Tuesday, October 31, 2017

MORE EXPLOSIONS FROM THAT CIGAR?


Kimberly Strassel of the Wall Street Journal tells us to expect more “Russia bombshells” if a judge orders Fusion GPS to turn over bank records to House investigators. Says Strassel:
We now know where Fusion got some of its cash, but the next question is how the firm used it. With whom did it work beyond former British spy Christopher Steele? Whom did it pay? Who else was paying it?
Bank records would likely answer these questions.
More “bombshells” may fall when the FBI turns over its dossier file to the House next week, as it has promised to do. Strassel predicts:
[E]xpect to learn that the dossier was indeed a major basis of investigating the Trump team—despite reading like “the National Enquirer,” as Rep. Trey Gowdy aptly put it. We may learn the FBI knew the dossier was a bought-and-paid-for product of Candidate Clinton, but used it anyway. Or that it didn’t know, which would be equally disturbing.
It might show the bureau was simply had. . . .
[Director] Comey was so convinced by the dossier that he pushed to have it included in the intelligence community’s January report on Russian meddling. Imagine if it turns out the FBI was duped by a politically contracted document that might have been filled up by the Kremlin.
Another set of records, those of Perkins Coie, might well put an end to the DNC’s attempt to disclaim knowledge of the dossier deal and pin the blame on the firm. Strassel explains:
[W]hile it is not unusual for law firms to hire opposition-research outfits for political clients, it is highly unusual for a law firm to pay bills without a client’s approval. Somewhere, Perkins Coie has documents showing who signed off on those bills, and they aren’t protected by attorney-client privilege.
Those names will matter, since someone at the DNC and at the Clinton campaign will need to explain how they somehow both forgot to list Fusion as a vendor in their campaign-finance filings. Some Justice Department lawyer is presumably already looking into whether this was a willful evasion, which can carry criminal penalties.
These aren’t the only bombshells Strassel anticipates. Read the whole thing.
That exploding cigar Scott referenced may contain a few more rounds.

The Coming Russia Bombshells

The Coming Russia Bombshells

A judge may order Fusion GPS to give House investigators its bank records.

