Tag: DNC

BEST JUSSIE SMOLLETT ESCAPES JUSTICE MEMES

Best Jussie Smollett Escapes Justice Memes

16 felony charges dropped because ‘Empire’ actor served community service

Infowars.com – MARCH 26, 2019

Conservatives and Chicago authorities are furious over prosecutors dropping actor Jussie Smollett’s 16 charges related to falsifying a hate crime.

Many on social media expressed their outrage through memes over what Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel called a “whitewash of justice.”

Here are the best memes capturing America’s frustration with Smollett and his Soros-backed prosecutors:

Screen Shot 2019-03-26 at 5.57.58 PM

Screen Shot 2019-03-26 at 5.58.46 PM

Screen Shot 2019-03-26 at 5.59.35 PM

Screen Shot 2019-03-26 at 6.00.21 PM

Screen Shot 2019-03-26 at 6.01.05 PM

It turns out billionaire George Soros and former President Obama have ties to Smollett’s prosecutor, Kim Foxx, who ultimately dropped the 16 charges approved by a Cook County grand jury.

Screen Shot 2019-03-26 at 6.02.03 PM

It turns out billionaire George Soros and former President Obama have ties to Smollett’s prosecutor, Kim Foxx, who ultimately dropped the 16 charges approved by a Cook County grand jury.

Screen Shot 2019-03-26 at 6.02.51 PM

Screen Shot 2019-03-26 at 6.04.00 PM

Screen Shot 2019-03-26 at 6.04.45 PM

Screen Shot 2019-03-26 at 6.05.40 PM

Screen Shot 2019-03-26 at 6.06.25 PM

Screen Shot 2019-03-26 at 6.07.17 PM.png

Screen Shot 2019-03-26 at 6.08.59 PM

Screen Shot 2019-03-26 at 6.09.45 PM

Screen Shot 2019-03-26 at 6.10.26 PM

Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson tore into Smollett during a Tuesday press conference.

“Do I think justice was served? No…I think this city is still owed an apology,” he told reporters.

“It’s Mr. Smollett who committed this hoax. Period,” Johnson added. “If he wanted to clear his name, the way to do that is in a court of law so everyone can see the evidence.”

“They chose to hide behind secrecy and broker a deal to circumvent the judicial system.”

0

APPLE-backed ‘SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER’ called a ‘con’ for bilking gullible liberals…

Screen Shot 2019-03-26 at 3.43.03 PM

In August 2017, following the Charlottesville riots, Apple made a contribution of $1 million to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). Apple also matched two-for-one employees’ donations to the Southern Poverty Law Center through September 30th of that year and had Apple’s iTunes Store offer visitors a way to donate to the SPLC.

In a letter to employees in August 2017, explaining Apple Inc.’s contribution, CEO Tim Cook wrote:

Apple will be making contributions of $1 million each to the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League. We will also match two-for-one our employees’ donations to these and several other human rights groups, between now and September 30. In the coming days, iTunes will offer users an easy way to join us in directly supporting the work of the SPLC. Dr. Martin Luther King said, “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about the things that matter.” So, we will continue to speak up. These have been dark days, but I remain as optimistic as ever that the future is bright. Apple can and will play an important role in bringing about positive change.– Apple CEO Tim Cook in a letter to employees, August 2017

Uh, yeah. Aging well, Cook’s missive hasn’t:

“In the days since the stunning dismissal of Morris Dees, the co-founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center, on March 14th, I’ve been thinking about the jokes my S.P.L.C. colleagues and I used to tell to keep ourselves sane,” Bob Moser reports for The New Yorker. “Walking to lunch past the center’s Maya Lin–designed memorial to civil-rights martyrs, we’d cast a glance at the inscription from Martin Luther King, Jr., etched into the black marble — ‘Until justice rolls down like waters’ — and intone, in our deepest voices, ‘Until justice rolls down like dollars.’”

