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GEORGE PARRY:
“…Coming from Barr, a most measured and serious man, this explosive testimony portends a bleak future for all those FBI, Department of Justice, and intelligence community operatives who used their official positions and enormous — bordering on limitless — governmental powers to undermine the presidential campaign of Donald Trump, and, failing that, to undo the results of the 2016 election. So it is that Barr’s description of the possibility of such political surveillance as a “big deal” is understatement of the first order. As “big deals” go, the stakes couldn’t be any higher.
On cue, the Democrats and their wholly owned mainstream media subsidiary have tried to dull the impact of Barr’s testimony. One bedraggled party flak claimed on network television that, since Barr merely thought spying had occurred, he had not confirmed that it had really, truly and actually happened. And, resorting to the left’s default position on all things Trump, Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin has called for Barr’s impeachment. These unhinged responses to Barr’s testimony are similar to the type of desperate, fantasy-based gibberish you might expect from a barricaded man facing imminent death at the hands of a SWAT team. Clearly the left knows that, with Barr running the show, trouble is on the way.
Although Barr tried to avoid making any definitive statements about the ultimate outcome of the current and future investigations, he did let slip certain tidbits that should cause many sleepless nights throughout what we in the Justice Department used to call the Seat of Government. In that regard, Barr effectively stated that the investigation would be to determine whether the Obama administration had engaged in electronic surveillance of the opposing political party’s presidential campaign and candidate without a proper legal basis.
When Barr questioned whether the spying on the Trump campaign was “adequately predicated,” he was obviously talking about the unverified and salacious Steele dossier that was used to obtain FISA warrants to intercept the communications of Trump campaign associate Carter Page. Such an investigation will necessarily encompass the genesis of the DNC and Hillary Clinton campaign’s bought-and-paid-for opposition research that constitutes the basis of the dossier, and its knowing, dishonest, and illegal use by James Comey’s FBI and Loretta Lynch’s Department of Justice to deceive the FISA court into authorizing the electronic surveillance of Page and by extension all of the persons in or out of the Trump campaign with whom he communicated.
As we now know, in sworn testimony given in the United Kingdom, not even Christopher Steele would vouch for the dossier’s accuracy. And equally damaging, in testimony before Congress, FBI lawyer Lisa Page stated that, contrary to standard FBI procedure in counterintelligence operations, the Trump campaign, purportedly the target of Russian infiltration, had not been warned of the Kremlin’s nefarious efforts because the FBI did not deem the Steele dossier reliable enough to compel such a warning.
Page’s testimony sets up an irresistible line of inquiry. If the dossier was not reliable enough to justify a warning to Trump’s campaign about the Kremlin’s plot, how could it even remotely serve as the basis for obtaining FISA warrants to spy on the campaign? By her benighted testimony, Page has framed the issue nicely and invited a full vetting of who, what, where, when, why, and how the dossier was used to dupe the FISA court.
Barr also made clear that, beyond the FBI and Justice Department, the investigation will also be looking at “intelligence agencies.” This makes sense given that low level Trump campaign associates such as George Papadopoulos and Sam Clovis were approached by foreign operatives with CIA ties in an effort to plant the seeds of the Trump-Russia collusion illusion. As for the FBI, Barr made clear that, while he does not think that there is an “endemic” problem at that agency, he thinks that “there was probably a failure among a group of leaders there, at the upper echelon.”
No kidding.
And, of course, any investigation into the spying must logically and inexorably lead to the clandestine state-sponsored plot to unwind the 2016 election and remove President Trump from office. In short, the subject matter of any proper investigation will necessarily encompass the first attempted coup d’état in our nation’s history.
So here we are. After suffering through Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ comatose stewardship of the Justice Department, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s underhanded machinations, and Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s protracted rear guard action to protect the anti-Trump deep state conspirators, the day of reckoning is at hand. Attorney General Barr’s testimony portends a long overdue cleansing of the government temple the likes of which has never before happened in this country. This will be history in the making…”
Kimberley A. Strassel:
“…The most inadvertently honest reaction to Attorney General William Barr’s congressional testimony this week came from former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. Mr. Barr had bluntly called out the Federal Bureau of Investigation for “spying” on the Trump campaign in 2016. Mr. Clapper said that was both “stunning and scary.” Indeed.
No doubt a lot of former Obama administration and Hillary Clinton campaign officials, opposition guns for hire, and media members are stunned and scared that the Justice Department finally has a leader willing to address the FBI’s behavior in 2016. They worked very hard to make sure such an accounting never happened. Only in that context can we understand the frantic new Democratic-media campaign to tar the attorney general. . . .
Mr. Comey testified that the Trump probe was simply too sensitive for members of congressional intelligence committees to know about—an unbelievable statement given the heavy publicity he gave the investigation of Mrs. Clinton’s improper handling of classified information. Here’s a more plausible explanation: Mr. Comey and his crew have also testified that they were all convinced Mrs. Clinton would win the election. That would have meant that no politician other than the incoming Democratic president would have known the FBI had spied on the Trump team. Nor would the public. A Clinton presidency would have ensured no accountability.
