Robert Mueller Should Be Executed For Treason

11 03 2018

 By Timothy D. Naegele[1]

The crime of treason against the United States is punishable by imprisonment or death.  Article III, Section 3 of our Constitution defines treason and its punishment:

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court.

The Congress shall have power to declare the punishment of treason, but no attainder of treason shall work corruption of blood, or forfeiture except during the life of the person attainted.[2]

The United States Code states at 18 U.S.C. § 2381:

Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.[3][4]

As FBI Director, Robert Mueller was a co-conspirator and complicit in the “Uranium One”-Russian-Clinton scandal, involving the payment by Russia’s killer Vladimir Putin[5] (directly or indirectly) of approximately $145 million to former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and their foundation—in exchange for the transfer of 20 percent of America’s critical Uranium assets to Russia.[6]  This is undisputed.

Putin kills people. He does not authorize the payment of a penny, much less $145 million, without expecting results—which he and Russia received in spades.  As FBI Director, what did Mueller know and when did he know it?  And what, if anything, did he do to prevent both the Clinton payments and the Uranium transfers?

Also, there are reasons to believe that Mueller has conspired and continues to conspire with Rod Rosenstein and others to reverse the results of the last American presidential election.  This alone constitutes treason, which is punishable by imprisonment or death.  And a multitude of other crimes have been perpetrated by them.[7]

These are not idle or frivolous statements, but contentions that go to the very essence of our great nation’s constitutional republic.  Indeed, it is posited that no greater internal threat to our nation’s existence has occurred since its founding.  Even our Civil War was a war of secession by the South, not a war to alter our form of democratic government.

Mueller and his co-conspirators have given aid and comfort to our enemies by trying to bring down the duly-elected presidency of Donald Trump.  Their efforts and funding should be cease immediately; all of their ongoing activities should be turned over to rank-and-file employees of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ)[8]; and they should be prosecuted.

The DOJ and FBI corrupted an American election, and the wrongdoers must be brought to justice.  To make certain that it never happens again, an example must be made of Mueller, not dissimilar to that of Benito Mussolini in Italy during World War II.  He must be prosecuted for treason and other crimes, convicted, and executed—to send the message of “Never Again” far and wide.

 

Robert Mueller the criminal

 

[See alsoWhat Atrocities Did Robert Mueller Commit In Vietnam?“]

 

© 2018, Timothy D. Naegele

 


[1]  Timothy D. Naegele was counsel to the United States Senate’s Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, and chief of staff to Presidential Medal of Freedom and Congressional Gold Medal recipient and former U.S. Senator Edward W. Brooke (R-Mass). He and his firm, Timothy D. Naegele & Associates, specialize in Banking and Financial Institutions Law, Internet Law, Litigation and other matters (see www.naegele.com and http://www.naegele.com/documents/TimothyD.NaegeleResume.pdf). He has an undergraduate degree in economics from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), as well as two law degrees from the School of Law (Boalt Hall), University of California, Berkeley, and from Georgetown University. He served as a Captain in the U.S. Army, assigned to the Defense Intelligence Agency at the Pentagon, where he received the Joint Service Commendation Medal (see, e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commendation_Medal#Joint_Service). Mr. Naegele is an Independent politically; and he is listed in Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who in American Law, and Who’s Who in Finance and Business. He has written extensively over the years (see, e.g., www.naegele.com/whats_new.html#articles), and can be contacted directly at tdnaegele.associates@gmail.com

[2]  See https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articleiii#section3

[3]  See https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2381

[4]  Possibly the last person charged with and executed for treason was Adam Yahiye Gadahn “for videos in which he appeared as a spokesman for al-Qaeda and threatened attacks on American soil.  He was killed on January 19, 2015 in an unmanned aircraft (drone) strike in Waziristan, Pakistan.”

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treason#United_States

[5]  See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2015/11/29/the-death-of-putin-and-russia-the-final-chapter-of-the-cold-war/ (“The Death Of Putin And Russia: The Final Chapter Of The Cold War”)

[6]  See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/10/20/the-real-russian-conspiracy-barack-obama-the-clintons-and-the-sale-of-americas-uranium-to-russias-killer-putin/ (“The Real Russian Conspiracy: Barack Obama, The Clintons, And The Sale Of America’s Uranium To Russia’s Killer Putin”)

[7]  See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2009/12/05/is-barack-obama-a-racist/#comment-11898 (“WILL BARACK OBAMA GO TO PRISON?”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2012/03/21/the-united-states-department-of-injustice/#comment-11876 (“A Reckoning For The Corrupt DOJ, FBI And Robert Mueller”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/10/20/the-real-russian-conspiracy-barack-obama-the-clintons-and-the-sale-of-americas-uranium-to-russias-killer-putin/#comment-11824 (“As FBI Director, Mueller Helped Cover Up Fla. 9/11 Probe, Court Docs Show”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2009/12/05/is-barack-obama-a-racist/#comment-11741 (“BARACK OBAMA’S FAILED, CHAOTIC, RACIST AND TREASONOUS PRESIDENCY’S FINAL DAYS”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/10/20/the-real-russian-conspiracy-barack-obama-the-clintons-and-the-sale-of-americas-uranium-to-russias-killer-putin/#comment-11728 (“Remove, Disbar, And Prosecute Robert Mueller!”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/10/20/the-real-russian-conspiracy-barack-obama-the-clintons-and-the-sale-of-americas-uranium-to-russias-killer-putin/#comment-11664 (“The Designated Target Of A TREASONOUS Elite FBI Cabal: The President Of The United States”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/10/20/the-real-russian-conspiracy-barack-obama-the-clintons-and-the-sale-of-americas-uranium-to-russias-killer-putin/#comment-11487 (“THE FACE OF EVIL: ROBERT MUELLER”)

[8]  See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2012/03/21/the-united-states-department-of-injustice/ (“The United States Department of Injustice”)


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59 responses

11 03 2018
Jonathan Buttall

Robert Mueller; United States Marine, War hero and combat veteran of Vietnam, former FBI director and now Special Counselor. Most American man in the USA.

Timmy, I stopped participating in this site because your articles were getting too extreme, but with this one, I sadly have to leave this site altogether. This is beyond the pale, sick and the most Anti American column I’ve ever seen.

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11 03 2018
H. Craig Bradley

Jonathan, spoken like a True Liberal (Progressive) Democrat. You surely won’t be missed around here.

Liked by 1 person

11 03 2018
Timothy D. Naegele

Thank you, Jonathan, for your comments. I respect your feelings on the subject.

Obviously, I feel just as strongly as you do; and both of us are free to present our views.

First, the Vietnam War was a tragedy in which approximately 58,000 Americans lost their lives; many more were maimed for life; vast riches of the United States and the American people were wasted; and tragically, more than a million people died for nothing.

See, e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War_casualties (“Vietnam War casualties”)

It was perpetrated by John F. Kennedy, who was despicable for a myriad of reasons; Lyndon Johnson; and Robert McNamara. Each was a criminal in his own right.

See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/10/04/john-f-kennedy-the-most-despicable-president-in-american-history/ (“John F. Kennedy: The Most Despicable President In American History”) (see also the extensive comments beneath the article)

I had friends who died in that war, or were among the “walking wounded,” and their sacrifices were for nothing. They were used and abused by our “leaders.”

Today, Vietnam is our “ally”; and many who fought in that war have had to atone for their sins. Without knowing all of the facts about Mueller, one cannot draw a conclusion about his role and misdeeds in that war.

Second, what we do know is Mueller’s role at the FBI and now as Special Counsel. It is despicable; and there are reasons to believe that he has been and is in the process of committing treason.

My guess is that history will not be kind to him. He is not a hero in any respect, but a sanctimonious traitor who is every bit as evil as Russia’s Putin.

See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2015/11/29/the-death-of-putin-and-russia-the-final-chapter-of-the-cold-war/ (“The Death Of Putin And Russia: The Final Chapter Of The Cold War”)

Third, what we do know for certain too is that the DOJ and FBI have been corrupt for decades. Anyone who has dealt with them knows this as a fact.

See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2012/03/21/the-united-states-department-of-injustice/ (“The United States Department of Injustice”)

Lastly, I am struck by your description of Mueller as the “Most American man in the USA.” Again, with all due respect, I believe he ranks as one of the greatest traitors in U.S. history. For that reason, as I have written:

[A]n example must be made of Mueller, not dissimilar to that of Benito Mussolini in Italy during World War II. He must be prosecuted for treason and other crimes, convicted, and executed—to send the message of “Never Again” far and wide.

Nothing less will suffice.

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11 03 2018
H. Craig Bradley

AMERICA’S COUP D’ ETAT

Fusion One: The Dossier, was a covert, orchastrated attempt by Hillary Clinton et. al to influence the 2016 Presidential election and win the Presidency ( Hillary’s Holy Grail ). She lost but the hanger’s-on and moles in the Federal system are not about to surrender any time soon. Thus, official corruption (cancer) is still spreading. Diagnosis: Terminal Disease to the Body Politic.
Rx: Purges, once daily by mouth (orally).

Liked by 1 person

11 03 2018
H. Craig Bradley

NULLIFICATION

Sanctuary State Status in California is “nullification”, exactly what the South did prior to the Civil War. Nullification of Federal Laws by a State is in itself unconstitutional. However, our weakened politic and Federal Government cannot deal with this progressive state law decisively enough to eradicate all the conspirators. Thus, California may eventually end-up seceding from the Union by default, without a shot or a confrontation with its leadership.

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11 03 2018
Timothy D. Naegele

Thank you, Craig.

I believe those governmental functionaries in California who are engaged in such lawless practices will lose; they may go to jail; and California will not secede.

Yes, in many respects, California is a far-Left “wacko” state governmentally, but the people of California will only allow it to go so far. Also, I believe the U.S. Supreme Court, among other federal courts, will curtail California’s lawlessness.

California is the state in which I was born and raised; and I will always love the state. But the pendulum swings. Among other things, Earl Warren, Ronald Reagan, George Deukmejian, Pete Wilson and Arnold Schwarzenegger were its GOP governors.

Last but not least, all federal funding to so-called “sanctuary” cities and/or states can be cut off completely. I have cited what Lincoln did, and Donald Trump can engage in similar practices.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/05/16/americas-newest-civil-war-2017-and-beyond/ (“America’s Newest Civil War: 2017 And Beyond”)

Also, the executive branch can ignore what “lawless” judges decree. Clearly, the judiciary does not have a military to enforce anything.

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12 03 2018
Timothy D. Naegele

NO EVIDENCE OF COLLUSION BETWEEN TRUMP CAMPAIGN AND RUSSIA

Ban Robert Mueller

Victor Morton has written in the Washington Times:

There is no evidence of collusion between the Kremlin and President Trump’s campaign, the House intelligence committee said in a statement Monday.

Rep. Mike Conaway, the Texas Republican who led the probe, announced Monday the completion of a 150-page draft report with findings.

“We have found no evidence of collusion, coordination, or conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Russians,” the committee statement said.

Mr. Conaway went further than that in an interview with Fox News, saying the panel also could not conclude that Russian President Vladimir “Putin favored Trump” in the Kremlin’s effort to sow chaos in the U.S. democratic process.

The report still need to be perused by the panel’s minority Democrats and sent to the White House for a declassification review by America’s intelligence agencies.

See https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/mar/12/house-intelligence-committee-finds-no-collusion-be/ (“House intel committee finds no evidence of collusion between Trump campaign, Russia“)

Robert Mueller should shut down his “witch hunt” immediately. Otherwise, as stated in the article above, he should be prosecuted for treason, and subjected to the maximum punishment possible, including death by execution for his many crimes.

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17 03 2018
Timothy D. Naegele

ANOTHER FACE OF PURE EVIL FALLS [UPDATED]

Criminal McCabe falls

Todd Beamon has written for Newsmax:

Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Friday fired former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, citing “an unauthorized disclosure to the news media” and lacking “candor” with Justice Department investigators, two days before his retirement on Sunday.

The attorney general’s decision makes McCabe, 49, a frequent target of attacks by President Donald Trump, ineligible for full retirement benefits derived from more than two decades of federal government service.

“I have terminated the employment of Andrew McCabe effective immediately,” Sessions said in a statement. “The FBI expects every employee to adhere to the highest standards of honesty, integrity, and accountability.”

McCabe immediately responded in a statement: “I am being singled out and treated this way because of the role I played, the actions I took, and the events I witnessed in the aftermath of the firing of James Comey.”

He joined the FBI in 1996 and became No. 2 under former Director James Comey in early 2016.

McCabe briefly [headed] the agency after President Donald Trump fired Comey in May 2016, abruptly taking leave in January after a report from the Justice Department’s inspector general about his actions during a probe of the Clinton Foundation.

He told CNN on Friday that “I absolutely never misled the inspector general in any way.”

McCable also slammed the termination as resulting from “a series of attacks designed to undermine my credibility and my reputation.”

In his statement, Sessions said that the Justice Department’s inspector general and the FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) found that McCabe “had made an unauthorized disclosure to the news media and had lacked candor, including under oath, on multiple occasions.”

He called the IG’s investigation “extensive and fair,” leading to a report on “allegations of misconduct” by McCabe that was provided to the FBI.

OPR, Sessions said, “reviewed the report and underlying documents and issued a disciplinary proposal recommending” McCabe’s dismissal.

In its recommendation Wednesday, OPR said that “all FBI employees know that lacking candor under oath results in dismissal and that our integrity is our brand,” Sessions said.

The inspector general’s report has yet to be made public.

McCabe was to turn 50 on Sunday, making him eligible for retirement benefits at an “enhanced” rate because he was a law-enforcement officer covered by the system for federal employees, according to news reports.

The IG announced a wide-ranging investigation last year into the FBI’s handling of the Hillary Clinton email probe — and Trump has repeatedly slammed McCabe’s actions during the inquiry.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Thursday described him as “a bad actor” to reporters in light of the IG’s report.

“We do think it is well documented that he has had some very troubling behavior and by most accounts a bad actor and should have some cause for concern,” she said at the daily briefing.

McCabe was at the Justice Department on Thursday with his lawyer to plead his case against termination.

In addition, Republicans on Capitol Hill have blasted McCabe, suggesting that Justice and FBI officials conspired against Trump when it began an investigation into the president’s ties to Russia.

According to the IG’s report, McCabe authorized FBI officials to talk to a reporter from The Wall Street Journal in October 2016 for a story on differing views within the FBI and Justice Department on how aggressively the Clinton Foundation should be investigated.

The report is also expected to allege that McCabe was not forthcoming with the agency about the media leak, which McCabe has denied.

In his attacks on McCabe, President Trump cited campaign contributions that his wife, Jill McCabe, had received during a failed run for the Virginia state Senate in 2015 from a political action committee of then-Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a longtime Clinton ally.

Because McCabe was fired on Friday, he lost out on an annual pension of nearly $60,000 under formulas published by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management for law-enforcement officers, according to news reports.

McCabe also most likely will be docked that amount until he reaches just under 57 years of age or as late as 62.

Further, McCabe most likely will also lose other benefits from serving in law enforcement, as well health and medical benefits.

See https://www.newsmax.com/politics/sessions-mccabe-fbi-deputy-director/2018/03/16/id/849199/ (“AG Sessions Fires Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe“) (emphasis added); see also DOJ’s Office of Inspector General’s “A Report of Investigation of Certain Allegations Relating to Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe” (PDF version) and https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/mccabe-fbi-criminal-referral/2018/04/19/id/855513/ (“Justice Department IG Submits Criminal Referral on McCabe“)

Hopefully McCabe is indicted, convicted and goes to prison for the rest of his life, and is joined by other despicable wrongdoers (e.g., Barack Obama, the Clintons, Robert Mueller, James Comey, Loretta Lynch, Eric Holder, Susan Rice).

The dominos are falling one by one, which—when the process is completed—may cleanse the U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI of corruption that has existed for literally decades.

Like Hollywood’s century-old depravity, we can only hope that this is not too much to ask for or expect.

The dominos fall

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18 03 2018
Timothy D. Naegele

The Traitor Mueller Has Been Botching Investigations Since The Anthrax Attacks

Robert Mueller the criminal

Daniel Ashman has written for The Federalist:

Mystery surrounds Robert Mueller and his investigation into Russia and President Trump. Some think he is the ultimate professional, others that he is a Democrat lackey, still others maintain he is working on Trump’s side.

We can see how he works if we look at how Mueller ran his second-most important investigation as FBI Director. In September of 2001, an entity began mailing anthrax through the US Postal system, hitting such prominent targets as NBC and Senator Daschle’s office. The terrorist attacks killed five and left others hospitalized. The world panicked.

Under Mueller’s management, the FBI launched an investigation lasting ten years. They now brag about spending “hundreds of thousands of investigator hours on this case.” Let’s take a closer look at Mueller’s response to understand the context of the investigation — who his people investigated, targeted, and found guilty.

The anthrax letters began just a week after the 9/11 attack. While planning the airplane hijackings, Al-Qaeda had been weaponizing anthrax, setting up a lab in Afghanistan manned by Yazid Sufaat, the same man who housed two of the 9/11 hijackers. Two hijackers later sought medical help due to conditions consistent with infection via anthrax: Al Haznawi went to the emergency room for a skin lesion which he claimed was from “bumping into a suitcase,” and ringleader Mohamed Atta needed medicine for “skin irritation.” A team of bioterrorism experts from John Hopkins confirmed that anthrax was the most likely cause of the lesion. Meanwhile, the 9/11 hijackers were also trying to obtain crop-dusting airplanes.

So how did Mueller’s investigative team handle the case?

Mueller issued a statement in October of 2001, while anthrax victims were still dying: the FBI had found “no direct link to organized terrorism.” The John Hopkins team of experts was mistaken, the FBI continued, Al Haznawi never had an anthrax infection. The crop-dusting airplanes they needed was possibly for a separate and unrelated anthrax attack.

A few weeks later, the FBI released a remarkable profile of the attacker. FBI experts eschewed analysis of the content of the letters, where it was written in bold block letters, “Death to America, Death to Israel, Allah is Great.” Instead, they focused on a “linguistic analysis,” stating that the letter’s writer was atypical in many respects and not “comfortable or practiced in writing in lower case lettering.” The FBI therefore concluded that it was likely a disgruntled American with bad personal skills.

The investigators hypothesized that the attacker was a lonely American who had wanted to kill people with anthrax for some undefined time period, but then became “mission oriented” following 9/11 and immediately prepared and mailed the deadly spores while pretending to be a Muslim.

Mueller’s FBI honed in on Steven Hatfill as the culprit — a “flag-waving” American, who had served in the Army, then dedicated himself to protecting America from bioterrorist threats by working in the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases.

There was no direct link from Hatfill to the attacks, by the FBI’s own admission, and the bureau never charged Hatfill. The FBI did however spy on, follow, and harass him non-stop for years. The Department of Justice also publicly outed Hatfill as the possible terrorist.

While Hatfill’s dignity and life was being trampled on by America’s secret police, Mueller took a stand. But on a different topic. He made front page news for threatening President Bush he would resign over NSA policy. All while his own team was trampling on the rights of an American in the FBI’s largest-ever investigation.

Hatfill successfully sued the government for its unlawful actions. He won almost $6 million dollars.

After the Hatfill investigation blew up in the FBI’s face, they moved on to Bruce Ivins, another Army researcher who had actually volunteered to help the FBI investigate this case, and had been doing so for years. It wasn’t until five years after the attack that Mueller’s men decided Ivins was a target.

The FBI case against Ivins, once again, was based on circumstantial evidence.

The prosecution stated Ivins purposefully gave a misleading sample of anthrax spore, but Frontline documented this was not true. Ivins was “familiar” with the area from which the anthrax letters were mailed, the FBI said, but Pulitzer Prize winning ProPublica lays out the accepted facts of the case showing it was impossible for Ivins to make the trip to mail the letters.

The spores used in the attacks were a similar type to the laboratory spores where Ivins worked, but that ignored the fact that the anthrax letters had a unique additive — so sophisticated and dangerous a scientist commented, “This is not your mother’s anthrax” — that was likely produced by a nation state or Al-Qaeda.

Ivins was never indicted, just given the Hatfill treatment. His house was raided, and he was threatened with a death sentence, or as his lawyer put it, put under “relentless pressure of accusation and innuendo.” He committed suicide.

One week later, U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Taylor stated Ivins was guilty “beyond a reasonable doubt,” and they were “confident that Dr. Ivins was the only person responsible for these attacks.”

Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy, one of the intended victims of the anthrax terror attacks, did not believe that Ivins was the sole actor. Mueller ordered an independent audit of the FBI’s case by the National Academy of Science, then formally closed the case in 2010, sticking with the conclusion that Ivins, and Ivins alone, committed the terror attack. One year later the NAS released their results and confirmed what many scientists had been repeating for years: the FBI’s science and conclusions were not solid.

A former FBI official involved in the investigation sued the FBI, alleging the FBI concealed evidence exculpatory to Ivins.

Mueller made his position known, saying, “I do not apologize for any aspect of this investigation,” and stated that the FBI had made no mistakes.

The investigation was an unmitigated disaster for America. Mueller didn’t go after al-Qaida for the anthrax letters because he couldn’t find a direct link. But then he targeted American citizens without showing a direct link. For his deeds, he had the second longest tenure as FBI Director ever, and was roundly applauded by nearly everyone (except Republican Rep. Louie Gohmert).

Now he’s running the Trump-Russia investigation.

See http://thefederalist.com/2018/02/08/robert-mueller-botching-investigations-since-anthrax-attacks/ (emphasis added); see also https://saraacarter.com/questions-still-surround-robert-muellers-boston-past/ (“[It is surprising] that lawmakers have lauded Mueller as a stellar and well-respected former FBI director but have little knowledge about the former bureau director’s past from the criticism during his years in Boston, challenges with the 911 Commission findings when he was first appointed to the FBI and handling of the Anthrax case to name a few”—”In Boston, Mueller was an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the U.S. Attorney’s Office and then became the Acting U.S. Attorney from 1986 through 1987.
It was Mueller’s actions during that time that raised questions about his role in one of the FBI’s most controversial cases involving the FBI’s use of a confidential informant that led to the convictions of four innocent men, who were sentenced to death for murders they did not commit. Local law enforcement officials, the media, and some colleagues criticized Mueller and the FBI for what they believed was the bureau’s role in covering up for the FBI’s longtime dealings with mobster and informant James ‘Whitey’ Bulger”—”Mueller who was first an assistant US attorney, ‘then as the acting US attorney in Boston’ had written ‘letters to the parole and pardons board throughout the 1980s opposing clemency for the four men framed by FBI lies. Of course, Mueller was also in that position while Whitey Bulger was helping the FBI cart off his criminal competitors even as he buried bodies in shallow graves along the Neponset'”—”In 2001, those four men, who were convicted in 1965 of Teddy Deegan’s murder were exonerated by the courts. It was discovered that the FBI withheld evidence from the court to protect their informant that would have cleared the men”
)

As stated in my article above, Mueller must be removed from office, indicted, convicted and executed for treason, to send a message loud and clear to the world that his conduct will not be tolerated in the United States ever again.

Nothing less will suffice.

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20 03 2018
Timothy D. Naegele

Wing Nut Congressman Suozzi Should Be Prosecuted For Treason

President Trump and traitor Suozzi

Ed Kilgore has written in the New York Magazine:

In pursuit of the ever-popular Beltway sport of False Equivalence, it’s common to see today’s left-bent resistance to Donald Trump compared to right-wing extremist movements of the recent past, from the tea party movement to precincts further off in the fever swamps. This sort of talk is often the product of laziness or malice. But now and then something happens that makes left-right parallels unavoidable and accurate. One such incident, surprisingly, comes from the loose lips of a member of Congress, New York’s Tom Suozzi. According to the New York Post, the Nassau County Democrat had this to say about the remedies available to deal with Donald J. Trump during a town hall meeting last week:

“It’s really a matter of putting public pressure on the president,” Suozzi said in a newly released video of the March 12 talk in Huntington. “This is where the Second Amendment comes in, quite frankly, because you know, what if the president was to ignore the courts? What would you do? What would we do?”

A listener then blurts out, “What’s the Second Amendment?”

The left-leaning Democrat says, “The Second Amendment is the right to bear arms.

First time I read about this, I thought maybe Suozzi was joking. Apparently not.

Suozzi political adviser Kim Devlin denied the pol was “advocating for an armed insurrection.”

But the Suozzi campaign at the same time seemed to double down on the comments, as they forwarded a line penned by Thomas Jefferson that called for armed resistance.

“What country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance. Let them take arms,” the quote said.

The idea that the Second Amendment is intended to preserve the right of the people to undertake a violent revolution against some present or future “tyrannical” government is dangerously common on the political right. It’s usually articulated by those who oppose any firearm regulations whatsoever. But at a deeper level, the availability of “Second Amendment remedies” is the foundation stone of the militia movement, and represents a not-very-subtle threat from anti-democratic (not to mention anti-Democratic) activists of all sorts that there are rights — ranging from property rights to the so-called right to life of the unborn — that no popular majority will be allowed to violate perpetually without provoking righteous violence. This Second Amendment–based right of revolution was embraced by 2016 Republican presidential candidates Ben Carson, Ted Cruz, and Mike Huckabee.

This sort of loose talk has largely been accepted as part of conventional conservative politics, though Donald Trump did raise some eyebrows during the 2016 general election by hinting that he might share it:

Repeating his contention that Mrs. Clinton wanted to abolish the right to bear arms, Mr. Trump warned at a rally here that it would be “a horrible day” if Mrs. Clinton were elected and got to appoint a tiebreaking Supreme Court justice.

“If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks,” Mr. Trump said, as the crowd began to boo. He quickly added: “Although the Second Amendment people — maybe there is, I don’t know.”

So Suozzi is in some pretty strange company in adopting the Second Amendment remedies meme, including, perhaps, the man whose threats to the Constitution apparently pushed him in this direction in the first place.

I’m sure Suozzi will issue a “clarification” before the sun sets tonight. But his remarks should serve as an opportunity for left-of-center folk to swear off similar thinking once and for all. There are few things more frightening than the possibility that participants in today’s hyperpolarized partisan politics will all get into the habit of threatening to take up shooting irons to redress the imperfections of our political system. Progressives would be well-advised to leave this sort of extremist reasoning to the gun nuts and the wing nuts.

See http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/03/demo-congressman-hints-at-armed-rebellion-against-trump.html (“Democratic Congressman Hints at Armed Rebellion Against Trump“); see also https://thepoliticalinsider.com/tom-suozzi/ (“Dem Congressman Suggests Taking Up Arms to Oppose President Trump“)

Democrats have done enough already to undermine our electoral and constitutional processes.

Like Robert Mueller who should be executed for treason, as discussed in my article above and the comments beneath it, traitors and swine like Suozzi should be indicted, convicted and incarcerated for treason.

Nothing less will suffice.

And yes, lots of us began as Democrats but will never vote for one again.

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21 03 2018
smilinjacksez

Not very long ago, I said the “coup” could possibly be in play. Now, I know it is, and it’s up to “you out there” to put an end to it.

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21 03 2018
Timothy D. Naegele

Yes, indeed, Smilin Jack.

It is nice to see you back.

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21 03 2018
Timothy D. Naegele

ANOTHER TRAITOR JOHN BRENNAN SQUEALS [UPDATED]

John Brennan traitor

George Neumayr has written for the American Spectator:

It was the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky who coined the phrase the “dustbin of history.” To his political opponents, he sputtered, “You are pitiful, isolated individuals! You are bankrupts. Your role is played out. Go where you belong from now on — into the dustbin of history!”

It is no coincidence that John Brennan, who supported the Soviet-controlled American Communist Party in the 1970s (he has acknowledged that he thought his vote for its presidential candidate Gus Hall threatened his prospects at the CIA; unfortunately, it didn’t), would borrow from Trotsky’s rhetoric in his fulminations against Donald Trump. His tweet last week, shortly after the firing of Andrew McCabe, reeked of Trotskyite revolutionary schlock: “When the full extent of your venality, moral turpitude, and political corruption becomes known, you will take your rightful place as a disgraced demagogue in the dustbin of history. You may scapegoat Andy McCabe, but you will not destroy America… America will triumph over you.”

America will triumph over a president it elected? That’s the raw language of coup, and of course it is not the first time Brennan has indulged it. In 2017, he was calling for members of the executive branch to defy the chief executive. They should “refuse to carry out” his lawful directives if they don’t agree with them, he said.

Trump has said that the Russians are “laughing their asses off” over the turmoil caused by Obamagate. No doubt many of the laughs come at the sight of Brennan, a supporter of Soviet stooges like Gus Hall, conducting a de facto coup from the top of the CIA and then continuing it after his ouster. Who needs Gus Hall when John Brennan is around? This time the Russians don’t even have to pay for the anti-American activity.

Another hardcore leftist, Samantha Power, who spent the weeks after Trump’s victory rifling through intelligence picked up on his staff, found Brennan’s revolutionary tweet very inspiring. “Not a good idea to piss off John Brennan,” she wrote. Sounded pretty dark and grave. But not to worry, she tweeted later. She just meant that the former CIA director was going to smite Trump with the power of his “eloquent voice.”

Out of power, these aging radicals can’t help themselves. They had their shot to stop Trump, they failed, and now they are furious. The adolescent coup talk grows more feverish with each passing day. We have a former CIA director calling for the overthrow of a duly elected president, a former attorney general (Eric Holder) calling for a “knife fight,” a Senate minority leader speaking ominously about what the intelligence community might do to Trump (“they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you,” Schumer has said), and assorted former FBI and CIA officials cheering for a coup, such as CNN’s Phil Mudd who says, “You’ve been around for 13 months. We’ve been around since 1908. I know how this game is going to be played. We’re going to win.”

In all this unhinged chatter, the partisan origins of Obamagate become clearer. The same anti-Trump hatred on display in their tweets and punditry drove the political espionage. James Kallstrom, the former FBI Assistant Director, notes that the “animus and malice” contained in Brennan’s tweet is “prima facie exposure of how he felt about Trump before the election.”

All the key figures in the decision to open up a probe on Trump wanted him to lose — from Brennan to Peter Strzok, whose anti-Trump machinations included, according to the latest batch of texts with his mistress, plotting to manipulate a buddy on the FISA court. In one text, he wonders if he can finagle a meeting with his friend by inviting him to a “cocktail party.” The impropriety aforethought on display in that tweet is staggering, but of course the media has paid no attention to it, preoccupied as it is with Andrew McCabe’s retirement income.

