90 Miles From Tyranny

Tuesday, March 26, 2019

With the conclusions of special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe now known to a significant degree, it seems apologies are in order.

However, judging by the recent past, apologies are not likely forthcoming from the responsible parties.

In this context, it matters not whether one is a supporter or a critic of President Trump.

Whatever his supposed flaws, the rampant accusations and speculation that shrouded Trump’s presidency, even before it began, ultimately have proven unfounded. Just as Trump said all along.

Yet, each time Trump said so, some of us in the media lampooned him. We treated any words he spoke in his own defense as if they were automatically to be disbelieved because he had uttered them. Some even declared his words to be “lies,” although they had no evidence to back up their claims.

We in the media allowed unproven charges and false accusations to dominate the news landscape for more than two years, in a way that was wildly unbalanced and disproportionate to the evidence.

We did a poor job of tracking down leaks of false information. We failed to reasonably weigh the motives of anonymous sources and those claiming to have secret, special evidence of Trump’s “treason.”

As such, we reported a tremendous amount of false information, always to Trump’s detriment.

And when we corrected our mistakes, we often doubled down more than we apologized. We may have been technically wrong on that tiny point, we would acknowledge. But, in the same breath, we would insist that Trump was so obviously guilty of being Russian President Vladimir Putin’s puppet that the technical details hardly mattered.

So, a round of apologies seem in order.

Apologies to Trump on behalf of those in the U.S. intelligence community, including the Department of Justice and the FBI, which allowed the weaponization of sensitive, intrusive intelligence tools against innocent citizens such as Carter Page, an adviser to Trump’s presidential campaign.

Apologies also to Page himself, to Jerome Corsi, Donald Trump Jr., and other citizens whose rights were violated or who were unfairly caught up in surveillance or the heated pursuit of charges based on little more than false, unproven opposition research paid for by Democrats and the Hillary Clintoncampaign.

Apologies for the stress on their jobs and to their families, the damage to their reputations, the money they had to spend to hire legal representation and defend themselves from charges for crimes they did not commit.

Apologies on behalf of those in the intelligence community who leaked true information out of context to make Trump look guilty, and who sometimes leaked false information to try to implicate or frame him.

Apologies from those in the chain of command at the FBI and the Department of Justice who were supposed to make sure all information presented to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) is verified but did not do so.

Apologies from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court judges who are supposed to serve as one of the few checks and balances to prevent the FBI from wiretapping innocent Americans. Whether because of blind trust in the FBI or out of ignorance or even malfeasance, they failed at this important job.

Apologies to the American people who did not receive the full attention of their government while political points were being scored; who were not told about some important world events because they were crowded out of the news by the persistent insistence that Trump was working for Russia.

Apologies all the way around.

And now, with those apologies handled — are more than apologies due?

Should we try to learn more about those supposed Russian sources who provided false “intel” contained in the “dossier” against Trump, Page and others? Should we learn how these sources came to the attention of ex-British spy Christopher Steele, who built the dossier and claimed that some of the sources were close to Putin?

When and where did Steele meet with these high-level Russian sources who provided the apparently false information?

Are these the people who actually took proven, concrete steps to interfere in the 2016 election and sabotage Trump’s presidency, beginning in its earliest days?

Just who conspired to put the “dossier” into the hands of the FBI? Who, within our intel community, dropped the ball on verifying the information and, instead, leaked it to the press and presented it to the FISC as if legitimate?

“Sorry” hardly seems to be enough.

Will anyone be held accountable?

Sharyl Attkisson (@SharylAttkisson) is an Emmy Award-winning investigative journalist, author of...

The Chairman Says, Wait In Line...

Internet banking nails Islamic Utrecht tram shooter..

A fine piece of financial investigation has proven fatal for Utrecht tram shooter Gökmen Tanis. The attacker of Turkish origin made a money transfer via telebanking using a phone he borrowed from a friend shortly after he killed three people.

UTRECHT- The mobile phone, with which the remarkable transaction was carried out, was able to be traced, and so the investigators discovered Tanis’ location. He was overpowered by an arrest team soon after.

The investigators — after the identity of the attacker was first ascertained — were only able to hunt down an old telephone number for Tanis.

That number did not lead to any useful information concerning his location. Investigations of friends and family also bore no results. Meanwhile, the threat of further attacks by Tanis had increased.

Due to these enormous risks, the police decided to monitor the bank details of the suspect in real time. This is a very exceptional step say Dutch law enforcement officials.

Shortly after the attack, Tanis logged into his bank account with an unknown mobile telephone and transferred money. The transaction was able to be directly linked to the number of a mobile phone, which could then be checked out using special equipment thanks to an urgent authorization from a magistrate.

The phone turned out to be the property of a friend of Tanis’. The digital tracking exercise led to the location where Tanis was staying. Soon after, a team from the Special Intervention Service raided the location and arrested Tanis.

Meanwhile, it has become clearer why the police and public prosecutor have taken the terrorist motive of the attack seriously. In a letter recovered from the getaway car, Tanis not only reported that he acted in the name of Allah, but also...

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...