Fox’s Long Time Fascistic Chris Matthews Caught Selling Falsehood?

Joe DiGenova: Fox News’s Report About Me Working On The Ukraine Matter “Off The Books” Was Absolutely False

by ALLAHPUNDIT  at HotAir

I don’t know. If you compare what Chris Wallace said yesterday to what diGenova is saying today, it sounds like the Fox report was true — except for one important detail, if diGenova is to be believed.

SEE ALSO: Yikes: Now deepfakes are getting the voices right too

Here’s what Wallace said:

RECOMMENDED

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  Chris Wallace: Rudy had help in trying to get dirt on Biden from Ukraine, and it’s a name Fox News viewers will recognize

“Fox News has learned the president’s private attorney, Rudy Giuliani, was not acting alone in trying to get dirt from Ukrainian officials on 2020 rival Joe Biden. Two high-profile Washington lawyers, Joe diGenova, who’s been a fierce critic of the Democratic investigation, and his wife Victoria Toensing were working with Giuliani to get oppo research on Biden. According to a top U.S. official, all three were working off the books apart from the administration. The only person in government who knows what they were doing is President Trump.”

Pretty straightforward. Rudy wanted oppo from Ukraine on Biden, diGenova was helping, and they were doing it unofficially but with Trump’s knowledge. Now here’s diGenova in an interview this morning with WBAL, calling the report “absolutely false.”

“While [Giuliani] was looking into [evidence in Ukraine that people tried to frame Trump with the Russia collusion story], he came across information about Hunter Biden and Joe Biden that came up concerning the threat to hold back money and that Biden’s son had received bribes. The prosecutor involved in that was the one that Biden had fired.”

“He asked us – Rudy – he asked us to represent any of the Ukrainian whistleblowers who wanted to provide information to U.S. law enforcement about what they had heard and learned,” diGenova said.

“They were fearful to come to U.S. law enforcement because the United States ambassador in the Ukraine at that time had threatened these individuals not to give information because, as she, the ambassador, put it, Trump was going to be impeached and Biden was going to be president.”

“The trip to Ukraine was cancelled,” diGenova said. “No-one ever went there. No-one was ever talked to. We never had an opportunity, our law firm, to represent any whistleblowers. Any conversations we may have had with anybody prior to that time obviously are privileged. We were never representing the President of the United States. Mr Giuliani was. So, that’s the story.”

So Giuliani did solicit diGenova’s help in producing Ukraine dirt on Biden. And diGenova implies that some sort of work was done in the early stages of that project but he can’t discuss it because those chats would be privileged. What about Wallace’s claim that this was all being done with Trump’s knowledge? “Totally false,” diGenova said, “The President was not involved with any of this.” Here’s what Rudy said when he was asked about this today:

On Monday morning, Giuliani told The Daily Beast that “Joe is absolutely right,” and that President Trump “didn’t know about this at this point. I don’t think I’d even briefed him yet [on this specific matter]… They weren’t working on the investigation with me. I did the investigation with my people. This was not a matter that was brought to the president” while the trip was being planned.

Giuliani said that he had planned to bring “Vicki” Toensing with him on the aborted Ukraine trip earlier this year, to offer her services to Ukrainian individuals as independent counsel. When asked if he had told the president about any of this after the trip fell apart, Trump’s personal attorney said “I’m not going to tell you what I told the president” and cited privilege.

So it sounds like Rudy brought diGenova and Toensing in on the effort early, on his own initiative and without Trump’s knowledge — “off the books,” as it were, just as Rudy’s informal outreach to Ukraine was. Some preliminary work was done but then D&T dropped the matter for whatever reason before it reached the stage of them visiting Ukraine. Trump may have been made aware of their involvement after the fact, though; Giuliani is notably coy about whether POTUS was told of diGenova’s and Toensing’s early participation later on. It would also stand to reason that “The only person in government who knows what they were doing is President Trump,” as Wallace claimed. If all of this were being done “off the books” via private attorneys, only Rudy’s client, Donald Trump, would know the extent of their involvement.

