2016 Presidential Election
April 14, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
It’s not news that the liberal Center for American Progress (CAP) is a vicious operation. It is news that Bernie Sanders has decided to call it out. The New York Times obtained a letter (I wonder how) that Sanders sent to the boards of the Center for American Progress and its sister group, the Center for American Progress Action Fund. The letter accuses the think tank of undermining Democrats’ chances
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April 13, 2019 — Scott Johnson
At ReaclClearPolitics yesterday, the invaluable Eric Felten took a deep dive into the testimony of former FBI counterintelligence chief Bill Priestap before the House last year (and do read the whole thing). President Merkin Muffley explained in Dr. Strangelove: “Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here. This is the war room!” By the same token, Priestap explained to Congress: “You can’t ‘spy’ here. This is the FBI.” Eric tells the story:
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April 12, 2019 — Scott Johnson
Kim Strassel devotes her weekly Wall Street Journal column today — “Barr brings accountability” (behind the Journal’s column) — to the news that Attorney General William Barr is undertaking a review of the surveillance of the Trump presidential campaign conducted by the FBI and intelligence agencies under the Obama administration. As we have frequently observed, we weren’t meant to learn a blessed thing about this surveillance. Strassel picks up this
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April 10, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
Attorney General William Barr is testifying before the Senate Appropriations Committee today. A little while ago, he talked about the subject of spying on Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign. Barr stated: I am going to be reviewing both the genesis and the conduct of intelligence activities directed at the Trump campaign during 2016 and a lot has already been investigated. . .by the office of the Inspector General. But one of
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April 8, 2019 — Scott Johnson
Rep. Devin Nunes appeared on Maria Bartromo’s Sunday Morning Futures show yesterday. No one in Congress has taken more abuse than he has for his work exposing the Russia collusion hoax foisted on us by the 2016 Clinton presidential campaign. To borrow a formulation from Walt Whitman: He is the man. He suffered. He was there. We were not supposed to know. Thanks in large part to Rep. Nunes and
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March 26, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
Yesterday, the New York Times carried an op-ed by Bob Bauer. As the title — “Trump’s Shamelessness Was Outside Mueller’s Jurisdiction” — suggests, the op-ed is just another attempt to talk around the fact that Robert Mueller cleared President Trump of “collusion” with Russia. What’s notable about the article is how the New York Times identifies Bauer. The Times states: Mr. Bauer is a professor of practice and distinguished scholar
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March 22, 2019 — Steven Hayward
Just this morning I offered this reflection on Twitter: But just now the news broke that special counsel Robert Mueller has delivered his report on the Trump—Russia collusion investigation to Attorney General Barr. Godot showed up after all. Cue the media frenzy. Not sure how long it will be before we find out what’s in the report, but it’s going to be a long weekend in the newsrooms, where the
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March 16, 2019 — Scott Johnson
A limited part of the deposition of former secret agent man Christopher Steele — he allegedly of the Steele Dossier — was unsealed on Thursday. Steele’s deposition had been taken in June 2018. His deposition was taken in the now dismissed defamation lawsuit brought by Aleksej Gubarev, a tech executive who Steele alleges took part in the hacking of Democrats’ computer systems (as the Daily Caller’s Chuck Ross explains briefly
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February 24, 2019 — Scott Johnson
The news reports have it that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s sentencing memo in the case against former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort is 800 pages long. In reality, it’s 25 pages plus exhibits. The sentencing memo has been filed in the case against Manafort pending before Judge Amy Berman Jackson in the Washington, D.C. federal district court. I have embedded the sentencing memo as redacted and made public yesterday afternoon
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February 21, 2019 — Scott Johnson
I’m struggling with a painful condition that has not yet been subdued by medication. The condition is disrupting my sleep and the medication is suppressing my energy. (I should add that my painful condition is only painful. It does not have any other physical effect.) Borrowing the heading from the old National Review Notes & Asides column in which William F. Buckley responded to letters from readers — he compiled
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February 18, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
The race for the Democratic presidential nomination has barely commenced, but already Margaret Sullivan, the Washington Post’s media columnist, is whining about “sexist” coverage of female candidates. As evidence she mentions the “mocking” of Kirsten Gillibrand’s uncertainty about how to eat fried chicken. However, candidates of both genders are routinely mocked when they eat “down home” food in an uptown manner. It happened to Donald Trump and John Kasich in
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February 13, 2019 — Scott Johnson
Following Brit Hume on Twitter, I learned last week that Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr had let on that the committee had found nothing to suggest collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign (tweet below, linking to this CBS News story). Now comes Ken Dilanian’s NBC News story “Senate has uncovered no direct evidence of conspiracy between Trump campaign and Russia.” Dilanian labors mightily to keep hope (in “collusion”)
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January 28, 2019 — Scott Johnson
Maria Bartiromo interviewed former House Intelligence Committee Chairman and current Ranking Member Devin Nunes on her FOX News Sunday Morning Futures show yesterday. I have posted the 16-minute video clip of Rep. Nunes’s appearance below. Mocked and reviled by the Democrats and their media adjunct, Nunes is the voice of truth on the Mueller Switch Project and related issues. What did he have to say yesterday? Bartiromo asked Nunes to
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January 19, 2019 — Scott Johnson
House sources leaked the testimony of Department of Justice official Bruce Ohr to Congress last year. Ohr himself was a conduit for the Steele Dossier and Russian meddling in the presidential election of 2016 if the dossier is taken at face value, as the FBI purported to take it. John Solomon broke the story of Ohr’s testimony here. Sara Carter had more here. Kim Strassel devoted her weekly Wall Street
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January 17, 2019 — Scott Johnson
Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani appeared on CNN for a little roughhousing with Chris Cuomo yesterday. All over the news is Giuliani’s failure to deny that some on the Trump presidential campaign may have “colluded” with the friends of Vladimir Putin. I have posted Cuomo’s tweet with the video excerpt below. Cuomo to the contrary notwithstanding, I believe that Trump himself has acknowledged the possibility while denying that he himself committed
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January 13, 2019 — Scott Johnson
The Mueller madness has intensified to such an extent this past week that I was unable to keep up. We covered the story of Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort’s passing on polling data to his former Ukrainian/Russian associate Konstantin Kiliminik in the January 9 edition of this series. In that post I drew on the Wall Street Journal and AP stories while neglecting this New York Times story (accessible here
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January 9, 2019 — Scott Johnson
Attorneys for Paul Manafort inadvertently disclosed on Tuesday that the former Trump campaign chairman gave 2016 presidential polling data to a Kiev associate U.S. officials have linked to Russian intelligence and may have discussed a Ukraine peace plan with him. The disclosures surfaced in a filing made public Tuesday in which the attorneys disputed special counsel Robert Mueller’s allegation that their client lied to investigators about his contacts with the
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