Wednesday, April 24, 2019
7 Glaring Omissions In The Mueller Report That Kill Its Credibility
Robert Mueller’s special counsel was presented to the American public as unimpeachable. From its beginning, a distinct minority in politics and media, including several Federalist writers, were skeptical, citing the special counsel’s past prosecutorial abuses, the past alleged misconduct of its pivotal investigators, and the team’s peculiar partisan makeup.
Once in action, its seemingly limitless powers, heavy-handed usage of such powers, and more questionable if not dubious indictments, far removed from “collusion,” seemed to confirm our worst fears. While there is much within the Mueller report that further suggests this skepticism was well-founded, what is perhaps most probative is what the report omitted.
The following are seven of the most glaring omissions from the collusion section of the redacted Mueller report—since collusion, not obstruction, was the theory from which the investigation stemmed.
1. No Attempt to Grapple with the Investigation’s Troubling Underpinnings
Russiagate in many ways appears to be the fruit of a poisonous tree of epic proportions. Allegations of a treasonous Russian conspiracy led to beyond novel legal theories, including the ludicrous invocation of the Logan Act, pervasive unmasking, spying on a presidential campaign by a political adversary based in part on a salacious and unverified dossier gleaned from sketchy Russian sources by a foreign agent and paid for by an opposition campaign, chicanerous circularity in the warrants backing the spying, the use of informants to perhaps entrap campaign members, a deluge of leaks (some of which were illegal), and much else.
We can layer on top of these malevolent acts the biases, ethical infractions, outright criminality, and clear double standards applied by law enforcement figures common to the Trump-Russia and Hillary Clinton emails investigations.
The collusion section of the Mueller special counsel report barely addresses any of the foregoing. How could such an investigation have any credibility without dealing with any, if not all of these issues?
Russiagate in many ways appears to be the fruit of a poisonous tree of epic proportions. Allegations of a treasonous Russian conspiracy led to beyond novel legal theories, including the ludicrous invocation of the Logan Act, pervasive unmasking, spying on a presidential campaign by a political adversary based in part on a salacious and unverified dossier gleaned from sketchy Russian sources by a foreign agent and paid for by an opposition campaign, chicanerous circularity in the warrants backing the spying, the use of informants to perhaps entrap campaign members, a deluge of leaks (some of which were illegal), and much else.
We can layer on top of these malevolent acts the biases, ethical infractions, outright criminality, and clear double standards applied by law enforcement figures common to the Trump-Russia and Hillary Clinton emails investigations.
The collusion section of the Mueller special counsel report barely addresses any of the foregoing. How could such an investigation have any credibility without dealing with any, if not all of these issues?
2. No Discussion of Whether the Special Counsel’s Appointment Was Legitimate
From the special counsel’s inception, former federal prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy and others have harped on a single fundamental question: Was the special counsel appointed in accordance with Department of Justice (DOJ) regulations?
A special counsel must be appointed based on a criminal investigation. The Mueller special counsel stemmed from a counterintelligence investigation. A special counsel’s scope must be tailored to “a specific factual statement of the matter to be investigated.” The Mueller special counsel order did not seem to adhere to this standard, and in practice, its scope was virtually unlimited.
The Mueller report does not even attempt to address this basic challenge to its legitimacy. Nor does it deal with the arguable conflicts of interest and improper actions taken by those associated with its creation, including former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe, former FBI director James Comey, and the man overseeing the special counsel, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein—who, as Sean Davis points out, was a participant, witness, and perhaps target of the investigation himself.
3. No Discussion of Special Counsel’s Perceived Bias
The appearance of conflict based upon the composition of the special counsel team is striking. To highlight the affiliations of just a few members: Andrew Weissmann attended Hillary Clinton’s election night 2016 party and cheered on Obama DOJ holdover and former acting attorney general Sally Yates’ defying of a directive from President Trump.
Jeannie Rhee represented Hillary Clinton in a lawsuit regarding her private emails, as well as the Clinton Foundation, and previously served as a deputy assistant attorney general in the Obama administration. Aaron Zebley defended former Hillary Clinton staffer Justin Cooper, who installed her infamous private email server.
