Transition into Trump

[Franny]

I wish I would have grabbed the article I saw yesterday on Barr's announcement that he found no reason to prosecute the Clintons or the Clinton foundations. Anyone with a few hours to spend looking into those foundations would find enough to see at least some of the most obvious corruption. What, really, did we think when he was appointed? He has been an insider and fixer for decades.

So I went looking and found only two articles. My apologies for the first, it's not a good article, it's one of two I turned up in a short time. However, it does give enough information, with a sarcastic snarl, to let readers know that nothing shady is going on with the Clintons.

The second article will be posted below and is referenced in the first, but it's also light on information.


Clintons skate again! Bill Barr takes another dive

Exclusive: Larry Klayman zings 'cowardly' AG after ending of Hillary probe

By Larry Klayman
Published January 10, 2020 at 7:18pm

In the political and military turmoil if not madness over the killing of Iranian terrorist Quds commander Qassem Soleimani, as well as the stalled Pelosi impeachment caper, our compromised and do-nothing U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) – now run by that overweight clone of former Attorney General Jeffrey Beauregard Sessions, a neutered elephant going by the name of William "Bill" Barr – predictably and quietly let it be known this week that Barr would not bring charges against Hillary Clinton, or for that matter any Clinton, over alleged corruption at the Clinton Foundation. To me and other seasoned "special ops legal veterans" of the Washington, D.C., corrupt swamp, infested with dishonest reptilians of both major political parties, this came as no surprise. Not only are the "Clinton Gang of Three" – Hillary, Bill and their equally criminally minded daughter, all directors of the Clinton Foundation – a protected species of the capital's so-called law enforcement establishment, they are even more off limits than even the desert tortoises that roam over my client Cliven Bundy's ranch at Bunkerville, Nevada. Like the rest of the privileged, elitist beautiful people who reside along the Potomac, they can do as they please – in particular take bribes and steal with impunity.

The Washington Post, a newspaper not coincidentally represented by Williams & Connelly, whose lawyers such as David Kendall also represent the Clintons, was the first to leak the latest dive by our worthless attorney general and his equally worthless DOJ. Here is what the Post gleefully and sarcastically reported Thursday, which report was not picked up widely in the aftermath of the Iranian shootdown of a Ukrainian airliner, killing all on board.

Reported the Post: "A Justice Department inquiry launched more than two years ago to mollify conservatives clamoring for more investigations of Hillary Clinton has effectively ended with no tangible results, and current and former law enforcement officials said they never expected the effort to produce much of anything.

"John Huber, the U.S. Attorney in Utah, was tapped in November 2017 by then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions to look into concerns raised by President Trump and his allies in Congress that the FBI had not fully pursued cases of possible corruption at the Clinton Foundation and during Clinton's time as secretary of state, when the U.S. government decided not to block the sale of a company called Uranium One.

"… The effective conclusion of his investigation, with no criminal charges or other known impacts, is likely to roil some in the GOP who had hoped the prosecutor would vindicate their long-held suspicions about a political rival."

TRENDING: Video catches Ilhan Omar giggling as U.S. Iraq War deaths are discussed

Years ago, I filed a racketeering lawsuit that included as one of the Clinton defendants the Clinton Foundation. The lawyer who represented the foundation not coincidentally became one of the top prosecutors of Special Counsel Robert Mueller in his now infamous Russian collusion investigation. Her name is Jeannie Rhee, and she was also instrumental in threatening to indict my brave client Dr. Jerome Corsi in this witch hunt, if Jerry would not agree to lie and implicate the president in Russian collusion. It regrettably came as no surprise to me that my racketeering lawsuit was dismissed, as it was supposedly randomly assigned to a Clinton-appointed federal judge, the Honorable Donald Middlebrooks, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida.

But, to the contrary, when President Trump's own Justice Department, run by someone who has been billed by the confused likes of Sean Hannity of Fox News as the equivalent of a "legal messiah," acts no differently than a politicized Clinton judicial appointee, this underscores what We the People are up against these days.

