90 Miles From Tyranny

Sunday, November 20, 2022

Trump Special Counsel Targeted Conservatives for Prosecution in IRS Scandal

"Smith asked whether they could charge the groups with conspiracy to violate U.S. laws."

What are the bona fides of the special counsel appointed to go after Trump? The ones you expect.

Attorney General Merrick B. Garland announced today the appointment of former career Justice Department prosecutor and former chief prosecutor for the special court in The Hague, Jack Smith, to serve as Special Counsel to oversee two ongoing criminal investigations.

“Based on recent developments, including the former President’s announcement that he is a candidate for President in the next election, and the sitting President’s stated intention to be a candidate as well, I have concluded that it is in the public interest to appoint a special counsel,” said Attorney General Garland. “Such an appointment underscores the Department’s commitment to both independence and accountability in particularly sensitive matters. It also allows prosecutors and agents to continue their work expeditiously, and to make decisions indisputably guided only by the facts and the law.”

A special counsel was long overdue, but there was no way Garland was going to pick anyone except a loyal soldier to go after conservatives.

How loyal?

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee recently obtained an email addressed to former IRS official Lois Lerner sent from Election Crimes Branch Director Richard Pilger at the Justice Department. The email addressed to Lerner stated that, “I have been asked to run something by you.” During the Committee’s investigation, Public Integrity Section Chief Jack Smith told investigators that officials at the Justice Department discussed targeting conservative nonprofit groups with Lerner as early as October 2010.

Pilger says that Smith asked him to arrange a meeting with Lerner. Pilger further stated that the agenda for the meeting was to discuss how the IRS could be, “more vigilant to the opportunities from more crime in the . . . 501(c)(4) area.”

In their letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, the Committee said, “The Justice Department convened a meeting with former IRS official Lois Lerner in October 2010 to discuss how the IRS could assist in the criminal enforcement of campaign-finance laws against politically active nonprofits. This meeting was arranged at the direction of Public Integrity Section Chief Jack Smith.”

Public integrity indeed.

Who better to pick to go after conservatives than a guy with a track record of doing just that.

What we tend to forget is that the IRS scandal was much worse than the popular understanding of it. Beyond an attempt to block and shut down conservative nonprofits, it had roots in the DOJ and the FBI. It wasn’t just about denying tax-exempt status, but actively criminalizing and prosecuting political dissent:

The 90 Miles Mystery Video: Nyctophilia Edition #1208

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The 90 Miles Mystery Box: Episode #1908

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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Garland Moves To Transform J6 Inquisition Into A Permanent Prosecution

Trump officially declared his presidential candidacy to reclaim the White House three days before the appointment of a special counsel.

Attorney General Merrick Garland launched a special counsel investigation into former President Donald Trump on Friday, the week before Thanksgiving, to ensure a permanent prosecution of public enemy number one on a third bid for the White House.

The special counsel, Garland said, will take over the investigation of Trump’s purported mishandling of presidential records and probe whether Trump can be held criminally liable for the events that unfolded on Jan. 6, 2021. The former is a desperate follow-up to the latter after the House Select Committee on Jan. 6 emerged empty-handed from an 18-month investigation.

“It is in the public interest to appoint a special prosecutor to independently manage an investigation and prosecution based on recent developments, including [Trump’s] announcement that he is a candidate for president in the next election and the sitting president’s stated intention to be a candidate as well,” Garland told reporters at an afternoon press conference.

Trump officially declared his candidacy to reclaim the Republican Party’s presidential nomination this past Tuesday. Just as his administration was handicapped early on by a special counsel investigation probing left-wing conspiracies of Russian collusion, his third presidential campaign has already been hit with the same playbook.

The timeline of Garland’s announcement three days after Trump’s announcement was surely a political calculation. As the Soviet-style Jan. 6 inquisition began to wind down on Capitol Hill with nothing to show this summer, Garland personally signed off on an unprecedented raid of a former president. Garland sent more than 30 plain clothes FBI agents to search Trump’s Florida residence at Mar-a-Lago over apparent violations of the Presidential Records Act, a rarely prosecuted statute now being weaponized to prosecute political opponents. The entire investigation was set in motion by a disgruntled bureaucrat at the National Archives and Records Administration. The Justice Department alleged that Trump illegally took classified documents with him to Florida after he left the White House last year.

All Americans want — and deserve — is an attorney general who cares about the law. Garland, however, is far from it. Look no further than his refusal to appoint a special prosecutor on Hunter Biden, whose father, serving as president, presents a legitimate conflict of interest worthy of an independent probe. Garland is a political activist with a...

The American people should prepare for more stunning revelations about the FBI’s key role in the events of January 6.

Amid bombshell revelations that the FBI embedded numerous informants in two militia groups accused of plotting to overthrow the government on January 6, FBI Director Christopher Wray finally is facing some heat.

During a House Homeland Security Committee hearing on Tuesday, Representative Clay Higgins (R-La.) angrily demanded to know more details about the use of FBI informants related to the Capitol protest. Higgins twice asked Wray whether FBI informants disguised as Trump supporters were planted inside the building even before protesters gained entry.

When Wray offered his usual obfuscating tap dance about protecting sources and methods—“the suggestion that the FBI’s confidential human sources or FBI employees in some way instigated or orchestrated January 6th, that’s categorically false,” he indignantly insisted—Higgins called his bluff. “It should be a no!” he yelled when Wray wouldn’t give a straight answer.

Ironically, Wray was saved from directly responding by none other than Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-La.), the chairman of the January 6 select committee. One would assume the lawmaker in charge of the 18-month congressional investigation into the events of January 6 would force Wray to respond. Thompson should have been shocked at the suggestion the FBI stationed assets dressed as Trump supporters inside the Capitol prior to the breach.

Further, given reporting by friendly regime news organizations such as the New York Times confirming the existence of FBI informants months before January 6, Thompson and his fellow Democrats should have blasted Wray for either inept sources or a complete failure to collect accurate intelligence from those informants. Where’s the outrage that Wray concealed this information from the public and various congressional inquiries?

Wray has misled Congress for nearly two years by insisting his agency was caught off guard by what happened that afternoon—so why didn’t Thompson and committee Democrats condemn Wray instead of rescuing him from a legitimate question?

It was a telling moment.

Thompson’s punt also is the latest indication that the January 6 select committee will ignore the role of the FBI and other law enforcement agencies in direct contradiction to what the American people were promised.

In comparing the Capitol protest to the deadly terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) last year announced the formation of a special commission to investigate January 6. “Many questions regarding [the] circumstances of this assault on our democracy and our response to it remain,” Pelosi said during a June 2021 press conference. “It is imperative that we seek the truth.”

The initiating legislation promised the same: “The functions of the Select Committee are to investigate—activities of intelligence agencies, law enforcement agencies, and the Armed Forces, including with respect to intelligence collection, analysis, and dissemination and information sharing among the branches.”

But, of course, those assurances have never publicly materialized; televised performances by the committee instead focused on the role of Donald Trump and his allies in allegedly provoking the so-called “insurrection.” While the first hearing in July 2021 featured the testimony of four overly emotional police officers who were on duty on January 6, committee members pointedly did not press for answers as to why the Capitol complex had been left intentionally unsecured, or why officers allowed...