Democrats with deep ties to the administration under which the Russia investigations commenced, as well as Donald Trump’s presidential opponent, predominated in the special counsel’s office. Meanwhile, Mueller, as former FBI director, was a creature of the political establishment, and the institutions from which the investigations sprung. That his report does not grapple with any of the misconduct of the high-ranking individuals behind those investigations in and of itself raises questions.
One would think Mueller would have at least sought to create the appearance of neutrality among the investigators, especially given the anti-Trump biases exposed in the investigations preceding it. Yet Mueller did not, nor did he apparently feel it necessary to address this issue in his report. In fact, he fails even to discuss the circumstances surrounding the removal from his team of its most outspoken Trump hater known to the public, fired FBI agent Peter Strzok.
4. Skating Over the Papadopoulos Predicate for the Collusion Investigations
The Mueller report asserts that the investigation into collusion began when a foreign official (presumably unnamed former Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer) told the FBI that Trump campaign advisor George Papadopoulos conveyed to him that the Russians had “dirt” on Hillary Clinton that could help the Trump campaign. There is not even an attempt to grapple with the theory that Papadopoulos was set up, based on sketchy approaches from U.S. government informants and foreign counterparts who...
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Former Army Sergeant to Omar: You are ‘living large’ now, because we watched our friends get drug through the streets in Mogadishu
Sergeant Major Kyle E. Lamb (retired) told Fox News host Tucker Carlson that the Minnesota’s Democrat’s resurfaced tweet claiming U.S. forces killed “thousands” of Somalis during the “Black Hawk Down” mission in Mogadishu was, at the least, “kind of disturbing.”
“First of all, she wasn’t there, she had already left the country. We were there, and I’ve never heard numbers quite that inflated. I mean, we wish we could have done that much damage, but that didn’t happen as far as I know,” Lamb, who fought in the Battle of Mogadishu, said on “Tucker Carlson Tonight” Tuesday.
Carlson, in introducing his guest, recapped the history of the U.S. military mission to aid Somalis caught up in their country’s brutal civil war and resulting famine in the 1990’s, noting that Omar “thinks Americans were the bad guys” in the conflict in the Battle of Mogadishu, which was later portrayed in the movie “Black Hawk Down.”
The freshman congresswoman and Somali refugee disparaged the memory of the 19 American soldiers killed and more than 70 wounded in that mission back in 2017, when she was serving as a Minnesota state representative. Omar is under fire for the recently resurfaced tweet in which she made the claims responding to someone on Twitter remembering the battle that day.
“It seems like the mission was purely altruistic. We were only there to help, we didn’t take Somalia. Did you steal gold or natural resources when you were there?” Carlson asked Lamb, who laughed at the idea.
“We didn’t do that. We were trying to take out a clan leader that had taken over the town,” Lamb replied, explaining how the clan was taking the humanitarian aid being directed to the people of that town while “running drugs” and weapons. “He needed to be eliminated, so that we could get peace back in that town. We were actually there to help some of the lesser tribes, the lesser clans, such as her clan, which obviously they were already gone.”
Lamb, a 21-year military veteran who spent 19 of those years in Special Operations and over 15 of the years in the military’s elite Delta Force, said U.S. forces “were there to try to do the right thing.”
“We didn’t say ‘Hey, let’s pick out Somalia is a great place to go hang out.’ The president at the time, President Clinton, said this is where we are going, this is the mission, and our commander said ‘Roger that, we can do it,’ and we all had signed on the line,” Lamb said. “That is why we served. You can make a difference when you go to those countries.”
Carlson asked his guest about Omar’s seeming ungratefulness and why, after being accepted into the U.S. as a refugee when she was a child, has “spent the rest of her life attacking this country.”
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“As they would say down here in Tennessee, bless her heart,” Lamb replied, before giving the Democrat congresswoman a scathing dose of reality.
“We want her to understand that she is living large now because of her family being able to escape the atrocities of Mogadishu,” he said, pausing.
“It’s very disturbing. We watched our friends get drug through the streets by the people she says are her people. We got to watch that on TV,” he said. “Yeah, we take it personal when you attack us like that. Once again, it is not surprising to hear that. There has been kind of a long list of things she said, I don’t know if she meant them or not, but she continues to say them. Yeah, I feel bad for her.”