Screen Shot 2019-03-26 at 3.43.32 PM

“The first surprise was the office itself. On a hill in downtown Montgomery, down the street from both Jefferson Davis’s Confederate White House and the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, where M.L.K. preached and organized, the center had recently built a massive modernist glass-and-steel structure that the social critic James Howard Kunstler would later liken to a ‘Darth Vader building’ that made social justice ‘look despotic.’ It was a cold place inside, too,” Moser reports. “But nothing was more uncomfortable than the racial dynamic that quickly became apparent: a fair number of what was then about a hundred employees were African-American, but almost all of them were administrative and support staff— ‘the help,’ one of my black colleagues said pointedly. The ‘professional staff’ — the lawyers, researchers, educators, public-relations officers, and fund-raisers — were almost exclusively white. Just two staffers, including me, were openly gay.”

“In the decade or so before I’d arrived, the center’s reputation as a beacon of justice had taken some hits from reporters who’d peered behind the façade. In 1995, the Montgomery Advertiser had been a Pulitzer finalist for a series that documented, among other things, staffers’ allegations of racial discrimination within the organization. In Harper’s, Ken Silverstein had revealed that the center had accumulated an endowment topping a hundred and twenty million dollars while paying lavish salaries to its highest-ranking staffers and spending far less than most nonprofit groups on the work that it claimed to do,” Moser reports. “The great Southern journalist John Egerton, writing for The Progressive, had painted a damning portrait of Dees, the center’s longtime mastermind, as a ‘super-salesman and master fundraiser’ who viewed civil-rights work mainly as a marketing tool for bilking gullible Northern liberals.”

“Co-workers stealthily passed along these articles to me — it was a rite of passage for new staffers, a cautionary heads-up about what we’d stepped into with our noble intentions,” Moser reports. “Incoming female staffers were additionally warned by their new colleagues about Dees’s reputation for hitting on young women. And the unchecked power of the lavishly compensated white men at the top of the organization — Dees and the center’s president, Richard Cohen — made staffers pessimistic that any of these issues would ever be addressed.”

Much more in the full article – recommended – here.

MacDailyNews Note: Please follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MacDailyNews

“The president of the Southern Poverty Law Center, Richard Cohen, announced his resignation Friday, the latest in a series of high-profile departures at the anti-hate organization that have come amid allegations of misconduct and workplace discrimination,” Matt Pearce reports for The Los Angeles Times.

“The departure will mark the end of an era at the Montgomery, Ala., nonprofit, whose staff had recently raised questions about whether the organization’s long-standing mission of justice and anti-discrimination — which had yielded hundreds of millions of dollars in donations from the public — had matched its internal treatment of some black and female employees,” Pearce reports. “Under Cohen’s watch, the center had also received frequent criticism for its aggressive fundraising tactics and for its depiction of some right-wing figures as extremists. And the organization had been unable to shake long-standing internal concerns over the diversity of its predominantly white staff and white leadership.”

“Cohen’s departure comes one week after he fired his longtime partner, Morris Dees — the center’s co-founder, chief trial counsel and its biggest public face for nearly half a century — for undisclosed misconduct, a move that stunned insiders and marked the most significant changing of the guard in the center’s history,” Pearce reports. “The recent resignations came amid staff concerns over the recent resignation of one of the organization’s top black attorneys, Meredith Horton, who wrote in a farewell email that ‘there is more work to do in the legal department and across the organization to ensure that SPLC is a place where everyone is heard and respected and where the values we are committed to pursuing externally are also being practiced internally.’”

Read more in the full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: One thing we definitely agree with that Apple CEO Tim Cook wrote in his letter to employees is:

Regardless of your political views, we must all stand together on this one point — that we are all equal. As a company, through our actions, our products and our voice, we will always work to ensure that everyone is treated equally and with respect.

Cook’s decision to fund a questionable outfit like the SPLC (that was questionable longbefore these recent resignations) in the name of Apple Inc., no less, that most certainly did not “ensure that everyone is treated equally and with respect,” even within its own walls, was obviously an embarrassing mistake.

In a nutshell, Cook literally funded inequality and disrespect in the name of AppleInc.

Where were Apple’s Board of Directors when Cook’s knee-jerk reaction was formulated? Were they even consulted? If so, why didn’t they nip Cook’s ill-considered plan in the bud? If the Board wasn’t consulted, why not?

The problem isn’t Tim Cook espousing political views and donating to political causes. It’s a free country. The problem is his very questionable practice (to a properly-functioning BoD) of hijacking Apple’s brand and riding on Apple’s coattails to do so.

