Deep State
February 14, 2023 — Scott Johnson

Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper is one of the Deep State 51 who lent his credibility to the open letter to the castigation of the New York Post’s reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop. According to Clapper et al., the emails reported by the Post “ha[ve] all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” Given to Natasha Bertrand, the letter was published by Politico in conjunction with the
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February 6, 2023 — Scott Johnson

Last week I characterized Hunter Biden’s threatened legal assault on the purveyors of his abandoned laptop as “Battle of the Bulge, Biden style.” Hunter Biden’s new legal team invited the authorities to bring privacy claims and alleged defamation claims against a variety of parties that had the temerity to bring the contents of the laptop to the attention of the public. The news was notable for a number of reasons
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January 30, 2023 — Scott Johnson

Matt Taibbi has renamed his TK News site Racket. On Saturday he posted “Responding to Hamilton 68” — his analysis of the Alliance for Securing Democracy’s “fact sheet” on the Hamilton 68 “dashboard” that he exposed as a fraud in the fifteenth installment of the Twitter Files (the link is to my notes on it). Taibbi summarized his response to the fact sheet in the subhead: “After refusing to answer
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January 28, 2023 — Scott Johnson

Matt Taibbi has posted the fifteenth installment of the Twitter Files. It is a thread that comes in 42 tweets that can be accessed via the first (below) or read in unrolled form via the Thread Reader app here. 1.THREAD: Twitter Files #15MOVE OVER, JAYSON BLAIR: TWITTER FILES EXPOSE NEXT GREAT MEDIA FRAUD pic.twitter.com/bLRpDpuWql — Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 27, 2023 Taibbi’s thread addresses the Hamilton 68 “dashboard” fronted by
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December 16, 2022 — Scott Johnson

The Twitter Files reveal the suppression of the New York Post’s reporting on Biden family corruption at the behest of the deep state authorities with whom Twitter was collaborating. The absurd letter by 51 former intelligence officials reported by Natasha Bertrand and published by Politico was a key piece of the puzzle (to the extent it was a puzzle). Holman Jenkins takes it up in his Wall Street Journal column
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August 12, 2022 — Steven Hayward

Moviegoers may recall the scene late in Return of the Jedi where the rebel fleet transmits a stolen security code to get through the defensive perimeter surrounding the new death star, and the communications officer on the imperial battle cruiser says, “It’s an old code, but it checks out.” This line came back to mind with the news this morning that one of the items supposedly sought in the Mar-a-Lago
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September 22, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff

In this post, I argued against a defense of Gen. Mark Milley’s reassurances to China, in the waning days of the Trump administration, that’s based on his apparent collaboration with the Defense Department. If Milley made improper statements to Chinese military officials, it doesn’t matter that high-ranking DOD officials were in the loop. I also argued that, in all likelihood, Milley did make improper statements to the Chinese. Even before
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September 19, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff

Last week, Bob Woodward alleged that in the waning days of the Trump administration, Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, assured his Chinese counterpart, Gen. Li Zuocheng, that the United States would not strike China or its interests. According to Woodward and his co-author Robert Costa, Milley went so far as to pledge he would alert China in the event of a U.S. attack. Woodward
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January 11, 2021 — Steven Hayward

I had a conversation over the weekend with a senior career lawyer (who is a Trump supporter) with a federal agency who passed along some interesting information. He said career federal officials in Washington he spoke with on Thursday and Friday are seriously rattled by last Wednesday’s events. Among other things, the fact that apparently some Capitol Police were friendly with the protestors who entered the building have federal bureaucrats wondering
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June 3, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff

This morning, the Senate Judiciary Committee called Rod Rosenstein to testify about operation “crossfire hurricane,” the Mueller investigation, and related matters. I watched as much of it as I could stomach — a little less than two hours. Rosenstein is a snake. He recommended that James Comey be fired (albeit for a different reason than the one Trump mentioned in an interview about Comey’s termination) and then made the firing
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May 26, 2020 — Scott Johnson

President Trump sat for an interview with Sharyl Attkisson for her Full Measure show this past Sunday morning. The video and transcript are posted here. The good stuff is to be found in the second segment of the interview, which RealClearPolitics has now broken out and posted here. I have embedded it at the bottom of this post. This is the nub of it: I have a chance to break
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January 26, 2020 — Scott Johnson

In his presentation on behalf of President Trump in the Senate impeachment trial yesterday, White House Deputy Counsel Patrick Philbin raised the question of Adam Schiff and the whistleblower. Why have we not heard from him? Why has Schiff deep-sixed the testimony about him? RealClearPolitics has posted video of Philbin’s remarks along with this (lightly edited) transcript: PHILBEN: I want to touch on one last point before I yield to
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January 6, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff

At Power Line, we sometimes refer to the Washington Post as an adjunct of the Democratic Party. To an even greater degree, the Post is an adjunct of official Washington — the cadre of career bureaucrats and former officials who consider it their God given right to set policy, regardless of what elected officials desire. (There is, of course, considerable overlap between official Washington and the Democratic Party). Thus, it’s
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January 6, 2020 — Steven Hayward

Over at Instapundit, Glenn Reynolds posted an interesting message from a Facebook friend who wishes to remain anonymous. Here’s the relevant part: Following the death of Soleimani, it seems like nearly the entire DC / academia / journo natsec/forpol commentariat has penned variations on exactly the same essay: the President has acted hastily, has no plan, and isn’t capable of envisioning or handling what happens next. The template was established
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October 28, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff

Judge Emmet Sullivan reportedly has cancelled a November hearing he had scheduled in the case of Gen. Michael Flynn. Judge Sullivan said he is cancelling the hearing “in view of the parties’ comprehensive briefing concerning Defendant’s Motion to Compel Production of Brady Material.” In other words, he has all the argumentation he needs to rule on this motion. In this post, John discussed and embedded Flynn’s reply brief in support
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October 2, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff

Mainstream media outlets and the former members of the Deep State who supply them with information and quotes are outraged that Attorney General Barr went to Rome to obtain information about Joseph Mifsud. Mifsud is the professor who helped ignite the controversy that led to the Mueller investigation. It’s almost as if these outlets and Deep Staters are fearful of what Barr might learn. Some critics suggest that flying to
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September 27, 2019 — Scott Johnson

The whistleblower blowout is a funny affair. A year in advance of the 2020 presidential election we are in rerun season. We didn’t get enough of Adam Schiff the first time around. Live with it, baby. And we didn’t get enough of journalism based on misinformation supplied to friendly reporters by people “familiar with the matter.” Here it comes again. Andrew McCarthy captures a bit of the old-time quality of
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