Mr. Trump’s victory destroyed that scenario, and it became clear that the new Republican president would soon know that the former Democratic administration had surveilled his campaign on the basis of information from his rival. At that point two things happened. Neither was accidental, and both were aimed, again, at forestalling accountability.
First, Mr. Comey and other intelligence officials, including Mr. Clapper, engineered the public release of all the scandalous claims against Mr. Trump, to provide some cover. As liberal commentator Matt Taibbi notes in his new book, “Hate Inc.” Mr. Comey’s Jan. 6, 2017, briefing of the president-elect about the dossier was a classic Washington “trick.” It served as the “pretext” to get the details out, a “news hook” to allow the press to publish the dossier—with its salacious fictions about prostitutes and Moscow hotel rooms—and go wild.
Democrats used the furor in their successful push for a special counsel, which gave greater legitimacy to the FBI’s probe. The appointment of a special counsel also froze other oversight. Congress can’t have access to certain documents or ask witnesses certain questions, since that might interfere with the probe. The White House can’t demand answers, because that too would interfere. Mr. Trump’s adversaries got to hide behind Robert Mueller for nearly two years…”
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Patricia McCarthy:
“…At the hearing of the Oversight Committee on Tuesday, Attorney General William Barr was grilled about the Mueller report: when will it be released? Will they see an unredacted version? Has he (Barr) discussed it with the president? Etc. The questions were redundant, mostly stupid. All of those asked by the Democrats were accusatory. Since Special Counsel Robert Mueller announced there would be no charges of collusion against the president or anyone in or of his campaign, the Democrats have lost any semblance of sanity they may have had before Trump won the 2016 election. Since that day, the moment they were 100% certain that Hillary would become president, they have descended into a hell of their own making. They spend their days furiously angry, ready and willing to do anything to take Trump down and out. Since then (and before that day) they — “they” includes the mainstream media — have been determined to destroy the man. If the country must be damaged in the process, so be it. Our Democrats are willing to foment an invasion by third-world migrants (think Camp of the Saints) to prevent Trump from achieving his principal campaign promise, to control the border and the crisis of illegal immigration. That is how much they hate the fact that Trump is our president. That is how stupefied they have become, so much so that they are now a danger to us all.
When A.G. Barr stated he would be investigating the “spying” on the Trump campaign, the Democrats on the committee were shocked, truly stunned. How dare he suggest such a thing? These folks, for over two years, have had their heads deep in ostrich sand. They are apparently completely unaware, or pretend to be, of the massive amounts of actual proof that the Obama administration illegally attempted to eliminate Trump from the running by trying to plant its own spies in the campaign and surveil under prohibited pretexts. Part of this plan was to create and amass fake evidence to be used against him. As almost everyone knows by now, the “Russia Collusion” hoax was just that, a hoax, devised by persons with power in the FBI, the DOJ, the NSA and the Obama administration. Once Hillary lost the election, her minions, such as the disreputable Rob Mook, were right there to get the claim out that she lost because “the Russians hacked the election.” Yeah, right. No way. Not a chance. Did she know then that her supporters in the Obama administration, the FBI, and the DOJ had already implemented a stratagem to undo his victory? Probably. That would explain her leap to blame her loss on “the Russians.” Hillary is a callous, nasty piece of work.
Can these people, these Democrats on the Oversight Committee and those media narcissists who melted down after Barr uttered those few words on Wednesday, be as truly uniformed as they seem to be? Judging by their questions for A.G. Barr, and the media’s talking heads’ subsequent panic for the rest of the day, they are actually shocked there is gambling in Casablanca! Is it possible that they have not read a word of Gregg Jarrett’s book; Dan Bongino’s book; the multiple well researched columns of John Solomon, Sara Carter, Margot Cleveland, Jeff Carlson, Lee Smith, et. al.? Have they not bothered to read the numerous transcripts of closed-door interviews with the principals involved? Obviously not. Have they not heard even a snippet or two of Mark Levin’s radio and television programs, Limbaugh, Hannity, Larry Elder, and so many others over the past two years? Were they never even a little bit curious about all the information out there? While we conservatives can never escape their views, their mindsets, their anti-Americanism, they are thoroughly clueless about everything outside their purview. Most of the Democrats in Congress and the usual suspects in the mainstream media, it seems, have studiously avoided hearing, reading, learning anything that might obtrude upon their orange-man-bad mindset. They consider the work product of conservatives invalid without ever looking into it. They convince people that anything on Fox News is null and void. That is how close-minded the American left is today, all except those who are not, those who are leaving it. And on the horizon for them, Candace Owens’s Blexit movement is gaining steam, as is Brandon Straka’s Walk Away campaign. The Democrats should be afraid, very afraid. They deserve to lose those who are leaving their party.