Even with you agree 100% with everything Tim Cook says and does (which, unless you are Tim Cook, is likely an issue in and of itself), all you have to do is simply imagine that Apple’s CEO is someone else — say, Peter Thiel — and that they’re also prone to using Apple’s brand and established goodwill to espouse and promote their own political beliefs… We’re pretty sure that Steve Jobs did not intend for Apple to be turned into a personal soapbox for whoever happens to be occupying in the CEO’s office at the moment. — MacDailyNews, June 26, 2018

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about the things that matter. — Dr. Martin Luther King

Screen Shot 2019-03-26 at 3.43.21 PM

0

VIDEO: GIULIANI DEMANDS APOLOGY FROM CNN HOST LIVE ON AIR OVER RUSSIAGATE

Video: Giuliani Demands Apology From CNN Host Live On Air Over Russiagate

“You guys have tortured this man for two years with collusion and nobody has apologized for it.”

Steve Watson | Infowars.com – MARCH 26, 2019

In a must see segment Monday night, Rudy Giuliani demanded an apology from CNN anchor Chris Cuomo regarding two plus years of misinformation broadcast by the network regarding the Russia collusion hoax.

“It’s not very clever. You guys have tortured this man for two years with collusion and nobody has apologized for it. Before we talk about obstruction, apologize!” Giuliani, one of Trump’s most trusted legal advisors, demanded.

Cuomo refused to apologize saying “Not a chance.”

“Of course you’re not because you’re not being fair,” Giuliani shot back, adding “I’m outraged by the behavior of these networks. Collusion, collusion, collusion… No collusion, Chris.”

Giuliani would not back down, adding “How about this network should apologize? I ask you to apologize,” he further demanded.

“The Washington Post should apologize and Adam Schiff should apologize.” Giuliani continued.

“Before we start jamming him up in obstruction, couldn’t we take a day off and say the man was falsely accused?” Giuliani said of the President.

Cuomo attempted to argue that the report doesn’t totally exonerate Trump and that ‘attempts to obstruct’ should be looked into.

Later on during the appearance, Giuliani described the infamous Steele dossier, upon which the investigation was founded, as “a cheap National Enquirer story”.

“Christopher Steele had been fired by the FBI, was paid $1.1 million by Hillary Clinton. Certain things they corroborate. If you read that dossier, you get past the second page and you think it’s an intelligence report you’re reading and it is a National Enquirer story. It is a cheap National Enquirer story. I’ve had four or five retired CIA agents read it,” Giuliani exclaimed.

After two plus years of crying ‘collusion’, CNN cannot back down, and is now parroting the mantra that the Mueller report ‘does not exonerate’ Trump, when that is EXACTLY what it does.

The Attorney General determined that the President was not guilty of collusion based on the Mueller report. The report exonerated Trump.

How much more fake can this fake news get? We’re at the point now where CNN is saying the exact opposite of the truth in a desperate attempt to save face.

0

(BLACK PRIVILEGE) – Criminal charges dropped in case against Jussie Smollett, attorneys say

Screen Shot 2019-03-26 at 11.22.16 AM

Chicago prosecutors have dropped criminal charges against ‘Empire’ star and alleged hate crime hoaxer Jussie Smollett. The actor had been indicted on 16 felony counts for faking a ‘racist and homophobic’ attack on himself.

Smollett claimed in January that two masked men wearing red hats yelled racial slurs at him, put a noose around his neck, poured bleach on his skin and shouted “This is MAGA country” – a reference to President Trump’s ‘Make America Great Again’ catchphrase. Smollett’s case began to unravel, however, after it emerged that the actor allegedly paid two Nigerian brothers to stage the attack.

Smollett’s initial story captivated outrage-hungry politicians and media figures. 2020 presidential candidates Sen. Kamala Harris (D-California) and Sen. Cory Booker (D-New Jersey) called the supposed attack a “modern day lynching,” Rep. Adam Schiff (D-California) called it an “act of hatred and bigotry,” and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) called it “an affront to our humanity.”

Screen Shot 2019-03-26 at 11.24.03 AM

All of these Democrat leaders deleted their tweets when Smollett himself was arrested and charged in February.

After the charges against him were dropped on Tuesday, Smollett’s attorneys said that their client “was a victim who was vilified and made to appear as a perpetrator as a result of false and inappropriate remarks made to the public causing an inappropriate rush to judgement.”