He noted that families who lost loved ones in the battle don’t need Omar’s remarks to remind them of...
Carlson, in introducing his guest, recapped the history of the U.S. military mission to aid Somalis caught up in their country’s brutal civil war and resulting famine in the 1990’s, noting that Omar “thinks Americans were the bad guys” in the conflict in the Battle of Mogadishu, which was later portrayed in the movie “Black Hawk Down.”
Omar ravaged memory of US soldiers who died in ‘Black Hawk Down’ operation; see reported tweet dlvr.it/R3LJ0Z
16 people are talking about this
The freshman congresswoman and Somali refugee disparaged the memory of the 19 American soldiers killed and more than 70 wounded in that mission back in 2017, when she was serving as a Minnesota state representative. Omar is under fire for the recently resurfaced tweet in which she made the claims responding to someone on Twitter remembering the battle that day.
“It seems like the mission was purely altruistic. We were only there to help, we didn’t take Somalia. Did you steal gold or natural resources when you were there?” Carlson asked Lamb, who laughed at the idea.
“We didn’t do that. We were trying to take out a clan leader that had taken over the town,” Lamb replied, explaining how the clan was taking the humanitarian aid being directed to the people of that town while “running drugs” and weapons. “He needed to be eliminated, so that we could get peace back in that town. We were actually there to help some of the lesser tribes, the lesser clans, such as her clan, which obviously they were already gone.”
Lamb, a 21-year military veteran who spent 19 of those years in Special Operations and over 15 of the years in the military’s elite Delta Force, said U.S. forces “were there to try to do the right thing.”
“We didn’t say ‘Hey, let’s pick out Somalia is a great place to go hang out.’ The president at the time, President Clinton, said this is where we are going, this is the mission, and our commander said ‘Roger that, we can do it,’ and we all had signed on the line,” Lamb said. “That is why we served. You can make a difference when you go to those countries.”
Carlson asked his guest about Omar’s seeming ungratefulness and why, after being accepted into the U.S. as a refugee when she was a child, has “spent the rest of her life attacking this country.”
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“As they would say down here in Tennessee, bless her heart,” Lamb replied, before giving the Democrat congresswoman a scathing dose of reality.
“We want her to understand that she is living large now because of her family being able to escape the atrocities of Mogadishu,” he said, pausing.
“It’s very disturbing. We watched our friends get drug through the streets by the people she says are her people. We got to watch that on TV,” he said. “Yeah, we take it personal when you attack us like that. Once again, it is not surprising to hear that. There has been kind of a long list of things she said, I don’t know if she meant them or not, but she continues to say them. Yeah, I feel bad for her.”
He noted that families who lost loved ones in the battle don’t need Omar’s remarks to remind them of...
CNN’s Stelter: Trump Skipping Correspondents’ Dinner Is ‘Attack Against The Media’
The Washington Times reported on Tuesday that Trump is going to skip the event, for the third year in a row, and that White House Cabinet Secretary Bill McGinley "announced that all Trump administration officials are being ordered to boycott the dinner."
"The president and members of his administration will not attend the White House Correspondents Dinner this year," a senior administration official told The Times on Tuesday. "Instead, Saturday evening President Trump will travel to Green Bay, Wisconsin where he will hold a campaign rally."
In a clip flagged by NewsBusters' Curtis Houck, Stelter made the remarks on "CNN Newsroom" with Brooke Baldwin.
"It is an awards dinner and a fundraiser," Stelter said. "In the past, presidents have shown up even if they were angry at the press at any given time and, importantly, it’s useful for White House aide to schmooze with reporters."
"It’s helpful for us to get to know our sources," Stelter continued. "There’s some value in these sorts of festive events, but it is, as you said, another example of a tradition at least being put on pause during the Trump age. Here’s what the Correspondents’ Association says. They said, basically, they don't mind either way and this event is about celebrating journalists and the First Amendment and so the show will go on. There is the statement about this weekend's dinner and dinners in the future."
"But look, it’s yet another example of what we’re seeing. This administration’s attack against the media takes many forms," Stelter concluded. "One form is the President having a rally this Saturday instead of attending the dinner and I do think it matters mostly because...
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UNHCR Corruption: Resettlement Spots for a Price
Since ‘vulnerability’ is no longer the key to selecting refugees for resettlement, does that mean bribery is?