McCabe, by the way, has removed all doubts about his capacity for partisan lying with his post-firing statement, which rests entirely upon it. With all of its anti-Trump special pleading, the statement reads like it was cobbled together by Rachel Maddow. Like so many other ruling-class frauds, McCabe seeks absolution for his perjury and leaking through liberal politics. I stand with the liberal powerful against Trump, you can’t touch me — that’s the upshot of his defense. Comey has taken the same tack. The title of his forthcoming book should be: How the Law Doesn’t Apply to the Self-Appointed Ruling Class.

What an amazing collection of entitled creeps, who long ago convinced themselves that the “rule of law” is identical to what they see as their sacred right to exercise power in any way they see fit. All the blather about Trump’s violation of the law is simply a projection of their own lawlessness. So far the coup has been thwarted. They had hoped to stop him in the campaign through political espionage. But that didn’t work. Then they tried to upend him through spying during the transition, holding out hope until the very last moment, as evidenced by Susan Rice penning her sham exculpatory note only after Trump’s swearing-in. Now they join Brennan in seeking to bury Trump in Mueller’s dustbin.

Trotsky would have understood the shorthand of all the tweets, polemics, and posturing perfectly. Nothing in this show trial bears any relationship to reality or justice. It is simply an expression of power politics, which doesn’t always end well for its exponents. As even an old Gus Hall supporter like John Brennan must know, and perhaps his fulminating panic indicates a dawning awareness of it, those who talk the loudest about their enemies heading for the ash heap of history often end up in it.

See https://spectator.org/john-brennans-thwarted-coup/ (“John Brennan’s Thwarted Coup“) (emphasis added)

Like Robert Mueller who should be executed for treason—as discussed in my article above, and in the comments beneath it—traitors and swine like Barack Obama’s former CIA Director Brennan should be indicted, convicted and incarcerated for treason, at the very least.

Nothing less will suffice.

See also https://www.politico.com/story/2018/08/15/trump-pulls-security-clearance-of-ex-cia-director-brennan-778791 (“Trump pulls security clearance of ex-CIA director Brennan“)

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22 03 2018
Timothy D. Naegele

ANOTHER DESPICABLE: THE TRAITOR JAMES CLAPPER

Traitor James Clapper

Distinguished writer and editor Bill Gertz has written for the Washington Free Beacon:

A House Intelligence Committee investigation of Russian election meddling has concluded that former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper misled Congress about disclosing information to CNN.

The committee’s final report on the investigation was approved on Thursday and now awaits an intelligence agency review.

Despite 472 days of investigation and thousands of witnesses, the committee stated in its list of final conclusions and recommendations that it found no evidence of collusion between President Donald Trump, his campaign aides, and Russia.

“The committee found no evidence that meetings between Trump associates—including Jeff Sessions—and official representatives of the Russian government—including Ambassador Kislyak—reflected collusion, coordination, or conspiracy with the Russian government,” the list states.

The report also said former White House National Security Adviser Michael Flynn pleaded guilty to making a false statement to the FBI regarding conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak “even though the Federal Bureau of Investigation agents did not detect any deception during Flynn’s interview.”

The finding suggests the FBI improperly charged Flynn.

The Obama administration also failed to notify the Trump campaign that members of the campaign were assessed to be counterintelligence concerns, the report said.

The committee said opposition to Trump from the U.S. national security establishment prompted the campaign to hire unqualified aides such as George Papadopoulous and Carter Page.

Trump advisers had contacts with the pro-Russian Wikileaks, but none were involved in the theft or publication of Clinton campaign emails, the report said.

On the former DNI, the report says that Clapper, now a contributor to CNN as a national security analyst “provided inconsistent testimony to the committee about his contacts with the media, including CNN.”

A CNN spokeswoman did not return an email seeking comment. Clapper could not be reached for comment.

The report also states that leaks of classified information about Russian intentions to sow discord in the U.S. presidential election began prior to Election Day. The disclosures of U.S. secrets alleging Russia was working to help elect Trump “increased dramatically” after the Nov. 8, 2016 election.

The panel suggested that the leaks “correlate to specific language” in a U.S. intelligence community assessment of Russian election meddling.

The finding suggests that leaks of classified information were politically motivated to undermine Trump after he won the election.

The findings also say the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign funded the anti-Trump dossier produced by former British intelligence officers Christopher Steele.

Steele “claims to have obtained his dossier information second- and third-hand from purported high-placed Russian sources, such as government officials with links to the Kremlin and intelligence services,” the report says.

“Christopher Steele’s information from Russian sources was provided directly to Fusion GPS and Perkins Cole and indirectly to the Clinton campaign,” the report said.

The report suggests that the research group Fusion GPS was used by Russia for disinformation. “Prior to conducting opposition research targeting candidate Trump’s business dealings, Fusion GPS conducted research benefitting Russian interests,” the report said.

The Washington Free Beacon hired Fusion GPS early in the 2016 election campaign but had no role in the Steele dossier.

The report also concluded that Russia intelligence used social media to sow political discord and undermine the election.

The FBI was criticized by the committee for not providing victims information about Russian hacking operations.

Also, U.S. intelligence community judgments regarding Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s strategic intentions “did not employ proper analytic tradecraft,” the report said.

The report said Special Counsel Robert Mueller indicted former Trump campaign aide Paul Manafort on charges unrelated to collusion, coordination, and conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia.

See http://freebeacon.com/national-security/house-probe-accuses-clapper-misleading-congress/ (“House Probe Accuses Clapper of Misleading Congress“) (emphasis added)

Like Robert Mueller who should be executed for treason—as discussed in my article above, and in the comments beneath it—traitors and swine like Barack Obama’s former U.S. Director of National Intelligence Clapper should be indicted, convicted and incarcerated for treason, at the very least.

Nothing less will suffice.

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31 03 2018
Timothy D. Naegele

Dershowitz On Special Counsel: The Investigation Should End [UPDATED]

Alan Dershowitz

Jack Fink has reported for CBS in Dallas-Fort Worth:

Civil Liberties attorney Alan Dershowitz said Wednesday that he is fearful of the criminalization of political differences in today’s discourse and that he doesn’t think special counsels are the right way to approach criminal justice.

Dershowitz spoke to CBS 11 political reporter Jack Fink about Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians to affect the outcome of the 2016 election.

“I think the investigation should end and I think the Congress should appoint a special non-partisan commission,” said Dershowitz. He said he thinks a Congressional committee would be too partisan.

“That’s the way it’s done in other western democracies,” he continued. “They don’t appoint a special counsel and tell them to ‘Get that guy . . .’ that’s what they did in the Soviet Union. Lavrentiy Beria, the head of the KGB said to Stalin, ‘Show me the man, and I’ll find you the crime!’” That’s what special counsel does.”

Dershowitz was quick to point out that he was not making a direct correlation between the United States and the former Soviet Union. “I’m not comparing obviously the Soviet Union and the United States. We have structural protections in our Bill Of Rights but it’s going down the wrong direction.”

“The issue of criminalization [of political differences] has not been subject to rational discourse,” said Dershowitz. “Democrats hate when they politicize and criminalize political differences against Democrats . . . when they did it with Bill Clinton. Republicans hate when they do it against their people . . . President Trump. But each one supports it when they’re against their enemies and partisanship prevails over principle. It’s very hard to have a reasonable discussion.”

Dershowitz said that citizens should fear the direction of this investigation for their own sake. He warned that today criminalization of political differences appears – now – to only affect presidents and political leaders. “Tomorrow it can affect you and me. If you give the prosecutor the ability to stretch the criminal law to fit a target, it’s very dangerous.”

Dershowitz said that special counsels are not the right way to approach criminal justice. “When you appoint a special counsel you give them targets and you say, ‘You better get that guy or the people around him . . . and we’re going to give you tens of millions of dollars. And if you come up empty handed you’re a failure.’”

Dershowitz said that if an ordinary prosecutor goes months without finding a crime then “that’s great, no . . . there have been no crimes committed.” He says not so with a special counsel. “Special Counsel always has the goal of ‘getting the people.’ They’re going to find crimes, or they’re going to manufacture crimes or they’re going to stretch the criminal law to fit the ‘crimes’ because they’re not going to come away empty handed.”

Dershowitz was asked what he thinks should happen now. Should Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein curtail the investigation? “I think Rod Rosenstein needs to say to the special counsel, ‘Do not investigate the private finances of the president before he became president; do not investigate his relatives; do not investigate his sex life.’ Don’t do – to President Trump – what Ken Starr did to President Clinton,” said Dershowitz . “It started with Whitewater and ended up with a blue dress. That’s not the appropriate way a special counsel should operate.”

Rosenstein appointed Robert Mueller as special counsel after Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from any existing or future investigations of any matters related in any way to the campaigns for President of the United States.

Dershowitz had some strong words for Rosenstein. “I think Rod Rosenstein is concerned more about his reputation than anything else. I don’t understand why he’s not recused,” said Dershowitz. “He is the key witness in the firing of Comey.”

Dershowitz said if he were President Trump’s lawyer, Rosenstein would be the first witness he would call asking him, “Rod Rosenstein, you wrote the memo . . . you justified the firing . . . explain how you justified the firing. Did the President tell you to do it? Did you tell the President to do the firing?”

Dershowitz said the American public is quickly losing faith in the justice system and he called that a terrible, terrible tragedy. “We need neutral objective people administering justice. You can’t have an FBI agent like Strzok who is writing messages saying ‘oh we have to stop Trump from becoming President.’”

Dershowitz was referring to text messages between FBI employees Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, a senior FBI lawyer who was also working on the Mueller team.

During the campaign, Strzok led the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private server while Clinton was Secretary of State. The texts sent between Page and Strzok were dated between August 2015 and December 2016, the duration of the campaign. They raise concerns about Strzok’s impartiality and were likely to prompt more questions about the investigation into Clinton’s server.

Strzok was dismissed from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team in August, 2017.

“The American public insists that justice not only be fair, but be seen to be fair – appear to be fair. You need the appearance and the reality of justice. We’re not having that today,” said Dershowitz.

Dershowitz said he thought Trump should not have fired former FBI Director James Comey in the way that he did. “Look, Comey should have been fired. I think Clinton would have fired him had she been elected,” said Dershowitz. “[Comey] did a terrible, terrible thing during the election and he may have influenced the election. That’s not the job of the FBI. He should have been fired but I think it was a mistake for the President to fire him in the manner that he did,” he continued. “I don’t think it was illegal – I think it was a constitutionally authorized act – but I think we wouldn’t have a special counsel today if not for that firing.”

Dershowitz said he sees absolutely no evidence that there was either collusion between Trump and the Russian government and/or obstruction of justice. “I would think by this time there would be some public disclosure of any such charges,” said Dershowitz.

“Collusion – if it happened, and there’s no evidence that it happened – would be a sin, it would not be a crime,” said Dershowitz. “It is not a crime to collude about an election unless there are payments made, or violations of the federal law involving gifts to campaigns from foreign governments. But collusion itself is not a crime.”

“I think that the president cannot be charged with obstruction of justice for exercising his constitutional authority. He has the authority to fire anybody in the executive branch – the Supreme Court has said that.”

Regarding a possible impeachment, Dershowitz said “no one knows” whether or not there has to be a crime committed by the President – while he is in office – for him to be impeached.

“I believe the Constitution says what it means. The Constitution says in order to be impeached, the President must have committed bribery, treason or other high crimes and misdemeanors,” said Dershowitz. “I take that seriously. And I don’t think a President can be impeached for doing something that isn’t criminal.” He said he did not think President Bill Clinton should have been impeached either.

Dershowitz said he believes that no party should take up impeachment unless they are sure they can remove the President.

“You don’t go after the President unless he’s committed an act which would warrant removal. And for that to happen, [there] would have to be wide bipartisan support,” said Dershowitz. “There is no bipartisan support for impeachment of this president today.”

Dershowitz said he has taken a lot of heat from friends because some of his positions appear to “help” President Trump. “I didn’t vote for President Trump, I voted for Hillary Clinton. But I’m going to be honest about the law, whoever is the President.”

Dershowitz was in town to speak before the Institute of Policy Innovation’s Hatton W. Sumners Distinguished Lecture Series Wednesday. The Institute of Policy Innovation is a free-market think tank based in Irving.

He also talked with CBS11 about how it’s likely the census citizenship question issue will end up at the U.S. Supreme Court.

See http://dfw.cbslocal.com/2018/03/29/dershowitz-trump-special-counsel-investigation-should-end-soviet-union/ (emphasis added); see also https://www.newsmax.com/politics/alan-dershowitz-mueller-trump-russia/2018/04/04/id/852539/ (“Dershowitz: Mueller Sent Trump ‘Magic Code Word’ With ‘Target’ Comment“)

Several things are abundantly clear.

First, Mueller must never be trusted, as discussed in my article above and in the comments beneath it.

Second, Mueller, McCabe, Eric Holder, Loretta Lynch, Susan Rice and a whole cast of miscreants must be prosecuted for treason and other crimes, before applicable statutes of limitation run.

Third, I respectfully disagree with Professor Dershowitz about the appointment of a “special non-partisan commission,” and its utility. The first thing that I did when I began working in the U.S. Senate was to staff a presidential commission.

None are “non-partisan”—that is not the way Washington works—and they are convened to bury issues from scrutiny, and buy time, not to resolve them, much less expeditiously.

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3 04 2018
Timothy D. Naegele

The Traitor Mueller Found A Very Dishonest Way To Shroud His Investigation In Secrecy [UPDATED]

Robert Mueller the criminal

Colin Kalmbacher has written for Law & Crime:

Special counsel Robert Mueller and his deputy Andrew Weissmann filed a three-page notice on Monday arguing that Alex Van Der Zwaan should not be allowed to file Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests related to the ongoing Russia investigation.

As the notice points out, Van Der Zwaan originally agreed to waive his rights to “request or receive” such records from the government during his plea agreement. In the notice, Mueller claims his legal arguments are being filed because the court “drew attention” to a similar waiver agreement during Richard Gates‘ recent arraignment.

That’s likely true, but it strains credulity to think there’s not at least something else going on behind the scenes here. One plausible scenario: Van Der Zwaan’s attorneys have signaled their intent to challenge the government’s FOIA waiver because there’s not much in the way of precedent that actually binds the court to enforce the waiver.

Such waivers are generally considered enforceable, but this is a hotly contested body of law and civil libertarians–as well as defense attorneys–frequently press the issue in the U.S. court system. The Supreme Court has yet to rule on the exact question, so consider this all in flux. In a pointed bit of opinion from Price v. DOJ Attorney Office, where a waiver was found unenforceable, the D.C. Circuit noted:

To be clear, we do not hold that FOIA waivers in plea agreements are always unenforceable. We simply hold that the government may not invoke Price’s FOIA waiver as a basis for denying him access to the records he requests because, in this case, the government has given us no adequate rationale for enforcing this waiver in light of the public-policy harms Price has identified. That’s it.

Therefore, the law on point suggests that such waivers can only be enforced when the government can articulate cognizable criminal justice concerns that outweigh the public’s sacred right to information.

Mueller’s notice is aware of the law here–and apparently scared of it. But does the notice outline sufficient criminal justice concerns that could plausibly defeat Van Der Zwaan’s rights? Not really.

The anti-transparency filing reads, in relevant part:

[S]trong interests support the government’s and defendant’s agreement to include this particular waiver, which is limited to the “duration of the Office’s investigation.” The conduct underlying van der Zwaan’s plea arose in the context of an ongoing investigation–indeed one part of a larger ongoing investigation. A waiver that is limited in duration to the remainder of this Office’s investigation thus prevents a defendant from taking further actions that could interfere with the Office’s work. It prevents a defendant, for example, from effectively seeking discovery while the investigation is ongoing.

This is a high water mark for prosecutorial hubris. The government is constitutionally bound to provide criminal defendants with potentially exculpatory evidence or any evidence that may be favorable to them. Here, Mueller has attempted to pull a slight of hand with a classic and dirty lawyer’s trick. Mueller, of course, understands that the constitutional mandate known as the Brady Rule is, well, mandatory.

So, Mueller plays innocent by crowing about the “duration” language used in the original waiver agreement and implies that Van Der Zwaan’s inability to access records related to his case is only a temporary setback. But let’s get a bit real here: Mueller’s case isn’t ending any time soon and the nature of Van Der Zwaan’s legal trouble (he signed a guilty plea) means this durational language is of very little importance.

In other words, Mueller has created a false time line and scenario which makes it look like his office’s anti-transparency efforts are simple and plain but simultaneously shrug-worthy and deathly necessary. But that’s not all.

To be clear: there are nine statutory exemptions which would likely frustrate any potential FOIA request filed by Van Der Zwaan during the ongoing investigation. Whether an appeal to a denied request might force some discovery later in time is an open question and highly fact-specific but that’s not really the issue here. The issue is that Van Der Zwaan is barred from even filing FOIA requests because Mueller has a problem with transparency. Mueller’s court notice employs language akin to statutory FOIA exemption language but this is too clever by a quarter at least. There’s no need for FOIA exemption language because under the waiver agreement, Van Der Zwaan isn’t allowed to even access the FOIA regime.

Furthermore, Mueller’s argumentation is ridiculous in the extreme. The filing continues:

[T]he waiver conserves the scarce resources of the Special Counsel’s Office by avoiding the drain on members of the Office who might be called upon to assemble records and to help explain to other both their significance and the potential that their release could harm the ongoing investigation.

Let’s dispense with this insulting subterfuge as quickly as possible. In a criminal prosecution and otherwise, the government effectively has unlimited resources. As of December last year, Mueller’s investigation had ballooned to roughly $7 million worth of Justice Department funds. The Justice Department’s budget for Financial Year 2017 was nearly $28 billion.

The final argument in Monday’s notice reads:

Additionally, van der Zwaan is in an unusual position of having information related to the Office’s investigation that is not widely known–including information that he knows first-hand due to his role in the conduct the Office is investigating. That kind of information could be used by a defendant to submit highly targeted requests or even requests designed to impose burdens on the Office. And requests filed by someone with non-public information could, themselves, suggest to third parties investigative facts that are otherwise not widely known.

This is fairly remarkable. Here, Mueller has basically offered the public policy argument for why the waiver request should not be allowed. Van Der Zwaan is a high-profile player in a high-stakes U.S. political drama that’s been drawn out longer than most observers expected. His perspective and knowledge, to a large degree, is actually exactly what the public wants.

Mueller’s shook-sounding warning that “requests filed by someone with non-public information could, themselves, suggest to third parties investigative facts that are otherwise not widely known,” is really just a very summation and description of how FOIA laws work in tandem with the news media. Or, in other words, [i]f Alex Van Der Zwaan even attempts to file a FOIA request, journalists might be clued in to information that Mueller doesn’t want them to know about.

The FOIA regime relies upon information requesters having some sort of insight into or familiarity with an issue before they file their requests–and those requests have to be fairly specific. Third parties (re: the news media) frequently learn information from requests they never even thought about filing in the first place. This is literally just how everything works. That Mueller is repackaging this as some sort of potential bad is telling.

The additional blather about “highly targeted requests . . . designed to impose burdens on the Office” is more of the same. Defendants are allowed to–and expected to–impose burdens on the prosecutors who are after them. Notably, however, FOIA laws delineate an exemption more or less along these lines. Again, Mueller is cynically employing the language of FOIA to foreclose against basic access to FOIA. Elementary aspects of the U.S. legal system are being transmogrified into arguments against transparency and defendants’ rights.

Every law student learns lots of pretty myths about the adversarial nature of the U.S. legal system. Maybe they really are just myths. Mueller doesn’t want a formidable adversary. He wants his targets to lay down and take it. But that’s not how justice should work. Not even–especially–not in the Trump era.

See https://lawandcrime.com/opinion/mueller-found-a-very-dishonest-way-to-shroud-his-investigation-in-secrecy/ (emphasis added)

Robert Mueller and Rod Rosenstein are at the center of a massive cover-up of efforts undertaken by Barack Obama, the Clintons and many others (1) to insure that Hillary Clinton would be elected; and after that failed, (2) to undermine a duly-elected American president, Donald Trump, and his new administration.

This is T-R-E-A-S-O-N, and it must be dealt with as such. Indeed, it is probably the greatest constitutional scandal in American history.

Why should any American ever believe in our government again, much less in the DOJ and FBI, unless ALL of the treasonous wrongdoers are brought to justice and punished severely?

Nothing less will suffice.

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10 04 2018
Timothy D. Naegele

THE TREASONOUS ROBERT MUELLER SEEKS TO OVERTURN 2016 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION [UPDATED]

Ban Robert Mueller

Donald Trump is being prosecuted for winning the presidential election.

Civil Liberties attorney Alan Dershowitz—and the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law, Emeritus, at Harvard Law School—has written for TheHill:

There is much speculation as to the significance of the search of the offices and hotel room of President Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen. To obtain a search warrant, prosecutors must demonstrate to a judge that they have probable cause to believe that the premises to be searched contain evidence of crime. They must also specify the area to be searched, the items to be seized and, in searches of computers, the word searches to be used.

At least that’s the constitutional requirement in theory, especially where the Sixth Amendment right to counsel is involved, in addition to the general Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable searches. Yet, in practice, judges often give the FBI considerable latitude, relying on the “firewalls” and “taint teams” they set up to protect the subject of the search from violation of his or her constitutional rights.

But the firewalls and taint teams are comprised of government agents who themselves may not be entitled to read or review many of the items seized. It is an imperfect protection of important constitutional rights. That’s why Justice Department officials must be careful to limit the searching of lawyers’ offices to compelling cases involving serious crimes. We don’t know at this point what the prosecutors are looking for but, if it relates to payments made to porn star Stormy Daniels, that would not seem to justify so potentially intrusive a search of Cohen’s confidential lawyer-client files.

There are, of course, exceptions to the lawyer-client privilege. First, the lawyer must be acting as a lawyer, not as a friend or business associate. But the scope of a lawyer’s work is quite broad, encompassing much more than merely giving legal advice. It includes settling cases by making payments to potential litigants. Second, the lawyer must be engaged in lawful activities on behalf of the clients. Illegal or fraudulent activities are not covered by the privilege. Nor are communications with third persons, such as the lawyer for the other side, though such communications may be covered by the much weaker “settlement privilege.”

Civil libertarians should be concerned whenever the government interferes with the lawyer-client relationship. Clients should be able to rely on confidentiality when they disclose their most intimate secrets in an effort to secure their legal rights. A highly publicized raid on the president’s lawyer will surely shake the confidence of many clients in promises of confidentiality by their lawyers. They will not necessarily understand the nuances of the confidentiality rules and their exceptions. They will see a lawyer’s office being raided and all his files seized.

I believe we would have been hearing more from civil libertarians— the American Civil Liberties Union, attorney groups and privacy advocates — if the raid had been on Hillary Clinton’s lawyer. Many civil libertarians have remained silent about potential violations of President Trump’s rights because they strongly disapprove of him and his policies. That is a serious mistake, because these violations establish precedents that lie around like loaded guns capable of being aimed at other targets.

I have been widely attacked for defending the constitutional rights of a president I voted against. In our hyperpartisan age, everyone is expected to choose a side, either for or against Trump. But the essence of civil liberties is that they must be equally applicable to all. The silence among most civil libertarians regarding the recent raid shows that we are losing that valuable neutrality.

What else does the raid tell us? It seems likely that special counsel Robert Mueller is bifurcating the investigation: He will keep control over matters relating to Russia, the campaign and any possible obstruction. But he has handed over to the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York any matters relating to Trump’s personal and business affairs. Mueller will work hand in hand with the New York prosecutors, but they will be in charge of the other matters. If they manage to find prosecutable evidence against Trump’s lawyer, they may try to squeeze him into cooperating against his client.

It is doubtful that Cohen would cooperate, even if he has anything on his client. But prosecutors often try to get lawyers to “sing” against their clients — to become “canaries” — in order to save their own feathers. Some flipped witnesses will tell prosecutors anything they want to hear in order to earn a “get out of jail free card.” They know that the “better” their story, the more leniency they will earn. So, in addition to singing, they “compose” by making up incriminating details.

I have seen this on many occasions. Mueller has already apparently flipped several witnesses, but Cohen would be his biggest catch in the unlikely event he could be induced to turn against his client. So, stay tuned to this unfolding drama, but remember that prosecutorial tactics used today against President Trump may tomorrow be used against Democrats — and even against you.

See http://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/382459-dershowitz-targeting-trumps-lawyer-should-worry-us-all (“Dershowitz: Targeting Trump’s lawyer should worry us all“) (emphasis added); see also http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5601007/Mueller-violated-Michael-Cohens-constitutional-rights-just-seizing-records-says-Dershowitz.html (“Mueller violated Michael Cohen’s constitutional rights just by seizing his records says Dershowitz“) and http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5599133/Untethered-Trump-shouted-angrily-Rod-Rosenstein-Cohen-raid.html (“‘This has gone too far!’ White House says Trump has had it with Justice Department targeting lawyer Michael Cohen after he accused Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein of approving FBI raid”—”Trump vented Monday evening, saying a ‘witch hunt’ had been ‘going on for over 12 months now – and actually … you could say it was right after I won the nomination, it started'”—”The president also lashed out privately about Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who he blames for approving the warrant application that allowed FBI officials to raid Cohen’s office, home and hotel room”—”[H]e called on Justice Department investigators to focus on ‘crimes’ on the ‘other side’ – meaning Democrats and the Hillary Clinton camp. . . . where there are crimes and those crimes are obvious – lies under oath all over the place, emails that are knocked out, that are acid washed and deleted, 33,000 emails were deleted after getting a subpoena from Congress. And nobody bothers looking at that,’ Trump ranted”) and https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/apr/10/rand-paul-warns-gloating-trump-critics-muellers-gr/ (“Rand Paul warns gloating Trump critics: Mueller’s ‘great overstep’ a danger to all Americans“)

As political pundit Dick Morris has written:

The FBI raid on the offices of Trump attorney Michael Cohen will give special counsel Robert Mueller access to all of the president’s legal files in Cohen’s possession on any subject.

What is becoming crystal clear with each day that passes is that Robert Mueller is a traitor who must be indicted, convicted and executed for treason.

Nothing less will suffice.

His goals—and those of Rosenstein, Barack Obama, the Clintons and many others—from Day One have been to remove a duly-elected President of the United States, and undue the election results of 2016, which is treason.

Unless each of these individuals is brought to justice, and punished severely, there is no reason to believe in this great nation ever again. The DOJ and FBI are no better than killer Putin’s Russian KGB ever was—and just as corrupt for decades.

. . .

At the very least, President Trump should pardon Michael Cohen, just as he pardoned Arizona’s Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

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12 04 2018
Timothy D. Naegele

BRING IT ON!

Ban Robert Mueller

Patriotic Americans who elected Donald Trump are incensed at attempts to weaken his presidency and/or to destroy it.

One commenter expressed the sentiments of millions of law-abiding U.S. citizens who have never taken to the streets over anything:

Let’s get the EFFING Civil War Started!!! I’m SOOOOO sick of these Deep Stater child molesters, Leftist Communist TRAITORS and RINO Leftists. They need to be KILLED. This is a COUP attempt of our FAIRLY ELECTED PRESIDENT!!!! These SCUM need to DIE.

PRESIDENT TRUMP….FIRE THAT SOB. If they try to impeach you…. WE LOCK N LOAD AND START KILLING TRAITORS.

MAGA 2020.

See http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-republicans-trump-firing-mueller-20180410-story.html (“Senate GOP leaders warn Trump not to fire Mueller but reject calls for legislation to protect him“) (see the comments beneath the article); see also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2018/03/11/robert-mueller-should-be-executed-for-treason/ (“Robert Mueller Should Be Executed For Treason“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/10/20/the-real-russian-conspiracy-barack-obama-the-clintons-and-the-sale-of-americas-uranium-to-russias-killer-putin/ (“The Real Russian Conspiracy: Barack Obama, The Clintons, And The Sale Of America’s Uranium To Russia’s Killer Putin“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/05/16/americas-newest-civil-war-2017-and-beyond/ (“America’s Newest Civil War: 2017 And Beyond“)

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16 04 2018
Timothy D. Naegele

Congress Must Impeach Deputy AG Rosenstein And FBI Director Wray [UPDATED]

Watch the video

See also https://www.mediamatters.org/video/2018/04/09/joe-digenova-calls-congress-impeach-deputy-ag-rosenstein-and-fbi-director-wray/219894 (“Joe diGenova calls on Congress to impeach Deputy AG Rosenstein and FBI Director Wray“); see also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/10/20/the-real-russian-conspiracy-barack-obama-the-clintons-and-the-sale-of-americas-uranium-to-russias-killer-putin/#comment-12011 (“READ RUSSIAN INDICTMENTS: WILL MUELLER, ROSENSTEIN AND THE CLINTONS BE NEXT?“)

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16 04 2018
Timothy D. Naegele

James Judas Comey: A Rat And Drama Queen

Mueller Witch Hunt

Piers Morgan has written in the UK’s Daily Mail:

‘My book is about ethical leadership,’ tweeted former FBI Director James Comey yesterday.

To which my immediate response, having watched his shockingly self-serving, unctuously arrogant and cynically exploitative ABC interview to launch the book, is this:

1) What would he know about ethics?

2) What would he know about leadership?

The central premise of Comey’s lengthy literary whine is that Donald Trump’s ‘morally unfit’ to be President.

Yet, as revealed by his own damning words, it’s Comey himself who is not only ‘morally unfit’, but was also ultimately most responsible for getting Trump elected.

It was HIS decision to announce, just 11 days before the 2016 election, that the FBI was re-opening its investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails after new ones had been uncovered.

Nine days later, just 48 hours before America voted, and after a week of fevered media coverage, Comey then announced the new emails had been reviewed and Hillary was in the clear.

By then, the damage was done and many people, including Hillary herself, believe the sudden onslaught of negative publicity that followed the original bombshell news helped tip Trump into the White House.

They or may not be right about that, but nobody could argue it was anything but massively unhelpful to the Democrat candidate.

Now, astonishingly, Comey’s admitted he made this decision for political, not legal reasons.

‘It is entirely possible that because I was making decisions in an environment where Hillary Clinton was sure to be the next president,’ he told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, ‘my concern about making her an illegitimate president by concealing the restarted investigation bore greater weight that it would have if the election appeared closer or if Trump were ahead in all polls.’