The rest of the article is not too relevant to the topic but can be read at the above link.

[Franny]

Justice Dept. winds down Clinton-related inquiry once championed by Trump. It found nothing of consequence.

By
Devlin Barrett and
Matt Zapotosky

Jan. 9, 2020 at 1:56 p.m. HST

A Justice Department inquiry launched more than two years ago to mollify conservatives clamoring for more investigations of Hillary Clinton has effectively ended with no tangible results, and current and former law enforcement officials said they never expected the effort to produce much of anything.

John Huber, the U.S. attorney in Utah, was tapped in November 2017 by then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions to look into concerns raised by President Trump and his allies in Congress that the FBI had not fully pursued cases of possible corruption at the Clinton Foundation and during Clinton’s time as secretary of state, when the U.S. government decided not to block the sale of a company called Uranium One.

As a part of his review, Huber examined documents and conferred with federal law enforcement officials in Little Rock who were handling a meandering probe into the Clinton Foundation, people familiar with the matter said. Current and former officials said that Huber has largely finished and found nothing worth pursuing — though the assignment has not formally ended and no official notice has been sent to the Justice Department or to lawmakers, these people said.

The effective conclusion of his investigation, with no criminal charges or other known impacts, is likely to roil some in the GOP who had hoped the prosecutor would vindicate their long-held suspicions about a political rival. Trump, though, has largely shifted his focus to a different federal prosecutor tapped to do a separate, special investigation: U.S. attorney in Connecticut John Durham, who Attorney General William P. Barr assigned last year to explore the origins of the FBI’s 2016 probe into possible coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia.

U.S. Attorney for Utah John Huber speaks with Immigration and Customs Enforcement acting director Thomas Homan by his side during a news briefing at the White House in June 2017. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

U.S. Attorney for Utah John Huber speaks with Immigration and Customs Enforcement acting director Thomas Homan by his side during a news briefing at the White House in June 2017. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

That FBI investigation was being supervised by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III in late 2017, when Trump and his supporters were pressuring senior law enforcement officials to appoint a second special counsel to pursue Clinton.

“Everybody is asking why the Justice Department (and FBI) isn’t looking into all of the dishonesty going on with Crooked Hillary and the Dems,” the president tweeted at the time.

Sessions did not appoint a second special counsel, but weeks later sent a letter to Huber telling him to “review” a wide array of issues related to Clinton. They included the Clinton Foundation and Uranium One matters, along with the FBI’s handling of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of state and alleged leaks by former FBI director James B. Comey. At the time, Sessions was facing persistent public and private criticism from Trump, who was upset over his recusal from the Russia probe.

“Your recommendations should include whether any matters not currently under investigation warrants the opening of an investigation, whether any matters currently under investigation require further resources or further investigation, and whether any matters would merit the appointment of a Special Counsel,” Sessions wrote.

Sessions tasks U.S. Attorney to review FBI actions in Clinton cases

A spokeswoman for Huber referred questions to Justice Department headquarters, where a spokeswoman declined to comment.

Conservative lawmakers, particularly then-Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), who was chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, and members of the Freedom Caucus, were initially encouraged by Huber’s assignment, seeing it as a sign that Clinton faced new legal jeopardy. Huber was a prosecutor with bipartisan credentials — having been named the U.S. attorney first by President Barack Obama before he was retained in the Trump administration.

But from the start, senior officials inside the Justice Department viewed Huber’s task as unlikely to lead to anything of significance beyond appeasing those angry lawmakers and the president.

“We didn’t expect much of it, and neither did he,” said one person familiar with the matter, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity because of persistent political sensitivities connected to the 2016 election. “And as time went on, a lot of people just forgot about it.”

A spokesman for Sessions declined to comment.