In fact, Rudy didn’t need to tell POTUS that diGenova and Toensing were involved in the early stages of the Ukraine outreach. Back in May, when news first broke into public view about Giuliani’s interest in Ukraine, the New York Times reported the couple’s connection to the matter. Quote: “Mr. Giuliani has been working on the effort with other allies of Mr. Trump whose involvement has not been previously reported, including Victoria Toensing, a lawyer who was named last year, along with her husband, as part of the legal team representing the president in the special counsel’s investigation. The appointment was rescinded less than one week later amid concerns about conflicts of interest, but Mr. Trump’s legal team suggested that Ms. Toensing and her husband, Joseph E. diGenova, would assist the president ‘in other legal matters.’”

All of this jibes with what Wallace reported. Where Wallace went wrong — again, if diGenova is to be believed — was in not making clear that diGenova’s and Toensing’s work on the Ukraine matter allegedly ended early, without the two visiting Ukraine or representing any Ukrainian whistleblowers. DiGenova claims that Fox was informed of that but declined to mention it, which amounted to overselling the two’s involvement. All Wallace will say (for now) is that Fox stands by its story. Hmmm.

Even if you take the most diGenova-friendly view of all this, though, it remains a mystery why he was offered to Tucker Carlson’s audience last week as a disinterested legal expert countering Andrew Napolitano’s opinion of whether Trump’s actions were criminal. By his own admission, he was asked by the president’s personal lawyer to represent Ukrainians who might have information on Biden. DiGenova never claims that he turned Rudy down either; to the contrary, the Times story from May says Toensing was working with him, at least for a time. Why was the conflict of interest not mentioned to Fox viewers? That was the whole reason Fox’s news division broke this scoop, I assume — to expose diGenova’s former work for Giuliani on this matter while he plays dispassionate pundit about it on primetime. Maybe that’s why Wallace stands by the story.

A Case for a Trump Landslide in 2020!

Today in American History

Where Lincoln Stood on Slavery

by Carl M. Cannon at realclearpolitics:

August 22, 2019

Seven years ago today, as the presidential election contest between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney entered the home stretch, Vice President Joe Biden spoke at three events in Detroit. Biden was in the news that week because of an intemperate assertion that Republicans desired to put African Americans “back in chains.”

Such rhetorical excess is a hallmark of our time, especially when Democrats discuss race, but Biden’s infelicity put me in mind of a time a century and a half earlier when a Republican president was publicly challenged within his own party to do more to free human beings who were literally in chains.

The unsolicited advice to Abraham Lincoln came in the form of an open letter in a newspaper published by Horace Greeley. Although remembered today mostly for a phrase he didn’t utter (“Go west, young man”), in his own time Greeley was known as an ardent social reformer, journalist, and politician. He came relatively late to the cause of abolition, but once he did, Greeley was all-in. Even as Lincoln pushed reluctant Union Gen. George B. McClellan to press the fight against the Confederates, Lincoln was hearing it from his other flank. Greeley’s New York Tribune published an editorial headlined “Prayer of Twenty Millions,” in which Lincoln was told that many of those who had voted for him in the 1860 election were now “sorely disappointed and deeply pained” by the president’s presumed moderation toward the Southern states then in rebellion.

Three days later, on this date in 1862, Lincoln gave his answer.

 * * *

Unbeknownst to Horace Greeley, Lincoln had been considering decisive action on the question of Southern slavery in the summer of 1862. The president had discussed it with his Cabinet and drafted a version of a sweeping executive order. But Lincoln believed it was best delivered from a position of strength. In the commander-in-chief’s mind, this meant issuing it after a military victory by Union troops. For this reason, Lincoln didn’t want to tip his hand entirely; neither did he want the Tribune’s editorial sitting out there unanswered. And on Aug. 22, 1862 — 157 years ago today — he formulated his reply.

“If I could save the Union without freeing any slave,” Lincoln wrote to Greeley, “I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that.”

This statement has been used by 20^th century revisionists of various stripes to assert that Lincoln wasn’t all that committed to the cause of ending slavery. This criticism is not only wrong, it’s wrong in every respect. Abraham Lincoln had made his name in politics by speaking against slavery; the nascent political party he had joined was created to end it. Even as he wrote to Greeley, he was commanding a huge military force suffering frightful losses, a force called “Mr. Lincoln’s Army,” whose infantrymen marched off to war singing “John Brown’s Body,” later to be known as “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”

In fact, Lincoln tipped his hand even in the Greeley letter, with his concluding statement: “I intend no modification,” he wrote, “of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be free.”