Sorry, WHAT?

It wasn’t Comey’s job to factor in his personal interpretation of the political landscape while making any decision, and before reviewing the emails.

It was his job to ensure the FBI reviewed the new information as fast as possible and then make a decision as to what may or not be relevant to inform the American public.

Comey’s rush to go public without knowing the material facts was entirely in keeping with his unsettling lust for self-publicity that ensured his name and face were in the headlines throughout election year.

(An odd character trait, you might think, for an FBI Director?)

The reality is that James Comey’s a snivelling, egotistical worm who quite possibly swung an election through disastrous misjudgment, was correctly fired for staggering incompetence, and is now cashing in on his abject failure in a manner that should make all right-minded Americans, Republican or Democrat, puke in disgust.

It seems quite outrageous to me that he should be able to publish such a lurid, sensationalist, secret-spilling, tell-all book exploiting his own ineptitude – and make millions of dollars by doing so.

The book itself is contaminated by Comey’s deep loathing of the President which is so intense it drags him into the very Trump-style gutter of personal insult and false ‘nudge nudge, wink wink’ smear innuendo he professes to find so distasteful.

For instance, he gleefully recounts how Trump asked him to investigate the notorious, unverified pee-tape prostitute allegations so he could reassure his wife Melania they weren’t true.

This seems a perfectly understandable reaction given the furore that erupted around such humiliating allegations contained in an intelligence dossier that’s since been widely discredited.

But ‘Saint’ Comey thought differently.

‘In what kind of marriage, to what kind of man, does a spouse conclude there is only a 99% chance her husband didn’t do that?’ he opines in his book.

Hmm.

What kind of man concludes that such an intensely private and potentially embarrassing conversation between a president and his then FBI chief should now be made public to sell books?

Comey has no evidence to support the pee-tape claims, but that doesn’t stop him hinting they may be true. Just as when Stephanopoulos pressed him on whether Russia may ‘have something’ on Trump, he replied conspiratorially: ‘It’s possible.’

For Comey, facts don’t matter when unsubstantiated rumours scream book sales ‘KER-CHING!’

Some of the content is pathetically petty.

Comey wants us to know Trump’s not as tall as him and his hands aren’t as large as his, face is ‘slightly orange’ and he has ‘bright white half-moons under his eyes where I assumed he placed small tanning goggles.’

Seriously?

This from a man professing to be mortally offended by Trump’s failure to live up to the high standards of public office?

The timing of Comey’s spiteful gossip-mongering tome seems especially inappropriate given Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s ongoing investigation into alleged Russian collusion.

Yet I’m not remotely surprised he’s put personal fortune and self-aggrandising PR before any sense of professional propriety.

When Comey was dismissed a year ago, I wrote then that he was a man with a bizarre, emotion-charged streak of narcissism for someone running the FBI.

His appearance in front of the Senate committee confirmed him to be not a dispassionate, methodical gatherer of facts but a drama queen of toe-curling proportions.

Comey painted a picture of heroic self-sacrifice as he weighed up his two options the week before the election: one ‘bad’ (revealing the development in the Hillary email investigation), the other ‘catastrophic’ (as he put it, ‘concealing’ that development.)

‘I knew this would be disastrous for me personally,’ he said, his face etched with torment. ‘Look, this is terrible,’ he sighed, bottom lip trembling. ‘It makes me mildly nauseous to think that we might have had some impact on the election.’

Ironically, it’s turned out to be the best thing that’s ever happened to Comey, who will now be all he ever wanted to be: a multi-millionaire celebrity; whilst making the rest of us a damn sight more than ‘mildly nauseous.’

The bottom line is this: James Comey was fired for no other reason than being bad at his job.

Rod Rosenstein’s first act when he was appointed Deputy Attorney-General a year ago, was to address the ‘Comey problem’.

Rosenstein spoke to all the relevant people, and then sent President Trump a memo with his assessment and recommendation.

It said that under Comey, the FBI had suffered ‘substantial damage’ to its reputation and credibility.

It hammered him for the way he handled the reopening of the Hillary email investigation, and for ‘his refusal to accept the near universal judgment that he was mistaken.’

The memo also cited former Deputy Attorneys General Gorelick and Thompson’s damning description of Comey’s behaviour as ‘real-time, raw-take transparency taken to its illogical limit, a kind of reality TV of federal criminal investigation’ that is ‘antithetical to the interests of justice.’

It concluded: ‘The FBI is unlikely to regain public and congressional trust until it has a Director who understands the gravity of the mistakes and pledges never to repeat them. Having refused to admit his errors, the Director cannot be expected to implement the necessary corrective actions.’

Trump read the memo, and rightly fired him.

Now, from his own mouth, Comey’s confirmed Trump why was right.

Aside from numerous other failings, he made a massive decision based on how he viewed the politics of an investigation.

It was a catastrophically bad decision that may well have determined the outcome of a US election.

So if Comey wants someone to blame for President Trump, he needs look no further than his own mirror.

He would have us believe he’s a man of deep integrity but in reality he’s shown himself to be a treacherous, useless, money-grabbing weasel.

If, as Comey offensively claims, Trump behaves like a mob boss – then he is a Sammy the Bull type rat.

His book is entitled ‘A Higher Loyalty’.

I wouldn’t trust James ‘Judas’ Comey to run a bath, let alone the FBI.

See http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5621733/PIERS-MORGAN-No-wonder-Trump-fired-Judas-Comey-wouldnt-trust-far-throw-book.html (“No wonder Trump fired James ‘Judas’ Comey – I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw the egotistical, money-grabbing worm and his treacherous, disgraceful, secret-spewing book“) (emphasis added); see also http://www.breitbart.com/video/2018/04/16/heilemann-comey-trying-cast-hero-resistance/ (“‘Comey comes into this moment as sort of a man without a country. . . . Democrats are unhappy in 2016 for having supposedly taken the election away from Hillary Clinton. Republicans are now unhappy with him. He doesn’t have a natural constituency'”) and http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5621389/Obama-compromised-Justice-Department-Hillary-Clintons-email-probe-says-James-Comey.html (“Obama compromised Hillary email probe by putting Clinton in the clear while FBI was still probing her secret server, says Comey“)

Like Mueller, Rosenstein and so many others, Comey is a traitor who should spend the rest of his life in prison—at the very least. Also, the profits from his book should be seized.

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2 05 2018
Timothy D. Naegele

STICK IT TO THE TREASONOUS MUELLER, MR. PRESIDENT!

Ban Robert Mueller

Mike Allen has written at AXIOS:

President Trump will be “triggered” by the bleak leaks about the extent and intrusiveness of Robert Mueller’s investigation, and is likely to become more aggressive as he feels more threatened, sources close to the White House tell me.

What we’re hearing: “His instinct is always to be on the offensive,” one source said. “This was a wake-up call to the president that will embolden him, in a lot of ways. As he sees this becoming more serious, his instinct is to punch back 10 times harder.”

Mueller threatens subpoena: After the N.Y. Times’ list of Mueller’s four dozen questions for Trump, the WashPost reported last night that at a tense meeting in early March, Mueller told Trump lawyers that if he declined an interview, Mueller “could issue a subpoena for the president to appear before a grand jury.”

Why it matters: “[T]he standoff could turn into a historic confrontation before the Supreme Court over a presidential subpoena.”

The threat is vast: The questions (topics, really) stretch across Trump’s campaign, the Republican convention, the transition and the first year of the administration.

Many of the questions include specific dates, reflecting the rich narrative Mueller has already assembled.

A source very close to Trump said: “For the average human, nothing scares them more than legal issues. He. Does. Not. Care. His whole adult life has been spent in litigation. He’s not afraid of high-stakes legal stuff. … He’s just going to start swinging and knock people’s heads off.”

This is likely to include further steps to try to discredit the investigation with his base, a strategy he has been blatantly pursuing for months.

Bob Bauer — a former White House counsel under President Clinton and now a New York University law professor — told me the Times list makes it plain that the risks are too high for Trump to submit to an interview.

“He is entirely unpredictable,” Bauer said. “But I do not see him sustaining the hours of questioning he would face. And to some questions — such as his role in the Trump Tower matter and the fake press release he directed for Don Jr. — he seems unlikely to have good answers.”

Furthermore, and one of the reasons the list is so threatening: Some of the questions have no safe answer.

A former U.S. attorney tells me how federal prosecutors approach such an interview: “For each of the questions, there is already an elaborate follow-up question tree, supported by marked exhibits ready to be presented to refresh Trump’s recollection, impeach him, or otherwise test his credibility.”

The former fed continued: “The question tree has a flow: ‘If yes, then [follow up] down this branch. If no, then f/u down this branch. If maybe or non-responsive, then f/u down this branch.’ This is what we do. And no one is better at it than Mueller.”

Paul Rosenzweig, a former Whitewater prosecutor, told the N.Y. Times that with that many topics, “that’s honestly a two-day interview. That’s 12 hours of questioning.”

Another complication: The Daily Beast’s Betsy Woodruff pointed out on MSNBC that Mueller is likely to take the leak of the questions by the Trump team as a “betrayal of trust.”

The bottom line: Based on my conversations with insiders, a Mueller interview of Trump is unlikely but not impossible.

See https://www.axios.com/donald-trump-mueller-interview-subpoena-lawyers-3d7dfbb4-a045-4ffd-b10d-62757763d09c.html (“Triggered Trump on Mueller warpath“) (emphasis added)

As stated in my article above:

The DOJ and FBI corrupted an American election, and the wrongdoers must be brought to justice. To make certain that it never happens again, an example must be made of Mueller, not dissimilar to that of Benito Mussolini in Italy during World War II. He must be prosecuted for treason and other crimes, convicted, and executed—to send the message of “Never Again” far and wide.

Nothing less will suffice.

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4 05 2018
Timothy D. Naegele

Federal Judge Questions The Traitor Mueller’s Powers In Manafort Case [UPDATED]

Ban Robert Mueller

Sarah N. Lynch has reported for Reuters:

A federal judge on Friday sharply criticized Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s criminal case in Virginia against President Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, and openly questioned whether Mueller exceeded his prosecutorial powers by bringing it.

“I don’t see what relationship this indictment has with anything the special counsel is authorized to investigate,” U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III in the Eastern District of Virginia said.

At a tense hearing at the federal courthouse in Alexandria, Virginia, the judge said Mueller should not have “unfettered power” in his Russia probe and that the charges against Manafort did not arise from the investigation into Moscow’s alleged meddling in the 2016 U.S. election.

“It’s unlikely you’re going to persuade me the special counsel has unfettered power to do whatever he wants,” said Ellis, who was appointed to the bench by Republican President Ronald Reagan.

Manafort is facing charges in both Virginia and Washington. The Virginia case charges him with offenses including tax and bank fraud.

The other case in Washington accuses him of conspiring to launder money and failing to register as a foreign agent when he lobbied for the pro-Russia Ukrainian government.

None of the charges relate, however, to Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign or possible collusion with Russia. Trump has denied any collusion.

Manafort’s attorney Kevin Downing has argued that the charges must dismissed because the FBI investigation dates back to 2014, and therefore did not arise from Mueller’s probe.

The bulk of Friday’s questions by the judge were aimed squarely at Michael Dreeben, the deputy solicitor general who is currently working in Mueller’s office.

While Dreeben conceded that Mueller had inherited the probe into Manafort after his May 2017 appointment by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, he insisted the office is on solid legal ground and has the power to proceed with prosecuting the case.

“Our investigative scope does cover the activity” in the indictment,” Dreeben told the judge.

“Cover bank fraud in 2005 and 2007? Tell me how!” Ellis retorted.

Friday marked the third time now that Manafort has tried to get the charges against him dropped.

He first filed a civil case alleging the Justice Department’s order appointing Mueller was overly broad in violation of Justice Department rules, but the case was tossed last month.

He is also seeking to get the Washington-based criminal charges against him dismissed on similar legal grounds that were presented to the Virginia judge on Friday.

The federal judge in Washington, Amy Berman Jackson, has not yet ruled on the request to dismiss that indictment.

Friday, however, marked the first time that Manafort’s arguments about the scope of Mueller’s powers appeared to have gained some traction.

During the oral arguments, Ellis repeatedly chided Mueller’s $10 million budget.

He also asked whether Rosenstein, who oversees the probe and is considered an important witness into whether Trump tried to obstruct justice, is recused from the case.

And he repeatedly claimed that the indictment appeared to serve as a way for Mueller to “assert leverage” over Manafort.

“The vernacular,” he said “is to sing.”

Ellis did not issue a ruling on Manafort’s motion to dismiss the indictment Friday.

But he asked why a run-of-the-mill bank fraud case with no “reference to any Russian individual or Russian bank” could not be handed over to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Eastern District of Virginia.

As an example, he pointed to the FBI’s probe into Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen, and mused that the special counsel had turned that matter over to prosecutors in Manhattan.

Dreeben declined to discuss the Cohen case, but said that Mueller’s probe into Manafort was authorized by Rosenstein.

Rosenstein’s May 2017 order laying out the scope of the probe, he told the judge, did not reveal all the details because they involve sensitive national security and counterintelligence matters that could not be divulged publicly, but were conveyed to Mueller.

Ellis balked, saying Dreeben’s answer essentially means the Justice Department was “not really telling the truth” about the probe and invites someone to respond by saying, “Come on, man!”

Dreeben also stressed that Rosenstein wrote another memo two months later, in August 2017, explicitly granting Mueller the power to investigate Manafort’s Ukraine dealings years before the 2016 election.

Ellis complained that the bulk of that August memo he has received was highly redacted.

He directed Mueller’s office to take two weeks to consult with U.S. intelligence agencies to see if they will sign off so that he can personally review a sealed, unredacted version of the memo.

Dreeben told him the redacted portions did not pertain to the Manafort case.

“I’ll be the judge,” Ellis said.

See https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-russia-manafort/u-s-judge-questions-special-counsels-powers-in-manafort-case-idUSKBN1I51WE (“U.S. judge questions special counsel’s powers in Manafort case“); see also http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018/05/04/federal-judge-accuses-muellers-team-lying-trying-to-target-trump-cmon-man.html (“Federal judge accuses Mueller’s team of ‘lying,’ trying to target Trump: ‘C’mon man!'”) and https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/04/politics/paul-manafort-hearing/index.html (“Judge in Manafort case says Mueller’s aim is to hurt Trump“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/05/16/americas-newest-civil-war-2017-and-beyond/#comment-13233 (“MEMO TO OUR PRESIDENT: DEFY MUELLER AND DESTROY HIM“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/10/20/the-real-russian-conspiracy-barack-obama-the-clintons-and-the-sale-of-americas-uranium-to-russias-killer-putin/#comment-11824 (“As FBI Director, Mueller Helped Cover Up Fla. 9/11 Probe, Court Docs Show“) and https://larouchepac.com/20170927/robert-mueller-amoral-legal-assassin-he-will-do-his-job-if-you-let-him (“Robert Swan Mueller III is about as corrupt as they come, bending and twisting the law every which way necessary to serve the goals of those who provide him assignments”—”His appointment as special prosecutor caps a long career in which he has envisioned himself to be a stern and willing warrior, a dutiful Marine, acting on behalf of whatever evil scheme his superiors present to him, and using whatever means seems necessary to execute it”—”[A]n intelligence community which functions as the gendarme of our Orwellian police state—the blunt instrument chosen for the hit was Robert Mueller. Along the way, between the two assignments, Robert Mueller played a hugely significant role in covering up the Saudi/British role in the murders of almost 3,000 Americans on September 11, 2001, and the wholesale destruction of the United States Constitution which followed in its wake—a role which, if thoroughly examined, constitutes obstruction of justice, among other crimes”—”Mueller’s career . . . is a trail of prosecutorial misconduct, including what former Senator Bob Graham calls ‘aggressive deception’ of the U.S. Congress and the public concerning the events of September 11, 2001, and includes a major role in the creation of the post-9/11 surveillance state which has eviscerated and destroyed the Fourth Amendment and the rest of our Constitution’s Bill of Rights”—”In 1982, Robert Mueller joined the staff of U.S. Attorney William Weld in Boston, Massachusetts. He had previously been in private practice in San Francisco while waiting to be accepted into the U.S. attorney’s office there. His life’s dream was to prosecute. Mueller and Weld concentrated on public corruption cases, targeting and taking down the administration of popular Boston Mayor Kevin White in an investigation widely criticized for ‘gestapo tactics’ and prosecutorial misconduct”—”Manual Noriega was known in the CIA and DEA as a steadfast drug fighter, and DEA and CIA agents testified to that fact at his trial. To overcome this problem, Mueller dealt and bribed Latin America’s most notorious drug gangs with ‘get out of jail’ free cards, if they would say that Noriega dealt drugs”—”Having done the assignment on Noriega, Mueller ascended to head the Justice Department’s Criminal Division. Here he successfully covered up the drug, weapons, and terrorism activities of two banks, BCCI and BNL”—”Congress convened a Joint Congressional Inquiry into the events of 9/11 in 2002, chaired by then U.S. Senator Bob Graham [who placed] Mueller, operating on behalf of the Bush family, at the center of obstructing his investigation and others. It was Mueller who angrily intervened to prevent Congressional investigators from visiting FBI offices in San Diego. They went anyway, and discovered troves of FBI documents concerning the Saudi hijackers’ San Diego cell, and its support by Saudi royals and government officials, which Mueller’s FBI never made available to the Congressional Committee, despite their specific requests”—”Congressional investigators also discovered the identity of an FBI informant who was close to both San Diego hijackers and rented rooms to them, living in the same house. Rather than allowing investigators to interview the informant, Mueller placed him in an FBI safehouse for ‘his protection.’ The results of the Joint Congressional Inquiry’s review of Saudi government support of the 9/11 hijackers, 28 pages of the Joint Congressional Committee’s report, were classified in the final report. They remained classified, despite the demands of the 9/11 families and an all-out national campaign for their release, until July 15, 2016. According to all concerned, the man who classified these 28 pages in 2003—and adamantly fought to ensure that they would never see the light of day—was FBI Director Robert Mueller. The 28 pages solely concern what Congressional investigators found in the San Diego FBI office, the discovery of which Robert Mueller actively sought to prevent”—”Earlier, Robert Mueller, serving as Deputy Attorney General in the days prior to 9/11, had blocked a major funding increase for the FBI’s counter-terrorism division led by John O’Neill. O’Neill had moved his entire operation to New York because official Washington would not listen to his warnings about Al Qaeda. The job to ‘aggressively deceive’ the American people about this sordid history fell to Robert Swan Mueller III, and he obstructed a Congressional investigation to do precisely that”—”While engaged in ‘aggressive deception’ about the criminal conspiracy resulting in almost 3,000 American murders, Robert Mueller continued to railroad innocents. He personally directed the PENTBOM investigation which falsely accused Dr. Steven Hatfill of mailing the deadly Anthrax letters which killed five people in 2001. For years, Mueller harassed the innocent Dr. Hatfill, ordering the FBI to search his apartment multiple times, searching the apartment of his girlfriend, ensuring that Hatfill lost his job, and leaking continuously about Hatfill’s alleged perfidies to the national news media. Once, when an FBI agent ran over Hatfill’s foot with his car, it was arranged that Hatfill would get a ticket for impeding traffic. The Justice Department finally paid Hatfill $5.8 million dollars to settle his Privacy Act lawsuit aimed at government leaks—a settlement, along with an exoneration, which only came when a federal judge insisted that reporters reveal their Justice Department and FBI sources for stories about Hatfill”—”Studies have found that almost every domestic terrorist plot during Mueller’s tenure, from 2001 to 2010, was in some way cooked up, assisted, and eventually busted by Mueller’s FBI. The book, The Terror Factory—Inside the FBI’s Manufactured War on Terrorism by Trevor Aaronson documents this in chilling detail. J. Edgar Hoover’s domestic security depravities seem pale in comparison”—”And then, of course, there is Enron, another notch in Mueller’s prosecutorial belt. Stretching the law on obstruction of justice, Mueller and his task force went after Arthur Anderson and Company, then one of the world’s largest accounting firms, for the perfidies of Enron, charging the accountants with obstruction of justice. The U.S. Supreme Court found that Mueller and friends had stretched the obstruction statute beyond recognition to prevail in the case, a reversal which came too late for the company and the people who worked there. Arthur Anderson went out of business as a result of Mueller’s prosecution“)

It must be noted that the federal judge in Washington, D.C., Amy Berman Jackson, is one of the worst and most lawless judges in the federal system. She should be removed from the bench, and never allowed to practice law again.

Nothing less will suffice.

See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2013/07/15/justice-and-the-law-do-not-mix/#comment-10099 (“Despicable Benghazi Deaths’ Judge Must Be Targeted For Removal”)

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28 06 2018
Timothy D. Naegele

Cowardly Federal Judge Takes A Dive [UPDATED]

Ban Robert Mueller

Josh Gerstein has written for Politico:

A federal judge on Tuesday rejected former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort’s challenge to the authority of special counsel Robert Mueller.

The ruling from U.S. District Court Judge T.S. Ellis III dashes the hopes of many allies of President Donald Trump’s that Ellis would deliver a crippling blow to Mueller’s office and undermine the legal legitimacy of his appointment.

During oral arguments last month relating to bank and tax fraud charges against Manafort, Ellis skewered the special prosecutor’s team, suggesting they were on a crusade aimed at impeaching Trump. The president leaped on the critique, reading it aloud from a stage during a speech in Texas.

“I‘ve been saying that for a long time. It‘s a witch hunt,“ the president said, praising the judge as “really something special, I hear.”

Ellis’s 31-page written opinion is rife with skepticism about the special counsel mechanism and about Mueller’s pursuit of fraud charges against Manafort. But the judge ultimately concluded that Manafort’s attorneys had not made a sufficient legal case to justify tossing out his indictment.

“The Special Counsel’s appointment was consistent with both constitutional requirements regarding appointment of officers and statutory requirements governing the authority to conduct criminal litigation on behalf of the United States, the Special Counsel had legal authority to investigate and to prosecute this matter and dismissal of the Superseding Indictment is not warranted,” the Reagan appointee wrote.

Still, Ellis insisted, “that conclusion should not be read as approval of the practice of appointing Special Counsel to prosecute cases of alleged high-level misconduct.”

“Here, we have a prosecution of a campaign official, not a government official, for acts that occurred well before the Presidential election. To be sure, it is plausible, indeed ultimately persuasive here, to argue that the investigation and prosecution has some relevance to the election which occurred months if not years after the alleged misconduct. But in the end, that fact does not warrant dismissal, the judge added.

Ellis, who sits in Alexandria, Virginia, made clear he believes the appointment of special counsels is unwise but said it wasn’t his role as a judge to implement that view.

“The Constitution’s system of checks and balances, reflected to some extent in the regulations at issue, are designed to ensure that no single individual or branch of government has plenary or absolute power. The appointment of special prosecutors has the potential to disrupt these checks and balances, and to inject a level of toxic partisanship into investigation of matters of public importance,” the judge warned.

Passages in Ellis’ ruling echo concerns he aired publicly at the May 4 hearing, including that the goal of Mueller’s investigation is to get Trump by prompting Manafort to “sing.”

“Given the investigation’s focus on President Trump’s campaign, even a blind person can see that the true target of the Special Counsel’s investigation is President Trump, not defendant, and that defendant’s prosecution is part of that larger plan,” the judge wrote. “Specifically, the charges against defendant are intended to induce defendant to cooperate with the Special Counsel by providing evidence against the President or other members of the campaign. Although these kinds of high-pressure prosecutorial tactics are neither uncommon nor illegal, they are distasteful.”

Pointing to a POLITICO report on Trump’s budget plan, the judge noted that Mueller’s team is expected to spend $10 million in the coming fiscal year. Complaining that officials seem to have “forgotten” lessons learned from the widely criticized independent counsel statute that expired in 1999, the judge declared that Mueller’s office is “in some ways less accountable” than the prosecutors appointed under that law.

Mueller was appointed in May 2017 by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein under regulations adopted after the independent counsel law passed into the history books.

In a footnote near the end of his decision, Ellis said that he thought concerns about Russian interference in the U.S. election would be better handled through a blue-ribbon panel.

“A better mechanism for addressing concerns about election interference would be the creation of a bipartisan commission with subpoena power and the authority to investigate all issues related to alleged interference in the 2016 Presidential election. If crimes were uncovered during the course of the commission’s investigation, those crimes could be referred to appropriate existing authorities within the DOJ,” the judge wrote.

Spokespeople for Manafort and Mueller declined to comment on the ruling.

Manafort is currently set to stand trial on bank fraud, tax evasion and other charges in Ellis’ Alexandria courtroom beginning July 25. Manafort also faces a separate trial, set to open Sept. 17, in a case brought by Mueller in Washington, charging the veteran lobbyist and consultant with money laundering, failing to register as a foreign agent and other offenses.

Last month, the judge in the Washington case, Amy Berman Jackson, rejected a similar motion by Manafort’s defense seeking to throw out the indictment over issues related to Mueller’s appointment and the scope of the investigation.

Jackson also caused more trouble for Manafort earlier this month by ordering him jailed over new witness-tampering charges. He’s now being held at a Virginia jail about two hours’ drive south of Washington. A hearing on motions in Manafort’s Alexandria case is set for Friday, but Ellis excused him from attending after Manafort’s defense lawyers said he didn’t want to endure four hours driving to and from the session.

Manafort is appealing Jackson’s decision to send him to jail to await his trials.

See https://www.politico.com/story/2018/06/26/judge-rejects-challenge-676814 (“Judge rejects Manafort’s challenge to Mueller’s legitimacy“); see also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2018/03/11/robert-mueller-should-be-executed-for-treason/#comment-13242 (“Federal Judge Questions The Traitor Mueller’s Powers In Manafort Case“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2013/07/15/justice-and-the-law-do-not-mix/#comment-10099 (“Despicable Benghazi Deaths’ Judge Must Be Targeted For Removal”)

As I have written before, many if not most prosecutors are zealots who have never met an innocent criminal defendant, and they proceed accordingly. This is the traitor Robert Mueller to a T. Only when he is subjected to the harshest punishment possible will justice have been done.

See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2013/07/15/justice-and-the-law-do-not-mix/ (“Justice And The Law Do Not Mix“)

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9 07 2018
Timothy D. Naegele

Traitor Mueller’s Pit Bull Weissmann Arranged Meeting With Reporters To Discuss Manafort Investigation [UPDATED]

Chuck Ross has reported for The Daily Caller:

Justice Department documents released on Friday confirm that the DOJ attorney known as Robert Mueller’s “pit bull” arranged a meeting with journalists in April 2017 to discuss an investigation into Paul Manafort.

The documents show that Andrew Weissmann arranged a meeting with DOJ and FBI officials and four Associated Press reporters on April 11, 2017, just over a month before Mueller was appointed special counsel.

Manafort’s lawyers obtained the documents on June 29 and revealed them in a briefing filed in federal court in Virginia. The attorneys are pushing for a hearing into what they say are possible leaks of secret grand jury information, false information and potentially classified materials from the meeting.

“The meeting raises serious concerns about whether a violation of grand jury secrecy occurred,” a lawyer for Manafort, Kevin Downing, wrote in a motion requesting a hearing. “Based on the FBI’s own notes of the meeting, it is beyond question that a hearing is warranted.”

Manafort’s attorneys have for months questioned whether Weissmann, the number two official on the Mueller team, leaked information about Manafort to The AP. At the time of the meeting, Weissmann served as chief of the Justice Department’s criminal fraud section.

He previously served as general counsel to Mueller when he was FBI director. Weissmann joined the special counsel’s investigation when it was formed on May 17, 2017.

The existence of meeting between AP reporters and DOJ officials was first reported in January. The government confirmed it for the first time in a pre-trial hearing held on June 29.

In the hearing, FBI Special Agent Jeffrey Pfeiffer said that the FBI may have conducted a May 2017 raid of a storage locker that Manafort was renting based on a tip from AP reporters. He also said that the purpose of the meeting was for the DOJ and FBI to obtain information from The AP.

Manafort is set to go to trial on July 25 for a slew of money laundering and bank fraud charges related to his consulting work for a Ukrainian politician years before joining the Trump campaign.

Friday’s court filing includes two reports about the April 11, 2017 meeting: one written by Pfeiffer and another written by Supervisory Special Agent Karen Greenaway.

“The meeting was arranged by Andrew Weissmann,” Greenaway wrote in her report, for the first time establishing that Weissmann took part in the meeting.

Greenaway also said that Weissmann provided guidance to the reporters for their investigation. According to Greenaway, Weissmann suggested that the reporters ask the Cypriot Anti-Money Laundering Authority, a Cypriot government agency, if it had provided the Department of Treasury with all of the documents they were legally authorized to provide regarding Manafort.

The AP journalists, Chad Day, Ted Bridis, Jack Gillum and Eric Tucker, were conducting an extensive investigation of Manafort, including payments he received through various shell companies set up in Cyprus.

Day and Gillum published an article a day after the meeting laying out some of the allegations against Manafort, including that he was listed in a “black ledger” that documented illicit payments from a Ukrainian political party allied with the Russian government.

During the meeting, the AP reporters told the DOJ and FBI officials that they had learned about Manafort’s storage locker. Greenaway’s report says that the journalists provided government officials with a code for the storage facility but did not provide a name of the company or an address.

Lauren Easton, the director of media relations for The AP, defended the journalists’ briefing with government officials.

“Associated Press journalists met with representatives from the Department of Justice in an effort to get information on stories they were reporting, as reporters do. During the course of the meeting, they asked DOJ representatives about a storage locker belonging to Paul Manafort, without sharing its name or location,” Easton said in a statement to The Daily Caller News Foundation.

DOJ officials provided other guidance to the reporters, according to Greenaway’s report. She noted that when the journalists asked DOJ officials to tell them if they were off base in their findings about Manafort, “government attendees confirmed that the AP reporters appeared to have a good understanding of Manafort’s business dealings in Ukraine.”

Downing said that the special counsel’s office has previously confirmed that at the time of the meeting with the AP reporters, “there was an ongoing grand jury investigation of Mr. Manafort in the Eastern District of Virginia.”

In addition to Weissmann, Pfeiffer and Greenaway, Justice Department officials George Mceachern, Ann Brickley and Ariel Shreve attended the meeting.