By Kimberley A. Strassel
Christopher Steele speaks to the media in London, March 7.
The confirmation this week that Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee paid an opposition-research firm for a “dossier” on Donald Trump is bombshell news. More bombshells are to come.
The Fusion GPS saga isn’t over. The Clinton-DNC funding is but a first glimpse into the shady election doings concealed within that oppo-research firm’s walls. We now know where Fusion got some of its cash, but the next question is how the firm used it. With whom did it work beyond former British spy Christopher Steele ? Whom did it pay? Who else was paying it?
The answers are in Fusion’s bank records. Fusion has doggedly refused to divulge the names of its clients for months now, despite extraordinary pressure. So why did the firm suddenly insist that middleman law firm Perkins Coie release Fusion from confidentiality agreements, and spill the beans on who hired it?
Because there’s something Fusion cares about keeping secret even more than the Clinton-DNC news—and that something is in those bank records. The release of the client names was a last-ditch effort to appease the House Intelligence Committee, which issued subpoenas to Fusion’s bank and was close to obtaining records until Fusion filed suit last week. The release was also likely aimed at currying favor with the court, given Fusion’s otherwise weak legal case. The judge could rule as early as Friday morning.
If the House wins, don’t be surprised if those records include money connected to Russians. In the past Fusion has worked with Russians, including lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, who happened to show up last year in Donald Trump Jr.’s office.
FBI bombshells are also yet to come. The bureau has stonewalled congressional subpoenas for documents related to the dossier, but that became harder with the DNC-Clinton news. On Thursday Speaker Paul Ryan announced the FBI had finally pledged to turn over its dossier file next week.
Assuming the FBI is comprehensive in its disclosure, expect to learn that the dossier was indeed a major basis of investigating the Trump team—despite reading like “the National Enquirer,” as Rep. Trey Gowdy aptly put it. We may learn the FBI knew the dossier was a bought-and-paid-for product of Candidate Clinton, but used it anyway. Or that it didn’t know, which would be equally disturbing.
It might show the bureau was simply had. Don’t forget that it wasn’t until January the dossier became public, and the media started unearthing details. And the more ugly info that came out (Fusion, Democratic clients, intelligence-for-hire) the more former Obama officials seemed skeptical of it. In May, former Director of National Intelligence Jim Clapper said his people could never “corroborate” its “sourcing.” In June, Mr. Comey derided it as “salacious and unverified.”
Yet none of this jibes with reports that the FBI debated paying Mr. Steele to continue his work. Or that Mr. Comey was so convinced by the dossier that he pushed to have it included in the intelligence community’s January report on Russian meddling. Imagine if it turns out the FBI was duped by a politically contracted document that might have been filled up by the Kremlin.
There’s plenty yet to come with regard to the DNC and the Clinton campaign. Every senior Democrat is disclaiming knowledge of the dossier deal, leaving Perkins Coie holding the bag. But while it is not unusual for law firms to hire opposition-research outfits for political clients, it is highly unusual for a law firm to pay bills without a client’s approval. Somewhere, Perkins Coie has documents showing who signed off on those bills, and they aren’t protected by attorney-client privilege.
Those names will matter, since someone at the DNC and at the Clinton campaign will need to explain how they somehow both forgot to list Fusion as a vendor in their campaign-finance filings. Some Justice Department lawyer is presumably already looking into whether this was a willful evasion, which can carry criminal penalties. It’s one thing to forget to list that local hot-dog supplier for the campaign picnic. It’s a little fishier when two entities both fail to list the firm that supplied them the most explosive hit job in a generation.
And there are still bombshells with regard to unmasking of Americans in surveilled communications. If the Steele dossier reports (which appear to date back to June 2016) were making their way into the hands of senior DNC and Clinton political operatives, you can bet they were making their way to the Obama White House. This may explain why Obama political appointees began monitoring the Trump campaign and abusing unmasking. They were looking for a “gotcha,” something to disqualify a Trump presidency. Of course, they were doing so on the basis of “salacious and unverified” accusations made by anonymous Russians, but never mind.
No, this probe of the Democratic Party’s Russian dalliance has a long, long way to go. And, let us hope, with revelations too big for even the media to ignore.
Write to kim@wsj.com.

Don's Tuesday Column

             THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson  Red Bluff Daily News   10/31/2017

