2016 Election
November 7, 2021 — Scott Johnson
In the scheme of things the indictment handed up by an Eastern District of Virginia grand jury against Igor Danchenko this past Thursday may be small potatoes, but the case is significant. I have embedded a copy of the 39-page indictment at the bottom. Check my summary of the allegations below against the indictment itself. I leave out a lot and the indictment conceals the names of key players in
»
September 14, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
Count American Jews among the minority groups that appear to be more disposed to vote for Donald Trump in 2020 than they were four years ago. A poll by the Jewish Electorate Institute found that Jewish likely voters favor Joe Biden over President Trump by a split of 67-30. Exit polling in 2016 found that Trump received only 25 percent of the Jewish vote, while Hillary Clinton garnered 70 percent
»
December 24, 2019 — Scott Johnson
Gregg Jarrett’s Witch Hunt is one of this year’s good books on the Russia hoax. Jarrett’s subtitle — The Story of the Greatest Mass Delusion in American Political History — posits that the hoax may have derived from something other than intentional wrongdoing, but Jarrett leaves no stone unturned to make out willful misconduct. I find the book frustrating in certain respects. It lacks an index. It is argumentative. It
»
August 13, 2019 — Scott Johnson
Today is the official publication date of my friend Andrew McCarthy’s Ball of Collusion: The Plot to Rig an Election and Destroy a Presidency. Courtesy of Encounter Books I read an advance copy of the book last week and want to recommend it enthusiastically to Power Line readers. Even though I have closely followed the “collusion” story as it has come into public view since January 2017, I was reminded
»
July 27, 2019 — John Hinderaker
What to do about the booming Trump economy is a problem the Democrats have yet to solve. Democratic presidential candidates always want to run as though it is 1932 and their mission is to end a depression, but that is hard to do when employment is at record highs, wages are rising, and in general the economy is perhaps the strongest in American history. For the most part, the Democrats’
»
July 8, 2019 — Scott Johnson
The investigative affiliate of RealClearPolitics has posted Aaron Maté’s long examination of key findings in the Mueller report: “CrowdStrikeOut: Mueller’s Own Report Undercuts Its Core Russia-Meddling Claims.” Among other things, according to Maté, largely undisputed headline assertions that the Kremlin worked to secure Donald Trump’s victory are unsupported by evidence or other publicly available sources for that matter. As set forth in the summary provided by RCP, Maté finds that:
»
February 16, 2019 — Scott Johnson
Mark Penn puts the greatest scandal of Obama administration officials — the greatest political scandal in our history — this way: The most egregious anti-democratic actions ever taken by the what can now fairly be called the Deep State are confirmed with the publication of fired FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe’s new book detailing how the FBI and Justice Department plotted to remove President Trump from office for firing FBI
»
January 3, 2019 — Scott Johnson
Lee Smith’s Federalist essay “New Documents Suggest The Steele Dossier Was A Deliberate Setup For Trump” is only his most recent contribution to our understanding of the greatest scandal in our history — the one underlying the presidential election of 2016, from the Clinton campaign to the highest reaches of the Obama administration. Struggling to find a representative excerpt of this long essay, I am happy to glom onto this
»
December 21, 2018 — Scott Johnson
In her weekly Wall Street Journal column (accessible here via Outline) Kim Strassel notes what we have learned so far regarding “one of the greatest dirty tricks of our political times.” Kim, strike “one of the.” Making points we have made several times, noting a loose thread and calling for the declassification of documents revealing the rest of the story, Kim writes: House and Senate investigators get pride of place
»
December 17, 2018 — Scott Johnson
In “Flynn’s fate (6)” I posted the Special Counsel’s reply memorandum in the matter of Michael Flynn’s sentencing. Judge Sullivan had ordered the parties to file the FBI 302 and underlying notes of the the FBI’s interview with General Flynn. The attachments to the reply memorandum include neither. Where are they? Those documents are not included, but McCabe’s memo of his conversation scheduling the meeting with Flynn is included as
»
December 8, 2018 — Scott Johnson
The Special Counsel filed a 10-page memo yesterday supporting its determination that Paul Manafort has breached his cooperation agreement with the office. The heavily redacted document is posted below. The memo notes that the Special Counsel has supporting material to be filed under seal. Manafort met with the prosecutors as well as the FBI on twelve occasions and testified twice to the grand jury. The Special Counsel asserts that Manafort
»
December 8, 2018 — Scott Johnson
The government filed two sentencing memos late yesterday afternoon in the cases brought against Michael Cohen. The Special Counsel referred the investigation of the largest basket of Cohen’s misconduct to the Office of the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York (the prosecutors, as I will refer to them). The 38-page sentencing memo filed by the prosecutors is below. It is a biting document. Despite his plea
»
December 3, 2018 — Steven Hayward
Regarding the “irredeemable deplorables”—the white working class that liberals now openly disdain—a few perceptive liberals have pointed back to something written in 1998 by Richard Rorty, the “neo-pragmatist” epigone of John Dewey, in his book Achieving Our Country: Members of labor unions, and unorganized unskilled workers, will sooner or later realize that their government is not even trying to prevent wages from sinking or to prevent jobs from being exported.
»
October 30, 2018 — Scott Johnson
Much (if not most) of what we have learned about the real scandals and true Russian collusion underlying the 2016 presidential election derives directly or indirectly from the dogged work of House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes and his Republican colleagues on the committee. In recognition of his efforts, Rep. Nunes has been punished by the dross of April Doss and others soldiering in the Democrat/Media complex. Rep. Nunes deserves
»
July 17, 2018 — Scott Johnson
Vladimir Putin sat down for a 30-minute interview with Chris Wallace for broadcast on FOX News yesterday. Putin is of course an extraordinarily cold-blooded liar and murderer. See, for example, David Satter’s The Less You Know, the Better You Sleep. I thought that Putin’s qualities of character emerged with some clarity in the course of the interview. Putin’s treatment of responsibility for Russian interference in the 2016 election is of
»
April 26, 2018 — Scott Johnson
We have yet to ascertain the source of the counterintelligence investigation that culminated in the Mueller Switch Project. Andrew McCarthy and Lee Smith are the two analysts who have both refused to disseminate the carefully cultivated stories of the Obama/Clinton apparatus and provided their own invaluable analysis to the proceedings. Today Lee Smith complicates my understanding of the Steele Dossier in the intensely reported RealClearInvestigations column “Unpacking the other Clinton-linked
»
April 19, 2018 — Scott Johnson
Yesterday Rep. Ron DeSantis and ten other Republican congressmen sent a letter to Attorney General Sessions, FBI Director Wray and Sessions designee John Huber seeking the investigation of Hillary Clinton, James Comey, Loretta Lynch and other players “in connection with 2016 campaign controversies,” as FOX News puts it in its report. Observing “the dissimilar degrees of zealousness” that have marked the investigations of the respective presidential campaigns, the letter cites
»
