90 Miles From Tyranny

Tuesday, October 22, 2019

They Aren’t Whistleblowers. They’re Double Agents.

The New York Times on Oct. 4 reported that a second intelligence official “alarmed by President [Donald] Trump’s dealings with Ukraine” is considering whether to file a complaint with the intelligence community inspector general.

Like the first whistleblower, however, this individual is apparently trying to advance his agenda outside of the process provided by federal law.

As we have detailed, the first whistleblower began with the office of Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. The Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act, however, prohibits that direct contact, requiring instead that complaints follow a process that begins with the intelligence community inspector general.

In like fashion, this second individual, who claims to have firsthand information regarding Trump’s July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has chosen to talk to the media through his or her lawyer, rather than file a complaint.

The demand for socialism is on the rise from young Americans today. But is socialism even morally sound? Find out more now >>

According to the lawyer, this person has firsthand knowledge of some of the allegations included in the first complaint and has spoken to the inspector general.

Until this official files a complaint and it’s made public, we have no idea whether his or her account will, as the media have reported, bolster the secondhand and thirdhand information recounted in the first complaint. Until we see his or her complaint and the information actually detailed in it, the information the media report that his lawyer told them is still secondhand.

Naturally, that hasn’t stopped the media from calling this a “firsthand” account and speculating wildly about its impact on Democrats’ impeachment efforts. The New York Times, for example, claims that it “would potentially add further credibility to the account of the first whistleblower.”

There’s that word again: “whistleblower.”

The media often use it, but all we know is that the second person has something to say that his or her lawyer has shared with the media. How does that make him or her a “whistleblower”? For that matter, is the first person a whistleblower?

Let’s start with the law that protects intelligence officials who blow the whistle. The key provision of the Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act is codified in Title 50 of the U.S. Code Section 3033.

The law does not define or even use the term “whistleblower,” except in the title, but it does clearly identify the people it’s designed to protect.

To be covered by the Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act, a would-be whistleblower must (1) be an employee of the intelligence community or of an intelligence community contractor, (2) who intends to report to Congress a complaint or information, (3) with respect to an urgent concern, and (4) who follows the disclosure procedures set forth in the act.

The act defines “urgent concern” as a problem, abuse, or deficiency relating to “an intelligence activity within the responsibility of the Director of National Intelligence.”

That’s the most concrete way we have of defining a “whistleblower.” Those criteria show that this second person is not a whistleblower at all.

For one thing, we have no evidence corroborating the lawyer’s assertion that his client is an intelligence official. For another, there is no indication that he or she intends to submit a...

Grassley Suspects ‘Deep State’ Is Responsible For Delay In FISA Abuse Report

Republican Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley expressed frustration Monday at a months long delay in the release of the Justice Department Inspector General’s report on possible FBI surveillance abuse against the Trump campaign, questioning whether the “deep state” has somehow slowed the release of the document.

“All of the delays and excuses why the Horowitz IG FISA report isn’t public yet after several months of anticipation of its issues leads me to the suspicion it’s going to be ‘deep six’ by the deep state,” Grassley wrote on Twitter.

Michael Horowitz, the inspector general, began in March 2018 investigating whether the FBI complied with legal requirements in applications for Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants against Trump campaign aide Carter Page. The bureau relied heavily on the unverified Steele dossier in applications for the warrants, as well as for the main investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian government.

Christopher Steele, a former MI6 officer, dug up dirt on the Trump campaign on behalf of the DNC and Clinton campaign. In the dossier, he alleged that Trump aides, including Page, worked with Kremlin operatives to influence the 2016 election. Steele also claimed that there was a “well-developed conspiracy of coordination” between the Trump team and...

Is It Time For America To Begin Decoupling From Communist China?

The longer businesses in the West remain wedded to Chinese profits and Chinese money, the stronger the Chinese Communist Party will grow, at our long-term expense.