A story about alleged corruption in refugee resettlement at the UN refugee agency was published recently by NBC News.1 The seven-month investigation into refugee processing centers in five countries — Kenya, Uganda, Yemen, Ethiopia, and Libya — found widespread reports of U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) staffers accepting bribes from refugees in order to refer them for resettlement in a Western country.
Years ago, as I began researching the UN's role in the U.S. refugee resettlement program, I forewarned of the likely "subjectivity" of UNHCR's national staff (citizens of the countries where they are working, usually in regions of turmoil and economic unrest) responsible for refugee status determinations and resettlement referrals.2 Their appraisals can be at best complaisant and at worst open to the highest bidder.
In the wake of the NBC report, I looked at the five countries mentioned and found the following:
- In FY 2019, the United States resettled 2,756 refugees from the processing centers in Kenya, Uganda, Yemen, Ethiopia, and Libya.
- A total of 1,914 UNHCR staff members work at the refugee processing centers, of whom 79 percent (1,506) are national staff and 21 percent (408) international staff.
- The average Transparency International average corruption score in 2018 for the five countries was 23.6/100 (the lower the number the more corrupt). The average ranking of these five among the 180 ranked countries was 150.6 out of 180 (180 being the most corrupt country in the world — Somalia). For comparison, the United States had a score of 71/100 and ranked 22nd out of 180 countries.
- The United States is the top funder of UNHCR activities in four of the five countries.
UNHCR, Resettlement, and Fraud
UNHCR has the international mandate to determine who is (and who is not) attributed refugee status, to provide refugee assistance, and to decide who is eligible for resettlement in third countries. Resettlement is the "transfer of refugees from the country in which they have sought asylum to another state that has agreed to admit them as refugees and to grant them permanent settlement and the opportunity for eventual citizenship."3 A number of countries (29 nations in 2018) participate in UNHCR's resettlement program; the world's top resettlement country remains the United States.4
UNHCR's resettlement program is not impermeable to fraud. By UNHCR's own admission, "Refugee status and resettlement places are valuable commodities, particularly in countries with acute poverty, where the temptation to make money by whatever means is strong. This makes the resettlement process a target for abuse."5
UNHCR distinguishes between "external resettlement fraud" and "internal resettlement fraud".6 "External resettlement fraud" applies to "fraud perpetrated by persons other than those having a contractual relationship with UNHCR", such as the refugees themselves. One example of external resettlement fraud is identity fraud: "Identity fraud occurs when an identity is either invented, or the identity of another real person is assumed by an impostor. Supporting documents may be missing, or fraudulent documents provided." Other types include "family composition fraud", "one of the areas where misrepresentation or fraud is most likely to be committed"; and "document fraud" or "material misrepresentation fraud", whereby "refugees deliberately exaggerate, invent, or otherwise misrepresent the nature or details of their refugee claim or resettlement needs."
"Internal resettlement fraud" (the subject of the NBC story) refers to fraud perpetrated by UNHCR staff themselves. Examples include drafting false refugee claims or false needs assessments for resettlement; facilitating preferential processing or access to the procedure; charging a fee or asking for a favor to be added to an interview list; coaching refugees prior to or during the interview; and providing false medical attestations. Resettlement procedures are free of charge, but the fraudulent actions described above are often undertaken for a fee, a favor, or a gift and...
UNHCR has the international mandate to determine who is (and who is not) attributed refugee status, to provide refugee assistance, and to decide who is eligible for resettlement in third countries. Resettlement is the "transfer of refugees from the country in which they have sought asylum to another state that has agreed to admit them as refugees and to grant them permanent settlement and the opportunity for eventual citizenship."3 A number of countries (29 nations in 2018) participate in UNHCR's resettlement program; the world's top resettlement country remains the United States.4
UNHCR's resettlement program is not impermeable to fraud. By UNHCR's own admission, "Refugee status and resettlement places are valuable commodities, particularly in countries with acute poverty, where the temptation to make money by whatever means is strong. This makes the resettlement process a target for abuse."5
UNHCR distinguishes between "external resettlement fraud" and "internal resettlement fraud".6 "External resettlement fraud" applies to "fraud perpetrated by persons other than those having a contractual relationship with UNHCR", such as the refugees themselves. One example of external resettlement fraud is identity fraud: "Identity fraud occurs when an identity is either invented, or the identity of another real person is assumed by an impostor. Supporting documents may be missing, or fraudulent documents provided." Other types include "family composition fraud", "one of the areas where misrepresentation or fraud is most likely to be committed"; and "document fraud" or "material misrepresentation fraud", whereby "refugees deliberately exaggerate, invent, or otherwise misrepresent the nature or details of their refugee claim or resettlement needs."
