable doubts about whether Mr. Biden knew he was sharing classified information with Zwonitzer and intended to do so. For these jurors, Mr. Biden’s apparent lapses and failures in February and April 2017 will likely appear consistent with the diminished faculties and faulty memory he showed in Zwonitzer’s interview recordings and in our interview of him. Therefore, we conclude that the evidence does not establish that Mr. Biden willfully disclosed national defense information to Zwonitzer.

I thought someone would press Hur on the “willfulness” issue at the hearing. Rep. Ken Buck, who declared he’s outta here next week, came the closest to getting at it toward the tail end of the five-hour hearing (video below). Even within the five-minutes limiting each round of questions — Buck could have omitted his introductory remarks and gotten to the point — Buck almost got there, but this ain’t horseshoes.