Weissmann, who is the top prosecutor handling the Manafort case, has been one of the most controversial members of the Mueller team. He has donated $6,600 to the Democratic National Committee and to the campaigns of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

He also reportedly attended an election night party held for Clinton in New York City.

A spokesman for the special counsel’s office declined to comment on Weissmann’s role in setting up the meeting and whether it poses a problem for the case against Manafort.

See http://dailycaller.com/2018/07/08/mueller-manafort-journalist-leak/ (emphasis added); see also http://dailycaller.com/2017/11/20/meet-the-very-shady-prosecutor-robert-mueller-has-hired-for-the-russia-investigation/ (“MEET THE VERY SHADY PROSECUTOR ROBERT MUELLER HAS HIRED FOR THE RUSSIA INVESTIGATION“) and http://dailycaller.com/2018/06/29/manafort-raid-tip/ (“FBI MIGHT HAVE RAIDED MANAFORT’S STORAGE UNIT BASED ON TIP FROM ASSOCIATED PRESS“) and http://dailycaller.com/2018/05/22/manaforts-lawyers-mueller-leaker/ (“MANAFORT’S LAWYERS SUGGEST KEY MUELLER DEPUTY IS LEAKING TO MEDIA“) and https://www.politico.com/blogs/under-the-radar/2018/07/08/manafort-justice-department-reporters-701906 (“Details emerge on Justice Department meeting with reporters on Manafort“)

As the article states, “Andrew Weissmann arranged a meeting with DOJ and FBI officials and four Associated Press reporters on April 11, 2017, just over a month before Mueller was appointed special counsel.”

(Emphasis added)

What scumbags and criminals!

The list of treasonous “Deep State” wrongdoers continues to grow, including but not limited to Weissmann; Barack Obama; former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former President Bill Clinton; former Attorneys General Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch; Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and former Deputy AG Sally Yates; former FBI Directors Robert Mueller and James Comey; former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper; former CIA Director John Brennan; former National Security Advisor Susan Rice; former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe; and Senior Advisor to Obama, Valerie Jarrett.

See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2018/06/15/the-department-of-injustices-inspector-general-is-complicit-in-the-deep-state-cover-up/ (“The Department Of Injustice’s Inspector General Is Complicit In The Deep-State Cover-Up!“)

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12 07 2018
Timothy D. Naegele

#WalkAway Must Cut Off America’s Traitor Mueller At His Knees

Ban Robert Mueller

Betsy Woodruff has written for the far-Left’s Daily Beast:

Chelsea Manning, Iranian extortionists, and Hillaryland’s original hacker—they’ve all been targets for prosecutors that now work for Team Mueller.

As special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe has quietly chugged along, outraging the president and encircling some of his top campaign officials, the investigation has slowly grown. When Mueller first started his investigation into potential coordination between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin, he brought on just over a dozen seasoned prosecutors—some from inside the Justice Department and others from private practice—to work on his team.

In the past six months, the number of prosecutors working on cases he has brought has expanded significantly, with new additions casting light on the special counsel’s potential priorities and focuses. Court filings show that at least half a dozen new names are participating in Mueller’s work, all current Justice Department prosecutors. Their backgrounds vary widely, from prosecuting violent crimes to cyber attacks.

Sol Wisenberg, who worked on Ken Starr’s independent counsel investigation of the Clinton White House, told The Daily Beast that the expansion of Mueller’s probe was to be expected.

“I don’t think it’s unusual at all,” he said. “That’s what happened with us. You get more cases or your cases become more complex, you need more prosecutors and you need more agents.”

“They wouldn’t bring them on if they didn’t need them,” he added. “They’re not bringing them on for grins. There’s work there that needs to be done or they would not be bringing them in.”

Ryan Kao Dickey

Of all of Mueller’s new prosecutors, Dickey—who joined the special counsel’s team last November—may have the experience that hits closest to home: He worked on the prosecution of Romanian hacker Marcel Lazar Lehel, known as Guccifer. Lehel hacked Sidney Blumenthal, a longtime confidante and ally of Hillary Clinton, and released emails showing she had used a private email address as secretary of state. His victims also included former secretary of state Colin Powell, Daily Beast founder Tina Brown, and actor Jeffrey Tambor. After Guccifer’s incarceration—a judge sentenced him to 52 months in prison—another hacker took up his mantle, going by the moniker Guccifer 2.0 and targeting the Democratic National Committee in the lead-up to the 2016 presidential election. The Daily Beast reported exclusively in March that Guccifer 2.0, who communicated with Trump ally Roger Stone and took credit for giving the hacked DNC emails to Wikileaks, is actually a Russian intelligence officer.

“He’s young,” said defense attorney Edward MacMahon of Dickey, “but he’s obviously very steeped in the world of the internet. He’s very steeped in everything going on with computer intrusions and how that works.”

MacMahon, who has squared up against Dickey in court, said the prosecutor is an expert in all things cyber.

“He doesn’t play games,” MacMahon said.

Timothy Belevetz, who worked alongside Dickey as an assistant U.S. attorney for a time, said he has “a fairly relaxed and personable style.”

“They’ve got their core group of prosecutors who are working for the SC, then they brought Ryan on, I suspect, because of his background with computer crimes issues, cyber issues,” Belevetz said. “I don’t know all the evidence the government has or all the facts of the case, but my guess is that there is some significant component of computer use that relates to the alleged offenses that they believe he would have some special background and some special skills regarding.”

Dickey is working on the prosecution of the Internet Research Agency, a Russian troll farm that sowed division in the American electorate during the 2016 campaign.

Heather Alpino

Alpinio graduated from Harvard Law School just four years ago, according to her LinkedIn profile. Since then, she has taken a position in the Counterintelligence and Export Control Section of the Justice Department’s National Security Division. In her time there, she has worked on cases with geopolitical ramifications, including the prosecution of a British national who conspired with an American to ship lab equipment to Syria, in violation of U.S. law. The equipment included tools to detect chemical weapons, according to a press release from ICE, which worked with the Justice Department on the case.

Alpino also worked on the prosecution of two Iranian nationals for a computer hacking scheme. The pair allegedly stole tens of thousands of people’s names and credit card numbers, and also tried to extort their victims. And she worked on the successful prosecution of Turkish national Hamza Kolsuz, convicted in 2016 for illegally trying to export guns to Turkey.

Alpino is also working on Mueller’s prosecution of the IRA.

Jonathan Kravis

Kravis, who has extensive experience prosecuting public corruption cases, worked in the White House Counsel’s office during the Obama administration as associate counsel to the President. And during that time, he got to know another key player in the Russia probe: Emmet Flood, who joined the White House legal team in May to help handle issues related to the probe. While he was in the White House Counsel’s Office under Obama, according to a 2009 ethics waiver, Kravis was responsible for liaising with the representative for former President George W. Bush. Flood was that representative.

Kravis also clerked for Justice Stephen Breyer and Judge Merrick Garland. But his record isn’t one of partisanship; he worked on the prosecution of Chaka Fattah, a Democratic representative from Philadelphia who was convicted for using government money to pay for his personal and campaign expenses. In 2016, a judge sentenced Fattah to ten years in prison.

Another high-profile case was the prosecution of corrupt Drug Enforcement Administration agent Artemis Papadakis, who last year pleaded guilty to stealing money recovered for victims of fraud.

Jeffrey Miller, a Philadelphia criminal defense attorney who once squared off against Kravis, told The Daily Beast he had no complaints about him.

“I would say he is very businesslike, definitely reserved, bright, doesn’t engage in what I call small talk, he doesn’t get into silly talk or nonsense talk,” Miller said. “He’s all business. Serious, bright, focused on the legal thing, not verbose. I have nothing negative to say about him. He was not disingenuous, he was not sarcastic, I did not find him to be incompetent at all.”

Kravis is working on the IRA case, along with Alpino and Dickey.

Uzo Asonye

For the contentious prosecution of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, Mueller has enlisted the help of Uzo Asonye, an assistant U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia. Defense attorneys who work in the district told The Daily Beast that Asonye is liked and well-respected, viewed as an honest broker and an expert on the ins and outs of the Alexandria courthouse where Manafort is facing charges.

“He’s hard-charging but he’s smart,” said one defense attorney, who spoke anonymously to keep his comments from coloring his relationship with Asonye. “He works really hard.” The attorney added that Asonye, who started working with Mueller in May, is best known for his work on fraud and financial crimes. He is the deputy chief of his office’s Financial Crimes and Public Corruption Unit, according to his LinkedIn.

“He’s skillful as well as being fair,” said defense attorney Thomas Abbenante. “I find him very easy to work with. He understands his role, he understands my role, and we’ve been able to work out very difficult cases together.”

Asonye has taken heat from the right for giving $900 to Hillary Clinton’s unsuccessful presidential campaign in 2009.

Kathryn Rakoczy

Rakoczy’s role on Mueller’s investigation—made public in a June 22 court filing—has raised some questions in Washington legal circles. An assistant U.S. attorney in the district of D.C., Rakoczy is best known for her work on violent crime cases. She focused on misdemeanors until about eight years ago, and then shifted to primarily prosecuting D.C. street crime. A Washington criminal defense attorney familiar with her work, who spoke anonymously to prevent tension between himself and Rakoczy, said her work for Mueller has generated some head-scratching, since Mueller isn’t investigating any violent street crimes.

The Washington Post reported in June that Mueller may have added the career Justice Department prosecutors to the IRA prosecution team so they can take it over once the special counsel probe winds down. It’s unlikely any of the 13 Russian nationals indicted in that case will be extradited to the United States, and legal proceedings could drag on for years.

Deborah Curtis

Curtis, another prosecutor working on the IRA case, comes from the DOJ’s National Security Division, where she is deputy chief of the Counterespionage Section. From that perch, she has had a role in some of the DOJ’s most electric prosecutions, including going after a Chinese company accused of sanctions-busting on behalf of North Korea and prosecuting Stewart David Nozette, a prominent American scientist who pleaded guilty to spying for the Israeli government. She also worked on the prosecution of Chelsea Manning, according to notes on grand jury proceedings that one witness took and then posted online.

And Curtis’ work meant she crossed paths with one of the most high-profile lawyers representing a client who has been enmeshed in the Mueller probe: Abbe Lowell, Jared Kushner’s attorney. Curtis worked on the prosecution of former State Department contractor Stephen Jin-Woo Kim. Lowell represented Kim when he was prosecuted for—and ultimately pleaded guilty to—disclosing classified material to a Fox News reporter.

There’s a bit of an irony here: While Mueller’s critics have accused the probe of leaking, he’s brought on a seasoned leak prosecutor.

The new attorneys bring additional breadth and depth to Mueller’s team, as well as experience working on complex and politically sensitive matters. It’s no surprise Mueller’s team would be quietly fleshed out, even as it faces the noisiest criticism.

See https://www.thedailybeast.com/inside-muellers-new-army (“Inside Mueller’s New Army“) (emphasis added); see also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2018/03/11/robert-mueller-should-be-executed-for-treason/#comment-14117 (“Traitor Mueller’s Pit Bull Weissmann Arranged Meeting With Reporters To Discuss Manafort Investigation“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2018/06/15/the-department-of-injustices-inspector-general-is-complicit-in-the-deep-state-cover-up/ (“The Department Of Injustice’s Inspector General Is Complicit In The Deep-State Cover-Up!“)

Each of these individuals are part of the treasonous Robert Mueller’s witch hunt, and each must be targeted.

#WalkAway and other groups, and the American people must cut off the traitor Mueller at his knees.

The list of treasonous “Deep State” wrongdoers continues to grow, including but not limited to these individuals; Andrew Weissmann; Barack Obama; former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former President Bill Clinton; former Attorneys General Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch; Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and former Deputy AG Sally Yates; former FBI Directors Robert Mueller and James Comey; former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper; former CIA Director John Brennan; former National Security Advisor Susan Rice; former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe; and Senior Advisor to Obama, Valerie Jarrett.

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14 07 2018
Timothy D. Naegele

Dershowitz: Time For Mueller To End Pursuit Of The President And Say Trump Is Completely Innocent [UPDATED]

Wanda Carruthers has written for Newmax:

Former Harvard Law professor and constitutional scholar Alan Dershowitz said Friday’s announcement of indictments for 12 Russia military intelligence officers “proves that we never needed a special counsel,” Mediaite reported.

Dershowitz was responding to a question from Fox News host Martha MacCallum about a tweet by Rudy Giuliani, lawyer for President Donald Trump, who wrote after the indictments were announced, “The Russians are nailed. No Americans are involved. Time for Mueller to end this pursuit of the President and say President Trump is completely innocent.”

“It proves — this indictment proves that we never needed a special counsel,” Dershowitz said. “This indictment could have been brought by ordinary prosecutors, ordinary FBI agents. There’s no conflict here. It’s Russians they are going after. There is no president; There’s no people around the president; “There’s no conflict between the attorney general, the deputy attorney general and Americans — it’s all Russians. Why do we need to spend 20, 30, 40 million dollars, have special counsel appointed to do a routine national security investigation? [That’s] number one.”

The second point, according to Dershowitz, was that the guilt or innocence of those indicted would never be known because “they are never going to go on trial.”

“They are indicted. Do you think the Russians are going extradite them? Do you think they’re going travel to the United States to Disneyland to get arrested? Of course, that’s not going to happen. So, it will be the end of the process.”

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein announced the 12 Russian military intelligence officers were charged with hacking into the accounts of the Democratic National Committee, Hillary Clinton’s campaign and other party operations during the 2016 election.

Dershowitz called the indictments “one-sided allegations,” adding, “They are not proof.”

See https://www.newsmax.com/politics/alan-dershowitz-indictments-russians-hillary-clinton/2018/07/14/id/871691/ (“Dershowitz: Indictment of 12 Russians Proves Special Counsel ‘Never Needed'”) (emphasis added); see also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2018/06/15/the-department-of-injustices-inspector-general-is-complicit-in-the-deep-state-cover-up/#comment-14180 (“DOJ’s Rod Rosenstein Is A Traitor“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2018/03/11/robert-mueller-should-be-executed-for-treason/#comment-14159 (“#WalkAway Must Cut Off America’s Traitor Mueller At His Knees“) and https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/dershowitz-whitaker-rosenstein-mueller/2018/11/09/id/890116/ (“Dershowitz: ‘Hypocritical’ to Seek Whitaker’s Recusal From Mueller Case”)

Of course, Dershowitz is correct: the Mueller witch hunt must end immediately.

However, contrary to Dershowitz’s sincere beliefs, the co-conspirators in the “Deep State”—who have tried to destroy the candidacy and the presidency of Donald Trump—must be brought to justice. Otherwise, most Americans will never believe in the DOJ, FBI or our government again. Each co-conspirator must be prosecuted and imprisoned for treason, at the very least.

The treasonous wrongdoers include but are not limited to Barack Obama; former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former President Bill Clinton; former Attorneys General Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch; Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and former Deputy AG Sally Yates; former FBI Directors Robert Mueller and James Comey; former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper; former CIA Director John Brennan; former National Security Advisor Susan Rice; former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe; and Senior Advisor to Obama, Valerie Jarrett.

Nothing less will suffice.

See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2018/06/15/the-department-of-injustices-inspector-general-is-complicit-in-the-deep-state-cover-up/ (“The Department Of Injustice’s Inspector General Is Complicit In The Deep-State Cover-Up!“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2018/05/24/should-barack-obama-be-executed-for-treason/ (“Should Barack Obama Be Executed For Treason?“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2018/03/11/robert-mueller-should-be-executed-for-treason/ (“Robert Mueller Should Be Executed For Treason“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/10/20/the-real-russian-conspiracy-barack-obama-the-clintons-and-the-sale-of-americas-uranium-to-russias-killer-putin/ (“The Real Russian Conspiracy: Barack Obama, The Clintons, And The Sale Of America’s Uranium To Russia’s Killer Putin“)

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20 07 2018
Timothy D. Naegele

One FBI Text Message In Russia Probe That Should Alarm Every American [UPDATED]

Peter Strzok and Lisa Page
[star-crossed lovers, Peter Strzok and Lisa Page]

This is the title of an article written by award-winning investigative journalist John Solomon for TheHill:

Lisa Page and Peter Strzok, the reported FBI lovebirds, are the poster children for the next “Don’t Text and Investigate” public service ads airing soon at an FBI office near you.

Their extraordinary texting affair on their government phones has given the FBI a black eye, laying bare a raw political bias brought into the workplace that agents are supposed to check at the door when they strap on their guns and badges.

It is no longer in dispute that they held animus for Donald Trump, who was a subject of their Russia probe, or that they openly discussed using the powers of their office to “stop” Trump from becoming president. The only question is whether any official acts they took in the Russia collusion probe were driven by those sentiments.

The Justice Department’s inspector general is endeavoring to answer that question.

For any American who wants an answer sooner, there are just five words, among the thousands of suggestive texts Page and Strzok exchanged, that you should read.

That passage was transmitted on May 19, 2017. “There’s no big there there,” Strzok texted.

The date of the text long has intrigued investigators: It is two days after Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein named special counsel Robert Mueller to oversee an investigation into alleged collusion between Trump and the Russia campaign.

Since the text was turned over to Congress, investigators wondered whether it referred to the evidence against the Trump campaign.

This month, they finally got the chance to ask. Strzok declined to say — but Page, during a closed-door interview with lawmakers, confirmed in the most pained and contorted way that the message in fact referred to the quality of the Russia case, according to multiple eyewitnesses.

The admission is deeply consequential. It means Rosenstein unleashed the most awesome powers of a special counsel to investigate an allegation that the key FBI officials, driving the investigation for 10 months beforehand, did not think was “there.”

By the time of the text and Mueller’s appointment, the FBI’s best counterintelligence agents had had plenty of time to dig. They knowingly used a dossier funded by Hillary Clinton’s campaign — which contained uncorroborated allegations — to persuade the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court to issue a warrant to monitor Trump campaign adviser Carter Page (no relation to Lisa Page).

They sat on Carter Page’s phones and emails for nearly six months without getting evidence that would warrant prosecuting him. The evidence they had gathered was deemed so weak that their boss, then-FBI Director James Comey, was forced to admit to Congress after being fired by Trump that the core allegation remained substantially uncorroborated.

In other words, they had a big nothing burger. And, based on that empty-calorie dish, Rosenstein authorized the buffet menu of a special prosecutor that has cost America millions of dollars and months of political strife.

The work product Strzok created to justify the collusion probe now has been shown to be inferior: A Clinton-hired contractor produced multiple documents accusing Trump of wrongdoing during the election; each was routed to the FBI through a different source or was used to seed news articles with similar allegations that further built an uncorroborated public narrative of Trump-Russia collusion. Most troubling, the FBI relied on at least one of those news stories to justify the FISA warrant against Carter Page.

That sort of multifaceted allegation machine, which can be traced back to a single source, is known in spy craft as “circular intelligence reporting,” and it’s the sort of bad product that professional spooks are trained to spot and reject.

But Team Strzok kept pushing it through the system, causing a major escalation of a probe for which, by his own words, he knew had “no big there there.”

The answer as to why a pro such as Strzok would take such action has become clearer, at least to congressional investigators. That clarity comes from the context of the other emails and text messages that surrounded the May 19, 2017, declaration.

It turns out that what Strzok and Lisa Page were really doing that day was debating whether they should stay with the FBI and try to rise through the ranks to the level of an assistant director (AD) or join Mueller’s special counsel team.

“Who gives a f*ck, one more AD like [redacted] or whoever?” Strzok wrote, weighing the merits of promotion, before apparently suggesting what would be a more attractive role: “An investigation leading to impeachment?”

Lisa Page apparently realized the conversation had gone too far and tried to reel it in. “We should stop having this conversation here,” she texted back, adding later it was important to examine “the different realistic outcomes of this case.”

A few minutes later Strzok texted his own handicap of the Russia evidence: “You and I both know the odds are nothing. If I thought it was likely, I’d be there no question. I hesitate in part because of my gut sense and concern there’s no big there there.”

So the FBI agents who helped drive the Russia collusion narrative — as well as Rosenstein’s decision to appoint Mueller — apparently knew all along that the evidence was going to lead to “nothing” and, yet, they proceeded because they thought there was still a possibility of impeachment.

Impeachment is a political outcome. The only logical conclusion, then, that congressional investigators can make is that political bias led these agents to press an investigation forward to achieve the political outcome of impeachment, even though their professional training told them it had “no big there there.”

And that, by definition, is political bias in action.

How concerned you are by this conduct is almost certainly affected by your love or hatred for Trump. But put yourself for a second in the hot seat of an investigation by the same FBI cast of characters: You are under investigation for a crime the agents don’t think occurred, but the investigation still advances because the desired outcome is to get you fired from your job.

Is that an FBI you can live with?

See http://thehill.com/hilltv/rising/397902-opinion-one-fbi-text-message-in-russia-probe-should-alarm-every-american (emphasis added); see also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2018/06/15/the-department-of-injustices-inspector-general-is-complicit-in-the-deep-state-cover-up/#comment-14219 (“Peter Strzok’s Arrogance Is The Product Of A Corrupt FBI“)

Both the arrogant Peter Strzok and Lisa Page should be arrested, convicted and sent to prison, where their fellow inmates will dispense true justice to each of them.

Also, anyone who has dealt the with DOJ and/or the FBI knows that they have been corrupt for decades. No American should trust them.

See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2018/06/15/the-department-of-injustices-inspector-general-is-complicit-in-the-deep-state-cover-up/ (“The Department Of Injustice’s Inspector General Is Complicit In The Deep-State Cover-Up!“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2018/05/24/should-barack-obama-be-executed-for-treason/ (“Should Barack Obama Be Executed For Treason?“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/10/20/the-real-russian-conspiracy-barack-obama-the-clintons-and-the-sale-of-americas-uranium-to-russias-killer-putin/ (“The Real Russian Conspiracy: Barack Obama, The Clintons, And The Sale Of America’s Uranium To Russia’s Killer Putin“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2012/03/21/the-united-states-department-of-injustice/ (“The United States Department of Injustice”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2013/07/15/justice-and-the-law-do-not-mix/ (“Justice And The Law Do Not Mix“)

Peter Strzok

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23 07 2018
key508

Mueller is so corrupt and crooked. He should have been in jail a long time ago

Liked by 1 person

23 07 2018
Timothy D. Naegele

Thank you for your comment. I agree completely.

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26 07 2018
Timothy D. Naegele

Jeff Sessions Defends Rosenstein, And Must Be Removed As Attorney General [UPDATED]

Jeff Sessions

Tragically, the United States has had a succession of lawless and despicable Attorneys General, including but not limited to Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch.

Lots of us had great hope for former Alabama senator Jeff Sessions’ tenure in that office, but we have been proven wrong and are gravely disappointed. His conduct—or absence of actions when leadership has been so essential—has tarnished his reputation forever.

In a sense, he is far worse than his despicable predecessors, inter alia, because he has allowed the greatest scandal in American history to unfold on his watch. Americans need faith in their government restored, and Sessions has been “Missing In Action” (MIA).

See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2018/06/15/the-department-of-injustices-inspector-general-is-complicit-in-the-deep-state-cover-up/ (“The Department Of Injustice’s Inspector General Is Complicit In The Deep-State Cover-Up!“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2018/05/24/should-barack-obama-be-executed-for-treason/ (“Should Barack Obama Be Executed For Treason?“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/10/20/the-real-russian-conspiracy-barack-obama-the-clintons-and-the-sale-of-americas-uranium-to-russias-killer-putin/ (“The Real Russian Conspiracy: Barack Obama, The Clintons, And The Sale Of America’s Uranium To Russia’s Killer Putin“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2012/03/21/the-united-states-department-of-injustice/ (“The United States Department of Injustice”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2013/07/15/justice-and-the-law-do-not-mix/ (“Justice And The Law Do Not Mix“)

Daphne Psaledakis and Nate Raymond have written for Reuters:

U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan on Thursday rejected a move by fellow Republicans to impeach Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, the No. 2 Justice Department official, who oversees the federal probe of Russia’s role in the 2016 presidential election.

“Do I support impeachment of Rod Rosenstein? No, I do not,” said Ryan, whose stance could make it easier for other Republican members to oppose the measure.

A group of Republicans in the House of Representatives on Wednesday introduced articles of impeachment to remove Rosenstein, escalating a fight over Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into whether Republican President Donald Trump’s campaign worked with Moscow to sway the 2016 presidential election.

Representatives Jim Jordan and Mark Meadows, who belong to the conservative House Freedom Caucus, joined nine other lawmakers in accusing Rosenstein of hiding investigative information from Congress, failure to comply with congressional subpoenas and other alleged misconduct.

No immediate action was expected on the move. The House was scheduled to leave on Thursday for a recess that extends until September. A House Republican aide said the two lawmakers were not trying to force quick action on the measure.

Earlier, Rosenstein’s boss, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, expressed confidence in the career civil servant and took a swipe at the lawmakers pushing for his ouster.

“My deputy, Rod Rosenstein, is highly capable. I have the highest confidence in him,” Sessions said during an appearance in Boston.

“What I would like Congress to do is to focus on some of the legal challenges that are out there,” including illegal immigration, the attorney general added.

The former U.S. senator recused himself from matters that involve the Trump campaign, including the Russia probe, last year because of his role as a top adviser to the campaign.

Rosenstein, the No. 2 Justice Department official, has become a frequent punching bag for Trump supporters for appointing Mueller to take over the Russia investigation from the FBI. The president has denied collusion with Moscow and characterizes the probe as a “witch hunt.” Russia has denied interfering in the election.

Democrats criticized the Republican move. House of Representatives Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi noted that Rosenstein is a Republican appointee and said the Republican lawmakers were undermining the judicial system with a politically motivated action.

“The attack on Rosenstein of course is an attack on the Mueller investigation,” Pelosi said at a news conference on Thursday.

See https://ca.news.yahoo.com/sessions-defends-deputy-rosenstein-impeachment-move-143717897.html (“House Speaker rejects Rosenstein impeachment effort“) (emphasis added)

Paul Ryan is a colossal embarrassment, and must resign immediately. In the 2012 election when he was Mitt Romney’s running mate, he could not carry his own state of Wisconsin or even his congressional district for the Romney-Ryan ticket.

Americans must never forget that Ryan’s House of Representations is taking a recess that extends until September. Do these clowns ever work, or do anything positive? Having had my fill of both political parties when I left the U.S. Senate, this is why I became an Independent.

Tragically, and even worse, America’s “leadership” at the Department of Justice, FBI, House and Senate is either treasonous and corrupt, or outright incompetent. NO AMERICAN should trust any of them.

. . .

Lastly, Mueller is a sanctimonious bastard and, yes, a traitor who must be crushed like a gnat.

See also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2018/05/06/what-atrocities-did-robert-mueller-commit-in-vietnam/ (“What Atrocities Did Robert Mueller Commit In Vietnam?“)

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27 07 2018
Timothy D. Naegele

DEMAND IMPEACHMENT OF ROD ROSENSTEIN!


[Rod Rosenstein and Heinrich Himmler]

Political pundit and Trump supporter Dick Morris has written:

Dear Friend,

A courageous group of House conservatives led by Jim Jordan of Ohio and Mark Meadows of North Carolina have filed impeachment resolutions against Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.

Rosenstein appointed Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller and has overseen and supervised his entire investigation, letting it run far afield [and] going after people unconnected with the so-called Russian meddling in the 2016 election that Mueller was appointed to investigate.

Rosenstein signed off on a request to the FISA court to wiretap Trump advisors without disclosing to the court that the warrant was based on a dossier amassed by and funded by Hillary’s campaign.

And Rosenstein has failed to produce documents demanded by Congressional investigators or has so heavily redacted them as to make the[m] useless.

We are never going to get a fair chance to probe the coverups of the Justice Department and the FBI unless we use our control of the House — while we have it — to bring Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to trial in the Senate through impeachment proceedings.

We likely will lack the two-thirds majority required for removal from office, but the trial will bring national focus to the phony origins and fraudulent nature of the Mueller probe.

Unfortunately, House Speaker Paul Ryan stopped a vote on the impeachment resolution until after the August recess. But with our majority in the House, we should pass it when Congress reconvenes if only our Republican members stand up for justice.

WE, the Undersigned, demand that our members of the House of Representatives vote to impeach Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein for his misconduct in office.

Please sign this petition to impeach Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein! The outpouring of support for his impeachment may well bring the matter to the House floor in September and lead to its passage.

Your signature will count! We will send an email in your name to your Congressman telling them of your position!

We’ll add your email address to our Alerts list to keep you posted on progress and let you know if we need to take further action.

Thank you,

Dick Morris

If you agree, please sign the petition by clicking on the following link: https://dickmorris.rallycongress.net/ctas/impeach-rod-rosenstein

See also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2018/03/11/robert-mueller-should-be-executed-for-treason/#comment-14331 (“Jeff Sessions Defends Rosenstein, And Must Be Removed As Attorney General“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2018/07/20/the-american-lefts-feeding-frenzy/#comment-14316 (“Are Paul Ryan And The Neanderthals In the GOP Leading The Party To Crushing Defeats In November?“)

Capitol and flag

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3 08 2018
key508

Robert Mueller has been getting away with corruption for years. It’s time for Robert to be investigated. He is so corrupt and has many judges in his pocket because he has the goods on most of the judges. They too have committed many wrongs, and Mueller knows all about the judges’ corruption; that’s why he can make judges put people in jail for much much less crimes than Hillary, Bill and the Obamas committed.

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3 08 2018
Timothy D. Naegele

Thank you for your comments.

A perfect example may be District Judge Amy Berman Jackson, who is handling part of the Manafort litigation.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2013/07/15/justice-and-the-law-do-not-mix/#comment-10099 (“Despicable Benghazi Death’s Judge Must Be Targeted For Removal”); see also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2013/07/15/justice-and-the-law-do-not-mix/ (“Justice And The Law Do Not Mix”)

Liked by 1 person

31 10 2018
Timothy D. Naegele

What Role Did Robert Mueller Play In The Savage Killing Of Whitey Bulger? [UPDATED]

Robert Mueller and Whitey Bulger

Kayla Brantley, Michela Freda and Keith Griffith have reported for the UK’s Daily Mail:

The fatal attack on notorious Boston mob boss and longtime FBI informant James ‘Whitey’ Bulger reportedly included a gruesome attempt to cut out his tongue – and a Mafia hitman who hated snitches is the prime suspect.