The “oft-expressed” observation was no exaggeration. Lincoln had forcefully denounced slavery before the Civil War and continued to do so throughout its duration. And he did so in ways that helped Americans see the cosmic issue at stake, which was whether all the Founders’ talk about freedom really meant anything at all.

In an Oct. 4, 1854 speech in Springfield, Ill., Lincoln had expressed it this way: “We were proclaiming ourselves political hypocrites before the world, by fostering human slavery and proclaiming ourselves at the same time, the sole friends of human freedom.”

In an 1855 letter to his friend Joshua Speed, Lincoln amplified on this theme in more caustic language. “Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid,” he wrote. “As a nation, we began by declaring that ‘all men are created equal.’ We now practically read it ‘all men are created equal except Negroes.’ When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read ‘all men are created equal, except Negroes and foreigners and Catholics.’ When it comes to this, I shall prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty — to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.”

Three years later, Lincoln gave his famous “house divided” speech at the Illinois state Republican convention that nominated him for a Senate campaign.

“A house divided against itself cannot stand,” Lincoln said. on that occasion. “I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or the other.”

In his December 1862 State of the Union message to Congress, President Lincoln portrayed the intertwined goals of ending slavery and preserving the Union as one and the same. “In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free,” he asserted. “We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last, best hope of Earth.”

At Gettysburg, Lincoln referred to the “unfinished work” of the Union dead as “a new birth of freedom” that validated not just the hopes of enslaved Americans, but the soaring principles of America’s founding.

In an 1864 letter to a friend from Kentucky, a newspaperman named Albert G. Hodges, Lincoln wrote, “I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I can not remember when I did not so think, and feel.” A month before he died, in a speech to the 140^th Indiana Regiment, Lincoln said simply, “Whenever [I] hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.”

Lincoln’s actions, of course, spoke loudest of all. The military success he was awaiting on this date in 1862 came three weeks later at Antietam Creek. The cost was frightful: 2,100 Union soldiers killed, and another 9,500 wounded. The result was really a military stalemate, not a Union victory. But the Confederate losses were nearly as high, and the Battle of Antietam drove Robert E. Lee out of Maryland and back to Virginia. Less than two weeks later, Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation.

 

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/08/22/where_lincoln_stood_on_slavery_141074.html

Fascistic Washington Post Support for Fascist ANTIFA Violence!

WASHINGTON POST SHILLS FOR ANTIFA

by Paul Mirengoff   at PowerLine:

Here is the opening paragraph of the Washington Post’s account of a rally by a group called Proud Boys protesting the exclusion of some activists from social media:

Hundreds of D.C. police officers descended on the area around Washington’s Freedom Plaza on Saturday, preventing antifascists from clashing with right-wing demonstrators during dueling rallies near the White House.

Who were these “antifascists”?

Police on bicycles and on foot quickly broke up skirmishes and prevented black-clad, hooded leftist antifascists, known as antifa, from erecting barricades in streets with toppled newspaper boxes and chairs.

(Emphasis added)

What is the Post’s basis for telling its readers that Antifa, thugs who go around beating up people whose views they disagree with, is antifascist? It’s probably the fact that the Post also disagrees with the views of those whom these leftist thugs beat up.

It’s true that Antifa claims to be antifascist. But surely the Post, chock full of crack, truth-seeking journalists, isn’t taking Antifa’s word for it.

Donald Trump says he’s making America great again. The Post doesn’t parrot that claim. Why does it parrot the claim of hooded goons that they are antifascist? Again, it’s probably because the Post thinks Antifa, if not exactly on its side, is at least the enemy of its enemies.

It took four Post reporters — Peter Hermann, Peter Jamison, Hannah Natanson, and Clarence Williams — to crank out this pedestrian story, which runs only a little over two dozen paragraphs. Which of these ace reporters decided to buy Antifa’s marketing of itself as an antifascist organization? Maybe it was a collective decision. Or maybe they simply followed an editorial decision made by the Post’s brass.

Speaking of marketing, it’s shocking that a newspaper that markets itself through the slogan “democracy dies in darkness” applies a heroic description to a gang whose criminal behavior constitutes a head-on threat to free speech and, therefore, democracy.