Clinton and her family have been subjected to significant law enforcement and other scrutiny over the years — though the various probes have mostly delivered reputational blows, rather than legal ones. When she ran against Trump in 2016, the FBI investigated her use of a private email server to determine whether she had mishandled classified information when she was secretary of state. Officials ultimately determined the case should be closed without charges.

The State Department more recently concluded a multiyear probe of its own into the matter, but concluded there was no systemic or deliberate mishandling of classified information by employees.

The Clinton family foundation has separately faced investigation over the years on vague corruption allegations, though so far those probes have not produced any charges.

Huber’s work has been distinct from a number of sensitive investigations into politically fraught cases, including Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s probes of the FBI’s handling of the Trump campaign investigation, and the FBI investigation into how Clinton used the private email server. Those two investigations resulted in lengthy reports documenting FBI missteps and failures.

Huber’s assignment was separate from the ongoing investigation overseen by Durham, and Justice Department officials believe the Connecticut U.S. attorney’s work will be far more consequential. Durham is weighing whether to charge a former FBI lawyer for altering an internal email that misled other officials on a key fact related to surveillance applications to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. He is also looking into other issues surrounding FBI and CIA activities during the Russia investigation, according to people familiar with the matter.

Barr says FBI probe of Trump campaign was ‘a travesty’

Huber’s tasking was nebulous from the start. Some people involved in the matters he was said to be reviewing expressed surprise that they were not contacted by the U.S. attorney, and wondered privately what he was doing.

Some in the Justice Department considered him more reviewer than investigator. He would get involved, people familiar with the matter said, only if other cases were not being handled properly.

By the time Mueller filed his lengthy report last spring, Huber’s work was largely done, these people said.

When Trump pushed Sessions out of the Justice Department in November 2018, Matthew G. Whitaker became acting attorney general. Whitaker, according to people familiar with the conversations, tried to push Huber to be more aggressive in his work, but Huber felt he had looked at everything he could and that there was not much more to do, these people said.

Whitaker did not respond to messages seeking comment.

After Barr was confirmed as attorney general early last year, the department had still said nothing publicly about the result of Huber’s work, focusing instead on releasing Mueller’s findings.

Barr, who served as attorney general during the George H.W. Bush administration as well, was among the conservative voices in Washington who had previously suggested there was possible criminal wrongdoing in the Uranium One matter, though he tempered those comments during his confirmation.

Republicans questioned whether there was misconduct in the U.S. government’s decision to not block a 2010 acquisition in which Russia’s atomic energy agency, Rosatom, acquired a controlling stake in Uranium One, a Toronto-based company. The deal meant that Rosatom received rights to about 20 percent of the uranium extraction capacity in the United States.

That transaction had a tenuous connection to Clinton, who was running the State Department at the time.

Under obscure government rules, the deal required approval from a multiagency board because it involved giving a foreign government control of an American business commodity with national security implications. The board, called the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or CFIUS, is composed of representatives from nine agencies, including the State Department. Clinton herself was never on the CFIUS board.

In rare cases, CFIUS can decide to intervene and block a corporate merger or acquisition if the board feels the risk to U.S. national security is too great.
Conservatives questioned whether Clinton may have manipulated CFIUS to let the acquisition proceed, but current and former officials have denied that, saying such a decision was handled well below the level of the secretary of state.

Conservatives also demanded an aggressive investigation into whether wealthy individuals and governments may have made donations to the Clinton Foundation in the hopes of getting favors from the State Department. That investigation became the subject of escalating tensions within the FBI and Justice Department in 2016, and was restarted after the election, but has not gained traction, according to people familiar with the matter.

[TomKat]

Posted by edina (here)

Posted by TomKat (here)

Posted by edina (here)
He said the one thing that surprised him about Trump was how great a listener he was. I've heard this from many others, every day people on the street to people in leadership positions in government and companies.
It's the first thing he does when he decides to tackle an issue, he brings in people who are affected from all walks of life and listens.

I have noticed, when he bombed Syria and now with this recent assassination, the US news media takes a respite from the We Hate Trump Show, and treats him like Mr. President. They seem to be trying to Pavlov him, with positive and negative reinforcement, to get with the neocon programme.