Prosecutors dropped the case after “reviewing all of the facts and circumstances,” and taking into account Smollett’s volunteer service in the community. His lawyers, without a trace of irony, called the case “a reminder that there should never be an attempt to prove a case in the court of public opinion.”

The prosecutors’ decision shocked conservatives, some of whom viewed Smollett’s easy ride as a form of “leftist privilege,” and District Attorney Kimberly Foxx’s membership of the Democratic party as instrumental in her decision to let Smollett off the hook.

Screen Shot 2019-03-26 at 11.26.51 AM

Screen Shot 2019-03-26 at 11.29.53 AM

 

0

TRUMP STOPS TAXPAYER-BACKED MORTGAGES FOR ILLEGALS

Trump Stops Taxpayer-Backed Mortgages for Illegals

Democrats taking economy hostage to protect illegal aliens

Frontpage Mag – MARCH 26, 2019

When Barack Obama implemented his unilateral amnesty for illegal aliens who claimed to have entered this country before the age of sixteen, the illegally amnestied illegals qualified for many benefits.

One of these were FHA loans.

FHA loans are government-backed mortgages meant for poorer Americans unable to qualify for normal mortgages. Democrat abuse of the FHA helped lead to the Great Recession and in the years afterward, FHA insured loans hit losses of $70 billion. By 2012, the FHA was $16 billion in the hole and had to be bailed out. The delinquency rate for FHA loans is still more than three times higher than normal loans, and depending on the period, have hovered between 8% and 14%. Time to bring in the illegal aliens.

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism

When Barack Obama implemented his unilateral amnesty for illegal aliens who claimed to have entered this country before the age of sixteen, the illegally amnestied illegals qualified for many benefits.

One of these were FHA loans.

FHA loans are government-backed mortgages meant for poorer Americans unable to qualify for normal mortgages. Democrat abuse of the FHA helped lead to the Great Recession and in the years afterward, FHA insured loans hit losses of $70 billion. By 2012, the FHA was $16 billion in the hole and had to be bailed out. The delinquency rate for FHA loans is still more than three times higher than normal loans, and depending on the period, have hovered between 8% and 14%. Time to bring in the illegal aliens.

When Obama illegally implemented DACA, a program exempting certain illegal aliens from government action, they were also allowed to apply for FHA loans. How many illegal aliens obtained FHA loans?

In December, a letter from three Senate Democrats claimed that HUD barred “approximately 800,000 individuals approved for DACA from FHA-insured mortgage loans”. This refers to the total number of DACA illegal aliens and it’s unknown how many of them have obtained FHA loans in past years.

Ellie Mae’s millennial tracker estimated that the average size of an FHA loan to millennials is $186,454. Potential exposure to illegal alien mortgages could then climb as improbably high as $150 billion.

It’s unknown how many illegal aliens have taken out FHA loans, but some media stories have cited loan officers for whom illegal alien FHA loans represent a significant percentage of their business.

The Trump administration has applied the brakes to this avalanche of taxpayer-insured mortgages to illegal aliens. The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) had begun notifying lenders that the FHA was no longer in the illegal alien mortgage business. The reasons were common sense. DACA illegal aliens, or in media spin, DREAMERs, were not legal residents and weren’t being legalized.

Under Obama, FHA rules had been bent so far backward that people who were not only non-citizens, not only non-permanent residents, but weren’t even legally here, were having taxpayers guarantee their mortgages. Not only hadn’t the Democrats learned anything from the Great Recession, they were determined to make the irresponsible behavior of the FHA a decade ago seem sober and sensible.

And they aren’t giving up.

The December letter by Senator Menendez, who had recently been on trial for corruption charges, Senator Booker, on whose watch the $100 million poured into Newark public schools dissipated, and Senator Cortez-Mastro, who had been accused of taking dirty money, claimed to be, “appalled that the Trump Administration would exploit a federal government program to deny Dreamers an opportunity of owning their own home.” But it was the Democrats who had exploited a federal government program meant for poor Americans to benefit not only foreigners, but illegal aliens with no right to be here.