"Internal resettlement fraud" (the subject of the NBC story) refers to fraud perpetrated by UNHCR staff themselves. Examples include drafting false refugee claims or false needs assessments for resettlement; facilitating preferential processing or access to the procedure; charging a fee or asking for a favor to be added to an interview list; coaching refugees prior to or during the interview; and providing false medical attestations. Resettlement procedures are free of charge, but the fraudulent actions described above are often undertaken for a fee, a favor, or a gift and...
AOC Says VA Isn’t Broke, Shouldn’t Be Fixed While Veterans Are Dying Waiting for Healthcare
But she may have just outdone herself. A new clip of the New York representative is so jaw-dropping that it would be absolutely hilarious, except for the fact that some of America’s best citizens are being impacted by her ignorance.
On Monday, journalist Ryan Saavedra posted a video of Ocasio-Cortez basically waving away problems within the Veteran’s Administration and scolding the people who have called for repairing the many problems within the troubled VA.
Socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) claims that the VA provides the "highest quality of [health]care" to veterans, says: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it"
7,927 people are talking about this
Come again? Does Ocasio-Cortez truly believe that a federal agency that has been plagued with problems for years “ain’t broke”? If there was any doubt that this was what she was saying, the representative repeated the claim as she...
This Supreme Court Case Threatens the Left’s View of Group Identity, Victimhood
Oral arguments heard at the Supreme Court Tuesday were ostensibly about whether the 2020 census could include a question about citizenship.
But don’t be fooled. The reason this case rocketed to the Supreme Court and has been so hotly contested is that the debate hinges, at bottom, on two starkly different visions of America.
In one vision, what matters is loyalty to and affiliation with a nation-state that is self-contained, independent, civic, and colorbind. In the other vision, priority is given to one’s membership in a subnational group that is based on subjective self-identity (like race or sexual orientation), and association with that group yields benefits and preferences in everything, from hiring to contracting, employment, housing, and even electoral redistricting.
The divide essentially comes down to a commitment to America as a nation vs. a commitment to one’s subgroup and the hierarchy of victimhood.
This is one of the great debates of our time—not just here, but around the world.
Whatever the Supreme Court decides—and an opinion is needed by summer if the Census Bureau is to meet its deadline of printing millions of forms—rest assured that this debate will not go away any time soon.
To paraphrase Mark Twain, reports of the death of the nation-state seem to have been greatly exaggerated. Despite pressure from above—from sovereignty-draining, transnational institutions like the United Nations and the European Union—and from below, i.e., from identity groups based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability status, and anything else that can confer conceptual victimhood (and thus special rights) on an individual, the nation-state has shown remarkable resilience.
Defenders of the nation-state remind us that democracy, the rule of law, self-determination, liberty, and everything else Americans and like-minded people hold dear depend on territorially and culturally defined nation-states. Its opponents like to portray the nation-state as archaic, unnecessary, and a gateway to authoritarianism, if not worse.
The Trump administration has championed the sovereignist view, and in 2017 recognized the importance of citizenship by requesting that a question on citizenship be added to the 2020 census.
Progressive groups have left no stone unturned in their bid to frustrate the administration on this front. Notably, these same groups defend a panoply of other census questions that divide Americans by sex, ethnicity, and race.
These groups argue that the citizenship question would depress responses among certain marginalized groups, especially...
The 90 Miles Mystery Box: Episode #601
You have come across a mystery box. But what is inside?
It could be literally anything from the serene to the horrific,
from the beautiful to the repugnant,
from the mysterious to the familiar.
If you decide to open it, you could be disappointed,
you could be inspired, you could be appalled.
This is not for the faint of heart or the easily offended.
You have been warned.
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