Hi TomKat, have you watched the interview?

I agree, the media has been used as a stick/carrot for Presidents, Prime Ministers, people in all sorts of leadership positions, for a very long time.

I posted the above interview thinking about people who may be interested.

Not interested enough, I guess.

[edina]

The World Is Watching

[edina]

Posted by edina (here)


The World Is Watching

I had came across these tweets a couple of days ago.
This guy was talking about Trump teaching himself languages so he could deal better with Korea and Iran.

https://twitter.com/COsweda/status/1215819712229064705

https://twitter.com/COsweda/status/1215821170575982594

[edina]

Posted by TomKat (here)

Posted by edina (here)

Posted by TomKat (here)

Posted by edina (here)
He said the one thing that surprised him about Trump was how great a listener he was. I've heard this from many others, every day people on the street to people in leadership positions in government and companies.
It's the first thing he does when he decides to tackle an issue, he brings in people who are affected from all walks of life and listens.

I have noticed, when he bombed Syria and now with this recent assassination, the US news media takes a respite from the We Hate Trump Show, and treats him like Mr. President. They seem to be trying to Pavlov him, with positive and negative reinforcement, to get with the neocon programme.

Hi TomKat, have you watched the interview?

I agree, the media has been used as a stick/carrot for Presidents, Prime Ministers, people in all sorts of leadership positions, for a very long time.

I posted the above interview thinking about people who may be interested.

Not interested enough, I guess.

TomKat, I wanted to come back and thank you for your honesty.

It's refreshing.

No rationalization to justify your disinterest, or accusations/attempts to demean others for their interest.

Just a pure, clean statement.

Beautiful!!!

[edina]

This was a topic of discussion all over Twitter last night.

I didn't check Twitter trending to see if it had been suppressed, or not.

That said, I think it's spilled over into public awareness to the point that it can't be suppressed in the western media the way it has been.

I read AP, Google Trends, and Reuters, in the morning to get a feel, or quick pulse-check, of what's showing up. Often times, I'm several days, sometimes weeks, ahead of hearing about news before it starts filtering down into other platforms.

Sometimes, news that shows up in the Legacy wires, never makes it to the news media outlets.

I also feel better getting news that is not overly emotionally hyped in one direction or another. (Although it is at times still skewed.)

This was the featured article in AP News this morning:

Iran braces for protests after admitting plane shootdown

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran’s security forces deployed in large numbers across the capital on Sunday, expecting more protests after its Revolutionary Guard admitted to accidentally shooting down a passenger plane at a time of soaring tensions with the United States.

[Chester]

I am learning from you fast, edina... a very good way to try and get the "less distorted" possible truths. Interesting that I went to the article you linked in post #4847 and I see the headline now reads - Defying police, Iranians protest over plane shootdown.

[Chester]

Steve Bannon: Trump should delay State of the Union until impeachment trial ends

Bannon points out how Trump's economic approaches to China and Iran have been successful.

Bannon refers to Hong Kong, Tehran, and Taipei highlighting the public's demands for "freedom and democracy."

The rejection of the "permanent political class's foreign policy of appeasement"... and more

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=TmQPi7dfvqY

[edina]

I watched this short clip today, about the coming announcement tomorrow of Trump's Middle East Peace plan.
https://www.c-span.org/video/?468608...office-meeting

I'm interested to see what is announced and how it plays out.

I started reading reports about this potential plan in the last week, in Reuters, and was surprised it wasn't getting much MSM/Cable news coverage.

Today, it is getting more coverage since the announcement is due tomorrow.

(Intuitively, I've been getting that there will be peace in the Middle East, for several months now, so... we'll see if that intuition is accurate.)

Thinking about this, I remembered an earlier interview I watched with Van Jones and Jared Kushner.

In this interview, Van wanted to pick Jared's brain, because he wanted to learn how Jared was able to build bi-partisan support for the prison reform that Jared and Van worked on together.