The letter by the three Senator Democrats falsely claimed that President Trump was targeting a “portion of the American public”, when in fact illegal aliens are not part of the American public. They demanded, “sound and unambiguous legal reasoning” for the move. The sound and unambiguous reasoning would be that illegal aliens are not legally resident in the United States and therefore do not qualify for loans.

Much of the furor over FHA loans for illegal aliens was stirred up by Dani Hernandez, an underwriter for NewCastle Home Loans. NewCastle in Chicago markets aggressively to DACA illegal aliens, declaring, “Don’t let the political climate worry you. DACA recipients are eligible to buy a home.” It also assures the illegal aliens that they can qualify for FHA loans and it “specializes in working with DACA recipients.”

Prospective FHA borrowers are also informed that they can get a loan with a credit score as low as 500 and a 50% debt-to-income ratio.

The illegal alien mortgage business, built on the backs of American taxpayers, is obviously profitable. But it’s also a silent nuclear weapon threatening mass destruction of the economy in case of deportations.

The more illegal aliens end up with FHA loans, and as those FHA loans are turned into Ginnie Mae Mortgage Backed Securities, deporting DACA illegal aliens would risk mass defaults on FHA loans which are backed by American taxpayers. Quite a few Ginnie Mae bonds are being held by Japan and China.

That’s why HUD’s move of stopping the flow of FHA loans to illegal aliens is so vital and important.

Not only do FHA loans endanger our economic security, they also endanger our national security. Their very existence serves as political leverage to prevent the government from enforcing the law. Every illegal alien mortgage not only robs American taxpayers, but puts them at risk of even worse losses.

And considering the role of mortgage backed securities in the Great Recession, the threat is real.

However, HUD has carefully avoided taking a clear position to prevent the inevitable lawsuits and overrides by Obama and Clinton judges embedded in the federal judiciary. Instead HUD officials have successfully warned off many lenders by creating ambiguity about the status of DACA FHA loans.

The riskier illegal alien FHA loans appear, the more irresponsible taking them on will seem. And lenders will be aware of the shadow of the “False Claims Act” hanging overhead if they bite on illegal loans.

This is far from an ideal solution. But it’s an understandable response by a crippled executive branch that has had its legal powers stripped from it by Democrat activists operating under the guise of judges.

But taxpayer-backed mortgages for illegal aliens are only the tip of the tottering FHA iceberg that President Trump needs to begin shutting down to avoid another recession caused by bad loans.

FHA loans to non-citizens are also extended to non-permanent residents and even to “refugees”. The Office of Refugee Resettlement had even been promoting Freddie Mac’s Islamic Sharia-compliant mortgages for Muslim “refugees”. Foreigners here under Temporary Protected Status, a category that the Trump administration has begun winding down, are also potentially eligible for FHA loans.

The FHA is deeply dangerous and troubled. It is in desperate need of reform.

American taxpayers have long been exploited by the FHA as a piggy bank to pay off Democrat voters. But DACA FHA loans have taken this a step further by taking the economy hostage for illegal aliens.

The FHA loan was created to serve Americans. If it is to continue to exist, it should only serve Americans.

There has never been any reason given why the United States government should be extending its credit on behalf of foreigners, whether they are residents, temporary workers or, let alone, illegal aliens.

The risk of such loans has been rolled into the overall risk for Americans. And the buck was passed.

The artificial stimulation of the housing market isn’t reason enough for the government to be putting the economy at risk and taxpayers on the hook for the illegal aliens whom Democrats hope to turn into voters. DACA was an illegal policy. FHA loans for DACA recipients piles illegality on illegality.

American taxpayers should be let off the hook for illegal alien mortgages before the cost grows too high.

0

‘EMPIRE’ BOMBSHELL! SMOLLETT CHARGES DROPPED STAR STICKS TO STORY HE WAS ATTACKED COMMUNITY SERVICE CASE SEALED CHICAGO POLICE ‘FURIOUS’

Screen Shot 2019-03-26 at 10.54.11 AM

CHICAGO (CBS) — Less than two weeks after “Empire” actor Jussie Smollett pleaded not guilty to 16 counts of disorderly conduct for allegedly lying to police about a hate crime, prosecutors have dropped charges in the case.

Cook County prosecutors agreed to drop the charges against Smollett at an unscheduled hearing in the case Tuesday morning. Smollett will forfeit the $10,000 bail he posted after his arrest.