          Manafort, Tea Party, fires and sex

As of Monday morning, the news informing this column casts no guilt on President Donald J. Trump and no aspersions on his campaign; nor does the reported indictment of former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort—even if proven true—shed any light on evidence of collusion between Trump, his campaign and Russia. Reportedly, Manafort (who had a temporary, limited role during the 2016 Trump campaign and, frankly, never impressed this writer as a good face or voice for Trump) faces charges stemming from financial and advocacy activities years ago involving foreign governments.
At the time he was brought into the Trump campaign last year, he had no prior convictions or indictments, so Trump is free of any taint associated therewith. Assuming that Manafort has no previously unknown information—the surfacing of which would be surprising, even shocking, given the lack of secrecy in the phony Trump/Russia scandal—it will be nothing less than an exoneration of Trump and his campaign.
Let’s be clear about one thing: The indictments announced Monday are irrelevant to the task given the special prosecutor, Bob Mueller, of discovering actual collusion (not a crime) or conspiracy (a crime if what was being conspired amounted to a federal criminal act). A case can be made regarding the disclosure of the surreptitious and blatantly illegal deception over the funding of the so-called “Russian dossier” and its numerous fabrications, by the Democratic National Committee, based on stated Russian sources by ex-British spy Christopher Steele.
That case would be that the money paid by Democrats and their contracted lawyer/law firm—Mark Elias and Perkins Coie—to opposition research firm Fusion GPS, were not for “legal services,” but were payments to foreigners for salacious fabrications whose use was intended to remove Trump from the presidency of our nation. That is vile Russian/Democrat “collusion.”
Let’s note several other news items. “US to pay tea party groups in lawsuits over IRS scrutiny,” by Sadie Gurman of the AP, provides a fitting closure to one of the most despicable, outrageous and, frankly, defining cases of corruption under Obama’s presidency. President Richard Nixon was impeached, in part, over merely attempting to use the IRS to persecute his political opponents; Barack Obama succeeded beyond Nixon’s wildest dreams.
It was a conspiracy in plain sight between Obama, IRS head Lois Lerner and their minions at the agency’s tax exempt division, to slow down and harass the Tea Party movement into ineffectiveness in the elections following the passage of Obamacare (ACA), rammed through Congress with 100 percent Democrat votes. Some of those responsible should face fines and jail.
 In “GOP targets environmental rules after wildfires,” the AP’s Matthew Daly reported on reasonable and much overdue measures proposed by Republicans in Congress to expedite cutting and thinning of our national forests, recently in the news for deadly, massive wildfires that destroyed many thousands of homes and businesses. Fires in America’s forests are not entirely preventable; indeed, about a hundred years ago, fires in the upper Midwest that killed hundreds were accelerated by logging. The clearing of forests was good but the wood debris littered the forest floor and had the predictable effect of precipitating conflagrations, overtaking towns.
It is beyond dispute that if forests are cleared and heavily thinned in the areas surrounding towns and cities, the fires that start by nature or human carelessness (even intention) have vastly less fuel as they approach population centers. Why else would forestry departments go to such lengths to urge clearing fuel from around rural, foothill and mountain homes? It’s an idea so full of common sense that no one could credibly deny that seeing less forest around towns and cities would be a fair trade-off.
No one but Democrat environmental slaves to the so-called global warming religion, as revealed in Daly’s piece, drives opposition to Republican proposals. “Democrats also complain that Republican proposals don’t acknowledge or address root causes for increasingly severe wildfire seasons, such as climate change or increased development near forest lands.” First, when people develop and move into subdivided parcels, simply provide schools with additional money from clearing of nearby forests by logging—it’s a win-win. Second, they can’t have it both ways by saying forests are dying from global warming but overgrown tracts must be left alone to fuel conflagrations. Go see “Only the brave” playing locally for the meaning of “fuel.”
“California lawmaker apologizes for 2009 harassment incident,” by AP’s Kathleen Ronayne; Instapundit.com’s Glenn Reynolds asks, “Why are Democrat-run institutions such cesspools of sex assault (or violence, drugs, corruption, etc.).” She inadvertently illustrates the oversight in many news stories—or the “Name that party” game—of neglecting to identify Democrats caught in scandal as, well, Democrats. “Oversight” would be sloppy; intentional obfuscation would be professional malpractice. It’s hard not to lean toward intentionally misleading readers when, in a later baseless charge by the Women’s Caucus, Ronayne immediately identifies Assemblyman Devon Mathis as a “Republican-Visalia,” for his “alleged actions.” Years ago, a media critic assembled over a dozen reported sex scandals, often involving minors, that rarely ID’d the perpetrator’s political party; yes, they were mostly Democrats.

A brief correction to an accepted narrative from the Vietnam War: Ho Chi Minh was, first and always, a communist adherent of Lenin, Stalin and Mao. His fanatical pursuit of a “unified Vietnam” was solely to implement international Communism. Not red-baiting, “domino” theorizing or commie-hunting; just pure, brutal, totalitarian devotion to Russia and China.

Democrats, Russians and the FBI: Did the bureau use disinformation to trigger its Trump probe?

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL EDITORIALIZES: Democrats, Russians and the FBI: Did the bureau use disinformation to trigger its Trump probe?