Shocking, but not surprising, given that the newspaper in question is the Washington Post.

Hinderaker and Owens….REAL AMERICANS!

CANDACE OWENS AND ME

by John Hinderaker  at PowerLine:

As assiduous readers know, I am a big fan of Candace Owens. I think she is one of the most important people in the United States, perhaps second only to President Trump. Three weeks ago, Candace headlined Center of the American Experiment’s Annual Dinner. I wrote about it here. Nine days ago, I posted five brief video clips from Candace’s excellent speech. After she talked for a half hour, I joined her on the stage and asked some questions, after which we opened it up to questions from the audience of 940 or so. I am now getting around to posting short clips of that colloquy between Candace and me. They are interesting, I think, and have some entertainment value, too.

Why is Candace so effective? It has to do with focusing on culture:

Candace is visibly happy. How do happiness and unhappiness relate to Right vs. Left?

Candace is probably the second most attacked person in the U.S., after Donald Trump. How does she deal with the hate that the Left showers on her, day after day?

Recently Candace testified before the House Judiciary Committee. Her testimony went viral, and is the most-watched segment on CSPAN ever. What was it like?

Is Owens interested in running for office? Maybe she could follow in the footsteps of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez…

I ask Candace to describe the Blexit rallies on which she is now focusing most of her attention:

Finally, my favorite: I ask Candace what she does for fun. She is getting married in August, and we talk about her fiancé’s idea of a good time–hunting wolves in Serbia with eagles. Seriously:

When Candace Owens burst on the scene a year and a half ago or so, I wondered whether she could take the heat. Pressures on prominent black conservatives are almost unimaginable. But she is a knowledgeable, fearless conservative who will, I am convinced, stay the course. In person, she is delightful. I hope you get a sense of that from these brief clips.

The Mass of Dem Presidential Contenders ARE More Fascistic Than Anything American!

Trump isn’t the biggest threat to the Constitution. Democrats are.

By Marc A. Thiessen

Who is the biggest threat to our constitutional order? It is not President Trump.

Ever since Trump took office, Democrats have been telling us he is an authoritarian who threatens our system of government. Well, today it is Democrats who are declaring war on the Constitution. Leading Democrats are promising that, if elected in 2020, they will abolish the electoral college and might also pack the Supreme Court with liberal justices — allowing them to marginalize Americans who do not support their increasingly radical agenda and impose it on an unwilling nation.

The purpose of the electoral college is to protect us from what James Madison called the “tyranny of the majority.” Each state gets to cast electoral votes equal to the combined number of its U.S. representatives (determined by population) and its senators (two regardless of population). The goal was to make sure even the smallest states have a say in electing the president and prevent those with large, big-city populations from dictating to the less populous rural ones.

No wonder Democrats don’t like it. Today, they have become the party of big-city elites, while their support is declining in less populous states of Middle America. Just look at a county-by-county map of the 2016 election — you can actually drive from coast to coast without driving through a single county that voted for Hillary Clinton. Clinton lost in 2016 because millions of once-reliable Democratic working-class voters in the American heartland switched their allegiance to Trump.

Thanks to the electoral college, Democrats have no choice but to try to win at least some of those voters back if they want to win the presidency. But if we got rid of the electoral college, Democrats could write off voters in “fly-over” country and focus on turning out large numbers of their supporters in big cities and populous liberal states such as New York and California. Unburdened by the need to moderate their platform to appeal to centrist voters, they would be free to pursue full socialism without constraint. If voters in Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania oppose spending tens of trillions on a Green New Deal and a government take-over of the health-care, energy and transportation sectors of the economy, tough luck.

The electoral college protects us from this kind of unconstrained radicalism, by forcing the political parties to broaden their appeal — which is precisely why more and more Democrats want to get rid of it. Fortunately, the framers of the Constitution required supermajorities for amendments — another wise protection against the tyranny of the majority.

But Democrats would have no such obstacles in dealing with another impediment to their radical agenda: the Supreme Court. Thanks to Trump’s electoral college victory, Republicans have been able confirm two Supreme Court justices and secure a conservative majority. Democrats have no one but themselves to blame for their judicial predicament. They were the ones who announced that they would not confirm a Supreme Court justice during George W. Bush’s final year in office, setting the precedent for Republicans to block President Barack Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland. And they were the ones who eliminated the filibuster for federal circuit courts judges — setting the precedent for Republicans to eliminate the filibuster for Supreme Court justices.