Fotios ‘Freddy’ Geas, 51, is under investigation for allegedly instigating a group of men to beat wheelchair-bound Bulger to death with a lock wrapped in a sock and partially gouge his eyes inside USP Hazelton on Tuesday.

The attack also included an attempt to cut out Bulger’s tongue – the signature mob punishment for informants – but the amount of blood made it unclear whether his tongue was fully cut out, sources at the West Virginia prison tell TMZ.

At least two men, including Geas, are being investigated for the attack after being caught on CCTV entering Bulger’s cell around 6am, the Boston Globe reported, without naming the second suspect. Two hours later, Bulger was found dead.

‘Freddy hated rats,’ private investigator Ted McDonough said of Geas, who is serving a life sentence after he was ratted on for the murders of former Genovese crime family mob boss Adolfo ‘Big Al’ Bruno and associate Gary D Westerman in 2003.

Bulger had cut a sweet deal to serve as an FBI informant as far back as 1975, giving him virtual impunity to commit any crime he wanted for decades – except for murder.

The former head of south Boston’s Winter Hill Gang was convicted in 2013 of killing at least 11 people and was serving two life sentences at the time of his death.

‘Freddy hated guys who abused women. Whitey was a rat who killed women. It’s probably that simple,’ McDonough, who became friendly with Geas while working for him as an investigator.

Bulger was found dead by guards on Tuesday morning at USP Hazelton, a high-security federal prison in Bruceton Mills, West Virginia. He was 89.

He had just been moved to Hazelton Monday from a prison in Florida after a stint in a transfer facility in Oklahoma City.

Bureau of Prisons officials and his attorney declined last week to comment on why he was being moved.

Bulger was in general population when three inmates rolled his wheelchair to a corner out of view of surveillance cameras, beat him in the head with a lock wrapped in a sock, and attempted to gouge his eyes out with a shiv, according to reports.

Law enforcement sources tell DailyMail.com that Whitey had been talking about outing people in the top echelon of the controversial FBI informant program.

The sources said he hadn’t even been processed at the West Virginia facility when he was killed.

But someone who knew he was being transferred put the word out – the killer or killers had to know he was coming.

Geas has not disputed his role in the killings, local media claims, and has refused to identify his accomplices.

The lawyer who represented him when he was jailed for murder said he was not surprised that Geas was refusing to cooperate.

‘He wouldn’t rat on anybody,’ said attorney David Hoose. ‘And he had no respect for anyone who did.’

Geas was also no stranger to violence. When he killed Westerman in 2003, he shot the mobster twice in the head, but somehow he survived.

When Westerham broke free of Geas and his brother Ty and tried to flee, the pair dragged him back to the pit they had dug and beat him to death with shovels.

Afterward, Geas praised his brother for completing some ‘good teamwork’.

In Big Al’s case, Geas did not perpetrate the killing himself, but hired another hitman to carry out the murder for him.

He was caught after both the hitman – a former cellmate named Frankie Roche – and the man who ordered the killing – a Mafia boss and ally of Geas called Anthony Arillotta – turned on him and agreed to testify.

Prison officials have not said who else may have been involved in Bulger’s murder, but mobster Paul Weadick, 63, was sent to Hazelton this summer after his murder conviction alongside Francis ‘Cadillac Frank’ Salemme – Bulger’s co-defendant in a sweeping federal racketeering indictment in 1999.

Salamme and Weadick were convicted in June of the 1993 murder of Steven DiSarro, a nightclub owner in South Boston.

Bulger’s right-hand man, Stephen ‘The Rifleman’ Flemmi, was the star witness in the prosecution of Salamme and Weadick – though Flemmi also testified against Bulger himself in 2013.

Salamme, 85, is currently incarcerated in Brooklyn MDC.

It’s possible that Bulger was set to open up to someone on Lynch’s team with claims of abuses in the program.

Bulger was one of the FBI’s most wanted fugitives for 16 years until his 2011 arrest in Santa Monica, California.

His 2013 trial, which featured 72 witnesses and 840 exhibits, produced chilling testimony worthy of a pulp novel.

It heard harrowing tales of teeth being pulled from the mouths of murder victims to foil identification and the strangulation of a mobster’s girlfriend who ‘knew too much.’

The Federal Bureau of Prisons said in a statement Tuesday: ‘Life-saving measures were initiated immediately by responding staff. Mr. Bulger was subsequently pronounced dead by the Preston County Medical Examiner.’

The BOP said that no other staff or inmates were injured and that an investigation was underway.

In a statement, Bulger’s lawyer J.W. Carney Jr blasted the prison system over the mobster’s death.

‘He was sentenced to life in prison, but as a result of decisions by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, that sentence has been changed to the death penalty,’ the statement read.

In the past seven months, there have been three homicides at Hazelton – dubbed Misery Mountain – with the officers’ union blaming chronic under-staffing.

‘This facility is severely understaffed,’ the union president told the Globe.

Bulger was born in Boston on September 3, 1929, the son of a longshoreman and his first-generation Irish immigrant wife.

The young crook was arrested at age 14, in 1943, when he began running with a street gang called the Shamrocks and was charged with larceny.

Police gave young Bulger the nickname ‘Whitey’ early in his criminal career, a reference to his blond hair. Bulger is said to have hated the moniker, but it stuck.

Following a stint in the Air Force, Bulger served his first federal prison sentence starting in 1956 on armed robbery and truck hijacking charges.

Bulger went on to rule the Boston underworld with an iron fist for nearly 30 years while also working as an informant for the FBI.

His deal with the FBI gave him virtual impunity to commit crimes – FBI agents later testified that Bulger had been allowed to commit any crime except for murder in exchange for information.

The deal has astounded those close to th Bulger case ever since and continues to inspire legislation to this day.

Just last year US Rep. Stephen Lynch introduced the Confidential Informant Accountability Act – which calls for congressional oversight into the selection and use of confidential informants.

It is perhaps no coincidence that Lynch is from Southie, Bulger’s old turf.

Kevin Weeks, Bulger’s former right-hand man, told the Mirror how the pair made millions from gambling, drugs, robberies and ­extortion.

He recalled watching Bulger murder three people in 1984, including fisherman John McIntyre who was shot in the back of the head after he admitted talking to the cops about a plot to smuggle guns to the IRA.

Weeks said McIntyre was beaten for an hour before Bulger tried to strangle him with a rope. When the rope proved to be too thick, Whitey asked him if he wanted to be shot instead – and offer he accepted gladly, Weeks said.

By 1995, his FBI coverage wasn’t enough to protect him from a sweeping federal indictment on obstruction of justice, racketeering, drug dealing and extortion charges.

After his FBI handler John Connolly tipped him off that the indictment was about to drop, Bulger went on the run with his girlfriend Catherine Grieg.

The pair ended up in Santa Monica, California, where they posed as married retirees from Chicago.

After al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was killed by U.S. forces in Pakistan in 2011, Bulger succeeded him as No. 1 wanted fugitive on the FBI’s ‘Ten Most Wanted’ list.

One of the many aliases Bulger used while on the run was that of James Lawlor, a man who Bulger found living on the street in the Los Angeles area.

The two men resembled each other so much that Bulger could use Lawlor’s driver’s license and other identity papers. In return, he paid Lawlor’s rent, according to the Boston Globe.

Miss Iceland of 1974 was responsible for Bulger’s capture. Anna Bjornsdottir, who had acted in US television shows and commercials under the name Anna Bjorn, had lived near Bulger and girlfriend Catherine Greig in Santa Monica, California.

While she was visiting Iceland, she saw a news report about the authorities’ hunt for Bulger. She recognized him as the quiet retiree she knew from Santa Monica and called the FBI, which arrested him in June 2011. Bjornsdottir later claimed a $2 million reward.

When police raided his Santa Monica apartment, they found several fiction and non-fiction books about criminals, including ‘Escape From Alcatraz.’

Bulger refused to testify at his trial claiming he had been given immunity from prosecution by federal agents.

He steadfastly denied being an FBI informant, but close links between some FBI agents in Boston and Bulger’s Winter Hill Gang in the 1970s and 1980s have been well documented.

When Bulger was captured, Weeks was among those to testify against him.

Weeks insists he is not a snitch, but said seeing Bulger’s FBI file – proving he had spent years as an informant – ‘broke’ him.

‘I didn’t want to give evidence. He was like an older brother to me. I liked him. He treated me well. He was protective.

‘We made millions together but he broke me when I was shown his FBI file after my arrest showing he was a rat.

‘If I spoke to him now I’d only have one question to ask: ‘Why?’.’

Bulger’s incredible story has provided inspiration to writers down the years, including for the mob boss played by Jack Nicholson in Martin Scorsese’s 2006 film, The Departed.

In 2015 Whitey’s story was made into a film itself, called Black Mass, starring Johnny Depp as Bulger.

While Whitey himself never expressed an opinion on the film, Weeks said it was so inaccurate that he is considering legal action.

Among his many bug-bears with the movie are the fact that it linked him with a murder in Miami, a place he says he never visited.

He also objects to the portrayal of him as dim-witted, saying: ‘I was smart.’

As for Depp’s portrayal of Bulger, he says the actor swore too much for the role – something the real Bulger did not do day-to-day – and ‘got nothing right’ about him except for his hair.

See https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6336111/Freddy-hated-rats-Convicted-Mafia-hitman-suspected-leading-deadly-attack-Whitey-Bulger.html (“Gruesome prison murder of mob boss Whitey Bulger included attempt to cut out the former FBI informant’s TONGUE, as convicted mafia hitman who ‘hated rats’ becomes the prime suspect”) (emphasis added; video and sidebars omitted)

As investigative reporter Sara Carter has noted:

In Boston, Mueller was an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the U.S. Attorney’s Office and then became the Acting U.S. Attorney from 1986 through 1987.

It was Mueller’s actions during that time that raised questions about his role in one of the FBI’s most controversial cases involving the FBI’s use of a confidential informant that led to the convictions of four innocent men, who were sentenced to death for murders they did not commit.

Local law enforcement officials, the media, and some colleagues criticized Mueller and the FBI for what they believed was the bureau’s role in covering up for the FBI’s longtime dealings with mobster and informant James “Whitey” Bulger.

. . .

Mueller who was first an assistant US attorney, “then as the acting US attorney in Boston” had written “letters to the parole and pardons board throughout the 1980s opposing clemency for the four men framed by FBI lies. Of course, Mueller was also in that position while Whitey Bulger was helping the FBI cart off his criminal competitors even as he buried bodies in shallow graves along the Neponset.

. . .

Mueller never was asked by Congress, “what did you know about Whitey Bulger, and when did you know it?”

See https://saraacarter.com/questions-still-surround-robert-muellers-boston-past/ (“Questions Still Surround Robert Mueller’s Boston Past“) (emphasis added) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2018/03/11/robert-mueller-should-be-executed-for-treason/#comment-12611 (“The Traitor Mueller Has Been Botching Investigations Since The Anthrax Attacks“); see also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2018/05/06/what-atrocities-did-robert-mueller-commit-in-vietnam/ (“What Atrocities Did Robert Mueller Commit In Vietnam?“)

Clearly, the Feds knew that Bulger could be a target, yet they allowed him to be killed brutally. Why?

. . .

What is crystal clear is that Robert Mueller must be incarcerated for treason and his other crimes; and his fellow inmates must dispense similar justice to him, which is long overdue.

Like

11 08 2019
H. Craig Bradley

LIVE AND LET DIE

Whitey Bulger finally got what was coming to him. The only tragedy I can see was it took until his 89th birthday to finish him off. Should have happened a long time ago, but everything in due course. Sometimes it takes a long time for justice to be affected, as in the case of the late Jeffery Epstein. Could not have happened to a “nicer” guy. These are all scum. No tears will be shed.

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11 08 2019
Timothy D. Naegele

Tears will be shed for the women whose lives Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell and their co-conspirators destroyed; and for those individuals whom Barack Obama, Robert Mueller and their many co-conspirators have hurt as a result of their treasonous conduct—which continues to this day.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2019/08/11/u-s-attorney-general-barr-is-appalled-give-americans-a-break/ (“U.S. Attorney General Barr Is Appalled: Give Americans A Break!”)

Until Obama and his co-conspirators have been crushed, legally, no American should believe in the American system of justice again.

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28 11 2018
Timothy D. Naegele

The Trials For Treason Must Begin With Robert Mueller [UPDATED]

For the reasons set forth in the article above and the comments beneath it, Robert Mueller must become target #1.

No American of any age should believe in this great nation’s system of justice until Mueller and his fellow treasonous co-conspirators are brought to justice, and dealt with in the harshest ways imaginable.

See, e.g., https://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2018/11/28/this-mueller-clown-show-might-as-well-indict-minnie-mouse-2/ (Rush Limbaugh: “This Mueller Clown Show Might as Well Indict Minnie Mouse”—”[T]his Mueller investigation is itself its own version of a hoax, precisely because there isn’t a crime to investigate, and there never has been a crime to investigate”—”[I]f there’s any integrity, if there’s any honor anywhere in this investigation team of the special counsel, it can’t be found. This is the deep state; this is the Washington establishment; this is everybody in that town still to this day ganging up, refusing to accept the election results of 2016 and searching in vain for even the slightest thing that could be said to be a crime that has some tangential connection to Russia so that Mueller and his team can say that their work was worth it, or worse. Trying to convince clueless Americans that what they’ve alleged for the last two years did happen, collusion between Trump and Russia”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2018/05/06/what-atrocities-did-robert-mueller-commit-in-vietnam/ (“What Atrocities Did Robert Mueller Commit In Vietnam?“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/10/20/the-real-russian-conspiracy-barack-obama-the-clintons-and-the-sale-of-americas-uranium-to-russias-killer-putin/ (“The Real Russian Conspiracy: Barack Obama, The Clintons, And The Sale Of America’s Uranium To Russia’s Killer Putin”) and http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/letters/ct-mueller-russia-trump-united-arab-emirates-20180305-story.html (“Mueller doesn’t care about the truth or justice. He wants scalps. He will stop at nothing and destroy as many people along the way as necessary. You see, in the Marine Corps in Vietnam he learned all about collateral damage. Like the Terminator, he has no remorse. Mueller is soulless with motives known only to him”)

The end of Obama, the Clintons and others

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5 12 2018
Timothy D. Naegele

Mueller Recommends No Prison Time For Disgraced And Cowardly Trump Adviser Michael Flynn [UPDATED]

Shamed Michael Flynn

James Gordon Meek, Matthew Mosk, Lee Ferran and John Santucci have reported for ABC News:

Special counsel Robert Mueller is recommending no prison time for retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, citing the former national security adviser’s “substantial assistance” in his ongoing investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

“Given the defendant’s substantial assistance and other considerations set forth,” the special counsel wrote, “a sentence at the low end of the guideline range—including a sentence that does not impose a term of incarceration—is appropriate and warranted.”

Flynn, whose sentencing is scheduled for Dec. 18, pleaded guilty in December 2017 to lying to the FBI about his conversations with then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the presidential transition period from Election Day 2016 to Trump’s inauguration in January 2017. As part of his plea agreement, Flynn agreed to cooperate with the Mueller investigation.

Under federal guidelines, the retired Army lieutenant general’s crime carries a penalty of up to six months in prison. But court observers say if Flynn satisfactorily cooperated with the special counsel, he could avoid prison time.

Upon learning of Mueller’s sentencing suggestion, a source close to Flynn said his family is relieved and happy tonight that the special counsel is recommending no prison time for him.

“Jail time wouldn’t be a good thing for him,” the source told ABC News.

Mueller has wasted no time bringing into court other cooperating witnesses, such as George Papadopoulos, a former campaign adviser, and Paul Manafort, once Trump’s campaign chairman, to face penalties for lying to his investigators or not fully cooperating.

Papadopoulos is currently serving a 14-day sentence after a judge denied his 11th-hour appeal to delay a prison sentence. Manafort faces sentencing in two separate cases early next year after his plea agreement deteriorated last month.

Mueller’s assessment of the value of the cooperation by Flynn – who had at times testified in Congress as Defense Intelligence Agency director alongside Mueller when Mueller led the FBI – is likely to influence U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan’s handling of the sentence. One knowledgeable source said the bulk of Flynn’s cooperation with the special counsel occurred immediately following his December court appearance.

To date, there have been scant details from Mueller’s team about the extent of Flynn’s cooperation, including how many times he was interviewed, what he disclosed and whether he fully cooperated to their satisfaction.

In his Tuesday memo, Mueller revealed that Flynn “participated in 19 interviews with the [special counsel’s office] or attorneys from other Department of Justice offices,” the content of which notably included “firsthand information about the content and context of interactions between the transition team and Russian government officials.”

“His early cooperation was particularly valuable because he was one of the few people with long-term and firsthand insight regarding events and issues under investigation by the [special counsel’s office],” Mueller wrote Tuesday.

Mueller noted that many of the investigations “in which [Flynn] has provided assistance are ongoing.”

A distinguished military officer with decades of government experience, Flynn – who’s now retired – forged a close bond with President Trump during the 2016 campaign as an adviser and surrogate.

Except for a handful of public appearances and speeches, the former DIA director has kept a low profile over the past year. A source close to Flynn said that after one campaign appearance for a Republican in California, the retired intelligence officer was advised not to make any further political appearances before the midterms and his scheduled sentencing this month.

Friends and relatives have said Flynn, who at 2016 campaign rallies led chants of “Lock her up!” about Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, is eager to face the judge and accept his fate following his dramatic guilty plea almost exactly one year ago.

Flynn’s downfall has caused him deep pain, friends and family said, after a three-decade career and launching a private consulting firm in retirement, the Flynn Intel Group, where he grew closer with his son Michael Jr. after years of war deployments overseas.

Trump said last year that Flynn was a “fine man,” but he had to dismiss his national security adviser 21 days into the new administration because he had misled Vice President Mike Pence about his contacts with Russia’s ambassador in Washington during the transition.

“I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI. He has pled guilty to those lies. It is a shame because his actions during the transition were lawful,” Trump tweeted after Flynn pleaded guilty a year ago.

The special counsel has until Friday to submit similar sentencing memos for Manafort and Michael Cohen, who spent a decade as the real estate tycoon’s personal lawyer.

See https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/mueller-files-key-sentencing-recommendation-trump-adviser-michael/story?id=59597161 (“Citing ‘substantial assistance’ to probe, Mueller recommends no prison time for former Trump adviser Michael Flynn”); see also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/10/20/the-real-russian-conspiracy-barack-obama-the-clintons-and-the-sale-of-americas-uranium-to-russias-killer-putin/#comment-15419 (“The Rat Sings“)

Having served as an Army officer assigned to the Defense Intelligence Agency at the Pentagon—where I received the Joint Service Commendation Medal—Flynn is a disgrace to the uniform that he wore, and to the DIA where he served.

Robert Mueller may have committed crimes in Vietnam, but it is a certainty that he committed treason and other crimes afterward. For Flynn to cooperate in any way with the Mueller witch hunt is a sign of cowardice on Flynn’s part.

At some point, Mueller must serve time in prison, at the very least. There, his fellow inmates will likely dispense true justice to him, which is long overdue—similar to what happened to Mueller’s “friend,” Whitey Bulger.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2018/03/11/robert-mueller-should-be-executed-for-treason/#comment-15092 (“What Role Did Robert Mueller Play In The Savage Killing Of Whitey Bulger?”); see also< https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/dec/14/robert-muellers-probe-costs-taxpayers-22m/ (“Mueller probe is costing taxpayers $25M: DOJ“)

Ban Robert Mueller

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12 02 2019
Timothy D. Naegele

Robert Mueller Is A Traitor Who Must Receive The Most Severe Punishment Possible Under American Laws

Ban Robert Mueller

Kyra Phillips, Chris Vlasto, Matthew Mosk and John Santucci have written for ABC News:

The veteran criminal defense attorney who headed President Donald Trump’s legal team during a crucial stretch of the special counsel investigation believes the entire affair will end in silence from special counsel Robert Mueller, and called the massive two-year probe into Russian interference in the 2016 campaign “a terrible waste of time.”

“I don’t think there’ll be a report,” John Dowd told ABC News in a wide-ranging interview for the premiere episode of “The Investigation,” a new podcast focused on the probe led by special counsel Robert Mueller. “I will be shocked if anything regarding the president is made public, other than ‘We’re done.’”

Dowd, 77, left his role as Trump’s lead attorney last March over differing views about how cooperative to be with prosecutors. But after spending nearly a year guiding the president’s legal strategy, he forged a close relationship with Trump and continues to speak with him about the Russia probe.

In one of his most in-depth interviews since departing Trump’s legal team, he offered a view of the probe very much in line with that of the president -– namely, that it lacks merit.

“I know exactly what [Mueller] has,” Dowd said. “I know exactly what every witness said, what every document said. I know exactly what he asked. And I know what the conclusion or the result is,” he said, describing the sweeping efforts by Trump’s legal team to assess the case by speaking to dozens of witnesses. Based on that knowledge, Dowd said, “there’s no basis. There’s no exposure. It’s been a terrible waste of time.”

Dowd’s overall view of the investigation — he called it “one of the greatest frauds this country’s ever seen” — echoes Trump’s claim that it is a hoax or a witch hunt.

That differs sharply from Justice Department officials, who have had a window into the probe, which, to date, has pried guilty pleas out of five former Trump advisers, and indicted 26 Russian nationals, three Russian companies, a California man (for assisting Russians in faking their identities), another Trump adviser, and a London-based lawyer.

In appearances on Capitol Hill, a series of senior administration officials have disputed President Trump’s repeated dismissals of the probe.

“I do not believe special counsel Mueller is on a witch hunt,” FBI Director Christopher Wray told Congress in June, a sentiment shared by Rosenstein — and more recently — by the man appointed to take over the Justice Department, William Barr. Even acting attorney general Matthew Whitaker defended Mueller’s work in an appearance before the House Judiciary Committee last week.

“I do believe he’s honest,” Whitaker said of Mueller. “I have been on the record about my respect for Bob Mueller and his ability to conduct this investigation.”

Known for his cantankerous demeanor and aggressive legal tactics, Dowd is a former Marine and a veteran of high profile Washington investigations and legal disputes. He helped clear Arizona Sen. John McCain’s name during a 1989 corruption scandal, known as Keating Five, involving improper influence on behalf of the savings and loan industry. And he led the Major League Baseball investigation that resulted in a lifetime ban for Cincinnati Reds star Pete Rose.

Trump brought Dowd in to lead his legal defense team one month after the president fired FBI Director James Comey and Mueller was subsequently appointed to serve as the special counsel overseeing the widening probe into Russian interference.

Dowd told ABC News that the president cooperated with the investigation, even producing communications with the White House Counsel that Mueller requested.

“There’s no time in history has anybody had this kind of look at communications with the president,” Dowd said.

Where Dowd said he drew a line in terms of executive branch cooperation was having Trump consent to an interview.

“What I was worried about is that he really couldn’t do it,” Dowd said. “He couldn’t do it”

One concern was that it would set a precedent that would open the current president and future presidents to this kind of interview.

“You cannot treat the president like anybody,” he said.

But a deeper concern, he said, was that prosecutors might try to set perjury traps for the president – a pattern he maintained was on display in the indictments that Mueller’s team was filing earlier in the investigation – cases brought against Trump advisors for lying to investigators.

Dowd described those indictments as “What I call nickel-dime process crimes. I ran a strike force. I ran big corruption cases. I didn’t go around, picking scabs and just making any case I could make. If there was a petty case, I shifted it to someone else. I didn’t do it. And that’s where I disagree with Bob.”

Dowd said he did not believe Trump would intentionally lie to the Mueller team, but that he would lose track of key details in the swirl of a massive amount of material he had to digest as president every day.

“In my questioning him or talking to him, you know, first question, easy. Second question, easy. Third question, he wasn’t sure. And he doesn’t like being unsure. So he’ll guess,” Dowd said. “There’s your trap, right there. It’s not whether he lies or not… It’s not a matter of integrity. It’s overload.”

Dowd suggested during the interview that he channeled the frustration the president has displayed for months about the probe, and those running it. He believes it should have ended last year, and he was surprised that Mueller and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein instead allowed it to mushroom.

“If I was supervising Mueller, [I would] tell him to ‘knock it off, get it done,” Dowd said.

“Your job is to find out if there’s collusion or there was obstruction,” he said. “And the answer’s ‘no,’ so let’s get on with it.”

Dowd said that at one point after Comey appeared before Congress, he wrote to Rosenstein to ask for the Justice Department to investigate whether the former FBI director lied in his testimony.

“He blew me off,” Dowd said. “That’s not leadership. That’s not accountability. … We did it in writing. We did it politely. We did it confidentially. And he just blew us off. So, I lost all respect for Rod Rosenstein.”

Dowd left his official post as Trump’s lawyer after a series of negative reports — most memorable one in September 2017, when Dowd and then-White House attorney Ty Cobb were overheard by a nearby New York Times reporter while eating lunch on the patio of a Washington restaurant as they loudly debated presidential privilege and its effect on document production, and talked about tensions on the legal team.

“The New York Times wants to be jerks about it and go listening in on people’s conversations, shame on them,” Dowd said. “There’s nothing I can do about that, you know — except eat someplace else.”

See https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-lawyer-slams-mueller-probe-maintains-president-cleared/story?id=60967234 (“Former Trump lawyer slams Mueller probe, maintains president will be cleared: ‘Knock it off and get it done'”) (emphasis added)

First, no American should believe or give credence to ABC’s reporting of anything. It is biased, FAKE NEWS.

Second, as stated in my article above, Mueller is a traitor who must receive the harshest punishment available under the United States’ laws—for the good of the country in the future, and for the sake of posterity and justice in America. He must not be allowed to go “quietly in the night.” An example must be made of him.

Third, FBI Director Christopher Wray and Rod Rosenstein are traitors too, who must be removed from their posts and dealt with severely. They are products of the deeply corrupt FBI.

Fourth, as I have written previously:

The treasonous wrongdoers include but are not limited to [Barack] Obama; former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former President Bill Clinton; former Attorneys General Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch; Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and former Deputy AG Sally Yates; former FBI Directors Robert Mueller and James Comey; former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper; former CIA Director John Brennan; former National Security Advisor Susan Rice; former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe; Senior Advisor to Obama, Valerie Jarrett; and DOJ/FBI current or former employees such as Peter Strzok, Lisa Page and Andrew Weissmann.

See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2018/05/06/what-atrocities-did-robert-mueller-commit-in-vietnam/ (“What Atrocities Did Robert Mueller Commit In Vietnam?“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/10/20/the-real-russian-conspiracy-barack-obama-the-clintons-and-the-sale-of-americas-uranium-to-russias-killer-putin/ (“The Real Russian Conspiracy: Barack Obama, The Clintons, And The Sale Of America’s Uranium To Russia’s Killer Putin“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2018/05/24/should-barack-obama-be-executed-for-treason/ (“Should Barack Obama Be Executed For Treason?“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2018/06/15/the-department-of-injustices-inspector-general-is-complicit-in-the-deep-state-cover-up/ (“The Department Of Injustice’s Inspector General Is Complicit In The Deep-State Cover-Up!“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2012/03/21/the-united-states-department-of-injustice/#comment-14220 (“Peter Strzok’s Arrogance Is The Product Of A Corrupt FBI“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2012/03/21/the-united-states-department-of-injustice/#comment-14510 (“FINALLY, The Traitor Peter Strzok Is Gone!“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2018/06/15/the-department-of-injustices-inspector-general-is-complicit-in-the-deep-state-cover-up/#comment-14180 (“DOJ’s Rod Rosenstein Is A Traitor“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2018/03/11/robert-mueller-should-be-executed-for-treason/#comment-14117 (“Traitor Mueller’s Pit Bull Weissmann Arranged Meeting With Reporters To Discuss Manafort Investigation“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/05/16/americas-newest-civil-war-2017-and-beyond/#comment-13471 (“CRUCIFY MUELLER AND ROSENSTEIN!“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2018/03/11/robert-mueller-should-be-executed-for-treason/#comment-13002 (“Congress Must Impeach Deputy AG Rosenstein And FBI Director Wray“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2018/03/11/robert-mueller-should-be-executed-for-treason/#comment-12657 (“ANOTHER TRAITOR JOHN BRENNAN SQUEALS“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2018/03/11/robert-mueller-should-be-executed-for-treason/#comment-12675 (“ANOTHER DESPICABLE: THE TRAITOR JAMES CLAPPER“)

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19 02 2019
Timothy D. Naegele

McCabe’s Shocking Claims Prove The Bloodless Coup Rolls On

Criminal McCabe fails

This is the title of an article by Francey Hakes, a former assistant U.S. attorney, which she has written for TheHill:

Disgraced former acting FBI director Andrew McCabe has provided clear evidence that in 2017 a small cabal of high-level officials inside the Department of Justice (DOJ) weighed whether to attempt to remove the duly-elected president of the United States. McCabe claims that he and others at the top of the FBI and DOJ held multiple discussions about invoking the Constitution’s 25th Amendment to declare President Trump unfit for office and install the vice president in his place.

Is this proof that a rolling bloodless coup really existed within the government? McCabe himself previously provided false information to the DOJ, for which he was unceremoniously fired, rendering any statements he now makes while promoting his book highly suspect. But, given the underpinnings of the entire Russia collusion investigation and what we know now about its early steps, McCabe’s statements ring disturbingly true.

The 25th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution provides for a way to remove a president who is unable to perform the duties of the office. (This is different from impeachment, the proscribed method to remove a president for misconduct.) The vice president and a majority of cabinet officers must agree, in writing, that the president is unable to discharge the duties of the office. There is no provision for law enforcement — the FBI, lawyers at DOJ, or someone such as Andy McCabe — to force a president from office. Discussions on how, or whether, to attempt to exercise the 25th Amendment in this way is truly indicative of a coup mentality by career bureaucrats.

It is hard to explain this kind of attitude except in the rankest of political contexts. McCabe’s claims that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein was part of this coup attempt are shocking. The deputy AG makes innumerable decisions every day that impact a massive number of issues; practically every decision the federal government makes requires his approval if it implicates legal or constitutional issues. That any person in that position would consider wearing a wire to obtain evidence against the sitting president, based upon thin allegations contained in the dossier ex-British spy Christopher Steele produced for the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton’s campaign, should frighten every American.

Though McCabe’s veracity is questionable, it does seem unlikely any serious deputy attorney general would joke about such matters.