It turns out that Russia has sown distrust in the U.S. political system—aided and abetted by the Democratic Party, and perhaps the FBI. This is an about-face from the dominant media narrative of the last year, and it requires a full investigation.
The Washington Post revealed Tuesday that the Hillary Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee jointly paid for that infamous “dossier” full of Russian disinformation against Donald Trump. They filtered the payments through a U.S. law firm (Perkins Coie), which hired the opposition-research hit men at Fusion GPS. Fusion in turn tapped a former British spook, Christopher Steele, to compile the allegations, which are based largely on anonymous, Kremlin-connected sources.
Strip out the middlemen, and it appears that Democrats paid for Russians to compile wild allegations about a U.S. presidential candidate. Did someone say “collusion”?
This news is all the more explosive because the DNC and Clinton campaign hid their role, even amid the media furor after BuzzFeed published the Steele dossier in January. Reporters are now saying that Clinton campaign officials lied to them about their role in the dossier. Current DNC Chair Tom Perez and former Chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz deny knowing about the dossier arrangement, but someone must have known.
Perhaps this explains why Congressional Democrats have been keen to protect Fusion from answering dossier questions—disrupting hearings, protesting subpoenas and deriding Republican investigators. Two of Fusion’s cofounders invoked their Fifth Amendment rights last week rather than answer House Intelligence Committee questions, and Fusion filed a federal lawsuit on Friday to block committee subpoenas of its bank records.
The more troubling question is whether the FBI played a role, even if inadvertently, in assisting a Russian disinformation campaign. We know the agency possessed the dossier in 2016, and according to media reports it debated paying Mr. Steele to continue his work in the runup to the election. This occurred while former FBI Director James Comey was ramping up his probe into supposed ties between the Trump campaign and Russians.
Two pertinent questions: Did the dossier trigger the FBI probe of the Trump campaign, and did Mr. Comey or his agents use it as evidence to seek wiretapping approval from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Trump campaign aides?

Perhaps the court should address this. Plus:
All of this also raises questions about Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. The Fusion news means the FBI’s role in Russia’s election interference must now be investigated—even as the FBI and Justice insist that Mr. Mueller’s probe prevents them from cooperating with Congressional investigators.
Mr. Mueller is a former FBI director, and for years he worked closely with Mr. Comey. It is no slur against Mr. Mueller’s integrity to say that he lacks the critical distance to conduct a credible probe of the bureau he ran for a dozen years. He could best serve the country by resigning to prevent further political turmoil over that conflict of interest.
Yes, he should.

Monday, October 30, 2017

HILLARY’S DOSSIER

HILLARY’S DOSSIER

The Trump Dossier was a fertile source of hysteria over Russian collusion with the Trump campaign. Then FBI Director James Comey found the dossier of use, briefing President Trump on it at Trump Tower in New York two weeks before the inauguration. “In my opinion, he shared it so that I would think he had it out there,” Trump subsequently told the New York Times. When asked by the Times if it was as leverage, Trump responded: “Yeah, I think so. In retrospect.”
“When he brought it to me, I said this is really, made-up junk. I didn’t think about any of it. I just thought about, man, this is such a phony deal,” Trump said, denying the dossier’s claims. (Here I am drawing from the Hill’s account of events this past July.)
All of which undoubtedly contributed to the firing of James Comey and the appointment of Robert Mueller as special counsel to investigate all things Trump and anything else that captures his interest along the way. In the words of the Gershwin brothers’ song, let’s call the whole thing off.
After much pain — after much lying, Clinton style — the Washington Post reported on Tuesday evening that the Trump Dossier was commissioned by the smear outfit GPS Fusion at the behest of the Clinton campaign. It was funded by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee.
Tom Perez, the current chairman of the Democratic National Committee wants it to be known that the DNC’s “new [post-election] leadership” (Perez and Minnesota’s own fast-talking hustler Keith Ellison) know nothing. They all sound like Mafia types. Nobody knows anything.
The nobodies include Clinton presidential campaign spokesman Brian Fallon — the fallacious Brian Fallon. He knows nothing. However, he’s not too sure about Hillary (video below). As always, she must have maintained deniability, however implausible.
 
