90 Miles From Tyranny

Tuesday, March 26, 2019

Mueller Exposes Spy Chiefs

Did our intel leaders have any evidence when they pushed the Russia collusion line?

Now that special counsel Robert Mueller has found that no one in the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election, Democrats are busy moving the goal posts. But this is a distraction from the real reckoning that needs to come.

The one we need is for all the intelligence officials—including former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former Central Intelligence Agency chief John Brennan, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s former Director James Comey and former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe—who pushed the Russia conspiracy theory. The special counsel has just made clear they did so with no real evidence.

Mr. Mueller could have said he didn’t have enough evidence to prosecute. Instead he was categorical: “The investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”

This wasn’t for lack of trying on Moscow’s part. “Despite multiple offers” from Russia-affiliated individuals to help their campaign, Mr. Mueller reports, the Trump people didn’t take them up on it.

So why do 44% of Americans—according to a Fox News poll released Sunday—believe otherwise? Part of the answer has to be that the collusion tale was egged on by leading members and former members of the American intelligence community.

Intelligence professionals are trained to sift through the noise and distractions in pursuit of the truth. In this case, however, they went all in for a tale that the Russian government had somehow compromised Mr. Trump or his close associates. In peddling this line, their authority rested on the idea they had access to alarming and conclusive evidence the rest of America couldn’t see. Now it appears they never had much more than an unverified opposition-research dossier commissioned by Fusion GPS’s Glenn Simpson on behalf of Hillary Clinton.

Nevertheless, they persisted. Start with the FBI’s Mr. McCabe, who boasts that he is the man who opened the counterintelligence probe into Russia and President Trump. Today the question has to be: On what evidence was this extraordinary step predicated, apart from Mr. Trump’s saying things the G-man didn’t like?

As recently as three weeks ago, Mr. McCabe—sacked by the bureau for a “lack of candor”—told CNN that he still thought it “possible” President Trump was a “Russian asset.” Again, on what evidence?

Ditto for Mr. Clapper, who said he agreed “completely” with Mr. McCabe that Mr. Trump could be a Russian asset. He added only that he couldn’t be certain whether it was “witting or unwitting.” Coming from a former director of national intelligence, this is a grave accusation. But on what evidence?

Or consider Mr. Brennan. After a presidential press conference in Helsinki with Vladimir Putin in which Mr. Trump refused to acknowledge Russian meddling in the 2016 election, Mr. Brennan tweeted that the president’s behavior was “nothing short of treasonous.” Not “wrong,” not “outrageous,” but...

VIDEO: 22 illegals pour out of stolen pickup truck in 11 seconds after fleeing TX traffic stop

How many illegal immigrants can cram into a stolen Ford F-250?

Deputies with the Brooks County Sheriff recently learned the answer is at least 22.

It took only about 11 seconds for nearly two dozen illegal immigrants to ditch the vehicle following a traffic stop in Encino, Texas on Friday.

A video posted to the Brooks County Sheriff’s Office Facebook page is as comical as it is concerning, a shocking illustration of the chaos that’s become daily life in border communities.

“Brooks County Sheriff’s Office conducted a traffic stop on a White Ford F-250 that came back stolen,” according to the post. “After a brief pursuit the vehicle bailout in Encino, TX.”

The footage, from a cruiser dash cam, shows deputies initially pulled the white four door truck over on northbound Highway 281, about an hour north of the U.S.-Mexico border.

A passenger in the truck poked his head out of the rear passenger door, and the truck then sped away, crossing both northbound lanes to a turnaround across the median. The vehicle continued across two southbound lanes before driving into a field, where passengers began to flee before the vehicle even came to a stop.

A half-dozen or more men jump out and over a nearby fence as the truck stopped, then well over a dozen more follow suit. Several men in the back of the truck were clearly packed in literally like sardines, with one row in...

After over two years of speculation and endless media coverage, the Mueller report is here, and it arrived with a whimper.

Questions will now turn to what’s shaping up to be the bigger scandal.

The only indictment we’ll likely see in the coming weeks is of America’s media elite, who oversold the report, misled the public, and otherwise appeared to be laser-focused on the goal of ending Donald Trump’s presidency rather than faithfully drawing out the truth.

For those who were hoping the report would unveil evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government, the fact that it was submitted late on Friday afternoon wasn’t a good sign. Late-Friday document dumps are usually aimed at minimizing media coverage of embarrassing information.

Attorney General William Barr confirmed the left’s worst fears in a four-page summary on Sunday.

“The special counsel’s investigation did not find that the Trump campaign or anyone associated with it conspired or coordinated with Russia in its effort to influence the 2016 presidential election,” Barr wrote.

The letter continued, quoting directly from the Mueller report: “[T]he investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”

Of course, Trump was quick to pounce, as they say, on Twitter.

For those searching for a way to implicate Trump in some sort of crime, Robert Mueller’s report declined to comment on “whether the examined conduct constituted obstruction,” according to Barr.

Undoubtedly, progressives and Democrats will now turn their attention to the inconclusive obstruction of justice charge, but that’s an awfully big drop-off for a movement that is dead set on impeachment and dragging Trump out of office in chains.

The fact is that after nonstop allegations and insinuations that Trump was a Manchurian candidate and a puppet of the Putin regime, there appears to be no evidence whatsoever to...