It has for nearly two years been clear, proven beyond all doubt, that a self-important faction at the FBI and DOJ, with covert approval of then-president Obama, conspired to see that Trump would not be elected. Once he was, they amped up their plan to see that he would be removed from office. They embarked on their scheme to frame him, his family, friends and campaign staff for colluding with Russia. All along it was them, setting him up, planting spies, involving persons in the UK and Australia. That is how deceptive, how venal, these people are. And all along, only the Clinton campaign colluded with Russians. Only Clinton paid for fabricated “opposition research.” Mueller was hired to cover up their despicable conspiracy in which so many of his own pals were involved. As hard as he and his team of professional saboteurs tried, they found no provable evidence of collusion with Russians.
The facts are in. It was all a grand scam to deprive voters of their duly-elected President who these self-appointed tyrants could not abide. And the dems cannot accept the facts. They’ve been exposed. The truth is coming out, in dribs and drabs that will soon be a tsunami. The dems in Congress have embarrassed themselves over and over again; the Kavanaugh spectacle was a disgrace. Schiff, Swalwell, Nadler, Lieu, Pelosi, etc. They are all disgraceful, pretentious snobs who lack any intellectual prowess. That any of them can act as though there is no evidence of what is the most serious, egregious political scandal in American history is a very sad commentary. They have succumbed to Arthur Conan Doyles’s observation that “there is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.” Our leftists have allowed themselves to be deceived by a mountain of obvious facts. The nation has suffered tremendously for their crimes and history will judge them harshly…”
Remember when this guy was the media’s favorite anti-Trump hero?
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON:
“…For over six years, California has had a top marginal income-tax rate of 13.3 percent, the highest in the nation. About 150,000 households in a state of 40 million people now pay nearly half of the total annual state income tax.
The state legislature sold that confiscatory tax rate on the idea that it was a temporary fix and would eventually be phased out. No one believed that. California voters, about 40 percent of whom pay no state income taxes, naturally approved the extension of the high rate by an overwhelming margin.
California recently raised gas taxes by 40 percent and now has the second-highest gas taxes in the United States.
California has the ninth-highest combined state and local sales taxes in the country, but its state sales tax of 7.3 percent is America’s highest. As of April 1, California is now applying that high state sales tax to goods that residents buy online from out-of-state sellers.
In late 2017, the federal government capped state and local tax deductions at $10,000. For high earners in California, the change effectively almost doubled their state and local taxes…”
Seth Barrett Tillman:
“…Professor ZZZ asks: “[W]here [would] you put Trump?”
No new, major land war(s) in Asia—so Trump is ahead of LBJ.
No missile crisis risking an exchange of nuclear weapons with a superpower—so Trump is ahead of JFK.
No wars of national conquest—so Trump is ahead of Polk (Texas) and McKinley (Philippines, Cuba).
No move to war after foreign power made full, reasonable efforts to amicably settle reasons for dispute—so Trump is ahead of Madison (War of 1812). Under Madison, we burned down the capital of British North America (York/Toronto), and they returned the favor in Washington. So Trump beats Madison.
No wars against native American tribes—so Trump is ahead of [fill in the blank—many such presidents could be listed here].
No wars based on poor intelligence or to prop up foreign absolute monarchies—so Trump is ahead of both Bush I and Bush II.
Trump has not interned 100,000s of US citizens based on race—so Trump is ahead of FDR.
Trump has not allowed a U.S. state or territory to go into civil war and then allow its government to be hijacked by the brigands who engineered the civil war—so Trump is ahead of Buchanan (Bleeding Kansas).
I still don’t know why President Clinton blew up an aspirin factory or why Secretary Clinton permitted NATO forces and materiel to blow up Libya—so Trump probably comes out ahead of both of them too.
Trump is ahead of Woodrow Wilson: World War I, and! his resegregation of the federal civil service. I grant you that being ahead of Wilson is not saying much…but then, the nation survived Wilson, and no one today thinks of Wilson as having lowered the bar vis-a-vis future presidents. Professor ZZZ seems to be worried about this. He wrote: “Having a POTUS so publicly awful along those lines lowers the horrible bar so dramatically that we will pay for years to come.” Really?—Will we pay for it in years to come, or is this just a shabby slippery slope-type argument?
I cannot say I see much sense in Professor ZZZ’s references to Roy Cohn. Roy Cohn’s permanent claim to fame is his association with McCarthy and aggressive anticommunism. Trump, by contrast, has been criticized for being too close to Putin. It is not exactly the same; actually, the two are not alike at all.
If words and pretty speeches are the measure of a president, then Trump comes up short. The question is whether that is the correct standard for measuring presidents in a dangerous world…”
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Waters is the chairwoman of the House Financial Services Committee — the committee that regulates the banks.