 
Query: who on Team Hillary signed off on it? How did the Obmaa administration use the dossier? These are questions that I seriously doubt will be entertained by Mueller and his team.
The Trump Dossier is the pure product of the Clinton campaign/Elias commission. Despite much confusion among media types such as FOX News’s Ed Henry, GOP money had nothing to do with the dossier. See Mollie Hemingway’s Federalist short course in the Trump Dossier for Dummies. See Ken Vogel’s New York Times version. See Aaron Blake’s Washington Post version.
The Trump Dossier was commissioned and paid for — the money was laundered and the payments for the dossier were concealed — through Washington’s Perkins Coie law firm and Perkins Coie partner Marc Elias. The Perkins Coie firm is a Democratic outfit. Marc Elias is a lawyer operative for Democrats. According to his firm bio, Elias worked as general counsel to Hillary for America, i.e., the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign.
Americas PAC chairman Tom Donelon tells us that he has faced Perkins Coie in its work on behalf of Democrats threatening radio stations to get ads pulled. Tom reminds me that I wrote about Americas PAC’s close encounter with Perkins Coie in 2014 on Power Line here.
Elias tasked former British MI6 counterintelligence chief Christopher Steele with preparing the Trump Dossier. Steele’s work for MI6 reportedly included posting in Russia. In preparing the dossier, Steele drew on Russian sources who seem to have fed him disinformation, Putin style, during the period from June 2016-December 2016.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Steele also devised a plan to get the information to law-enforcement officials in the U.S. and Europe, including the FBI. We know that dossier made its way to Comey.
Mollie Hemingway refers to the sources as “senior Russian officials” quotes Howard Blum’sVanity Fair article on the dossier: “Source A—to use the careful nomenclature of his dossier—was ‘a senior Russian Foreign Ministry figure.’ Source B was ‘a former top level intelligence officer still active in the Kremlin.’”
As President Trump observes, the long sought campaign collusion with Putin’s Russia appears to have come courtesy of Hilary Clinton. What now?

MORE EXPLOSIONS FROM THAT CIGAR?

MORE EXPLOSIONS FROM THAT CIGAR?

Kimberly Strassel of the Wall Street Journal tells us to expect more “Russia bombshells” if a judge orders Fusion GPS to turn over bank records to House investigators. Says Strassel:
We now know where Fusion got some of its cash, but the next question is how the firm used it. With whom did it work beyond former British spy Christopher Steele? Whom did it pay? Who else was paying it?
Bank records would likely answer these questions.
More “bombshells” may fall when the FBI turns over its dossier file to the House next week, as it has promised to do. Strassel predicts:
[E]xpect to learn that the dossier was indeed a major basis of investigating the Trump team—despite reading like “the National Enquirer,” as Rep. Trey Gowdy aptly put it. We may learn the FBI knew the dossier was a bought-and-paid-for product of Candidate Clinton, but used it anyway. Or that it didn’t know, which would be equally disturbing.
It might show the bureau was simply had. . . .
[Director] Comey was so convinced by the dossier that he pushed to have it included in the intelligence community’s January report on Russian meddling. Imagine if it turns out the FBI was duped by a politically contracted document that might have been filled up by the Kremlin.
Another set of records, those of Perkins Coie, might well put an end to the DNC’s attempt to disclaim knowledge of the dossier deal and pin the blame on the firm. Strassel explains:
[W]hile it is not unusual for law firms to hire opposition-research outfits for political clients, it is highly unusual for a law firm to pay bills without a client’s approval. Somewhere, Perkins Coie has documents showing who signed off on those bills, and they aren’t protected by attorney-client privilege.
Those names will matter, since someone at the DNC and at the Clinton campaign will need to explain how they somehow both forgot to list Fusion as a vendor in their campaign-finance filings. Some Justice Department lawyer is presumably already looking into whether this was a willful evasion, which can carry criminal penalties.
These aren’t the only bombshells Strassel anticipates. Read the whole thing.
That exploding cigar Scott referenced may contain a few more rounds.