Month: March 2019

Ed Driscoll strung this together.

BICOASTAL: Feds Charge Michael Avenatti with Extortion in NY, Embezzlement in CA. “Sources told The Wall Street Journal that Mark Geragos, the attorney for Jussie Smollett, is Avenatti’s co-conspirator.”

Talk about annals of leftist autophagy — Geragos is (was?) also Nike endorsee Colin Kaepernick’s attorney, — and is/was a CNN legal analyst:

Related: “Jussie Smollett Hires Michael Jackson’s Attorney Mark Geragos: All His Famous Past Clients” — from People magazine on Friday.

UPDATE: CNN Drops Mark Geragos After Legal Commentator Reported as Co-Conspirator in Avenatti Scheme.

The Media Research Center calculates that CNN alone gave Avenatti “74 appearances and adds that Avenattti made a total of 147 TV appearances over 10 weeks; that means CNN hosted more than half of his appearances ‘which almost certainly makes Avenatti the most ubiquitous guest in the network’s history.’”

MORE: Last year, CNN’s Brian Stelter touted Avenattti as a ‘serious’ contender for the 2020 presidential election.

Conrad Black:

“…The president and his family have endured merciless torment by the intellectually corrupt national media and the lawless opposition. His restraint at the end of the story has shown more taste than his enemies would have thought him capable of; he is owed an apology. All those who said there was clear evidence of Trump-Russia collusion, including dozens of congressional Democrats and scores of prominent political-media figures, should be shamed and ashamed. And the ringleaders in confecting this monstrous aggregation of defamatory lies should be legally punished, with the due process they tried to deny the nation’s leader. Attempts to drive a president from office on the basis of allegations of betrayal of the country that they knew to be false is as close as the United States has ever been to an attempted coup d’état. It is time for the legal system, which has ground slowly to a just verdict, to do the same to those responsible for this disgraceful episode. This must never happen again; not in America…”

Original

A short two-minute video for those of you in the media pitifully insisting that no media reckoning is needed and journalists performed beautifully, soberly and responsibly throughout this whole saga: https://t.co/PF5s2kTcYA

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) March 25, 2019

Kimberley A. Strassel:

Americans deserve a full accounting of the missteps of Comey and the FBI.

“…This is more than an exoneration. It’s a searing indictment of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, as well as a reminder of the need to know the story behind the bureau’s corrosive investigation.

Mr. Mueller’s report likely doesn’t put it that way, but it’s the logical conclusion of his no-collusion finding. The FBI unleashed its powers on a candidate for the office of the U.S. presidency, an astonishing first. It did so on the incredible grounds that the campaign had conspired to aid a foreign government. And it used the most aggressive tools in its arsenal—surveillance of U.S. citizens, secret subpoenas of phone records and documents, even human informants.

The wreckage is everywhere. The nation has been engulfed in conspiracy theories for years. A presidency was hemmed in by the threat of a special counsel. Citizens have gone to jail not for conspiracy, but for after-the-fact interactions with Mr. Mueller’s team. Dozens more have spent enormous amounts of money and time defending their reputations.

None of this should ever have happened absent highly compelling evidence—from the start—of wrongdoing. Yet from what we know, the FBI operated on the basis of an overheard conversation of third-tier campaign aide George Papadopoulos, as well as a wild “dossier” financed by the rival presidential campaign. Mr. Mueller’s no-collusion finding amounts to a judgment that there never was any evidence. The Papadopoulos claim was thin, the dossier a fabrication.

Which is all the more reason Americans now deserve a full accounting of the missteps of former FBI Director James Comey and his team—in part so that this never happens again. That includes the following: What “evidence” did the FBI have in totality? What efforts did the bureau take to verify it? Did it corroborate anything before launching its probe? What role did political players play? How aware was the FBI that it was being gulled into a dirty-trick operation, and if so, how did it justify proceeding? How intrusive were the FBI methods? And who was harmed?..”
Original

PORTSMOUTH, Va. (March 15, 2019) The port side anchor of the aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush (CVN 77) is lowered into a dry dock for maintenance.