Screen Shot 2019-03-26 at 10.55.27 AM

“After reviewing all of the facts and circumstances of the case, including Mr. Smollett’s volunteer service in the community and agreement to forfeit his bond to the City of Chicago, we believe this outcome is a just disposition and appropriate resolution to this case,” the Cook County State’s Attorney’s office stated in an email.

Sources tell CBS 2 that CPD Superintendent Eddie Johnson is furious and that he received no notification about the charges being dropped. CBS 2 is told that he will speak after the police graduation taking place.

Smollett’s spokesperson said his record would be “fully expunged.”

“Today, all criminal charges against Jussie Smollett were dropped and his record has been wiped clean of the filing of this tragic complaint against him. Jussie was attacked by two people he was unable to identify on January 29th. He was a victim who was vilified and made to appear as a perpetrator as a result of false and inappropriate remarks made to the public causing an inappropriate rush to judgement,” spokeswoman Anne Kavanaugh stated in an email.

“Jussie and many others were hurt by these unfair and unwarranted actions. This entire situation is a reminder that there should never be an attempt to prove a case in the court of public opinion. That is wrong. It is a reminder that a victim, in this case Jussie, deserves dignity and respect. Dismissal of charges against the victim in this case was the only just result.

“Jussie is relieved to have this situation behind him and is very much looking forward to getting back to focusing on his family, friends and career.”

Screen Shot 2019-03-26 at 10.56.27 AM

A judge also granted a motion to seal the case.

More details are expected soon, after an unscheduled emergency hearing Tuesday morning.

Smollett was accused of falsifying a police report, and lying to police. Each of the 16 counts against him covers various alleged acts that Smollett falsely described to the officers–including that he was hit by two men, that they yelled racial and homophobic slurs and poured a chemical on him.

Smollett, who is black and openly gay, had told police he was attacked as he was walking home around 2 a.m. on Jan. 29. He claimed two masked men – one of them also wearing a red hat – shouted racist and homophobic slurs as they beat him, put a noose around his neck, and poured a chemical on him.

Police said, in reality, Smollett had paid Ola and Abel Osundairo to stage the attack.

CBS 2’s Charlie De Mar has reported Smollett also directed the brothers to buy the noose at a hardware store and the hat and masks at a store in Uptown. Chicago Police Supt. Eddie Johnson said police have the check.

Police said the two brothers wore gloves during the staged attack, and did punch Smollett, but the scratches and bruises on Smollett’s face most likely were self-inflicted.

Police at the time said the attack was a publicity stunt because the actor was upset about his pay on the show.

Smollett has denied all the allegations.

More on Jussie Smollett:

Brothers At The Center Of Jussie Smollett Case In A Different Fight: The Boxing Ring

While actor Jussie Smollett fights for his freedom, the two brothers at the center of his case were involved in a different kind of fight Thursday night.

Jussie Smollett Pleads Not Guilty To Disorderly Conduct Indictment; Accused Of Orchestrating Hate Crime Hoax

“Empire” actor Jussie Smollett pleaded not guilty Thursday to 16 counts of disorderly conduct, nearly a week after he was indicted for allegedly lying to police about a hate crime.

0

DEMS: PLAN B… TAX RETURNS!

By Billy House

Screen Shot 2019-03-26 at 10.31.33 AM

(Bloomberg) — Robert Mueller’s final report robbed Democrats of what they hoped would be a devastating blow to President Donald Trump. And, after defending the special counsel’s integrity for more than a year, they have little room to challenge his conclusion there was no conspiracy between Trump’s campaign and Russia in the 2016 election.

Yet, even before the special counsel’s 22-month probe ended, Democrats were already working under a Plan B to undermine Trump going into the 2020 presidential race, through investigations led by House committees now under their control.

“We’re going to move forward with our investigations of obstruction of justice, abuses of power, corruption, to defend the rule of law, which is our job,” House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler said Sunday at a news conference in New York. “It’s a broader mandate than the special prosecutor had.”

The strategy poses risks for the Democrats, particularly if voters prove tired of talk of investigating Trump now that Mueller has completed his work. In addition, the probes could overshadow their agenda, particularly on issues like health care that helped the party take back the House in 2018.