Midway in this interview, Jared answers Van questions about how this would work in the Middle East peace process.

Jared Kushner on Trump, Mideast policy (Full interview) | CITIZEN by CNN (Oct 2018)

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=td9qhhOJp2U

[edina]

President Trump Delivers Joint Remarks with the Prime Minister of the State of Israel

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=xmJSuYKS0SM

I've updated with the White House video from the earlier live stream.
Remarks posted at WhiteHouse.gov
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings...nt-statements/

Peace to Prosperity website
DOWNLOAD THE FULL PLAN

[Chester]

Billions can't buy this kind of advertising...

[edina]

Posted by Sammy (here)
Billions can't buy this kind of advertising...

This is kind of fun...

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=0whniAAwgy4

and then the following video...

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=K6k1p9AynpE

I wonder what the agent driving the President's limo thought about this?

[Chester]

Looks like two left on PA public threads where a positive view (considering the alternatives) to Trump are expressed, Edina... you and me. I do see one "guest" but that may just be a member that wishes to hide their user name.

My family, my loved ones and friends... and I, are measurably better off today than three years ago and for more than a decade for that matter.

As synchronicity goes, I just saw this on Fox Business news and so I looked for it on Youtube.

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=loBe0WXtts8

[Chester]

I saw the following comment below the Reagan video...

posted by - Constitutionally Speaking
8 years ago
@TheNerdywhitepeople Could you explain to me just how it involves "walking on the backs" of mid to lower class people?

I decided to respond -

This comment doesn't make sense as the power of a single vote is equal no matter who casts it. That's why we have voting. Mid and lower class people's votes make a difference. Also, votes are color blind. Striving to make it about class or race (or any other "identity label") exposes the fact that the commentator knows they can't win over votes debating the issues.

[Chester]

George Soros calls for Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg to be removed from Facebook because they are 'helping Trump get re-elected' by not banning political ads

Read it all HERE

[Chester]

Today's Tom Sawyer

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=auLBLk4ibAk

[edina]

Posted by Sammy (here)
George Soros calls for Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg to be removed from Facebook because they are 'helping Trump get re-elected' by not banning political ads

Read it all HERE

I think Soros is beginning to feel the pressure.

[Curiosity]

I have serious concerns about political ads and the credibility or honesty of them.
I'm tired of researching and fact checking. I'm tired of finding then to be full of lies and misleading, in a "sneaky" manner. I'm tired of correcting people when they re-post or repeat talking points from misleading or misinformation propaganda from stuff that's been proven false over years and even decades.
That stuff still circulates today and I don't know if it's trolls or just new gullible uninformed individuals falling for that crap and sharing it on social media.
I've seen stuff that was proven false more than a decade ago re-circulating, but with a different candidates name on it. Be it your favorite politician with misleading hype or a politician you don't like with misleading smear tactics, or a combo of both. But the problem is if it sounds good to you you eat up what ever you're being fed without question.
Now we have new politically misleading propaganda popping up everywhere on social media platforms.
The more serious problem with this is you go to the voting booth misinformed. Then when the candidate you voted for gets elected and doesn't come close to doing what you expected, you get disappointed.
But who's fault is it?
It's your fault for not researching and fact checking of such sensitive and critical information that influenced you to make a decision the will affect everyone in the USA.
But really, you can't take all the blame.
The blame starts with the dishonest deceitful politicians and the platforms that enable them.

So what 's the reason/s some platforms have banned political adds and some are being pressured to follow suit?
They are not banning or being asked to ban one party or the other, it's all or none.

"Internet political ads present entirely new challenges to civic discourse: machine learning-based optimization of messaging and micro-targeting, unchecked misleading information, and deep fakes. All at increasing velocity, sophistication, and overwhelming scale."
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/twitter...ed-2019-10-31/

[Curiosity]

https://www.politico.eu/article/face...itical-ad-ban/