McCabe claims that he and others believed they were working for a president who might have conspired with Russia to betray this country. There must not be one scintilla of evidence of this; otherwise, special counsel Robert Mueller surely would have taken steps long before now to rid the nation of such a dangerous commander-in-chief. It apparently has not occurred to McCabe that he looks cowardly if he really believed the president was conspiring with a foreign government in a way that compromised his loyalty to this country.

And yet, McCabe blithely went about meeting with the president, continued to do his normal work, and said nothing about it publicly. Is it reasonable to believe a career law officer wouldn’t shout from the rooftops, and even risk his job, to blow the whistle on such a catastrophic potential national security risk? McCabe and his cabal knew that the entire Russia collusion narrative was bought and paid for by the Clinton campaign. We know McCabe knew this from the congressional testimony of former associate deputy attorney general Bruce Ohr, who swore under oath (and he, unlike McCabe, was not fired for lying) that he told McCabe and others at the FBI that the Steele dossier was being pushed by a Trump-hater and should be relied upon with caution.

By May 2017, McCabe implies he was in a state of panic on behalf of the gullible nation led by a Russian asset — but as Ohr said, McCabe and his cronies were aware that the explosive claims in the dossier were unverified. How could there be panic about unverified allegations?

Also by May 2017, the FBI had months and months worth of “FISA take,” or data from the electronic spying on former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page and all those with whom Page communicated over months, or even years, prior to October 2016 when the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant was signed. According to former FBI director James Comey, none of that data resulted in any verification of the claims in the Steele dossier.

Nonetheless, to these government bureaucrats it was acceptable to lie to the FISA Court by vouching for an unverified dossier. It was acceptable to them to illegally leak to the media the existence of the Russia investigation (for example, leaking the existence of a highly-classified FISA warrant on the Russian ambassador to destroy former national security adviser Michael Flynn and cripple the young presidency). And they apparently thought it acceptable to contemplate the use of the 25th Amendment to remove a president wholly capable of performing his constitutional duties.

That’s a rolling coup, indeed.

See https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/430318-mccabes-shocking-claims-prove-the-bloodless-coup-rolls-on (emphasis added); see also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2018/03/11/robert-mueller-should-be-executed-for-treason/#comment-16041 (“Robert Mueller Is A Traitor Who Must Receive The Most Severe Punishment Possible Under American Laws“) and https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/rep-pete-king-trump-mccabe-rosenstein/2019/02/18/id/903210/ (“Rep. Pete King: McCabe, Rosenstein Probe Justified“)

McCabe and his fellow treasonous co-conspirators must be dealt with as harshly as anyone in our great nation’s history.

Nothing less will suffice.

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21 02 2019
Paul Gaeta

Not Prison! DEATH

Mueller if you think millions of us American Patriots are going to allow you to continue your Coup against our duly elected President, you’re crazy!

I’ve got millions of Patriots who will stand shoulder to shoulder with me, my family, friends, current and retired Law enforcement and current and retired military!

We the American People are putting all of you Corrupt Deep State phonies on notice! You can’t threaten us or kill us. We are on the side of justice and God!

Paul Gaeta

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21 02 2019
Timothy D. Naegele

Thank you, Paul, for your comments.

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14 03 2019
Timothy D. Naegele

Andrew Weissmann Must Be Imprisoned, Not Employed

Carrie Johnson has written for the ultra-Leftist, thoroughly-discredited NPR:

One of the most prominent members of special counsel Robert Mueller’s team investigating Russia’s attack on the 2016 presidential election will soon leave the office and the Justice Department, two sources close to the matter tell NPR.

Andrew Weissmann, the architect of the case against former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, will study and teach at New York University and work on a variety of public service projects, including his longstanding interest in preventing wrongful convictions by shoring up forensic science standards used in courts, the sources added.

The departure is the strongest sign yet that Mueller and his team have all but concluded their work.

Manafort has been sentenced to about 7 1/2 years in federal prison following two cases that stemmed from Mueller’s investigation, although neither case involved alleged collusion with the Russians who interfered in the election.

Weissmann has borne the brunt of attacks from critics such as Rush Limbaugh and conservative legal interest groups.

They cited his attendance at Hillary Clinton’s election night party in 2016 and a positive email he wrote to former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates after she refused to defend the Trump administration’s first Muslim travel ban.

A later version of that ban was eventually upheld by a majority of the Supreme Court.

Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon also issued a warning about Weissmann and other senior members of the special counsel team when they were named in 2017.

Trump and his aides would be facing off against a group of “killers,” Bannon reportedly said. Author Michael Wolff wrote that Bannon told him that Weissmann was like “the LeBron James of money laundering investigations.”

Former Enron prosecutor Kathryn Ruemmler said there’s a reason for the attacks on Weissmann.

“Andrew is attacked because he is feared; those under investigation know just how effective he is,” Ruemmler said. “He has not only peerless technical skills, but the fearlessness necessary for pursuing high profile, complex cases and a passionate commitment to seeing justice is done.”

Departures from the special counsel’s office

Weissmann’s move offers a potent signal that the special counsel investigation is all but done, one source said.

His leaving will follow the departure of the senior-most FBI agent working on the Mueller probe, who has taken his own next step. Special Agent in Charge David Archey started a new job on March 4 as head of the FBI’s office in Richmond, Va.

Earlier this month, another special counsel prosecutor, Brandon Van Grack, moved on to lead a Justice Department effort to enforce compliance with the Foreign Agents Registration Act, a law that has become the subject of intense interest following charges against Manafort, his right-hand-man Richard Gates, and former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn.

And WilmerHale, the law firm that Mueller and several other prosecutors left to help create the special counsel team, is preparing for the return of some of its onetime law partners, three lawyers have told NPR in recent weeks.

Veteran prosecutor

Weissmann has a long history of unraveling complex financial ties and securing cooperation from people inside corporations or mob enterprises to build criminal cases against higher-ups.

As a federal prosecutor in Brooklyn, Weissmann won a conviction against the head of the Gambino crime family, using testimony from Sammy “The Bull” Gravano and others.

He went on to lead the Justice Department task force investigating fraud at Enron Corp., a high-flying energy company whose chief executives, Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling, were convicted by a jury in Houston.

Lay died before he could be sentenced. Skilling served 12 years behind bars before his recent release.

At the time, critics said Weissmann deployed hard-nosed tactics and a “win-at-all-costs” mentality. They pointed out that his conviction against the accounting firm that did Enron’s books, Arthur Andersen, was unanimously reversed by the Supreme Court, which cited faulty jury instructions.

The case helped prompt Congress to pass a new obstruction of justice statute, but it remains to be seen whether that law will prove fruitful in the ongoing Mueller probe.

Leslie Caldwell worked alongside Weissmann in Brooklyn and at the Justice Department in Washington. She said he has a reputation for getting results.

“Throughout his career, Andrew has had unparalleled success in building case after case against the most sophisticated criminals in the world,” Caldwell said. “He took on New York’s most feared organized crime families, unraveled the incredibly ornate frauds at Enron, and has tracked international criminals, exposing their carefully concealed financial dealings in many dark corners of the world.”

Weissmann has moved in and out of public service several times throughout his legal career. He did high-profile legal work for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other corporate clients before rejoining the Justice Department as general counsel at the FBI when it was led by Mueller.

During that stint, Weissmann worked closely with the Innocence Project to institute a wide-ranging review of cases in which defendants might have been wrongfully convicted based on bad testimony from FBI forensic experts.

See https://www.npr.org/2019/03/14/703108073/top-mueller-prosecutor-stepping-down-in-latest-clue-russia-inquiry-may-be-ending (“Andrew Weissmann Stepping Down From Special Counsel Robert Mueller Team“) (emphasis added); see also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2018/03/11/robert-mueller-should-be-executed-for-treason/#comment-14117 (“Traitor Mueller’s Pit Bull Weissmann Arranged Meeting With Reporters To Discuss Manafort Investigation“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/05/16/americas-newest-civil-war-2017-and-beyond/#comment-10529 (“Defund The Left’s PBS And NPR“)

This shameful article is tantamount to a press release for Weissmann.

It would not be surprising in the least if he and the traitor Robert Mueller received the “Whitey Bulger Treatment” from their fellow inmates.

See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/10/20/the-real-russian-conspiracy-barack-obama-the-clintons-and-the-sale-of-americas-uranium-to-russias-killer-putin/#comment-16195 (“The Rat: Straight To Prison And The Whitey Bulger Treatment?“)

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1 05 2019
Timothy D. Naegele

Robert Mueller Is A Traitor And A Fool

As stated previously—in the article above and the other comments beneath it, and in other articles and the comments beneath them—Robert Mueller is a traitor and a criminal on many levels.

Indeed, he is one of the greatest traitors in American history, with few peers.

See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2019/04/18/the-mueller-report-a-monumental-travesty/ (“The Mueller Report: A Monumental Travesty“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2019/03/24/the-mueller-witch-hunt-is-over/ (“The Mueller Witch Hunt Is Over“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2018/05/06/what-atrocities-did-robert-mueller-commit-in-vietnam/ (“What Atrocities Did Robert Mueller Commit In Vietnam?“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2018/03/11/robert-mueller-should-be-executed-for-treason/ (“Robert Mueller Should Be Executed For Treason“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/10/20/the-real-russian-conspiracy-barack-obama-the-clintons-and-the-sale-of-americas-uranium-to-russias-killer-putin/ (“The Real Russian Conspiracy: Barack Obama, The Clintons, And The Sale Of America’s Uranium To Russia’s Killer Putin“)

As stated emphatically at the conclusion of the article above:

To make certain that [the crimes including treason never happen] again, an example must be made of Mueller, not dissimilar to that of Benito Mussolini in Italy during World War II. He must be prosecuted for treason and other crimes, convicted, and executed—to send the message of “Never Again” far and wide.

Instead of “going quietly in the night,” Mueller is front and center again. Devlin Barrett and Matt Zapotosky have written for the Washington Post:

Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III wrote a letter in late March complaining to Attorney General William P. Barr that a four-page memo to Congress describing the principal conclusions of the investigation into President Trump “did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance” of Mueller’s work, according to a copy of the letter reviewed Tuesday by The Washington Post.

The letter and a subsequent phone call between the two men reveal the degree to which the longtime colleagues and friends disagreed as they handled the legally and politically fraught task of investigating the president. Democrats in Congress are likely to scrutinize Mueller’s complaints to Barr as they contemplate the prospect of opening impeachment proceedings and mull how hard to press for Mueller himself to testify publicly.

At the time Mueller’s letter was sent to Barr on March 27, Barr had days prior announced that Mueller did not find a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russian officials seeking to interfere in the 2016 presidential election. In his memo to Congress, Barr also said that Mueller had not reached a conclusion about whether Trump had tried to obstruct justice, but that Barr reviewed the evidence and found it insufficient to support such a charge.

Days after Barr’s announcement, Mueller wrote the previously undisclosed private letter to the Justice Department, laying out his concerns in stark terms that shocked senior Justice Department officials, according to people familiar with the discussions.

“The summary letter the Department sent to Congress and released to the public late in the afternoon of March 24 did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance of this office’s work and conclusions,” Mueller wrote. “There is now public confusion about critical aspects of the results of our investigation. This threatens to undermine a central purpose for which the Department appointed the Special Counsel: to assure full public confidence in the outcome of the investigations.”

The letter made a key request: that Barr release the 448-page report’s introductions and executive summaries, and it made initial suggested redactions for doing so, according to Justice Department officials.

A spokesman for Mueller declined to comment.

Justice Department officials said Tuesday that they were taken aback by the tone of Mueller’s letter and that it came as a surprise to them that he had such concerns. Until they received the letter, they believed Mueller was in agreement with them on the process of reviewing the report and redacting certain types of information, a process that took several weeks. Barr has testified to Congress previously that Mueller declined the opportunity to review his four-page memo to lawmakers that distilled the essence of the special counsel’s findings.

In his letter to Barr, Mueller wrote that the redaction process “need not delay release of the enclosed materials. Release at this time would alleviate the misunderstandings that have arisen and would answer congressional and public questions about the nature and outcome of our investigation.”

Barr is scheduled to appear Wednesday morning before the Senate Judiciary Committee — a much-anticipated public confrontation between the nation’s top law enforcement official and Democratic lawmakers, where he is likely to be questioned at length about his interactions with Mueller.

A day after Mueller sent his letter to Barr, the two men spoke by phone for about 15 minutes, according to law enforcement officials.

In that call, Mueller said he was concerned that media coverage of the obstruction investigation was misguided and creating public misunderstandings about the office’s work, according to Justice Department officials. Mueller did not express similar concerns about the public discussion of the investigation of Russia’s election interference, the officials said.

When Barr pressed Mueller on whether he thought Barr’s memo to Congress was inaccurate, Mueller said he did not but felt that the media coverage of it was misinterpreting the investigation, officials said.

In their call, Barr also took issue with Mueller calling his memo a “summary,” saying he had never intended to summarize the voluminous report, but instead provide an account of its top conclusions, officials said.

Justice Department officials said that, in some ways, the phone conversation was more cordial than the letter that preceded it, but that the two men did express some differences of opinion about how to proceed.

Barr said he did not want to put out pieces of the report, but rather issue the document all at once with redactions, and that he didn’t want to change course, according to officials. Barr also gave Mueller his personal phone number and told him to call if he had future concerns, officials said.

Throughout the conversation, Mueller’s main worry was that the public was not getting an accurate understanding of the obstruction investigation, officials said.

“After the Attorney General received Special Counsel Mueller’s letter, he called him to discuss it,” a Justice Department spokeswoman said Tuesday evening. “In a cordial and professional conversation, the Special Counsel emphasized that nothing in the Attorney General’s March 24 letter was inaccurate or misleading. But, he expressed frustration over the lack of context and the resulting media coverage regarding the Special Counsel’s obstruction analysis. They then discussed whether additional context from the report would be helpful and could be quickly released.

“However, the Attorney General ultimately determined that it would not be productive to release the report in piecemeal fashion,” the spokeswoman said. “The Attorney General and the Special Counsel agreed to get the full report out with necessary redactions as expeditiously as possible. The next day, the Attorney General sent a letter to Congress reiterating that his March 24 letter was not intended to be a summary of the report, but instead only stated the Special Counsel’s principal conclusions, and volunteered to testify before both Senate and House Judiciary Committees on May 1 and 2.”

Some senior Justice Department officials were frustrated by Mueller’s complaints because they had expected that the report would reach them with proposed redactions, but it did not. Even when Mueller sent along his suggested redactions, those covered only a few areas of protected information, and the documents required further review, these people said.

The Washington Post and the New York Times had previously reported some members of Mueller’s team were frustrated with Barr’s characterization of their work, though Mueller’s own attitude was unknown before now.

In some team members’ view, the evidence they had gathered — especially on obstruction — was far more alarming and significant than how Barr had described it. That was perhaps to be expected, given that Barr had distilled a 448-page report into a terse, four-page memo to Congress.

Wednesday’s hearing will be the first time lawmakers question Barr since the Mueller report was released on April 18, and he is expected to face a raft of tough questions from Democrats.

Republicans on the committee are expected to question Barr about an assertion he made earlier this month that government officials had engaged in “spying” on the Trump campaign — a comment that was seized on by the president’s supporters as evidence the investigation into the president was biased.

Barr is also scheduled to testify Thursday before the House Judiciary Committee, but that hearing could be canceled or postponed amid a dispute about whether committee staff lawyers will question the attorney general. Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), the panel’s chairman, called for a copy of the Mueller letter to be delivered to his committee by Wednesday morning.

Democrats have accused Barr of downplaying the seriousness of the evidence against the president.

Mueller’s report described 10 significant episodes of possible obstruction of justice but said that because of long-standing Justice Department policy that says a sitting president cannot be indicted and because of Justice Department practice regarding fairness toward those under investigation, his team did not reach a conclusion about whether the president had committed a crime.

See https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/mueller-complained-that-barrs-letter-did-not-capture-context-of-trump-probe/ar-AAAKJB8 (“Mueller complained that Barr’s letter did not capture ‘context’ of Trump probe“) (emphasis added); see also https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/30/politics/mueller-barr-complained-russia-probe/index.html (“Mueller expressed misgivings to Barr about 4-page letter“)

Attorney General Barr released essentially all of the Mueller Report, which he did not have to do. When it happened, it was available here.

See https://naegeleblog.files.wordpress.com/2019/04/mueller-report-19-4-18.pdf

If an objective account of American history is written years or decades from now, it would be deficient and “missing in action” if it failed to describe the despicable Mueller as one of the greatest traitors—and fools—who has ever been born on American soil.

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3 05 2019
Diana Burgos

Mueller is a traitor and a liar who is mad that Pres.Trump didn’t make him attorney general. What a way to get even.

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3 05 2019
Timothy D. Naegele

Thank you, Diana, for your comments.

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29 05 2019
Timothy D. Naegele

Robert Mueller Should Be Executed For Treason [UPDATED]

This is the title of the article above, which concludes:

The DOJ and FBI corrupted an American election, and the wrongdoers must be brought to justice. To make certain that it never happens again, an example must be made of Mueller, not dissimilar to that of Benito Mussolini in Italy during World War II. He must be prosecuted for treason and other crimes, convicted, and executed—to send the message of “Never Again” far and wide.

This was true when the article was written—for all of the reasons stated in it, and in the comments above—and it is even truer today.

The traitor Mueller was unable to “nail” our President and destroy his presidency, so he is passing the torch to his co-conspirators in the Democratic Party, and urging them to do it. And yes, lots of us began as Democrats, but will never vote for one again.

Sandy Fitzgerald has written for Newsmax.com:

Rudy Giuliani on Wednesday panned outgoing special counsel Robert Mueller’s comments about his investigation’s findings, questioning if it was ethical for him to comment about the investigation into President Donald Trump when criminal charges were not going to be filed against a sitting president.

“A sitting president can’t be charged, so then if that’s the case, why did he offer all those opinions?” Giuliani, the president’s personal attorney, told Fox News after Mueller’s statement Wednesday morning. “Why did he offer all those recommendations and suggestions? Why did he investigate?

“The reality is that he gave us his opinion on collusion and obstruction. His opinion is you can’t bring a case.”

Further, he said, “the real question whether it’s ethical at all to be discussing it or writing about it. If you concluded you can’t bring a case[,] the rules of ethics say you have to keep your mouth shut as a prosecutor.

He also slammed House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler, who said after Mueller’s statement that it now falls to Congress to “respond to the crimes and wrongdoing of President Trump and we will do so.”

“He just proved he shouldn’t be the chairman of that committee by saying that,” said Giuliani. “Jerry Nadler has figured out already without an investigation that he will respond to the crimes of the president? Even Mueller didn’t say that. Mueller said he couldn’t reach a conclusion. Jerry has already reached a conclusion.”

Overall, Giuliani said Mueller’s comments only repeated his report and there was nothing new to learn from it.

“There is no case on obstruction, there is no case on collusion,” said Giuliani. “When he goes on to discuss the DOJ policy, we all know that’s the DOJ policy. When I first met him he was unsure whether he could indict or not. But obviously, he can’t. We all know that.”

Giuliani also said he doesn’t know now how real the threat of impeachment is.

“That’s being handled by the White House counsel,” he said. “From my point of view, unless Nadler is removed and they put a chairman on there who at least hasn’t made all sorts of prejudicial comments that a crime has been committed where nobody else has, I would think their investigation is illegitimate. It is a misuse of congressional power.”

See https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/rudy-giuliani-robert-mueller-jerrold-nadler-impeachment/2019/05/29/id/918046/ (“Giuliani Slams Mueller: Why Investigate If You Can’t Bring Charges“) (emphasis added; video omitted)

Fitzgerald added:

Outgoing special counsel Robert Mueller wrote a “convoluted, complex” report that didn’t conclude anything about President Donald Trump, but there wasn’t any reason he couldn’t have said the president was guilty of wrongdoing if the evidence presented itself, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said Wednesday.

“You know, Ken Starr issued an independent counsel report on Bill Clinton,” Gingrich told Fox News’ “America’s Newsroom” after Mueller offered his statement concerning his extensive report on the president. “He used the word guilty 11 times. Six of them were obstruction of justice. It wasn’t complicated. He just said you asked me to report, here is my report. He is guilty.”

If Mueller had used the word guilty once, “we would be in a different world,” Gingrich added. “He didn’t come out and say President Trump is guilty of anything, where Starr said Clinton was guilty of 11 counts. That is a major difference where we are today.”

Meanwhile, Gingrich noted that millions of dollars were spent and 500 people were interviewed by “left-wing lawyers that didn’t like Trump” but they did not find sufficient evidence against Trump.

“At some point in the hunt you have to decide there are no deer in the forest, and the fact is, they couldn’t prove anything,” said Gingrich. “They ought to relax and just say you know, in the absence of proof in America, you are innocent. Therefore, by definition, President Trump is innocent.”

See https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/newt-gingrich-mueller-report/2019/05/29/id/918058/ (“Newt Gingrich: Mueller Didn’t Say Trump Committed a Crime“) (emphasis added); ; see also https://nypost.com/2019/05/29/muellers-final-statement-was-a-disgraceful-mess/ (“Robert Mueller’s ‘final statement’ was a disgraceful mess”—”Special prosecutor Robert Mueller’s statement upon the shuttering of his two-year investigation into the Trump campaign was weird even by the standards of the weirdness of the past couple of years. . . . His statement was only 8 minutes long. The report is 400 pages long. It matters what he chose to repeat from it and what he did not. He wanted the American people to hear him speak those words. He wanted to emphasize this point. The ‘I couldn’t exonerate him’ point is discomfiting for another reason, which is: Since when do prosecutors exonerate people? That isn’t a prosecutor’s job. . . . The obvious rejoinder here is that the president of the United States isn’t just any person and that it is bad for our government and our country for a dark cloud to hang over the president’s head. . . . Mueller wanted the American people to hear him say he couldn’t dissipate the cloud. And by announcing that, he just spread it out over the president’s head again. This is why his peculiar locutions and soothsayer ambiguity represent a terrible failure of his mission as a public servant in this case”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2018/05/06/what-atrocities-did-robert-mueller-commit-in-vietnam/ (“What Atrocities Did Robert Mueller Commit In Vietnam?“)

Stephen Dinan wrote in The Washington Times:

Calls for Democrats to ramp up impeachment proceedings grew louder Wednesday after special counsel Robert Mueller said he couldn’t clear President Trump of crimes.

Rep. David Cicilline, chair of the House Democratic Policy and Communications Committee, said the House Judiciary Committee must formally open an “impeachment inquiry” into the president.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, didn’t go that far, but said he saw in Mr. Mueller’s statement an invitation to Congress to act.

“He did not exonerate the president of the United States of obstruction of justice, obstruction of justice is a serious crime that strikes at the core of our justice system, and the Constitution points to Congress to take action to hold the president accountable,” said Mr. Nadler, New York Democrat.

Mr. Nadler would be the person leading any impeachment, and he said what Mr. Mueller laid out confirms the president did commit “crimes,” which Congress has a duty to punish.

See https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/may/29/muellers-statement-fuels-impeachment-push/ (“Mueller’s statement fuels impeachment push on Capitol Hill“) (emphasis added)

Robert Mueller is an American traitor of the highest order, and he must be dealt with accordingly. Nadler is a one-man, un-American freak show.

Jerrold Nadler
[Jerrold Nadler]

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30 05 2019
Fuckthedeepstate

He is no doubt a fucking traitor along with the rest of the high-up CIA and FBI officials. I no longer support them, and will never again as American citizen allow anyone in my family to support them either. Fuck the FBI and the CIA.

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30 05 2019
Timothy D. Naegele

You have stated how many Americans feel, perhaps a majority.

Thank you.

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31 05 2019
Timothy D. Naegele

Robert Mueller Is A Traitor [UPDATED]

Pat Buchanan—an adviser to Presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford, and a former GOP presidential aspirant himself—has written:

What is it about special counsel Robert Mueller that he cannot say clearly and concisely what he means?

His nine-minute summary of the findings of his office, after two years of investigation, was a mess. It guarantees that the internecine warfare that has poisoned our politics continues into 2020.

If it was the intention of the Russian hackers and trolls of 2016 to sow discord within their great power rival, they have succeeded beyond their dreams.

Consider. Of the charge of conspiracy to collude with the Russians to hack the emails of the DNC and Hillary Clinton’s campaign, Mueller said, “there was insufficient evidence to charge a larger conspiracy.”

This suggests that there was at least some evidence to conclude that Donald Trump’s campaign did conspire with Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin to fix the 2016 election, just not enough evidence to sustain a charge of treason.

Didn’t they use to call this McCarthyism?

On obstruction of justice, Trump attempting to impede his investigation, Mueller said: “If we had had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so.”

“Mueller Declines to Absolve Trump” was The New York Times headline.

That tells us that Mueller would not give Trump absolution. But why would Trump need absolution, if he did not commit the crime?

Mueller implied that his refusal to charge Trump publicly was based on a Justice Department ruling that presidents cannot be indicted.

But if the special counsel cannot indict a sitting president, and ought not charge him, as, said Mueller, it is “unfair to accuse somebody of a crime when there can be no court resolution of the actual charge,” then what was the point of naming a special counsel?

If Mueller actually believes Trump was guilty of obstruction, why did he not forthrightly declare: “While the Justice Department’s interpretation of the Constitution precludes my office us from indicting President Trump, we believe his actions during the course of our investigation constituted an obstruction of justice.”

At least we would have clarity. Now we have Mueller walking out, without taking questions, and leaving us with this toxic mush.

Republicans should not let Mueller skate on this. For the James Comey-Mueller investigation is itself in need of investigation.

Among the questions that need answering:

If, after two years, Mueller found “insufficient evidence” of collusion by Trump, what was the compelling evidence that justified launching the investigation of collusion during the Obama era?

Did that earlier “evidence” turn out to be false allegations and lies?

When did Mueller discover that George Papadopoulos and Carter Page were not agents of the GRU or KGB?

When did Mueller decide there was no collusion or conspiracy?

Was it not until this spring? Or has Mueller known for a good while there was no conspiracy?

Why are these questions important? Because the investigation itself, leaving as it did a cloud over the legitimacy of the president, was damaging not only to Trump but also to the nation. As long as half the country believed Trump was an agent or asset or blackmail victim of Putin, the nation could not come together.

Did Mueller feel no obligation to clear up that false impression as swiftly and fully as possible, if, indeed, he believes it is false?

When did Mueller discover the Steele dossier was the product of a dirt-diving operation, financed by the Clinton campaign and fabricated by a Trump-hating ex-chief of British intelligence with long ties both to former agents of Russia’s FSB and James Comey’s FBI?

Did Mueller ever suspect that the investigation he inherited was a takedown operation, instigated by enemies of Trump who were determined that he never become president or, if he did, that his tenure would be short?

The progressive left and its media auxiliaries, rabid on the subject, are egging on and cheering for candidates who call for impeachment. As of now, at least eight Democratic presidential candidates favor hearings.

The Democratic left is out to break Nancy Pelosi’s resistance.

If they succeed and this city and the nation turn their attention to a titanic battle to see if the Democratic Party can remove the Republican president, it will be bad news for the republic.

The real business of the nation will be put off until 2021.

Meanwhile, the Venezuela crisis is smoldering, and Sen. Lindsey Graham is urging an ultimatum to Cuba to get its forces out.

North Korea is testing missiles again, with few believing Kim Jong Un will give up the security provided by his nuclear weapons.

And John Bolton is in the Middle East accusing Iran of acts of sabotage and war in Yemen and the Gulf, and of threats to American forces in Iraq.

Mueller’s assignment was to give us answers. After two years, he gave us options.

The nation will pay a price for Mueller‘s muddling indecisiveness.

See http://buchanan.org/blog/what-a-hash-mueller-made-of-it-137096 (“What a Hash Mueller Made of It“) (emphasis added)

Perhaps most chilling is what price will the United States and the American people pay for Robert Mueller’s treachery?

See, e.g., https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/may/30/kim-hyok-chol-north-korea-special-envoy-us-execute/ (“North Korea reportedly executes special envoy to U.S. over failed Trump-Kim summit“) and https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7088941/N-Koreas-Kim-Jong-Un-carrying-purge-Hanoi-summit-collapse-Chosun-Ilbo.html (“Kim Jong-un EXECUTES his man in America: Special envoy to US is killed by firing squad for ‘betraying the supreme leader’ over failed Trump summit along with four other officials (and the interpreter is sent to a labour camp)“)

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3 06 2019
Timothy D. Naegele

The Enemies Within

Wray and Haspel
[Christopher Wray and Gina Haspel]

Jed Babbin has written in The American Spectator:

“Crossfire Hurricane” — the melodramatic code name for the FBI/CIA spy operation on candidate Trump and his early presidency — was run for the FBI by then-FBI Director James Comey, his deputy Andrew McCabe, Special Agent Peter Strzok, and a few others.

Then-CIA director John Brennan ran it for the CIA. Brennan had to have help, but who was it? A lot of evidence points to the CIA’s then-chief of station in London in 2016-2017, and now the Director of Central Intelligence, Gina Haspel.

President Trump claimed that the FBI and CIA’s spying on his campaign and early presidency was treason. Attorney General William Barr said that, legally, it wasn’t.

Barr is correct. But note well that he didn’t say that crimes other than treason weren’t committed. On Friday, Barr said that since he became attorney general he had been asking why the counter-intelligence investigation was begun and hasn’t yet gotten a satisfactory answer.

The criminal investigation being conducted for Barr by U.S. Attorney John Durham is aimed at the intelligence community. As I wrote last week Trump’s recent executive order, which requires the intelligence agencies to cooperate with Barr and gives Barr the power to declassify anything he chooses, was probably necessitated by the stonewalling by the CIA and the NSA that Durham had already encountered.

There is every reason for the CIA to stonewall. Its current director, Gina Haspel, must have played a major role in conducting the CIA/FBI spy op on Trump.

One result of last week’s column was that one of my intelligence sources — a longtime veteran of the U.S. intelligence community — reappeared after about a year of silence. This person reminded me that he/she tried — unsuccessfully — to warn the White House against Haspel’s nomination to be DCI because of her longstanding close ties to Obama’s CIA chief, John Brennan.

Many people who objected to Haspel’s confirmation, including Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), based their objections on the fact that Haspel had run a CIA site in Thailand in which terrorist suspects were reportedly waterboarded. The waterboarding charge was sufficient to get the Senate — and apparently the White House — to overlook the real problem with her: the fact that, as Paul once implied in a tweet, Haspel is Brennan’s acolyte and protégé.