White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders called the Mueller report a “two-year waste of taxpayer time and dollars” in an appearance Monday on NBC’s “Today” program. “We are all very glad it’s over and we can move forward and focus on things that really matter,” she said.

Within an hour of Attorney General William Barr delivering a summary of Mueller’s report to Congress, Nadler said his panel will call the attorney general to testify about “very concerning discrepancies and decisions at the department” in its interpretation of Mueller’s findings, particularly the decision not to pursue an obstruction of justice prosecution.

‘More Questions’

Barr’s “conclusions raise more questions than they answer given the fact that Mueller uncovered evidence that in his own words does not exonerate the president” on obstruction, Nadler said.

Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani said on Fox Monday morning that Americans should breathe a “sigh of relief” at Mueller’s report.

“It’s quite clear that this group was hardly a group of Trump fans,” Giuliani said during n appearance Monday on Fox News. “It was thorough and it was conducted by people who had a bias to get him.”

Another Trump lawyer, Jay Sekulow, said on MSNBC, “It’s very hard to complain when you’ve got this letter from the Department of Justice.”

Investigations in the Democratic-controlled House stretch across six committees, including Nadler’s Judiciary panel along with the Intelligence, Financial Services and Oversight Committees. The topics for investigation include alleged public corruption, presidential abuses of power, Trump’s banking relationships, his tax returns and efforts to quash embarrassing stories about the president in coordination with the National Enquirer.

One benefit for Democrats is that it may ease pressure for now from a faction of House members who’ve been pressing to begin impeachment proceedings. With polls showing most of the public didn’t support impeaching the president even before Mueller’s findings, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had been trying to tamp down that talk. Barr’s description of Mueller’s report as finding no criminality makes her caution appear savvy.

Political Attack

Republicans dismiss the House investigations as a fall-back strategy long planned in case the Russian collusion narrative collapsed, as it did, under Mueller’s conclusions. They accuse Democrats of undertaking a wide-ranging congressional fishing expedition simply to wound Trump politically heading into the 2020 elections.

The House Judiciary panel’s top Republican, Doug Collins of Georgia, said Sunday he hopes Nadler “recognizes that what may be political fodder for Democrats may not be good for our country.”

Top Oversight Committee Republican Jim Jordan of Ohio added, “I hope this will put an end to the partisan and political investigations in Congress aimed at undermining President Trump.”

Democrats argue that oversight of the executive branch is a basic and important congressional role.

Previous Probes

“Apparently the Republican definition of oversight is harassment,” responded Representative Gerry Connolly of Virginia, chair of the Oversight subcommittee on government operations. “And that’s a brand new definition.”

Connolly pointed to multiple, sustained investigations undertaken by Republicans when they controlled the House and Senate and Democrat Barack Obama was in the White House.

Those cited by Connolly include the long-running probes of the deadly 2012 attacks on a U.S. outpost in Benghazi, Libya, and scrutiny of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server, as well as investigations into whether the Internal Revenue Service targeted conservative or GOP-aligned political groups.

“If you’re going to be a phony, at least be sincere about it,” said Connolly of Republican complaints about politically motivated Democratic congressional oversight.

‘Fight and Win’

However, there was a political element to those investigations. Then-House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy boasted on Fox News in 2015 that the lengthy Benghazi investigation of Clinton, who went on to be the Democrats’ 2016 presidential nominee, was part of a “strategy to fight and win” by portraying her as untrustworthy. He said Clinton’s poll numbers dropped as a result.

Even before Barr’s letter on Sunday, Democrats were underscoring that they will fight — in court if necessary — to get Mueller’s full report, including its underlying documents. They say that material will help their probes.

“It will greatly facilitate our own investigation not to have to reinvent the wheel,”said Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, whose panel will be looking into any foreign influence over Trump. He said it would be “enormously time-consuming, and not entirely possible,” to retrace all of Mueller’s steps.

He, like other Democrats, called for public release of the entire Mueller report.

“I trust Mueller’s prosecutorial judgment, but the country must see the evidence,” Schiff said in a tweet.

Close Scrutiny

Schiff’s committee and other panels also are planning to hold public hearings to scrutinize Trump’s administration, and his personal business and finances, daring Trump to fight turning over documents and other material.