Democrats have miscalculated at every turn, and now their solution is to break precedent yet again — by packing the Supreme Court. There have been nine justices on the Supreme Court for the past 150 years. No matter, Democratic candidates including Beto O’Rourke; South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg; and Sens. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.), Kamala D. Harris (Calif.) and Kirsten Gillibrand (N.Y.) have all said that, as president, they would consider adding justices to the Supreme Court to secure a left-wing majority. The last president who tried this, Franklin D. Roosevelt, was stopped only because members of his own party rebelled. The Senate Judiciary Committee, then controlled by the Democrats, correctly declaredhis plan “an invasion of judicial power such as has never before been attempted in this country.”

It seems unlikely a Democratic president would face such a rebellion today. But unless Democrats win not only the presidency but also a 60-vote Senate majority, they would have to eliminate another minority protection — the legislative filibuster — to pass a court-packing bill. I suspect they would not hesitate to do so.

Taken together, the Democrats are proposing what amounts to a systemic assault on the foundations of our federal system. Democrats are freely pursuing a tyranny of the majority. We’ll see how it plays in Middle America. But if they do, then spare us the overwrought complaints about Trump. You can’t defend the Constitution while trying to tear it up at the same time.

Read more from Marc Thiessen’s archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump-isnt-the-biggest-threat-to-the-constitution-democrats-are/2019/03/21/77c99d82-4c03-11e9-b79a-961983b7e0cd_story.html?utm_term=.2bce5223f03b

Mitt Romney Turns Brutus, or Perhaps He Was Always an IDIOT!

ET TU, MITT?

by John Hinderaker  at PowerLine:

“Republican” Congressman Justin Amash of Michigan has called for President Trump’s impeachment on Twitter. His reasons are idiotic:

“Impeachment, which is a special form of indictment, does not even require probable cause that a crime (e.g., obstruction of justice) has been committed; it simply requires a finding that an official has engaged in careless, abusive, corrupt, or otherwise dishonorable conduct,” Amash wrote.

An interesting paraphrase of “high crimes and misdemeanors.” But naturally Politico cheers Amash on, with this false statement of fact:

The [Mueller] report outlined several episodes that meet all the element [sic] of an obstruction of justice offense, most notably former White House Counsel Don McGahn’s testimony about Trump’s persistent efforts to have McGahn fire the special counsel.

No, actually, it didn’t. The McGhan theory is laughable: if Trump had wanted to fire Mueller so that another special counsel could have been appointed, he would have done it. But he didn’t. And replacing a conflicted special counsel with another special counsel could not possibly constitute obstruction of justice, in any event.

This morning on CNN’s State of the Union, Mitt Romney praised Amash without going so far as to call for impeachment himself:

Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) said Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI) was “courageous” for concluding President Donald Trump committed “impeachable conduct.”

Romney said, “I think every individual has to make their own judgment. I think it helps to actually have read the entire document. It’s a long document. It took me two full days to get through it. The second volume is more difficult to get through than the first. Hopefully more people read it. I think a lot of people want to reserve judgment until this is played out. My own view is that Justin Amash has reached a different conclusion than I have. I respect him. I think it’s a courageous statement. But I believe to make a case for obstruction of justice, you just don’t have the elements that are evidenced in this document. And I also believe that an impeachment call is something that not just relates to the law but considers practicality and politics. I think those considering impeachment have to look at the jury, which is the Senate. The Senate is certainly not there either.

Thanks for that ringing endorsement of your president, Mitt. Taking the Democrats’ absurd grounds for impeachment seriously is a betrayal of your party and, ultimately, of the American people who are benefiting so greatly from the Trump administration. Romney also declined to endorse President Trump for re-election, saying it is “way too early.” Who knows, Mitt might yet decide Bernie Sanders or Joe Biden is a better choice.

AG BILL BARR IS DEFINITELY NOT A CLONE OF OBAMALAND’S AGs

 Democratic smears of Bill Barr would be more accurately applied to Obama’s AGs

by Mike Braun,  Fox News:

House Democrats hold Barr in contempt, Trump asserts executive privilege over Mueller report

Reaction and analysis from former deputy assistant attorney general John Yoo and former independent counsel Sol Wisenberg.