Brennan was — and still is — a hyper-partisan anti-Trumper. He was a relentless promoter of the Steele dossier allegations against Trump. Either he or James Comey (the two are disputing which) insisted on including information from the Steele dossier in the Intelligence Community Assessment of January 2017, which said that the intelligence community had agreed that the Russians interfered in the 2016 election to benefit Trump. We know that Brennan has lied to Congress on a host of topics, including events surrounding the spy op on Trump’s campaign and presidency.

Haspel’s longstanding loyalty to Brennan ranks her among the two or three worst personnel choices made by President Trump.

Her loyalty to Brennan is more than a little relevant to Durham’s investigation because, as noted above, Haspel was the CIA’s Chief of Station (COS) in London from 2014-2017. It was during the latter two years of her tenure there when all of the FBI/CIA spying operation on Trump and his campaign occurred.

I’m told that the most-coveted job in all of the CIA (second only to the directorship) is the COS-London job. Before her tenure there in 2014-2017, Haspel had already had that job from 2008 to 2011. It’s very unusual for anyone to have it twice. Brennan probably gave Haspel her second stint there as a reward for her loyalty.

COS-London sits in on weekly meetings of the UK’s Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) for the purpose of exchanging top-secret intelligence information. The JIC is made up of the heads of all the UK intelligence agencies ranging from MI6 to GCHQ, the UK’s equivalent of our National Security Agency.

During her 2008-2011 stint, Haspel would have made many close friends among the UK intelligence community. Those ties would have been renewed during her 2014-2017 time in the COS-London job.

During Haspel’s later time as COS-London, much of the action on CIA/FBI spy op on Trump took place in London.

The New York Times reported on May 16, 2018 that within hours of opening the “Crossfire Hurricane” investigation into Trump’s supposed collusion with Russia, two FBI agents were dispatched to London to interview Australian Ambassador Alexander Downer about his meeting with Trump advisor George Papadopoulos. One of those agents was Peter Strzok, the anti-Trump FBI agent who led the “Crossfire Hurricane” team.

As the CIA’s chief of station (COS), Haspel would not only have known about Strzok’s mission to London, but would had to have been briefed on it and approved it.

And that’s not the half of it. Haspel, as Brennan’s COS in London, must have run the UK end of the spy op on Trump for Brennan.

In addition to the Downer meeting, much of the Crossfire Hurricane action took place in London. Among the UK meetings that were part of the spy op in London were meetings between Stefan Halper, the Cambridge professor, and Carter Page, another minor Trump advisor. (Page also met with one of Halper’s employees who was operating undercover for the FBI.) Joseph Mifsud, a Maltese academic, also met with Carter Page in London and cooperated with the FBI’s investigation.

All of these meetings were parts of the “Crossfire Hurricane” investigation. They had to have been overseen by the CIA’s London Chief of Station: Gina Haspel.

We don’t know — yet — what went on between Brennan, Haspel, or any of their agents and Christopher Steele, author of the dossier that was later seized upon as the basis for their “investigation.” Durham will have to investigate all of the London events and every aspect of Haspel’s and Brennan’s involvement.

Remember Hillary’s “Clintonmail.com” email system on which she communicated with Obama himself? Did Haspel, Brennan, and Comey — like many Obama officials — have non-government email accounts through which they communicated among themselves and with the Obama White House?

Durham will face the most determined stonewalling by the CIA on all of this. Both Haspel and Brennan have a lot to lose, so she will be fighting tooth and nail against any of Durham’s requests for documents and testimony. Durham, and Barr, will have to force the issue.

There are too many other inquiries Durham will have to make to recount here. But it’s worthwhile to mention two others.

The “original EC” is the much-discussed and never revealed electronic communication that Brennan sent to Comey that supposedly kicked off the “Crossfire Hurricane” investigation. We don’t know the date, but the investigation — we are told by the FBI — began on or about July 31, 2016. The original EC must have been dated days or weeks before that date.

House investigators Reps. Devin Nunes and Trey Gowdy were allowed to view a heavily redacted version of the original EC only after threatening to begin impeachment proceedings against FBI Director Christopher Wray and then-deputy AG Rod Rosenstein. It is still classified and unavailable to Congress and the public. Durham will be able to get it in unredacted form and Barr, if he so chooses, can release it publicly. He should.

We don’t know what, if any, of Christopher Steele’s input is contained in the original EC. It’s important to find out because Steele’s dossier begins with a memorandum dated 20 September 2016, two months after the likely date of the original EC.

That’s important because — despite the date of his first memo in the dossier — we don’t know when Steele began to spread his rumors about Trump to the FBI or CIA. It is entirely possible — even likely — that Steele (a trusted FBI source at the time) successfully peddled his unverified, anonymously sourced products to the FBI and CIA long before September 2016.

Barr and Durham have an enormous — and enormously important — task before them. They should not hesitate to go to the president whenever they are stonewalled by the CIA or FBI. His executive order is just the beginning of his necessary involvement in their investigation.

The faster Barr and Durham can complete their investigation, the sooner the public will learn about the abuses of power that occurred in the FBI/CIA spy op on Trump, his campaign, and his early presidency.

See https://spectator.org/who-ran-crossfire-hurricane/ (“Who Ran Crossfire Hurricane?“) (emphasis added)

Clearly, Wray and Haspel—”[among] the two or three worst personnel choices made by President Trump”—must be removed, investigated, prosecuted and imprisoned. Nothing less will suffice if the FBI and CIA are to have any credibility at all in the future.

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26 06 2019
Timothy D. Naegele

Robert Mueller Must Be Executed For Treason, Not Paraded Before Congress

Ross Ibbetson has reported for the UK’s Daily Mail:

Alan Dershowitz said the Democrats have exposed Robert Mueller to a grilling over claims the FBI spied on the Trump campaign in demanding his testimony next month.

The veteran lawyer told Fox News that Republicans would now be able to tear into the special counsel over the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) application – a request by the FBI to monitor a member of the Trump campaign team in 2016.

Dershowitz told The Ingraham Angle: ‘Those are the kind of questions that I think Republicans will be very well prepared to ask.

‘Those are the kind of questions which are currently under investigation by the inspector general whose report we are waiting for.

‘But those are not in any way precluded. So I think that they will regret having called him.’

President Donald Trump referred to the FISA warrants approved by the Obama Justice Department as ‘bigger than WATERGATE’ last month.

Trump fired FBI director James Comey two years ago, who had led the Russian interference probe which was later taken up by Mueller.

Attorney General William Barr told Congress in April that ‘spying on a political campaign is a big deal,’ and added: ‘I think spying did occur.’

The president referred to those comments last month, saying: ‘The word “spying” has been used. He [Comey] probably was one of the people leading the effort on spying.’

Dershowitz suggests the Republicans will now have a chance to take aim at those Trump campaign ‘spying’ claims.

Special counsel Robert Mueller has agreed to testify publicly before Congress on July 17 after Democrats issued subpoenas to compel him to appear, the chairmen of two House committees announced Tuesday.

Republicans have slammed them for their continuing investigations of President Donald Trump since the lengthy Russian interference report was filed.

Doug Collins, the most senior Republican on the Judiciary Committee, said in a statement: ‘I hope the special counsel’s testimony marks an end to the political gamesmanship that Judiciary Democrats have pursued at great cost to taxpayers.’

But Collins also welcomed Mueller’s appearance, saying: ‘May this testimony bring to House Democrats the closure that the rest of America has enjoyed for months, and may it enable them to return to the business of legislating.’

Meanwhile House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) questioned the hearing: ‘He said he didn’t want to talk to us anymore, didn’t he?’

Mueller’s unusual back-to-back testimony in front of the House Judiciary and Intelligence committees is likely to be the most highly anticipated congressional hearing in years, particularly given Mueller’s resolute silence throughout his two-year investigation into Russian contacts with President Donald Trump’s campaign.

Mueller never engaged in public attacks from Trump, nor did he ever personally join his prosecutors in court or make announcements of criminal charges from the team.

His sole public statement came from the Justice Department podium last month as he announced his departure, when he sought to explain his decision to not indict Trump or to accuse him of criminal conduct.

He also told lawmakers that he never intends to say more than what he put in the 448-page report.

‘We chose those words carefully and the work speaks for itself,’ Mueller said May 29. ‘I would not provide information beyond what is already public in any appearance before Congress.’

Those remarks did little to settle the demands for his testimony.

The two committees continued negotiations that had already been going on for weeks, saying they still wanted to hear from Mueller no matter how reluctant he was.

‘When you accept the role of special counsel in one of the most significant investigations in modern history you’re going to have to expect that you’re going to be asked to come and testify before Congress,’ House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) told reporters shortly after the announcement.

Trump himself simply tweeted, ‘Presidential Harassment!’

In the report issued in April, Mueller concluded there was not enough evidence to establish a conspiracy between Trump’s presidential campaign and Russia, which was the original question that started the investigation.

But he also said he could not exonerate Trump on obstruction of justice. The report examined several episodes in which Trump attempted to influence the investigation.

Democrats say it is now the job of Congress to assess the report’s findings.

Lawmakers are likely to confront Mueller on why he did not come to a firm conclusion on obstruction of justice.

They are also likely to seek his reaction to a drumbeat of incessant criticism from the president and ask for his personal opinion about whether Trump would have been charged were he not the commander-in-chief.

Schiff and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler said they issued the subpoenas Tuesday, and Mueller agreed to testify pursuant to those subpoenas.

In a letter to Mueller accompanying the subpoenas, the committee chairmen said ‘the American public deserves to hear directly from you about your investigation and conclusions.’

Schiff said there will be two hearings ‘back to back,’ one for each committee, and they will also meet with Mueller’s staff in closed session afterward.

The Justice Department declined to comment.

See https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7182763/Alan-Dershowitz-says-Mueller-faces-grilling-claims-FBI-spied-Trump-campaign.html (“Alan Dershowitz says Mueller faces grilling over claims FBI spied on Trump campaign and that the Democrats have ‘shot themselves in the foot’ in demanding his testimony“) (emphasis added); see also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2019/04/18/the-mueller-report-a-monumental-travesty/ (“The Mueller Report: A Monumental Travesty“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2018/03/11/robert-mueller-should-be-executed-for-treason/ (“Robert Mueller Should Be Executed For Treason”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2018/05/06/what-atrocities-did-robert-mueller-commit-in-vietnam/ (“What Atrocities Did Robert Mueller Commit In Vietnam?”)

As I stated previously:

The DOJ and FBI corrupted an American election, and the wrongdoers must be brought to justice. To make certain that it never happens again, an example must be made of Mueller, not dissimilar to that of Benito Mussolini in Italy during World War II. He must be prosecuted for treason and other crimes, convicted, and executed—to send the message of “Never Again” far and wide.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2018/03/11/robert-mueller-should-be-executed-for-treason/ (“Robert Mueller Should Be Executed For Treason”) (emphasis in original)

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19 07 2019
Timothy D. Naegele

Robert Mueller Is A Traitor And Contemptible

Conrad Black—the Canadian-born, British former newspaper publisher, author and life peer—has written in The New York Sun:

Nowhere is the collapse of the Democratic Party as a coherent political organization more evident than in the astounding metamorphosis of Robert Mueller. He returned to public notice as special counsel and was instantly heralded by the Democratic press as a virtual Douglas MacArthur of selfless national duty, precisely the sort of rigorous, incorruptible, no-nonsense public servant who would tear the Trump fraud of corruption and artificiality, dirty tricks, shady accounting, and outrageous misbehavior apart and expose the whole rotten mess that had, by nightmarish mischance, moved into the White House (where the Clinton pay-to-play casino should already have been installed).

Mr. Mueller looked the part: tall, slender, slab-faced, jut-jawed, and unsmiling, all business, and no soft bonhomous weakness for anything but a thorough plumbing of the depths of President Trump’s unutterable hucksterism, skullduggery, and larceny. The commentariat, though well gone in the saddle after their long incumbency as the country’s political sages, dressed for the part again and took to the airwaves with the smug confidence of veterans and the zest of those addicted to tearing down administrations they found distasteful.

Disentombed from the obscurity that had long enshrouded him, Carl Bernstein resurfaced, speaking matter-of-factly of imminent impeachment and removal of the usurping miscreant. From Nate Silver to Charles Blow and even the once-professional David Gergen, like a phalanx of bobbleheads, they agreed that impeachment was coming and . . . coming and . . . just around the corner.

Mr. Bernstein became so exasperated waiting, he sanctimoniously called Mr. Trump a “grifter,” but tempered his judgment with an endlessly repeated theory that Mr. Trump’s brain had turned to mush and he was not physically and mentally fit to govern. “We have a constitutional crisis.” Not that anyone else noticed. On and on it has gone, without a thought to professionalism, balance, or anything but another partisan smear job on a non-conformist Republican.

The Bushes after all, were good old boys; you had to have a tame Republican on the top of the Democratic wedding cake from time to time, and at the start, practically all the Republicans in Congress were as appalled at the Trump imposture and intrusion as the Democrats. After all, he ran against them, too.

Mr. Mueller packed his investigative team with notorious Democratic partisans. Andrew Weissman, who had cooked his share of Republicans already, and attended Hillary Clinton’s victory party the night she lost to Mr. Trump, took over the actual work. He and many of those he recruited had just finished white-washing Mrs. Clinton — on to the tarring-and-feathering of her opponent.

Mr. Mueller, never a martyr to the work ethic, despite the Democratic press’ wall-to-wall effort to spin him as a war hero Republican, flawless FBI director, and a rail-splitting confessant to the chopping of the cherry tree, left the direction of the investigation to Mr. Weissman and his gang, all of them desperate to destroy the president.

Perish the thought of any of this pusillanimous bourgeois rubbish about impartiality. Mr. Trump was an interloper, and he had to be sent packing with such finality that no one would dare interrupt the self-enriching slumbers of the political class for at least another century.

Mr. Trump managed the considerable feat of tough-talking as he resisted the depredations of a partisan witch-hunt while completely cooperating and leaving the investigators no ground to allege obstruction. This was the tactically correct response to what instantly was a difficult position. Trump had erroneously promoted an apparently qualified U.S. senator and former prosecutor, Jeff Sessions, as attorney general.

Mr. Sessions immediately recused himself on all Russian matters and sat like a great eunuch-toad leaving the president whom he served practically defenseless while this rampaging lynch mob ransacked his personal, corporate, campaign, and presidential records. The Strzok-Page text messages indicate that the Mueller team ascertained quite quickly that there was no collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, and in fact, no nominee of any serious party to the presidency of the United States in its history would ever have partaken of such an evil and preposterous enterprise.

From early on, Mr. Mueller’s game was obstruction. He piled demands on the president, required sworn testimony over several days from the White House counsel (who should have immunity in respect of his chief client). The president’s tactic of talking tough while furnishing everything asked by the special counsel got him through the midterm elections.

Few commentators noticed that the big winner in those elections was not the Democrats but the president. When he started out in January 2017, there were demonstrations all around the world and though the Republicans were in nominal control of both houses of Congress, in fact they were both controlled by coalitions of Democrats and NeverTrump Republicans.

They sand-bagged the president on health care reform, the Republicans strutting in their hypocrisy, having voted many times to repeal Obamacare while Mr. Obama was there to veto their votes.The only place Mr. Trump could get a consensus was in appointing conservative judges who would generally adhere to the Constitution and the relevant legislation, (a terrible inconvenience for the Democratic addicts to the authoritarian state). Then he cobbled together the necessary votes for his tax cut and reform package, which has proved an immense success.

The Republicans lost the House in the midterm elections, but Mr. Trump never had the majority anyway. His speaker, Paul Ryan, was a conflicted NeverTrumper and retired. But in the Senate, he added two senators as three NeverTrump Republicans — Bob Corker of Tennessee, Jeff Flake of Arizona, and John McCain — departed; in the case of McCain, by dying and causing his funeral to be a tasteless bipartisan Trump-bashing session. This shifted the balance in the Senate.

President Trump then fired Mr. Sessions, appointed an unsurpassably competent and upright replacement, William Barr, who had held the position under George H. W. Bush. Mr. Barr ordered Mr. Mueller to wind down his investigation, which Mr. Mueller and his sponsors had apparently hoped to keep going through the next election.

Mr. Trump’s enemies had thought it was their right to have an impeachment-launching special counsel lurking around the White House ready to pounce on anything the Trump-hating press could confect into a cause for removal.

Mr. Mueller, the lion of official redemption, failed again and again. He had to choose between keeping faith with his rabidly Trump-hating sponsors, or his claims to professional integrity. Having found no evidence of collusion by anyone, he tried to leave the door open to impeachment for obstruction. He went down with the ship, and stated his inability to “exonerate” on obstruction.

A special counsel finds adequate evidence of criminal wrongdoing, or not. No one wants or asks him to exonerate anyone. In his summary of the report, Mr. Barr said there was no conclusion on obstruction but that he and the deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein, Mr. Mueller’s old side-kick who had protected Mr. Mueller all through the phantom Sessions term, and the in-house counsel of the Justice Department, all agreed that the elements of obstruction: a corrupt act for a corrupt purpose in contemplation of a legal action, were all absent in this case.

The pitiful attempt by Mr. Mueller to leave Mr. Trump a live grenade with the pin pulled was made even more absurd by his attempt to run away and hide. He spoke to the press inarticulately from a printed text for less than 10 minutes, took no questions, and said he would have nothing more to say.

Finally, the two egregious Democratic committee chairman who still claim to have evidence of impeachable offenses by the president but can’t cite any, Representatives Jerry Nadler and Adam Schiff, both seriously ill-favored men, called Mr. Mueller as a witness, and designed a timetable for his appearance clearly intended to prevent the Republican members from really getting at Mr. Mueller.

If his stumbling press statement was indicative of his forensic talents, Mr. Mueller will have a real sleigh-ride with a gang of Democrats angry because he couldn’t find anything on the president and Republicans who rightly consider his entire performance an unprofessional and morally corrupt operation.

Attorney General Barr has offered him support if he wishes not to appear. The Trump lynch mob has reached the last round-up. It only remains for Mr. Barr and his special prosecutor, John Durham, to indict those who politicized the intelligence agencies and the FBI, fraudulently sought FISA warrants to spy on the Trump campaign, and lied to congressional committees and the FBI.

Those who would use the wheels of justice to persecute the innocent, will be ground to powder by them. Mr. Mueller is unlikely to have committed any offenses, but his conduct has been contemptible at every stage.

See https://www.nysun.com/national/mueller-set-for-sleigh-ride-in-the-house/90771/ (“Mueller Is Set For Quite a Sleigh-Ride In the House“); see also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2019/04/18/the-mueller-report-a-monumental-travesty/ (“The Mueller Report: A Monumental Travesty“)

With all due respect to Conrad Black’s fine analysis and marshaling of the facts, I disagree with one conclusion: “Mr. Mueller is unlikely to have committed any offenses.” As stated in my article above:

The DOJ and FBI corrupted an American election, and the wrongdoers must be brought to justice. To make certain that it never happens again, an example must be made of Mueller, not dissimilar to that of Benito Mussolini in Italy during World War II. He must be prosecuted for treason and other crimes, convicted, and executed—to send the message of “Never Again” far and wide.

Otherwise, there is no justice in the United States; and no American should believe in this myth.

See also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2018/03/11/robert-mueller-should-be-executed-for-treason/#comment-17820 (“Robert Mueller Must Be Executed For Treason, Not Paraded Before Congress“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2018/05/06/what-atrocities-did-robert-mueller-commit-in-vietnam/ (“What Atrocities Did Robert Mueller Commit In Vietnam?”)

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24 07 2019
Timothy D. Naegele

Perhaps Robert Mueller Realizes That He May Be Facing Years In Prison . . . Or Execution For Treason [UPDATED]

Mueller testifies

As detailed in my article above—and in the footnotes and comments beneath it—Robert Mueller is one of the greatest traitors in American history. His demise must be consistent with that fact. Perhaps he realizes it today.

Geoff Earle, Emily Goodin and David Martosko have written in the UK’s Daily Mail:

President Donald Trump cheered Robert Mueller’s testimony Wednesday moments after the former special counsel wrapped up his appearance before his second of two congressional committees.

‘TRUTH IS A FORCE OF NATURE!’ Trump tweeted, celebrating a long-sought hearing that Democrats hoped might bring new national awareness of the details of Mueller’s 448-page report.

Instead, Trump, his campaign, and his allies were ridiculing Mueller’s performance, following a pair of televised hearings where the longtime prosecutor and former FBI director stumbled during some answers, failed to recall details of his report – and turned down multiple opportunities to deliver a stern lecture to Trump or his campaign.

‘I would like to thank the Democrats for holding this morning’s hearing,’ Trump tweeted following Mueller’s first appearance, before the House Judiciary Committee.

Mueller at times turned Wednesday’s hotly anticipated congressional hearing into a lost opportunity and disappointment for Democrats, hemming and hawing through questions and flipping through his own report to follow along with his inquisitors.

Mueller at one point couldn’t remember that it was President Ronald Reagan who appointed him to his first federal prosecutor job, and said he wasn’t at all ‘familiar’ with Fusion GPS.

That company, with a lucrative contract paid for by the Democratic party and Hillary Clinton’s campaign through a law firm, paid a former spy to gather dirt on Donald Trump, resulting in a ‘dirty dossier’ full of unproven and salacious rumors about the future president.

The dossier was later used to justify surveillance on a Trump foreign policy adviser, contributing to the extended-play Russia probe that Mueller helmed for 22 months.

Mueller answered a long list of questions with complaints that the subjects were ‘not in my purview,’ and dodged more than 100 times.

Mueller testified that his probe was ‘not a witch hunt’ – an attack repeatedly made by President Trump. And he defended the integrity of his team, blasting claims they were selected for partisan reasons. But his performance left some allies downtrodden, on a day when Democrats bolstered his reputation and work product while Republicans tried to undermine the credibility of his investigation.

David Axelrod, a former Barack Obama strategist, tweeted that the hearing was ‘very, very painful’ to watch. Laurence Tribe, the famed liberal lawyer, wrote that Mueller wasn’t up to the challenge of ‘breathing life into his damning report.’

When Mueller finally sat down to deliver his high-stakes testimony to the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday, he immediately contradicted President Trump’s contention that the Russia probe exonerated him.

Trump weighs in

After the conclusion of Mueller’s Judiciary appearance, Trump joined in. ‘I would like to thank the Democrats for holding this morning’s hearing. Now, after 3 hours, Robert Mueller has to subject himself to #ShiftySchiff – an Embarrassment to our Country!’ the president wrote, referencing California Intelligence Chairman Rep. Adam Schiff.

When the second hearing was over, Trump tweeted: ‘TRUTH IS A FORCE OF NATURE!’

His new press secretary, Stephanie Grisham, also blasted the hearing.

‘The last three hours have been an epic embarrassment for the Democrats. Expect more of the same in the second half,’ she said in a statement.

Cleanup of Judiciary testimony on charging decision

Later Wednesday, before the House Intelligence Committee, Mueller had to clean up one of his remarks.

He had responded to a question that ‘You didn’t charge the president because of [internal Justice Department guidelines],’ according to Mueller’s comment.

‘That is not the correct way to say it,’ Mueller said later. ‘We did not reach a determination as to whether the president committed a crime,’ he emphasized.’

‘We did not make any determination with regard to culpability,’ he said later in the hearing.’

With Mueller offering only short answers and sometimes having to be pointed to passages in his report, Democrats were left to make their own points in speeches and in blow-by-blow interrogations.

‘Disloyalty to Country’

‘Your investigation determined that the Trump campaign — including Trump himself — knew that a foreign power was intervening in our election and welcomed it, built Russian meddling into their strategy, and used it,’ said California Rep. Adam Schiff, the House Intelligence Committee chair.

‘Disloyalty to country. Those are strong words, but how else are we to describe a presidential campaign which did not inform the authorities of a foreign offer of dirt on their opponent, which did not publicly shun it, or turn it away, but which instead invited it, encouraged it, and made full use of it?’ Schiff continued.

‘That disloyalty may not have been criminal. Constrained by uncooperative witnesses, the destruction of documents and the use of encrypted communications, your team was not able to establish each of the elements of the crime of conspiracy beyond a reasonable doubt, so not a provable crime, in any event’, he added.

Schiff also put Mueller to a series of questions about the 2016 campaign, including a reference to a Trump Tower meeting with Russians and Trump’s televised invitation to Russia to get Hillary Clinton’s emails.

‘The president’s son said when he was approached about dirt on Hillary Clinton that the Trump campaign would love it?’ Schiff asked.

‘That is generally what was said, yes,’ Mueller replied.

‘The president, himself, called on the Russians to hack Hillary’s e-mails?’

‘There was a statement by the president on those general lines,’ said Mueller.

‘In numerous times during the campaign, the president praised the releases of the Russian hacks through e-mails at Wikileaks,’ Schiff continued to ask.

‘That did occur,’ Mueller responded.

‘Apart from the Russians wanting to help Trump win, several individuals associated with the Trump campaign were also trying to make money during the campaign in transition. Is that correct?’ Schiff asked.

‘That is true.’

[Former Trump campaign chair] Paul Manafort was trying to make money or debt forgiveness from a Russian oligarch?

‘Generally, that is accurate,’ said Mueller’

‘Donald Trump was trying to make millions from a real estate deal in Moscow?, Schiff asked.

‘To the extent you are talking about the hotel in Moscow? Yes, ‘ Mueller responded.

Seeds for Barr’s FBI probe

Republicans on the committee tried both the blast the origins of the Russia probe and potentially establish a record that might play out in an ongoing investigation overseen by Trump’s attorney general William Barr.

‘Before you arrested [Trump campaign foreign policy aide] George Papadopoulos in July of 2017, he was given $10,000 in ash in Israel. Do you know who gave him that cash?’ California Rep. Devin Nunes asked Mueller.

‘Again, that’s outside our … questions such as that should go to the FBI or the department,’ said Mueller.

‘But it involved your investigation,’ said Nunes.

‘It involved persons involved in my investigation,’ said Mueller.

Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow released a statement saying: ‘This morning’s testimony exposed the troubling deficiencies of the Special Counsel’s investigation. The testimony revealed that this probe was conducted by a small group of politically-biased prosecutors who, as hard as they tried, were unable to establish either obstruction, conspiracy, or collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. It is also clear that the Special Counsel conducted his two-year investigation unimpeded. The American people understand that this issue is over. They also understand that the case is closed.’

Although he spent hours trying to avoid sharing the characterizations put forward by lawmakers, Mueller did allow himself to condemn candidate Donald Trump’s encouragement to WikiLeaks, which the U.S. government considers cutout for a hostile foreign power.

‘Problematic’ Trump statements about WikiLeaks

Rep. Mike Quigley of Illinois read Mueller quotes by Trump. “Wikileaks, I love Wikileaks,” Trump said October 10, 2016. “This WikiLeaks stuff is unbelievable. It tells you the inner heart. You gotta read it,” Donald Trump, October 12, 2016,’ he continued. “This Wikileaks is like a treasure trove,” Donald Trump, October 31, 2016. “Boy, I love reading those WikiLeaks,” Donald Trump, November 4, 2016.’

‘Would any of those quotes disturb you Mr. Director?’ he asked.

‘I’m not certain I would say,’ Mueller tried to defer.

‘How would you react to it?’ Quigley pressed him.

‘Problematic is an understatement in terms of what it displays, in terms of giving some hope or some boost to what is, and should, be illegal activity,’ Mueller finally offered.

During a grilling by lawmakers that was to last through the day, the tight-lipped former FBI chief who helmed the Russia probe delivered a series of crisp answers – restating key conclusions of his report, even as he sought to avoid revealing new information about internal deliberations of his nearly two-year investigation.

Democratic Rep. Val Demings of Florida asked Mueller: ‘Could you say director Mueller that the president was credible?’ in his written answers to questions with prosecutors.

‘I can’t answer that question,’ Mueller responded.

‘Director Mueller, isn’t it fair to say that the president’s written answers were not only inadequate and incomplete because he didn’t answer many of your questions but where he did his answers showed that he wasn’t always being truthful?’ she followed up.

‘I would say generally,’ Mueller responded.

Nadler wrings statement that report didn’t ‘exonerate’ Trump

House Judiciary Chairman Jerold Nadler, putting Mueller to questioning for the first time since the March release of his report, asked him: ‘Director Mueller, the president has repeatedly claimed that your report found there was no obstruction and that it completely and totally exonerated him. But that is not what your report said, is it?

‘That is correct. That is not what the report said,’ responded Mueller.

‘Does that say there was no obstruction?’ Nadler followed up later.

‘No,’ the former special counsel responded.

‘In fact, your report expressly states that it does not exonerate the president,’ Nadler told him.

‘Yes it does,’ Mueller replied.

Mueller expanded: ‘The finding indicates that the president was not exculpated for the acts that he allegedly committed.’

Nadler also tried to get Mueller to expand on his report’s statement that he relied on existing Justice Department guidelines in concluding he could not indict President Trump.

‘In fact you were actually unable’ to charge Trump, Nadler told the witness.

‘We at the outset determined that we, when it came to the president’s culpability, we needed to go forward only after taking to account the [Office of Legal Counsel] opinion that indicated a sitting president cannot be indicted,’ Mueller said.

The answer was dry and technical, but it was the kind of statement Democrats had forecast they would use the hearing to get on record – and on video.

Mueller went further in a later exchange with Rep. Ted Lieu of California.

‘I’d like to ask you the reason, again, that you did not indict Donald Trump is because of OLC [Office of Legal Counsel] opinion stating that you cannot indict a sitting president, correct?’ asked Lieu.

‘That is correct,’ Mueller responded. In more nuanced answers he has said existing guidelines prevented him from considering the question.

Democrats had been planning for Mueller to stick to his pledge to stay within the confines of his report, and worked to wrangle short answers out of him. They did their best to try to extract new information from him. He turned down several opportunities to read from his report, but stated if it was in the report, he stood by it.

Trump’s refusal to be interviewed

‘Did any senior official refuse .. to be interviewed’ by the probe, Nadler asked him. Mueller said he would have to check.

‘Did the president refuse?’ Nadler followed up.

‘Yes,’ Mueller replied.

Other Democratic panel members tried to get Mueller to read or amplify segments of the report.