The House Judiciary Committee, which has jurisdiction over impeachment, has already sent out 81 requests for documents from the Trump administration, his family, associates, businesses and other entities. And that’s likely just the start of the demands for Trump-related materials.

Nadler said the focus won’t be limited to impeachable crimes and misdemeanors. Along with Intelligence and Judiciary, the Oversight and Reform, Financial Services, Foreign Affairs and Ways and Means committees also are pursuing Trump-related investigations and hearings.

For Trump’s allies and supporters, the continuing investigations may turn into a rallying point.

“Democrats took us on a frantic, chaotic, conspiracy-laden roller coaster for two years, alleging wrongdoing where there was none,” said Trump’s 2020 campaign manager Brad Parscale. “Their dirty tricks have not ended. Even today Democrats have picked up the disgraceful mantle of investigating, obstructing, and destroying the will of the American people at any cost.”

“They failed once and they will fail again,” he said.

(Updates with Sanders, Giuliani quotes starting in fifth paragraph.)

–With assistance from Erik Wasson and Terrence Dopp.

To contact the reporter on this story: Billy House in Washington at bhouse5@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Joe Sobczyk at jsobczyk@bloomberg.net, Laurie Asséo, Joshua Gallu

0

CNN Zucker: No Regrets… (THE MEDIA IS THE ENEMY)

NEW YORK, NY - MARCH 15: President of CNN Jeff Zucker attends the grand opening of phase one of the Hudson Yards development on the West Side of Midtown Manhattan, March 15, 2019 in New York City. Four towers, including residential, commercial, and retail space, and a large public art …

By Joshua Caplan

CNN Worldwide president Jeff Zucker is pushing back against critics accusing the news network of being one of the chief propagators of a debunked Trump-Russia conspiracy theory after special counsel Robert Mueller cleared the president’s 2016 campaign of alleged collusion with the Kremlin.

In an interview with the New York Times, Zucker said he was “entirely comfortable” with CNN’s Trump-Russia coverage and suggested it was entirely appropriate to give near around-the-clock-coverage due to the story’s magnitude. “We are not investigators. We are journalists, and our role is to report the facts as we know them, which is exactly what we did,” the CNN chief wrote in an email. “A sitting president’s own Justice Department investigated his campaign for collusion with a hostile nation. That’s not enormous because the media says so. That’s enormous because it’s unprecedented.”

According to a four-page summary of Mueller’s findings written by the Justice Department, investigators found no evidence President Trump’s campaign “conspired or coordinated” with Russia to influence the election.

Zucker neglected to mention CNN’s steady stream of conspiracy-theory punditry and several stories which proved demonstrably false.

Last December, CNN congressional correspondent Manu Raju reported that Wikileaks emailed Donald Trump Jr. access to information nearly two weeks prior to their public release. However, the network failed to verify the email’s date — September 14th, 2016 — by which time the emails had already been released. In June, CNN reported former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci was being investigated for meeting with a Russian banker ahead of President Trump’s inauguration. Scaramucci denied the claim and CNN eventually apologized for its inaccurate report. CNN Executive editor Lex Haris, editor Eric Lichtblau, and journalist Thomas Frank resigned in shame over the story.

Further, CNN claimed in July that Michael Cohen, President Trump’s personal lawyer, was prepared to tell special counsel investigators that the president possesses advanced knowledge of the Trump Tower meeting between his son, Donald Trump Jr. and a Russia lawyer, and others. Cohen’s lawyer, Lanny Davis, later told CNN had “mixed up” its facts and denied claims that Cohen had any such knowledge about the meeting.

Over the course of the Mueller probe, CNN gave a platform to Trump-Russia collusion pushers such as Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Washington Post opinion writer Max Boot. For example, appearing February 19th on CNN’s State of the Union, Schiff, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, claimed that there is “compelling” evidence in “plain sight” of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government.

“You can see evidence in plain sight on the issue of collusion, pretty compelling evidence. Now, there’s a difference between seeing evidence of collusion and being able to prove a criminal conspiracy beyond a reasonable doubt,” Schiff told host Dana Bash.

In 2017, an undercover investigator for Project Veritas filmed CNN Supervising Producer John Bonifield saying that the Russia conspiracy theory was “mostly bullshit” and the network was promoting it so heavily — without real evidence — “because it’s ratings.”

0

Blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