 

William Barr has been confirmed by the U.S. Senate four times, has served two U.S. presidents, and has proven himself to be a consummate professional who deeply respects the great responsibilities and boundaries of the office of the attorney general. Considering the turbulent tenures of President Obama’s two attorneys general, Democrats’ partisan attacks on Barr’s honesty and transparency should fall on deaf ears.

To refresh your memory, Obama’s first attorney general, Eric Holder, became embroiled in a scandal when guns illegally sold to Mexican drug cartels by the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) were found at the scene of the murder of a U.S. Border Patrol agent.

When the House of Representatives requested documents related to the scandal, Holder refused and was held in contempt of Congress with 17 Democrats crossing the aisle to formally condemn him – the first time Congress had taken such action against a cabinet official. Obama invoked executive privilege to protect Holder and hide those documents from the American public: a decision that is still being battled in the courts.

REP. COLLINS BLASTS BARR CONTEMPT VOTE AS ‘DESPERATE’ MOVE TO DISCREDIT ATTORNEY GENERAL

His successor didn’t fare much better. In June of 2016, Attorney General Loretta Lynch met privately with former President Bill Clinton on her private plane on the tarmac in Arizona for an hour while his wife was being actively investigated by the Department of Justice for mishandling classified information through a private email server – an investigation Lynch later decided to close without pursuing charges.

Lynch claimed at the time that she would accept the FBI’s recommendation to pursue charges in the Clinton investigation, but according to testimony from FBI lawyer Lisa Page released earlier this year, it was, in fact, the Department of Justice that determined not to bring charges.

Democrats’ absurd claims about Barr are, in actuality,  the sad truth about President Obama’s AGs.

A private meeting with the spouse of a major presidential candidate in an election year – which would have gone unnoticed was it not for a local television station – should be cause enough to doubt the impartiality of the nation’s top law enforcement officer. A secret meeting with the politically powerful husband of an investigative subject days before declining to pursue charges against her is a solid “F” grade on the tests of trust and transparency.

Barr, by contrast, has handled the release of the Mueller report with unprecedented transparency: releasing the full report with minimal redactions as quickly as possible and even allowing select members of Congress to view all of the report that is legally viewable at their convenience. As of this week, no Democrat has taken him up on that offer.

It wasn’t enough. Following Barr’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Democrats’ slander reached fever pitch: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wasted no time or investigation in declaring the attorney general of the United States a criminal, the junior senator from California falsely claimed Barr “lied to Congress,” and another Democratic colleague said he was “a paid hack for the president.”

Democrats’ public vilification of Barr is a glimpse into how Holder’s “Fast and Furious” scandal or Loretta Lynch’s tarmac summit with Bill Clinton might have played out without the air support of a breathless liberal media unwilling to portray Obama officials as anything but selfless public servants and Trump officials as anything but supervillains.

Democrats’ absurd claims about Barr – that he’s calling balls and strikes based on partisan allegiance, that he’s refusing to cooperate with reasonable congressional requests, that he may have declined prosecution to protect his political ally – are, in actuality, the sad truth about President Obama’s AGs.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

Americans should remember this blatant double standard as we watch Democrats’ last-ditch effort to destroy Attorney General Barr, a distinguished public servant, and call these smears what they are: bluster from politicians desperate to stretch out the Mueller investigation as long as possible in an attempt to damage President Trump and baseless political grandstanding from presidential candidates.

In both cases, it should be treated as exactly as what it is: hypocrisy.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM SEN. MIKE BRAUN

Mike Braun is an entrepreneur who created hundreds of American jobs and is a U.S. Senator from Indiana.

 

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/senator-mike-braun-bill-barr-obama-holder-lynch

The Unhappy Snake in the Grass, Slippery Boa Mueller Moans

MUELLER MOANS, MEDIA MISLEADS

by Paul Mirengoff  at  PowerLine:

Yesterday, I noted that mainstream media coverage of William Barr’s testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee omitted an important piece of information — Barr tried to address the concern of Robert Mueller that some combination of Barr’s four-page memo and media reporting about it was “confusing” the American public. Barr responded with a statement designed to clarify the situation. The media did not report this fact even though it figured prominently in Barr’s testimony.