Perhaps the most momentous part of the Trump administration’s National Security Strategy (NSS) was its acknowledgment that the U.S. government’s historical premise “that support for China’s rise and for its integration into the post-war international order would liberalize China” was wrong. Recent events indicate that not only was the theory underlying all U.S.-China policy for nearly 50 years incorrect, but that perhaps the opposite is true: Support for China’s rise and for its integration into the post-war international order has actually illiberalized America.

Stated differently, there is a case to be made that since President Richard Nixon’s historic 1972 visit to China, the United States has become more like China than China has become like us. We may have been sowing the seeds of our own destruction.

The National Basketball Association (NBA) is just one of many prominent Western industries as diverse as automobiles, fashion, and lodging that have cowed to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) line, and engaged in self-censorship out of a desire for the almighty dollar. While the NBA is a particularly deserving target of ire, given the fact its social justice warriors have shown themselves to be hypocritical sellouts, one would be hard-pressed to find any entity with substantial profits or funding tied to China willing to permit the voicing of views that might rankle the CCP.
Businesses Manipulated by America’s Enemy

“Stealth War: How China Took Over While America’s Elites Slept,” a new book by U.S. Air Force Brig. Gen. Robert Spalding (Ret.), confirms this assessment. Spalding served as the chief China strategist for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as senior U.S. Defense official and defense attaché to China in Beijing, and later in the Trump National Security Council (NSC), where he was the chief architect of the NSS’s framework for national competition.

According to Spalding, even organizations that would seem to have a vested interest in exposing China’s malign behavior remain mum. Spalding writes that upon his arrival at NSC:

Illegal Alien Charged With Hacking Boy To Death With Brutal Machete

Two men who claimed to be members of the MS-13 gang were charged with first-degree murder in Washington on Friday, Oct. 18.

The suspects, 28-year-old Rudy Osvaldo Garcia-Hernandez and 20-year-old Carlos Orlando Iraheta-Vega, an illegal alien, allegedly killed and dismembered 16-year-old Juan Carlos Con Guzman, The Seattle Times reported.

Guzman’s body was recovered from a local river on Sept. 10. He was a student at Mount Rainier High School in Des Moines, a city near Seattle.

One of the suspects, Garcia-Hernandez, was identified by ICE as an illegal alien with a lengthy criminal record, The Washington Times reported.

Both suspects are being held in King County Jail on a $3 million bond.

Detectives with the King County Sheriff’s Office said that Garcia-Hernandez and Iraheta-Vega both claimed to be members of the MS-13 gang.

EpochTimes reports: According to the investigation, Guzman was lured out by the suspects to fight and settle a dispute. Iraheta-Vega said Garcia-Hernandez hacked Guzman’s neck with a machete after a fistfight. They also later admitted to beating the victim with a baseball bat.

The King County Medical Examiner’s Office determined that Guzman died from both blunt-force injuries to the head and cutting injuries to the neck.

The authorities recovered a machete with help from Iraheta-Vega, who said Garcia-Hernandez buried it after washing the blade. The detectives found a machete that appeared to be stained with blood in Iraheta-Vega’s room.

A woman named Juan Con—who claims to be Guzman’s mother—launched a GoFundMe campaign to raise money for Guzman’s funeral.

Con said Guzman left home at 2:00 a.m. on Sept. 10 without notice. His family didn’t notice he had left until saw the door was...

‘Woke’ idiocy comes full circle.

The Chinese Communist Party says that criticizing LeBron James over his anti-free speech, pro-Beijing stance is racist.

You knew it was coming.

Following Houston Rockets General Manager Daryl Morey tweeting his support for the Hong Kong protesters, James said that Morey “wasn’t educated on the situation at hand and he spoke.”

Siding with his Communist paymasters, who forced the NBA into a groveling apology after Morey’s tweet, the basketball star added that free speech had negative “ramifications.”

Now the government-run China Daily, a mouthpiece for the Communist Party, has backed LeBron, asserting that criticism of him is a racist dogwhistle.

An editorial published by the newspaper claimed James’ detractors were using “nasty racial connotations” to attack him.

The irony of course is delectable; Here you have one of the biggest human rights abusers on the planet, a regime that literally puts Muslims in concentration camps, pandering to ‘woke’ progressive identity race politics in order to...