Rep. Steve Cohen read a passage from the report where Trump is quoted privately with his reaction upon learning Mueller was appointed. ‘This is terrible. This is the end of my presidency. I’m f*****,’ the report quotes Trump as saying.

But Mueller added little, saying he didn’t recall whose notes the quote came from. The report cites former Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

‘Why did the President of the United States want you fired?’ asked Florida Rep. Ted Deutch, bringing up one of ten possible elements of obstruction examined by the Mueller probe.

‘I can’t answer that question,’ he said.

Stumbles at Judiciary panel

At times, Mueller, 74, stumbled during answers, asking fast-talking lawmakers to repeat page citations and repeat their questions. He sometimes had to scan the hearing room to locate questioners. Although his stock answer was to say issues were beyond the purview of his mandate, he also appeared not to recall specific information at times.

‘Where are you reading from?’ he asked one member, Rep. James Sensenbrenner. ‘I am reading from my question,’ the Wisconsin Republican lawmaker told him.

Under questioning by Republican Rep. Steve Chabot, Mueller didn’t show immediate familiarity with political intelligence firm Fusion GPS, a key player in the trail of the Steele Dossier, and a fixture of attention of President Trump and GOP critics of the Mueller probe.

‘When you talk about the firm that produced the Steele reporting, the name of the firm was Fusion GPS, is that correct?’

‘I’m not familiar with that,’ said Mueller.

‘That’s not a trick question. It’s Fusion GPS.’

‘Now, Fusion GPS produced the opposition research document widely known as the ‘Steele dossier,’ and the owner of Fusion GPS was someone named Glenn Simpson, are you familiar with …’ he followed up.

‘That’s outside my purview,’ Mueller responded.

‘Okay. Glenn Simpson was never mentioned in the 448-page mueller report, was he?’ Sensenbrenner asked.

‘Well as I said it’s outside my purview and being handled in the department in the department by others,’ Mueller responded.

Failure to recall Reagan appointment

Near the end of the hearing, Democratic Rep. Greg Stanton of Arizona tried to build up Mueller following GOP attacks, point to parts of his sterling resume, which includes a Bronze star after Vietnam service, Princeton, the University of Virginia Law school, 12 years running the FBI, and other career accomplishments.

‘Which president appointed you to become the United States Attorney for Massachusetts?’ asked Stanton.

‘Which senator?’ asked Mueller, mishearing the question.

‘Which president,’ said Stanton.

‘I think that was President Bush,’ said Mueller. ‘According to my notes it was President Ronald Reagan [who] had the honor to do so,’ Stanton reminded him. ‘My mistake,’ Mueller responded with a laugh.

As the hearing wore on, Republicans began to ratchet up their criticism of Mueller, attacking his team of investigators and [] the origins of the probe he oversaw.

Both sides sought to get Mueller on record on the question of whether he had any potential conflict that would prevent him from overseeing the probe.

‘Conflicts’ of interest and Comey

Rep. Hank Johnson asked Mueller if he had any conflicts of interest that prevented him from being special counsel. Mueller said he did not. Trump has repeatedly said Mueller was ‘highly conflicted,’ saying he had interviewed to be his FBI director and that the two men had a nasty business dispute.

The Mueller report summarizes a brief exchange of letters with a Trump Virginia golf club Mueller belonged to and left.

Mueller stated that his meeting with Trump before being named special counsel was not as a candidate for FBI Director.

‘When you talked to President Trump the day before you were appointed as special counsel, you were talking to him about the FBI Director position, again, did he mention James Comey?’ asked Texas Republican Rep. Louis Gohmert.

‘Not as a candidate,’ interjected Mueller, contradicting a repeated claim by President Trump.

‘Did he mention the firing of James Comey in your discussion with him?’ asked Gohmert.

‘Cannot remember. Cannot remember. I don’t believe so.,’ said Mueller.

‘You don’t remember. But if he did, you could have been a fact witness as to the president’s comments and state of mind on firing James Comey,’ responded Gohmert.

‘I suppose that’s possible,’ said Mueller.

Mueller pushed back when Gohmert tried to get him to say he was ‘good friends’ with Comey, which could also pose a conflict.

‘We both started off at the Justice Department about the same time,’ said Mueller.

‘No, we were business associates,’ Mueller said.

But later allowed, ‘We were friends.’ He also said he had not spoken to Comey in six months before he was named special counsel.

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) sought to draw Mueller out on the surveillance warrants for former Trump campaign advisor Carter Page, whose trips to Russia drew attention of investigators.

‘Director Mueller, the third FISA renewal happens a month after you’re named special counsel. What role did your office play in the third FISA renewal of Carter Page?’ Jordan asked.

‘I’m not going to talk to that,’ said Mueller.

In his prepared statement, Mueller began by defending his probe following an onslaught of attacks, and spelling out questions he will and will not answer.

He said he told his team at the start of the Russia probe to ‘work quietly, thoroughly and with integrity so that the public would have full confidence in the outcome.

‘We needed to do our work as thoroughly as possible and as expeditiously as possible. It was in the public interest for our investigation to be complete and not to last a day longer than necessary,’ said Mueller.

He said his team of lawyers and agents worked ‘fairly and with absolute integrity’ – minutes after President Trump once again attacked it as a ‘witch hunt.’

‘Our team would not leak or take other actions that would compromise the integrity of our work,’ said Mueller. ‘All decisions were made based on the facts and the law.’

Democratic Rep. Val Demings of Florida asked Mueller: ‘It is fair to say then there were limits on what evidence was available to your investigation of both Russia election interference and obstruction of justice?’

‘That’s true and usually the case,’ Mueller said.

‘And that lies by trump campaign officials and administration officials impeded your investigation?’ ‘I would generally agree with that,’ Mueller allowed.

The long-awaited hearings featuring Mueller finally got underway Wednesday, as Nadler reminded the witness President Trump was ‘not exonerated’ by his report.

A protester sought to disrupt the high-stakes hearing even before Nadler, a Manhattan lawmaker who has known Trump for years, gaveled it into order. Nadler said Congress would consider ‘all appropriate remedies,’ citing the need for accountability – but did not mention the word impeachment in his opening statement.

Ranking Republican Rep. Doug Collins of Georgia made his own opening statement where he vowed Republicans would ask ‘serious questions about Mr. Mueller’s work.’

Signaling how his party would circle around the president during the hearing, Collins said of Trump: ‘He did not shut down the investigation. The president knew he was innocent … The president did not conspire with the Russians, and nothing we hear today will change those facts.’

No ‘impeachment’ mention

Republican Rep. James Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin, who helped push the impeachment of President Bill Clinton, noted during his questioning that Mueller did not use the term impeachment in his report, and asked why.

‘You never raised the term raising to impeachable conduct,’ said Sensenbrenner.

‘We studiously kept in the center of our investigation our mandate. Our mandate does not go to other ways of addressing conduct. Our mandate goes into developing the report and turning the report into the attorney general,’ responded Mueller.

Mueller asked for a moment during the Judiciary hearing to defend his team, whom President Trump has repeatedly painted as biased.

Defense of his prosecutors

‘Can I speak to hiring practices? We strove to hire those individuals that could do the job. I have been in this business for 25 years. I haven’t had an occasion to ask somebody about their political affiliation. It is not done. I care about the capability of the individuals that do the job and do the job quickly and seriously and with integrity,’ Mueller said.

But Republican Congressman Kelly Armstrong of North Dakota pushed back against him.

‘This isn’t being about you being able to vouch for your team. The day you accepted this role you had to be aware no matter what the report concluded half the country would be skeptical of your team’s findings and why we have recusal laws that define bias and perceived bias for this very reason,’ he said.

‘Half of them had a direct relationship political or personal with the opponent of the person you were investigating,’ he added. ‘That’s my point. I wonder if not a single word in in entire report was changed but rather the only difference was we switched Hillary Clinton and President Trump. If Peter Strzok had texted those terrible things about Hillary Clinton instead of President Trump, if a team of lawyers worked for donated thousands of dollars to and went to Trump’s parties instead of Clinton’s, I don’t think we would be here trying to prop up an obstruction allegation.’

The the ultimate high-stakes political poker game, and the day began with President Donald Trump anteing in.

‘So Democrats and others can illegally fabricate a crime, try pinning it on a very innocent President, and when he fights back against this illegal and treasonous attack on our Country, they call It Obstruction? Wrong!’ Trump tweeted early Wednesday morning.

‘Why didn’t Robert Mueller investigate the investigators?’ he added, presaging the Republicans’ main line of attack.

Mueller was set to be sworn in 90 minutes later for the first of two hearings before the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees, both helmed by the Democrats he blames for his years-long predicament.

Long lines of press, Capitol Hill staffers and ordinary gawkers lined up outside hearing room in the Rayburn House Office Building where Mueller will, he hopes, close the book on his lengthy probe into Russia’s interference with the 2016 presidential election.

Some lined up outside the building to get through security screening. Some had been there all night.

n prepared testimony, panel chairman Rep. Jerold Nadler saluted Mueller’s credibility as a witness.

‘You are a decorated Marine officer. You were awarded a Purple Heart and the Bronze Star for valor in Vietnam. You served in senior roles at the Department of Justice and, in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, you served as Director of the FBI,’ Nadler told him.

‘Two years ago, you returned to public service to lead the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. You conducted that investigation with remarkable integrity,’ Nadler said.

‘You secured the convictions of President Trump’s campaign chairman, his deputy campaign manager, his national security advisor, and his personal lawyer, among others,’ said Nadler.

Without knowing how far Mueller would go in his own testimony, Nadler told him: ‘Although Department policy barred you from indicting the President for this conduct, you made clear that he is not exonerated. Any other person who acted this way would have been charged with a crime. And in this nation, not even the President is above the law.’

Trump has long claimed to be the victim of a ‘witch hunt’ and he has repeatedly asked why Mueller didn’t investigate Hillary Clinton’s use of an unsecured private email server to house classified information while she was seretary of state.

The FBI investigated Clinton and found her ‘extremely careless’ but filed no criminal charges.

Trump was eager on Wednesday to remind the nation of what he sees as a double-standard in his own Justice Department.

‘Why didn’t Robert Mueller & his band of 18 Angry Democrats spend any time investigating Crooked Hillary Clinton, Lyin’ & Leakin’ James Comey, Lisa Page and her Psycho lover, Peter S, Andy McCabe, the beautiful Ohr family, Fusion GPS, and many more, including HIMSELF & Andrew W?’ the president added.

And then: ‘So why didn’t the highly conflicted Robert Mueller investigate how and why Crooked Hillary Clinton deleted and acid washed 33,000 Emails immediately AFTER getting a SUBPOENA from the United States Congress? She must have GREAT lawyers!’

Those are references to an ever-lengthening list of the president’s antagonists. He has argued bit by bit that the speical counsel’s process was stacked against him from the beginning.

Mueller’s mission was to investigate possible collusion between Russia and Trump’s campaign. He ultimately examined a second, thornier question: whether Trump obstructed justice by trying to stymie the federal probe.

He found no evidence of collusion, but left the obstruction question open. Attorney General Bill Barr and his deputy, Rod Rosenstein, determined that the evidence there was scant and inconclusive.

Trump hopes Wednesday is a nothingburger of a denouement where Mueller stays within the four corners of his voluminous report. Democrats want it to weaken his re-election prospects in ways that the report did not.

Republicans are ready to defend Trump and turn their fire on Mueller and his team instead.

The back-to-back Capitol Hill appearances, Mueller’s first since wrapping his two-year Russia probe last spring, will carry the extraordinary spectacle of a prosecutor discussing in public a criminal investigation he conducted into a sitting U.S. president.

Mueller, known for his taciturn nature, has warned that he will not stray beyond what’s already been revealed in his report. The Justice Department has instructed Mueller to stay strictly within those parameters, giving him a formal directive to point to if he faces questions he does not want to answer.

Trump had other ideas on Wednesday, baiting Mueller into conceding that the president denied him the opportunity to return to the Justice Department as FBI director 24 hours before he took on the job of investigating him.

‘It has been reported that Robert Mueller is saying that he did not apply and interview for the job of FBI Director (and get turned down) the day before he was wrongfully appointed Special Counsel. Hope he doesn’t say that under oath in the we have numerous witnesses to the interview, including the Vice President of the United States!’ he wrote in a tweet.

On Tuesday, Democrats granted his request to have his top aide in the investigation, Aaron Zebley, sit at the table with him. Zebley is not expected to be sworn in for questioning by the judiciary panel. But he will be able to answer questions before the intelligence committee, where, a committee aide said, he will be sworn in. The aide was not authorized to discuss the hearing preparations publicly and requested anonymity.

Mueller’s approach to testifying may well deny Democrats the made-by-TV moments they want to rally their base. But Republicans, too, are likely to be left without their sought-after confirmation that the Russia investigation was a politically tainted waste of time.

Trump this week feigned indifference to Mueller’s testimony , telling reporters in the Oval Office on Monday, ‘I’m not going to be watching – probably – maybe I’ll see a little bit of it.’

The president has a light schedule when Mueller begins speaking Wednesday morning, then heads to West Virginia for evening fundraisers.

The TVs aboard Air Force One are likely to be tuned to coverage of the hearings, and the president is expected to watch or be briefed on most of the proceedings, according to four administration officials and Republicans close to the White House. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss internal plans.

Yet the former special counsel need not say much to have his own quiet impact: His mere appearance will give voice to the 448-page legal thicket known as the Mueller report. His testimony, however sparse, will convert from dense paragraphs into plain English a document many in America have yet to wade through.

Mueller may create a powerful impression simply by confirming without hesitation some damning details from his report. A former FBI director who spent 12 years parrying questions from lawmakers at oversight hearings, and decades before that as a prosecutor who asked questions of his own, Mueller is unlikely to be goaded into saying anything he doesn’t want to say.

In fact, he had to be subpoenaed to show up in the first place.

Wednesday’s first hearing before the Judiciary Committee will focus on whether the president illegally obstructed justice by attempting to seize control of Mueller’s investigation.

The special counsel examined nearly a dozen episodes, including Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey and his efforts to have Mueller himself removed. Mueller in his report ultimately declined to state whether the president broke the law, saying such a judgment would be unfair in light of Justice Department legal opinions that bar the indictment of a sitting president.

The afternoon hearing before the House intelligence committee will dive into ties between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin.

On that question, Mueller’s report documented a trail of contacts between Russians and Trump associates – including a Trump Tower meeting at which the president’s eldest son expected to receive dirt on Democrat Hillary Clinton – but the special counsel found insufficient evidence of a criminal conspiracy aiming to tip the 2016 election.

Like most Russia-related hearings before Congress, this one is likely to divide sharply along partisan lines.

Democrats are angling to draw Mueller out on some of the most incendiary findings of the report, including Trump’s repeated attempts to choke off the investigation.

Even if the testimony won’t inspire impeachment demands – House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has made clear she will not pursue impeachment, for now – Democrats hope Mueller can unambiguously spell out questionable, norm-shattering actions by the president.

Republicans, by contrast, are likely to confront Mueller on the origins of the FBI’s Russia probe and whether opposition to the Trump campaign drove the early days of the investigation.

They’ll ask about a dossier of opposition research compiled by a former British spy that was funded by Democrats and cited by the Justice Department in its application for a secret surveillance warrant on a former Trump campaign associate.

They’ll also press Mueller on Peter Strzok, the former FBI counterintelligence agent who badmouthed Trump over text message even as he was helping lead an investigation into the campaign. Mueller fired him once the texts were discovered two years ago, but Strzok has remained a talking point for Trump in trying to discredit Mueller’s work.

Mueller also is likely to be asked about his own tensions with Attorney General William Barr over how the report was handled and how its findings were communicated to the public.

Mueller complained privately to Barr in March that the attorney general’s four-page letter summarizing the main findings of his report ‘did not fully capture the context, nature and substance of this office’s work and conclusions.’ Barr, in turn, has called Mueller’s note ‘a bit snitty.’

Mueller has made clear he didn’t think it was appropriate to make a determination one way or the other about whether the president had committed a crime. He has rejected Barr’s assessment that the evidence couldn’t satisfy an obstruction of justice allegation, noting both in his report – and, again, in a public statement from the Justice Department podium – that if he had confidence the president had not committed a crime, he would have said so.

Barr had no such hesitation and said Mueller shouldn’t have started investigating the president if he wasn’t prepared to reach a conclusion.

____

DailyMail.com’s 30 questions for Robert Mueller

‘If Trump weren’t president, would your non-determination on obstruction of justice have been different?’

‘Do you believe that the president’s potential obstruction prevented you from getting to the bottom of whether or not there was a conspiracy or collusion with Russia?’

‘Do you believe the Russians possess compromising material on President Trump?’

‘Did you examine Trump’s finances? Do you believe he could be charged with any financial crimes as a private citizen?’

‘Do you think Trump was honest in his written responses to you?’

‘Why didn’t you subpoena the president?’

‘Do you believe his prolonged negotiation and ultimate decision not to sit for an interview shows consciousness of guilt?’

‘Do you think you have sorted out all the loose ends about whether the Trump campaign cooperated with the Kremlin in any way?’

‘Would the investigation have benefited from more time, and did the president’s attacks on the ‘witch hunt’ lead you to hurry your work to avoid being shut down? Did the firing of Sessions affect the pace of your work?

‘Do you believe Rod Rosenstein protected your investigation to the fullest of his ability? Did you anticipate he might decide so quickly not to charge the president?’

‘Did you anticipate that Congress, rather than Trump’s attorney general, would decide whether or not to charge him? Was your intention to lead Congress toward reaching a conclusion you couldn’t?’

‘Has the president accurately characterized your “business dispute” with him? Did he say why he wouldn’t return your Virginia golf club membership fees? Do you believe this was an honest business practice?’

‘Is Maltese-born Professor Josef Mifsud, who made contact with George Papadopoulos about dirt on Clinton, alive?’

‘Are any parts of the counter-intelligence operation still going on?’

‘Do you trust Attorney General Bill Barr as an honest broker to oversee a probe of the FBI’s actions?’

‘Was there anything at the FBI or CIA that you wanted to see but were denied access to?’

‘Is the president correct when he says that a finding of obstruction would be impossible without first establishing the existence of an underlying crime?’

‘What are the biggest questions your investigation was unable to answer adequately, and how should Congress go about using its powers and authorities to pick up where you left off?’

‘Are you writing a book?’

‘Did you examine President Trump’s income tax returns in the course of your investigation, as he has said he presumes you did?’

‘Did your investigators ever visit any of his properties in person to seek to look at the books or interview personnel? Which ones?’

‘If Congress were to impeach the president, using your report as the basis of underlying evidence, would that be appropriate?’

‘From everything you have learned, do you – as a citizen – think there are grounds for Congress to open an impeachment inquiry?’

‘Why exactly did you remove Peter Strzok from your team?’

‘Did any member of Trump’s campaign team have contact with Russia that put American national security at risk?’

‘Did you consider the Steele dossier to be verifiable evidence that you could use in your investigation?’

‘Why did you build your team with lawyers who mostly were Democratic political donors? Was this a political mistake, even if within department rules?’

‘Do you agree with Trump’s pronouncements that he cooperated “fully” with your investigation?’

‘Did any case you referred to other prosecutors involve the president or anyone in his family as a target or a co-conspirator?’

‘Do you consider President Trump a credible witness? Do you consider James Comey a credible witness?’

See https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7280823/Muellers-high-stakes-hearing-day-arrives-Trump-claiming-hes-victim-Democratic-setup.html (“‘TRUTH IS A FORCE OF NATURE!’ Trump takes victory lap and THANKS Democrats for holding hearings where dazed Mueller bumbled through answers and was an ’embarrassment for the Democrats'”) (emphasis added; videos and Opening Statement omitted)

The last part of this Daily Mail article was written before the two hearings took place; and the list of questions to be asked mirrors the Daily Mail‘s long-standing biases against President Donald Trump.

Nonetheless, Mueller’s treasonous conduct shines through the verbiage. He must be indicted, convicted and imprisoned at the very least, for treason and other crimes. Otherwise, no American should ever believe in our system of justice again.

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25 07 2019
Timothy D. Naegele

Treasonous Bob Mueller [UPDATED]

Mueller testifies

Michael Goodwin has written an important article in the New York Post:

Among his talents, Donald Trump has a special gift for driving his detractors so crazy that they do really stupid stuff. The decision by Democrats to force Robert Mueller to testify before Congress is Exhibit A.

Bumblin’ Bob was a train wreck of epic proportions. The fallout is immediate, starting with this: Impeachment is no longer an option.

It had a slim chance before Wednesday’s painful slog and no chance after it.

Mueller was that bad, seemingly hard of hearing, often confused, and contradicted himself several times.

The Dems’ fantasy of having him breathe life into his report backfired.

His dismal performance killed any possibility that his 450-page tome could serve as a road map for overturning the 2016 election and driving Trump from office.

Although Mueller’s general demeanor was disturbing, it was also instructive. He did not project the mental and physical vigor of someone capable of leading the complex two-year probe into Russian meddling, possible Trump collusion and obstruction of justice.

More likely, the 74-year old former FBI director was something of a figurehead for an investigation that was carried out by the team of zealots he ­assembled.

That is not an incidental issue. As Andy McCarthy at National Review has written, and as Trump has repeatedly charged, the prosecutors were ­primarily people who had donated to Hillary Clinton and other Democrats or who otherwise made known their support for her.

Perhaps Mueller’s detachment explains his failure to remedy these obvious conflicts of interest that undercut his credibility from the moment they became known.

Oddly, Mueller removed FBI agent Peter Strzok because his bias against Trump became public, but apparently had no concerns about public reports showing that chief prosecutor Andrew [Weissmann] and others were in Clinton’s camp.

Mueller’s detachment may also explain the bizarre standard his team created, where Trump’s presumption of innocence was shredded because they could not find sufficient evidence to “exonerate” him. Several Republicans pointed out that prosecutors either file charges or don’t, but have never imposed the impossible standard of exoneration.

Those flaws are among many that undercut the report, including the fact that much of it reads as if it were written by Trump-hating reporters from the New York Times.

As one GOP member noted, the report cites nearly 200 articles and broadcasts, giving the impression that the media set the probers’ agenda. At the very least, Mueller’s team and the media were joined at the hip from the get-go.

Because of its pro-Clinton bias, the probe was the evil twin of the initial FBI investigation it inherited. Recall that the crooked James Comey relied heavily on the infamous Steele dossier, which Clinton’s team funded.

So from start to finish, Trump was targeted by partisan law enforcement officials who had no business being on the case. And yet, despite a probe that ran a combined three years, involved hundreds of witnesses, thousands of subpoenas and surveillance on Trump associates and maybe the president himself, investigators could find nothing — nothing! — worthy of a criminal charge.

That can only help the president in his re-election campaign. While there is a long way to go, the cloud of possible impeachment, which existed since Mueller was appointed, finally has been lifted.

There are two other major developments growing out of the hearing.

First, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi now has the responsibility to get her party back to its job of governing. She gave the impeachment caucus and its fanatical leaders, Reps. Jerry ­Nadler and Adam Schiff, time to gin up public support, but they have gotten nowhere because the facts were not as they promised.

If Pelosi is as smart and practical as her supporters say, she will make it clear that the hearing was the end of the Mueller era. If, on the other hand, she hesitates and lets the wing nuts chase their fantasies, she will recklessly waste the next year and increase the chances the GOP will retake the House in 2020.

The other development is that Washington’s focus now shifts to the two investigations into the investigators. The first to drop will be the review of the surveillance warrants obtained against Carter Page, which is being carried out by the inspector general in the Justice Department.

The chief questions center on what Comey and others told the secret court’s judges about the Steele dossier. Did they disclose that it was paid for by Democrats?

Did they concede that Steele said he was motivated to make sure Trump did not become president? And did the judges know the allegations were unverified before granting four warrants?

The ultimate probe, though, is the one Attorney General Bill Barr launched. He said he was appalled at FBI bias against Trump and that he wants to get his hands around the origins and scope of the initial scrutiny.

“The use of foreign-intelligence capabilities and counterintelligence capabilities against an American political campaign to me is unprecedented and it’s a serious red line that’s been crossed,” Barr told CBS in May.

He also warned of the dangers of weaponizing law enforcement against political opponents, saying “the idea of resisting a democratically elected president and basically throwing everything at him” is a real threat to our nation.

There is no known deadline for Barr’s report, but my guess is that he will work relatively fast, certainly faster than the special counsel. And because Mueller’s day in the spotlight turned out to be a dud, Barr’s findings have the potential to be the real bombshell.

See https://nypost.com/2019/07/24/muellers-testimony-equals-end-of-any-trump-impeachment-talk/ (“Mueller’s testimony equals end of any Trump impeachment talk“) (emphasis added)

It is worth repeating again and again:

[Robert Mueller] must be indicted, convicted and imprisoned at the very least, for treason and other crimes. Otherwise, no American should ever believe in our system of justice again.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2018/03/11/robert-mueller-should-be-executed-for-treason/#comment-18233 (“Perhaps Robert Mueller Realizes That He May Be Facing Years In Prison . . . Or Execution For Treason“)

Next, no one should hold their breath waiting for the DOJ’s Inspector General to do the right thing. The best that may be said about him is that his office is “where the truth goes to die.”

See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2018/06/15/the-department-of-injustices-inspector-general-is-complicit-in-the-deep-state-cover-up/#comment-15562 (“The DOJ’s Inspector General Michael Horowitz Is Missing In Action“)

Lastly, the former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Newt Gingrich has written presciently:

The biggest conclusion I reached after watching Robert Mueller in front of Congress was that he clearly did not have a detailed knowledge of the report issued in his name.

He failed to answer nearly 200 questions.

He frequently was not familiar with citations from his own report.

On several key points, he contradicted his own report and his own letters to Attorney General Barr.

When he said he never asked his team their political views I believe him.

It also signals that the most charitable conclusion you could reach was that Mueller had come of age in an era of professional responsibility and did not realize he now lived in an era of harsh, even vicious, partisanship.

My first reaction to his assertion that he did not ask the political opinions of his staff was that it was laughable that he could randomly assemble a hard line anti-Trump group of Democratic prosecutors without a single pro-Trump Republican lawyer in the room.

However, the more I watched him, the more I came to the conclusion that he had been a figure head. The tough, younger Trump-hating Democrats had networked with each other and assembled a legal team dedicated to destroying Trump and protecting the Clintons.

Seen from this perspective, it is a tribute to President Trump that despite their best efforts these deeply hostile prosecutors simply could not find any evidence of serious wrongdoing. They could write innuendo — and huff and puff — but in the end the Trump wall of obeying the law withstood the best these smart, tough, widely-experienced Democratic prosecutors could do.

Wednesday’s stunningly inadequate performance by a widely respected career civil servant (my own tweet on his appointment had been entirely positive and it was only while watching the team he assembled that I grew hostile to his project) raises its own new questions.

If Mueller has been as out of touch with his report over the last two years as he was yesterday, then who was driving the team and who was writing the report?

It is clear Mueller does not know the details of his own report or of the two years of investigations behind the report.

Who then does know all those details?

Who masterminded putting Paul Manafort in solitary confinement for months?

Who made the decision to not look into the Steele Dossier, the company that paid for it, or the links to the Clinton campaign?

After yesterday’s disastrous performance by the so-called leader of the Mueller investigation and report, the attorney general should ask for a thorough internal review of how that system worked, who made the decisions, and how internally hostile to the president they were.

There was no Mueller Report. There was a report signed by Mueller, but it was really someone else’s work. This was the biggest lesson from Wednesday’s hearings.

See https://www.gingrich360.com/2019/07/who-wrote-the-mueller-report/ (“Who Wrote the Mueller Report?“) (emphasis added); see also http://www.anncoulter.com/columns/2019-07-24.html (“MUELLER HAS A REPUTATION …“)

At the very least, Mueller must be sent to prison, where he is likely to experience the “Whitey Bulger Treatment,” and true justice.

See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2018/03/11/robert-mueller-should-be-executed-for-treason/#comment-15092 (“What Role Did Robert Mueller Play In The Savage Killing Of Whitey Bulger?“)

Robert Mueller and Whitey Bulger

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25 09 2019
Paul

Thank you for having the courage to speak out.
Stay vigilant my friend, the deep State is dangerous and is the biggest threat to our country.
There are millions of us Retired Law Enforcement and Military that have your
back. We all took a oath to this country and
We have given sweat, blood and years of service to this country and we are ashamed
how corrupt our DOJ and FBI is.
I pray that more honorable and courageous
men stand up and hold all involved in the
ongoing coup against Trump accountable.
We are sliding down a extremely slippery sloap
we pray that justice be served! There is only one sentence for Treason period!
Thank you for staying in the fight to save
this nation and God Bless You and God Bless
America.
Sir, I don’t have money to support your efforts
but I’ll give you my life if needed to defend
you and this country we love.
Respectfully,
Paul Gaeta
American Patriot
Father
Grandfather
Retired Law Enforcement

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25 09 2019
Timothy D. Naegele

Thank you, Paul, for your excellent comments and for your service. We are a better nation because of it.

I agree, and especially with your comment: “There is only one sentence for Treason period!”

Thank you too for your support. I have never asked for or accepted money since this blog began almost ten years ago. And yes, I will stay in the fight until my last breath, which I assume is true of you as well.

May God bless you too, and God bless our wonderful nation, and Americans everywhere.

Tim Naegele

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4 11 2019
Richard Koranda

Wonderfully stated…. Besides the dozens of others involved and the few main initiators whom orchestrated this, I couldn’t agree more with you! Another of the major criminal co-conspirator’s and examples that need to be made of is the entire news/journalist’s media who have willfully and purposely mis-lead and falsified events, ( some even, not only had direct involvement with the criminal aspects, and also broadcasts from media networks were knowingly falsified in support of the witch Hunt against Trump and initiators of this organized criminal and unconstitutional acts and continue to mis-lead with their broadcasts) their un-ethical and non-professional should also be procecuted so examples to ALL journalist’s will not allow their personal and or political beliefs and the broadcasting platform to be used in this manner ever again. Thank you Mr. Naegele, please keep up the outstanding work and never ceases spreading the truth!

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4 11 2019
Timothy D. Naegele

Thank you for your comments.

You make an excellent point: the media must not be allowed to knowingly distort the truth. “Free Speech” cannot become a “license to lie.”

Otherwise, there is no accountability for the media.

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