In addition, the media either did not report or barely mentioned three other important facts to which Barr testified. Marc Thiessen highlights two of them in this op-ed for the Washington Post.

First, before issuing his four-page summary of Mueller’s two major conclusions, Barr gave the special counsel a chance to see the document and to offer comments and proposed edits. Mueller declined.

One rarely sees mention of this in mainstream media reporting, for an obvious reason — it makes Barr look good and Mueller look bad. It casts Mueller’s after-the-fact whining, or that of his “snitty” staff, in an unfavorable light.

Second, Barr, far from being uncooperative with Congress or trying to hide the ball, overrode normal Justice Department procedures and released the full Mueller report to the public with only minor redactions. Moreover, Congress has access to a version of the report that contains even less redacted material.

Barr stressed this point in his opening statement, but I don’t recall seeing it mentioned in mainstream media reporting. Again, the reason is obvious — it makes Barr look good and undercuts the furious attempts of Democrats to demonize him.

Finally, the media is covering for Mueller at Barr’s expense in another way. Barr testified that the Department of Justice, anticipating that redactions to the Mueller report would be necessary as a matter of law, encouraged Mueller’s team to identify portions of its report that would need to be redacted.

By doing so before submitting the report to the DOJ, Mueller would significantly reduce the time required before his report could be released to the public and to Congress. Barr testified that, shortly after becoming Attorney General, he personally made this point to Mueller.

But when Mueller submitted his report, it did not identify redactions. This meant that Barr’s team had to start the redaction project from scratch. As a result, the report could not be released as soon as Barr had hoped.

Had Mueller cooperated with redactions at the front end, Congress and the public would have heard directly from him much sooner. Indeed, he might not even have had to ask Barr, in that now famous letter, to issue multi-page summaries of his findings. The entire report might have been ready, or nearly ready, for release by then.

Thus, Mueller dropped the ball twice: first by not flagging redactions and second by not reviewing Barr’s four-page memo before it was released. If there is public confusion about the report (other than that now being generated by desperate Democrats) due to Barr’s memo and the delay in releasing the actual report, Mueller is partly to blame.

Fortunately for him, the mainstream media acts as his shield.

 

Dem Fascists Go Wild Attacking AG Wm Barr at Stalinist Jerry Nadler’s May Day Judiciary Committee Gathering

Jerry Nadler just turned the Judiciary Committee into a complete circus

By N.Y. Post Editorial Board

AP

Rising to chairman of the House Judiciary Committee after more than a quarter-century in Congress, New York’s Rep. Jerry Nadler is finally enjoying his moment in the spotlight — by turning the committee into a circus.

On Thursday, Nadler chaired a mock hearing, complete with an empty chair for Attorney General William Barr, who he knew wouldn’t show up.

Playing to the TV cameras, one committee Democrat placed a fake chicken on the chair — and, for good measure, brought a bucket of fried chicken.

The point: “Chicken” Barr was afraid to show his face and testify about his summary of the Mueller report. Never mind that he’d faced a Senate committee the day before, or that the idea of Bill Barr being afraid of Jerry Nadler is just ludicrous.

The reason Barr refused to show is that Nadler demanded that he face questioning from staff lawyers. The AG was perfectly right to object: There’s no precedent for non-members quizzing a Cabinet official in a public Judiciary hearing.

Nadler knew full well Barr would refuse to play the patsy in what would’ve been a mock trial. As the committee’s top Republican, Doug Collins said, the only reason Barr wasn’t there is that “Democrats decided they didn’t want him here.”

Besides, the Judiciary Committee is packed with lawyers, including Nadler. Does the chairman think they’re just not competent to question the AG?

Playing out the show, Nadler went fully over the top, threatening Barr with contempt or impeachment and warning that our “very system of government . . . is at stake.” Please.

Don’t be misled: The Mueller report was a dud, but Democrats don’t dare admit it — nor pay the political price they’d incur if they went for impeachment anyway. So they’ve created a distraction — a phony scandal centered on Barr.

If anyone’s showing contempt for our “very system of government,” it’s Jerry Nadler and his crew.

https://nypost.com/2019/05/02/jerry-nadler-just-turned-the-judiciary-committee-into-a-complete-circus/